Cuba: Close But No Cigars
Okay, I have a theory that President Obama agreed to recognize Cuba just to piss off Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio.
It worked like a fifty dollar hammer on a greased nail.
They both swooned, clutched their chests, and little spittle things came out of the sides of their mouths. It was adorable!
Hell, we forgave Japan in less time than we forgave Cuba.
But, the one I enjoyed the most is Good Ole Tom DeLay. We have surrendered!
“This is surrender,” DeLay said. “This is a president who is a socialist to begin with reaching out to his socialist friends and opening up relationships with one of the most oppressive regimes in the world. The only worse one I can think of right now is North Korea.”
Really? North Korea? That’s the best you can do?
Now, I wouldn’t find this such a big deal if not for this.
2005, Time Magazine —
Arguing against loosening sanctions against Cuba last year, DeLay warned that Fidel Castro “will take the money. Every dime that finds its way into Cuba first finds its way into Fidel Castro’s blood-thirsty hands…. American consumers will get their fine cigars and their cheap sugar, but at the cost of our national honor.”
Tom DeLay / Honor. That right there is the only time you will ever see those words together.
“American consumers will get their fine cigars…”
I’m willing to give Tom DeLay a little leeway here, because he had to smoke those “fine” Cuban cigars so he could to speak from experience.
1I trust he’ll be one of the first to join an all expenses paid fact finding mission when Trump Havana Towers & Casino opens it’s doors in 2017.
He should lead cruz and rubio back to cuba as boat people.
2With the resumption of normal relations, can we deport Ted’s daddy for sneaking into the country? And for being a godawful nuisance?
3North Korea, huh? He must have totally forgot about Saudi Arabia and China.
Maybe those cigars are just sweeter when he knows the average person cannot get them. Now that they may be on the open market just takes the fun right out of it.
4Shucks, hey you Cuba crabsters! My Canadian family has been in Cuba for decades. Thats just a mild look-out. Canada has been investing in Cuba for years, just like they invest everywhere else. They are so well situated and comfortable in Cuba that they have built an airport down there. Thats something Americans should know. If American business thinks it can just go down there and move right in and make a killing, well, look out Nelly! There biggest durned competition will be our good neighbors to the north!
5I’ll wager Putin isn’t too pleased with the Yanks cozying up to their soviet satellite. So now while the Russian economy tanks and the rest of the world isolates it due ti its “outreach in Ukraine, the US is taking steps to influence our neighbor towards the benefits of democracy.
6Vlad can’t be too happy having to share those Cubans with
Amerikanskis.
Tom Delay is relevent how? How does this criminal’s comments even get reported?
7I bought cuban cigars in Mexico, easy peasy.
Ahhhh, maryelle, didn’t think of that. Another very good reason to befriend Cuba.
Maggie, you are right. We wasted over 50 years cutting off our nose to spite our face.
Cruz and Rubio are right, though – that embargo was going to work just any day now. Any day now. Probably about the same time the trickle down would finally start trickling down.
8@Cheryl….
Sure…. the “embargo” will work…
Heck… it’s only been 50 years.
The really weird thought process of Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz.
Makes me nuts.
9Castro doesn’t need the money – his health care is free.
10@Cheryl Ann
11Yeah Mx is easy, but if you find yourself up north say in Detroit city, go over to Ouellette Ave in Windsor, Ontario. There is a House of Havana within an easy hike of Checkpoint Charlie. When I worked in Detroit, I made the walk daily with hundreds of others who crossed the border, ate, smoked a Havana cigar, left the butt in Cdn and walked back to their lives in Detroit. Yeah thatsa effective embargo awrigthy. Oh and gasoline was cheaper in Windsor as well at the time. By a bunch.
I doubt that DeLay could recognize a socialist if Eugene Debs punched him in the nose.
12JJ, I saw what you did here. Cruz and Rubio, twin cheeks buttressing the same uh, aperture?
13@gabberflasted
And that aperture would be….. Who? one of the Pauls? rMoney? a Shrub? an aperture to be named later?
On that point were you really thinking of aperture repubs or were you thinking more like crevasse repubs?
14Rubio and Cuba, how pathetic! Seems like it doesn’t make a hoot to Rubio, where he gets his money from these day’s!
“Senator Marco Rubio and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen are two of the most outspoken Cuba travel “hall monitors” in Congress. They argue for a total ban on travel, as Senator Rubio likes to say “because it provides money to a cruel, repressive, and murderous regime.” Or, as Rep. Ros-Lehtinen puts it, the restrictions on travel to Cuba are “commonsense measures meant to prevent U.S. dollars from supporting a murderous regime that opposes U.S. security interests at every turn and which ruthlessly suppresses the most basic liberties of speech, assembly and belief.”
That’s pretty clear. At least it seemed that way until the Tampa Bay Times dropped this bombshell a few months back:
“Top aides to Sen. Marco Rubio and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, two of the most vehement anti-Communist voices in Washington, took an all-expenses paid trip to China this month courtesy of the Chinese government.”
This was not some misunderstanding. In fact, both offices confirmed the story was true. Just as the paper reported, Arthur Estopinan, chief of staff to Ros-Lehtinen, and Sally Canfield, who served as deputy chief of staff to Senator Rubio until she left his employ on December 5th, were part of a congressional staff trip facilitated by the U.S.-Asia Institute. An Institute source told the Tampa Bay Times, the trips were “paid for by the Chinese government.”
As found here:
15http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/12/18/1352659/-Sen-Rubio-and-Rep-Ros-Lehtinen-Change-Cuba-Policy-or-Give-China-Its-Money-Back
I bet the Diaz-Blowhards (represent Florida) are having s— fits, too.
16Fidel Castro is 88 and not running the country anymore. Raul Castro appears to be on his last legs. Being afraid of these two guys is conspicuously fraidy-cat even for the radical right, which runs on fear. Of course, if they didn’t have fear as an issue then they’d have no issues at all.
17Micr says-you named a number of A-holes,just keep going they all work.
18What an awkward moment this is: The Republicans are defending torture and start complaining about Cuba’s human right’s violations.
19Delay looks like a hog carrying a stick.
20Did somebody say “Lame Duck?” I just love the way our President is making those smug Rethugs’ heads explode. I wonder what else he has up his sleeve? This is going to be a lot of fun!
21People can go to Cuba. They just have to get a note from the principal. It’s time we quit being snooty with them.
22Sometimes a Cigar is just a Cigar and sometimes its a Federal Crime. Of course, Tom DeLay is a convicted criminal so that’s what those people do.
As to Cuba, nothing angers American Conservatives more than success. Right-Wingers embrace failure and proclaim it to be a Wild Success. They still claim W’s Iraq Fiasco was a stunning success.
The reason Conservatives supported the failed sanctions against Cuba was because they enjoyed hurting Cubans.
23@Al in az: Precisely – Ted Cruz may want to ask how often Cuba has kidnapped people and tortured them versus that bastion of truth and justice: the US of A under the Bush Crime League.
24At the least, we can try a little dialog to ask for a decrease in repression. If that doesn’t work, we can always reestablish the embargo….
This isn’t nuclear war. We CAN try different approaches to solve the problems, whether or not we succeed on the first try or not.
25Cruz, Rubio and all the other resisters . . . theme song for them . . . from Walt Disney’s Cinderella . . . Some day my prince will come . . .
Nuff said.
26I predict a sudden stop to all the rightwing howling over the terrible decision to recognize Cuba when the lobbyists (I usually hate them but they can be useful) start collaring “law”givers about how wonderful it would be for corporations.
27Last night on Jon Stewart’s show, Jon described the Castro brothers as such:
Castro Jr. is 83 and Fidel is sitting in a corner farting sawdust!
It was truly a LOL moment!!
28Cubans have a lot of vintage autos because embargoes prevent them from getting new ‘murrican cars. If wingnuts want to drag the country back in time by a century they’d do well to shop Cuba to get vehicles that would make them feel at home.
29@e platypus onion
My old dad always said those 55-56-57 cars would by themselves revive the post-Castro Q-ban economy. That and Meyer Lansky’s descendants making a deal to re-open the casinos and clubs in Habana.
30Accepting the fact that the Cold War is over in the Caribbean is long overdue. The US and Cuba might not like each other’s regimes (increasingly oligarchical and crony-capitalist on the one hand versus one-party mostly state-socialist police state on the other), but the two countries do have common interests, interests that have been ill-served by catering to a dwindling number of right-wing Cuban émigré intransigents who still think 50 years later that they are going to overthrow the Havana regime.
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