Friends, the indictment of Raul Castro in the U.S. leads many to suspect that the Trump Administration wants to Venezuela-ize Cuba. Well, that does sound nice! How easy would it be to pull off? And is Venezuela really the best paradigm to follow, when in many ways it's still a failed, Marxist state? We may get answers soon to these exciting questions, so stay tuned... I am, of course, totally in favor of any strategy which leads to freedom for the Cuban people.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgpzwkn5jko
Stephen Colbert's long reign of terror in late-night TV is finally coming to an end! His fellow lefties are outraged, as per usual, but there will still be plenty of tediously condescending and unrelentingly "progressive" voices on television, so my advice to them, and to him, is: relax!!! Colbert will presumably ride off into the sunset with his millions of dollars and dream up new and different ways to insult conservatives and patriots.
Finally, I have to second the sentiments of Victor Davis Hanson in this fine article. By no means is conflict between the U.S and China inevitable, and, as he points out, it is far from obvious that China is eclipsing America in the types of power that really matter. Most important, I think, is China's lack of experience as a hegemonic power, and its relative timidity in wielding what power it has.
https://amgreatness.com/2026/05/21/america-is-not-caught-in-a-thucydides-trap/
RAY TO DR. WADDY
ReplyDeleteFinally, after 65 years of the Castro brothers, there is hope for the Cuban people.
Dr. Waddy and Ray et Al from Jack: Yet again the utter incompetence and comprehensive futility of applied Marxism is proven . If we can free the Cuban people of this curse then once again we are "the flag that sets you free" And that historical reality goes far toward condemning the America haters.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack : Though Hansen did not mention Iran , it might well belong in that category of brashly ascendent powers which have been "schooled" by greater powers. Iran is driven by an esoteric and atavistic ideology which motivates potentially deadly hostility to any nation which excites its easily aroused resentment.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: Late night TV is way too late for me. Am I right in perceiving that the ranks of the late night casual purveyors of contempt for America are diminishing? I wonder if the snide producers of such dreck contaminated late night broadcast because they assumed most conservatives are leading constructive and positive lives which require them to get up early or are senior citizens who cannot stay awake that long. Maybe they are wearing out their welcome even in that bleary setting?! If so, good riddance.
ReplyDeleteRay, there is! It's hard to know how seriously to take these rumblings, however. No one saw the collapse of the Soviet Bloc coming, I think it's fair to say. "Tear down this Wall!" was a throwaway line, until it wasn't. I sure hope the day of reckoning has arrived in Cuba!
ReplyDeleteAgreed, Jack: Iran has behaved like a regional superpower, when in reality it's a third rate power easily bested by the U.S. and Israel. Moreover, Iran has made a lot of boneheaded decisions that have exposed it to its current comeuppance. Despite its social media swagger, I would hope that its leaders have learned a lesson or two.
For sure, Jack: late night audiences are dwindling. There is also a lot more competition, and most late night hosts are not nearly as political or as one-sided as Colbert or Kimmel. I'd say late night is now a cultural side show rather than a seminal entertainment institution. Be that as it may, it's nice to see the back of one of its worst offenders.
Dr. Waddy from Jack: That's a good point about ". . . tear down that wall". At the time we didn't know what a historically great figure was saying it and we could not have been at all sure that the wall would be coming down in the near future.
ReplyDeleteJFK had emoted "Ich bin ein Berliner" ( really an astonishing thing for a WWII combat vet to say), in Berlin. Many believe that the presence of free world troops in the interior of the Marxist and Russian oppressed German "Democratic" Republic" was one of the sore points for Soviet hardliners which precipitated the fateful placement of nuclear missiles in firebrand Castro's Cuba. Our Berliner President had not dissuaded them with his stirring pledge; he had of necessity to take us to the brink of nuclear insanity to drive home the point that America would not tolerate such presumption.
Hard to say what effect President Reagan's clarion call had. It might well have inspired Germans to seriously consider that they could finally rid their country of the curse of totalitarianism. And moved by that possibility, when the Soviets refrained from crushing Poland's beyond miraculous expulsion of communism, the wall DID come down , albeit not at Russian hands .
For we for whom the Cold War had been a given and unrelentingly challenging reality, the utter failure of the Soviet experiment and its tragic, catastrophic effects on myriad millions of unfortunate lives was almost beyond belief .
President Reagan did back his ringing call to a Gorbachev he may have perceived as a relatively reasonable Soviet leader, by rebuilding our military to a point which may well have driven the Soviets to despair. Eg. the Soviets had made an all out effort under their visionary Admiral Gorshkov to build their Navy into one which could credibly rival the US Navy throughout the world. They couldn't; they simply could not out do the American naval regeneration President Reagan enabled .
Jack, I'm as big a fan of Reagan as you are, but I'm not convinced that anything he did "brought down the Soviet Union", or caused communism's collapse in Eastern Europe. He spent money liberally on defense, which increased the pressures on the USSR, but those pressures had been building for some time for a wide variety of reasons. I would give maybe 20% of the credit for the Soviet collapse to Reagan. I would give 40-50% to Gorbachev -- not that he intended it, but his felicitous incompetence was a Godsend!
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