BloggeRhythms

This morning, Nick Gass @politico.com summed up Fidel Castro's remarks following the POTUS’s return home after his trip to Cuba. And from Castro's verbiage, a lot of presidential time and considerable amounts of taxpayer’s money, could have been saved if Obama had stayed home. Because it sounds like the trip did absolutely nothing to improve the USA/Cuba relationship or ideology.  

While Obama did not meet with Fidel Castro during the “historic” visit to Cuba, according to Mr. Gass: “[T]hat apparently, “does not mean that Castro did not have any thoughts about el presidente norteamericano in his country,” as follows: 

“Castro ripped into the president and his words during the visit in El Granma, the official state newspaper of the Cuban Communist Party, bringing up Obama's relative youth, the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 and the role of both countries in ending the apartheid in South Africa and elsewhere on the continent in an article titled "El hermano Obama." 

"Native populations do not exist at all in the minds of Obama," Castro wrote. "Nor does he say that racial discrimination was swept away by the Revolution; that retirement and salary of all Cubans were enacted by this before Mr. Barack Obama was 10 years old." 

“Referring to the 1961 failed invasion of the Bay of Pigs, Castro wrote of the U.S.' "mercenary force with cannons and armored infantry, equipped with aircraft ... trained and accompanied by warships and aircraft carriers in the U.S. raiding our country. Nothing can justify this premeditated attack that cost our country hundreds of killed and wounded." 

But, hey, the trip wasn’t totally wasted, The POTUS did get to do the tango and sit in the stands doing the wave at a Cuba vs. Tampa Bay Rays baseball game. Maybe next time he can visit Korea, do nothing there either, and then watch the South get nuked by the North. 

On another subject, Thomas Black and Isabella Cota @bloomberg.com, shed some very bright light on why Trump has such great appeal to “working-class” voters. Their article’s titled: “The 89% Pay Cut That Brought Trump-Mania to America's Heartland” 

The writers begin with some background: “Amid the rugged cattle farms that dot the hills of southern Kentucky, in a clearing just beyond the Smoke Shack BBQ joint and the Faith Baptist Church, lie the remains of the A.O. Smith electric-motor factory. 

“It’s been eight years since the doors were shuttered. The building’s blue-metal facade has faded to a dull hue, rust is eating away at scaffolding piled up in the back lot and crabgrass is taking over the lawn. At its zenith, the plant employed 1,100 people, an economic juggernaut in the tiny town of Scottsville, population 4,226. 

“Randall Williams and his wife, Brenda, were two of those workers. For three decades, they helped assemble the hermetically sealed motors that power air conditioners sold all across America. At the end, they were each making $16.10 an hour. That kind of money’s just a dream now: Randall fills orders at a local farm supply store; Brenda works in the high school cafeteria. For a while, he said, their combined income didn’t even add up to one of their old factory wages.” 

And then: “Just as the Williamses were being informed by A.O. Smith that they’d be let go, a young Mexican woman named Zoraida Gonzalez was hired some 1,200 miles away in the hardscrabble town of Acuna, just over the Rio Grande from Texas. To replace its Kentucky output, A.O. Smith was ramping up production in lower-cost Mexico, a move facilitated by the signing a decade earlier of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Gonzalez was brought in to help handle phone calls. 

“Now 30 years old and in charge of payroll, she makes about $1.75 an hour, on par with wages earned on the plant’s assembly line. It may not seem like much by U.S. standards. (Or, for that matter, to some of the workers toiling in the heat of Acuna’s factories.) To Gonzalez, though, the money has been life-changing. It’s given her things she says her mother never had: a washing machine, cable TV, a Ford Freestar minivan that she shares with her boyfriend, daily zumba classes at a nearby gym and the hope that her 11-year-old son, Angel, will be the first member of her family to attend college.”

Whereas this story applies to virtually millions who’ve seen their income shrink -or become unemployed completely- there certainly should be no surprise to the appeal of Trump’s anti-trade platform.

At the same time, other candidates keep presenting all kinds of pro-U.S./international value to maintaining agreements with neighbors. However, and most importantly, those hit squarely in the pocketbook by free-trade simply can’t afford to be as magnanimous as those unaffected, above-it-all, politicians are.   

Here’s today’s quote from Ronald Reagan, sent by a friend: “The nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this earth is a government program.”

Bringing us to today’s update on Bill Clinton’s wife.

A long article in the Wall Street Journal @wsj.com via Drudge, by Peter Nicholas and Carol E. Lee, details how Joe Biden could help Bill’s wife’s campaign. If they can find a way to work out their not uncommon differences. 

The story itself provides a background of how the two, Bill’s wife and Biden, have dealt with each other in the past. And then, in a couple of paragraphs near the article's end, the following example of significant uncomfortability on Biden’s part is presented, as follows:   

  

“Over the past quarter of a century Mr. Biden and Mrs. Clinton have been peers, colleagues and rivals. Their relationship has been cordial, but they aren’t especially close, people who know them both say. In private conversations with friends and political figures, Mr. Biden has voiced concerns about what he sees as the Clintons trying to capitalize on their public service, by giving paid speeches, for example. 

“Mrs. Clinton has said repeatedly she isn’t compromised by virtue of taking speaking fees from interest groups. “Anybody who thinks they can buy me doesn’t know me,” she told the Des Moines Register early this year.” 

The quote above from Bill’s wife, caused significant consternation. Because trying to respond briefly, while underlining the huge disparity between her response and the truth proved difficult to accomplish. And then, once again, a reader solved the problem, hitting the nail squarely on the head with his response to the subject. 

John Stephenson commented: ““Anybody who thinks they can buy me doesn’t know me,” she told the Des Moines Register early this year." 

“One thing about the Clinton's is their ability to say exactly what they are trying to say, while leaving the listener to figure out just what they mean.  In this instance, what Mrs. Clinton is trying to say is that those people who know her don't just "think" she can be bought, they "know" she can be bought.  Only those who don't know her just "think" she can be bought.” 

It just doesn't get more accurate than that. 

It also brings up the ongoing question, one more: “Joe Biden, Mayor Bloomberg, Jerry Brown, and Starbuck’s chairman and CEO, Howard Schultz, are you guys reading this? 

  

That’s it for today folks. 

Adios