Daily Kos Week in Review: Talkin' Baseball...and Communism

Ozzie Guillen's recent comments on Fidel Castro were ill-advised, but at least were meant only as an expression of personal, rather than political, admiration. One Kossack, however, suggested that in many ways Castro's Cuba compares favorably to the U.S., a belligerent colossus in which "stupidity and willful ignorance" are common.     

As usual, each headline is preceded by the blogger's name or pseudonym.

agnostic: Cuba is non-aggressive...
 
There's something about [the U.S.] that scares and confuses me. A goodly, godly percentage of this country's population seems to worship stupidity and willful ignorance...

...Castro did not wipe out millions of his own people. Castro did not start world wars. For all his faults, and there were many of them, Castro managed to confound and outlive a super power which faces his shores, despite the fact that that super power has never, not once, since 1918 had a year in which we did not use our military for one reason or another. We even invaded several of his neighbors, and succeeded in deposing those nearby rulers who managed to anger us. Especially if they won democratic elections. And still he survived. And still he managed to raise his country's literacy rate from 65-70% to 98%...

Besides, doesn't christianity teach people to love thy neighbors, to turn the other cheek, and to love their enemies? It just strikes me that those people most upset about what Ozzie said just happen to be christian conservative GOP voters, which seems par for the course. Ignorance of the facts has never stopped them before. It certainly won't stop them now...

calross: ...unlike criminally bellicose America
 
...The reason we don't participate in world bodies like the [International Criminal Court] is that we wish to be free to behave like criminals, regardless of how many conventions and treaties we sign on to. Anybody with an ounce of brains or a sense of common decency knows that about us and knows why we won't cooperate. We wouldn't be able to bomb and kill people at will. We'd be forced, at least, to behave in an justifiable and explainable manner...
 
MinistryOfTruth: The GOP's race-based campaign exposed
 
...[I]n the world of the southern male dominated GOP someone is first innocent until proven negro...
 
...[I]f you look all over the rightwing media you see conservative pundits linking Trayvon Martin's tragedy to other notable scary black people in the rightwing lexicon of scary things, and always it leads to one point, Obama...
 
...[T]he GOP, which is largely a rural, southern, western and xenophobic party of low-information religious white people, well, these people have lost their fucking minds...because their pundits have taken control of the party and filled their heads with bullshit. Mitch McConell is not the leader of the Senate, Rush Limbaugh is, Conservative voters don't respect John Boehner, they respect Sean Hannity...
 
...The only way the GOP will be able to motivate their fundy, southern base into voting for a moderate northeastern millionaire mormon is by ramping up the racial rhetoric, and the GOP and their punditocracy will gladly do so with a wink and a nod for two simple reasons, because the President is black and they have literally nothing else...

David Phillips: If Zimmerman's acquitted, Hannity will fuel the hysteria

...This trial will have a national spotlight on it not seen since the OJ Simpson murder trial in 1995. And if the outcome is the same in this case, there is a real chance that race riots could break out all across the country. And Sean Hannity, along with other right wing pundits, will be fanning the flames just as we’ve seen them do in the past with Health Care reforms, promotions of anti-government protests in Washington DC with the Tea Party, and the hysteria they created with the Mosque that was built two blocks away from ground zero in New York where the Twin Towers once stood...
 
Troubadour: Walk tall, red-state liberals
 
...I don't want to hear [Democrats] pledge to defend abortion rights - I want to hear their plan for invading the Bible Belt with more abortion clinics than the GOP's rank-in-file can bomb...
 
I want someone in office to engage in an objective study of how far we've fallen under backwards right-wing policies since the onset of Ayatollah Reagan's multi-generational jihad against competent governance...
 
I want liberals in the reddest of the red states to be fearless...and walk with the strength and undeniable implicit pride of people confident that they represent truth, justice, and the American way - and not the wingnut pieces of shit surrounding them, who exhibit every psychological and political disease imaginable...