My View by Silvio Canto, Jr.: 04/12/12

Thursday, April 12, 2012

North Korea: Another bad guy gives Pres BO the finger

We learned today that North Korea joined Saddam, Khadaffi, Iran, etc and defied UN resolutions.

They also fooled the US government and put the whole region on a war time footing.

Yes, the missile did not work. Yes, it did not land in South Korea or Japan as some had feared.

Nevertheless, they fired the missile making a mockery of Pres BO's 'smart" diplomacy.

This is from FP:

"The Obama administration worked behind the scenes for months on the deal, and had been set to announce it last December, but North Korean leader Kim Jong Il died the day before the announcement was set to be made.

In February, administration officials traveled to Beijing to try again and proudly announced on Feb. 29 that Pyongyang had agreed to a host of concessions, including a missile-test moratorium."

So much for that moratorium. So much for the smart diplomacy that was supposed to make the world love us and live happily ever after.

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The pain in Spain is in the plain and everywhere else

As we tackle our own problems, Spain is the middle of a political and economic crisis that few of us can understand:

"Here’s just a brief summary of the ugly statistics:

(1) The government in Madrid expects the economy to shrink by 1.7% in 2012 – its third contraction in four years.

(2) Unemployment continues to rise. It is now more than 23%, and youth unemployment is above a staggering 50%.

(3) Housing prices are down 22% from their peak, and are likely to continue to drop, perhaps by 20% or more. This puts extreme pressure on the balance sheets of an already shaky banking sector." (Time)

How do you get yourself out of that mess? It's not easy, to say the least.

Spain has structural problems, or the kinds of problems that take a long time to get yourself out of. Spain has gone through a lot before but this is the kind of crisis that challenges your democratic institutions. We could see a lot of young Spaniards get disillusioned with democracy and fall prey to extreme slogans from both the left & right.

Last, but not least, Spain is the 4th largest European economy. This is not Greece. This is much bigger than Greece.

Click here for our chat with Jose M Guardia from Barcelona:

Listen to internet radio with Silvio Canto Jr on Blog Talk Radio

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We love homemakers today: Here is one for my wife and all of those wonderful women like Anne Romney who stayed home to raise our children

This is my wife and our 3 sons from 1991. Where did the time go?

I want to personally salute every lady out there who is at home raising a family.

You have the most important job on earth. You are literally looking into the eyes of the future.

You are a mother and that's the greatest and most important position under God.

Let me bring you Cardinal Mindzenty's words. He was the brave Hungarian priest who stood up to Hitler and later the communists in Hungary. He said that God loves mothers:

"The most important person on earth is a mother.
She cannot claim the honor of having built Notre Dame Cathedral.
She need not."
“She has built something more magnificent than any cathedral –
a dwelling for an immortal soul,
the tiny perfection of her baby’s body…"

Back to today's news. I guess that you can't keep an angry feminist down. You can't keep an angry feminist down when the target is a woman who has babies rather than abortions.

The latest chapter is this awful attack on Anne Romney from Hillary Rosen. The attack goes like this: Anne is a housewife and she is not smart like us feminists!

Is that stupid? Yes!

The White House has already thrown Hillary under the bus, as Ed Morrisey indicates this morning.

I agree with Bill Katz that this is a blunder.

Anne Romney is a lot like my wife, and probably your wife, too.

My wife Beatriz has a college degree but decided to stay home to raise our 3 sons. She is working now but felt that staying home with young sons was a better use of her time than pursuing some professional experience.

My sons and I are so grateful for her time at home and how she made all of our lives better.

Anne Romney has devoted her life to helping people. She is a wonderful woman and does not deserve a cheap shot from a frustrated feminist like Hillary Rosen.

Click to watch this awful attack:

Tags: We love homemakers today: Here is one for my wife and all of those wonderful women like Anne Romney who stayed home to raise our children To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the My View by Silvio Canto, Jr. Thanks!

Pope back in Rome, Cubans back in Cuba

As we mentioned a week ago, we were very disappointed with Pope Benedict's visit to Cuba. We weren't expecting miracles but an invitation to "las damas en blanco" to attend the public mass would have been a huge step forward.

The Pope is back in Rome but Cubans are still in Cuba. In other words, Cubans are now facing the consequences of having spoken to the international media or any other act of dissidence.

Alberto De La Cruz alerted us to The Wall Street Journal's editorial:

"Dissidents who asked to meet with the Pope are now being arrested.

Pope Benedict XVI's recent trip to Cuba was described by the Vatican as way to spread the gospel to a nation captured by an atheist state. And surely it was the Pope's purpose to inspire as many Cubans as possible. The irony of the Pope's visit is that it has provoked a crackdown on dissent.

Agence France Press reports that in the last week at least 43 dissidents in the eastern province of Santiago, one of the stops during the Pope's three-day Cuban sojourn, have been detained by the police. They include former political prisoner José Daniel Ferrer and his wife Belkis Cantillo.

Mr. Ferrer was one of the 75 arrested in Cuba's "Black Spring" in 2003, and he was among 12 who refused to accept exile as a condition of release in 2011. He is the leader of the Patriotic Union of Cuba. Ms. Cantillo is among 10 members of the Ladies in White—Catholic mothers, wives and sisters of political prisoners—who were arrested in the sweep."

Am I surprised? Not really. This is life in the prison, a.k.a the island of Cuba.

Let's hope that Pope Benedict will call on the Cuban dictatorship to show some restraint and respect for human rights. At the same time, they have not shown any restrain or respected human rights since they arrived on the scene in 1959.

Click here for our conversation with Alberto De La Cruz, The Babalu Blog: