Farewell Fidel and HD DVD Format

I woke up today, did my normal morning routine, and eventually got on the internet to post something on the blog for today. The morning news pops up and I see that a commie fossil south of Florida is finally stepping down, and my favorite HD video format is quitting as well! Good and bad news!

Farewell Fidel, and good riddance. For those of you out there like Michael Moore who admire the man, or you young ones that think you're cool and a rebel when you wear his buddy's face, Che Guevara, on a tee-shirt, let's take a look at what he accomplished over his 50 years as a dictator:

• Led a violent overthrow of the Cuban government under Batista beginning in 1956 and ending in 1959 (after a failed attack in 1953, where the Cuban government tried, imprisoned, and then released him from jail - he fled to Mexico to train for his next guerilla invasion - they had him and let him go! - bad mistake).
• Sworn in as the Prime Minister of Cuba immediately after toppling the government.
• Led the transformation of Cuba into a one-party socialist republic (in other words, commie dictatorship) as First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba.
• President of the Council of State as well as of the Council of Ministers in 1976 (more titles added to his commie dictator designation).
• Supreme military rank of Comandante en Jefe ("Commander in Chief") of the Cuban armed forces (in other words, commie dictator with lots of guns).
• Allied himself with the Nikita Khrushchev and the USSR (soviet commie dictator) in 1960.
• Shortly after in 1960, he "nationalized" (in other words, stole and incorporated into his centralized commie dictator government) all U.S. businesses and lands in Cuba.
• Drove out thousands of middle and upper-class Cubans who previously supported him with his communist economic system (in other words, the hard working people said "we're outta here!" and immigrated to the US and are now living in Florida).
• Lost all diplomatic ties with U.S. by 1961.
• Repelled US-backed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 and this pissed him off (which is understandable).
• End of 1961 he declared that he was a Marxist-Leninist (in other words commie) and that Cuba was adopting communism (big surprise).
• In 1962, US embargo of Cuba began, and is still in place.
• Later in 1962 he almost started a nuclear war with the Cuban Missile Crisis - he encouraged the USSR to strike the US first with its nuclear weapons if the US invaded Cuba, which the soviet commie dictator refused to do, thankfully.
• In the 70's he supported Marxist (commie) revolutions in other parts of the world, including Ethiopia (thus, we see images of starving kids in Ethiopia due to the wars there).
• In 1991, his commie friends of the government of the USSR went bankrupt and collapsed (thank you Reagan!), and Cuba went into the crapper - shortages were rampant, factories and such shut down.
• In the same year, a hurricane hit and Fidel refused US humaitarian aid, instead agreeing to a one-time purchase of food (commie thug pride shining through).
• Rather than relinquish his commie dictator hold on the country (which would have ended the economic embargo and open trade with his closest neighbor and allowed his country to prosper), he legalized the evil American dollar in Cuba instead (sort of a get his cake and eat it too measure) and allowed foreign nationals to transfer their US dollars home to Cuba.
• Recently he's found other commie dictator friends to help him out in Latin America (see Hugo Chavez, who called our elected President Bush the Devil at the UN, on US soil - and Democrats were silent!).
• He's killed thousands of political opponents after his rise to power, and imprisoned thousands more in concentration camps without trial (what commie dictators naturally do - see China).
• Labor camps were instituted in 1965 to put "social deviants" - like those pesky homosexuals and Jehovah's Witnesses - to work as slaves (camps closed in 1967 due to international pressure).
• He's an athiest (as most commie dictators are - atheism allows amoral actions).

This is not a man to honor or admire. He's an egotistical thug, who takes credit for what little is right, and blames the US for all that is wrong. For you US-haters out there who love to hear commie dictators spew venom against your own country, laugh with glee when our enemies put us down, and love to go to their countries and have them give you the dog and pony show, go live there for awhile and see how you like it. Try to get your opinions and movies approved and allowed to air on state-run television. Sooner or later, you'd end up in a political prison with the rest of them. That or dead.

We'll see if democratic reforms are instituted and honest elections held - it sounds like Fidel's 70-something brother Raul is going to rise to power - what they call commie dictator fossil succession, I guess. It would be nice to smoke a Cuban cigar with a clear conscience. Or maybe take a vacation to what could be a beautiful island paradise and is instead a dump of human poverty and suffering.

Now to the bad news: HD-DVD format lost the Hi-def war with Sony's Bluray format. Well, at least it was over quick! I picked the Betamax format, I guess. I'm only out a few hundred bucks on the player and the movies I've bought so far, but they will still always play, and some of them are Combo Format HD-DVD and standard DVD. I feel really bad for those who went out and bought a HD-DVD player for Christmas, only to have the rug pulled out from under you after a month and a half!

The deciding factor seemed to be the number of production companies signing with Sony - Warner Brothers being the latest - that many stores were only carrying Bluray, and the fact that Playstation 3 sales were good over Christmas. Seems to me like the consumer really didn't get a chance to decide which format was better - the corporations decided - and now 600,000 people are left with worthless players (at least long term). Sony now has a monopoly on the Hi-Def format - don't look for their prices to go down any time soon! The competition quit just when the war was getting going, because things weren't looking good. That's fine, but it's a pretty crappy thing to do to your customers!

It does bring to mind the reality of people quitting before the contest has really even begun. Presidential candidates quit after losing a couple state primaries. Investors quit after a little bad news, sending the stock plunging for no real reason. Half the country quits the War on Terror when it gets a little tough and there are a few setbacks, and instead believe we are the enemy, sending a message to the true enemies that we are not in for the long haul and we don't have the resolve. Unfortunately, today we want results and we want them now. And if we don't get them right away, we quit.

Where would our country be if we quit when the going got tough (which it certainly did) in the Revolutionary War? Or when we stormed the beaches of Normandy, and huddled in the frozen holes of Bastogne when the enemy surrounded them? Or when the firehoses were turned on American-African marchers in the south? We've become a nation of quitters, and people without resolve, and courage, and stomach, and instead sit back and watch young celebrity girls destroy themselves before our very eyes.

That is the one and only lesson we can take from good old Fidel - he kept fighting, he never quit, he kept giving his five-hour rambling speeches to his captive audiences, and kept pointing the finger at the US and brainwashing his people in the public schools - he certainly wasn't a quitter.