Charlie Crist staffer quits after fundraiser

Tampa Bay.com -- The Buzz ^ | 6-23-10 | Beth Reinhard

[kabumpo]

not only a demand for GMS, but also for bread and butter and salt and pepper — but since Cuba has no economy and the Cubans have no money and there is no free enterprise, the “Market” you are thinking about doesn’t exist.

Cuba is a concentration camp.

[Dr. Sivana]

Hmmm, think of all the pent-up demand for GM cars!

Indeed. Think they have a 1959 Buick Electra I could get?

[married21]

“Cuba is a concentration camp.”

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So is Saudi Arabia (especially if you’re female). So was China.

I’m not sure what the embargo in Cuba is accomplishing. I know the Cubans live under an evil dictatorship and stole American assets. What I’m looking for is some coherent way to sort out why we trade with some evil dictatorships and not with others. I don’t see a sane pattern here. I’d like somebody to set forth a coherent policy on this.

Also, I don’t mind using “sticks” as a policy, but what if “carrots” may be more effective in influencing those countries toward greater freedom?

[kabumpo]

But to whom do you offer the “carrot”? The Castro family and their mafia don’t want Cuba to be free — and the Cuban people are so oppressed in ways that you can’t even conceive that they can’t respond to the “carrot” — they would need to be free in the first place in which case they wouldn’t need the “carrot” —

You can’t offer a “carrot” to donkey that muzzled, hog-tied and blindfolded. Or you can. but the donkey can’t choose the carrot.

[kabumpo]

No, Saudi Arabia is not a concentration camp, even for women — it is oppressive and has draconian laws — but the peop;le are not kept in a state of constant hunger with no resources — you don’t get arrested for normal human activity like trying to get food with money that you have worked for.

[Dr. Sivana]

This thing about the Castros being old and about to die is a canard that I have been hearing about Cuba since I began to go there (as a writer/researcher) in the early 1980s.

Maybe. But at least Fidel and Raoul have to die eventually.

It’s about to finally go under now —

Now THAT's the one I have heard since the '80's. I wish Reagan tried the blockade, that might have pushed them ovver the edge. Unfortunately, we had Boland and the Dems largely tying Reagan's hands. Cuba made mischief in Nicaragua and Grenada as well.

I regret that we have spent so much of our energy of Iraq and Afghanistan when in many ways Venezuela and Red China are the bigger threats.

[kabumpo]

The death of Fidek and Raul is not relevant to the Cuban situation. Again, it’s not Oz where the land of the Munchkins can be liberated by the death of a witch.
How many Soviet leaders died and the system stayed in place?
It’s only fascist systems (Nazi Germany, Franco’s Spain) that are magically changed by the death of a leader.

he poeple who in the ‘80s were saying that the system was about to go under didn’t even know ethe system — most had never even been there.
Right now Cuba is like the South at the end of the civil war — there isn’t evn food for the tourists. This is the moment to push even harder.