Don't Miss:

A Russian Perspective on the state of the Union. Straight from Pravda.ru here. A new wrinkle on the Russians dissing us, gotta love it!
(Although it uses the name, as a cheesy fellow reminded me, it is not the old official Soviet news organ.)

Read: Fidel's Last Days

With that title, I couldn't pass it by. Surprisingly, I'm not sorry I didn't. The novel by Roland Merullo is eminently readable as a suspense story. Here is a labyrinthine plot, a storyline layered with tissue upon tissue of deception, much of which rings true. The odd thing is that the succession of power is never mentioned, nor the extended putrescence of the maximum leader. No, I can only surmise that the novel was written at an earlier time unmarked by the dictator's extended illness, but by the time the novel was published, 2008, circumstances had changed considerably, because Merullo's Fidel is functioning on all cylinders.

Still, I enjoyed it. There were few places where the truth teller radar went off. My biggest gripe is that it all ended too abruptly, left some major questions and characters suspended in the ether. In any case, you could do much worse than spend an afternoon between Miami and Havana. From the author's title to God's ears...

Meanderings: Not Again!

Part of the spotty posting lately is the result of the overlap between mourning my mother's death and impending nuptials of the daughter, known affectionately since her infancy as "La Nana." It was in this last context that I found myself once again on the 75 hurtling toward Tampa to retrieve the aforementioned offspring.

The last time I made the same trek, I wound up fish-tailing across three lanes of an interstate with nary a scratch. My psyche, however, was scarred. I no longer trust my midlife crisis car and would have traded it in if it weren't for the aforesaid wedding. So this time, I decided that to be safe I would take Mom's sedate Chevy. Although I haven't been able to change the registration and such, the insurance is up to date. The way I figured it, safety trumped legal nicety.

So I get on the highway. The car is riding a bit rough, but I figure it's the pavement. After all the front tires are new, right? But since I'm traumatized anyway, I'm going pretty slow, to the chagrin of the drivers behind me. Still, it don't feel quite right, so I decide I'll get out at the rest stop by the Skyway Bridge and check it out. Just about that time, I hit something on the road. Correction: it feels like I hit something on the road because there is nothing on the road. The car starts swerving. Fortunately I'm in the right lane this time and going slow. Unfortunately, I'm also in the middle of a substantially large bridge over the Manatee River with a four foot wide shoulder. All the time, I'm automatically wrestling the car into submission, my brain is saying, "This can't be happening again!" Alas, it was. Climbing over the shift, preferable to getting my door blown off, I scoot out the passenger side. There is essentially no right front tire. All that remains is a rubbery fringe around the rim. Yessiree.

Now I'm thinking, "What am I going to do?" I have no cell phone, refusing to carry one. The Little One is at the airport. She won't know what happened. The registration and insurance is at home with the packet of stuff for Motor Vehicles. The wind is battering me; traffic is fast and furious; my perch, narrow and precarious. I debate whether I should leave the car and walk off the bridge. It does seem the only way to get help, but I have visions of a codger seeing me on the edge of the road and following his line of vision with his motor vehicle. Then a huge, and I mean huge, flatbed pulls onto the shoulder about a block in front of me and proceeds to back up. Salvation or serial killer, I wonder?

This incredibly wonderful human being in a blue uniform with an Irish lilt to his speech and Irish gold in his heart proceeds to change my tire. Incredible that there are still such people. Despite some trouble with my newfangled jack which I unearthed from all the Mom memorabilia in the trunk, he did it one-two-three. Miraculously, I actually have cash in the pocketbook. I try to give him a present, because nothing can repay what the man just did for me, but he will not take a penny. His only request that I do someone else a favor. Reminds me of a country song.

I make it to the airport almost in time. My first words: "Next time fly to Sarasota. I don't care how much it costs." Amen.

Truth Be Told Updated

From Babalu comes this well-reasoned and informed NPR piece via NRO online. In reference to the embargo lifting, Duncan Currie nails it. Of particular note is his treatment of the Democratizing-Cuba-one-mojito-at-a-time rationale. I'll leave you with a snippet:

As for tourism, European and Canadian tourists have been enjoying Cuba's beaches and hotels for years. Has this sparked internal reforms? "European and Canadian governments would like to make that case, but I don't believe there is any evidence to support it," Peter Orr, a retired Foreign Service officer who served as Cuba coordinator at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) under President Clinton, told me in an e-mail. No surprise there: The Cuban tourism industry is dominated by the armed forces, and foreign tourists are generally isolated from ordinary Cubans. Miami Herald columnist Andres Oppenheimer, a shrewd observer of Cuban and Latin American affairs, dismisses the "U.S. tourists will bring democracy" claim as "wishful thinking." He writes that the millions of European, Canadian, and Latin American tourists who have come to Cuba during the past decade have not had "any visible impact on the island's totalitarian system."

Update: I was researching Mr. Currie when I stumbled onto this he wrote about the ALA and their improbable stance on Cuban censorship as an intern in 2003.

Cheney's Remarks: You Go

Although I didn't agree with some of his reputed foreign policy views, I am one of the five people who actually liked the former VP. Anyway, the Republican Party sent me a link to the full text of his foreign policy speech, really more of a defense. Trust me, it's worthy of a read. Bravo!

Clearing Out The Cobwebs

From my personal closet of journalistic curiosities...

Another George Will column over at the Washington Post makes the cut this week. Mr. Will points out the obvious here: the administration is acting as if it is above the law. He cites arm twisting of states, threats to corporate financing, and breaches of contract law. Besides, Will actually uses the word ukase in a sentence. After reading the general treatment he affords the Chrysler situation, turn to a letter from the American Thinker cited at Babalu in which one unfortunate dealer makes clear just what devils lurk in the details of this deal. This is America? Unconscionable.

Here's another gov't disgrace. In an ironic twist, AFP informs us via BreitBart that the US Attorney and the FBI are investigating insider trading at the SEC. You know, the guys who prosecute everyone else for financial malfeasance in the market. You gotta be kidding me.

According to this report over at Foxnews the happiest people are old, male, and Republican. Of course, I could have told you that the ill-mannered shrillness of the left indicated very unhappy people with unresolved issues from adolescence. But, heck, I'm no expert, being middle-aged, female, and Republican. Actually, I have grossly oversimplified the Pew Research. Read it for yourself.

In another peripherally related CBS report, it seems you really can die of a broken heart, of Broken Heart Syndrome, to be exact. Seems the stress of emotional upheaval, sudden fear and the like really can give you a heart attack. Whoddathunkit?

Finally, I'll share a rather puzzling report from the UK's Times Online, via How Green. Seems there is no global honeybee crisis after all. Still the report lacks a bit of clarity. What is going on in the States? Is it the two syndromes cited or that people don't keep bees? And what about the demand? I'm confoosed.

A Graduation is no Place for Tantrums or Catholics have Manners

The commencement speaker at my daughter's graduation from Boston College a few years ago was Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice. For weeks prior to the event, controversy raged across the campus. On the appointed day, much to our relief, there was little evidence of the same. Of course, some of the faculty did stand and give her their backs to her while she spoke. This feeble and ill-mannered demonstration, however, was more than countered by the warm welcome and rousing response of the crowd.

This week at Notre Dame, the other side was afforded a similar treatment. Despite the attendant hoopla, when the President spoke, he was welcomed heartily. This was as it should be. I do not agree with the man on many things, but I do believe that as a guest of the school, he was due the hospitality of the entire place. There is never an excuse for bad manners... almost never anyway.

It stikes me that these people, whether the professors at BC or the odd heckler at Notre Dame, share in the notion that their views trump those of the assembled multitudes. Graduation is not about the speaker, or the administration, or even them. Graduation is a celebration of the hard work of students and parents, a milestone in the development of young minds. Who are they to impose their will?

The beef, if any, is not with the speaker but with those who invited him or her. The speaker also bears the burden of not prosletyzing about his or her own brand of politics. In my experience, most are cognizant of the same and present a pretty catholic message. Anyway, we have reached a pretty sad state of affairs when we cannot listen to each other, when we cannot at least pretend to be gracious. Upshot: save your tantrums for your parents or spouses. You have no right to inflict them on us. There is a time and a place for disagreements of all stripes. Graduation is not it.

Wordless

May 15 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama will keep
the military tribunal system for trying some terrorism suspects held at the U.S.
prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, with expanded legal protections for
defendants.

Here.

and

GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) - U.S. military judges
dropped all war crimes charges on Monday against the only two Guantanamo
captives facing trial, rulings that could preclude trying any of the 380
prisoners held at the U.S. base in Cuba any time soon.

The judges said they lacked jurisdiction under the strict
definition of those eligible for trial by military tribunal under a law the U.S.
Congress enacted last year.
Here.

Boldface mine

Last Week's Follies

Soft Shoe. Kudo's to Michelle Malkin for pointing out the "double standard" when it comes to political couture. Check out Michelle Obama's Lanvin footgear in question. A Sneaker by any other name would still be as odiferous. Glad she devoted herself to public service and not to pursuing filthy lucre. Read it at Townhall.

Burlesque. I'm listening to the TV in the other room, so I figure I missed something. "What is Fiat giving Chrysler for the stock?" I ask the hubster. "I'm not sure," he replies. Doesn't seem to be much as far as I can see. Better question: what's the UAW putting into the kitty? Talk about your misbegotten creatures. Read the Barone column in the Washington Examiner and get the gory details. The very fabric of our economic system, my friends.

Pantomime. The ruling military junta celebrated May Day with a mute Raul, perhaps because even though they are masters of the demonstration on demand, the message that repression and misery will continue was a tad unpopular. Read all about it here in a Miami Herald article co-written by an undercover reporter. You go, Herald.

Stand Up. How about a week in swinging Nazareth? Very interesting article at Fox News about the contemporary city where Jesus grew up and that believers won't recognize.

Can-Can. Although the swine flu has thankfully turned into a bust, Mexican neighbors think it originated at a plant co-owned by Smithfield farms. With all the pig joints South of the Border, it had to be a partially American-owned one. Believe it? Who knows?

Guess What Travel Company I Won't Be Using

Greed Fuels Clamor to Ease Cuba Restrictions

I fantasize that one day, I'll open the paper and read that headline. It is, after all, essentially the case. Aside from idealogues, the greatest chearleaders for ending the embargo and attendant travel restrictions, are almost invariably ranchers, farmers, wouldbe investors. The latest entity- doubtless fueled by the desire to democratize Cuba one tourist at a time- to enter the lists is none other than Orbitz. Yup, of Orbitz.com fame. Seems they wanted to throw their weight behind a social cause and apparently decided that bailing out a totalitarian dictatorship while lining their pockets fit the bill better than, say, ending world hunger.

It would seem that some sort of campaign of our own might be called for. Suggestions? Read the Seattle Times article about their orchestrated campaign here, complete with link to online petition. Sign up and they'll give you a one hundred dollar coupon toward travel in Cuba. Bajate del asiento, Ñiquito. (Allusion to old Alvarez Guedes joke about a father and his son dreaming of the new family car they will someday buy.)

Cross-posted at Babalublog

Canaries in the Political Mine?

If eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, maybe we should be looking at some recent developments. I'm driving along in me vehicle when I hear an ad condemning a proposed radio tax. So I go here. Maybe I don't see things as a free speech sort of thing- it seems to apply to music- but I take note.

Then one day, I open my email and find an empassioned plea from a conservative magazine. I've reproduced the text below:

You may recall that, just over a year ago, the federal government's taxpayer-subsidized mail-delivery monopoly -- aka the United States Postal Service -- hit us with a whopping 20 percent rate increase that drove up our annual delivery costs by more than $120,000.

Well, believe it or not, they've just done it again.

That's right: the USPS is hitting us with yet another postal increase that will jack up our annual delivery costs by an additional $51,568.

Together, this one-two punch of rate hikes amounts to more than $170,000 in increased annual delivery costs -- a staggering sum that we simply can't afford.

Now, it's outrageous enough that the USPS can continually jack up our rates without fearing any loss of our business to more cost-efficient competitors -- something it can do ONLY because federal law effectively protects it from private competition.

But what really burns me up is that these increases are part of a new rate system that was designed in part by lobbyists for liberal media giant Time Warner and other large publishers to benefit themselves at the expense of smaller competitors such as [ ].So instead of Time Warner's mailing costs ratcheting up like ours, the cost of delivering liberal Time magazine and other Big Media publications will increase at about half the rate hike forced on [ ] (and that's after some of those publications actually had a decrease in postage costs last year!).

Talk on radio is mostly conservative; large media publications are almost inveterately liberal. Co-incidence? Who was it that said there are no co-incidences. There is more than one way to shut up the Right. In the meantime, keep an eye on the bouncing ball.

Meanderings: A Death, A Wedding, And An Estate

I've been distracted as of late by the recent death of my mother, the impending wedding of my daughter, and the interminable process of settling an estate. Of the three, the estate has been the worst. My mother was very ill. By the time she died, she had left a five year old Chevy on which she owed money, a modest condo worth less than a luxury car in today's market, and a small amount of money in the bank, co-incidentally just over what she owed in debts. So I was not particularly perturbed about settling it. I knew the estate was not big enough for probate in Florida, so I never anticipated the hoops through which I would need to jump.

Now, if you're rich, you hire an attorney, pay lots of money, and forget about the thing. If you're not so rich, you impose on an attorney friend and do the legwork yourself. If you're poor, I have no idea what you do, as I can't conceive you would have to go through the whole rigmarole. All I know is that when Mom died, I began to pay her bills off with the account that we'd always used. The crematory notified Social Security, so that was done. I paid off her car. Check. When I went to pay off her bank credit card, I found that the same bank she owed the money to had frozen her funds. It was just as well, because just about that time, I discovered that I wasn't allowed to do it. I had to file some probate variant with the court. Filing fees, Ka-ching. Advertising in the paper for three months, Ka-ching. By the way, keep paying the maintenance fees on the condo, the insurance on the car, they're yours. Ka-ching.

Oh, my lawyer informs me a month later, we'll need an inventory of her belongings. What belongings?, I reply. Lets see, an extensive wardrobe I've donated to Goodwill. Some furniture my husband had scrounged for her, also donated to Goodwill. She did have quite a costume jewelry collection I didn't have the heart to donate. And I still have her bottle collection. Don't get excited. They're just ordinary bottles. My mother, the folk artist, collected bottles she liked. Sum total: dismal. I realized that she had been shedding possessions for years. She had very little left. She had, however, traveled extensively, eaten her way across Sarasota, and generally enjoyed herself. That doesn't count.

The bank she owes the money to, which has frozen the funds to pay them, now sics a collection agency on her. I get a phone call. I tell them, "She's dead." I guess a lot of people must use that excuse, because she says, "Oh, I'll tell them not to call you for like three or four days."

"You gotta be kidding me," I reply. "You guys froze the funds. Now you gotta wait three months like everyone else."

Then begins the reign of terror. They call me every day. If I don't answer they call twice a day. Finally, I do what I should have done in the first place but was too peeved to do. I call this TARP bank. After giving them the name of my much put upon lawyer, it subsides.

Now this poor fellow informs me that I need proof that I paid the car. On that hangs another tale. This but the beginning of my adventures in nonprobate land.

RIP: Jack Kemp

It is with great sadness that I mark the passing of a man who inspired me greatly, Jack Kemp. Mr. Kemp was truly a compassionate conservative. He was a man who demonstrated that adhering to principles of small government, low taxes, etc. did not preclude concern for those less fortunate. He will be sorely missed. Read here.

Apoplectic Fit Inducing Quote of the Day...

...comes from this in USA Today:

But the facilities — save for some up-to-date resorts and a few contemporary Havana hotels — pose challenges for demanding Americans, experts say.

Cubans own the hotel real estate, "and (foreign) hoteliers don't have free rein to manage as they wish," Baker [ "author of the Moon travel guide to Cuba, who has visited the country more than 30 times"] says. Bad service and food are common. "Communism and good service don't go together," he says. Cuba does not get a high percentage of repeat visitors, he says.

So many aspects of this quote are so vile that it is difficult to keep from spluttering over the keys. First, there is the overt bigotry. The accommodations are not up to snuff because they are owned by the natives. You know them; they're the little brown "sensual" types. Then there is the ignorance or dishonesty of that very misleading statement. The hotel real estate is not owned by Cuban landowners, as the article, penned by Kitty Bean Yancey, implies. It is owned, as is just about everything else, by the ruling military junta. Forgive me, if I feel no compassion for those foreign hoteliers who want to line up behind the khaki clad caudillos to ravish the Cuban population. Tourism diplomacy in action.

H/T Babalublog

Cosa Mas Grande, Chico!

Thoroughly enjoyed Manny Perez's reminscence over at Cubanology of a surreptitious jaunt into Manhattan when he was a young man during which he met Tres Patines. I was trying to remember those television shows of the late 70's, early 80's, shows that featured celebrities who had fled Cuba. I remember Popa and her ever present pocketbook, and then I remember a Mexican singer whose trademark was uttering "Mucho gusto, mucho gusto, mucho gusto!" My memory fails me. There was no Spanish TV when I was young, and these programs- watched by my grandparents much later- I caught in passing.

In Which One Resigns Himself

freedigitalphotos.net

As Mom used to say, "Eramos pocos y pario la mula," or "There weren't enough of us already and the mule gave birth.

Semi-Literary Interlude

I was so taken with The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency that I've quickly read the next four books in the series. So there I am enjoying my Friday afternoon with the sun shining all around me, feet up, when I come across this musing by Precious Ramotswe:

Most morality, thought Mma Ramotswe, was about doing the right thing
because it had been identified as such by a long process of acceptance and
observance. You simply could not create your own morality because your
experience would never be enough to do do. What gives you the right to say
that you know better than your ancestors? Morality is for everybody and
this means that the views of more than one person are needed to create it.
That was what made the modern morality with its emphasis on individuals and the
working out of an individual position, so weak. If you gave people the
chance to work out their morality, then they would work out the version which
was easiest for them and which allowed them to do what suited them for as much
of the time as possible. That, in Mma Ramotswe's view, was simple
selfishness, whatever grand name one gave to it.

from Morality For Beautiful Girls by Alexander McCall Smith

Failed Policy: Successful Semantics

Although the men who run the Cuban dictatorship have essentially destroyed the island economy and turned the nation into the great mendicant of the Caribbean, they have been successful in maintaining power long after most Communist regimes have crumbled. This is their, pardon the pun, crowning achievement. An almost equally notable success has been their triumph in the propaganda wars. Face it, it is their verbiage that has won the day.

Those in this country who have the most at stake in the freedom of their countrymen and who are in the best position to know what is transpiring on the island, since there is no such thing as a free press or freedom of speech in the island gulag, are routinely dismissed or vilified as "hard-liners," "intransigents," "dead enders," and even the "Miami Mafia" in the mainstream media. This last in particular is clearly evidence of the success of the castroite mix of propaganda, bribery, blackmail and infiltration that have won the day.

So as I stumbled across the term blockade to describe the embargo the other day, I had a thought. It is time that we get a bit more deliberate in our passionate opposition to those who wield the jackboot. As a movement we need to develop a terminology of our own and use it until it, too, wends its way to the mainstream media.

I offer my own humble contribution. Since the practical Raul has loaded his government with military types, at every opportunity I use "the ruling military junta" to denote the Havana regime. So what, if it's not completely accurate, Cuba being a more familial fiefdom. It's close enough. Americans, particularly liberals, have a knee jerk dislike of such bodies, associating them with right wing, Latin American dictatorships. Who knows? Use it enough, and it might stick. The possibilities are endless.

Re-education, Please!

Though economically weak, the Castro government has kept the broad support of its people by responding to economic shocks and providing universal access to health care and education. There will be no counter-revolution any time soon.

-from a letter by twelve retired military military officers urging President Obama to lift the travel ban. I'm sure the 11 million or so Cubans on the island will be heartened to know that they do not live in a totalitarian dictatorship. It is only their slavish devotion to free health care that keeps the jack boot on their necks.

The School of No Choice

Having once attended a public middle school in a good neighborhood where walking the hallways was, nonetheless, an occasion for fear, I am passionate in my support for school choice. As such, I am equally contemptuous of those elected officials who prate about weakening the public school system. In an incisive column over at Townhall, Ed Feulner takes on the hypocrisy of these

same officials, many of whom send their own children to private schools.

I suspect the support of the teachers' unions or the noble principle of public education is of more import than the fate of inner city children who have no other means of escape from dangerous, overcrowded, substandard schools. Until these same politicos can make inner city schools safe beacons of learning, the least they can do is continue the voucher system as in Washington DC. It will not save everyone, but it might provide some much needed stimulus for reforming the public school system.