here we are with Commie China Inc. on every shelf, & boycotting Communist Cuba. It would be nice to have a latin america policy run from DC and not from Miami.

Continuing the embargo post Soviet Union has been an international embarrassment.

Obama meets Santos following inconclusive Summit .
Sunday, 15 April 2012 13:49 Adriaan Alsema

U.S. President Barack Obama met with his Colombian counterpart Juan Manuel Santos Sunday following the 6th Summit of the Americas held in the coastal city of Cartagena.

The official bilateral meeting followed a secretive summit in which the U.S. and Canada found strong opposition from Latin American countries regarding the North American countries' stance on drug trafficking, the Falkland islands and Cuba.

In his opening speech of the summit, Santos rejected the U.S. embargo on Cuba, a stance that found substantial support among his Latin American colleagues.

"All the countries here in Latin American and the Caribbean want Cuba to be present. But the United States won't accept," President Evo Morales of Bolivia told reporters late Saturday. "It's like a dictatorship."

More:
http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/23429-obama-meets-santos-following-unconclusive-summit.html

Cuba should be allowed in (though it will definitely cost Obama Florida, which is probably lost anyway). The prostitution scandal is an embarrassment that will provide more firepower to attacks, and the rebellion of Latin American countries makes Obama look weak.

After three years of making the most of firing blanks, falsifying charges that Obama is a foreigner, a communist, a socialist, a Nazi, and/or a Moslem, the Repubs finally have some live ammunition.

I wish American politics didn't work that way, but Obama is going to catch some real flak now, not just mud.

They are the ones who have been demanding the embargo stays in place all these years. The Democrats have NOT supported that embargo for many years, and many Democrats have been working to remove it for decades.

It's the right-wing which has insisted on trying to control everything in this hemisphere at the tragic price of countless human lives.

Am I supposed to agree we have a terribly corrupt, unfair system that has created and supports delusional, incredibly selfish people like US conservatives? I agree. As yourself this: is it worth throwing an election to Mitt Romney and the conservatives? Because you know Romney will adopt a government posture similar to George Bush I, except more right wing, because he doesn't care and the personnel he has to work with from the Republican Party are all ultra-conservative. So, here would be your cue to call for revolution. Easy to call for, hard to take tazering, the body cavity search, and/or the bullets.

Or am I supposed to explain to you how the machinery of the US government gives Floridian Cubans an inordinate amount of political clout?

It's our screwy electoral system. As it is, a Cuban minority that's at most (guessing) 15% of Florida and .015 percent of the US, is able to swing an entire presidential election. Meanwhile, due to our Senate and congressional committee system, they also have inordinate power at other levels.

Cuba isn't a US state, something they're proud of. However, this means it has no such power, and it's not important enough otherwise (unlike, say, China). A somewhat moderate President, such as President Obama, has to weigh losing his job, and (I would hope) giving the Right Wing more power against keeping sanctions on Cuba.

Now I'll tell you: I wish Obama would normalize relations with Cuba immediately. I hope afterward he can still win the election. I also wish he would do the first regardless of the last. It probably won't happen, and definitely won't happen before an election.

But I don't have a genie, so the first and second wish will not be granted. Now I have to fall back on the hope he does it in his second term, after he beats Romney.

The right-wing is insisting on a lot, and it's been tragic for everyone, including a large, and unwitting number of them.

"It's the right-wing which has insisted on trying to control everything in this hemisphere at the tragic price of countless human lives."

It's costing many people something, though not equally. Most right wingers are also costing themselves, don't know it and won't acknowledge it. In general, it's a major hassle and burden to so many. US corporations and conservatives are certainly doing their level best to prove Marx right.

In time this may lead, as has been mentioned in the past, to the possibility of the USA being ejected from the OAS.

The rightwing fascists in Florida have a lot of pull over the fascist wing of the US government, AKA GOP. We send trillions of dollars and millions of jobs to communist China but we can't get along with Cuba. Its time for Obama to just say no to the fascist rightwing anti Cuba nuts.

No more sweetheart immigration deals for repug Cubans, on the dole the minute they arrive, but everyone else is an alien