And the hits keep coming...

And so in the last post I explained why I find it offensive to call the tea party people “tea baggers”

But it gets much worse than that.

Now we have the president of the US mocking concerned American citizens because they don’t share his world view.

Being a life long Democrat, I’m not all too thrilled about has happened to the Democratic party in the last 20 years, It has been high jacked by the left-over left of the sixties, by a bunch of now over the hill clueless hippies.

So I was, unlike some of my friends, a bit pleased to see that someone was making an attempt to lure the president back from the left edge of radical foreign policy by dangling some green in front of him.

Of course, I’m talking about the Estefans.

In reality, politics is about influence and influence is about money and Obama proved that it’s pretty easy to buy his influence even if it’s by one of the only minorities that don’t march lock and step with the Democratic party-The Cubans.

Sorry, I’m not a fan of one-party systems.

Now, in a candy coated way, the ever “diplomatic” and “politically correct” Gloria said as much:

The beauty of this amazing nation is that anything is possible! Even hosting a very political evening to get the “ear” of my President

And in a not so diplomatic way, Estefan warned the president that the considerable sum she helped raise for his party came with some strings attached by quoting Dr. Lawrence J. Peter:

“Democracy is a process by which the people are free to choose the man who will get the blame.”

Unfortunately, while he was in Miami the president decided to do to the American people the very thing that the Estefans were lobbying him to put pressure on the Castro regime to stop doing to the Cuban people.

See, the Castros, through their sate – run media ridicule and mock any opposition in order to marginalize it and that is exactly what president Obama did. During the fundraiser, the president had this to say about the tea partiers who were protesting on tax day:

`You'd think they would be saying thank you,''

As far as I know past presidents have always shrugged off protesters and critics rather than to try to mock and ridicule them.

At least he didn’t call them tea baggers or terrorists.

The latter fell to former president Bill Clinton who warned that those angry tea partiers could incite home grown terror a la Oklahoma City bombing:

"But when you get mad, sometimes you wind up producing exactly the reverse result of what you say you are for."

Sure... Timothy McVeigh was home watching “I Love Lucy” re-runs and tuned into some anti-Clinton protest on TV and decided to kill a bunch a people.

If you listen to these two presidents, you get the impression that they would have sided with the tax loving King George instead of with the American patriots.

But that’s not the point. One can shrug off their point of view.

It’s much harder to understand why these two can’t just shrug of the respectful and sincere criticism of many taxpayers who don’t agree with them and try to blame the people rather than realize that ultimately, in a democracy it is the people who choose who's to blame.

Shrugs

I haven’t been writing lately. Frankly, the run-up to the 2008 election and the election of a President who thinks that the US constitution is flawed shook me to the core. The cult of then candidate and now president Obama’s personality, all hinging on vague concepts like hope and change and Marxist inspired posters as well as the inability of the opposition to mount a coherent defense of the core American value of a constitutionally limited government, brought back such horrible memories of the Cuban tragedy, that I resorted to burying my head in the sand for over a year, playing ostrich, barely sticking it out on occasion to mutter “I’ve seen this movie before.”

At times, I’ve threatened, in desperate jest, to go back to Cuba. I tell my life partner that I already rode the runaway train of socialism down once and have no desire to do it again. At least Cuba has already hit rock bottom.

And so here I am today, writing. Head out of the sand and squinting. Grimacing at all that my senses are taking in. Surrounded by an all too familiar ugly, foul smelling, painful reality that’s leaving a bitter taste in my mouth.

I was watching TV and they were talking about the tea party activists. Whatever. They wear t-shirts and hats, make signs, wave them at the TV cameras, pat themselves on the back and tell each other what great Americans they are and then they go home and nothing changes. A stupid waste of time, really. Kind of like going to a Star Trek convention.

And they were referring to these folks as “tea baggers.” Apparently this is offensive.

Sheesh! Everyone is way too sensitive these days.

Then, I read on a blog that “tea bagging” was a “sexually” offensive epithet and Hah! that made me interested enough to Google “tea bagger” on my miraculous 3G smart phone and Oh My God!, or OMG in 2010 text lingo. Who knew?!? I certainly didn’t. Wow, right there on Wikipedia! It takes a lot to make this old “gusano” blush.

Oh, pardon my spanglish. Lemme esplain what a gusano is…

Ah yes, “gusano”, Spanish for worm, a lowly, belly crawling creature that feeds off rotting carcasses and refuse. That’s what I was called in Cuba when I was a kid. That’s what all of us who didn’t think Fidel Castro had all the answers or was the only one with the right to ask questions were called.

I mean if you didn’t think that government, Fidel’s or Batista’s or Pepito’s, could abolish the constitution, or had the right to force you to do things you didn’t want to do, like “volunteer”, or that it had no right to take your property and give it to someone else, you were a “gusano.” You were a “counter revolutionary”- against the party, against Fidel. So you were ridiculed and shamed with an insulting moniker made to conjure up a disgusting image...a “gusano.”

Some of “gusanos” were lucky enough to escape Castro’s totalitarian amusement park to a place where you could, if you wanted, wear funny t-shirts and hats and wave signs that mostly say hooray for our side and we cherished this more than anyone will ever know. Being allowed to do so, really, even in this day and age, is a rare gift…an unalienable gift endowed by our creator…that’s denied to so many.

And the best thing about this country was that its constitution was so respected that whenever harmless kooks carrying signs and screaming at the tops of their lungs for whatever reason got together and demonstrated, everyone just shrugged.

Imagine that.

Some nut standing in the middle of the street screaming the total opposite of what you believe in and you just shrug.

Amazing!

And why? because of the flawed, according to our president, piece of a paper that founded our government.

Really amazing.

And so I shrugged, starting in November of last year. Because I believe in the constitution and its “negative powers.” I believe in elections.

But when I see celebrities, folks in the media and some elected officials calling these tea party nuts an offensive name like “tea bagger” just because they’re carrying signs and wearing funny t-shirts and hats and patting themselves on the back for being patriots. Damn-it it breaks my heart because it hits way too close to home for this old “gusano.”

These folks aren’t doing anything more than a Trekie does at a Star Trek convention, really. Then, they go home and pay their taxes. I mean, most people shrug off the Trekies (ok some do give understandably quizzical looks), but these tea party folks get called names-a hideous, insulting, sexually charged epithet just because they have a different concept of the role of government.

And really, that you just can’t shrug off.