Castro's visit was rather controversial because he faced skepticism from many in the U.S. He was asked about the promised elections that were delayed and delayed.
Castro was also beginning to hear a lot of criticism from fellow Cubans who kept asking about the surplus of communists and shortage of reforms.
Finally, President Dwight D. Eisenhower did not meet with him, but V.P. Richard Nixon did.
After the meeting, V.P. Nixon said that his bearded visitor was "either incredibly naive about communism or under communist discipline — my guess is the former."
Castro also appeared on Meet the Press and denied that he was a communist. He even joked about it, saying some people thought Adam and Eve were communists.
Furthermore, Castro benefited from a lot of people in the U.S. who were caught up in the cult of personality and did not know the truth of pre-Castro Cuba. It's easy to fall for the narrative when you don't know about the large middle class in Cuba and the number of immigrants who had flooded Cuba in the first half of the 20th century. They came to Cuba because the island offered opportunities, or the exact opposite of "Cuba is all about casinos" that was peddled to justify what they called revolution.
As my late father used to say when he got questions about casinos, "we had a lot more home-grown prosperity than casinos!" He should know, because he worked for one of five Cuban-owned banks that operated all over the country.
Down on the island, Castro continued to deny that he was a communist and put people in jail for accusing him of that. In December 1961, eight months after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, he declared his allegiance to Marxism-Leninism, and our worst fears were realized.
Blue wave? Justice Alito retiring? Pope vs Trump. April 15th and history.
Democrats don’t appear able to hit a teed-up ball.
Maybe part of the problem is that they can’t speak two words without bashing Trump. On Iran, they can’t deny the risk of a nuclear Iran run by fanatics, but they just don’t like that Trump is cleaning up the mess. On illegal immigration, they agree that Biden left the border unprotected, but they can’t say anything more imaginative than call for “immigration reform.” On affordability, it’s all about making the rich, or the mean corporations, pay their fair share. On everything, it’s Trump’s fault, rather than propose a credible alternative that voters between San Francisco and Washington D.C. can understand.
So let’s see what happens, but don’t bet on any wave coming. It may be like Texas days when it looks like rain, but the drops don’t fall.
Click to read:
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2026/04/the_can_t_score_democrats.html
On this day in 1947, baseball changed when Jackie Robinson opened the season playing first base with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Robinson turned into one of the key players in those Dodgers’ teams that won the NL pennant in 1947, 1949, 1952, 1953, 1955 and 1956. The Dodgers finally beat the Yankees in the 1955 World Series. Along t he way, he won the 1949 National League MVP.
Before he broke with Brooklyn, Robinson and his teammates spent spring training in Cuba in 1947. It gave many Cuban fans a chance to see the man who would open the door to so many players from the island. This is how Cesar Brioso recalls the moment:
The overflow crowd spilled into foul territory where ropes cordoned off fans from the field of play. Beyond the outfield wall, those who failed to gain entrance climbed the light towers for a glimpse of the contest.
The decisive game of the Cuban League season riveted the packed house at Havana’s El Gran Stadium on Feb. 25, 1947, but Cuban fans briefly diverted their attention to acknowledge the presence of a special guest.
After Jackie Robinson was introduced over the public-address system, “he took bows to the wild shouting of 38,000 jabbering fans,” Sam Lacy wrote in the Baltimore Afro-American 75 years ago, pointing out that several members of the Brooklyn Dodgers sitting in the same reserved section “were hardly noticed.”
The Cuban fans anticipated the historic moment. First, they were knowledge of major league baseball, Secondly, they knew that Jackie was ready to jump from AAA to the majors. They knew that history would be made in a few weeks.
Of course, Jackie was followed by black Cuban baseball players, from Orestes Minoso to the many others.
Happy Jackie Robinson Day.
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"By 1956, Robinson's last season, he had lost his second-base position to Jim Gilliam, a black man. Robinson died of diabetes-related illnesses in 1972, at 53, the same age Babe Ruth was when he died. Ruth reshaped baseball; Robinson's life still reverberates through all of American life. As Martin Luther King Jr., who was 18 in 1947, was to say, Robinson was "a sit-inner before sit-ins, a freedom rider before freedom rides."
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Robinson stood up for equal rights even before he did so in baseball. He was arrested and court-martialed during training in the Army for refusing to move to the back of a segregated bus. He was eventually acquitted of the charges and received an honorable discharge.After baseball. Jackie Robinson continued working for civil rights.
After integrating baseball, Robinson became a full-fledged leader in the civil rights movement. As a board member of the NAACP, he traveled across the country in an effort to build morale among African Americans fighting for racial justice in their local communities.And as a friend of Martin Luther King Jr., Robinson helped to lead civil rights campaigns in Albany (Ga.) and Birmingham. While in Albany, he was so moved by the efforts of black parishioners to register African-American voters — despite the fact that their church had been burned to the ground — that he offered to raise enough money to rebuild several torched churches.In 1964, Robinson then founded Freedom National Bank in Harlem as a protest against white financial institutions that discriminated against African Americans by denying them loans or setting interest rates artificially high.And while he criticized Harlem resident Malcolm X for advocating racial separatism and the use of “any means necessary,” Robinson saved his harshest public criticism for white politicians, including Presidents Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy and Richard Nixon, when they hesitated, as they often did, to advance civil rights legislation.These few examples of Robinson’s post-baseball life can help us begin to understand a claim he made in 1968: “I think I’ve become much more aggressive since I left baseball.” Coming from a man who stole home plate in the 1955 World Series, this claim gives us some indication of the importance he attributed to his baseball life.What fueled Robinson’s aggression after baseball? No doubt, deadly violence against civil rights activists played a role. But if we dig a bit deeper, we can see that he was especially driven by his long-held belief that the people of God have an obligation to “set the captive free.”
Thanks to religious mentors, especially his mother Mallie, Robinson embraced a social gospel that called for freedom and justice right here and right now.
Lincoln died April 15, 1865: The Wit and Wisdom of Abraham Lincoln: A Book of Quotations......
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