Diane Wat­son just loves Fidel Castro.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Diane Wat­son (D — Cal­i­for­nia) gives me the heeby-jeebies.  Here’s why:

It was just men­tioned to me by our esteemed speaker, “Did any­one say any­thing about the Cuban health system?”

And lemme tell ya, before you say “Oh, it’s a commu–”, you need to go down there and see what Fidel Cas­tro put in place. And I want you to know, now, you can think what­ever you want to about Fidel Cas­tro, but he was one of the bright­est lead­ers I have ever met. [APPLAUSE]

And you know, the Cuban rev­o­lu­tion that kicked out the wealthy, Che Gue­vara did that, and then, after they took over, they went out among the pop­u­la­tion to find some­one who could lead this new nation, and they found…well, just leave it there (laughs), an attor­ney by the name of Fidel Castro…

This is from a “town hall” she held in her dis­trict.  Yes, she’s prais­ing Fidel Cas­tro.  But she is a lit­tle con­fused on her his­tory.  Che Gue­vara did not “kick out the wealthy”.  That was actu­ally Cas­tro.  From Biog­ra­phy:

Cas­tro was released in 1955 under an amnesty deal with the Batista gov­ern­ment. He went to Mex­ico, where he met Ernesto “Che” Gue­vara. There he devised a new strat­egy to over­throw the Batista régime based on guer­rilla war­fare. Gue­vara believed that the plight of Latin America’s poor could be rec­ti­fied only through vio­lent rev­o­lu­tion. He joined Castro’s group and became an impor­tant con­fi­dante, shap­ing Castro’s polit­i­cal beliefs.…

Fidel Cas­tro was able to cap­i­tal­ize on the inci­dent to con­sol­i­date his power and fur­ther pro­mote his agenda. On May 1 [1961], Cas­tro announced an end to demo­c­ra­tic elec­tions in Cuba and denounced Amer­i­can impe­ri­al­ism. Then at year’s end, Cas­tro declared him­self a Marxist-Leninist and announced the Cuban gov­ern­ment was adopt­ing com­mu­nist eco­nomic and polit­i­cal poli­cies. On Feb­ru­ary 7, 1962, the United States imposed a full eco­nomic embargo on Cuba, a pol­icy that con­tin­ues to this day.

Any­one who calls Fidel Cas­tro one of the “bright­est” lead­ers needs to be expa­tri­ated to Cuba.  They need to be forced to live under that sys­tem to see just how “great” it is.  If it IS so great for the com­mon Cuban, then why have hun­dreds — if not thou­sands — risked their lives on makeshift rafts to come to Amer­ica?  Why are they still doing so? 

If that is the pol­i­tics these lib­er­als want to espouse, they need to leave our coun­try.  I’m telling you folks — if this is who has con­trol of our coun­try now, it won’t be long before the Amer­ica we know and love  will be gone (if it’s not already).  For the first time in my life, I’m gen­uinely scared of what is to come.  Pray, folks.  Pray for our coun­try — that the Peo­ple of this nation will wake up and rise up and take the coun­try back.

– Daniel 9:3–7