No “cake de bodas para gays” in Cuba

(My new Babalu Blog)

Can you imagine President Bush reaching out to a regime that treated "gays" like second class citizens?

At the very least, we would hear expressions of outrage.

Remember the left's outrage over Pinochet in Chile?   They claimed violations of human rights and zero tolerance for lifestyle choices.  or Franco in Spain?

Where is their outrage about Cuba?   Or the way that "gays" have been treated in Cuba for years.

Has anyone told Governor Cuomo that he is about to do business with a country like this?

This is from Liz Mair:

"Cuba’s record on LGBT rights has improved over the years.
However, it was so dismal to start with that this can hardly be surprising.
Shortly after seizing power, the Castro regime sent tens of thousands of gay men to labor camps.
It later forced HIV-positive people and those with AIDS into facilities in which they were separated against their will from the public-at-large.
Even after these worst abuses fell by the wayside, LGBT individuals as well as LGBT advocates in Cuba have faced ongoing harassment from government authorities in the form of detention, arrest, and physical assault.
Cuba also initially opposed, then abstained from voting on, a 2010 UN proposal to treat “sexual orientation” as an especially objectionable motive for murder—a position it is hard to believe Cuomo would endorse.
Say what you will about Indiana’s legislators and governor, but it does not appear that they sanction cops targeting LGBT Hoosiers or their allies in downtown Indianapolis for beatings.
It appears that the Cuban regime does, or at least has failed to put a stop to behavior on the part of public authorities that members of Cuba’s LGBT population feel have left them “very isolated.”
A 2013 report by the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association indicates that in Cuba, not only can people refuse to bake cakes for gay couples if they so desire, there is also no “constitutional prohibition of discrimination based on sexual orientation.”
Only very recently did Cuba ban discrimination in employment against gays and lesbians.
Furthermore, in Cuba, same-sex couples enjoy none of the rights of marriage, let alone the ability to marry. Moreover, joint adoption is not an option for gay couples on the island.
Gay couples in Cuba also lack the option of civil unions, domestic partnerships and similar arrangements."

So where is the outrage from the left wing of the Democrat Party that wanted to shut down travel to Indiana?

Of course, the left has never been consistent about human rights in Cuba.   It appears that the only thing that matters to the left about the Castro regime is that their so called "free health care" provides free abortion.

Where is the intellectual honesty of the left?    Or am I asking too much?

P.S. You can hear my show (CantoTalk) or follow me on Twitter.

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Tags: No "gay rights" in Cuba  To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the My View by Silvio Canto, Jr. Thanks!

Why are Democrats Talking about Income Inequality in the 7th Year of Obama?

(My new American Thinker post)

Did you catch Senator Bernie Sanders on the Fox Sunday Show?  Or Govenor Martin O’Malley on NPR?   

It’s a bit strange but they are talking about the state of the middle class or the nation’s inability to create good paying jobs. They say that the jobs are going overseas and that wages are under siege.

They say all of these things in the 7th year of “hope and change” and after 6 years of a U.S. Senate Democrat majority (2009-15).

Am I the only one who finds all of this a bit surprising?

Of course, it’s been tough for “income inequality” under President Obama, as we see in W. James Antle III’s post:

Early in the State of the Union address, Barack Obama asked, “Will we accept an economy where only a few of us do spectacularly well? Or will we commit ourselves to an economy that generates rising incomes and chances for everyone who makes the effort?”

What he didn’t mention is that income inequality has actually worsened since he has been president. It is not necessarily easier for Rebekah and Ben Erler of Minneapolis to get ahead by working hard and playing by the rules.

Don’t believe me? Let’s consult that notorious spewer of right-wing talking points, The New York Times: “Income inequality in the United States has been growing for decades, but the trend appears to have accelerated during the Obama administration.”

Income inequality may be even worse under Obama than George W. Bush. Emmanuel Saez, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, memorably found that the average income of the top 1 percent grew by 11.2 percent in real terms since 2009. The bottom 99 percent saw their incomes decrease by 0.4 percent.

That means 121 percent of the income gains from the Obama recovery went to the wealthiest during the period Saez examined. The top 1 percent took in 65 percent of the income gains when the economy was expanding under Bush from 2002-07, only 45 percent during the Clinton economic boom from 1993 to 2000.

It almost makes you wonder: who is the president of the 1 percent? 

Even Mitt Romney can’t help but notice. 

“Under President Obama the rich have gotten richer, income inequality has gotten worse and there are more people in poverty in American than ever before,” he told the Republican National Committee.

Mitt of the “47 percent” fame now sounds like another Democrat he once ran against, Teddy Kennedy, railing against Ronald Reagan’s economy during the Decade of Greed.

Median household income was down 4.4 percent from the end of the Great Recession to 2013. 

By the end of 2012, corporate profits were at an all-time high and wages as a percentage of the economy a record low.

To be fair, it’s not all President Obama’s fault. However, it would be nice if some of these Democrats would at least identify the name of the guy sitting in the Oval Office.

Candidate Obama ran for office bashing President Bush on the state of the middle class. My guess is that a lot of middle class Americans wish that they had that economy back.   

P.S. You can hear my show (CantoTalk) or follow me on Twitter.

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Tags: Income inequality in year 7 of the Obama economy  To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the My View by Silvio Canto, Jr. Thanks!

Greece and a look at the US economy with Dr Ileana Johnson

GUEST:  Dr Ileana Johnson, economist and author..............we will take a look at Greece and the implications of a default on the EU as well as the international economy...............plus remarks by Gov Christie regarding entitlements......

Click to listen:

Check Out Politics Podcasts at Blog Talk Radio with Silvio Canto Jr on BlogTalkRadio

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Tags: Greece default, US economy and entitlement reforms  To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the My View by Silvio Canto, Jr. Thanks!