[American Thinker] It was 55 years ago today that my dad, my mom, and the three kids woke up in Cuba knowing that things would never be the same. My mom had talked to us the night before and told us to be strong and stick together as one family.
Nobody said a lot that morning. My parents had decided to leave after the Cuban Missile Crisis and the "communist radicalization" of Cuba. They did not want us to attend government schools where kids were taught communist ideas, and history was rewritten to justify "la revolución."
My parents knew that this day would come, but it was still a bit hard for them to take. Cuba was all they knew. They were born there and never expected to leave their country to pursue a better life anywhere else.
We got to the airport knowing we'd be harassed by Castro's thugs. It was customary for these government workers to harass "los gusanos" (or "worms," as we were called). The idea was to pick a fight and then delay your departure.
We sat at the airport, fearing the personal searches. This is where the men and women were separated and "searched" to make sure you weren't taking jewelry or anything of value beyond clothes. My parents had left their wedding rings with my aunt, so they wore plain rings just in case some government thug decided to take them.
The plane finally took off, and we landed in Mexico City a few hours later. We went to Mexico because there were no flights to Miami after the Missile Crisis. The Miami flights were started in 1966, or what became known as the "freedom flights." Thousands of Cubans came to the U.S. on those flights.
A week later, we flew to Jamaica, where we waited for the U.S. government to grant us entry. We spent two months there and were supported by our two uncles in the U.S. who sent weekly money drafts. We lived in a small room and spent our day throwing around a baseball that my mom had put together for us from a rock and my father's socks.
Eventually, we got our "papers" and arrived in the U.S. And then we found our way to Wisconsin thanks to the generosity of a church.
My father is now gone, and my brother and sister have their own lives and families. I will speak with my mom, who usually remembers something about that day.
It just does not seem possible that it happened so long ago. We definitely learned about liberty and how a powerful and ruthless central government can crush the individual.
[Breitbart] Tuesday on his nationally syndicated radio show, conservative talker Rush Limbaugh argued that former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s opposition to Nike’s so-called Betsy Ross footwear was proof Kaepernick’s kneeling was not about alleged police brutality but animosity toward the American flag.
Nike pulled the product line based on Kaepernick’s opposition, which came because the footwear featured the Betsy Ross flag.
Partial transcript as follows (courtesy RushLimbaugh.com):
The Washington media-political complex, if you will, authors the daily script. It’s one-sided. How does Nike let one person sway them into ditching an entirely already-made shoe, featuring ‐ by the way ‐ a flag designed by Betsy Ross. Now, did not Kaepernick tell us when he began kneeling ‐ as a barely-could-get-on-the-field bench rider for the San Francisco 49ers. Did he not tell us that he was kneeling to protest police brutality? Did he not tell us this? He did! That’s all it was. He was protesting the fact that the cops were shooting people like him.
That the cops are shooting black people and women and minorities first. It was all about the cops. Except it wasn’t! It was about the flag all along! He was taking a knee because he opposes the country! He opposes the national anthem. He opposes honoring the flag. This proves it! They always lie. They always lie to us. They hide so much of their real core. Even when they are in the process of displaying it, they still deceive. And there was the media and the Democrat Party applauding the guts and the courage of the forever untalented bench retired, Colin Kaepernick.
Then the media led the charge demanding that NFL owners hire the guy every time they had a starting quarterback that’d get injured, and none of the NFL owners wanted the hassle. Nobody wants somebody anti-American on their team, certainly not as starting quarterback. The media does, though! The media wants Kaepernick starring... Not starring. He’s not capable of that. They want him playing for some team so that they can carry the narrative through every NFL game he’s playing ‐ and then, of course, he’ll get other players to join him ’cause they’ll want to shine in the spotlight.
The NFL then can be presented as an anti-American institution and the people leading the anti-Americanism will be made heroes. We’ll be told that they are very courageous.
#4
It has always been about his hate and contempt for America. The media just cant hide it now.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
07/03/2019 10:07 Comments ||
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#5
Just a reminder - Megan Rapinoe (USWNT) is following a similar pattern - at first it was kneeling for the National Anthem 'in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick', then it became a protest against Trump.
#6
Make no mistake, the exclusion of tribalism is his enemy.
America is *the* most interesting political experiment in the last 300 years. We built a country based not on tribes, blood, or soil but on a shared idea, a belief in the Constitution. E Pluribus Unum - Out of many, one.
Appealing to tribal loyalties is good way to grab political power, but ultimately, it is bad for America. If you need an example why, just check out any long-running ethnic conflict in Africa, Europe or Asia.
#9
NFL and US women's soccer are money grabs. Lots of idiots hand over theirs, I can't stop that. But they ain't getting mine...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
07/03/2019 11:05 Comments ||
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#10
I don't know for sure but I'm guessing these shoes are made in China. So the Kaepernick thing is plenty bad enough but I wouldn't buy the shoe anyway even if it does feature a Betsy Ross flag. Nike can suck on it...the shoe I mean.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
07/03/2019 11:39 Comments ||
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#11
What it's really about is:
"look at me, look at me, look at me."
The Rana bazaar factory collapse (2013), in Dhaka killed more than 1100 indentured workers slaving away for Nike, GAP, H&M and others.
The companies' local agents had paid off municipal officers and the labor was working in appalling, unsafe conditions. Women with their children, often the wages being only two meals a day.
[PJ] Austin has long been the weird, liberal capital of Texas. The rest of Texas just sort of shrugs and puts up with it. Austin is quirky. Austin is odd. Austin lives in its own little world. Austin is also home to some of the best live music joints anywhere and you have to work pretty hard to find a bad restaurant in the city, so it’s not without its charms. The joke about Austin is that it’s nice because it's so close to Texas (its the capital, a deep blue dot surrounded by a vast red sea). Austin is like that oddball cousin we all have. He’s there. He picks his nose and argues with light posts. But he’s nice and basically no threat to anyone, so whaddyagonnado?
Well, Texas’ weird cousin just became a threat to itself and others.
On June 20, the Austin city council passed what has to be one of the dumbest, most nonsensical ordinances since the city’s last idiotic, nonsensical ordinance (they pass a lot of ’em, bless their hearts).
The city council made it perfectly legal to camp out on the city’s public spaces and sidewalks, under bridges and overpasses and, well, everywhere all over town ‐ except, notably, parks and Austin City Hall.
That’s right. The city council exempted themselves from seeing homeless campouts ‐ let’s call them Adlervilles, after the esteemed Mayor Steve Adler ‐ on their own front porch. Mayor Adler and his cohort deemed city hall camping out of bounds. But you, owner of the local cookie store or overtaxed home, will get to see and step over and around all manner of things right out in your yard 24-7 now.
Oh, they’ll say they have a good reason for making camping legal and they’ll say they have a reason for making sure they will not have to step over people, their makeshift shelters ‐ and the garbage, feces, urine, used needles and other issues associated with legalized squatting that we have all already seen in Los Angeles and San Francisco. That reason, they claim, is the Occupy protests that made a tent- and filth-city on city hall back in 2012. The city doesn’t want to see that again.
Fine. But why inflict this on homeowners, business owners and everyone but themselves? I’m not making this up. They claim it’s mean to issue tickets for running a clothesline off the Discount Tire store ‐ which has actually already happened! That the tickets create a spiral out of which the homeless cannot escape. So it’s somehow better to issue tickets if you water your lawn at the wrong time, because Harry the Homeowner can actually pay the fine, but inhumane to keep the streets free of bedrolls and poop ‐ a policy which in Los Angeles is giving rise to medieval disease. Only in the liberal mind does this make any sense.
The real reason they exempted city hall is, obviously: because they can. The city votes so far to the left the city council is in little danger of a workable voter backlash. Che Guevara would be a moderate in this town. They will very likely get away with this.
#2
Austin has, I believe, the largest colony of bats in North America, around 750,000 when they arrive, 1,500,000 when the moms have their babies. They live under a bridge. They are not the only colony. The phrase 'bat sh*t crazy' comes from what happens when humans play in their feces. Then, there is rabies. So, they really should not let the homeless camp under bridges. It could really become a scene from 'The Crazies'. I did not see them but I saw a smaller colony near Round Rock.
#5
So these people have learned absolutely nothing from San Francisco and Los Angeles...or maybe they have. Maybe their goal really is to turn America into a Third World hell hole.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
07/03/2019 11:45 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
