Plan B Forum

Let them go, get the US our of Puerto Rico. Independence for Puerto Rico now.

https://www.heritage.org/crime-and-just ... rist-votes

President Obama’s Pardon for Oscar Lopez Rivera Trades a Terrorist for Votes
Jan 22nd, 2017 4 min read
COMMENTARY BY

Mike Gonzalez @Gundisalvus
Senior Fellow, The Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute
Mike Gonzalez is a senior fellow at the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies.

Thousands took to the streets demanding the release of Oscar Lopez Rivera on the 35th anniversary of his imprisonment, in San Juan, Puerto Rico, 29 May 2016. Thais Llorca/EFE/Newscom
Key Takeaways

In 1979, Jimmy Carter released from prison three Puerto Rican terrorists who shot at members of Congress.
In 1999 Bill Clinton pardoned 12 members of the FALN.
Obama’s one-time friend Bill Ayers, himself a terrorist in the 1970s, tweeted out a celebratory “Oscar Lopez freed!”
Copied In 1999, a year before Hillary Clinton was elected to the Senate from New York and a decade and a half before emails helped destroy her presidential ambitions, an adviser to her husband’s administration sent an email about proposed pardons of imprisoned Puerto Rican terrorists.
The pardons would be “fairly easy to accomplish and will have a positive impact among strategic communities in the U.S. (read, voters),” wrote Mayra Martinez-Fernandez, an adviser to the White House Working Group for Puerto Rico, according Debra Burlingame in The Wall Street Journal. Get that? Voters. Clinton, to be sure, issued the pardons.

Communists celebrated the pardons then, just as they did yesterday from Canada to Colombia to Cuba when President Obama commuted yet another convicted Puerto Rican terrorist’s sentence. But Martinez-Fernandez’s email still holds the clue. The president’s action carries the same unavoidable whiff of playing identity politics with a key voting bloc of the Democratic Party. In fact, you have to go back to Lyndon Johnson to find the last Democratic president who, in his waning days in office, didn’t spring from prison a Puerto Rican convicted of terrorist acts.
The beneficiary of Obama’s commutation this time is Oscar Lopez Rivera. He’s no angel, but he’s being lionized as one—and not just by too many Puerto Ricans, but also by celebrities.

I voted to give Puerto Rica its freedom; let have their own country since they have a right to fight for their freedom.

Who is the asp that voted other? How can you have other, there is either freedom of slavery. It is time for Puerto Rico to be free. They want freedom they are just scared of the cold cruel world. They need a push out of the nest.

liberty wrote:Who is the asp that voted other? How can you have other, there is either freedom of slavery. It is time for Puerto Rico to be free. They want freedom they are just scared of the cold cruel world. They need a push out of the nest.

You might want to note that the U.S. Virgin Islands are neither a slave colony, nor an independent nation. The same observation applies to Hawai‘i, Guam, and Manhattan. Possibly even Louisiana.

Econoline wrote:

liberty wrote:Who is the asp that voted other? How can you have other, there is either freedom of slavery. It is time for Puerto Rico to be free. They want freedom they are just scared of the cold cruel world. They need a push out of the nest.

You might want to note that the U.S. Virgin Islands are neither a slave colony, nor an independent nation. The same observation applies to Hawai‘i, Guam, and Manhattan. Possibly even Louisiana.

Eccono you are a very a likable nice guy so I am not trying to offend you. And you can strike the slave part off colony that was just me being hyperbolic for the sake emphasis. But all through the Cold War the left referred to Puerto Rico as a colony of the US and the US as an imperialist power. Since Puerto Rico was a colony, according to the left, it is still a colony and now it is time to set them free.

There have been a series of democrat presidents that agreed that the Puerto Ricans deserve independence. They expressed this by releasing from prison Puerto Rican freedom fighters (liberal interpretation).

There has not been an anti-communist Democrat president since LBJ so maybe that has something to do with it.

liberty wrote:But all through the Cold War the left referred to Puerto Rico as a colony of the US and the US as an imperialist power. Since Puerto Rico was a colony, according to the left, it is still a colony and now it is time to set them free.

So if I say black is white, down is up, ice is hot, fire is cold, and you're an idiot, then that makes it so?

-"BB"-

liberty — For someone who is nowhere near liberal, you sure seem to have a shitload of "insight" into what "liberals" and "leftists" think.



P.S. I actually do sincerely appreciate the fact that you see me as "a very likable nice guy"—even though I'm a self-confessed liberal. Thanks...I guess?

Bicycle Bill wrote:

liberty wrote:But all through the Cold War the left referred to Puerto Rico as a colony of the US and the US as an imperialist power. Since Puerto Rico was a colony, according to the left, it is still a colony and now it is time to set them free.

So if I say black is white, down is up, ice is hot, fire is cold, and you're an idiot, then that makes it so?

-"BB"-

Don’t you remember when you were burning the flag and calling the US a fascist imperialist police state? What has change you useful idiot..

I propose that we give Puerto Rico to Russia, in exchange for them agreeing to not attack us in the arctic circle...

any chance that I can get a royal land grant in Puerto rico, lord jim?

Apparently lib doesn’t care and/or doesn’t know what the citizens of Puerto Rico want. I’ll leave it to see if he can figure out, but here’s a big hint: the correct answer to this poll is “other.”

Guin be fair the knows just as much about Puerto Ricans as he does about liberals.

Crackpot wrote:Guin be fair the knows just as much about Puerto Ricans as he does about liberals.

Cp be fair - he knows twice as much as each of them about both of them; far more or less than a flatworm does, in fact.

Guinevere wrote:Apparently lib doesn’t care and/or doesn’t know what the citizens of Puerto Rico want. I’ll leave it to see if he can figure out, but here’s a big hint: the correct answer to this poll is “other.”

They are scared of being on their own. They are like a thirty year old child living in their parent’s basement and wanting their parents to pay their bills. If you cared anything about them you would want to push them out of the nest.

I have heard it over and over said that after Puerto Ricans has had a couple drinks they all want independence.

If you have any Puerto Rican friends ask them what they really want for Puerto Rico.

Answer this question please: Are imprisoned Puerto Rican terrorist political prisoners?

I have heard it over and over said that after Puerto Ricans has had a couple drinks they all want independence.

Yeah, but you can't always go by what you hear at the local KKK meeting lib...

Lord Jim wrote:

I have heard it over and over said that after Puerto Ricans has had a couple drinks they all want independence.

Yeah, but you can't always go by what you hear at the local KKK meeting lib...

You don’t watch Rick Steve’s travel shows on PBS do you? That is the last place I heard it.

Well I have a number of Puerto Rican relatives and have been there a few dozen times--even shared drinks with them, and only know of one person who is for independence. I think the plebiscites show only a few percent favor independent, with statehood and continuation of the commonwealth status being evenly divided among the rest (and recently statehood won, but no action in Congress on it). Now I will agree independence is more popular among the Puerto Ricans here, but then many of them are second and third generation and have never even been to the island (like most immigrants) they profess to know more about the old country than those who live there)

Face it, most would not willingly give up their US citizenship, and Puerto Rico is one of our few real military presences in the Caribbean (aside from Gitmo, but they're a lot easier to supply), so the US is not anxious to cut it loose.

Econoline wrote:liberty — For someone who is nowhere near liberal, you sure seem to have a shitload of "insight" into what "liberals" and "leftists" think.




P.S. I actually do sincerely appreciate the fact that you see me as "a very likable nice guy"—even though I'm a self-confessed liberal. Thanks...I guess?

When I was young I had a mild to moderate case of liberalism, primarily due to my mother. My first two political idols were JFK and LBJ, but Vietnam cured me of that affliction. After it was all over I realized that Goldwater was right; don’t fight a war unless you fight to win.