Senator Bob Menendez can read this and weep. He’s a dinosaur and he shouldn’t be in charge of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. People want to engage with Cuba, not treat it is as if JFK is still the president. By what right does Sen. Menendez interfere with my freedom to travel to or do business with Cuba? Because of what? What is supposed to be achieved that hasn’t been achieved in the last fifty-five years?
This is high school stuff.
Castro takes back Cruz, Menendez (bipartisan!) and Rubio, and we let Cuba have a MLB expansion team.
Win-win!
Although its still difficult to travel there, the restrictions have been eased up a bit by the current administration. Its way past time to end this ridiculous embargo and apparently the rest of the world thinks so too. This from back in the fall of 2012:
Here in Bloomington we’ve encouraged relations by joining with Santa Clara as a sister city. A lot of people here are looking forward to personal meetups once the madness has ended. IU has obtained permission to travel to Cuba this spring for an 11 day course. Wish I could go along!
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○ U.S. drops 13 places in press freedom ranking, to #46 out of 180 countries measured
Do the really, really, really angry Cuban-Americans even have an argument for keeping Cuba embargoed? Are we trying to institute regime change, as if the Castro brothers are a military menace and use poison gas on their people? Are they hoping for reparations for the nationalization of their property? Do they still worry about Che exporting communism?
Not that they need a real reason. I just wonder what they say.
#2 The mob wants their hotel-casinos back.
An EU move would isolate the US as the only nation not having regular diplomatic relations with Cuba.
Lots of Cuban-Americans would like free access to Cuba. It’s just the grandstanding politicians standing in the way, trying to keep the Cold War alive.
Having normal diplomatic relations with every nation on the planet would be a major achievement by January 2017. So would repealing two AUMFs and a PATRIOT Act.
Two Patriot Acts!
two words: primary challenge
Cuba won’t be part of any such challenge.. One of the reasons it’s taking so long to have a sane policy is that the only people who really care are against sane policy. Which makes sanity a losing stand in Florida, and no one cares anywhere else. Including New Jersey
Well the longstanding Cuban community in NJ is why Menendez, who is from that community, takes the “FL” standard line; but, as you say, no one else cares, and the younger generation has moved on. That’s why I say primary challenge – to challenge on other issues; why not?
Of all the issues, this one is the biggest no-brainer. It’s just insane to trade with china and continue this insane blockade of cuba. There’s just NO argument for not ending the embargo that makes any sense for any faction of the political spectrum.
something like 55% favor normalizing relations but in Florida that rises to the mid 60s. The old argument for dems not ending it was the right wing miami exilio but that argument is dead on arrival now.
And there’s a ton of otherwise right wing jerks who have been gung ho for ending the embargo since the bush adminstration, e.g. Jeff Flake.
It’ll happen.
There’s money in it.
Watch.
I was there in late 2010. Cuba puts the rest of the Carribean to shame in terms of…in terms of just about everything. Always has. The tourism potential is enormous and the poverty is not they same sort of grinding poverty that you see in U.S.-dominated countries in the area. It’s different. Prouder and less criminal in expression. Smarter. Less beaten down. The Chinese were already heavy on the ground in Havana by late 2010. Investing. Bet on it. Canadian and Western European tourist hotels were busily building as well. There is now probably some Korean money headed that way as well.
Why is the U.S. corporate-owned PermaGov not already in with both feet?Because it is now almost always a day late and a dollar short. That’s what happens with age and girth. But if you think that the current U.S. movement towards some sort of detente with Cuba is humanitarian in its intent, I got a couple of bridges to sell you in Brooklyn.
Cheap.
Follow the money.
Always.
AG
And right about PermaGov being hobbled by girth and age. We see a similar dynamic wrt Iran. The PermaGov elements behind Obama see the necessity of changing with the times to keep up with the more multipolar world developing, it’s also profitable expanding business. However, in addition to girth and age, the US also has a bad case of the zios. The US body politic is starting to realize and reject the insincere formulations presented by the propaganda purveyors in the media manipulation snowstorms. The strength of the spinners is seen as ‘Mile wide, but inch deep’ now. The collapse of the duplicitous mindset in the public awareness isn’t too far in the future.
We’ll see. I hope you’re right.
AG
And another thing.
Menendez is deep into Dominican Republic money. The recent prostitution smear against in the DR…if it was a smear… and his cushy deals with the good doctor Melgen are all you really need to know about him. Melgen? Check him out.
That’s a whole lotta ophthalmology, Doc!!!
More? Sure. (Same link.)
That’s a lotta oversight, Bobby boy!!! For two flights? What>?You dunno about Travelocity?
Spook City.
Bet on it.
Saaayyy…I wonder if he knew Bebe Rebozo?
Nice work. Spraying money around like Kool Aid. “Dese guys are good for it, Bob>” said someone. Bet on that as well.
She used Melgen’s business and home addresses when she drove into tickets? She’s “a very hard working, very talented actress and singer and dancer, and that’s the only thing I can tell you?” Riiiiight…
If Cuba opens up the DR will immediately look like New Jersey in comparison. Just like Menendez does now. Down goes the pork. Pork pulls, and Menendez pulls pork. Where there’s smoke, there’s BBQ. When it smells like pork and people like Menendez and Melgen are involved? It’s the Porkbarrel Polka, PermaGov style!!!
Like Christie only with even less class.
A new slogan for New Jersey.
A bipartisan state of mind.
i guess somebody has to be the bad guys.
Thank you, Chris Christie and Bob Menendez!!!
Thank you.
AG
Great digging, AG. The pettiness is what is so embarrassing, I guess. This is our fair country? The very verdant lands of my youth? Let there be a lesson here. Good growing conditions often entail the necessity of pulling up weeds! The Garden State has been tasked.
That Sopranos pic is perfect. If we can connect the entertaining dream world that people live in with the real world that ‘Christie’ inhabits (and we all feel via the downstream effects), it could be a really good thing.
That was what made “The Sopranos” so good. They were so close to something that people actually believe exists…and it does exist, I’m a musician and I’ve worked for people like that so many times I can’t count them…that suspension of disbelief was easy. Suspension of disbelief in troglodytes like Menedez, Christie and Dr. Mengele…errr, ahhh, Melgen…is becoming easier as a result. Bush II, Cheney, Rove, etc…they have acted as like breakers. They are so obviously wrong that even dummies are beginning to smell the horses hit.
AG
A case of Life imitating Art.
and those stares.
Do actors lose some of their soul when they go so deep? Do little traces linger, to resurface, bursting forth inconveniently at weak times against unsuspecting innocents?
Charitably, there was an argument for Cuba being an outlaw satellite of the Soviet Union. That argument died with the Soviet Union. Unless Putin somehow gets control of Cuba.