President's Trip to Cuba by SHINYGOODGUY

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by SHINYGOODGUY:

It is a show of strength coming from the U.S.A.

It is more of an effort to try a different policy that might actually achieve the goal of the Cuban Embargo.

The Current Communist Countries are Cuba, Laos, North Korea, and Vietnam. Do you notice how the four countries are connected? The USA invaded them. China is Communist in name only and the USA never invaded it.

The USA’s Cuban embargo was intended to bring down Castro’s government. That did not work, did it? Probably it is time to end the embargo and try a different policy, despite what the two Cubans running for President, who have an unhealthy hatred toward Castro, have said. When the Cubans become President and Vice-President, they can have whatever policy most pleases their Cuban parents.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Friday, February 19, 2016 9:33 AM

America loves a winner!

Quote:
Originally posted by SHINYGOODGUY:
Some see it as grandstanding, others see it as a mistake and still others
say that it glorifies the Castro regime.

WRONG! on all counts. It is a show of strength coming from the U.S.A.

SGG

Disagree. You blurting out 'WRONG!' doesn't make it so. GOING to there is hardly a 'show of strength'. Its more like capitulation, than anthying.

Which this President does quite well, when it comes to our enemies and adversaries.

I wonder how far down he'll bow at the waist when he meets Raul Castro.

( And I don't want to even think how he'll greet Fidel, behind closed doors )

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Friday, February 19, 2016 10:08 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:

Disagree. You blurting out 'WRONG!' doesn't make it so. GOING to there is hardly a 'show of strength'. Its more like capitulation, than anthying.

I disagree with your disagreeability. I know Republicans only want the USA to talk to friendly countries, but the World is not their company retirement party where they only talk to their old friends. Diplomacy is about talking to your enemies, too. Otherwise, the USA would have spent the years since 1945 not talking to Russia, China, Germany, Italy, Japan, or all the other countries the USA has been in conflict with. Just think how many Communists and Fascists have dined with Republican Presidents in the White House.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Friday, February 19, 2016 4:13 PM

REAVERFAN

It's a smart, mature move. I'm glad he's going.

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Friday, February 19, 2016 6:10 PM

America loves a winner!

Quote:
Originally posted by reaverfan:
It's a smart, mature move. I'm glad he's going.

Nothing smart or mature about the move, what so ever. And simply calling it that doesn't make it so. I bet 1000's of Cubans who fled the tyrant murdering a-hole Castro think otherwise as well. He stole property and killed 1000's of innocent people. He should have been taken out LONG ago, and it's a pity he wasn't offed by a smart bomb or similar.

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Friday, February 19, 2016 8:07 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:

I bet 1000's of Cubans who fled the tyrant murdering a-hole Castro think otherwise as well. He stole property and killed 1000's of innocent people. He should have been taken out LONG ago, and it's a pity he wasn't offed by a smart bomb or similar.

You wouldn't happen to be a murder-happy Republican?

After Ngo Dinh Diem, President of S Vietnam, was murdered, Ho Chi Minh of N Vietnam reportedly stated: "I can scarcely believe the Americans would be so stupid." I believe Americans can be so stupid.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ngo_Dinh_Diem#Aftermath

The USA bombed Muammar Gaddafi. Libya is now a mess because the USA lost interest in making a new government.

If the USA decapitated the government of Cuba, then worse people than Castro would take control. Once Castro is dead, criminals with AK-47s will arrive in Havana from all over Latin America and Florida to take control of Cuba and the drone operators back in the USA will have no idea who to bomb next. It's difficult from 10,000 feet above to know who is who on the ground. It will be Libya all over again.
www.rt.com/usa/326373-air-force-enlisted-airmen-drones/
www.rt.com/usa/333055-pentagon-libya-strike-authority/

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Friday, February 19, 2016 11:35 PM

America loves a winner!

What a complete load of crap and a boat load of red herrings.

What anyone else did has zero to do w/ the Castro boys murdering and enslaving an entire country and running it like their personal club med.

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Saturday, February 20, 2016 8:41 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:
What a complete load of crap and a boat load of red herrings.

What anyone else did has zero to do w/ the Castro boys murdering and enslaving an entire country and running it like their personal club med.

You need to remember some American history of assassination.

Once the USA kills Castro, the job is not done. But Republicans can’t understand that the USA has a responsibility for not allowing Cuba to descend into chaos once Castro is dead.

For the USA, there were good enough reasons to kill Muammar Gaddafi who admitted Libya's responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing. He paid compensation to the victims' families in 2003.

But what happened next in Libya after Gaddafi was dead?

The USA thought Libya was no longer it’s problem once the job was done. Chaos followed.

The USA killed Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Did Chaos follow?

The USA killed President Diem of Vietnam. Chaos.

The USA has got this stupid notion that if it kills enough then World Peace follows. It will need a Cuban Marshall Plan to follow the assassination of Castro. Or else Cuba descends into Chaos. I really don’t think Republicans are willing to pay for such a plan. The Republicans won't pay because they will be absolutely certain that Castro's assassination will not end in Chaos like all those other assassinations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan

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Saturday, February 20, 2016 9:55 AM

America loves a winner!

You can attempt to distract away from the issue at hand all day long, and blame Obama and Hillary for Libya's demise into chaos, but that's an entirely different topic. Trying to draw comparisons to Libya of 4-5 years ago to Cuba of almost 60 years ago is folly.

2 entirely different animals. You can't claim because x happened there, x would also follow anywhere else. Sorry, you just can't.

Obama's capitulation to the Castros and giving them the prestige and honor of being back in our good graces w/ out having to change 1 damn thing about their tyrannical , human rights violating govt, is a joke. But it's what we've come to expect from this admin, as seen with Iran. Giving 150 Billion back to them, and getting nothing in return.

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Saturday, February 20, 2016 10:05 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:

You can't claim because x happened there, x would also follow anywhere else. Sorry, you just can't.

What I am claiming is that Republicans are Republicans and they keep making the same mistakes. If Republicans like Cuban Marco Rubio or Cuban Ted Cruz kill Cuban Castro, Cuba will end in Chaos. Republican just can't imagine that killing Castro might NOT end with eternal peace and democracy in Cuba. Republicans will refuse to pay the price to guarantee that Cuba does NOT fall into Chaos.

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Saturday, February 20, 2016 11:28 AM

America loves a winner!

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:

You can't claim because x happened there, x would also follow anywhere else. Sorry, you just can't.
What I am claiming is that Republicans are Republicans and they keep making the same mistakes. If Republicans like Cuban Marco Rubio or Cuban Ted Cruz kill Cuban Castro, Cuba will end in Chaos. Republican just can't imagine that killing Castro might NOT end with eternal peace and democracy in Cuba. Republicans will refuse to pay the price to guarantee that Cuba does NOT fall into Chaos.

Cuba IS in chaos NOW. Not true violent lawlessness, but still under the stranglehold of the Castros. And no one is talking about KILLING Castro now.The issue is of Obama capitulating to communist dictators and getting NOTHING in return is some how seen as some magnanimous and progressive act is pure rubbish.

And what is this crap about paying the price? Has Hillary or Obama paid the price for tipping the scales in Libya which led to the killing of Qudaffy ?

Please, quit w/ the red herring nonsense.

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Saturday, February 20, 2016 1:36 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:

Please, quit w/ the red herring nonsense.

Cut the crap, AURaptor. Where do get that pacifist nonsense? Cuban Marco Rubio and Cuban Ted Cruz want to kill Cuban Castro. Rubio and Cruz and their daddies have a weird mental health issue about killing Castro. If those Cubans become Prez and Vice-Prez, they will do it and all your denials of the truth changes nothing about Rubio and Cruz.

Powell’s Pottery Barn rule—“you break it, you own it”—is one of the iconic rhetorical flourishes of the Iraq War era, representing warnings ignored and unintended consequences unleashed. The Republicans running for President are all for invading Syria. They've got nothing planned for what to do after the President Assad is dead. They never will have a plan. They are incapable of planning ahead. And their thinking about Cuba is just as childish as their thinking about Syria.
www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/09/the-pottery-barn-rul
e-syria-edition/408193/

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Saturday, February 20, 2016 3:02 PM

America loves a winner!

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:

Please, quit w/ the red herring nonsense.
Cut the crap, AURaptor. Where do get that pacifist nonsense? Cuban Marco Rubio and Cuban Ted Cruz want to kill Cuban Castro. Rubio and Cruz and their daddies have a weird mental health issue about killing Castro. If those Cubans become Prez and Vice-Prez, they will do it and all your denials of the truth changes nothing about Rubio and Cruz.

The Castros deserves to die for what they've done, for the lives they ruined, and claiming otherwise is simply a show of ignorance. But saying they deserve to die isn't the same thing as wanting to kill them. Your claims are totally unsubstantiated on Marco and Ted, and clearly are nothing but nonsensical hyperbole.

Ted and Marco are Americans, not Cuban.

Unless you want to extend that same warped logic to Obama, who then is as Kenyan as they are Cuban.

Quote:

Powell’s Pottery Barn rule—“you break it, you own it”—is one of the iconic rhetorical flourishes of the Iraq War era, representing warnings ignored and unintended consequences unleashed. The Republicans running for President are all for invading Syria.
Cite ?

And as for Powell, sorry,but who the hell made his one liner words etched in a stone tablet, handed down from upon high ?

Quote:
They've got nothing planned for what to do after the President Assad is dead. They never will have a plan. They are incapable of planning ahead. And their thinking about Cuba is just as childish as their thinking about Syria.

www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/09/the-pottery-barn-rul
e-syria-edition/408193/

Well, doling out contractor bids like Halloween candy as Bush43 did worked out so swimmingly for Iraq, didn't it ?

But sticking on point, no one is remotely talking about INVADING Cuba. Quite the contrary. All that's being brought up is that Obama capitulated to a communist thug, and the US is getting nothihng out of it, nor are the Cuban people. Cuba has been free to trade w/ the rest of the world for nearly 60 years, and how well has it worked out for them ? Trying to promote the claim that if ONLY the US had joined 99% of the rest of the world, Cubans would be enjoying 1st world technology, true healthcare , and the latest 2016 Ford and GM cars ?

Please. You're trying to distract from the real issue, and it's obvious as to why.

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Saturday, February 20, 2016 4:41 PM

RIVERLOVE

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Sunday, February 21, 2016 8:53 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are invincibly ignorant.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invincible_ignorance_fallacy

I just now checked and “Tourist travel to Cuba is prohibited under U.S. law for U.S. citizens, permanent residents, and others subject to U.S. jurisdiction.” Thank Cruz and Rubio for restricting Americans' freedom.
http://travel.state.gov/content/passports/en/country/cuba.html

The last two paragraphs explain why Obama is doing this.
www.nytimes.com/2015/09/19/world/americas/us-cuba-relations.html

U.S. Eases Some Limits on Cuban Travel and Commerce
by Julie Hirschfeld Davis SEPT. 18, 2015 (This is old news)

WASHINGTON — The White House on Friday announced wide-ranging changes to loosen travel, commerce and investment restrictions on Cuba, moving to fulfill President Obama’s goal of breaking down barriers between Washington and Havana even as the American embargo remains in place.

The rules will allow American companies, including telecommunications and Internet providers, to open locations and hire workers in Cuba, facilitate financial transactions between the two nations and remove limits on the sums that can be taken to the island nation. They are to take effect on Monday on the eve of the visit to Washington by Pope Francis, a proponent of the reconciliation who quietly helped broker the agreement between Mr. Obama and President Raúl Castro last year.

Mr. Obama spoke to Mr. Castro by telephone on Friday to discuss the normalization process before the pope traveled to Cuba on Saturday and then to the United States on Tuesday, the White House said. In addition to praising the pope’s role in their rapprochement, the two presidents “discussed steps that the United States and Cuba can take, together and individually, to advance bilateral cooperation,” an official said, even as they continue to have differences on important issues and “will address those differences candidly.”

Administration officials said Mr. Obama was still hoping that Congress would take action to lift the travel and trade embargo, although senior aides to the president offered a grim assessment of the chances that it would happen in the short term.

“I don’t think we’ve seen a whole lot of evidence to indicate that those prospects have significantly improved,” said Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary. Still, he said, the rules would deepen connections among Cubans and Americans in the interim and expose Cuba’s citizens to American values while helping United States businesses.

Jacob J. Lew, the Treasury secretary, said the rules, issued by his agency and the Commerce Department, could lead to “constructive change for the Cuban people.”

“A stronger, more open U.S.-Cuba relationship has the potential to create economic opportunities for both Americans and Cubans alike,” Mr. Lew said in a statement. “By further easing these sanctions, the United States is helping to support the Cuban people in their effort to achieve the political and economic freedom necessary to build a democratic, prosperous, and stable Cuba.”

They also hold out the prospect of new business opportunities for American companies in Cuba, which some observers said was intended to increase pressure on Havana to take corresponding action to open its economy.

The White House is working to show momentum in the rapprochement with Cuba before Dec. 17, the first anniversary of when it was announced.

“In addition to expanding our commercial engagement with the Cuban people, these additional adjustments have the potential to stimulate long overdue economic reform across the country,” Penny Pritzker, the secretary of commerce, said in a statement.

American corporations have been working behind the scenes with the Obama administration for months to bring about the normalization the president promised, which began with an initial set of regulatory changes in January. But the new rules exceeded the expectations of some business leaders, who said they had sent a clear message to Cuba that it must do more on its end.

Administration officials acknowledged on Friday that the scope of the changes that can be brought about by lifting sanctions and loosening commercial rules would depend to a degree on Cuba’s willingness to facilitate the new cooperation and make reforms in its state-run economy.

“In part, this depends on the government of Cuba,” said a senior official who worked on the rules, “and we don’t have control there.”

For example, the lifting of some United States export restrictions, such as those on certain electronic equipment and civilian aviation safety goods, may have limited effect if Cuba does not change the way it handles imports, which now must go through a government agency.

But officials said they foresaw many potential areas of cooperation, including a venture between Etecsa, Cuba’s government-owned telecommunications provider, and an American firm that could improve service on the island.

The regulations will for the first time in decades allow United States companies to do business directly in Cuba, setting up subsidiaries or opening offices or warehouses there, and allowing Americans to have bank accounts and Cubans to maintain bank accounts outside of their country. Cruise ships will be able to travel between the United States and Cuba without making a stop in a third nation. And close relatives will be able to visit family members in Cuba for a wider array of purposes.

They will also allow American telecommunications and Internet companies to locate in Cuba and market their services there, as well as to import mobile applications made in Cuba for development in the United States.

Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, said allowing companies to have a physical presence in Cuba was a major step, making it far easier, for example, for the agricultural exporters from her state that provide $20 million in food aid to streamline their operations.

“All of the machinations that they had to go through to get to these provisions just shows the crying need for lifting the embargo, because while all of this is really good, it is so obvious that it would be so much simpler to lift the embargo,” Ms. Klobuchar, a sponsor of legislation that would remove the trade and travel ban, said in an interview. “While it is a very positive step, it just shows the absurdity” of keeping the embargo in place, she added.

James A. Williams, the president of Engage Cuba, a bipartisan public policy group pushing for normalization, cheered the changes but said there was “more the Obama Administration can and should do, such as allowing individuals to participate in people-to-people travel without third-party brokers.” He also said Congress must “do its job” and lift the embargo.

Opponents of Mr. Obama’s policy argued that the rules were one-sided concessions to a brutal government that has done nothing to change its behavior.

“The Obama policy of pouring more American money into the Castro regime’s coffers won’t make America safer or the Cuban people freer,” said Senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican and presidential hopeful of Cuban descent. “Not only do these measures harm the cause of a free Cuba, they also raise serious questions about the legality of the Obama administration’s regulations.”

Mr. Earnest said the administration would “continue to press the Cuban government to implement the kinds of reforms that we believe are long overdue.”

In the meantime, he said, relaxing commerce and travel rules would give leaders there “an incentive that they didn’t have before to start implementing those reforms, so that they can take advantage of the opportunity that the United States has extended to them.”

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Sunday, February 21, 2016 10:17 AM

REAVERFAN

Why are Repubicans so uniformly ignorant and uninformed?

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Sunday, February 21, 2016 1:18 PM

America loves a winner!

Quote:
Originally posted by reaverfan:
Why are Repubicans so uniformly ignorant and uninformed?

They aren't , by any stretch, alone in that dept. Dems are much much worse.

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Sunday, February 21, 2016 2:33 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:
Quote:
Originally posted by reaverfan:
Why are Repubicans so uniformly ignorant and uninformed?

They aren't , by any stretch, alone in that dept. Dems are much much worse.

Did Republicans notice that Russia is not Communist despite there being no embargo? Why are Republicans so certain an embargo will end Communism in Cuba when doing the opposite of an embargo worked with Russia?

Cuban Republicans Cruz and Rubio want the embargo, but is that really enough to justify an embargo that has failed for 55 years?
http://time.com/4076438/us-cuba-embargo-1960/

The longest running embargo in U.S. history is against North Korea. How is that going? Are Republicans expecting success any day now?

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Wednesday, February 24, 2016 9:46 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Cuba's Ramon Castro dies
www.cnn.com/2016/02/23/americas/cuba-ramon-castro-dies/
Patrick Oppmann and Ben Brumfield, CNN

Story highlights

Ramon Castro declined a role in armed communist revolution
He wore a long beard and was mistaken at times for Fidel Castro

Havana, Cuba (CNN) Ramon Castro has died at age 91.

The older brother of Fidel, 89, and Raul Castro, 84, knew little renown, as he declined an active role in the struggle that heaved the two, and communism, to power in Cuba in 1959.

Ramon Castro wore a long beard and was at times mistaken for leader Fidel Castro, who was about the same height and stature, but he preferred tilling the earth to stirring armed revolution. He was a farmer like his father Angel Castro.

Ramon Castro died Tuesday in Havana, state media reported in a short article. It did not name a cause. His body was cremated, and his ashes will be taken to the Castro family farm in Biran.
The different brother

The eldest brother contrasted in other ways with the famous revolutionaries, said Brian Latell, senior researcher at the University of Miami and a former CIA officer tasked with studying Cuba.

Ramon Castro showed little interest in getting an education or in ideological pursuits, but at times he sent the two revolutionaries supplies.

"Once, however, expecting a shipment of arms or ammunition from Ramon, Fidel complained that his brother had merely sent him an expensive watch he had no need for," Latell wrote in "After Fidel."

After the revolution, Ramon Castro was an agricultural official and could be seen driving around Havana on a tractor.

He had become proud of his brothers' communist government, said Washington Post reporter Sally Quinn, who interviewed him in 1977.

She described him as "a redneck, Cuban style. He is a simple man with little of the refinement of his most prominent brother," she wrote. "His politics are simple."

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Friday, February 26, 2016 8:57 AM

America loves a winner!

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:
Quote:
Originally posted by reaverfan:
Why are Repubicans so uniformly ignorant and uninformed?

They aren't , by any stretch, alone in that dept. Dems are much much worse.
Did Republicans notice that Russia is not Communist despite there being no embargo? Why are Republicans so certain an embargo will end Communism in Cuba when doing the opposite of an embargo worked with Russia?

Cuban Republicans Cruz and Rubio want the embargo, but is that really enough to justify an embargo that has failed for 55 years?
http://time.com/4076438/us-cuba-embargo-1960/

The longest running embargo in U.S. history is against North Korea. How is that going? Are Republicans expecting success any day now?

Kennedy started the embargo. Or have you forgotten that nugget ?

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=58824

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Friday, February 26, 2016 12:25 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:

Kennedy started the embargo. Or have you forgotten that nugget ?

Do you mean Mr "I don't need protection despite everybody in Dallas Texas hating me and carrying guns" Kennedy? The same Kennedy whose stupidity caused the assassination of the President of Vietnam? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_243

Since when is Kennedy an example of good judgement? All the way with JFK!

Kennedy started the Cuban Missile Crisis by first placing his missiles on the border of the Soviet Union. The Russians countered by placing missiles in Cuba. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PGM-19_Jupiter

“A missile is a missile,” Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara asserted. “It makes no great difference whether you are killed by a missile from the Soviet Union or Cuba.” On that first day of the ExComm meetings, Bundy asked directly, “What is the strategic impact on the position of the United States of MRBMs in Cuba? How gravely does this change the strategic balance?” McNamara answered, “Not at all”—a verdict that Bundy then said he fully supported. The following day, Special Counsel Theodore Sorensen summarized the views of the ExComm in a memorandum to Kennedy. “It is generally agreed,” he noted, “that these missiles, even when fully operational, do not significantly alter the balance of power—i.e., they do not significantly increase the potential megatonnage capable of being unleashed on American soil, even after a surprise American nuclear strike.”

Yet, although the missiles’ military significance was negligible, the Kennedy administration advanced on a perilous course to force their removal. The president issued an ultimatum to a nuclear power—an astonishingly provocative move, which immediately created a crisis that could have led to catastrophe. He ordered a blockade on Cuba, an act of war that we now know brought the superpowers within a hair’s breadth of nuclear confrontation.
www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/01/the-real-cuban-missile-cr
isis/309190/

Khrushchev removed his missiles from Cuba. Then it was Kennedy's turn. In secret, Kennedy removed his missiles, with A-bomb warheads, from Turkey and Italy under the cover of these missiles being "obsolete". So obsolete that the missile design was later used to go to the Moon. Kennedy could not remove in secret his Cuban Embargo, so he proudly kept it. The USA has been protecting his pride ever since.

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Saturday, February 27, 2016 11:30 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

More on the origin of the Cuban Embargo, taken from the true record, rather than the books written to serve John and Robert Kennedy's reputation:

On that very first day of the ExComm meetings, Kennedy's Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara provided a wider perspective on the missiles’ significance: “I’ll be quite frank. I don’t think there is a military problem here … This is a domestic, political problem.” In a 1987 interview, McNamara explained: “You have to remember that, right from the beginning, it was President Kennedy who said that it was politically unacceptable for us to leave those missile sites alone. He didn’t say militarily, he said politically.” What largely made the missiles politically unacceptable was Kennedy’s conspicuous and fervent hostility toward the Castro regime—a stance, Kennedy admitted at an ExComm meeting, that America’s European allies thought was “a fixation” and “slightly demented.”

In his presidential bid, Kennedy had red-baited the Eisenhower-Nixon administration, charging that its policies had “helped make Communism’s first Caribbean base.” Given that he had defined a tough stance toward Cuba as an important election issue, and given the humiliation he had suffered with the Bay of Pigs debacle, the missiles posed a great political hazard to Kennedy. As the State Department’s director of intelligence and research, Roger Hilsman, later put it, “The United States might not be in mortal danger, but … the administration most certainly was.” Kennedy’s friend John Kenneth Galbraith, the ambassador to India, later said: “Once [the missiles] were there, the political needs of the Kennedy administration urged it to take almost any risk to get them out.”
www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/01/the-real-cuban-missile-cr
isis/309190/

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Saturday, February 27, 2016 6:26 PM

"...Just think how many Communists and Fascists have dined with Republican Presidents in the White House."

Not to mention terrorists supporters, yet "we" crazily believe that in 50 years that Cuba is on it's knees from our anemic Embargo. I keep thinking back to Michael Moore's documentary where 9/11 first responders traveled to
Cuba to get the medical treatment they deserve, for free, from "our" government.

Funny how that works.

SGG

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:

Disagree. You blurting out 'WRONG!' doesn't make it so. GOING to there is hardly a 'show of strength'. Its more like capitulation, than anthying.
I disagree with your disagreeability. I know Republicans only want the USA to talk to friendly countries, but the World is not their company retirement party where they only talk to their old friends. Diplomacy is about talking to your enemies, too. Otherwise, the USA would have spent the years since 1945 not talking to Russia, China, Germany, Italy, Japan, or all the other countries the USA has been in conflict with. Just think how many Communists and Fascists have dined with Republican Presidents in the White House.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Saturday, February 27, 2016 6:46 PM

We could bomb the shit outta them, God knows we have the bombs, and perform
a Bush Shock & Awe tactic. Level 'em to rubble at any time, seems simple enough.

Then why oh why didn't Bush & Cheney do it. Fucking yellow-belly cowards. I guarantee, they do that and we wouldn't have the wimpy Obama calling for diplomacy. You know what, diplomacy is for pussies.

Or............

Scenario No. 2: You walk into the enemy camp, totally unarmed, just a smile.
You extend your hand and say, fuck it, let's start over. I've got the balls
to say I'm willing to put aside our differences, let's have a pow-wow.

Castro's gotta be saying, who the fuck is this guy (as he scratches his head in disbelief). He's got the nerve to upset the apple cart, walk into
my house and talk peace. Do they trust us, NO. Do we trust Castro, NO. So what gives. What makes Obama think he can when no one else even tried. Which do you think takes more balls? Bombing them into oblivion or walking in there with nothing but a smile, and nerves of steal. Castro's gotta be thinking, "who the fuck is this guy"

He's the motherfucking president of the United States. "I'm POTUS, BITCH!
Deal with it" that's what he's saying. For that, in this day and age, you
need to have them the size of grapefruits. Balls gentlemen, Balls!

SGG

Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:
Quote:
Originally posted by SHINYGOODGUY:
Some see it as grandstanding, others see it as a mistake and still others
say that it glorifies the Castro regime.

WRONG! on all counts. It is a show of strength coming from the U.S.A.

SGG

Disagree. You blurting out 'WRONG!' doesn't make it so. GOING to there is hardly a 'show of strength'. Its more like capitulation, than anthying.

Which this President does quite well, when it comes to our enemies and adversaries.

I wonder how far down he'll bow at the waist when he meets Raul Castro.

( And I don't want to even think how he'll greet Fidel, behind closed doors )

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Saturday, February 27, 2016 6:53 PM

Excellent point...............have we learned nothing from Iraq, Libya?

Why don't we further destabilize the world and see what happens.....tyrants
with guns will descend like locusts. It will make Aleppo look like a picnic.

SGG

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:

I bet 1000's of Cubans who fled the tyrant murdering a-hole Castro think otherwise as well. He stole property and killed 1000's of innocent people. He should have been taken out LONG ago, and it's a pity he wasn't offed by a smart bomb or similar.
You wouldn't happen to be a murder-happy Republican?

After Ngo Dinh Diem, President of S Vietnam, was murdered, Ho Chi Minh of N Vietnam reportedly stated: "I can scarcely believe the Americans would be so stupid." I believe Americans can be so stupid.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ngo_Dinh_Diem#Aftermath

The USA bombed Muammar Gaddafi. Libya is now a mess because the USA lost interest in making a new government.

If the USA decapitated the government of Cuba, then worse people than Castro would take control. Once Castro is dead, criminals with AK-47s will arrive in Havana from all over Latin America and Florida to take control of Cuba and the drone operators back in the USA will have no idea who to bomb next. It's difficult from 10,000 feet above to know who is who on the ground. It will be Libya all over again.
www.rt.com/usa/326373-air-force-enlisted-airmen-drones/
www.rt.com/usa/333055-pentagon-libya-strike-authority/

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Saturday, February 27, 2016 6:55 PM

You're thinking about the Japanese.

SGG

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Saturday, February 27, 2016 6:57 PM

And what do you think Assad is doing in Syria? Or Putin in Russia?

SGG

Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:
What a complete load of crap and a boat load of red herrings.

What anyone else did has zero to do w/ the Castro boys murdering and enslaving an entire country and running it like their personal club med.

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Saturday, February 27, 2016 7:05 PM

Forget it Second, Rappy cannot see history in the making, nor the subtleties of diplomacy. He thinks that a president is bowing and scraping, and lowering himself when he is actually setting things into motion that will bring about change without firing a bullet.

He wants John Wayne to walk in guns blazing and declaring "this town ain't
big enough for the two of us."

Question is: Would you do it for Randolph Scott?

Everybody in unison: "Randolph Scott"

SGG

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:

You can't claim because x happened there, x would also follow anywhere else. Sorry, you just can't.
What I am claiming is that Republicans are Republicans and they keep making the same mistakes. If Republicans like Cuban Marco Rubio or Cuban Ted Cruz kill Cuban Castro, Cuba will end in Chaos. Republican just can't imagine that killing Castro might NOT end with eternal peace and democracy in Cuba. Republicans will refuse to pay the price to guarantee that Cuba does NOT fall into Chaos.

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Saturday, February 27, 2016 7:21 PM

LMAO.....................HA!

SGG

Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:
Quote:
Originally posted by reaverfan:
Why are Repubicans so uniformly ignorant and uninformed?

They aren't , by any stretch, alone in that dept. Dems are much much worse.

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Sunday, February 28, 2016 1:31 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:

( And I don't want to even think how Obama will greet Fidel, behind closed doors )

Guantanamo Bay is in sovereign Cuban territory. The U.S. has been making annual lease payments of $4,085 — checks the Castro regime has refused to cash for decades. The uncashed checks are kept in Castro's office stuffed into a desk drawer.

"I'm sure that will be part of the discussion with Castro," said Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes. "I know that, because I've had that discussion many times with my Cuban counterparts. You know, they are insistent, obviously, that our presence there is not legitimate and that the facility be returned to them."

There are 91 detainees remaining in the Guantanamo prison; each one costs about $4 million per year. The only way to close the prison is for Obama to cancel the lease with Castro. Congress has no power to stop him because it is not a treaty; it’s simply a lease. The Republican Senators will soil their trousers in righteous indignation if Obama and Castro are plotting against Congress to close Guantanamo.

No matter what Barack Obama does in Havana next month, his visit just isn’t going to measure up to the one Calvin Coolidge made in 1928— the last one by an American president. It was a festival of drunken debauchery, inebriated idiocy, salacious smuggling and even unnatural acts with Key lime pies. The full details are here:
www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/cuba/article62559
982.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_Naval_Base#Lease
www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2016/02/18/guantanamo-bay-not-oba
mas-agenda-cuba/80571160/
www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN17200921

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Thursday, March 3, 2016 4:17 AM

And I don't want to even think how he'll greet Fidel, behind closed doors...

It can't be any worse than The Donald giving Putin a BJ in Macy's window.
When was the last time you heard an American praising a Russian president,
kissing his ass and showing up the president and dissing our country.
Meanwhile he's laughing all the way to the bank as he pulls off yet another
Con job. P.T. Barnum would be proud.

Yeah, behind closed doors............Trump is good at that!

SGG

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Thursday, March 3, 2016 6:57 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by SHINYGOODGUY:
And I don't want to even think ............

I noticed that about Republicans. Obama will never beat President Calvin Coolidge in Havana:

Coolidge was trying to calm down growing Cuban unhappiness over high U.S. sugar tariffs that were crippling the island’s economy and to defuse widespread Latin American criticism of American military interventions in Nicaragua, Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Hoping to assuage Latin leaders, Coolidge (who aside from a week’s honeymoon in Canada had never set foot outside the United States) decided to attend a meeting of the Pan American Union — an ancestor of the Organization of American States — in Havana in mid-January 1928.

Even more importantly, though, Coolidge intended to use the meeting to jump-start his campaign for a worldwide treaty renouncing war as an instrument of national policy. The U.S. Senate had refused to approve American participation in the League of Nations eight years earlier, but Coolidge thought that by simply concentrating on banning war without creating an international bureaucracy as part of the package, he might win approval.

Ultimately, he bombed on everything. Although Coolidge promised Cuban leader Gerardo Machado lower tariffs, that never happened — in fact, within a couple of years, the taxes on imported sugar were raised and the island’s good will toward the United States for its help in overthrowing Spanish rule began to leak away. And efforts to placate the rest of Latin America over U.S. interventions never really got under way because Coolidge ordered U.S. Marines back into Nicaragua just before departing to Havana.
www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/cuba/article62559
982.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Saturday, March 5, 2016 11:00 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

The USA has historically been nothing but a leech and an overlord for the people of Cuba, just as it has been for all of Central and South America (except Costa Rica). And Cuba, under USA control, was nothing but a source of very cheap sugar, and a playground full of mostly desperately poor people who were willing to do ANYthing for the rich Americans.

I'm sure RAPPY would like that.

And I know that ANTHONY, if he were here, would jump in and repeat the story how his Cuban grandfather by dint of hard work and obsessive saving bought land and became something other than a landless peasant who couldn't find work in the off-cane harvest-season, but the reality is that Cuba never had much of a middle class under the USA.

Getting involved with the USA ... and especially USA investors and banks ... means getting involved with oily salespeople who've learned the art of giving with one hand and taking with two.

--------------
You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

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Sunday, March 6, 2016 12:54 AM