A Haunting Email About the Promise of Change

reply to post by PammyK

Originally posted by PammyK
Cuba is much smaller than the US. There are many more "minds" to keep watch on our leaders.

History teaches a different lesson...

For example, was China or Russia small?

[edit on 4-3-2009 by loam]

I would like to add what a shame too. I was born in Pennsylvania, English/Irish stock but I have lived in Miami for over a decade now.

Miami in many ways is now what Cuba might have been had Fidel not taken over. The Cubans have an entrepreneurial spirit and a love of entertainment, life and family that over a few short decades has turned Miami from a sleep and somewhat dilapidated retirement town, into a thriving, exciting world class destination.

Meanwhile Cuba itself has slipped deeper and deeper into recline. Every year I see countless numbers of people fresh from Cuba and when they arrive they are literally skin and bones.

For the last ten years the refugees haven’t been political refugees. They grew up under Castro and no nothing different. They have been economic refugees because the reality for the bulk of Cubans is living out a life of deprivation and barely above a starvation level.

It’s true that the embargo of the Island by the United States mainly to assuage a still angry Cuban Exile community has made success for the communist regime more difficult, but one would be hard pressed to find a thriving communist regime.

Many elder Cubans living in Miami have drawn parallels between our current President and some of the sweeping changes he has talked about and some that he has actually started to implement as being reminiscent of what they have witnessed in Cuba.

Some are genuinely worried and worry where they might go and what they might do if their adopted homeland slides deeper into the socialist abyss.

Senator Mel Martinez has already announced his plans to retire from the U.S. Senate after his first term because he feels he will not be able to make an impact and contribute to the increasingly liberal/socialist agenda being carried out in Washington D.C.

Many very intelligent and well intentioned people voted for President Obama, so though did an unprecedented number of youths and minorities who have never seriously been interested in politics before.

His appeal, charisma and call for hope and change was a rallying siren call to those who are desperate for hope and change and those who felt previously disenfranchised from the system.

I can only hope as time goes on and that varied group of people come to realize that those changes are dashing hopes and diminishing opportunities and continuing along that declining slope the Patriot and Homeland Security Acts started, that we are putting more soldiers into harms way and expanding our wars, and the deficit continues to grow while jobs continue to disappear, that they will be able to admit what is happening before their very eyes, and able to admit that it’s not the byproduct of the conditions he inherited but the byproduct of pushing the same kinds of failed policies up a notch.

90 miles away from me sits a shining example of what socialism leads too. It’s called communism. What was once the gem of the Caribbean sits and falls apart a little more each year from decay. The people who could have made it the vibrant thriving place Miami has become are all here.

The reality is that the best and brightest will flee the United States too if it keeps going down this slope. Whether it’s through a declining tax base brought on by joblessness or emigration eventually a bankrupt treasury and a nation defaulting on it’s debts can’t afford to pay for all the wonderful ideas Fidel imagined he had. It always leads to one thing, and it’s never a few or many people having more, it’s everyone having less.

Real change is the end of secrecy-BASED government(s). It entails discussing things found nowhere on the web, and apparently not enough folks have the stomach for it. The "Prime Directive" (or what it's actually called) is real. Apparently I should hope I can reincarnate on a planet in the galaxy proper (as opposed to the outer rim hinterlands), except I'm sentimentally attached enough to this place to hope I'd be wrong.

Originally posted by MischeviousElf

Cuba was a capitalistic franchise of the very same people who have run the USA and World to ruin this time again, until the revolution.

Whilst Cuba had the best health care system as in Nurses and Doctors per patients, with the highest funding per capita/per head as a mean % of the GNP people have died there including thousands and thousands of terminally ill children as the USA since that time banned any company that sold to them or provided for them any type of connection from any ties with the USA and forced them out of other countries too.

Whilst ever Cuban was given at least an Acre of their land each so they could grow their own food, Holmlesness was eradicated, whilst EVERY member of the Cuban Government and Civil Service did community work each work, The USA last president was taking certain Illicit substances, not doing his national guard service, bankrupting a company funded by the Bin Laden's and drinking every night.

Whilst Cuba was sending more aid per head of population (per capita) than the USA it received hardly any help itself except from the USSR.

If the USA would not have blocked all the companies, and countries in the world from having any ties with Cuba, as Castro and Che kicked out the then Bankers and Rapists Cuba would have been the most successful country in the world in health care, Happiness, Production, Community and Environment and distribution of wealth.

Cuba never worked because the Hill(aka Bankers friends) did not want it to, as Castro did what should have been done on Wall Street 10 yrs ago, or 60 odd yrs ago with bush's Grandfather and Hitler. I bet Every American now wishes homelessness was impossible, and each would be garunteed his own land to work to ensure he could never starve and wouldnt have to beg.

Saying Cuba was wrong is like saying kids who are bullied and abused shouldn't have issues when older. The USA crushed every single country that even tried to work with it.


Elf.

Thanks for your thoughts on Cuba. Well never know how well an ideal Marxist state would have fared. I might argue that Castro's inflexibility in so many areas, particularly after the USSR stopped supporting him, has much to do with how thing turned out for Cuba.

Zimbabwe is still run by the man that liberated it from colonialism.

You are on the money as to who gets funding and who does not. The IMF is letting many countries die on the vine in Africa and elsewhere.

Leaders who do not want to join the club get penalized. But there is responsible leadership and irresponsible. History judges who was which.


Mike F

reply to post by sad_eyed_lady


Great Post Sad Eyed Lady!

It really amazes me how many "young" in this country right now are saying, "So what's wrong with socialism?"

They just don't know, and nothing we say will convince them.

They *think* Sweden is socialist, but it's not, they think universal healthcare is a good thing, but ask Canadians how long you wait for an appointment, and then ask what about seeing a specialist? - Most people don't realize you still have to pay for them.

Quote of the Day: The late Dr. Adrian Rogers (1931-2005) offered the following observation several years ago and it bears poignant significance today:

“You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the rich out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply the wealth by dividing it."

Edit to Add:

A news report from Venezuela:

President Hugo Chavez is tightening state control over Venezuela's food supply, setting quotas for food staples which are to be sold at government-imposed prices.

Venezuela's public finances are unravelling, with oil prices at $40 a barrel, while the national budget is calculated at $60 a barrel. Inflation is running at over 30 per cent, yet with the new measures Mr Chavez is seeking to ensure that his core support, the poor, can still fill their shopping baskets with food.

"If any industry wants to ride roughshod over the consumers, with a view to getting better dividends, we are going to act," said Carlos Osorio, the national superintendent of silos and storage. "For the government, access to food is a matter of national security."

Production quotas and prices have now been set for cooking oil, white rice, sugar, coffee, flour, margarine, pasta, cheeses and tomato sauce.

Source

And the American youth want to know what's wrong with socialism....

[edit on 3/4/09 by redhatty]

reply to post by sad_eyed_lady


What irony. The same press that told us there was a "rush to judgment" about going into Iraq, made a "rush to judgment" on Obama. Such a "rush to judgment" that he has not even provided an unaltered document to prove that he's Constitutionally qualified to be President!

reply to post by loam
No, but that was before we had widespread media outlets.

reply to post by PammyK


It's a fair distinction, but I don't think today's media has the protective illumination you think it does.

In fact, one could argue things are much worse today.

[edit on 4-3-2009 by loam]

This happens because the poor and mostly illiterate people of a free country become the majority.Then comes along a pathological narcissistic lier bereft of a conscience but a eloquent talker and you have Hitler,Castro,Chavez and now Obama.People will never learn,we will always take the path of least reistance,we are human but that is no excuse anymore.

reply to post by Battleline


I don't think the people of the US are illiterate. We are not uneducated nor do we lack common sense for the most part. We can listen to endless streams of marketing attempts to get us to spend money on an endless variety of products and somehow process and sort through it to find what we "want". That alone should have prepared us to sort through the obama speechifying and the main stream media whitewash to discover the truth but too many of us didn't recognize it as more marketing. We thought it was "true". Silly us. It's admirable that people recognized that they wanted things to be different, to be cleaned up. It's just too bad that we didn't see from obama's history and minimal experience that maybe he wasn't talking about the same thing we were hoping for. turns out he had something else entirely in mind though the main stream media still hasn't acknowledged it. they say it's gonna work and obama's team is on top of it. it certainly doesn't help when you have a completely dishonest media.

Originally posted by MischeviousElf
.......................
Wake Up please do read about this issue first in depth because it is a huge and massive subject and is nothing to do really with the USSR and Missile crisis or the Bay of Pigs or Hollywood spin, they are just fragments of a Huge and relentless ongoing continual plot to constantly undermine every single facet of any chance of any success for the Cubans and Cuba itself.

It truly would of outshone the world, hopefully some will look into this now that what is happening is happening.
.......................
Elf.

Wow, well I can actually tell you that it is clear that you are the one that needs to wake up. Wherever it is that you got your information about Cuba is wrong, sorry to tell you.

I am a Cuban, and I have family living in the island still, and they all would come to the U.S. if it was safer to do so. Quite a few Cubans actually take to the sea even when it is unsafe for them to do so.

Cuba under castro, or any other Communist wouldn't be any kind of gem, even if the U.S. decided not to get involved.

BTW, several countries do business with Cuba, and there are citizerns from other countries living in Cuba with businesses there, yet the Cuban people are still opressed, and starving.

First of all castro messed up Cuba within the first year that he took over, and before the U.S. got involved in any way with Cuba, castro and his thugs, which include Che, were murdering most Cubans that were starting to see the opressive government that castro was implementing. The less furtunate Cubans were imprisoned and suffered for years, or even decades in the prisons of castro, and were tortured every day.

Second of all, it has been because of castro that children starting from 12 years old have been taken from their parents and sent to summer work camps to work for the regime while not getting paid in the least.

It has been castro and his regime that has indoctrination camps for those Cubans that decide to speak agains castro.

BTW, that money you claim that castro is sending to help people?...please... he was sending that money to help spread the revolution in other countries, it wasn't for the goodness of his heart.

BTW do take notice that Obama also has something similar in mind, although at least at the beginning Obama's plan would only "require" for all children starting from middle high through high school to do 50 hours of mandatory community service. College students will be "required" to do 100 hours of mandatory Community service, and according to Rahm Emmanuel all American citizens, whether they are retired, or disabled will be called, and required, to do some sort of community service...

Part of this was even in Obama's websites yet people were so blind that they still voted for him.

BTW, did any of you watch Charlie Rangel, together with Reich (Obama's advisor) speaking on C-span on 01-07-2009 and trying to find ways to circunvent the state legislature, since they both see it as an obstacle for politicians to get more money for whatever they want, and even Rangel spoke about wealth redistribution and Rangel even said "the one thing you can depend on, is not worry about what the middle class is going to do, things are so bad, they have to put food on their tables, clothes on their kids, get them in school..." This man admitted on television that they plan to redistribute wealth, and that they should not worry for what the middle class will do about it, since things are bad, and will get worse...so yeah "WAKE UP"...

Here is part of what these people said in cspan.
www.youtube.com...

Anyway, back to Cuba, you should do some real research and not believe what Hollywood is telling you, or even Michael Moore.

The problem in Cuba is the Communist/Socialist system, which sorry to say has always, and all over the world only brought missery, and death to people.

reply to post by MischeviousElf


Well MischeviousElf , what you're suggesting is everyone have a right to land as well as other things , when someone has a right to anything it means they have to do nothing to aquire it . Aquiring it is then left in the hands of the Government. However the government owns nothing and aquiring this land or property requires the use of force against individuals who already own the land. Pure and simple this is theft regardless of the good intent behind actions you are taking from one who earned it , to give to another who did nothing for it.
How does it feel when someone forcefully takes something from you?

I read an interesting article on Obama and would like to share it here. I think its relevant.

www.redcounty.com...

Big surprise here - those in power controlling, deceiving, exploiting and abusing those who are not in power. It's only been going on since the beginning of time on every corner of the earth.

It is obvious that everyone is searching for answers. I just think it is sad that everyone is looking to a MAN for those answers instead of looking to the Creator. All things can be found through Him (not Obama) and people are searching for truth, peace and justice, and they are all looking in the wrong place(s)! There's only one place to find that and it's through the Spirit.

reply to post by earlywatcher


Because all the cabinet members that Bush appointed were squeaky-clean, puppy-dog tails and sunshine. The press and republicans be damned for speaking up so quickly (45 odd days now) after having their jaws wired-shut for the eight years previous to Obama.


It is all a game. The point is not to keep attacking one side or the other (well, maybe it is for some elements). The point is to see the flaws. I can't tell you if Obama is genuine or not. But, I do think it behooves the country to capture some of the community building and momentum that was started in the second half of last year during the run up to the election.

Complain all you want, but sitting around and complaining doesn't "change" a damn thing. The news, especially FOX, pushes the whole slippery slope into Communism as though laissez-faire capitalism is the end-all, be-all. If it keeps having to be fixed, what is the point?

But some will say, "Oh, but capitalism has to keep being fixed because the gov't intervenes." The gov't intervenes because these corporations run a muck, hopped up on greed, and screw the little guy. It's ironic that this form of capitalism is so dependent on hard core evolutionary principles (thin the herd - etc.) when it is also the economic dogma of the religious right...

...usury is a sin, by the way.

One half will win the fight, and another half will lose it.

Either Obama will suck and run this country further into the ground, or he will be the greatest president (or a good one) and renew our wealth and status amongst the world.

Can you blame Obama for the amount of idiotic people that followed him for the wrong reasons? Not really, unless you wanted him to tell people not to vote for him, but how realistic is that?

While stating that I did not support Obama, your argument is flawed.

So if anyone EVER promises change - they will be a communist dictator, or take away many freedoms and hurt their country?

The original post is NO BETTER THAN THE PEOPLE WHO BLINDLY VOTE IN ELECTIONS!

They vote for him based on personality, and you do not vote for him based on personality.

If what you say is true (which it isn't regarding Obama solely based on Cuba and those words you posted), your whole argument could be used against you that mindless rhetoric captured a group of people.

But lets you give a star anyways for trying...not.

The wealth was already redistributed, wake up.
After 8 years now people are worried ?
This started years ago. We are now each feeling the impact on how our country was being guided.
Now we worry about Obama?
The damage has been done not since Jan 09, but way before that.

I was just thinking about this today as I read about Obama's
ideas for health reform - for all.
Exactly this.
It's too late.
We are in the downward spiral. (which also has its very good side)
It will be up to each one of us to rise to the top of our own game and help others-
It has nothing to do with what is being promised us - from a political source.
The dirty system is broken... and we don't need someone to promise to fix it for us.
We need to fix it ourselves.





[edit on 5-3-2009 by spinkyboo]

Originally posted by chasnj

The damage has been done not since Jan 09, but way before that.

Oh, I guess the Dow dropping 25% in the last 2 months is an improvement?

and this is good news?

www.abovetopsecret.com...&addstar=1&on=5940002#pid5940002

I criticized Bush and every President before him all the way back to Nixon - it's called vigilance. That's in the past. Now let's focus on the issues at hand.

I made a bumper sticker for my car today. Inspired by another poster.

"I'll keep my freedom........You keep the change."

[edit on 3/5/2009 by sad_eyed_lady]