It's time to let the Zimmerman issue go away!

About a week ago, a jury found George Zimmerman not guilty.  Yet, there are lots of people in the country who don't want to let go.  They want to "squeeze" everything they can out of the trial.

My advice is to everyone is to accept the verdict and focus on real isues, such as "black on black crime" and the collapse of inner cities.

We spoke with Melanie Sturm and Bill Katz about Zimmerman and other issues.  Click here for Sunday's show:

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Cuba's "reforms" striking out with baseball players

Tuesday's MLB All Star Game reminded us that there are a lot of people in Cuba who would love to leave all of those "reforms" behind. 

The latest is Misael Silverio, a pitcher who will have no trouble finding a place in an MLB roster.    He abandoned the team during an exhibition game.

You can add Silverio to a nice little group of Cuban "defectors", from Cespedes of Home Run Derby fame, to Chapman throwing 100-mph fastballs out of the Reds' bullpen, to Martin playing center field with the Rangers to Jose Fernandez pitching with the Marlins.

They are not just baseball players.  They are men who've taken a risk and left the Cuban National Team to  have freedom. 

They are also men born in the late 1980s and 1990s.  They are the grandsons of the revolution who opted to leave everything behind for a taste of freedom.  They were supposed to be "the new men" of the revolution. 

We can safely say that the revolution is really striking out with these young men!

They also remind us of what Jose Azel just wrote of the so called Cuban reforms:

"The extraordinary degree to which Communist Cuba has failed to provide for the citizens’ economic well-being is well documented by an avalanche of statistics and data that have defined the country’s stagnation and regression since the 1959 revolution. A most disturbing illustration of this economic condition is Cubans’ purchasing power compared to that of other countries. A study by the University of Miami’s Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies shows, for example, that to purchase fourteen ounces of powdered milk, the average Cuban worker has to work 57.5 hours. To make the same purchase, the average worker in Costa Rica has to work only 1.7 hours. Comparable disparities hold for the other items analyzed in the study’s consumer basket."

Mr Azel is correct.  Cuba's reforms are a joke.  Just ask the ball players who would rather play here than there!

Click here for Friday's show:

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Maryland, and others, gets the 'hope and change' that they voted for

(My new American Thinker post)

For the record, I went to college in Maryland. It is a very nice state and they have a wonderful baseball team.   Unfortunately, I always voted for the guy who lost the election in Maryland.

Today, we learned that Maryland employers are cutting back hours.

In other words, the "digestion of ObamaCare" is underway.

This is from a TV report in next door Delaware:

"It appears large employers are struggling to adapt to the provisions of Obamacare, and frustration is building as reality sets in.

"One piece of legislation that has made changes already - employers cutting employee hours," licensed insurance consultant Chris Keen of Keen Insurance Associates said.

By 2015, employers with at least 50 full-time, 30-hour employees will be required to provide health insurance or pay a hefty $3,000 fine for each uninsured employee. Insurance experts worry it could create some friction between the employer and employee.

"We've seen employers starting to cut down hours to 28, 25 hours such that they will not be subject to penalty for that employee," Keen said.

That's exactly what Katie Frantz says has happened to her.

"The job that I currently have is part-time. And they don't want to let me be full-time because they don't want to pay me benefits. And I don't even need the benefits because I have it through my husband. It's just very annoying," she said.

Some employers have found that from a financial standpoint, they would be better off just paying the penalty. "

I understand the employers' pain but welcome to our brave new world.

I hope that our friends in Maryland pick up the phone and call the two US Senators who passed a bill they didn't read or understand.

ObamaCare was sold as something that would be beneficial to employees. Instead, it is turning into an "hour cutter" law and a lot of employees are not happy about it.

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And we thought that 'Brown Sugar' was a song by The Rolling Stones

(My new American Thinker post)

 President Obama has a new headache today: 

"Panama's president says the country has taken control of a North Korean ship that was trying to illegally sneak missile materials from Cuba through the Panama Canal...."We had suspected this ship, which was coming from Cuba and headed to North Korea, might have drugs aboard so it was brought into port for search and inspection," Martinelli said. "When we started to unload the shipment of sugar we located containers that we believe to be sophisticated missile equipment...." After examining images, intelligence officials told Fox News that the equipment is part of a "soviet era" radar system that accompanies the SA-2 surface to air missile."

And they said that it was a shipment of brown sugar?  

Yes, a special kind of "brown sugar" that shoots down jets!

There are a couple of lessons here:

1) Cuba is a terrorist state.  It hangs around with terrorist states like North Korea.  The Castro brothers have not changed their ways.  It's still amazing that there are people in the US who think that you can negotiate with them or buy into all of this talk about reforms.

2) Cuba is really cash strapped.  Look for Cuba to sell whatever old Soviet weapons they have in their inventories.  The old USSR armed Cuba extensively in the 1970s.  The weapons and MIGs were used by Cuba in Angola and other African wars.  The weapons may be old but they are till lethal.

Cuba and North Korea: Why is anyone surprised that a couple of terrorist thugs do business together?

I guess that "Brown Sugar" by the Stones will never sound the same!

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A few thoughts about Mexico and Latin America

Our friend Allan Wall just got back from Mexico.  He shared his thoughts about Mexico and the state of affairs south of the border.

Allan's latest article was about the most recent elections.

Click to hear our chat with Allan on Wednesday's show:

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Zimmerman? What about other problems in the Black community?

(My new American Thinker post)

Attorney General Holder is back with more talk about Zimmerman.  They are now looking into a civil rights lawsuit although The Washington Post is saying that it will be very difficult. 

Wonder if anyone at the DOJ heard that a jury of citizens found Zimmerman "not guilty"?  Six people sat there for days and heard every little angle and nuance of this trial and came to the conclusion that it was not about race.

What does it to take to persuade people that it was not really about racism? I understand that a young man is dead and a mother is grieving. Nevertheless, a jury concluded that it was not about race.

Again, when can we finally move on?

The reality is that President Obama, Attorney General Holder, and the Congressional Black Caucus would rather talk Zimmerman than unemployment, lousy public schools that most Democrats politicians do not send their kids to, and "black on black" crime tearing up cities every night.

How many Trayvon Martins have been killed in Chicago since President Obama became president?  I don't know, but probably quite a few!

The tragedy is that most black Americans live in districts with a black congressman, black councilman, and a black state representative.   

What do all of these districts have in common beyond black leadership?  They have 3 things in common:

* High unemployment rates (double digits) and very little hope of change;
* Lousy public schools that Senator Obama did not send his daughters to; and,
* High crime rates, especially if you are black.

This is why it's Zimmerman 24/7 for the American left.  What else are they going to talk to black Americans about?

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A big victory for the Mexican army in the drug war

(My new American Thinker post)

My Mexican friends tell me:  You guys consume billions of dollars of illegal drugs and we get all of the dead people.   There is a lot of truth in that!. 

We do consume and they have 70,000 dead!

We can blame Mexico for this or that but our consumption is the reason that the cartels cross borders and do business up here.

In December 2006, President Calderon started this crackdown on cartels and it's very difficult but necessary.

I don't think that many Americans understand just how bloody this drug war has been in Mexico.    We also don't hear about the sacrifice of many Mexican police and soldiers.

So let's say thumbs up to the Mexican army because they scored a big win this week:   

"Miguel Angel Trevino Morales, the notoriously brutal leader of the feared Zetas drug cartel, was captured before dawn Monday in the first major blow against an organized crime leader by a Mexican administration struggling to drive down persistently high levels of violence, officials announced. Trevino Morales, 40, was captured by Mexican Marines who intercepted a pickup truck with $2 million in cash on a dirt road in the countryside outside the border city of Nuevo Laredo, which has long served as the Zetas' base of operations. The truck was halted by a Marine helicopter and Trevino Morales was taken into custody along with a bodyguard and an accountant and eight guns, government spokesman Eduardo Sanchez told reporters."
 
This is a huge hit on the cartels.  Well done guys!

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The unions and ObamaCare

We discussed the sudden change of heart from some unions regarding ObamaCare.  We recall that the unions were huge supporters of ObamaCare in 2009-10!

That was then!  This is now:

"The leaders of three major U.S. unions, including the highly influential Teamsters, have sent a scathing open letter to Democratic leaders in Congress, warning that unless changes are made, President Obama’s health care reform plan will “destroy the foundation of the 40 hour work week that is the backbone of the American middle class.”"

We spoke with Dr Ileana Johnson-Paugh about ObamaCare on Monday:

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How many Democrats voted for ObamaCare hoping that the Supreme Court would kill it?

(My new American Thinker post)

Has there ever been a more complicated federal program to implement than Obama Care?

I can't think of one.

Worse than that, it appears that the Obama administration knew that it'd be difficult to implement. 

They've also known for months that the program wouldn't be ready as promised.

This is from The National Journal:

"Last week, it scaled back several required provisions. They aren't the first. And probably won't be the last."

Just curious.  What would happen to a private company that was so deceitful and incompetent in their introduction of a new service or product?

Can you imagine a car company selling a car without a radiator?  And knowing all along that customers were buying a car without a radiator?

What would happen to such a company?

The company leadership would be sent to jail!  They would also be dragged in front of Congress and hear self righteous statements from Democrats about protecting the little guy from companies who promise and don't deliver!

ObamaCare is no longer a liberal program.  This is an incompetent program crafted by people who did not take the time to study it beyond "hope and change" speeches.

Why didn't they pick one state and do a trial run for a few years?  Let real people use it and then make the necessary adjustments.

At the end of the day, ObamaCare raises two serious questions:

1) Was this a health care program or just "a power grab" to get into our pockets and medical records?

2) Did any of the 60 Democrats who voted for this take the time to to study what they voted for?

It leads me to one and only conclusion.  Most of the Democrats who voted for this mess wanted to have it both ways:

1) They voted "yes" to keep away a left wing primary challenger; and,

2) They bet that Justice Roberts would kill it in the Supreme Court.

Does any one have a better explanation?  How can 60 people vote for something this bad or allow such an incompetent group of federal officials to implement it?

Again, the answer is that they never thought that they'd be defending it in the 2014 elections. 

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Mexican Shortsightedness as 'Fast & Furious' Doesn't Go Away

(My new MexiData post)

By any historical measurement, "Fast & Furious" is the single greatest violation of Mexican sovereignty in years.  However, few in the Mexican political class today seem to care much about it.

I recall watching a TV presidential debate last year and the subject did not even come up.  Furthermore, while some Mexican Members of Congress in the past sexennial expressed criticism and concern, I am not familiar with any current Mexican Congress resolution condemning the US government.

Last week, we learned that another Mexican official was killed by one of these guns:

"Another weapon lost in the Obama administration's failed Fast and Furious gun-tracking operation has purportedly been traced to two more killings, including the fatal shooting of a police chief in Mexico.

"The officer, Luis Lucio Rosales Astorga, was killed Jan. 29 in the city of Hostotipaquillo, which is in central-western Mexico, when gunmen intercepted his patrol car and opened fire, according to Justice Department records obtained by the Los Angeles Times. The chief’s bodyguard was also killed, a second bodyguard and the chief’s wife were wounded."

You would expect outrage and marches in front of the US embassy.  Where is President Peña Nieto saying that Mexico's borders must be respected by the Obama administration?
 

Back in the 1980's, I worked in Mexico for a US company.  My office was across from the US Embassy, I had a balcony view of every demonstration on Reforma Boulevard and the US Embassy.  My favorite moment was watching a young man screaming in front of the embassy wearing a Roger Staubach #12 jersey!
 

I saw massive anti-Reagan demonstrations over far less consequential topics.  There were marches about "nuclear freeze," Grenada, the Cuban embargo, the "contras" and lots of other issues.  (We remind you that no Mexican was killed because of President Reagan putting missiles in Europe or having a tough approach toward Nicaragua.)
 

We hear little today about Fast & Furious south of the border.  Let me say this:  we hear nothing from the political class because a lot of Mexicans are very upset at a personal level.  After all, they are the ones caught up in the frequent firefights.
 

I am not familiar of a single demonstration calling on President Obama to explain how these weapons crossed the border.  The Mexican left loves to say that guns go south but has chosen to say nothing about a program that specifically put 2,000 high powered weapons in the hands of deadly cartels!

Again, "no me importa" is the attitude in Mexico about Fast & Furious, a bad program that has killed hundreds of Mexicans.

Why so much Mexican official indifference?

My first guess is that the Mexican government has decided to focus all of its energy in making sure that immigration reform happens in this Congress.  They do not want to embarrass the Obama administration and put border security on the front pages!

My second guess is that "Fast & Furious" is also a reminder of how little control Mexico has over its northern border.  In other words, it's the cartels who well may control large segments of the border!

Either way, it is shameful that the Mexican government has not made a bigger deal of a US program that killed the aforementioned police chief and lots of others, and keeps on killing!


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