« Indeed, let's all pray to God... for the opposite result | Babalu Blog - Main Page | Aquí radio Babalú »

The last thing that any of us should think of is the land relamation issue. It will only cause strife and what is first and foremost is the freedom of Cuba. As for Garcia "his" statements are selfish and only doing things for political gain. If anyone has sold his soul and Cuba for gain he has. While I have been critical of the administration mine has been to motivate action in freeing Cuba. garcia seems like he could care less.

Pototo,

I agree with you. And now that the spotlight is on Cuba, he's appearing in all the media trying to show that he's not a fracasado. He single handedly destroyed CANF. Screw Joe Garcia.

Excellent post Conductor! I saw that show and Garcia turned my stomach! Unfortunately his comments will be heard my many who are not very informed and they will have an impact. And yet, worse than Garcia on that same night was this guy Lazaro Farinas on Maria Elvira's show! That guy really made me want to puke! Que clase de hijo de la gran ....!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I would expect nothing less from the Democrats.
I can't for the life of me understand how far many of these morons will go to discredit President Bush, regardless of the consequences to the country.

¡Que pila de comemierdas!

Maybe the Dems are just trying to make Cuban Americans forget the Elian debacle. Joe is the lowest type of scum. Freedom for Cuba should be above any partisan politics.

These people sicken me!

That thing about housing is a sophism. The ordinary Cuban today lives in a building that is falling apart and few exiles would want to live in them.

What is really at stake is a pi`nata of the few good houses in Vedado and especially in Miramar, where the Mayimbe live.

BTW A draft of my paper "A Pernicious Model for Control of the World Wide Web: The Cuba Case" ASCE August 2006 ASCE meeting Miami
is found at: : http://draftarticlesldaley.blogspot.com/

My Scientific articles can be found at http://oregonstate.edu/Dept/hort/faculty/DaleyPublications.html

Drafts of "Memoirs of War in CubaP can be found at: http://draftarticlesldaley.blogspot.com/

As to the CANF I find myself in increasing disagreement with some of its policies, especially twhat I view as lack of support for rafters. however, only if I had done a 100th as much as the CANF has done in the past to help the exile community would I feel qualified to comment in public,

Larry Daley (Garcia-I~niguez Enamorado Ramirez....) better known in some circles on the wweb as El Jigue

Conductor:

I only heard the answer to the question. This is the first I heard that a reporter actually brought up the subject.

In that light, the president's comments make sense, otherwise it sounded that he was perpetuating the cuban-exile stereotype that has been so carefully crafted by castro and the media.

Cuban Americans have become the swing vote in a swing state. in the current political environment you simply cannot get to the white house without the cuban vote so democrats are going to try to chip away at the huge number that vote republican because they realize the cuban vote is issue oriented.

As a democrat, i don't think you have anything to worry about. the party of rangel, jackson, serrano have nobody. cubans are usually up on the issues and have had their own truth detecting media for years.

thanks for the post

Beg to differ, but Joe Garcia is NOT a smart fellow. He did a terrible job when he became spokesman for CANF and showed up in front of every camera when the night talk shows took root in Miami. He has gotten progressively more and more disgusting and defective in his analysis as he drifts to the left. He's simply divisive and nothing more. He has morphed into an acquiescing, nice-looking-talking pawn of the local DNC and his ethics have taken a downward spiral now that the party has him in their pocket to recruit Hispanics .... well, there are lots of ignorant Hispanics in south Florida just by the sheer numbers of immigrants from all over. But he doesn't speak for the exile community and should be taken to task for it.

The first time I heard him speak years ago, I was floored that someone from the CANF could say what came out of his mouth. He's an insider wanna-be, and a disgrace to the Cuban community. Then again, we seem to have a lot of those around, don't we?

I'm sitting here listening to Aruca (for the first time BTW), only because Val is coming up and ..... I had not dinner tonight.

As a Democrat, and a Cuban American, I do not forget what has been done. The Elian issue was a very touchy subject. The fact is that the child deserved to be with his biological father regardless of the circumstances and of what the mother did. He wanted his son home, and he had every right to claim him. Immediate family first, and if any of you were in a similar situation, you would want your child returnedm to you too and not have a foreign government get in the way of that. As for Joe Garcia trying to chip away at the Democrats, every party has it's own "spokesperson" who tries to single handedly destroy the opposing party. That is nothing new.

Personally, I don't support Bush. I did not vote for him twice, and I still fully believe that he stole the presidency the first time around, but those are just my opinions. I educate myself, I read up on current topics, and I vote according to my beliefs and values without purposely trying to insult the opposing party. Even so, I think President Bush answered that very touchy subject perfectly, considering he really is not a great public speaker and stumbles his words quiet often. I don't doubt that Joe was trying to make him look bad because that's what anybody with a political motive does, but I don't think the entire party should sterotyped because of one imbicile. If that were the case, what do you think Americans would be saying about Cuban Americans because of Joe?

Lucky Lady,

I don't want to get into the whole Elian thing except to ask how you know that Juan Miguel didn't really want his son living in Freedom, or if he even gave shit about his son. He could be a total son of a bitch for all we know. Or that he wants to live in the US himself. The fact is that Juan Miguel was under duress during the whole episode and our government was not sensitive to that. Our government does very little to advocate for parental rights of parents who've had their child abducted by the other parent and taken to other countries.

As for Joe Garcia, I didn't say that he represents the entire democrat party but that he put partisan politics over exile unity on the issue of Cuba and a transition to freedom. That said I think the democrat party has abandoned the middle and swung to the extreme left. That has nothing to do with Joe.

Folks,

Lucky Lady,

Your argument about Elian is bogus because we will NEVER know Elian's father's true wishes based on the fact that much of his family was back in Cuba at ALL times during the fiasco, probably under duress. Much of that family was probably threatened. After all the documented proof of duress and barbarity, paid for in so much suffering, I am quite surprised at any one of "us" could still turn a blind eye or forget the facts.

Some of you have been stating that you are considering "sitting out" the vote and denying the Republicans your vote. By doing this you are lending your support to those that have been the most vocal against us, such as the Michael Moores, the Jessie Jacksons, Maxine Waters, the Rangels, the Christopher Dodds, etc, etc. That is the Democratic party now. This is their leadership folks!

Granted, the GOP has been far from ideal, at times horrendous. Still, I can't even imagine the alternatives I pointed out here.

Max,

I agree with you, I'm frequently mad at the GOP, but I would NEVER do anything that would help the Democrats win. What with all of these "Limousine Liberals" like Ned Lamont whose family started the ACLU and he's a millionaire socialist. I will do my homework come election time and vote for the lesser of 2 evils.

Henry,

Thank you very much for this post. I have a much better understanding of what President Bush said and in what context. I never heard the question and ASSUMED the President had been the one to bring it up. OUCH! I rescind everything I said before.

LuckyLady,

You really need to watch the film “The Rats Below” by Agustin Blazques. It’s a real eye opener of the Elian Gonzalez case. But all that aside, Elizabeth Broton did not bring Elian to the U.S. without his father’s permission. In fact she did it with his blessings. It only became a custody issue when castro (as is his modus operandis) wanted to play David to the “Goliath of the North” and the Clinton administration obliged. Both ADM and President Clinton are directly responsible for this travesty of justice. By the way, Juan Miguel DID NOT “want his son home.” He had no choice but to play castro’s and Clinton’s game. Knowing the castros and their repressive system, why should that come as a surprise to anyone?

One thing you can be sure of is that Cuban parents would rather have their children live in FREEDOM than in a repressive system where the government has “patria potestad” over all children (parents loose all legal authority). Cuban history has proven this very well. If you have any doubts please read on “Operation Peter Pan” in which 14,048 children were smuggled out of Cuba Between 1960 and 1962 with the help of the U.S. government and the Catholic Church. It stopped after 1962 because of the missile crisis.

As to Joe Garcia, I think he is worse than vomit! The Cuban-American community need to be aware of his AGENDA. Jorge Mas Canosa would have never been “snowed” by the likes of him.

It's ridiculous that Mas Santos would accuse Fidel of nepotism, since he acquired the leadership from his father. He wasn't even born in Cuba, how can he represent he cuban people or CANF, for that matter? Also, I was wondering if any of the blog leaders were born in Cuba or have traveled to the island? Also, not every Cuban-Americans politics revolve around Cuba--there's Iraq, stem cell research, education, etc, that will determine my vote.

Camaguey,

I'm not going to defend Mas Santos because he's done a piss poor job at CANF and a lot of that has to with Joe. But CANF isn't a government that governs 11 million people. Your analogy is extremly flawed. But what's really ridiculous is how you can imply that you have to have been born in Cuba to blog about Cuba. For your information Val and George were born in Cuba. I was not, but my parents were. Does that disqualify my opinion? Ziva wasn't born in Cuba and is not the child of Cubans. Does that disqualify her opinion. I'm not Jewish or from Israel, does that mean I can't support Israel? This is a blog about Cuba. That's what we talk about. Politics is a big part of it, but not the only part. This blog is also about being Cuban and all that entails. If you don't want to talk about Cuba there are about 5 gazillion other blogs you can read.

Yea everyone is entitled to their opinion about Cuba, regardless whether they're Cuban or not, or however misguided they might be.... I was just wondering what everyone's background was, that's all.

This article is really great Henry and I too want to thank you for the knowledge you gave me about President Bush.

It is wise to keep in mind that Elian was conceived after his mother's divorce....

Conductor,

I was specifically trying to single you out as saying that he spoke for the whole of the Dem. party, but there were other comments that leaned in that direction and I was trying to correct their judgements. As for the Elian case, frankly as is stated, nobody truly knows the truth of what the father wanted. Yes, there is the possibility that he was pressured and threatened by the castro regime to demand his son back, but there is also the possibility that he truly just wanted his son back. We will probably never know until this idiots are dead and buried and he can freely speak his mind.

Come to think of it, you guys are right, but on another topic all together. DCF takes children away from inadequate parents all the time because of the children's living conditions, and thinking back on it, it should have been the same in this case. I think that the government acted in a way so as to avoid any further scandel from Castro, and to basically shut him up. I will check out that film though firefly.

I just realized a typo....I WASN'T trying to single you out...

What would happen if no Castro and we returned to an era where there would be more Americans living in Cuba than Cubans living in America?
Let's pretend and then ask what is the purpose of the CANF?
It would cease to exist.
So the question I'm wondering is what would Joe Garcia be doing?
To a certain degree, Joe's job, like that of a typical bureaucrat, is to make sure there is a problem and that the problem does not get fixed, so that they can keep collecting a paycheck.
The CANF is pathetic! They've only had 40 years
to get something done.
I personally believes that the likes of Henry Gomez if given equal air time, would get more accomplished for the freedoms of the Cuban people in 10 minutes than all the entire CANF bureaucracy.

Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)

(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)

URL:
Remember me? YesNo

Comments: