Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Dictators Say The Darndest Things

"The danger of a massive world famine is aggravated by Mr. Bush's recent initiative to transform foods into fuel," Fidel Castro wrote in his brief essay titled "Bush, Hunger and Death". He was referring to U.S. support for using corn and other food crops to produce gasoline substitutes. It does raise an interesting question: Why should we continue to produce food so that we can run our lawnmowers and Hummers while great portions of the world starve? At least he didn't use his first idea for a title: "A Nation of Pinheads".
Yes, it would seem that no matter how many times we try and bury him, Fidel keeps popping back up, like some sort of twisted version of "Whack-A-Mole" - "Bash-A-Bolshevik". He also alleged that President Pinhead "threatens humanity with World War III, this time using atomic weapons." A nice touch, as we approach the forty-fifth anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis. This time, however, he doesn't have Nikita Khrushchev to back him up. That seems to make this latest outburst all the more impressive, since our efforts to destabilize Cuba for the past fifty years have been about as successful as our attempts to get that little flower of Democracy to bloom in the Middle East.
Castro predicted that Pinhead "will adopt new measures to accelerate the 'transition period' in our country, equivalent to a new conquest of Cuba by force." White House press secretary Dana Perino responded, saying, "Dictators say a lot of things, and most of them can be discounted, including that." Pretty tough talk for somebody who wants to push around an eighty-one year old man recovering from massive intestinal failure. And besides, if we were serious about Cuba becoming a democracy, why haven't we invaded them yet?
Oh, right. Never mind.

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