LO QUE PROBABLEMENTE PASARÁ MAÑANA:

Mañana es el famoso anuncio de Carmen Yulín sobre su futuro político y aunque ya todos podemos imaginar cual será su “gran anuncio”, no deja de ser un espectáculo. En julio del 2017, apenas 2 meses antes del paso del Huracán María, Yulín dijo que la única candidatura que descartaba era la comisaría residente y lo dijo de una manera fuerte y hasta convincente para aquellos que todavía le creen las mentiras a los socialistas. En aquel momento Yulín dijo: “Yo he sido bien clara en que estoy apoderando mi futuro político y que todas las bases están abiertas. Lo único que descarto es la comisaría residente, nadie me va a sacar de aquí para callarme la boca”, con palabras tan fuertes y nacionalistas como esas, cualquiera diría que Lolita Lebrón había resucitado pero para desgracia de todos aquellos que se sintieron inspirados por esas palabras, fueron solamente eso: palabras.

Desde el cuatrienio de Alejandro García Padilla, Yulín ya coqueteaba con la candidatura a la gobernación. Le dividió el partido a AGP para provocar una derrota electoral y ella quedar como la líder de facto del partido al revalidar para otro término en la alcaldía de San Juan pero aun logrando su propósito, logrando frenar la política contributiva de AGP (aunque eso no quita que fuera nefasta) y forzando a AGP a aumentar el IVU a 11.5%, metiendo en la legislatura a independentistas de izquierda disfrazados de populares como Manuel Natal y criticando a Donald Trump en la prensa nacional todos los días, aun así no logró adueñarse del PPD. Al ver que no tiene ninguna oportunidad de correr para la gobernación bajo la insignia del PPD, ahora opta por la candidatura que en el 2017 ella dijo que descartaba: la comisaría residente.

Ahora que se ha filtrado la información de que Yulín decidió aspirar a la comisaría residente después de hacer tanto show diciendo que “no la iban a sacar de aquí para callarle la boca”, ahora dice que las críticas que recibirá a partir de mañara serán culpa del machismo. Miren que buscona y demagoga es esta mujer. Obviamente, no es coincidencia que el socialista pre-candidato a la presidencia de los Estados Unidos por el Partido Demócrata Bernie Sanders la haya designado como co-presidenta de su equipo de campaña en el momento en el que Yulín se prepara para anunciar su futuro político. La decisión de Yulín no fue una decisión fácil y gente del ala socialista del Partido Demócrata también participó en su decisión.

Yulín antes del Huracán María era una figura desconocida en los Estados Unidos que fue el mismo Donald Trump quien la hizo famosa cuando la llamó “nasty” en aquel famoso tweet, o sea, que Yulín le debe al propio Trump los 15 minutos de fama que recibió en la prensa nacional. El factor reconocimiento hizo a Yulín cambiar de opinión y al saber que el PPD ahora mismo no cuenta con un candidato a la gobernación con posibilidades reales de triunfo, ella opta por la comisaría residente para que si el PPD vuelve a ser derrotado en el 2020 pero ella logrando ganar la comisaría residente, estar lista para intentar nuevamente tomar el partido en el 2024.

Por eso es que el nuevo truco político de Alexandra Lúgaro y Manuel Natal llamado Movimiento Victoria Ciudadana no lanzará un candidato a la comisaría residente, porque la meta siempre ha sido lograr llevar a Yulín a Washington aunque el candidato a la gobernación del PPD pierda. Recuerden que la extrema izquierda lleva décadas intentando tomar por asalto el PPD y aunque ellos digan que crearon un nuevo partido, eso es solo un espejismo. El PPD aunque ya parezca un cadáver político, sin norte y sin rumbo, aun cuenta con un electorado base que pase lo que pase siempre votarán popular, al igual que pasa con el electorado base del PNP, que no importa quien sea el candidato si corre bajo la insignia de su partido, le dan el voto. Así funciona el fanatismo y eso es lo que los independentistas han intentado explotar pero no lo han conseguido porque no han podido adueñarse del PPD. Ellos están detrás de la franquicia llamada Partido Popular Democrático y créanme, no se han rendido y ahora es cuando más intentarán conseguirla.

Si Carmen Yulín logra llegar a Washington, la extrema izquierda no solo tendría otra oportunidad para intentar adueñarse del PPD sino que lograrían tener a la primera comisionada residente independentista, una delegada ante el Congreso que no llevaría un mensaje sobre como los puertorriqueños somos tan americanos como los residentes de Texas o Oklahoma sino como Puerto Rico “es una nación invadida y ocupada”. No llevaría un mensaje de unión sino un mensaje de separación, aun cuando la separación nunca ha sido la opción escogida por el pueblo de Puerto Rico pero gracias a su candidatura bajo la insignia de la franquicia popular logrando obtener el voto de ese popular recalcitrante que no importa quien sea el candidato, si es popular “es bueno”. 

New Pro-Statehood Movement Rises in Puerto Rico

Many things have changed in Puerto Rico since powerful hurricane Maria made landfall on the island last year and I would say that the most that has changed is the political scenario. Right now the territory is ruled by the New Progressive Party, a political party in Puerto Rico founded in 1967, which whose reason of its foundation was the dissatisfaction that many annexationists of the time had with the Republican Statehood Party (Partido Estadista Republicano) that at the time was the main pro-statehood political party in the island. Is in 1967 when Luis A. Ferre (who a year later would win the 1968 general election to become the 3^rd Governor Elect of Puerto Rico), founds the New Progressive Party (Partido Nuevo Progresista or PNP) as a new political alternative for all Puerto Ricans that want Puerto Rico to become the 51^st state of the United States of America and that felt betrayed by the inactions of the Republican Statehood Party and its leader Miguel Angel Garcia Mendez on achieving statehood for Puerto Rico.

A year later, in the 1968 general election, Ferre runs for governor as the candidate for the PNP and is responsible of the Popular Democratic Party’s first defeat. The Popular Democratic Party (Partido Popular Democrático or PPD) was the largest political party at the moment, founded by the island’s first elected governor Luis Muñoz Marin, a strong ally of the Democratic Party in the mainland, and had complete control of all of the island’s government thanks to the fact that since 1940, the PPD would never lose an election until Ferre’s victory in 1968. With the historic victory of Luis Ferre and his new party, pro-statehood Puerto Ricans saw the establishment of a new chapter in their fight for statehood. During time to time the PNP would achieve victories by electing five governors under their party, being the most recent, current governor Ricardo Rossello, who is the son of former governor Pedro Rossello, also from the PNP.

From 1968, the PNP would become the face of the pro-statehood movement in the island, where almost every pro-statehood Puerto Rican would identify itself as a member or supporter of the PNP and would support all the candidates of the PNP for public office in every general election. The PNP would break voting records achieving more than a million votes for their gubernatorial candidate in the 1996 and 2008 general elections. In 1996, governor Pedro Rossello ran for reelection and he received 1,006,331 votes equal to over 50% of the popular vote becoming the candidate with the highest number of votes received in history until the 2008 election when Luis Fortuño, also running under the PNP platform, received 1,025,965 votes equal to 52.8% of the popular vote becoming the candidate with the highest number of votes received in Puerto Rican electoral history. This would indicate that the PNP is a strong political party that would not disappear too easily.

Everything would look fine until the 2016 general election. In this election, the PNP would “win” the governorship but with the 41.8% of the popular vote, the smallest percentage in PNP’s history. Lower that the percentage they got in elections they didn’t win like the 1972, 1984, 1988, 2000, 2004, and 2012 elections. In 2016, Ricardo Rossello became the fifth PNP candidate to become Governor of Puerto Rico. He won the election under a campaign of promising on being the “last colonial governor”. The arrival of Ricardo Rossello to the island’s highest office is joined by Donald Trump’s historic victory in the 2016 US presidential election. Rossello who is a member of the Democratic Party and Trump who is a republican president, we would suppose that they would have a bad relationship but it wasn’t at the beginning. After hurricane Maria struck the island in 2017, president Trump would practically offer a path to statehood to Rossello. He would do it by considering the territory of Puerto Rico as domestic jurisdiction in the tax cut legislation that would become the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 but Rossello alongside anti-statehood leaders from the PPD and democratic congressmen that support independence like Luis Gutierrez, he lobbied for the island to be treated as a foreign country even though when the island is the home of over 3.5 million American born citizens.

For many pro-statehood Puerto Ricans they felt that move was a betrayal from governor Rossello and the PNP to the pro-statehood cause. Is after this that a group of pro-statehood Puerto Ricans joined and formed the Puerto Rico Statehood Alliance (Alianza Estadista). A new pro-statehood movement that looks to make Puerto Rico the 51^st state. For the founders of this new Statehood Alliance, the PNP leaders don’t represent the statehood ideology. For them, the PNP has become another colonialist party like the PPD. Not only has become a colonialist party but has also become a party with socialist influence by supporting socialist policies like the Democratic Party does, that no more denies socialism inside the party.

The leaders of this new movement, the Puerto Rico Statehood Alliance, affirm that they don’t belong to the PNP, they don’t make any alliance with democratic politicians or any colonialist party in the island, and they affirm that they represent a base of conservative pro-statehood citizens that believe in republican values and principles. This new movement not only presents itself as a new alternative for those pro-statehood citizens that feel betrayed by the PNP and its leaders but it also presents itself as an alternative for those pro-statehood citizens that identify themselves as supporters of the Republican Party and consider themselves as republicans and left the PNP due to their turn to the democratic left. There is no doubt that the Puerto Rican political scenario is changing as I already wrote many times before and it only remains to see how it will continue to change.

Do Not Buy San Juan’s Mayor Rhetoric

There is no doubt that Hurricane Maria changed Puerto Rico forever. The damage to its infrastructure, the fatalities, the challenges it has caused on issues such as education, healthcare and massive emigration of Puerto Ricans to the continental United States, has made the statement that Puerto Rico must change many things once and for all.

There are always those who want to take advantage of the tragedy, as is currently being attempted by the Mayor of San Juan, Carmen Yulín Cruz, who has been trying to use the 15 minutes of fame that the President of the United States Donald Trump gave her through Twitter to build a future run for governor in the 2020 elections, but the desire of the people to raise the island again is much stronger than Yulín’s hypocrisy and power ambitions.

The people should take this opportunity to reflect on what we must change so that Puerto Rico rises stronger than ever, so that the day mother nature decides to manifest again, the people be prepared and ready for recovery. I am not a believer in coincidences, much less when changes are caused by mother nature. I believe that life, or God, or whatever you want to believe, has sent us a message that we must change and take a new direction. It is time for Puerto Rico to make the radical changes that it has been reluctant to make.

Last week, a well known political commentator in Puerto Rico, Enrique “Kike” Cruz, tweeted that the pro-statehood political leaders must find a way to “stop the Mayor”, because there is “money flowing in”. He also wrote that Yulín wants to “decolonize Puerto Rico” but does not want to mention the word independence.

Kike Cruz has not said anything new. I have said this since the results of the last Puerto Rican election. The machinery of the Popular Democratic Party (PPD), which Yulin is a member, is on the ground, their leadership is invisible, they are without money and they had to appoint Hector Ferrer again as the party’s president because they were left without a strong leader. The tragedy caused by Hurricane Maria has become the ticket to which the team of Carmen Yulín has bet for her candidacy for the governorship in 2020. She has the local labor unions and the radical sector of the Democratic Party (composed mostly of labor unions in the nation) on her side. That means that she will have a lot of money available for her campaign.

These labor unions and leftist organizations call themselves as “advocates for social justice”, but they participate more in political investing than any company or corporation. Labor unions and leftist organizations in the nation are powerful donors and she will have funds from those people for her campaign, which means that her campaign will possibly be the most heavily financed in the political history of Puerto Rico. We will see so much propaganda.

She has known how to take advantage of her 15 minutes of fame in the mainstream media with her performances worthy of an Oscar “crying” and talking about decolonization, but without saying at any time how to decolonize the island, since that would represent the end of her political career and of her ambitions, since the ideology she believes does not exceed 2.5% of the popular vote every 4 years and with the growing influence of the federal government on the island and the media attention that Puerto Rico has received in the United States where we have been recognized as US citizens, that 2.5% may be reduced even more. The pro-statehood leaders underestimate her because they think that because she sympathizes with the ideals of the left, the people would not elect her governor. Big mistake, the leaders of the left are the best appealing to passion and feelings and we are seeing it with all the propaganda that has been posted about Yulín in social media pages like NowThis Politics and Al Jazeera. There are even people in the States that sympathize with her without knowing that on the island she has participated in anti-American rallies. That’s how powerful propaganda is.

The city of San Juan continues to be a mess after the hurricane. What is the purpose of she allowing that? Leave San Juan as a mess for the purpose of  blaming the federal government and the Trump administration?

The leadership of her party doesn’t like her and they do not find a way to get rid of her and her combo, among them that immature child called Manuel Natal, a state legislator who gets paid for tweeting, (and yeah they complain a lot about Trump’s tweets but Natal doesn’t stop being annoying on social media), because they know that she does not agree with the ideals in which that party was founded.

I remember when she said in front of the cameras on WAPA TV, a local Puerto Rican tv channel, that the Commonwealth (ELA) was a “colony”?

So if she does not believe in the Commonwealth, but does not believe in statehood neither, what does she believe in? I think the question answers by itself, it is not a science.

If Carmen Yulin becomes governor, Puerto Rico would have for the first time in its history a pro-independence governor, despite the fact that the last time the pro-independence ideal surpassed the miserable 5% in the popular vote was in the 1956 Puerto Rican elections, even before the first electoral victory of the pro-statehood party. But how would it be possible for an pro-independence politician to become governor if in the last three general elections, the Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP) barely exceeded 2% in the popular vote?

The answer is simple, because the Popular Democratic Party has been infiltrated for years by pro-independence politicians who know that the only way to reach positions of power is to disguise themselves as status quo cronies in the PPD. Being pro-independence and being a PPD member is a total contradiction. Those who believe in the Commonwealth (the official PPD’s ideology) believe in US citizenship for Puerto Ricans and believe in a relationship of unity with the United States, even if it is as a colony (which is ridiculous), but the issue is that they believe in that unity.

If those are the ideals in which former governor Luis Muñoz Marín founded the PPD in 1938, how would it be possible for an pro-independence politician like Carmen Yulín to be that party’s candidate for governor in the next election in 2020?

Again simple, thanks to the propaganda. We are living in a time when everyone who is against President Donald Trump, even if is corrupt and a liar, is a “good person” and she has known how to take advantage of that. Since Hurricane Maria hit the island and Yulín has gone around becoming “Trump’s most recent victim”, no one remembers that the offices of the City Government of San Juan were raided by the FBI and that some arrests for corruption crimes that the FBI made this year included people who had contracts with the Municipality of San Juan. People have forgotten the juicy contracts for doing nothing to people like Clarissa Lopez, daughter of former federal convict and marxist terrorist Oscar López Rivera, who spent 35 years in federal prison for teaching Puerto Rican radical marxist extremists how to make bombs, and Pedro Julio Serrano. They have forgotten the anti-American rallies in which she has participated and they have forgotten that she is not who she says she is.

As a Puerto Rican, is not funny to imagine a governor being counseled and advised in private by a person like Oscar López Rivera, and that would be Carmen Yulín if she ever becomes governor.

If you do not believe in independence and consider voting for Carmen Yulín, good luck trying to resolve that contradiction. If Yulin ever becomes governor, the only responsible for that would be the pro-statehood leaders, since unmasking this lady is no science. Continue to underestimate it her and you will see the results within three years. Do not say that you were not warned.

 

Obama Pardoned Guerrilla Leader Oscar Lopez. Will Mainstream Media and Celebrities Ask Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to Pardon Leopoldo Lopez?

This past week former President Barack Obama commuted the sentence of Oscar Lopez-Rivera, a Puerto Rican who was the leader of a guerrilla movement that operated in the very heart of the United States in the 70s and 80s, to which was known as the Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN). The FALN had five main objectives:

1. Directing the armed and political struggle in accordance with the Marxist-Leninist principle of a broad front including a popular sectors willing to join the armed struggle right away.
2. Agglutination of all forces based upon the principle of coordination between political work and military work under the leadership of a party composed of combatants assigned to different tasks
3. Application of the principle of internal ideological debate, a study of Marxist-Leninist ideology and the use of criticism and self-criticism
4. Implementation of the Stalinist ideological position on the concept of “nation” with regard to American reality
5. Application of the principle of the priority of the struggle for independence of Puerto Rico over any question of internal solidarity, demanding concrete support for an armed struggle as a priority matter in the international struggle against colonialism

As we can see, the FALN were not very different from the Colombian FARC, the Shining Path of Peru or the Nicaraguan Sandinista guerrillas. But these people of the FALN did something much more than any guerrilla movement of Latin America could have done, that was to commit acts of terror within the United States. This guerrilla organization was responsible for more than 120 bomb attacks inside the United States between 1974 and 1983. In only 9 years, they managed to create a panic within the American civilian population that no other clandestine group could have created in that time. Their attacks always happened in big cities like New York and Chicago, where they made several of them that cost the life of many people and left many others wounded.

The FALN, like the majority of terrorist organizations that have existed in history, recruited college students to carry out their misdeeds, since they were the easiest to manipulate with their idealism. Oscar Lopez-Rivera was one of those recruiters. He was dedicated to preparing explosives, which the organization then detonated in its objectives.

For Lopez-Rivera, his criminal life came to an end in 1981, after spending several years as a fugitive, when he was finally arrested by the FBI. He was tried for sedition, conspiracy, attempted armed robbery and preparing explosives, charges he himself admitted and pleaded guilty to, but the left of that time does not like to mention it today, and the new generations newly composed in its majority by idealistic college students, are completely unaware of it.

I ask myself: Do at least 20% of the people who defend this guy knows that his group was trying to implement a Stalinist government in Puerto Rico?

Especially when the Soviet Union itself, cradle of communism, sought to erase the mark of Joseph Stalin’s legacy for being such a severe and bloody dictator.

While other guerrilla groups in Latin America sought to force Marxism, compatible with that one of the post-Stalinist Soviet Union, the FALN sought to implement Stalin’s style of Marxism, the most severe and repressive. Oscar Lopez made bombs for those purposes, to promote Stalinism, as dictated by the philosophy of his organization.

For the relieve of his victims, Oscar Lopez-Rivera was sentenced to 55 years in federal prison. He was convicted after a trial by jury conducted by the due process of law as an American citizen that he is, despite attempting to delegitimize the process, calling himself a political prisoner and then adding another 15 years when he tried to escape from prison, in a conspiracy that included killing another prisoner.

Obviously a large number of people over the years, thanks to the propaganda to which the traditional media irresponsibly joined, those who covered the news of the attacks back then, today they call him a political prisoner, deceiving millions of young idealists that do not even know what the FALN is or were, insulting and cursing with their progressive “tolerance” anyone who sees this man as a criminal and not as a “political prisoner.”

In 1999, then-President Bill Clinton offered him a conditional pardon asking him to give up all sorts of violence for his political cause and he turned it down. His followers and again the press ignore this fact by saying that he only turned down the pardon because President Clinton’s offer did not included other members of the organization also imprisoned in that time.

As recently as last December, a local newspaper in Puerto Rico sent a journalist to interview him in the prison, where he was asked if he would accept a new pardon, and he replied: “I would have to deal with that when I see what the President is asking.”

That answer by Lopez-Rivera undoubtedly shows that the guy, who is already a 74-year-old man who has been in prison for 35 years, is not repentant of any of his crimes, as evidenced in 1999 when he rejected President Clinton’s pardon.

The propaganda that catalogs him as a political prisoner has been so strong that multiple public figures such as Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders and other members of the political elite in both the United States and Puerto Rico called for his release. Celebrities such as the Puerto Rican singer, sympathizer of Venezuelan Chavismo, Rene Perez, of the group Calle 13, also asked for his release and even Pope Francis did.

We can not forget when the Socialist President of Venezuelan Nicolas Maduro told President Obama that if he pardon Oscar, he would pardon Leopoldo Lopez. Obviously, the White House rejected the Venezuelan dictator’s offer but since today the release of Oscar Lopez-Rivera is a reality, now it is up to all who made noise for Oscar’s pardon to make the same noise for the release of Leopoldo.

Oscar was given a trial like any other, while Leopoldo, we all know that his lawyers were not even allowed to be present in his trial so they couldn’t present their evidence and they only allowed him to present 1 of 63 witnesses, while the regime controlled court allowed the regime’s prosecutor to present more than 100 alleged witnesses. Leopoldo was convicted and sent to a military prison while being a civilian where he has even been tortured, while Oscar has spent 35 years in a civilian prison like all other convicts.

I guess that as of today, since Oscar Lopez-Rivera will officially be a free man, I will see Rene Perez, Lin Manuel Miranda, Senator Bernie Sanders, Congressman Luis Gutierrez, former President Jimmy Carter, Pope Francis and all of those who have demanded the pardon of Oscar, demand the pardon of Leopoldo, since they are very concerned about the  rights of political prisoners.

I also guess that in my homeland of Puerto Rico since there is a deep feeling inside a group of people there towards human rights, that I will see marches and protests demanding Maduro the liberation of Leopoldo. In Puerto Rico they say that we are all Latinos so I think  that we are going to prove it, or is it that prisoners only matter when they come from our homeland?

I’m not mad because someone got his freedom (as long as they deserve it), but there are cases where there are no violent crimes, cases where the accused does not violate the rights of any victim, such as the case of Edward Snowden (whose only sin was to reveal to the people that the government unconstitutionally spies on you), who is still in exile in Russia without being able to return home due to a threat of death penalty, and nobody asks for him. I do not judge cases by nationality but by actions.

As a Puerto Rican and American (because Puerto Ricans are American born citizens) like Oscar Lopez-Rivera, I only say that although I do not think he should be free because he is not sorry for what he did, I congratulate him for the clemency that if I were President I wouldn’t given him and I am surprised that President Obama, being from Chicago, a city where the FALN did so much damage, has granted him a pardon. I only hope that he has learned his lesson and when he returns to Puerto Rico as a free man, he only devotes himself to spend the last few years of his life quiet and respecting others.

The Mysterious Arrival of Pope Francis the Progressive to the Papacy

Pope Francis continues to surprise the world with his radicalism inside the Catholic Church, his statements where he equates communism, an ideal that has been the cause of the greatest genocides in the history of mankind, with Christianity and exhorting Leftist movements to enter the political scene around the world, raise questions about his arrival to the highest ecclesiastical position in the largest Christian Church in the world.

We had never seen a pontiff so involved in political affairs since the time of Pope Leo XIII in the nineteenth century. Not even Pius XII who had to govern the Church during the dark days of World War II, as Pope Francis does.

This Pope, since becoming Saint Peter’s successor, he wanted to create a different image of the Pontificate. He does not wear the traditional papal garments, he does not reside in the Apostolic Palace, he does not wear the traditional papal gold ring known as the Ring of the  Fisherman, nor wear the traditional red shoes, but although it looks good, it is the doctrine that this Pontiff has wanted to inculcate what is worrying both Christians and non-believers.

The constant intervention of Pope Francis in lay matters outside the jurisdiction of the Church may seem to be a beautiful thing, since he is a figure who is supposed to seek peace and respect for human rights. Let us not forget that the iconic Pope John Paul II was one of the leaders responsible for the fall of communism in Eastern Europe and to some extent he can be attributed the political, economic and religious freedom that Eastern Europe enjoys unlike the tyranny they suffered under Soviet rule.

Pope Francis is the opposite. Since the beginning of his pontificate, he has been pursuing a progressive political agenda, calling for more government intervention in the markets, calling for greater tax policies to “redistribute wealth”, raising to the ranks of bishop and cardinals, priests, who are sympathetic to the so called “Liberation Theology” and elevating to the rank of cardinal left-leaning North American bishops leaving outside the College of Cardinals bishops of important archdioceses such as Archbishop Jose Horacio Gomez of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, the largest and most important archdiocese in the U.S. An unprecedented move that proves the turn that the Pope wants to make to the Catholic Church in the United States.

Pope Francis even resorts to censorship, canceling events with his cardinals to avoid having to answer questions from them, especially after four cardinals decided to make public a letter that addressed him privately first, but he ignored it, where these Cardinals asked him serious questions about the legality of the apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia.

Apparently, the pope who likes talks about the poor and minorities, does not like to be questioned, even canceling an event like this with his cardinals in the anteroom of a Consistory where Francis named 17 new cardinals, to avoid answering in person the questions that he has been avoiding and ignoring.

According to Edward Pentin of the oldest Catholic newspaper in the United States, the National Catholic Register, sources have told him that Francis has been “very angry” with these cardinals.

So this leads to a very interesting question. How can an individual with a mentality like that of Jorge Mario Bergoglio now Pope Francis have succeeded two very important conservative popes like John Paul II and Benedict XVI?

The strangest thing is not that, but the way in which this pontiff rises to that position, being the successor of a Pope that “stepped down”.

One thing that has baffled many people since the election of Pope Francis in 2013 is how a left leaning pope could be the successor of two very serious conservative popes that any of us would have thought would have prepared the Roman Curia and the College of Cardinals with a clergy who will maintain its theological and philosophical perspective and its legacy.

Was then Benedict XVI expelled from office for some internal scandal within the Vatican? Has there been an ecclesiastical coup within the Church?

I was raised in a Catholic family, I studied in Catholic school all my childhood and adolescence and believe me, knowing the kind of conservative that is Pope Benedict XVI, I would never think that he is the type of priest who would be willing to be the first Pope in 600 Years to abdicate to the throne of Peter.

Abdication is the maximum progressive act that can take place within the Catholic Church and definitely Joseph Ratzinger is not seen of that type, because if he were one, his doctrine during his eight years of pontificate would have been very different, much less when the abdication occurred a short time later of the so-called Vatileaks scandal.

Although there is no evidence of a coup to depose Benedict XVI, the National Catholic Register last year published a rather curious article about the authorized biography of the retired President of the Belgian Bishops’ Conference, Cardinal Godfried Daneels, where the cardinal admitted with laughter at an event launching his book in Brussels that he was part of what he called a “secret Mafia club of reformist cardinals” who opposed Pope Benedict XVI.

The cardinal himself said that this”club” was called the St. Gallus Club since those secret meetings behind the Pope were carried out in the city of St. Gallen in Switzerland. According to the cardinal, Cardinal Walter Kasper and the late Jesuit Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini also belonged to this so called “club”.

But what is even more curious and mysterious is what well-known Italian journalist Marco Tosatti wrote a few years ago:

“The election of Jorge Bergoglio was the result of secret meetings between cardinals and bishops, organized by Carlo Maria Martini, held for years in St. Gallen, Switzerland. This, according to Jürgen Mettepenningen and Karim Schelkens, authors of a newly published biography of Belgian Cardinal Godfried Danneels, who calls the group of cardinals and bishops as a ‘Mafia club’.”

“Danneels, according to the authors, worked for years to prepare the election of Pope Francis, which took place in 2013. Danneels, in addition, in a video recorded during the presentation of his book in Brussels, admits that he was part of a secret club of cardinals who opposed Joseph Ratzinger. Laughing, he calls it ‘a Mafia club bearing the name of St. Gallen’.”

If this were ever proved to be true, it would explain a lot about why the Church has changed its doctrine greatly, taking refuge in a disguise of modernism.

Do not get me wrong, it is not the dogmatic change that is worrisome, the Church can change or reform whatever they want as long as those changes are within the institution, which is worrying, it is as that since the election of Pope Francis, this pontiff has become part of the globalist elite that was already rejected in Europe with the victory of Brexit in the United Kingdom and now in America with the victory of Donald Trump.

The constant call of Francis to a greater intervention of supranational organizations like the United Nations and the European Union to take measures and decisions that violate the principles of sovereignty of the countries and the insistence in inclining towards the political left the American Church and exhorting the Church to break with the principle of impartiality and political neutrality, that is what I call dangerous.

All this after a mysterious abdication makes any individual to ask many questions, especially that if it were true, that would not make illegitimate the election of Francis after according to Canon Law the abdication of a Pontiff must be voluntary and free?

Unfortunately, we will never know, but it will undoubtedly be an eternal enigma.

This is Houston Calling the Libertarians

Many would say that this is the best year in the history of the Libertarian Party and why we would disagree?

It has at least 3% of the popular vote in the Presidential Election, over 4.2 million votes and counting, over 1.7 million votes in U.S. Senate races (the highest in the party’s history and honestly don’t thank the LP management for that, thank the Republican and Democratic Parties for nominating the two most unpopular presidential candidates in the political history of the United States), but I still feel that the party and the movement in general needs to change.

If you ask me if I’m a Libertarian, well at least I consider myself fiscally conservative and socially liberal, I think that can describe me as Libertarian or somebody who sympathizes with Libertarianism, but even though I believe in Libertarianism, I don’t feel motivated by the Libertarian Party.

Some people with influence inside the Libertarian movement can say that the reason that the Libertarian Party sometimes fails in attracting independents is because of the people who leads the party and by that I mean the party’s management team. But in my personal opinion is not the party’s fault. It’s libertarians’ fault.

I’ve been in a couple of events sponsored by the Cato Institute, the Young Americans for Liberty and Students for Liberty and even though their conferences are great and you hear from speakers that are brilliant, but when I go all I see is a bunch of people complaining, complaining and complaining but they do nothing.

All I see is a lot of anarchists trying to live a stateless utopia and complaining because weed is not legal in all 5o states.

Hey, I also believe that the War on Drugs is a failure and that it must end but Libertarianism is not only about legal marihuana, private roads and no central banking.

Libertarians need to be rational. If we see somebody trying to be the Libertarian nominee who doesn’t propose to abolish all taxes or to abolish the Federal Reserve, we call him a statist and we demonize him.

Libertarians are so “purist” that they just get stucked on the same issues all the time. That “purism” is ridiculous. Most Libertarian Party members take a candidate and they disagree with him at least on one issue and they already reject him for being “too statist”.

I remember seeing on Facebook, a lot of anarchists calling themselves “Libertarians”, bashing Rand Paul for being “too statist” just because he’s not like his father. Come on, really?

You’re going to call Rand Paul a statist because he didn’t propose to abolish the Fed but just to audit it?

You’re going to call Rand Paul a statist, just because his bill was named “Audit the Fed” and not “End the Fed”?

You’re going to call Rand Paul a statist because he encouraged Republicans to vote for Donald Trump and not for Gary Johnson?

I’m sorry if somebody feel “offended” but right now the Libertarian Party is a joke, even with the historic numbers they got in this election. How this party can be taken seriously or want to be mainstream with people like Augustus Invictus running in a Libertarian primary and with “Libertarians” supporting him?

How the Libertarian Party can get attention on the national level with guys like Sean Haugh running for a seat in the U.S. Senate, a guy that we don’t even know what kind of experience he has in politics, business, or something in life. He even say in his campaign website that he attended college just to have an excuse for “reading books and not working for 4 years”.

Really? That’s how the Libertarian Party want to be respected on the national level?

Make no mistake about it, the most brilliant minds in economics, law and other fields are inside the Libertarian movement, but you find those guys in think tanks like the Cato Institute and most of them are not interested to be associated with the Libertarian Party and I don’t blame them.

What economist from a prestigious think tank with a PhD from some prestigious school would like to be associated with somebody like Sean Haugh or Augustus Invictus?

I know that a Harvard degree doesn’t make you the perfect politician or businessman, Congress is full of guys with Harvard degrees and of other Ivy League schools and they know nothing about economics and even constitutional law when most of them are lawyers, but come on, if you make somebody like Sean Haugh run against one of those cronies, who you think the people will end voting for?

I think and this is sad, that most Libertarians don’t give a damn about winning an election. The people inside the Libertarian Party are so immature that some nobody with no money, no resume, no experience, and no skills, calls himself a Libertarian and says that want to run for a seat in Congress and the party says: “Ok cool, there you go”.

If these so called Libertarians with no money and no resume, really want to make a difference and help the party to grow, why they don’t run for some position in their local governments and with that they help to build a base inside local communities and cities that will boost the party’s reputation on the national level and maybe will motivate those Libertarians with the skills and resume (like those PhDs that you find inside think tanks and other organizations like the Cato Institute and the Foundation for Economic Education) to run for a position in the federal government?

Did you think that a rich guy like Peter Thiel, Kurt Russell, Clint Eastwood, Jeff Bezos or Cliff Asness, all of them Libertarians, will donate a dime to somebody like Sean Haugh or Augustus Invictus?

I’m not trying to disrespect Sean Haugh, but honestly I don’t think that the guy is fit for a job like being a U.S. Senator. Or Augustus Invictus, who in my opinion is just some crazy dude from Florida, who was supported by fascist groups when he also wanted to be a U.S. Senator.

I’m Puerto Rican and I had the opportunity to check on other Libertarian movements in other countries specially Latin America and even though they haven’t been successful winning elections at least they had been successful on helping socialist parties to lose elections.

Why? Because they are real, they do their job, they do politics, instead of sitting in some conference in DC, complaining on why the Fed still exist and weed is not legal yet.

I’m an independent myself and if someday people inside the party start being more pragmatic and stop living in that anarchic fantasy inside their minds, maybe I would join the LP in the future. But honestly if the LP continues being full of dumb college kids dreaming of some stateless utopia, I would rather prefer to join some crazy Communist Party because at the end of the day, they have the same ridiculous fantasy, a stateless utopia.

Now you understand why Rand Paul doesn’t want to be associated with the LP and calls himself a Republican and is associated with the GOP, even when his father praises the LP in his podcasts? Is not only because he want to be a Senator but also because if you want to spread the message of liberty in a serious way, I don’t think that the LP would be the best place for that.

The Rich behind Hillary Clinton

Democrats in the United States who supported socialist Senator Bernie
Sanders like those who currently support Hillary Clinton, accuse the Republican party of being “the party of the rich.”

They accuse Republican candidate Donald Trump of being the symbol of the “elite” because he is a famous billionaire but you have to analyze things before you judge. You have to analyze who is the candidate that really represents what Democrats like to call the “elite”.

Hillary Clinton, the current Democratic Party’s nominee for President of the United States, is the candidate that has received the most donations from billionaires and corporations, yeah, the “elite”.

Here, I’ll mention some of those billionaires and corporations.

First of all we have the third richest man in the world, Warren Buffet. Buffet who is the Chief Executive Officer of the powerful conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway, has a personal fortune of $60.8 billion and has been supporting the Democratic Party for years, specially the Clintons for over 15 years.

Also we have the so controversial billionaire George Soros  who could be considered the star of the Democratic Party donors club. Soros is the Chairman of one of the largest and most profitable hedge fund firms in the world.

Yes, hedge funds, those that Bernie Sanders, who now supports Clinton, criticized and demonized.

Soros has a personal fortune of $24.9 billion, and according to official reports he has donated to Hillary more than $11.9 million in this election cycle only.

Not only that, besides being a very important donor, he had organized Super PACs that had raised millions for the Clinton campaign from 17 different billionaires.

Another powerful billionaire who has funded the Clinton machine is Haim Saban, and I consider this a very dangerous one. Saban whose personal fortune amounts to $2.9 billion, owns 20% of Univision, the largest Hispanic television network in the United States, a network that has been criticized in the past for being biased.

Saban has held a number of fundraising events for Clinton in Hollywood which explains why Hollywood is characterized by being a propaganda machine for Democrats.

We also shouldn’t forget the moment when Saban said in an interview about civil liberties: “I’d rather be not free and alive”. 

Saban practically insinuated that “security” was more important than freedom itself.

Speaking of Hollywood and celebrities, Hillary has another powerful ally, and that ally is famous billionaire and former TV host Oprah Winfrey.

Oprah with a personal fortune amounting to $3.1 billion was the host of the highest rated  television show in the United States which has also been criticized for being biased.

Oprah’s endorsement of Hillary definitely gives a lot of strength to the Clinton machine specially when many in America consider her the most influential woman in the world.

Another powerful Wall Street billionaire who has invested its resources to return Hillary to the White House, this time as President, is another important hedge fund manager, James Harris Simons. Simons’s fortune amounts to $16.5 billion and has also been involved in a number of controversies specially related to tax evasion.

Another powerful billionaire who has been behind the Clinton machine during this election cycle is the former mayor of New York City and owner of the powerful media company Bloomberg L.P., Michael Bloomberg. Bloomberg’s fortune amounts to $42.7 billion making him according to Forbes, the 8th richest person in the world.

But besides powerful individual donors, there are also corporations especially powerful Wall Street banks.

The Clintons have received political donations from big banks since former President Bill Clinton lived in the White House in the 90s.

All of this without counting the large amounts of money that big banks like Goldman Sachs have paid them in the past for speeches that she has refused to reveal to the public.

Since former President Bill Clinton left the White House in 2001, the Clintons have been paid over $120 million in speeches for the international financial elite.

When it comes to donations, Clinton definitely have the advantage over Trump. While Clinton has raised over $21.1 million in PACs, Trump has only managed to raise $1.02 million.

According to Fortune, 6% of the donations that Clinton has received come from billionaires giving a total of more than $373.3 million. While only 0.006% of donations that Trump has received come from billionaires.

Another curiosity denoting demagoguery coming from Democrats is the constant criticism to the CEOs. Democrats constantly accuse Republicans of supporting the CEOs of the largest corporations in the country by refusing to increase the federal minimum wage, arguing that CEOs get paid too much for their work.

The interesting thing about all of this is that none of the 100 largest corporations’ CEOs in the country have donated a dime to Donald Trump.

Of the 100 largest corporations’ CEOs, none has donated a dollar to Trump but 11 of them have donated to Hillary Clinton.

Even according to an investigation by the Journal, Clinton has twice received donations from corporate executives in this election cycle of 2016 than President Barack Obama during his re-election campaign in 2012.

There is no doubt that all these facts destroy the myth that the Democratic Party and its candidate Hillary Clinton represent the middle class and those in need.

If there are people who believe in the so called “establishment” or the “system” or the “elite” well you should already have an idea of who this “elite” wants to win the presidential election on November 8 and I don’t think is Donald Trump who they want.

Clinton’s supporters and Trump haters who read this article will say that I am a “right-wing Republican” or even a”fascist” for what I have written here but the reality is that you don’t need to be a Trump supporter to figure out that Hillary Clinton is not what she claims to be.