Friday, June 30, 2017

Trump tweets, tourism down in Cuba and other stories.




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The Senate Democrats will hide behind the filibuster and not vote "yes or no" on sanctuary cities and Kate's Law



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Repeal now effective in 12 months..then send health care to the states....and let states create their own plans






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The thrill is gone and more flight cancelations to Cuba


jm070915_color_cuba_tourism_dissidents-1

A couple of years ago, many of my local friends were curious about traveling to Cuba. They seemed fascinated by the idea of traveling to an island isolated from reality for 50-plus years. I would often hear this expression: “I want to see it for myself”.
Some of my friends went and others never got to go. However, the ones who went all seem to be singing the same tune: “Beautiful beach, Okay hotel but the Internet does not work and the people are not happy.”
We learned today via the Miami Herald that Southwest Airlines is canceling flights to Cuba:   
The announcement comes less than two weeks since President Donald Trump announced new restrictions on travel to the island. Americans can no longer go on individual people-to-people trips, and are barred from doing businesses with entities that are owned and controlled by Cuba’s military. Exactly how the policy works will depend regulations that have yet to be released.   
However, Southwest stressed that the decision to discontinue its Varadero and Santa Clara flights was due to the challenge of stimulating demand in a new market like Cuba, said spokesman Brad Hawkins in a statement.   
“The decision to discontinue these flights is not tied directly to the recent policy announcement, but follows many months of reviewing our performance in the Varadero and Santa Clara markets,” Hawkins said. “Unfortunately, we do not see a pathway to sustainably serving these markets due primarily to the continuing prohibition in U.S. law on tourism to Cuba by American citizens.”
Varadero in particular, a town in the northwestern coast of Cuba, is known for its resorts and pristine beaches — not the cultural, people-to-people experiences in which American travelers are allowed to participate. 
Under rules established under the Barack Obama administration, Americans are not allowed to travel to Cuba for “tourism” but must travel under one of 12 approved categories of travel that include family visits, educational and religious activities.
Don’t blame this one on President Trump, the embargo, or even President Obama. This is on Cuba’s leadership, or a country that never got out of 1962.    
Before Castro or communism, Cuba had a highly developed tourism industry. Thousands of visitors went to Cuba to enjoy the beach, or the many historic places like colonial Trinidad, or Havana’s nightlife.     
Contrary to Godfather II, or the worst teacher of Cuban history other than the regime’s propaganda. the island was not run by the Mafia, nor did people run to their boats the night that Batista left, nor were suicide bombers willing to die for the revolution. Yes, there were gambling places and prostitutes. There were also thousands of Americans who went to Cuba for their honeymoons or just to enjoy the place.    
Furthermore, not a single American who went to pre-Castro complained about hot water or lousy hotels. Instead, they stayed at private hotels run by Cuban families who knew how to make tourists happy and return for more.
So the thrill is gone and Americans are not eager to see Cuba. It would be nice if the regime was gone soon so that the island can be restored to the prosperous place that communism destroyed.
P.S. You can listen to my show (Canto Talk), (YouTube) and follow me on Twitter.

Tags: Tourism and Cuba  To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the My View by Silvio Canto, Jr. Thanks!

Thursday, June 29, 2017

The media, Trump tweets and other stories




Tags: Russia and Obama, CNN and the media, Trump tweets,  To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the My View by Silvio Canto, Jr. Thanks!

The media have themselves to blame


fake20news

Yes, it’s true that President Trump is a bit unusual. He tweets. He probably talks too much about “fake news” and counterpunches way beyond proportion.   Trump is Trump and that’s all you can say.    
On the other hand, the media has only itself to blame for its current state of near-collapse, for a couple of reasons:
1) The Obama years may go down as the worst displays of journalism in U.S. history. From “you can keep your own doctor” to “I learned about Fast & Furious from the front page” to “a video caused Benghazi”, most in the media were simply too eager to give President Obama the benefit of the doubt.
For example, did you ever hear a reporter say something like this:    
“Mr. President, did you dismiss somebody when you learned on the front pages that your administration had put 2,000 high-powered rifles in the hands of Mexican cartels… are you not aware that innocent Mexicans have been killed by these weapons… aren’t you terribly served by your senior staff?”
This wasn’t asked about “Fast & Furious” or anything else. It was either a lack of curiosity or something else. It was not the kind of journalism that Americans deserved, especially after what President George W. Bush was put through for eight years of this and that. 
2) Enter President Trump. Since he upset Mrs. Clinton, and all of the experts at the networks, many in the media have been on a rampage to discredit him.    
It is the exact opposite of the Obama years. Again, Mr. Obama was always given the benefit of the doubt. Mr. Trump is second guessed about everything.
So how is all of this working for the country or for the media? Well, it’s not working, as Michael Goodwin wrote:    
Russia, Russia, Russia is a fixation for all the networks, with a new study by the Media Research Center showing 55 percent of Trump coverage on nightly broadcasts was related to the Russia investigation.
That adds up to 353 minutes of airtime since May 17, compared to 47 minutes on Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate pact, 29 minutes on the fight against terrorism and 17 minutes on the efforts to repeal and replace ObamaCare, according to the Daily Caller’s summary of the study. It said tax reform got a mere 47 seconds of coverage.
Too much coverage is far from the only problem with Russia reporting. Writing for The Intercept, Glenn Greenwald shows how reckless CNN, the Washington Post and others have been, and makes two key points.
First, that mistakes are “always in the direction of exaggerating the threat and/or inventing incriminating links between” Russia and Trump. Second, that all the false stories “involved evidence-free assertions from anonymous sources that these media outlets uncritically treated as fact.”
He’s right, and I would add another dimension: For all the focus on Russia, the media totally missed a key point. To wit, the Obama administration did nothing about Vladimir Putin’s attempt to interfere in the 2016 election even though the White House knew about it for months.
Of course, most media organizations spent eight years cheerleading everything Obama did, and it’s no secret that members of his administration, along with career Democrats, are the anonymous sources feeding the anti-Trump narrative.
Mr. Goodwin is right on. In fact, you don’t have to be a “Trumpista” to see that President Trump is getting a raw deal in contrast to the “butt kissing” that went on with President Obama.
Let’s hope that the media have learned their lesson, especially in light of the latest dismissals of three CNN reporters who got it wrong.
We need an aggressive media. Unfortunately, we don’t have that now.   
Let’s hope that the pendulum can swing back to the middle so that we can trust the media again. We don’t right now, as the latest Gallup Poll tells us!
P.S. You can listen to my show (Canto Talk), (YouTube) and follow me on Twitter.
 

Tags: The media vs Trump  To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the My View by Silvio Canto, Jr. Thanks!

What they use to say about President. Lincoln!






Do you know what they used to say about President Lincoln?   It was not pretty.    

Let's put it in proper historical context.   There were very strong feelings during the Civil War.   

In other words, it was not easy being president during that terrible conflict that saw citizens fighting their fellow citizens.    There were some very bad moments for President Lincoln, from the constant casualties to the summer of 1864 when few predicted his reelection.

Doug Ross has a neat blog. I just saw this post several years ago: The more things change, the more things stay the same (Civil War Edition)


Frankly, it wasn't pretty. Wonder what Abe's approval ratings were? Very low, I assume!







A post from 2008: The media is in the tank for Obama!




Wonder what journalism professors are saying about the media and Obama? Wonder how many are showing the SNL intro to their students?

Last week, ABC News actually asked Obama a question about his past. What happened?

The left wing blogs went nuts. That's to be expected! Obama is the left's man!

The media jumped on ABC News. I did not expect that. I thought that the media would stand by Charlie Gibson for actually asking Obama a question.

Let's change the story.

Would the media object if a reporter had asked McCain about his racist minister or his association with someone who bombed abortion clinics? Would they regard such activities as irrelevant to McCain's character?

Of course not.

The media would be 24/7 covering everyone of the minister's sermons and writing story after story about the man who bombed abortion clinics.

Of course, some media people are not in the tank for Obama.

This week, Politico had this story: Obama's secret weapon: The media By & :
"The difference seems clear: Many journalists are not merely observers but participants in the Obama phenomenon."
Today, John Fund, another honest journalist, wrote The Media's Man (Journalists flay ABC for failing to coddle Obama):
"Bravo to ABC for finally asking a lot of questions many Americans have been talking about."
Yes, bravo to ABC.

In the short run, all of this media bias is hurting Clinton because Obama has been given a free pass on so many things.

In the long run, Obama, and specially the media, will lose a lot.

Most Americans already think that the media has a liberal bias. (Americans See Liberal Media Bias on TV News)

It won't help the media's credibility to jump in the tank for Obama.

Wednesday, June 28, 2017

Trump vs media and other front page stories with Frank Burke





Tags: Trump vs media, Russia and Obama, Seattle minimum wage law, Corvette 1953 To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the My View by Silvio Canto, Jr. Thanks!

The cartel’s new ‘tango route’



As we’ve discussed before, the Mexican cartels are ruthless but very good at making money. We may see “illegal drugs” as a threat to our youth, and it is. Mexico may see it as a threat to its sovereignty and the chaos on the border confirms it. The Mexican cartels see it as a business and they will do whatever it takes to gain market share.   
We learned today that Mexican cartels are using Argentina to do business. This is a report from Strategy Page:     
Call it the Southern Route. 
Argentine police believe a Mexican drug cartel is shipping cocaine through Argentina and shipping a lot of it. 
Police seized two metric tons of cocaine in the port of Bahia Blanca on June 19. 
 
The cocaine was hidden in steel coils in an effort to deceive customs and police electronic scanners. 
The big cache had a street value of at least $60 million. 
In the same anti-smuggling operation, Argentine security forces seized another half-ton of cocaine in in Mendoza province, near the border with Chile. 
And that indicates the new shipping route. 
Police say the usual route for drug smuggling in Argentina is Bolivia or Paraguay, not Chile, but Argentina’s borders with Bolivia and Paraguay are heavily patrolled. 
Since the major territorial disputes between Argentina and Chile have been resolved their mutual border is more open. The cocaine route begins in Peru. 
The drugs may still transit Bolivia on the way to Chile. 
From Chile smugglers enter Argentina’s Mendoza province and move the cocaine to an Argentine seaport for shipment. 
Police believe cocaine from the two metric tons discovered in Bahia Blanca had two destinations: Canada and Spain. 
Why do authorities suspect a Mexican cartel is involved? Police and security forces arrested 17 people in the anti-smuggling operation, and four of them were Mexican citizens from Michoacan state. Several major cartels have a significant presence in Michoacan state.
Again, no one ever said that these guys are stupid. Ruthless, yes, stupid, no way!   
The article mentions Canada. I find this very interesting. I’m sure that there is a market share north of the border but there may be something else at work here. How about flooding the U.S. market from Canada? Are the cartels already calculating that President Trump will build the wall or protect the border with more vigor?  
Time will tell where all of this goes. The cartels are in this to make money and they will do whatever it takes to reach their consumers. Unfortunately, too many of those consumers live in the U.S.   
P.S. You can listen to my show (Canto Talk), (YouTube) and follow me on Twitter.

Tags: Cartels and new routes  To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the My View by Silvio Canto, Jr. Thanks!

A post from July 2010: We always knew that most of the media was in the tank for BO!






We've been enjoying the story (i.e. old e-mails) between media types doing their best to support candidate BO, specially after the Rev Wright videos were released in the spring of 2008!

Did anyone doubt that the media was cheering the Obama candidacy? Did some people just get it now that these e-mails were released?

Please consider this:

Do you believe that any white candidate, Rep or Dem, could have attended a church with a racist minister banging racist sermons? or attacking Jews?

Do you believe that the media would have allowed any candidate to get away with saying that he did not hear the racist sermons?

Please don't insult our intelligence. BO wrote that he was in church every Sunday and Rev Wright was a close family friend.

The American media was very irresponsible in 2008.

Fred Barnes nails it:
"Everyone knew most of the press corps was hoping for Obama in 2008.
Newly released emails show that hundreds of them were actively working to promote him."

A post from 2009: "No hope and change in Cuba"




Let's hope that Pres BO learned a big lesson this month: Cuba won't change until the Castro brothers leave or are forced to leave.

"After Raul declared he was "willing" to discuss issues like human rights and political prisoners with Obama, Fidel responded with an essay on a state-controlled Web site that said, essentially, not so fast.
And, he predicted, Obama will wind up on the "path [to] sure failure, like all of his predecessors."
Thanks for nothing, in other words, for lifting restrictions on Cuban-Americans' ability to send their families cash.

That's more than Cuba has gotten from any US president since Dwight Eisenhower.
Which is just what Obama should have expected, after making those gestures without demanding anything of Castro.
He probably was heartened, though, by Fidel's having asked a group of bootlicking US House members what he could do to "help President Obama."
Fidel won this round.

Let's hope that Pres Obama will demand something the next time that he calls for a change in US policy.

Again, Cuba won't change until Castro brothers die or are removed by force.

2007: Cuba remembers Herbert Matthews


Was this weird or what? 

Back in 2007, the Castro dictatorship remembered a journalist, the late Herbert Matthews of The NY Times:
"Cuba unveiled a marble plaque on Saturday commemorating the interview 50 years ago by New York Times reporter Herbert Matthews that helped build the legend of Fidel Castro, the state news agency Prensa Latina reported. The plaque was placed on the spot where Matthews met with Castro at his hideout in the Sierra Maestra mountains of south eastern Cuba." (Cuba honors American who made Castro a legend)
Of course, it's nice to remember journalists. However, it's a bit strange for a country that does not tolerate free journalism to celebrate the life of a journalist.

How many independent journalists will show up?  How many of the imprisoned Cuban journalists will be allowed to attend?

Anyway, they call Mr. Matthews "The man who invented Fidel Castro".  He was the first international journalist to tell us about the bearded man who would become Cuba's dictator.




Pedro Pan: A wonderful chapter of the Cuban experience in the US



In the early 1960's, many Cuban children were sent to the US and raised by Pedro Pan:
"From December 1960 to October 1962, more than fourteen thousand Cuban youths arrived alone in the United States. What is now known as Operation Pedro Pan was the largest recorded exodus of Unaccompanied minors in the Western Hemisphere."
Many of those Cuban kids did not see their parents again. Some of their parents were executed. Others spent years in political prisons.

Father Bryan O. Walsh was behind Operation Pedro Pan.  Today, the children of Pedro Pan run a website, support the organization and remember those who cared for them many years ago!

This is the amazing story of 14,000 lives. It shows the evil of the Castro communist dictatorship and the kindness of the many who raised them in the US.


Our friend Victor Andres Trey wrote a book about it many years ago.

A post from 2006: Cuba's aging population problem




By the way, there is a rumor that Castro is very sick. Of course, we've heard that before.


On a more important point, Fidel and Raul Castro are not the only old men in Cuba.  In fact, Cuba has a population problem. See Miami Herald!:

"In a nation faced with chronic shortages of everything from housing to food, more and more women are choosing to have just one child -- or none at all. A country with one of the hemisphere's highest life expectancy rates and lowest birthrates finds itself with a dwindling population -- one that in just 13 years will see the number of retired people outnumber the labor force."
Abortion is part of the problem. See Cuba Needs Church to Combat Abortion, Says Castro:
"Fidel Castro wants help from the Church to fight the "plague of abortion" in his country, reported an Italian cardinal at the end of a visit with the Cuban president.

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, archbishop of Genoa, spoke of his trip in an interview with the Italian newspaper La Stampa, published Thursday.

"Fidel Castro is asking us for help to combat the plague of abortion in Cuba," he said.

"The spread of abortion, as Fidel Castro emphasized, is among the causes of the country's demographic crisis," the cardinal added. "And it is also a consequence of the plague of sexual tourism."
Why are so many Cuban young women involved in sexual tourism? Could it be that they are working for the "pimp of pimps", or Castro himself.

Abortion in Cuba is free. Speaking of abortion in Cuba, see this:
"Cuba, which has unrestricted access to legal abortion, has an abortion rate of 58.6 per 1000 pregnancies in 1996 compared to a Caribbean average of 35, a Latin American average of 27 (the latter mostly illegally performed), and a European average of 48. Additionally, contraceptive use is estimated at 79% (in the upper third of countries in the Western Hemisphere)."
Yes, Castro leaves a legacy: Abortion, prostitution, political executions and many drowned in the Florida Straits. Of course, the left will always remind us that this is all because of the embargo!   

P.S. We also learned later that Castro died as a very wealthy man, as Juan Reynaldo Sanchez wrote.




A post from 2006 Looking at Castro and Pinochet







Back in 2006, Pinochet and Castro were seriously ill.   Wonder what they were thinking as they faced the end of their lives?    Castro lived to December 2016 and Pinochet died in 2006.

Castro took a prosperous nation and turned it into a socialist basket case. Pinochet took Chile and turned it into the best economy in Latin America.

Yes, Pinochet made mistakes and there were excesses.  Yet, he accepted a public plebiscite in '89 and left power.  Since his departure, Chile has had several elections.

Castro has never had a plebiscite. He will die in power and arbitrarily transferred power to his brother in 2006.

Dictators are dictators. Yet, Pinochet will have a much longer impact than Castro.


On the human rights front, there is no comparison. Yes, we know a lot about what happened in Chile. Why? Because the Chilean press was free to cover the events. Has any free Cuban press ever investigated Castro's prisons?

My guess is that St. Peter will send Pinochet to hell for a short time but Castro will get a one way pass.

You can read more about Pinochet & Castro.

Tuesday, June 27, 2017

The travel ban, Russia story, Seattle & Obama Care




Tags: Russia and Obama, Trump and the travel, Seattle minimum wage, Obama Care & GOP To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the My View by Silvio Canto, Jr. Thanks!

Gingrich on Trump by Barry Casselman

We've had Barry Casselman on our show many times.   He is one of our favorite guests and a gentleman as well.   This is Barry's review of Newt Gingrich's "Understanding Trump".   At the moment, the book is a huge best seller:


Occasionally, a book breaks all the rules of what makes a book
important, and it perhaps it should not surprise us when both 
the subject and the author of the book break all the rules, too. 

In order to tell my readers about this book, I have to break some 
rules myself.

Let me explain. The book I am reviewing is by a good and old 
friend.  If I managed a large website with many co-writers, the 
simple solution would be to assign the book to someone else. 
I can’t do that so I will try to be as transparent as I can be, and 
let the reader decide how to evaluate what I say.

I have known Newt Gingrich for more than three decades. When I
first met him he was a backbencher in Congress and a thorn in the
side of the then-Democratic Speaker of the House Jim Wright. 

Newt and his “Conservative  Opportunity Society” colleagues
formed a small band of constant critics of the then Democratic
majority with daily house floor speeches on camera, and 
broadcast on C-SPAN. That camera, incidentally, was fixed and
did not reveal that Newt and his friends were, other than the chair, 
often the only ones in the chamber. (It was a canny and pioneer 
political use of early cable TV.)

From being political nuisances, Newt and his group rose in 
prominence at the Capitol, culminating in his being elected 
Republican minority whip in 1989, and then his becoming 
speaker of the house following the upset Republican victory in 
the “Contract With America” mid-term election of 1994 that
marked a new direction in U.S. politics.

I did not ever work for Newt, but we collaborated on projects and
co-wrote an article on presidential debates for Real Clear Politics. 
We lived in different cities,  but thanks to the internet and frequent 
travel, we have remained in touch for more than 30 years.

I have had political disagreements with him, and he with me, 
but I have made no secret about my admiration for him as one 
of the nation’s few original political minds (in either party), 
and a rare political survivor. He demonstrated this again in
2011-12 by becoming a serious presidential candidate (even
briefly, the frontrunner) in that cycle, partly through his
formidable debate appearances and grasp of the issues.

He has often been controversial in both his public and private
life, but he has demonstrated the knack of being pertinent and
trenchant through all the recent U.S. political cycles. How many
other American political figures can this be said about?

He has written and co-written several books, including ones on 
public policy, American history, and lately, two fictional spy 
thrillers. I’ve read them all. Now he has written something quite 
different. It’s title is self-explanatory --- Understanding Trump. 
It’s based on Newt’s first-hand experience with the new president 
before, during and after the 2016 presidential campaign turned 
American politics upside down. 

There have been, and will be, many books trying to explain
Donald Trump, but this one is so good, in my opinion, that I am 
going to review it for my readers. As I said previously, readers
knowing my full disclosure, and my own decades of commentary 
writing, can decide if my comments are accurate and useful, or not.

In Understanding Trump, Newt makes no secret that his 
realization of who Donald Trump was, and why he succeeded
in 2016, took some time. Newt’s analysis is deferential, frequently
partisan, and in some ways, self-serving. It is also on occasion
critical of his subject, and almost always incisive. 

One point I can personally testify to is that Newt figured out 
Donald Trump’s success and skill well before most others. I was
a skeptic about the man who is now president during all of 2015 
and in early 2016, but in several private conversations with Newt 
in that period and later, he argued forcefully that Mr. Trump would 
succeed and why he would win the election.

Underlying Understanding Trump is the premise that most of the
new president’s opponents, much of the media, and even many of 
his supporters have little or no comprehension of the man, how he 
thinks and acts, and of his extraordinary skills in the public arena.

I have no intention or desire here of trying to persuade those who 
disagree with Donald Trump to change their minds about what he 
is doing or stands for --- or even to like him. What I do want to 
communicate is that this book gives all of us, supporters, 
opponents or critics, and uncommitted observers, a useful and 
original perspective of who Donald Trump really is, and his 
historic role in American politics.

Understanding Trump is now reportedly the number one best seller
on the New York Times list (interestingly, replacing Al Franken’s
new book as number one).

For forty tumultuous years, Newt Gingrich has remained at the
cutting edge of American politics and public policy. Like his
subject in Understanding Trump, he remains controversial, 
criticized, and underestimated, but now in his 70’s, he is still

amazingly at the center of it all.

Thanks to Barry for the great review.  It's time to read it and gain more information about the Trump presidency.

You can get the book HERE.

Tags: Barry Casselman reviews the new Trump book  by Newt Gingrich  To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the My View by Silvio Canto, Jr. Thanks!

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