Cuba will let people work for themselves

[ShogunOfFear]

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/09/24/cuba.jobs/index.html?hpt=T2

Seems to be a lot of changes going on in Cuba lately.  Did Fidel have a near death experience?  How does bore feel about opening trade with Cuba?  I've always thought it'd be a good thing and perhaps better relations with the US. 

[ShogunOfFear]

It is not the beaches we want, it is the women.   

[Mupepe]

Cubans are sooooo fucking annoying.  Worst hispanics ever, cono. 

[Brehvolution]

Open it up. These people have been oppressed for too long.

[Diunx]

Don't open it up! they will steal all our tourists :'(

[Mandark]

Cuba's a great example of how interest group politics work.

Talk to technocrats and the embargoes are almost universally seen as dumb, ineffectual policy.  You'd be hard pressed to find a dozen total diplomats/academics/development economists who think that it's helping in any significant way.

But the embargoes are sine qua non for anti-Castro Cuban American voters, who are the only people who give a shit and who are concentrated in the most important state in the electoral college.  So whaddya gonna do.

[Diunx]

Cubans are sooooo fucking annoying.  Worst hispanics ever, cono. 

The women are hot though, I remember there was this one Cuban girl on my marketing class two years ago, she was fucking gorgeous I just wanted to hold her in my arms and swallow her pain  

spoiler (click to show/hide)

and lick her pussy

[close]

[Beezy]

Cubans are sooooo fucking annoying.  Worst hispanics ever, cono. 

says the mexican

[chronovore]

Cuba's a great example of how interest group politics work.

Talk to technocrats and the embargoes are almost universally seen as dumb, ineffectual policy.  You'd be hard pressed to find a dozen total diplomats/academics/development economists who think that it's helping in any significant way.

But the embargoes are sine qua non for anti-Castro Cuban American voters, who are the only people who give a shit and who are concentrated in the most important state in the electoral college.  So whaddya gonna do.

But wouldn't that only be critical to the people who want the vote in Florida to go... whichever way it went last time? Or to the current president's party? I get that we don't want them feeling disenfranchised but I don't understand how it would hamstring the faction with which they are expected to align.

[Olivia Wilde Homo]

I can't wait until Cuba opens up and I can plunder its natural resources and women like the imperialist that I am 

[Mr. Gundam]

Get rid of the stupid embargo and let me go there, goddammit.

[Mandark]

chronovore:  Conventional wisdom is that if you want to be president, you need Florida, and if you want Florida you need at least a big chunk of the Cuban voters.

The larger point is that there's a very active, organized, emotionally invested interest group for keeping the embargo, no significant anti-embargo interest group to counterbalance, and an overwhelming majority of politicians and government officials who don't care much one way or the other, but who recognize what the easy choices are.

It's basically the same with Israel, but saying so gets you blasted as an anti-semite on the cover of The New Republic.

[Phoenix Dark]

So how about we kick Florida out the union, embargo it, then un-embargo Cuba.

[Diunx]

bu bu bu the oranges!!!

[Olivia Wilde Homo]

So how about we kick Florida the south out the union, embargo it, then un-embargo Cuba.

fixed

[chronovore]

Thanks, Mandark!