Cuba Libre

Walter Russell Mead explains why the Cuban leadership wants to go slow on normalization and believes the new Republican Congress is a useful counterweight to Obama:

They understand—nobody better—that many of the provisions of the embargo have been enacted into law by Congress, and despite an evolving consensus on the right that the Cuban embargo has passed its sell-by date, the new Congress is unlikely to go very far very fast in dismantling the complicated legal limits on economic relations.

That’s a good thing from a Cuban point of view, not a bad one. The Castro government isn’t dying to have hundreds of thousands of well-heeled Cuban-Americans descending on Havana and buying the island back as foreign investors. Fidel and Raul have never wanted a total end to the embargo; they have understood for decades that the embargo acts to protect their socialist experiment. If the U.S. repealed the embargo, the Cuban government would have to choose between two unattractive courses. It could move toward normal and open economic relations with the United States, swamping its underdeveloped and scrawny local economy with gringo dollars and influence (with Miami Cubans leading the charge), or it would have to enact a tight set of regulations aimed at keeping American and Cuban American money and investors from overwhelming the island. That would make it crystal clear to every Cuban citizen that the Cuban government needs to keep the island isolated and poor in order to protect its grip on power.

Cuba’s strategic objective has always been to keep the embargo up and to make the embargo look like America’s fault. 

 

Comments

[Jeff Dobbs]

Primero

[clarice]

Maybe. I'd not invest a penny there even if the embargo were lifted--See Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, Venezuela. Every thing you build there can be nationalized in a snap.
I have been watching the Alan Gross case from the outset--he went there as a contractor for the USIA and this Administration did NOTHING to help him though he rotted there for 5 yrs. He's now dying ). Our sharpies failed to throw out the children of the Cuban officials here on visas, to limit UN delegations to a few miles radius of UN hq, etc. NOTHING. Now they traded him for three spies.. Dishusting idiots.

[Extraneus]

Second among many.

[Threadkiller]

Maybe we will get the low down on Ted Cruz's dad.

[clarice]

I was primero but typapad ate my post.

The trade was stupid..the failure to do ONE damned thing to get Gross out of Cuba before now as he's dying is a disgrace.

[Sandy--I Stand with Walker 2016--Daze ن]

YCSTA: Disgusting idiots.

But it is more than that, isn't it, aren't they

malevolent disgusting idiots ?

[Old Lurker]

Is it legal?

[Old Lurker]

Daily Caller: In a speech held at the same time as President Barack Obama’s televised speech announcing a normalization of relations with Cuba, Cuban dictator Raul Castro urged Obama to use “executive action” to bypass Congressional policy on Cuba. USA Today’s Gregory Korte first caught the comments: Raul Castro urges President Obama to use “executive action” to lift congressionally imposed sanctions on Cuba.

[GMax]

WRM is wrong, why would communists with a firm grasp on all the levers of power worry about money coming into the country? They can expropriate it at the time of their choosing. Hugo and now Maduro have demonstrated how easy that is done.

[Jeff Dobbs]

clarice:
I was primero but typapad ate my post.

Well, typepad works for me.

(super secret double meaning there)

[Skoot]

The ray gun on the desk below the Che portrait looks like something Steve Stevens would use in one of his guitar solos.

[RickB]

GMax,

Maduro doesn't need any more sugar cane but he does need cash. BOzo is just replacing the Maduro commie prop with an Obama commie prop.

[GMax]

I believe he means it, and the vote count will mean this is just one more meaningless gesture on Zero's part:

“I anticipate I’ll be the chairman of the Western Hemisphere subcommittee on the Foreign Relations Committee” in the new Congress, Florida Senator Marco Rubio said in a press conference hours after the release of American prisoner Alan Gross from a Cuban prison was announced along with the administration’s plans to normalize relations with Cuba, including opening an embassy there.

“I anticipate we’re going to have a very interesting couple of years discussing how you’re going to get an ambassador nominated and how you’ll get an embassy funded,” Rubio, an ardent opponent of lifting the Cuban embargo, said.

“I intend to use every tool at our disposal in the majority to unravel as many of these changes as possible,” Rubio said…

“This Congress is not going to lift the embargo,” Rubio said.

Emphasis added by bolding.

[sylvia]

Well, typepad works for me.

I knew there was something fishy going on.

[jimmyk]

Reposted inadvertently (thanks, typepad) multiple times in the last thread:

It's reasonable to say the trade sanctions with Cuba haven't been all that effective (at least in bringing about the demise of the regime), but surely Bozo could extract some concessions in exchange for ending them. I hope Congress insists on that.

And I don't think we should have normal relations with any country that does not let its citizens emigrate.

[clarice]

Or which keeps a USIA contractor in prison as he slowly dies of cancer for 5 years on trumped up charges.

[Iggy]

I was willing to give WRM credit fora fairly sensible article til I came to this;

While their execrable failures as economic leaders and planners will keep the Castros out of the front ranks of the modernizing tyrants, the future will tell us to which class of dictator the Castro brothers belong.

These animals have run their very own murderous little island Gulag for fifty+ years, undermined neighbors and countries around the world, including shipping thousands of black soldiers to slaughter Africans in Angola and elsewhere, treated blacks and gays like pariahs in Cuba and used drugs and drug money to harm us and support themselves, not to mention the slight issue of letting the Soviets make a make a nuclear guided missile cruiser of their island with the missiles pointed at us.
I'd say it's a little late for them to salvage their position as anything other than the murderous, torturing, backward scum they are.

[Sue]

Someone on twitter is worried about Cuba's top notch healthcare system being overwhelmed with all these Americans rushing there.

[Miss Marple]

O/T but important. A guy was on the radio ("Chicks on the Right if you want to hear the replay) and he has gone through the details of Governor Mike Pence's supposedly conservative Medicaid expansion that he announced this spring.

It includes maternity, dental and vision (which a lot of people paying for Obamacare don't have) and those who are on it will only pay THREE DOLLARS a month. (Some incentive to keep people off welfare, huh?). He said it is going to wreck Indiana's budget as it will cost $2.9 billion over the next 7 years.

I TOLD you guys. Told you, told you.

Pence is going to Israel over the Christmas holidays, I guess to drum up support from evangelicals and polish his foreign policy credentials.

I would vote for Jeb Bush before this guy. He is really a sneak and a fake.

That is all.

[Iggy]

So is that, like, the real sylvia up there?

[Threadkiller]

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/394900/usaid-chief-who-promoted-cuban-democracy-resigns-joel-gehrke

Splendid

[Extraneus]

Well, at least they held Che Guevara in a position of high honor.

[clarice]

Worked for Chavez. I'd say it worked for Castro, too, but I believe he went to Spain for treatment.

[Miss Marple]

I am not computer-savvy enough to know if this makes sense, but Wired has some interesting analysis:

http://www.wired.com/2014/12/north-korea-did-not-hack-sony-probs/

[Jeff Dobbs]

Ok, this right here is funny:

Well, typepad works for me.

I knew there was something fishy going on.
Posted by: sylvia | December 17, 2014 at 05:29 PM

I love you whoever spoofed that sylvia response above. Brilliant!

Why? Well...

*******************************

Hmmm. Who's to know? Maybe Typepad would have a comment on it.
Posted by: sylvia | September 21, 2010 at 11:16 PM

*******************************

Okay just to update you, I have written Typepad about my problem with Tom Maguire and asked that they take some action.

I asked their help in convincing Tom that he has to remove comments that deal with stalking off his web site.
Posted by: sylvia | September 22, 2010 at 11:55 PM

*******************************

More updates.

I emailed Typepad about Tom Maguire yesterday and a woman wrote back to me and confirmed that any such abusive comments that refer to where a person lives, etc is against Typepad policy.
Posted by: sylvia | September 24, 2010 at 12:05 PM

*******************************

Aw,sylvia,I'm so happy for you to have gotten a response from Typepad. I'm sure that made you feel special.

Get well soon.

Love,
Me
Posted by: hit and run | September 24, 2010 at 12:43 PM

*******************************

No what makes me feel better Hit, is that Tom's colleagues are aware of the problem and hopefully, if they are legit, will talk to Tom about it.
Posted by: sylvia | September 24, 2010 at 12:48 PM

*******************************

This ends with Typepad making it onto your "maybe" list as a cybot troll,doesn't it?
Posted by: hit and run | September 24, 2010 at 12:56 PM

*******************************

[Ben]

No one can snark some spelunking debunking. C'mon. Dig it !

What a fabulist. This is what happens when cousins marry.

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/unmasking-Ferguson-witness-40-496236

"McElroy’s tale was met with skepticism by the investigators, who reminded her that it was a crime to lie to federal agents. When questioned about inconsistencies in her story, McElroy was resolute about her vivid, blow-by-blow description of the deadly Brown-Wilson confrontation. “I know what I seen,” she said. “I know you don’t believe me.”

When asked what she was doing in Ferguson--which is about 30 miles north of her home--McElroy explained that she was planning to “pop in” on a former high school classmate she had not seen in 26 years. Saddled with an incorrect address and no cell phone, McElroy claimed that she pulled over to smoke a cigarette and seek directions from a black man standing under a tree. In short order, the violent confrontation between Brown and Wilson purportedly played out in front of McElroy.

Despite an abundance of red flags, state prosecutors put McElroy in front of the Ferguson grand jury the day after her meeting with the federal officials. After the 12-member panel listened to a tape of her interview conducted at the FBI office, McElroy appeared and, under oath, regaled the jurors with her eyewitness claims.

McElroy’s grand jury testimony came to an abrupt end at 2:30 that afternoon due to obligations of some grand jurors. But before the panel broke for the day, McElroy revealed that, “On August 9th after this happened when I got home, I wrote everything down on a piece of paper, would that be easier if I brought that in?”

[Threadkiller]

http://www.newsweek.com/alan-grosss-spying-how-much-did-obama-know-292999

[Iggy]

Mark Perry of Carpe Diem asks a difficult question; why aren't speculators getting credit for falling oil prices?
Many times I've asked people who grouse about the greedy oil companies when prices are rising, why they don't give them a pat on the back when prices are falling.
Haven't gotten an answer yet.

[Miss Marple]

http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/douglas-murray/2014/12/from-australia-to-peshawar-islamic-extremism/

Super article about what this war is about and how damaging the Feinstein report was.

[Sue]

Iggy,

Send that question to Bill O'Reilly.

[Iggy]

--McElroy’s tale was met with skepticism by the investigators, who reminded her that it was a crime to lie to federal agents.--

IIRC she was debunked and disregarded by nearly everyone involved long before the GJ made its decision.
Is there a shred of evidence they used any of her testimony to come to their decision, when they had numerous local and credible witnesses who confirmed Wilson's story to rely on?

[Extraneus]

Speculators you say?

[Sue]

Again, seen on twitter, can we get the NK's to threaten the Keeping Up With the Kardashians so they will pull that show?

[Iggy]

--Iggy,

Send that question to Bill O'Reilly.--

Got any anthrax I could borrow? :)

[Extraneus]

Hillary must have made a bundle day-trading today.

[Miss Marple]

http://www.truthrevolt.org/news/michelle-o-racist-target-shopped-asked-help-taking-something-high-shelf

If you go to the link, you will find that 2 years ago, speaking on Letterman, the same story was charming and funny.

[Stephanie - Should a man offer a lady a tiparillo to celebrate? Rapist!]

Shep is worried that we'll ruin Cuba with Taco Bell and Wal Mart. Ho lee sheit he's the stoopit.

[jimmyk]

The NSA is watching, Iggy.

I'm sure the speculators are causing this too, only to give themselves another chance to buy low and sell high when they cause the price to go up. Or something.

[NKtesting]

Iggy, I strongly disagree about speculators. The damage they caused in the Greenspan/Bernanke financed 2004-2008 crude price explosion had a lot to do with the Great Recession, and the Great recession gave us the liquidity crisis which guaranteed us Obummer '08. The QE financed high crude price 2009-2014 coupled with ObummerCare and other Regs has killed the jobs market. They caused great damage to the USA, not to mention enriching Russian gangsters and Islamic Gulf Sheiks.

[rich@gmu]

evening all ... the Cuba story brought this article to mind

http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=7971

[Pagar]

"In the end, she lost her job, her parliament position, her livelihood and
everything she'd worked for.
"Last December, she tried to leave Cuba to visit her Argentinian son, his
wife and their children," the Thinker reported. "There was a showdown at the
Argentinian Embassy and much to its disgrace, the Argentines refused to give
her a visa, shoving her back to Castro's waiting agents on the outside.
Nothing has been heard from her since."

http://soc.culture.venezuela.narkive.com/oBblTqQe/acclaimed-cuban-medical-care-a-sham

IMO, you'd be safer going to to a witch doctor.

[Beasts of England]

Buy low and sell high? Oh, carp...

[GMax]

I assume McElroy wrote it all down with a FEATHER quill...

[Stephanie - Should a man offer a lady a tiparillo to celebrate? Rapist!]

Iowahawk:

"You'll never work in this town again." - new Sony president Kim Jong Un

via twitter via Facebook

[Extraneus]

Which speculators caused the damage, NK? The ones who bought low and sold high?

Honest question. I never did understand this argument, but I don't know a lot about how these markets can be manipulated by speculators. Seems like a lot of speculators lost money.

From the size of today's bar in the chart I posted above, more speculating went on today than at any point in at least the last year, and a lot of money was made and lost, by speculators.

[rich@gmu]

>>>Buy low and sell high? Oh, carp...

Posted by: Beasts of England | December 17, 2014 at 06:30 PM <<<

I hear that rule is supposed to make you money, but I've yet to figure it out.

[henry]

Ext, don't forget the banks keep the vig.

[GMax]

Never a good idea to align your thought process with Bill OReilly...

[Iggy]

White heterosexual men won the sexual counter revolution, as the freaks aspire to become married and in a family way.

[RickB]

Extraneous,

I can't find another chart confirming that end of session action with DJP. It's a Bloomberg Index and Bloomberg shows the close at $31.20.

[Extraneus]

Yes, it closed slightly down, but the intraday trading looks incredible. I saw the same chart at stockcharts.com, though. Here's the link, but I don't know if you can see it.

http://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=DJP&p=D&b=5&g=0&id=p66664010122&a=251859140&r=483&listNum=1

[Stephanie - Should a man offer a lady a tiparillo to celebrate? Rapist!]

When are the progressives and the atheists gonna get on Obama's ass for working with that honkie Pope?

[MarkO]

I spoke last night to a friend who had worked for the government on the issue of software security and hacking. He never says, but I like to believe he was part of the team that created Stuxnet.

He said there is no such thing as a secure software. Some here know more about this than I. He said he has a team that could find vulnerabilities in any system within 10 hours.

Most security focuses on being more difficult to hack than another system. When on system, like Sony, is targeted, it will be hacked if the hackers are good.

Sadly, NK has been able to quash free political speech. It is the first time of which I can recall when an enemy was able so to do. The wimp in the White House will do nothing to permit Americans to show NK that we will stand up to their threats even if it means sitting in a lousy movie.

DOOM™®

[Danube on iPad]

Wake up, Iggy. The Oil Companies are gouging the folks.

[Iggy]

--Iggy, I strongly disagree about speculators. The damage they caused in the Greenspan/Bernanke financed 2004-2008 crude price explosion had a lot to do with the Great Recession, and the Great recession gave us the liquidity crisis which guaranteed us Obummer '08. The QE financed high crude price 2009-2014...--

The common thread in there, MM, is financing by the Fed. Loose money and the weak dollar it engenders cause commodity spikes. Speculators may ride the price up and may raise it slightly but they also ride it down in the same way.

Given an expansive Fed the price spikes, even absent speculators.
Absent an expansive Fed the price doesn't spike, even with speculators.

[Danube on iPad]

I'm hearing that as an undisclosed part of the deal is for the Castros to give Obama the documents showing Cruz's dad was in on the Loretta Fuddy hit, and that Ted has an allegiance for Cuba.

[henry]

MarkO, correct. Unless your system is unplugged, in an underground vault, sealed with concrete, and surrounded by a minefield you will be hacked.* the trick is to avoid the Willie Sutton Zone and make the effort to hack exceed the payoff.

*they'll hack that as well, but you won't lose anything because you never stored anything on it.

[GMax]

Yes Ted Baxter is sure the oil companies are gouging the "folk"...

[Miss Marple]

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/texas-theater-show-team-america-759037

Texas theater will show "Team America" in place of "The Interview"

Bwahahaha!

[rich@gmu]

Posted by: Danube on iPad | December 17, 2014 at 07:13 PM -

you haven't been watching Bill O'reilly have you?

[Danube on iPad]

Of course I have, Rich. Who but Bill is watching out for the folks?

[MarkO]

David Burge ‏@iowahawkblog · 3m3 minutes ago
In 1942 Hollywood wasn't a bunch of pussies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKOEMqDupE0&feature=youtu.be

[rich@gmu]

my skin is starting to crawl ...

[Jane]

Wow - Mead's theory is something I hadn't thought about. Do you guys agree that Cuba doesn't want the embargo lifted?

[clarice]

No, I don't .

[Beasts of England]

Pretty much all I know about Cuba is that, like DoT, I like No. 2s. Is there a good primer on the web discussing the embargo and its merits or flaws?

[Jane]

The point of the embargo was to bring them to their knees (which it did) so Castro would step down - (which he didn't) so you have a desperately poor country with a family of dictators.

If we lift the embargo I don't think that will spread freedom around - it will make Castro richer.

Does Fidel have Alzheimers? (I forget what's wrong with him somaybe I'm the one with Alzheimers.)

[Danube on iPad]

I'm not sure, Jane. Other than the two Koreas (and formerly the two Germanys), I don't know of a better showcase of the glaring contrast between competing systems of economics and governance.

I suppose if by "Cuba" Mead means those few wealthy tyrants who run the place, maybe he's right. What the Cuban people want is not known, and the tyrants ensure that it will not become known.

[Jim Eagle]

Mrs. JiB's cigar making family in Belgium says Cuban cigars are a shadow of themselves and they have been partnering with DR and Honduran ex-Cuban makers. I wouldn't know but I do trust them since they have been making stogies since 1868 and many years with Cuban partners.

[Jim Eagle]

BTW, we are watching A Christmas Carol and the story and its underlining moral reminds me a lot of Ezekiel Emmanuel and his dictat on dying off at 75. Anyone who has ever read the story knows what I mean, I think.

[narciso]

We call it 'the little lie', the trade is in keeping with who we gave up for the Chapman ring' and the Gitmo 5, for Bergdahl.

[narciso]

The Wandering Coma, (a play on words); has been out of it since 2006. Spanish doctors saved him

[Captain Hate on the iPad]

narc, any comment on last night's POI?

[narciso]

I thought it was really good. It looks like Samaria is up to more mischief,

[narciso]

The Greer backstory, the scary doppelganger for
Root.

[narciso]

Fidel as defense minister runs all the state enterprise, including tourism think of him as the whole table in the Godfather

[narciso]

I meant Raul.

[Captain Hate]

Greer was betrayed by the people he was working for, just like Finch, Reese and Shaw. And Kara Stanton who fell in with Greer.

Using the child for Samaritan's avatar was really creepy; it was good rewatching it at the CBS website to realize that from the beginning of the interaction with Root, who was very good last night. Finch's soliloquy about the how an AI, even one considered benevolent, still is apart from being human and should never be given complete autonomy to deal with "irrelevants" was like reading Asimov. I'm impressed with how they trim the script to be lucid about such things in very constricted time.

[Iggy]

Reese will regret not plugging that blonde beeyotch in the church.
Somebody is going to croak.
Can't be Reese or Finch.
Root is the connection to the Machine.
Fusco is the connection to the NYPD.
Greer can only croak if this is the end of Samaritan.
That leaves Shaw and she seems to catch one in the old thorax on the preview. I'll have a sad if they off her. :(

[Captain Hate]

Me too, Iggy; Shaw brings a certain quality to Team Machine which nobody else offers.

Who has been shilling more for Cuba, the MFM or State Dept quislings?

[Captain Hate]

Listening to Chollie Rangel nattering away about this topic is enough to desire deafness.