Fausta's Blog

You know Marco Rubio’s star is in ascendance when the WaPo came up with this beaut yesterday,
Marco Rubio’s compelling family story embellishes facts, documents show

The documents show that Rubio’s parents came to the United States and were admitted for permanent residence more than 2½ years before Castro’s forces overthrew the Cuban government and took power on New Year’s Day 1959…

Rubio’s office on Thursday confirmed that his parents arrived in the United States in 1956 but noted that “while they were prepared to live here permanently, they always held out the hope and the option of returning to Cuba if things improved.” They returned to Cuba several times after Castro came to power to “assess the situation with the hope of eventually moving back,” the office said in a statement.

In a brief interview Thursday, Rubio said his accounts of the family’s migration has been based on family lore. “I’m going off the oral history of my family,” he said. “All of these documents and passports are not things that I carried around with me.”…

His office tried to clarify the facts in its statement Thursday. After their 1956 arrival, the couple visited Cuba after Castro’s takeover. In 1961, Oriales Rubio took her two children back to Cuba “with the intention of remaining permanently.” Mario remained in Florida “wrapping up the family’s matters.” But within weeks of arriving there, “it because clear that Cuba was headed full speed towards Communism and they decided to return to the U.S,” the statement said.

The WaPo standard of purity precludes all reasons that Mr. and Mrs. Rubio would have had to make them flee the Batista dictatorship, and later the Communist dictatorship, then?

Hot Air links to Rubio’s statement in The Corner,

What’s important is that the essential facts of my family’s story are completely accurate. My parents are from Cuba. After arriving in the United States, they had always hoped to one day return to Cuba if things improved and traveled there several times. In 1961, my mother and older siblings did in fact return to Cuba while my father stayed behind wrapping up the family’s matters in the U.S. After just a few weeks living there, she fully realized the true nature of the direction Castro was taking Cuba and returned to the United States one month later, never to return.

They were exiled from the home country they tried to return to because they did not want to live under communism. That is an undisputed fact and to suggest otherwise is outrageous.

The Miami Herald also posted on the WaPo’s embellishments.

The fact remains, Rubio was born and raised in the USA by legal immigrants.

Someday he will be President of the United States.

UPDATE
My family’s flight from Castro, by Sen. Marco Rubio
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‘The free enterprise system has lifted more people out of poverty than all the government anti-poverty programs combined’

Video via Val Prieto’s Facebook post, quote via Instapundit.

In the same evening (h/t Andrew Malcom’s Twitter), Marco Rubio to the rescue! Freshman senator saves a falling Nancy Reagan

VIDEO: Nancy Reagan falls : MyFoxORLANDO.com

Marco Rubio’s first speech in the Senate,

The Foundry posts on Marco Rubio’s Exceptional America

Rubio concluded by acknowledging the fear that “America’s century” was the 20th century and that someone else might lead the next. But this, he argues, would be entirely a failure of the American government. Our government is bankrupt and seems unwilling to fix itself. But the American people are not broken. They retain the same capabilities and desires to succeed that their ancestors did. Rubio exhorted his fellow Senators that:

If we give America a government that could live within its means, the American economy will give us a government of considerable means. A government that can afford to pay for the things government should be doing, because it does not waste money on the things government should not be doing.  If we can deliver on a few simple but important things, we have the chance to do something that’s difficult to imagine is even possible: an America whose future will be greater than her past.

That would be an exceptional America, indeed.

Ace calls it “Vice-Presidential?”

Human Events lists What GOP Presidential Candidates Can Learn From Marco Rubio’s Exceptional Maiden Speech

Babalu wants to draft him.

You can read the full text of the speech below the fold,
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Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fl) writes,

An unacceptable consequence of America taking our Latin American neighbors for granted is that China, among other nations, has capitalized on our complacency, signed their own deals, and made great strides to surpass America as the region’s leading trade partner.
…

Losing our competitive advantage to China is a particular concern. As Senator Lugar’s report points out, “In South America, China has replaced the United States as Brazil’s largest trading partner. … Today, China is Colombia’s second largest trading partner after the United States. The [Private Sector Competitiveness] Council predicts that China will supplant the United States as the leading trade partner within 10 years if current trends continue without a U.S.-Colombia FTA.”

America’s trade complacency is unacceptable. We should be an indispensable friend to our Latin American neighbors, but instead we are being replaced as their leading trading partner and most reliable ally.

In the 21st-century economy, America cannot effectively compete with China and other nations if we don’t aggressively move to open new markets to American products and services. We simply cannot accept an American trade policy that is a fool-proof plan to lose American jobs, alienate our friends, and allow America to be diminished.

Unfortunately, the current administration in Washington appears to want America to be diminished … permanently.

ARGENTINA
73% of Argentine journalists support controversial media law, survey finds

BRAZIL
Alternative investments in Brazil
The buys from Brazil
This year’s hot market for private-equity firms and hedge-fund managers

COLOMBIA
The FARC’s farce

Colombia and the United States
Trade disunion
Santos’s China card

COSTA RICA
Costa Rica Loses Land and Seeks an Army

CUBA
Sen. Rubio Questions “Risk” Of Increased Cuba Travel

No education is worth your freedom

Report: Cardinal Ortega tells Cuba prisoner of conscience Iván Hernández he’s about to be released (UPDATED)

“Comrade” Granma

It’s not time to remove Cuba from the terror list

Quick Cartoon: Cuba Change

ECUADOR
Monster or victim?
A court in Ecuador controversially fines Chevron a whopping $9 billion

Sting “ringleader” re-enters Chevron-Ecuador case

HONDURAS
Why is Honduras so poor?

Gobierno debe resolver problema de identificación

MEXICO
US immigration agent killed by gunmen in Mexico

Mexico’s Real War

Panistas laying the groundwork

PARAGUAY
In Cuba for medical treatment, Paraguayan president meets with Raúl and Fidel Castro

PERU
WikiLeaks: Toledo and Humala exploited border dispute to appeal Peru’s nationalist sentiments

VENEZUELA
Libya: Gadhafi Did Not Flee To Venezuela, at least for now. It would be a Burn After Reading situation, “Put him on a plane to Venezuela!”

Venezuela continues its plunge into Cuba-style tyranny

Revolutionary priorities

Criminals or dissidents?
A jailed judge pays the price for defying the president

The week’s posts and podcasts
At Real Clear World, The Hunger Strike in Venezuela

Stacy has the video,

NewsBusters has the transcript,

RUDY GIULIANI: Arianna, I’m also, I’m also responsible largely for the turnaround of New York City. I took over, I took over a city that had 2,000 murders a year, I left a city with four or 500 hundred murders a year. I took over a city with 1.1 million people on welfare, I left a city with 500,000 people on welfare. I took over a city with a $2.3 million deficit, I left a city with a $3 million surplus. I hired a lot of good people to do that…It’s just a cheap shot.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: That’s a cheap shot!…I want to stop. I want to stop right now. I want to talk also about Bernie Kerik for a second. I know no one else will agree with me. This is just me talking and nobody else. Bernie Kerik did a hell of a job also keeping New York City safe. Two, it’s an unpopular thing to say, Bernie Kerik made mistakes, a lot of people make mistakes. I was glad Bernie Kerik was standing behind Rudy Giuliani September 11. And the bottom line is Arianna, if Rudy Giuliani did not run for President of the United States, Bernie Kerik would be walking the streets today, because the second Rudy Giuliani started running for President of the United States, the long knifes came out and they started searching everybody’s record and they found somebody who had made some bad mistakes. [...]

MORT ZUCKERMAN: If there is one thing that the mayor deserves a lot of credit for is that he turned around the living conditions of New York by really reinforcing law and order, and particularly backing the police, and doing what he, a fundamental transformation of life in this city.

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: That’s not either, or. You are not judging the mayor’s entire history. We’re talking about something very important, something very specific. And we’re talking also about this knee-jerk attempt to criticize the administration on everything, especially the position of the president on terrorism from a man who said you don’t know if waterboarding is torture. I don’t know if you still hold that position.

GIULIANI: Well, first of all, we have a perfect right to talk all about that, but you’re comment about Bernie Kerik was totally irrelevant to it and just a cheap shot. [...]

SCARBOROUGH: Can I ask also how we got from Marco Rubio to waterboarding, Arianna? That is a wild (?), you have taken this conversation and hijacked it.
…
HUFFINGTON: It’s all about what the mayor stands for. What the man stands for means that we can look at who he supports from that perspective. This is a man…

SCARBOROUGH: Do you want to take waterboarding as the issue you embrace, because I know a guy sitting in the United States Senate now that said it polled pretty damn well in Massachusetts.

HUFFINGTON: What does this have to do with anything?

SCARBOROUGH: It has everything to do with everything. You’re saying that his position on waterboarding disqualifies him to endorse a guy in Florida, and I’m telling you if waterboarding is popular in Massachusetts, it’s probably pretty popular in my home state of Florida.

HUFFINGTON: So what? So it doesn’t disqualify him from supporting anybody he wants. It means that I don’t have to take his support particularly seriously. That’s all I’m saying.

SCARBOROUGH: I don’t think he gives a damn whether you support his candidate or not because you’re not going to support him anyway, right?

HUFFINGTON: I’m not saying whether I’m going to support his candidate. I’m saying we’re having a conversation about whether who he supports makes a difference.

SCARBOROUGH: It does in Florida.

HUFFINGTON: I mean, this is a man who also spent $50 million in the presidential race and got one delegate.

SCARBOROUGH: Hold on a second. Arianna, I’ve got to say this. Just stop. If we’re going to do this, Arianna, I, understand, we’re going to talk about your race in California.

HUFFINGTON: I never, I mean, my…

SCARBOROUGH: You ran for governor of California, and it was a complete flop. I still want to hear your ideas, and I don’t always go back to your failures here or your failures there. But for some reason, you’re doing it with Giuliani. And I, by the way, I would be defending somebody on the Left if someone on the Right was doing the same thing to them.

GIULIANI: The reality is you criticized the Tea Party movement and the right-wingers for getting terribly personal and terribly irrelevant and racist, and you’re the worst offender. I mean, I come on here just to talk about Marco Rubio, you’re attacking me on Bernie Kerik, you’re attacking me on how I ran my presidential race. I imagine you’re going to attack me on what I did in the Little League when I was a child. I mean, this is an over the top, emotional reaction as opposed to an intellectual discussion of whether Rubio or Crist would be the better senator.

That’s what we have Arianna for, isn’t it?

Marco Rubio spent $100 bucks at a salon and Crist says it was for a back wax,

Gay Patriot wanders if Crist really wants to go there. Erick‘s sending Crist some wax.

Now, when I saw Marco Rubio at CPAC he was wearing a suit, dress shirt and necktie, so I can’t tell you about the state of his back. Fully clothed he looks nice.

For the record, as long as Rubio’s not waxing his chest, I’m OK with back waxes.

But I digress.

Crist’s accusation backfired; Gateway Pundit points out that Rubio’s up in the polls, by 32 points.

Lord knows how high the polls would climb if Crist accuses Rubio of getting a manicure.

yesterday morning,

Part 1

Part 2

Via And so it goes in Shreveport.

Moe comments,

I’ve been personally staying out of the entire Crist/Rubio NRSC endorsement brouhaha, mostly because we’re going to have Senatorial candidates that are going to need the NRSC’s help – but I do have to ask: does Charlie have anything that can beat that?

Seriously. Does Crist play at that level? – Because if he doesn’t, this is going to be an interesting primary.

Indeed!