Castro, 1; Obama, big zero!

The American Thinker ^ | December 18, 2014 | Silvio Canto, Jr.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

My cell phone has been going off for hours with messages and angry conversations with fellow Cuban-Americans and conservatives in the U.S.

I hear this question over and over: what did the U.S. get out of this deal?

The answer is nothing, unless you are one of those who believes that the Castro regime is about to reform the economy, allow an independent media, and hold multi-party elections.

I have a unique perspective on this issue. I can address it as a Cuban-American and as a U.S. citizen. In other words, I want the best for those on the island and in my adopted homeland, the U.S.

It's great to see that Alan Gross is finally home. He was incarcerated on bogus espionage charges. I do not understand why we released three Cubans sitting in U.S. prisons for real acts of espionage. It's an insult to the rule of law to put Mr. Gross and these three spies on the same sentence.

As a Cuban-American, I can tell you that normalizing relations will have little impact on the Cuban people. Everything of consequence in Cuba is owned by the Castro family or the military, as Professor Suchlicki pointed out recently:

Money from American tourists would flow into businesses owned by the Castro government thus strengthening state enterprises. The tourist industry is controlled by the military and General Raul Castro.

Tourist dollars would be spent on products, i.e., rum, tobacco, etc., produced by state enterprises, and tourists would stay in hotels owned partially or wholly by the Cuban government.

The principal airline shuffling tourists around the island, Gaviota, is owned and operated by the Cuban military.

[SNIP]

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Al Neuharth: Why is China OK, but Cuba 'enemy'?

Fidel Castro - Cuba

[ifinnegan]

China’s not ok.

How many times do we want to open Pandora’s box?

[867V309]

Cuba is the next diversion from the last diversion.

[pepsionice]

If Castro had said free and open elections in 2015, and it came to pass...then we’d all be open to this idea. He hasn’t said that.

So, let’s write 2015/2016 as a script.

Some former and retired Democratic Senator will be pushed down to Havana to write the new treaty. It’ll be a quick six-week deal, and the President will sign it by April/May of 2015. It’ll get sent to the Senate for ratification. A vote will occur by October...70-25 against the treaty. Even Democrats will come up against it.

Somewhere by June of 2015, the President will come to visit Havana. There’s already a group working on project (my humble guess) and planning out a visit to some memorial, with a visit to some sugar cane field, and the President attending a Havana baseball game. Live coverage by CNN, NBC and ABC.

Big US money coming into Cuba? Well...there’s a couple of thug-like characters with inside connections to the White House and pretending it’ll all be big profits from the new venture. Where exactly is big profits going to emerge? Sugar? Tobacco? Hotels on the edge of some disaster economic zone? Baseball?

I can think of forty better island places to visit. There are two or three dozen European-invested hotel resorts already there, and a dozen-odd passenger jets that land weekly from Germany, France, and Russia. They stay mostly in protected compound areas which are on nicely landscaped beaches. A Disney ship landing in Havana? Maybe, but what exactly will you be going to see?

It’s like a WWE-wrestling script. Good guys and bad guys are virtually the same....just wrestling for an audience and pretending it’s all theater for people to watch. That’s it.

[informavoracious]

Just wait until they start letting in all of Cuba’s refuse as refugees and grant them amnesty, too. They’re used to living under a Communist dictatorship.

[Seeing More Clearly Now]

Obama was instllaed into the presidency by Communist keepers. What else is there to know?

[RginTN]

who controls Cuba’s prostitution business, the Castro brothers?

[Cincinatus' Wife]

I didn’t say it was, Al Neuharth did....

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Cuba is the next diversion from the last diversion.

It's the Socialist in Chief lining up his allies (while trying to kill off our traditional associations with free market allies).

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Just wait until they start letting in all of Cuba’s refuse as refugees and grant them amnesty, too. They’re used to living under a Communist dictatorship.

This will make it easier to import all the "doctors" the Cuban Communist Regime has manufactured as exports across the world - they're there to cure us from capitalism.

As Americans stop going into medicine, communist Cuban doctors and medical assistants will flood in to fill that vacuum.

Thousands of these "doctors" (and advisers) were sent to Venezuela to help push a once thriving nation into total communist collapse.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

They control everything.

[Ronin]

It’s really pretty simple, you know. All this really amounts to is Obama proving that he is still important despite his “lame duck” status. If he can’t do anything constructive, he can still set fire to a few trash cans and watch everyone freak out.

[seawolf101]

And Boner cried wee wee wee wee all the way home to the House of Representatives.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Russia.

Iran.

Cuba.

[Sacajaweau]

Good point

I love his speech where he says the Pope gives it moral clarity.

[Sacajaweau]

I predict 10,000 instant refugees. Let’s see...which state would po the politicians the most....Texas or Arizona??

[caveat emptor]

Like under Jimmuh Cahtah. From Wiki:

The Mariel boatlift was a mass emigration of Cubans who departed from Cuba's Mariel Harbor for the United States between April 15 and October 31, 1980.

The event was precipitated by a sharp downturn in the Cuban economy which led to internal tensions on the island and a bid by up to 10,000 Cubans to gain asylum in the Peruvian embassy.

The Cuban government subsequently announced that anyone who wanted to leave could do so, and an exodus by boat started shortly afterward. The exodus was organized by Cuban-Americans with the agreement of Cuban president Fidel Castro. The exodus started to have negative political implications for U.S. president Jimmy Carter when it was discovered that a number of the exiles had been released from Cuban jails and mental health facilities. The Mariel boatlift was ended by mutual agreement between the two governments involved in October 1980. By that point, as many as 125,000 Cubans had made the journey to Florida

And from the UK Independent in 1994:

During the so-called Mariel crisis - named after the Cuban port from which the refugees sailed - 14 years ago President Castro sent 125,000 Cubans to the US. Many were later discovered to be violent criminals, identifiable by their prison tattoos between their thumbs and their forefingers.

[gasport]

I have worked with Cuban "doctors".

The words arrogant, surly and incompetent come to mind.

[Rummyfan]

I hear this question over and over: what did the U.S. get out of this deal?

The answer is nothing

Gave away the store for NOTHING in return.

[IamConservative]

Obama is probably jealous of the Castro brothers ~ “Those boys sure know how to run a country.”