When I visited Cuba in 1991, people asked, “Vecsey, why doesn’t your government end the blockade and let some business in here?”
I replied, “Sure, el bloqueo is dumb, but think about it: what if American business did come to Cuba …Have you ever heard of a man named Trump?” This was my worst example of a rapacious developer who would put up gaudy, expensive hotels along the waterfront and destroy the feel of the old city. The Cubans nodded no. They were living 30-plus years in the past. Baseball fans were still asking about DiMaggio and Williams and Jackie Robinson. I had to explain to them there was a New York guy named Trump who built casinos and was known for his playboy ways – sounded like the bad old days, when Americans used Cuba for their pleasure. I told them: “He’ll bulldoze the Malecón” --the seaside promenade where young people congregate -- “and put up crappy-looking buildings and all the people living downtown will be back in the sugar fields.” Cubans did not have much in 1991 -- one egg a week, very little meat, and no basic goods like shampoo, which was sold in dollar stores, for tourists. A well-placed friend had a couple of doctors in her family; they brought home used soap from the hospital and she boiled it down for personal use – “like my grandmother used to do,” she said. That was life under Fidel, life under Communism – “The God That Failed,” from the 1949 confessional by six writers. By 1991, if you wanted to talk about the government in Cuba, you lowered your voice and never mentioned Castro’s name. A furtive stroking of an imaginary beard conjured up the image. While we were there for the Pan-American Games, the Soviet Union started to come down. I sat with some new friends in a bar and watched state television. My friends knew that Castro had rejected Gorbachev, the reformer; they shook their heads in fear and disdain. Within days, Russian oil tankers and Russian specialists steamed out of the harbor. In the past two years, the Cuban people have seen a reasonable American President named Obama start to open lines between the two neighbors. Now Fidel is dead -- and thousands are celebrating on Calle Ocho in Miami – and that builder of casinos that I used as the vulgar example of American business will now preside over that giant country just across the water.
bruce
11/27/2016 06:23:18 pm
George,
George Vecsey
11/27/2016 07:50:56 pm
"hey, what's the use in singing this song,
Brian Savin
11/27/2016 09:46:49 pm
George, I can. perhaps, go one better. I know two folks in the NYC building business in executive positions who have had relations with The Donald, who don't like him. I don't know who they voted for, but I wouldn't be surprised if both did. The sonofabitch in him matters mostly in terms of how he applies that persona to his new job. It is a trait that the people who live in the vast majority of American territory believe matters. "Drain the swamp" resonates. Let's give him a shot. He represents the vast portion of our population outside of a few overpopulated urban centers. There is a vast and much more diverse country outside those too-similar areas.
bruce
11/27/2016 09:59:47 pm
'brian,
Brian Savin
11/27/2016 10:13:31 pm
Bruce, I think, so far, they all have experience in the swamp as minority-thinking outsiders. I'll also add this: They all seem to have overlooked personal values of heretofore historical importance. As for myself, I'm satisfied with all of them for a variety of reasons. Let's see them perform. I don't know, but I would be surprised if our assessments of their future actions would differ all that much.
bruce
11/27/2016 10:52:34 pm
brian,
Brian Savin
11/29/2016 08:38:50 pm
Bruce, there is a not insignificant argument to be made to defend Trump's statement. The first is that certain states, including my own Connecticut and California both permit illegals to obtain drivers licenses and permit voting registration by showing a valid drivers license and a valid social security number, which are available online and hard to trace to actual individuals. The second thing of note is that Zonies vote Democrat. Dead people on voting roles exercising their former franchise has been a problem in cities for a very long time. It still is.
brian
11/29/2016 09:09:52 pm
brian, 11/30/2016 03:59:53 pm
We live in an age of instant communication where speed of response appears to be more important than accuracy. This is often compounded by ideologies that distort reason and facts.
Brian Savin
11/30/2016 08:13:02 pm
Alan, I agree we should just wait snd see. I do wish, however, there was more appreciation in our public discourse of the very, very serious ethical conflicts of the Clintons. But more than that, I think our current President is, truly, a very nice man who cares. However, I also am convinced he was unprepared for the job and clueless about the powers of his office -- and that is exactly what was intended by his handlers who orchestrated his election. Our President is not a man who can be said was in the control of the office or who had a clear substantive agenda. I have previously written about evidence of his cluelessness -- disclosed, inter alia, in an Academy Award winning documentary, "Inside Job," and a treatise by a Pulitzer Prize winning author and Obama supporter, Ron Suskind ("Confidence Men").
Brian Savin
12/2/2016 09:00:15 pm
That particular Post article misconstrues the definition, which literally necessitates that the truth was at first objectively established, then ignored. The Post article does the Queen of Hearts' English proud. Another such instance is yesterday's "discussion" at Harvard between the two campaign staffs. 12/2/2016 08:43:03 pm
The Oxford Dictionary selected “post-truth" their 2016 Word of the Year. 12/22/2016 01:39:51 am
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happy new year
3/21/2017 08:02:56 am
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Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online. The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal…. After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness. The progress stems mostly from three factors: First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot. Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.) Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year. “Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.” That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.” That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data. One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines. Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks. Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths. The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions. Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately Republican and white. Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.) *** From the great Maureen Dowd: As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop. But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels." --- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing. *** "Putting out the paper," we called it. Much more than nostalgia. ---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html Categories
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