Cuba

[....lybob]

And a Merry Christmas to you too!

Festivus for the rest of us

[OCinBuffalo]

And on a side note: Barry better hope Hillary doesn't need Florida.

I would submit that this is very far from a side note. FL wins elections, and Cubans win FL.

 

I wonder how the "demographics for Democrats" myth supporters are going to feel when the Cubans in FL, having slowly degraded over time in terms of staunch R support and turnout, suddenly are re-energized by this, and return to Reagan-era voting performance, and win the 3 Miami counties that no R has won since then?

 

This Cuba stuff may actually be the final nail for the "demographics" myth...although i know the far-left will keep saying it.

[B-Man]

And this would be the Washington Post editorial board.

 

 

 

President Obama’s ‘betrayal’ of Cuban democrats

Washington Post, by Editorial

 

Original Article

 

 

PRESIDENT OBAMA said he decided to normalize relations with Cuba because “we can do more to support the Cuban people and promote our values through engagement.” So it’s important to know the reaction of those Cubans who have put their lives on the line to fight for democracy and human rights. Many have supported engagement and opposed the U.S. embargo. But they are now pretty much unanimous in saying that the way Mr. Obama has gone about this is a mistake.

 

Actually, “mistake” is the polite word

of the Ladies in White, an astonishingly courageous group of women who march each week in support of political prisoners. “Betrayal” was the term used by several others, who asked why Mr. Obama had chosen to lift economic restrictions and dispatch an ambassador without requiring the “significant steps toward democracy” he once said must precede liberalization.

 

Guillermo Fariñas, the general director of the dissidents’ United Anti-Totalitarian Front, told reporters in Havana that Mr. Obama had promised in a November 2013 meeting with himself and Ms. Soler that any U.S. action on Cuba “would be consulted with civil society and the nonviolent opposition. Obviously this didn’t happen . . . they didn’t take into account Cuban democrats.”

 

The negative response from the people whom Mr. Obama portrays as the beneficiaries of his initiative is one reason to question his contention that Cuba should be treated like China and Vietnam, two Communist nations with which the United States normalized diplomatic and economic relations decades ago. The United States was not able to join with opposition movements in those countries in demanding democratic reforms as part of a normalization process because, at the time, such movements barely existed in either place. In Cuba’s case, the opportunity was there.

 

 

More at the link:

 

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Edited December 20, 2014 by B-Man

[DC Tom]

If everyone who called you an ahole were menstruating the streets would be rivers of blood

 

Most people don't get so worked up about it when I mock gatorman, though.

[GG]

It failed to make it easy for me to enjoy a Cuban beach with a glass of Cuban rum in one hand and a Cuban cigar in the other, you POS sponge !@#$er!

 

It's given birth to a nice cigar industry in Dominican and other islands' rums aren't too shabby.

[blzrul]

Funny how everyone's panties are in a bunch over inconsequential little island. Whoop de doo. There are TONS worse human rights violations going on all over the world - suddently they're an ISSUE with conservatives (but only the Cuban ones)? Yeh. It's not 1962 any more. Get over it.

[meazza]

It failed to make it easy for me to enjoy a Cuban beach with a glass of Cuban rum in one hand and a Cuban cigar in the other, you POS sponge !@#$er!

 

Throw in a bit of violent diarrhea. The food in Cuba, even at 5 star resorts is terrible.

[Chef Jim]

Funny how everyone's panties are in a bunch over inconsequential little island. Whoop de doo. There are TONS worse human rights violations going on all over the world - suddently they're an ISSUE with conservatives (but only the Cuban ones)? Yeh. It's not 1962 any more. Get over it.

Glad to see you can still follow along as you used to. We don't have an issue with who or where these human rights and lack of democracy are taking place. We (at least I do) think that this is going to do nothing to change the issue in Cuba or anyplace else. Despots will be despots and "normalizing" relations with them will do nothing to change that. Continues to show that this administration is clueless regarding how the real world works. Remember that reset button thingy? How did that embarrassingly stupid act work out for us?

 

It's given birth to a nice cigar industry in Dominican and other islands' rums aren't too shabby.

Coolest distillery tour I ever took. http://www.bareboatsbvi.com/cgb_callwood_distillery.html

[DC Tom]

Funny how everyone's panties are in a bunch over inconsequential little island. Whoop de doo. There are TONS worse human rights violations going on all over the world - suddently they're an ISSUE with conservatives (but only the Cuban ones)? Yeh. It's not 1962 any more. Get over it.

 

I hope you're not including me in "everyone." I think this is long overdue.

[B-Large]

It was old, outdated policy that needed to be scrapped. Only the people of Cuba can make change in their country, and only if they are willing to put everything on the line to do it.

 

 

Does this mean I can get Cigars now?

[Jim in Anchorage]

It was old, outdated policy that needed to be scrapped. Only the people of Cuba can make change in their country, and only if they are willing to put everything on the line to do it.

 

 

Does this mean I can get Cigars now?

Who cares about cigars. I want to bring over some of those cream puff 57 Chevys.

[/dev/null]

[Nanker]

Ah, yes. The Sean Penn school of diplomacy. Works every time.

 

FORWARD!

[Trump_is_Mentally_fit]

I would submit that this is very far from a side note. FL wins elections, and Cubans win FL.

 

I wonder how the "demographics for Democrats" myth supporters are going to feel when the Cubans in FL, having slowly degraded over time in terms of staunch R support and turnout, suddenly are re-energized by this, and return to Reagan-era voting performance, and win the 3 Miami counties that no R has won since then?

 

This Cuba stuff may actually be the final nail for the "demographics" myth...although i know the far-left will keep saying it.

Ya, if that Cuban kid's father in 2000 hadn't of wanted his son back, Al Gore probably would have won Florida

[3rdnlng]

Ya, if that Cuban kid's father in 2000 hadn't of wanted his son back, Al Gore probably would have won Florida

 

That and so many Gore supporters' confusion regarding how to punch a ballot.

[B-Man]

BYRON YORK: In Cuba deal, why did Obama back down on political prisoners?

 

 

Barack Obama has long believed United States Cuba policy should change; he so when he first ran for president in 2008. Back then, though, Sen. Obama stressed that the U.S. should hold Cuba to a number of stringent conditions before even beginning to normalize relations. The first of those conditions was freedom for Cuba’s political prisoners.

Obama laid out his proposal in a May 23, 2008 speech in Miami. Noting the “unanswered cries of the political prisoners heard from the jails of Havana,” Obama said his policy toward Cuba “will be guided by one word: libertad.”

 

“The road to freedom for all Cubans must begin with justice for Cuba’s political prisoners,” Obama said. The value of the U.S. embargo against Cuba, Obama went on to explain, is that it “provides us with the leverage to present the regime with a clear choice: If you take significant steps towards democracy, beginning with the freeing of all political prisoners, we will take steps to begin normalizing relations.”

 

Beginning with the freeing of all political prisoners. It was a pretty clear demand. Only after freedom was granted would Obama begin normalizing relations.

 

Fast forward six and a half years. In an address from the Cabinet Room Wednesday, President Obama announced that he would “begin to normalize relations” with Cuba through “the most significant changes in our policy in more than fifty years.” But the president did not insist on freedom for all political prisoners, which had once been a requirement for even the first steps toward normalization.

 

 

I wish that Senator Obama fellow were President. He seemed fairly sensible.

 

 

.

[Pine Barrens Mafia]

Funny how everyone's panties are in a bunch over inconsequential little island. Whoop de doo. There are TONS worse human rights violations going on all over the world - suddently they're an ISSUE with conservatives (but only the Cuban ones)? Yeh. It's not 1962 any more. Get over it.

 

You mean like Saudi Arabia? Yeah, not a fan of them either, but apparently BO is:

 

 

Seems ol' Hussein just can't find a dictator he doesn't like. Why should Cuba be any different, right?

[DC Tom]

Beginning with the freeing of all political prisoners. It was a pretty clear demand. Only after freedom was granted would Obama begin normalizing relations.

 

Like anyone takes his conditions or ultimatums seriously after Syria's "red line."

[OCinBuffalo]

Funny how everyone's panties are in a bunch over inconsequential little island. Whoop de doo. There are TONS worse human rights violations going on all over the world - suddently they're an ISSUE with conservatives (but only the Cuban ones)? Yeh. It's not 1962 any more. Get over it.

"Everyone's" panties are irrelevant. The Cuban vote in Florida is not. Per B-Man's link above, Cubans in FL panties are bunched. So the real question is: when the Rs win FL in 2016, are you going to get over it?

 

Or...because Ds are still clinging to the "demographics say we should never lose FL" are we going to have to go through another sore loser, waste of time recount, in Florida like we did in 2000?

Ya, if that Cuban kid's father in 2000 hadn't of wanted his son back, Al Gore probably would have won Florida

Ya, and if 600k registered Ds hadn't voted green in FL, and voted for Gore, Gore would have won FL.

 

The far left screwed Ds royally in 2000, like they always do. Then Ds respond by nominating a far-left demagogue, complete incompetent in Obama, and you want to blame everybody but yourselves, yet again?

 

I am bored with Ds never taking responsibility for anything that they do to themselves, that has nothing to do with us, Rs, or the rest of the USA.

 

Own the fact that this Cuba thing is yet another stupid, Obama's Great Distraction cannard, because that's precisely what it is. And, when it helps lose you FL, don't blame anybody but Obama.

 

Cuba is part of the Great Distraction: Democrats tactic to avoid the big, losing issues for Democrats, like entitlement reform, structural unemployment, natinonal debt, foreign policy, China in general. So, instead we get Global Warming(the least cared about issue in the country), War on Women, Racism, and now.....Cuba.

 

Democrats in the Federal Government have been running away from every major Federal Government issue( Harry Reid not allowing a vote on anything important) since 2010. Only an unmitigated moron can't see the Great Distraction for what it is = a way to keep power without having to do anything publicly, What they did do from 2009-2010 is so awful, and has failed so badly, no Democrat WANTS to vote FOR anything else....that will be used against them when it fails.

Edited December 24, 2014 by OCinBuffalo

[meazza]