Hey, guys...the Cuban Missile Crisis was 44 years ago. Castro is a doddering old fart. You need to find a more relevant boogeyman.

Yeah, but he's a COMMUNIST doddering old fart, who promotes evolution and it's pretty well confirmed that he harbors liberal homosexual Christ-hating terrorists.  He also attempted to purchase large quantities of plantains.  Plus, he occupies our Caribean resort.

I think maybe we could take him- if we could find him.

Email gw and let him know Castro is harboring Usama and has stockpiles of WMD's and that should get the ball rolling. I love Cuban cigars and figure after 15 years of fighting the Haitian insurgents in Cuba, I might be able to smoke one for 4-5 bucks or less. That victory for us militarily, could salvage gw's legacy. !5 years from now our troops in Bagdad would love a good inexpensive Cuban cigar as well.

This is disingenuous, and misinformation of the worst kind.  If you read the except, Castro is not endorcing Clinton/Obama, but instead he is critizing them:

Both of them feel the sacred duty of demanding "a democratic government in Cuba".

This could all be avoided if Beck and McDowell had quoted the source, then at least there could at least be a debate about different interpretations of what Castro meant.  But then the audience would be properly informed, and Beck and McDowell would be without their superpower, "SPIN".    

You're right, of course. Glenn Beck is just another GOP shill. He uses his aw-shucks demeanor and occasional "independent" rhetoric to make his audience think otherwise...but he's no better than Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity.

Sponge Bob Squarepants? Who's he endorsing this year?

A threefer. Two imaginary endorsements and an imaginary threat. Neatly packaged and I suppose his presentation was appreciated by someone.

Why don't you call them Commie pinko sympathizers again while you're at it, that's so 1959! There is not one strategy in the dusty, crumbling playbook that the right will discard.

b.oreally has been gone all week working on his new Castro dart board for his Premium Members only. How can Larry Craig prompt republicans to start commenting on Bill Clintons white house pickadillos? Did Bill Cinton smoke Cubans? Did GLAD contribute to Craigs last campaign? Are there Gays in Cuba? I understand now! The republicans could be on to something here for a change.

that is the problem with 24/7 cable news (?). they have time to give this dictator american television time.

"the best thing for a Republican is for Hillary and Obama to go ahead and embrace this endorsement."

Those are the words of a truly stupid person.

But hey, guess she should be thanked for that valuable, valuable tip. Maybe I should Email her advice to all the Democratic campaigns.

Hugo Chavez was seemingly invincible before the last Venezuelan elections.

If say, Rudolph Giuliani, had said the truth that Chavez was seemingly invincible, would he have been said to have endorsed Chavez? 

Its the front end of a newly developing vast right wing conspericy....stay tuned.

Actually the "conspiracy" if you want to call it that, has been around for quite some time.  This is coming out of the back-end and not the front of it.

the people who want to dismiss this as nonsense fail to recognize that castro is a big issue to the one million cubans in florida, which is a swing state.  this is an attempt to link these two with castro.  they should demand retractions from these news people and organizations.  there was no "endorsement" by castro.

I don't think that's being forgotten, but the sad thing is those 1 million displaced cubans continue to this day believe the republican do nothing but embargo policy brings them closer to their goal of returning Cuba to a democratic nation.

i would agree that the embargo does nothing, i would drop it, but it is not a republican only policy.   there has always been an effort by both parties as to  who can be seen as tough on castro.   they are appealing to the cuban vote, which is in general republican.

In other breaking news...on Fox.........North Korean dictator, Kim Jong Il has emerged from three years of severe depression after John Kerry's 2004 loss to endorse Hillary Clinton. That's right folks, North Korea loves Hillary Clinton. In further news, Satan has called a press conference for 1pm at which he is expected to endorse......Hillary Clinton. Reached for comment earlier today, Senator Clinton refused to respond as she was busy dining on a small child and wouldn't talk with her mouth full. In other news, it has been revealed by "sources" here at Fox that John Edwards is planning to expand his massive southern mansion to accomodate a large dungeon in which he intends to raise slave children to work on construction of his new theme-park "poverty-land."  A recent study by "scholars" at the University of "God Wants You to Be Rich" has discovered after extensive research that....God wants you to be rich. In a stunning revelation, the university states that an ancient mistranslation of the bible means that Jesus never said that it is "easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven." According to the university, the correct translation is, "it easy for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven...once he has passed a needle through the eye of a camel." Apparently, the passing of a needle through the eye of a camel is a metaphor for the attempted destabilisation and eventual bloody destruction of the middle east - In a convenient turn of events for the Bush White House, God appears to be directly endorsing President Bush's policies in the middle east. Well folks, that's all we have time for tonight on "The Big Story." I'm going  home to cry myself to sleep and i don't really know why. I'm sorry mommy - i tried to make you proud.

Well, they could always claim that they held a seance and that Saddam was endorsing Hillary and Obama as well. Shameful nitiwts.

While I make a habit of knocking mmfa for their never ending effort to support all things Hillary...this is not one of them.

Castro, in his letter, never claims or hints at claiming that he supports Hillary. This is just an attempt to discredit Hillary in the swing state of Florida...and no...I don't like the tactic. 

Wow another pointless, inane, and barely coherent post by Tweaker, what a shock.

Who the hell are you to judge ANYBODY?

Truth is on his side in this case. Read anything by the self avowed troll, and you'll quickly see.

I am the guy who will decide for himself exactly what he will judge. As far as I know Tweak might be the nicest guy in the world. His posts are consistantly worthless. Kind of like YOURS.

Cuba is certainly a problem:

On the one side you have the US, who have always coveted the island, and on the other side you have a Cuban government that unfortunately fails to live up to its ideal. Cuba exports more doctors than any other country. At the same time, the government there is almost more corrupt than our own, and there are secret police everywhere (my cousin, who is Spanish i.e. from Spain, visited friends there). The ideals of the revolution (and the people there don't regard themselves as communists, but as revolutionaries, something that Americans can sympathize with.

Cuba is an island in the Carribean; one that has been torn asunder by Colonialism, Imperialism, the Cold War and the Embargo.

No, it isn't free. But what does freedom mean to even we Americans any more, tied to our TVs and our SUVs and our iPods and our Internet?

We've lost all interest in enlightenment, ennoblement, and elevation in favor of endless entertainment. Who are we to judge these people with their noble, if flawed, experiment?

WE ARE THE POSSESSORS.

You make some good points, CM

Great post. It is especially sad when you consider that we founded this country on enlightenment principles. I guess that was what you meant though

No!

WE ARE THE WINNERS.

They can win too, if and ONLY, if, they can finally throw off the shackles of Fidel's HUBRIS.

Long live Cuba; fast die Fidel. 

Winners?

I'd check the numbers on that ticket one more time. 

Y'all need to try something new ... read a book.

You folks have no idea what communism actually is.

Cuba is NOT a communist country.

I always thought Cuba was socialist, but Castro had at one time embraced communism. Please tell us more, oh book reader. Really.

Cuba's not socialist either.  It's a dictatorship, the exact opposite of communism. 

Communism is, by definition, democratic.  The closest thing we have to communist nations are the scandinavian countries.

 Black Book of Communism:

Communism did kill, Courtois and his fellow historians demonstrate, with ruthless efficiency: 25 million in Russia during the Bolshevik and Stalinist eras, perhaps 65 million in China under the eyes of Mao Zedong, 2 million in Cambodia, millions more Africa, Eastern Europe, and Latin America--an astonishingly high toll of victims. This freely expressed penchant for homicide, Courtois maintains, was no accident, but an integral trait of a philosophy, and a practical politics, that promised to erase class distinctions by erasing classes and the living humans that populated them.

----------------------------------------

um... do we really have to continue to explain to people the evils of facism and communism?

Well I guess if you are going to blame communism for the attrocities of Pol Pot, Stalin and Mao then we have to blame capitalism on the attrocities of Suhuarto, Hitler, Idi Amin, Rios Montt, The Greek Colonels, and Saddam.

You forgot to mention Rowdy Roddy Pipper and The "Undertaker" of the WWF in your lame laundry list...

WEAK. I made a point apparantly one you had no hope of addressing. IF Communism was to blame for the monstrous attrocities of Stalin and Mao then I guess the same logic would mean that capitalism was to blame for the monstrous attrocities of the monsters I listed. It really isnt my fault your original post was stupid. It was that easy to point to WHY it was stupid. YOU faced with the exposure of the weakness of the point could only bleat like the sheep you are that it was lame. Here is a clue dim bulb, if you cant do likewise and show as easily as I did WHY it is lame just calling it lame shows you arent ready for the deep water. If you cant step up your game, you are wasting our time with your juvinile idiocy.

JohnTORRES:

Educate us. Tell us the PRINCIPLES of Communism and Socialism, and then show how STALIN followed those principles.

I remember things like "from each according to his ability to each according to his need" and the elimination of private property, where "all means of production are owned by the state, the PEOPLE, to profit all". Communal living, everyone works, everyone gets what they need, and nobody makes a profit. Everyone "equal."

In STALIN, we saw instead a brutal dictator, more like a feudal warlord than someone espousing an ideal of "equality" and "shared bounty". Sure, he SAID he was a Communist, but just SAYING something doesn't make it true. ACTIONS speak, and the words become big lies. Who believes those big lies? Apparenlty, only those invested in demonizing an economic/political theory as being the root of all evil.

So, John, help us out. Tell us what Stalin did that comports with the actions a person dedicated to the enactment of true "communism"? Where was this "equal redistributeion"? Didn't Stalin and his friends live in luxury, having looted all the wealth of the nation for their own use? Were industries owned and controlled by THE PEOPLE, collectively, or were they dictated by elites in the government?

If you're going to demonize "communism", John, it falls to YOU to show how your example is apt and valid. HINT: It doesn't count to simply rely on what these brutal dictators CLAIMED as part of their propaganda. You have to show compliance with the ideology. (And this, I fear, you cannot DO.)

Failing such a showing, Stalin represents just another rightwing dictator using violence to assert and expand his power, and has NOTHING TO DO with "communism".

Sorry guys .... That was NOT communism, just more sick dictators, especially Pol Pot.  Communism is, by definition, democratic.

I'm not going to get into some kind of game of trying to explain the simple truth to people who are in such denial.  

It's like trying to explain to a child molester that children are really harmed by sexual encounters with adults.  The molester hears the truth and then ignores everything that they hear that goes against their sick beliefs.  

Even after a person who is infected with communism reads  "The Black Book of Communism", they cannot handle the truth.

Have any of you guys bothered to read the book? 

JOHNTORRES:

Your inability to respond is clear, your "excuses" why are shrill and hysterical.

We accept that you have no response, cannot "educate" because you have no knowledge to impart ... only ages-old Red-Baiting propaganda.

Better luck next time, punter. 

Are you turning blue while kicking your feet and posting WWAAAHHHHH, stop showing how weak and stupid my posts are WAAAHHHH. I made the point, you couldnt answer it because your post was stupid. The point was obvious. Trying to pretend you have some lofty principles that are keeping you from showing why my point isnt valid when its clear to anyone that can READ that it IS valid and the reason you dont refute it is that you simply CANT refute it is ludicrous. You got spanked. Get over it.

Wow!  Up to now I thought you were just an IDIOT.

<>Now I see that you are certifiably INSANE. If you can't see the slow, tyrannical, evil, development of communism/state socialism then you are hopeless. But, you are a perfect Hillary/Obama voter. 

Good luck with that.

Thats ok, I KNOW you are ignorant and incapable of understanding virtually ANYTHING so I just take your moronic posts for what they are. Basic studies in stupidity

The gist of this "story" is that rightwing commentators are attempting to mislead the voting American public by telling LIES ... their "interpretations" which are destroyed when the actual words are seen.

Notice, they don't SHARE those actual words, in context, with their audience? Instead, they just say "Castro ENDORSES ..." as if it were the truth.

The Rightwing MUST lie, in order to try to gain POWER in America. If they tell the truth, they are doomed. If they tell the truth about ANYTHING ... Iraq, their own candidates, the actual condition of America's economy ... they are doomed. The Rightwing cannot tell the truth, so they MUST tell lies.

Will America be FOOLED? Will this shameless distortion and fabrication by the rightwing media be accepted by their audiences? The hope is, LIES will work for the GOP once again.

Wouldn't it stand to reason, if you believe the lies of a political party, you would end up with LIARS in office? Liars who lie about threats to America, lie about their own "morality", lie about the reality of war zones, lie about "supporting the troops", lie about anything and everything?

Take this from this story (and so many others): Republicans and their suppporters are LIARS, and they believe the American public to be STUPID, dumb enough to believe their lies. 

Rightwing apologist Beck

Seeks to save the Republican neck

As a sayer of 'sooth'

He destroys the truth

And the die-hards all lap up his dreck. 

Tex, great post and great limerick.

First you have to believe Hillary will get the nomination.  Then you have to believe that she would pick Obama.

Neither will come to be in my opinion

Partick is another one of the many mentally deficit quacks from Texas,who are upset that they can't control what a woman does with their bodies! More than likely Patrick goes both ways, when it comes to sex! 

Why are so many in here bent out of shape over Fox News' report of Castro's comments about Clinton and Obama? I should think that an honest liberal Democrat would blush over the prospect of getting Castro's attention.

If you lib Democrats really want the White House in 2008, you will forget about Clinton and Obama and support either Edwards or Biden. Neither Clinton nor Obama can win the general election for a thousand reasons.

Personally, I like Biden as a prospective nominee, even though I'd never vote for him. He's the only one in both parties who makes any sense about Iraq. He's seasoned and smart and he looks presidential. He could beat Romney or Thompson, the likely Republican nominees. Clinton could never beat Romney or Thompson. Can you see her in a one-on-one debate with either one of them? Just the visual aspect alone would cost her the election, never mind the fact that either one of them would expose her for the wholly inadequate, mediocre, corrupt megalomaniac that she is.

Besides all that, the American people will not put a woman, any woman, in the White House, especially with terrorism a constant threat. The Commander-in-Chief of our armed forces is going to be a man. The American people didn't go for a TV series about a woman president, they don't like a female anchor giving them their evening news, and they want Bill's proverbial rib to stay in the kitchen, barefoot and menopausal, where she belongs. :)

One caveat: Clinton could win a three way election, as her husband did before her. A serious conservative like Ron Paul or Tom Tancredo could break with the GOP and run on a third party line. The war and immigration are the two big issues this election cycle and both Paul and Tancredo are with the people on them. They could siphon off enough votes from the Republican nominee to hand the election to Clinton. This is highly unlikely, however, since the GOP would probably scourge and crucify Paul and Tancredo before they had the chance to run.

Stick with your electable men, folks. Mrs. Clinton is a loser.

MG Ragan

Wow, MG Ragan, I can hardly believe you parted with all of that wisdom and helpful advice for free. The liberal democrats owe you big time.

Except for the fact that your philosophy of choosing a candidate based on "looking presidential",or getting the votes of those who think foreign policy involves hand-to-hand manly combat, would be better suited to only the stoopidest Americans.

That is, your post would be more appropriately directedat the GOP in attracting the lowest common denominator that they depend on.

Still, thanks for your concern, and the reminder of how important the stoopid vote is in this country.

HBL, he just wants a manly man like you to run the country. I'd vote for you.  :-)

And I would immediately abolish your voting rights, JJ. Not with any malice, just so you could quit worrying your pretty little head about terrorists, and concentrate on that casserole.

 ;0)

Impressive.  I had no idea that a single liver could produce so much bile.

It started oozing with the "...Fox News report of Castros comments..." and didn't end until the "MG Ragan" signature!  (which - while unvalidated - at least has the prospect of being truth).

You may want to get that checked out.  It could be a sign of more extensive problems.

I deeply resent my liver suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous inadequacy. :)

Thanks, concern troll. Polls prove you wrong, that Clinton can be elected. 

The polls show Mrs. Clinton's negatives much too high for her to win a general election. This is why she ran for the Senate in New York, not Arkansas or Illinois. Only the whacked-out citizens in my blessed state could put her in that august body.

You'd probably have a better chance of winning Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida.

Now THAT concerns me.

MGRagan

So the polls showing her as being able to win a general election are false? Hmm, interesting. Your assertion though is that she's not "tough enough" to lead the country's military, although George W wasn't, and isn't very much of a tough guy either (he was a cheerleader for crying out loud). But then on the same hand, we keep getting these stories, and these tales and talking points from right wing radio show hosts that she's "tough" and "mean" and "bitchy" and things like that. Don't we want a tough person running the military? I'm confused, which is she? Menopausal, or tough? You guys need to make up your mind which she is. I can tell the angle that you're coming from, since you called her a "Bill's rib" indicating that you think that she should be in the kitchen making pies and serving her man, or something like that.

I've got news for you. You don't have to be a man to fight terrorists, no indeed. Look at what a "wonderful" job W has done thus far, which is to say, he's done poorly. Rudy? Well, he hasn't fought any. All of your arguments boil down to, you don't want a woman running the country for the mere fact that she's a woman, regardless of the experience and backing that she has. Misogynistic aren't you?

First of all, I'd be self-hating if I was a misogynist. I guess us women are too "stoopid" to argue, huh. :)

Furthermore, I maintained what I thought the American people would do at the polls. I asserted that I think they are not ready for a female president and I gave the reasons why. I don't think Margaret Thatcher could get elected here.

Hillary Clinton isn't qualified to be the President of the United States because she is a narcissicistic, power-hungry, dangerously left-wing, fourth rate public official. Just like her husband.

By the way, I think George Bush is an incompetent, stubborn, unprincipled fool who also didn't deserve to be president. He is responsible for the needless deaths of thousands of innocent Iraqis and hundreds of American soldiers. History will probably judge him more harshly than his adulterous, dishonest, criminal predecessor.

So much for assumptions.

MGRagan

You're right.

Us menfolk are the only ones virile enough to go toe to toe with the commies.

We've done such a good job over the last fifty plus years. 

I still don't understand, in this day, and in this age first, what did Fidel ever do to the US? Sure he parked a few missiles off the coast for a short while, but those got removed a long time ago. And that's about it. Well, he did kick out all the US big business interests that were in Cuba when he took over the country, so there is that as well. I find it ironic that we can do business with the biggest human rights violator in the world today (ahem, China), and we still won't have anything to do with Cuba. Why? Why not? And actually, China is starting to turn bit by bit more capitalistic. Show them the money, and the people might get up and "revolt". By starving Cuba what do we gain? Nothing, nothing at all. Open trade with them, remove the embargo, and make them a trusted neighbor and I think things would change, for the better, on the island itself. The people may even rise up, and remove the regime that has controlled them for so long.

Wait a minute.

In your solution to our dispute with Cuba, where do the bombs come in?

If there's one thing I've learned over the past 6+ years, it's that foreign policy requires bombs.  And I didn't notice any bombs in your comment.  You expect the Cubans to greet us as liberators without bombs?

... 

At least grenade launchers.  Is there any room in there for grenade launchers? 

Yeah, grenade launchers should be used for sure. I mean, you could probably launch a few RPGs from Florida and hit something down there.

I know that it all boils down to former Cuban nationals living in Florida who have a large amount of influence in the political sphere (I'm betting most of them were so called "illegal immigrants at one point in time as well, which proves ironic since from what I've read, most of them are republicans) not wanting the US to have anything to do with Castro and all, he being so "evil". Now, I'm not saying that he hasn't done bad things, and that he is probably continuing to do bad things, but alas, if we bring capitalism and things like that to their people, wouldn't that make it possible for Cuba to start to break free from the grip of Fidel and his cadre of a-holes? Again, China, prime example of what can happen when you bring business to them. It could happen in Cuba if we take away the silly embargo.

I realize we're at risk of veering far from the topic of this article, but I have to say I'm with you 100%.  All that I've said in the past about Cuba being our Carribean destination resort etc. really would be my solution for this conflict.  Remove the embargo, allow for the capitalist influence to build new hotels and tourism support, and sit back and watch the Castro regime rot from the inside as greed works its magic on the populace.

The right wing media keeps pulling this crap because it works with their stupid F@$!*ing conservitive base.

The conservative base is wising up to their representatives in the media. Rush is a blowhard and an unabashed apologist for Bush; Hannity contorts for Giuliani; O'Reilly is all over the place.

Some of us do think for ourselves, you know.

MGRagan

Jimmy(http://www.top1000destinations.com):

Those TV right wing pundits can provide lies only. If they had to provide the truth they would have to expose themselves as liars.

Gee, he says the ticket is "seemingly invincible" and said nothing positive about any other candidates in the race. Sounds like an endorsement to me.