Are Obama and Chavez BFF???

Yes, I am biased, and with good reason.

Having been born in a third rate Communist country, and having seen first hand what Socialism gone wrong looks like, color me skeptical that anything positive will come out of the Obama – Chavez handshake in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad this past week.

Nothing good for the US that is, for Chavez it was a once in a lifetime photo-op to try and legitimize his place on the “Who’s Who List” of third-world dictators. What more can you say about Chavez than that his idol and mentor is Cuba’s Fidel Castro?

Still, Obama is trying to stick to his guns, calling the meeting with the long-winded and narcissistic Venezuelan leader, at the Summit of the Americas, "an opportunity for frank dialogue on a range of issues, including critical issues of democracy and human rights throughout the hemisphere." (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090419/ap_on_go_pr_wh/cb_obama_summit)

Sure, I would love to give President Obama the benefit of the doubt on that, but honestly, I know better. Having lived in a Communist country, I know that there is no love lost for America in a country whose leader idolizes a monster like Castro.

So I have two choices, I can take the high road and say that we have a President who is naïve enough not to have figured out by now that no good can come out of making friends with Chavez, or I can have the ugly opinion that they are Socialist birds of a feather with more than a few points in common. An ugly thought to have of your President, sure, but didn’t we just recently wade knee deep into the nationalization of private businesses?

Isn’t that a page right out of the Socialist handbook that Chavez follows? Didn’t Castro too begin by nationalizing businesses the minute he took over the Island nation of Cuba? Hey, I’m just keeping it real. My ideas of “hope and change” goes no where near replacing the U.S. Constitution with the Communist Manifesto.

For his part, Chavez who wanted nothing to do with the last US Presidential Administration, goig as far as calling Obama “much smarter than the last president.” The problem is that it doesn’t really matter if the statement is true or false, what really matters is a US-hater like Hugo Chavez would not make that kind of statement if he did not have a hidden agenda to go along with it.

Obama, on the other hand, shakes off the critics by saying, "It's hard to believe we are endangering the strategic interests of the United States" by talking with Chavez. Sure okay, but lets count the times in which talking to a third-rate dictator has accomplished anything for US strategic interests? Anyone really believe that the Cuban missile crisis could have been avoided by a talk between Kennedy and Castro? Really? Or did it a take a hard stance and a blockade of the Island nation?

At least let us hope that Chavez has not added Obama to “his Five” or that he will be referring to the US President as his new BFF. Only time will tell though.

We <3 Castro!?!

I almost vomited my lunch today.

I almost vomited and it had little to do with anything I ate, and everything to do with the ridicules sound bytes I heard of US politicians gushing over a visit with Cuba's Fidel Castro.

To hear Representative Barbara Lee (Calif. Democrat) and her colleagues talk about Cuba and her visit with the 82 year old dictator, you would think that Cuba was an island paradise and Castro a wise paternal old man with nothing but love in his heart for America.

My problem with the whole thing? Well, for starters, I was born in Communist Cuba and lived there long enough to tell you Lee and her law maker friends are either Marxists (thinly veiled as Democrats) or people too naive to hold a seat in Congress. How else can you explain the feel good moment that came out of the meeting?

You want to know the real Castro, ask my uncle "Chino," who spent 18 years in a Cuban prison as a political dissident before former President Jimmy Carter helped get him released. Never mind the beatings he took in prison, ask him about the year he served in the nude, or the multiple years he spent in his underwear, and you will quickly come to realize that Guantanamo was not really the prison that needed to be shut down in Cuba. While you are at it, ask my father about Castro and his regime. My dad, who had the dubious honor of once playing baseball with the man, wound up in prison as well for trying to get a passport to come to America (through the Swiss embassy), back in the day where you still could. My dad's Defense Attorney told the judge to simply "throw the book at his client." Then there are the scores of people who died by firing squad in the early days of the post revolutionary period. Need I go on? The stories are endless...

Yet, here were three US law makers, praising Castro, his "humbled" home, his wife, and his desire of wanting to know more about Dr. Martin Luther King. Still, that wasn't the moment when my lunch wanted to make a hastily exit by way of mouth. No, that moment came a bit later when our politicians actually spoke of Castro's sincere offer to, "help President Obama in any way he can."

It's a sad day when we mistake a monster for a man.