Whut? Obama Says, “We Have A Lot To Learn From Cuba About Human Rights…”

THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA just said "we have a lot to learn" from Cuba about human rights.

— Lyndsey Fifield (@lyndseyfifield) March 21, 2016

Strange: U.S. Hellfire missile shipped to Cuba...

Incompetence or espionage?

Via WSJ:

An inert U.S. Hellfire missile sent to Europe for training purposes was wrongly shipped from there to Cuba in 2014, said people familiar with the matter, a loss of sensitive military technology that ranks among the worst-known incidents of its kind.
The unintended delivery of the missile to Cuba has confounded investigators and experts who work in a regulatory system designed to prevent precisely such equipment from falling into the wrong hands, said those familiar with the matter.
For more than a year, amid a historic thawing of relations between the U.S. and Cuba, American authorities have tried to get the Cuban government to return the missile, said people familiar with the matter. At the same time, federal investigators have been tracing the paper trail of the wayward Hellfire to determine if its arrival in Cuba was the work of criminals or spies, or the result of a series of blunders, these people said.

Tweet of the Day: Cuba's reaction to normalizing relations with the U.S.

We normalized relations with Cuba and they normalized their jails pic.twitter.com/VAs6BDXmYG
— Bill (@DefendWallSt) April 12, 2015

Obama's approval finally hits 80%...in Cuba

Obama should move to Cuba and make both Cubans and Americans happy.

Via New Times:

Fidel Castro should be thankful he never really had to run for re-election. A new poll conducted by a Miami polling firm of Cubans (as in actually living in Cuba) finds that his favorably ratings are pretty mediocre on the island. Only 44 percent of Cubans have a positive opinion of El Caballo. Meanwhile, 80 percent of Cubans have a favorable opinion of United State President Barack Obama, which is much higher than his 47 percent approval rating back here in America.
The poll was conducted by Bendixen & Amandi International for Univision, Fusion, and the Washington Post. They surveyed 1,200 Cubans in mid-March. It is the first privately conducted poll done in Cuba since the country became communist over 50 years ago. So there's no reliable data to compare Fidel's past popularity on the island.

Cuba refusing U.S. demands for greater freedoms

Surprise! Not!

HAVANA - The start of talks on repairing 50 years of broken relations appears to have left President Raul Castro's government focused on winning additional concessions without giving in to U.S. demands for greater freedoms, despite the seeming benefits that warmer ties could have for the country's struggling economy.

Following the highest-level open talks in three decades between the two nations, Cuban officials remained firm in rejecting significant reforms pushed by the United States as part of President Barack Obama's surprise move to re-establish ties and rebuild economic relations with the Communist-led country.

"One can't think that in order to improve and normalize relations with the U.S., Cuba has to give up the principles it believes in," Cuba's top diplomat for U.S. affairs, Josefina Vidal, told The Associated Press after the end of the talks. "Changes in Cuba aren't negotiable."

It's not clear if Cuba's tough stance is part of normal negotiation tactics or a hardened position that could prevent the talks from moving forward.

YouTube star to Obama: Castro puts the "‘Dick’ In Dictatorship”…

Why is Obama negotiating with Cuba anyway?

Remember the 53 political prisoners that Obama promised Cuba would release?

They still haven't been released. Obama is the worst deal-maker ever. If he was your lawyer negotiating a traffic citation, you would get life. 

Via Daily Signal:

President Obama’s change of policy on Cuba looks worse with every passing day.
Remember the 53 political prisoners that Obama promised would be released? Three weeks later, the State Department could not confirm even one had been let out of prison. That became abundantly clear during an awkward, five-minute standoff between State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki and reporters on Jan.5. Only after this embarrassing exchange did Washington and Havana rushed to say that “some” of them had been let out.
Why did Psaki pussyfoot around the issue? Earlier, administration officials had told the Wall Street Journal’s Mary O’Grady that to push Cuba’s communist leaders on the release of the 53 would only upset them. As O’Grady put it, “in other words, the Castros are sensitive boys who throw despotic tantrums when their absolute power is questioned. Asking them to keep their word is apparently a trigger.”
Keep on reading…

Raul Castro claims better relations with U.S. won't change Cuban system...

Somebody tell me why we are doing this again.

HAVANA (AP) - Cuban President Raul Castro sent a blunt message to Washington Saturday as the White House works to reverse a half-century of hostility between the U.S. and Cuba: Don't expect detente to do away with the communist system.
Castro's speech to Cuba's National Assembly was a sharp counterpoint to the message U.S. President Barack Obama gave in his year-end news conference the day before. Obama reiterated that by engaging directly with the Cuban people, Americans are more likely to encourage reform in Cuba's one-party system and centrally planned economy.
"We must not expect that in order for relations with the United States to improve, Cuba will abandon the ideas that it has struggled for," Castro said.

Meet the main architect of the deal reached with Cuba

It the progressive in the middle of the above picture...

Via WFB:

Hillary Clinton was the main architect of the deal reached with Cuba and her advocacy toward opening a new relationship with the Castro regime began almost immediately when she became secretary of state, according to a report from Bloomberg’s Josh Rogin.
From 2009 until her departure in early 2013, Clinton and her top aides took the lead on the sometimes public, often private interactions with the Cuban government. According to current and former White House and State Department officials and several Cuba policy experts who were involved in the discussions, Clinton was also the top advocate inside the government for ending travel and trade restrictions on Cuba and reversing 50 years of U.S. policy to isolate the Communist island nation. Repeatedly, she pressed the White House to move faster and faced opposition from cautious high-ranking White House officials. […]
Clinton’s advocacy on behalf of opening a new relationship with Cuba began almost as soon as she came into office. Obama had campaigned on a promise to engage enemies, but the White House initially was slow to make good on that pledge, and on the Cuba front enacted only a modest relaxation of travel rules. From the start, Clinton pushed to hold Obama to his promise with regard to Cuba.
Keep on reading…

Video: Marco Rubio destroys Tom Harkin's fawning love of Cuban, Venezuelan communists

Excellent...

Cuba and Venezuela most pleased with Barack Obama's re-election...

I wonder if Hugo Chavez did a happy dance? 

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — From Caracas to Havana to La Paz, President Barack Obama’s re-election victory was welcomed with a sigh of relief by many on Latin America’s left, though others cautioned that the U.S. leader had not made the region a priority during his crisis-buffeted first term and was unlikely to do so in a second.
In Cuba, state-run news website CubaSi called the outcome a victory for the lesser of two evils, saying: “U.S. elections: the worst one did not win.”

“The news of Barack Obama’s triumph in yesterday’s general elections in the United States was received with some relief and without great optimism,” CubaSi wrote.

On the streets of Caracas, some said they worried that a win by Republican Mitt Romney would have brought a much harder line against leftist leaders such as their own President Hugo Chavez, and that they hoped another four-year term for Obama would bring relatively peaceful U.S.-Latin American ties.

“The other guy would have cut off relations with Venezuela,” said Cesar Echezuria, a street vendor selling newspapers emblazoned with front-page photos of Obama celebrating. “It would have been a disaster for Venezuela if Obama had lost.”

Keep on reading…

Socialism has failed and Cuba is moving towards more free enterprise

Socialism has failed and Cuba is moving towards more free enterprise. Cuban President Raul Castro has decided to layoff a half a million workers and allow more free enterprise in an effort to boost productivity. Low productivity has always been the bane of socialist societies. People will always work harder if they are working for themselves instead of the government. Ironically, Cuban President Raul Castro claims these moves are strengthening socialism.

HAVANA (AP) — Cuban President Raul Castro told legislators Saturday that the future of the country’s revolution is at stake as the government tries to institute sweeping economic reforms, adding that the changes are meant to strengthen socialism — not replace it.
Cuba has announced it will lay off a half-million workers from bloated state-run enterprises, while simultaneously allowing more free enterprise. It has also begun to scale back many of the subsidies Cubans have come to rely on to compensate for salaries that average just $20 a month.

WikiLeaked: Cuba Banned Michael Moore’s "Sicko" Because of "Blatant Misrepresentation" of Cuba Health Care System

In 2007 Michael Moore put out a documentary, named "Sicko", reaming the American health care system. The documentary compared the US system to Cuba and found the Cuban system to be very favorable. Cuban doctors were disturbed at Moose's lying and walked out when the film was shown. The Cuban government subsequently banned the film because they didn't want the Cuban people to have unrealistic expectations.

The Guardian reported:

But the memo reveals that when the film was shown to a group of Cuban doctors, some became so “disturbed at the blatant misrepresentation of healthcare in Cuba that they left the room”.

Castro’s government apparently went on to ban the film because, the leaked cable claims, it “knows the film is a myth and does not want to risk a popular backlash by showing to Cubans facilities that are clearly not available to the vast majority of them.”

Liberal Heartache: Castro Admits Socialism Has Failed

The founder of Socialism in Cuba, Fidel Castro, has made a rare blunt admission about Socialism's failure in Cube. He said,

“The Cuban model doesn’t even work for us anymore”

AP reported:

The fact that things are not working efficiently on this cash-strapped Caribbean island is hardly news. Fidel’s brother Raul, the country’s president, has said the same thing repeatedly. But the blunt assessment by the father of Cuba’s 1959 revolution is sure to raise eyebrows.

Jeffrey Goldberg, a national correspondent for The Atlantic magazine, asked if Cuba’s economic system was still worth exporting to other countries, and Castro replied: “The Cuban model doesn’t even work for us anymore” Goldberg wrote Wednesday in a post on his Atlantic blog.

Cuban Spy at State department Was Left Wing Wacko

A retired State Department employee and his wife, Walter Kendall Myers and Gwendolyn Steingraber Myers, have been charged with spying for Cuba over thirty years. The Myers did not do it for the money, they were left wing wackos who loved Castro and hated President Bush. This is reportedly the same State department employee who tried to damage our relations with the British a few years ago. From BabaluBlog and The Telegraph:

According to the UK Telegraph, it turns out that this Kendall Myers scumbag is the same State Department official who embarrassed both the US and the UK by stating to the press that Britain and the US were really not all that friendly to each other and that Britain should distance itself from the Bush administration.

Wow. This story has just taken my breath away. Do you remember the State Department analyst in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (relatively obscure but one of the US government's intelligence agencies) who caused a storm in late 2006 with his disdainful remarks about the US-UK "special relationship?

His name was Kendall Myers and I was one of two British journalists who reported his decidedly undiplomatic comments. He retired quietly in 2007. Well, he's just been arrested as a spy for Cuba for nearly 30 years. The Cubans apparently knew him better as their Agent 202.

The most telling part of this Telegraph article is the reporter's impression of Myers when he met with him in D.C. for a drink back in 2001.

I found him to be an erudite and well-read fellow who was an interesting conversationalist and was much more indiscreet that most State Department officials. He was clearly no fan of President George W. Bush and seemed to be fit the caricature of the pro-European, soft-Left type that is often levelled at the State Department by conservatives.

I guess Myers is one of those patriotic Bush haters the left keeps telling us about.

Candidate Obama pledged to stand up against Cuba's oppressors. Oh yeah, the election is over now

Candidate Obama pledged to stand up against Cuba oppression when pandering for Cuban votes during the 2008 election. He said there was no place for this kind of tyranny and he wouldn't stand for that kind on injustice. Of course, the election is over. Now, he wants to improve relations with the oppressors and treat them as equal partners. Here is the video in case anyone forgot the strong words Obama said about Cuba and Cuban oppression.

Obama Speech On Cuba

Now, Obama has a new song and dance.

Obama Statement On Cuba