Florida's Senator, George LeMieux, a pawn of Miami's Cuban Community

[Photo from here]

When Charlie Crist appointed this nogoodnik to the U.S. Senate, many of us in Florida recoiled in horror. George LeMieux is a typical Repugnican wingnut who lives for the corporations who own his soul, and is a pawn of the rabid Cuban community in Miami.

Thus, LeMieux is front and center blocking the man the Obama administration has appointed to be our new ambassador to Brazil. Why would LeMieux do this? He's supposed to sit quietly in his Senate seat, keep his big mouth shut, and step aside when Charlie leaves the governorship to run for the Senate himself.

Here's why: The man nominated to become our ambassador to Brazil is Tom Shannon. Under Georgi W. Bushy, Shannon served as assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs. But, according to the goofball Cubans in Miami, "he wasn't tough enough on the Castro regime..."

But there's more. LeMieux is still working for Crist. And Crist is up against a Cuban-American in his bid for a seat in the Senate. So, LeMieux, it is said, is "trying to burnish his Cuba credentials to help Crist ..."


The Cuban community in Miami consists of a bunch of retrograde Castro haters who still think it's 1960. If they had their way, the U.S. would have taken Castro out long ago and forced their version of democracy on the island, which generally means the rich rule and the poor get the scraps.

And the rightwingnut Florida legislators in Congress, who are in bed with the aforementioned rabid Cuban community in Miami, are backing LeMieux one hundred percent.


Remember that LeMieux knows from nothing about Latin America. But under arcane Senate rules, one senator can put a "hold" on a nomination so it can go nowhere. Before LeMieux it was the nogoodnik Jim DeMint from, naturally, South Carolina, who held up Shannon's nomination.

The Obama administration is not happy, and claims that LeMieux's recalcitrance is messing up our relationship with Brazil.

Nine former assistant secretaries of state sent a letter to LeMieux asking him to withdraw his opposition to Shannon. Bernard Aronson, one of these former assistant secretaries of state, said that LeMieux "has every right, if he doesn't think this individual is qualified, to go to the floor and make his case, but why should one freshman senator with no background in Latin America, no background in Brazil, decide the Senate can't vote on the president's nominee?"


Why? Because with Repugnicans like LeMieux, it is eternally about politics, not about what's good for the country. Everything in this world is political. LeMieux doesn't give a rat's ass about Brazil or any other country in Latin America. He's playing to his base to give his old buddy, Charlie, a leg up. Well, he probably hates Castro, too, but that's not what this is all about. If the Cuban community in Miami told LeMieux they would support Charlie if LeMieux kissed Castro's ass, he would do it.

It's the usual game. And any respect I ever had for Charlie Crist has long since disappeared. He's turned out to be a disappointing governor in many ways (the only good thing he's done that I can think of is accept the stimulus money which has helped our schools immensely) and his appointment of LeMieux smacks of cronyism and political chicanery.


(The material in this post was obtained from an article at McClatchy, published on Thursday, November 19.)