Fidel Castro reportedly suffers massive stroke

Miami Herald:

Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and his state of health is so precarious that he has trouble feeding, speaking and recognizing people, said a Venezuelan physician who assured El Nuevo Herald that he has access to firsthand sources and information.

“He suffered an embolic stroke and recognizes absolutely no one,” said José Marquina, a respected doctor who in the past has claimed to have direct information about the illness affecting President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela.

“The people with a condition of this nature have difficulty eating and, of course, they end up with total deficit in their neurologic capacities.”

[…]

Castro was last seen in public in March, during the visit to Cuba of Pope Benedict XVI. Since June, he has not written his opinion columns, called “Reflections.” He did not send any message or congratulation to Chávez for his recent election victory.

“He could last weeks like that, but what I can say is that we’ll never again see him in public,” Marquina told the Herald. He said Castro was “very close to a neurovegetative state.”

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Griper Blade: Proving Hypocrisy isn't Poisonous

I'm not one of those "everything happens for a reason" types, but if you need some sort of justification for George W. Bush's existence, you could point to the fact that he's living proof that hypocrisy is non-toxic. President Bush may be one of the healthiest executives ever to sit behind the big desk in the Oval Office. Yet, he indulges in hypocrisy as often as is humanly possible -- without any obvious symptoms of some sort of poisoning. Hypocrisy is harmless to the hypocrite, apparently.

For an example, we go to the Roosevelt Room in the White House. That'd be the Republican Teddy Roosevelt, not the Democrat Franklin. Teddy was a progressive Republican, but so what? History doesn't matter much to this president. The entire purpose of the location is that Bush stand beneath a portrait of Teddy in his "Rough Rider" uniform from the Spanish-American War. A war fought in Cuba.

Standing beneath that portrait (one that unfortunately reminds us of another pointless war of choice), President Bush scolded the world on its treatment of Cuba. In all seriousness, Bush spoke of Cubans "trapped in the tropical gulag," where they're "subjected to beatings, inadequate medical care, and long separations from their family."

If your mind immediately jumps to Guantanamo Bay -- a tropical gulag coincidentally within Cuba -- you're not alone. In what may be a record setting display of hypocrisy, President Bush was complaining about human rights abuses in Cuba -- while committing human rights abuses in Cuba. Brilliant...

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