Obama Take Steps to Free Cuba

Thank you President Obama for having the audacity to fulfill a campaign promise once more. Isn’t it a bit refreshing to have a politician actually do what they promised for your vote? It’s almost as if he kept a record of everything he said, promised, would look into, or might consider during the brutal campaign for President. Who’d of thought he actually might act on them?

One thing that I follow is the promises President Obama made to the Cuban descent people in America, he was going to end the madness of the embargo on Cuba that should have ended twenty or more years ago. Today he made the first step towards freeing the Cuban people and I’m as happy as a pig in $H!?. Over at the White House they have this to say on the loosening of trade and relations with Cubans here in America and rebuilding relationships of people in America with Cubans and commerce back in their homeland…

Today, the Obama administration announced a series of changes in U.S. policy to reach out to the Cuban people in support of their desire to freely determine their country’s future. In taking these steps to help bridge the gap among divided Cuban families and promote the freer flow of information and humanitarian items to the Cuban people, President Obama is working to fulfill the goals he identified both during his presidential campaign and since taking office.

All who embrace core democratic values long for a Cuba that respects basic human, political and economic rights of all its citizens. President Obama believes these measures will help make that goal a reality.

Lift all restrictions on transactions related to the travel of family members to Cuba.
Remove restrictions on remittances to family members in Cuba.
Authorize U.S. telecommunications network providers to enter into agreements to establish fiber-optic cable and satellite telecommunications facilities linking the United States and Cuba.
License U.S. telecommunications service providers to enter into roaming service agreements with Cuba’s telecommunications service providers.
License U.S. satellite radio and satellite television service providers to engage in transactions necessary to provide services to customers in Cuba.
License persons subject to U.S. jurisdiction to activate and pay U.S. and third-country service providers for telecommunications, satellite radio and satellite television services provided to individuals in Cuba.
Authorize the donation of certain consumer telecommunication devices without a license.
Add certain humanitarian items to the list of items eligible for export through licensing exceptions.

- The White House

I’m Irish American but I still have contact with family back in Southern Ireland and I can not imagine a blackout of contact or even a denial by my country to visit them if I so choose for forty plus years. If I work, and work hard to earn a paycheck, then I have the right to spend my hard earned money any damn way I please. Who’s business is it if I mail a check to my daughter here in my home state to help her out with my grandchild or if I mail it to Ireland? Same goes for Cuban Americans. Its called taking care of your own. If that is wrong then I’m going to hell in a hand basket pronto! Wrap me up, I’m good to go.

Republicans are on a kick ass gripe over this issue because Communism might just be paid for by citizens in the United States just 90 miles from our shores off of Florida. Fact check for them, the Soviet Union collapsed under Communism. The Soviet Union cut Cuba off financially during the Gorbachev administration or is that fact to clear for them? The government of Cuba is collapsing now. The Castro regime can not sell the collective power to the people anymore as gospel simply because the people are not stupid. Piracy of the internet for lack of a better term is rampant in the island nation and the people can see that they have been sold a bag of goods that was rotten, mold filled, and just not worth keeping.

We won the cold war and it has been a long time since the walls in Berlin have been taken down. Thank you President Reagan for that great speech. Cuba too can be free but they can’t do it alone. It takes commerce, it takes cooperation, it takes a helping hand up out of the ditch of the 1950’s. The cold war is over, the up and coming generation of Cubans are fed up with living like paupers and they deserve better.

Besides all the gloom and doom over an Americanized Cuba, classic car collectors will spend a fortune to buy all those old Chevy and Fords still in mint working order. How the Cuban people kept them running for fifty years is something Detroit could take a lesson from.

Mark my words, Cuba will be the 51st state in the Union simply because her people desire and want the American dream. Ten years maybe fifteen but the stepping stones have just been placed in the water off of Florida and President Obama is the one that placed the first stone.

Papamoka

THE PYRRHIC "VICTORY" OVER THE SOVIET UNION

Picture courtesy of Vet Friends.com

BY MICHAEL LINN JONES

It is repeated often enough that Ronald Reagan "won" the Cold War. True, his defense policies helped push them over the edge; an edge the Soviet economy had brushed against for decades. But if one were to give proper credit for presidents who "won" the Cold War, we'd have to start with Harry Truman and go right through to George H.W. Bush. Each of those men maintained the patient but remorseless bulwark against the totalitarian regime once headquartered in the Kremlin.

Those not around in those decades would find it hard to fathom what people lived with on a daily basis. The worst case scenario was a full-blown nuclear exchange which would have made moot any point about who was right or wrong since everyone would be dead. It was a very real thing; a threat that somehow people lived with yet still managed to carry on.

But then, it might be fair to ask if those born since 1990 do not indeed have a better understanding of living with the threat of the yoke of totalitarian government.

It is a misnomer to refer to the collapse of the Soviet Union as the "collapse of communism." To do so ignores the fact that the people of China, North Korea, Cuba, and Vietnam live under communism. It's not quite two decades since the fall of the Soviet Empire, and yet here we are as a nation (and economy) in hock up to our eyebrows to China; a communist nation providing debt relief for a society that thinks itself some kind of "victor" over their form of government.

It might be said that the Cold War began in earnest in 1949. That was when China was "lost" to the communists. It was also then that the Soviet Union exploded its first atomic bomb. The Korean War would shortly follow in 1950. Communism WAS a real threat to the national security of the United States.

That, however, did not prevent the usual twisting of facts and reality by certain politicians for their own personal gain. The greatest alarmist in the early 50's was Senator Joe McCarthy, one of the all-time nihilists to serve in government. He pushed an atmosphere of fear and suspicion that lasted for years. Hence, the term "McCarthyism" to describe that era.

One example of how wacked out things were then was an experiment carried out by a political science teacher. He had his students re-word the Bill of Rights into modern language and sent them out to sign a "petition." Said petition was, of course, nothing more than what was already in the Constitution.

Amazingly (or not so amazingly if you study human behavior) very few people would sign it. It was too "controversial" for most people to sign onto. It would have put them outside the stream of acceptance, which was very important in those days. Individuality was not encouraged to say the least.

So here we are, again, at the start of a new Cold War. Calling it a "Global War on Terror" is a misnomer. It is, in fact, a war on freedom. On the face of it not many of us would argue that some freedoms might have to be "temporarily" forgotten in the overall struggle against a menace.

I don't know if you've noticed, but it seems as though every single one of the candidates for the presidency, whatever their party, do not speak of personal freedom. Oh, they might if we're talking about lowering taxes on the suffering top 1% of income earners. But not within the context of the "land of the free" America that we still worship in rhetoric but do our best to erase in deed.

There is always some group somewhere that insists that it cannot in any way, fashion, or form...be offended. And government power exists for the sole purpose of stamping out perceived affronts. And it's all so wonderful because people idiotically assume that THEIR agenda will never be touched. Too many people fall for that line of goat manure about some corporate or government entity being "on your side."

That is not so. A power granted to government by the governed is rarely returned. Government exercizes power for the benefit of itself. True, some may benefit financially but not within the realm of freedom.

This new Cold War, like the original, has a clear beginning; September 11, 2001 to be precise. Many agendas that had laid dormant burst forth like rotten Spring flowers seeking cross-pollination. And what did we do, as a people? We snored on.

This is what bothers me about the current crop of substandard candidates for the White House. NONE of them ring a bell of freedom, except to illuminate what they perceive to be a good lever for acquiring votes. It is NOT from the heart.

The fall of the Soviet Union led to a presumed sense of superiority; one that indicated no need to continue to compete with another ideology. That was the first, and perhaps biggest mistake.

We lurk in restaurants, waiting to be offended by someone using tobacco. We delight in those fast-food companies getting hammered for the fatty foods. Not only do we have "zero tolerance" for kids bringing aspirin to school, or drawing pictures of a gun, we have zero tolerance for kids, period. We must have instant adults....childish behavior is now unacceptable, even from children.

We live in an era of self-righteous prohibition that is nothing more than national navel-gazing. Yet it goes beyond that. Two examples come to mind. The first is Congresswoman Sue Myrick (R-NC) whose rhetorical question about the Patriot Act, "If you're not doing anything wrong, what do you have to worry about?" exemplifies a blindness to the dangers of expanded government power. What Ms. Myrick does not understand is that it all turns on what the word "wrong" means.

The other example comes from the Fox show COPS. I rarely watch it but it was one of those times when I couldn't look at a monitor very long or read a book, either. I see this policeman (in Broward County, Fla....it always seems to be in Broward County) cruising along.

He says something that stuck with me..."It's my business to get into other peoples' business." He pulls over a woman with a boombox system for being too loud. Then the 'ole "mind if I have a look in your car?" and within minutes he's found a whopping 22 grams of marijuana, the driver is handcuffed, weeping on the sidewalk.

I didn't feel safer watching this. It felt creepy. It was creepy because I had this flashback to the film "Dr. Zhivago." Zhivago is ripping down a wooden fence for firewood. His family is freezing. A policeman arrests him, telling Zhivago that he "has the right" to do so. Zhivago responds, "You have the authority, not the right."

I was raised with the notion that there are written laws (authority) and unwritten laws (the morally right and wrong). In the almost two decades since the demise of the Soviet Union, the United States has increasingly abandoned the unwritten for the written only. We've become obsessed with authority while placing the human condition in a straitjacket.

What a victory over totalitarianism. We are becoming that which we once defeated. Welcome to the brave new world, comrades.

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Another Lurch In the Global War On Diplomacy

Picture Courtesy of The White House

This post Stolen from Michael Linn Jones...

President George W. Bush is in Europe. And, he’s smiling. Why not? He’s not in the United States where his policies and actions have rendered him a rolling-up of the welcome mat in many places.

So, off to Europe for eight days of lecturing a number of nations in the fashion that he has become accustomed to back home. Like 70% of Americans, many around the globe just don’t get it. So President Bush is going to give another series of Jackson Square speeches that are, in the parlance of his native state, all hat and no cattle.

In trying to determine what President Bush’s strong points are, I find it best to use the process of elimination. It’s a long list, but mastery of the English language is not one. The ability to receive (let alone accept) contrary advice or opinions is another. Now I have to add diplomacy. Whatever is at stake is not going to be helped by this trip.

Jennifer Loven of AP has an article, BUSH: RUSSIANS HAVE DERAILED REFORMS .

Russian President Vladmir Putin has been in need of a lecture, and George W. Bush is just the man to deliver it.

“In Russia, reforms that once promised to empower citizens have been derailed, with troubling implications for democratic development,” Bush said, speaking at a conference of current and former dissidents.

The president asserted that this discussion of democratic backsliding in Russia under the leadership of President Vladimir Putin was just one part of a strong relationship. “America can maintain a friendship and push a nation toward democracy at the same time,” Bush said.

But the lecture, however gentle, was not likely to be well-received by Putin, already riled over what he sees as unwelcome meddling by the United States in Russia’s sphere of influence.
Most recently, Moscow has become increasingly irritated by U.S. plans to build a missile shield in Eastern Europe, on Russia’s doorstep.

U.S. officials have been alarmed by threatening statements from Putin and others over the proposed network. Russia believes the system — with a radar base to be sited in the Czech Republic and interceptor missiles in neighboring Poland — is meant for it. Putin has said he has no choice but to boost his nation’s own military potential in response.

President Putin may be a ruthless scoundrel. Then, he may not. He doesn’t appear to be a big proponent of democracy, and that is putting it mildly. But, to be fair, how would we react if the Russians established a “missile defense shield” in Cuba or Mexico, and reassured us that it was aimed at say, Bermuda instead of us?

Our president is telling the Russians that this shield is aimed at rogue states, such as Iran. He is also saying the Cold War is over. These type of statements might be addressed diplomatically. But what is regional or world stability compared to a good photo op?

There is a smell of Karl Rove to this; appropriate being that Rove is Bush’s Rasputin. There are, however, no more elections to be won. Only peace and stability and that is something that can be influenced diplomatically, but never by declarations.

Lecturing the leader of a nation like Russia is never a good idea, even in private. Doing so publicly is asking for trouble.

And I think it’s self evident that President Bush has already bitten off enough for other people to chew.

Great article Mike!!!

Papamoka

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