Appeasing the Castro Tyrants...

“Is there no tyrant or anti-American center in the world that Obama will not appease for nothing in return?” Krauthammer asked.

“If you get something in return I’d be willing to listen. I haven’t seen anything.”
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/394938/krauthammers-cuba-take-there-no-tyrant-world-obama-will-not-appease-nothing-nro-staff

obervantone wrote:Because it has worked so well since 1960.

 BTW the prisoner exchange involved an Cuban who spied for the
U-S in Cuba being released to the U-S.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/18/world/americas/us-cuba-relations.html?_r=0

"...Even the disgraced Times’ con artist Jayson Blair recognized that Matthews had dramatically misreported this story. “I was now in the same category as Herbert Matthews,” Blair laments, “the reporter who described Fidel Castro in the Times’ pages as an ‘agrarian reformer’ who supported democracy while ignoring evidence that he was torturing and murdering his own people...”
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2005/07/31128/#ywm0Z8PPyPFxDF4i.99

New York Times photographer Stephen Crowley snapped a picture of freed Cuban detainee Alan Gross at his lawyer’s office preparing his televised remarks after landing in America. But when he posted it to Twitter, it raised eyebrows for someone else in the picture: Communist revolutionary Che Guevara.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com

obervantone wrote:Because it has worked so well since 1960.

BTW the prisoner exchange involved an Cuban who spied for the
U-S in Cuba being released to the U-S.

"Designation under the above-referenced authorities also implicates other sanctions laws that penalize persons and countries engaging in certain trade with state sponsors. Currently there are four countries designated under these authorities: Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria."
—US State Department

“The quality of ideas seems to play a minor role in mass movement leadership. What counts is the arrogant gesture, the complete disregard of the opinion of others, the singlehanded defiance of the world.”
Eric Hoffer

News Hawk

obervantone wrote:
Because it has worked so well since 1960.

BTW the prisoner exchange involved an Cuban who spied for the
U-S in Cuba being released to the U-S.

His lawyer had a photo of Che Gueverra in his office, yet you say "he was a spy for U-S"?

Cuba said he was a spy?

CIA spy jailed for nearly 20 years in Cuba before being sent to the U.S. on Wednesday is almost certainly a communications specialist who worked for the Cuban Interior Ministry before being arrested in 1995, a former U.S. intelligence officer tells NBC News.

The spy, who funneled secrets to his U.S. handlers before being exposed, was not publicly identified by U.S. officials. But former U.S. intelligence officer Chris Simmons named him as Rolando "Rollie" Sarraff Trujillo, believed to be 51 years old. Sarraff worked on the systems that permitted Cuban spies in the U.S. to communicate with officials in Havana before his arrest. He was later sentenced to 25 years in jail for espionage

In his speech Wednesday, Obama referred to Sarraff as “one of the most important intelligence agents that the United States has ever had in Cuba,” someone who “provided America with the information that allowed us to arrest the network of Cuban agents that included the men transferred to Cuba today, as well as other spies in the United States.”

News Hawk
Something else I hadn't considered is that it was Senator Ted Kennedy (and all the other Kennedys) who didn't want the US to recognize the murderer Castro

“That policy hasn’t resulted in the reforms we were hoping for,” he said. “... A new track was desperately needed.”
The younger Kennedy said Friday he favors a phasing in of normal relations with Cuba in exchange for the country adopting a more open, democratic system.
http://www.thesunchronicle.com/news/local_news/despite-family-history-on-cuba-congressman-kennedy-in-favor-of/article_f6b25be6-86e3-11e4-bd16-3769e9779838.html

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce said it “welcomes” President Barack Obama’s announcement that the United States and Cuba will start to normalize relations.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2014/12/17/chamber-of-commerce-welcomes-obama-cuba-announcement/

It is rare that a political party running for office in a midterm election not standing for anything ends up with a mandate, and they have one, and it is the biggest and perhaps the most important mandate a political party has had in the recent era, and it is very simple what that mandate is. It is to stop Barack Obama. It is to stop the Democrats. There is no other reason why Republicans were elected yesterday. Republicans were not elected to govern.
-Jaba the Rush http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2014/11/05/the_mandate_republicans_were_elected_to_stop_barack_obama_not_to_work_with_him

The pilots' families said they weren't given notice of the release, according to NBC News.

"We simply cannot understand how this could have happened, especially in the case of Gerardo Hernandez. This was the only modicum of justice we had," Maggie Alejandre-Khuly, sister of one of the pilots, told NBC News.

Florida Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen said she believes the president may have broken federal law in arranging the swap.

"This is outrageous. The Cuban regime ordered the murder — the assassination of these three American citizens, one resident — and what has been the value of these valiant heroes lives and deaths? An exchange," she said, according to NBC News.

In Cuba, the spies had long been hailed as the Five Heroes, with photographs displayed on billboards across the country, The New York Times reported.
http://www.newsmax.com/Headline/cuban-five-alan-gross-prisoner-swap-Brothers-to-Rescue/2014/12/18/id/613743/

But it's a fools errand to think a president like Obama, who has willingly lied to, spied upon and harassed his own people, would understand the plight of the average Cuban, especially since he clearly doesnt care about the plight of the average American.

In fact, I’ll predict that Cuba, with its peculiar confluence of European and African cultural heritage steeped in decades of brutal communist hegemony, will end up being a lot like another bastard creation of too much money without enough liberty: Russia. Given Obama’s personal humiliation at the hands of current Russian oligarch and Soviet holdover Vladimir Putin, and his barely concealed admiration for precisely the sort of government that made Cuba such a party for the past half-century, it’s likely Obama won’t figure this one out until it’s too late.

Cuba is a Marxist hellhole. Worse: Cuba is precisely the hellhole Marxism always produces, albeit with tropical-getaway foliage. A ludicrously tiny minority of the people — in Cuba’s case, the Castros and whichever of their cronies hasn’t been sent to “rehabilitation” for “crimes against the state” — not only own nearly everything of value, they essentially own everyone else. While the Castro boys party with Hollywood stars, the average Cuban scrapes and claws his way to a subsistence living. And, as is always the case in a communist dictatorship, the average Cuban knows: Someone is always watching.

http://personalliberty.com/obamas-cuba-gambit-will-fail/

obervantone wrote:"...Oh yeah, now I remember...it's that "say no" to Obama thing..."

Just one day before President Obama announced sweeping changes that would allow potential American investment in Cuba, the Cuban government apparently had begun preparing itself by announcing new measures that would allow Cubans who work for foreign companies to keep only 8% of their salaries.
Breitbart

obervantone wrote:Here is a little more reading material that you won't read.
http://www.factcheck.org/2014/12/is-cuba-a-leading-sponsor-of-terrorism/?utm_source=FactCheck.org&utm_campaign=2da8997ca0-FactCheck_Newsletter_12_19_201412_19_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_3294bba774-2da8997ca0-47870977

obervantone wrote:You left out the quote from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce welcoming the President's decision to move to normalize relations with Cuba when you quoted me above.

It's funny how Barack Obama plays the oppressed victim card in an interview with People magazine and at the same time announces he will subsidize Cuba's communism. The media couldn’t get enough of Obama’s inane tale of racial oppression this past week. Then, he goes and aligns himself with oppressors extraordinaire – the Castro brothers.

What else can we expect from a man mentored by Frank Marshall Davis, a communist pervert? Or a community organizer who worked with small-c communist Bill Ayers in Chicago?

In 2009, Obama and senior adviser Valerie Jarrett actually ushered communist revolutionary Anthony K. "Van" Jones into the White House.

Cuba has long inspired romantic feelings in Obama's far-left radical buddies. Many of Van Jones’s fellow STORM comrades visited Cuba in 1999 as part of the Venceremos Brigade. And a day after the president's historic pledge to loosen the "shackles of the past" with Cuba, Bill Ayers posted "Viva Cuba! Cuba es en mi corazon!" on his website.

The U.S. Communist online news site Peoples World is also doing cartwheels over Obama's decision to re-establish diplomatic relations with Cuba. While leftist activists and the media provide cover for Obama, stirring up trouble between blacks and whites, the president is praised by communist propagandists right here at home.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...

Cuban police have detained at least three leading dissidents ahead of a planned free-speech demonstration in the Plaza de la Revolución.

The arrests of Antonio Rodiles, Eliezer Avila and Reinaldo Escobar look set to be the biggest test yet of diplomatic relations with the US since they were restored earlier this month after 53 years of tension.

The crackdown came around lunchtime on Tuesday, just hours before local performance artist Tania Bruguera was due to stage an open-microphone event in Havana’s most politically sensitive square.
—The Guardian

obervantone wrote:"...It also strikes me as odd that you would be so opposed to this when the "business arm of the GOP" is welcoming the announcement with open arms...!

"Survivor says her husband went missing. The other occupants were shipped back to the island. Women and children freed, men still in custody.

Masiel González Castellano, a woman who survived the attack and whose husband is allegedly missing, told reporters in Miami during a telephone conversation from Matanzas, Cuba, that her husband, Leosbel Díaz Beoto, was nowhere to be found after falling overboard.

“We were screaming and crying for help as the boat was sinking. But they ignored us. Instead, they continued charging against our boat. Some people dove in the water and others stayed aboard as the boat sank,” the Miami Herald reported Gonzalez, who was contacted during a press conference hosted in Miami by the Democracy Movement, as saying. “They knew there were children aboard, but continued to charge against us. They didn’t care.”

González said the boat was carrying 32 people, including seven women and two children, one of which was her eight-year-old son. After being hit on Tuesday morning, the Cuban Coast Guard rescued most of the survivors, who were then locked up by the State Security in Versailles, Matanzas.

González said she was released on Thursday night with the rest of the women and children. The men remain under custody, she added.

According to Ramón Saúl Sánchez of the Democracy Movement, the incident occurred in international waters, 22 miles away from Cuban territory. On Friday, Sánchez said he contacted the U.S. Coast Guard in Miami, and was given confirmation that a call had been received about a sunken boat and that they reported the incident to the Cuban Coast Guard.
http://en.mercopress.com/2014/12/20/cuba-s-coast-guard-sinks-boat-carrying-32-refugees-who-were-trying-to-reach-fla.

In a move that has angered lawmakers and activists in the United States, the Cuban government has rearrested two political prisoners from the list of 53 whose release had been negotiated by the U.S.

According to independent media sources in Cuba, Ronaldo Reyes Rabanal and Luís Enrique Labrador – along with other activists – were arrested while attending a meeting of the opposition group, Movement for a New Republic. Lazara María Borrego Guzmán, a member of the Ladies in White opposition movement, was also allegedly arrested during the meeting and Cuban officials allegedly broke her arm.
Fox News Latino

A group of Senate Republicans pressed Attorney General Eric H. Holder on Friday to explain the administration’s policy for U.S. fugitives in Cuba, including a convicted cop killer, following President Obama’s announced normalization of relations with the communist island nation. “As the nation’s chief law enforcement officer, do you support the normalization of relations with Cuba without the return of fugitives from justice for prosecution who have the blood of Americans, including law enforcement officers on their hands?” said the three senators in a letter to Mr. Holder.

The letter was signed by Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida, Ted Cruz..."
—Washington Times

Measures put into effect this month range from permitting large-scale sales of telecommunications equipment to allowing U.S. banks to open accounts in Cuba, but officials on the island want to know if Cuba can buy such gear on credit and whether it is now free to use dollars for transactions around the world, not just those newly permitted with U.S. institutions. Until now, at least, U.S. law and policy has banned most foreign dealings with Cuba.

"I could make an endless list of questions and this is going to require a series of clarifications in order to really know where we are and what possibilities are going to open up," Vidal said.

Obama also launched a review of Cuba's inclusion on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism and Vidal said "it will be difficult to conceive of the reestablishment of relations" while Cuba remains on that list, which imposes financial and other restrictions.
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/cuba-leaves-talks-us-ties-insisting-wont-major-224809935.html

SAN JOSÉ, Costa Rica—Cuban President Raúl Castro demanded Wednesday that the U.S. return the base at Guantanamo Bay, lift the half-century trade embargo on Cuba and compensate his country for damages before the two nations re-establish normal relations.

Mr. Castro told a summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States that Cuba and the U.S. are working toward full diplomatic relations but “if these problems aren’t resolved, this diplomatic rapprochement wouldn’t make any sense.”

Mr. Castro and U.S. President Barack Obama announced on Dec. 17 that they would move toward renewing full diplomatic relations by reopening embassies in each other’s countries. The two governments held negotiations in Havana last week to discuss both the reopening of embassies and the broader agenda of re-establishing normal relations.

On Wednesday, Mr. Castro emphasized an even broader list of Cuban demands, saying that while diplomatic ties may be re-established, normal relations with the U.S. depend on a series of concessions that appear highly unlikely in the near future.

The U.S. established the military base in 1903, and the current Cuban government has been demanding the land’s return since the 1959 revolution that brought it to power. Cuba also wants the U.S. to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in damages for losses caused by the embargo