Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis said that a victory from Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams would lead to a “Cold War” between the two states.
DeSantis made the <a href="https://thehill.com/news/3262688-desantis-says-cold-war-coming-between-florida-georgia-if-stacey-abrams-is-elected-governor/">remarks</a> during a recent press conference, where he commented on the Masters golf tournament and referenced the upcoming elections in Georgia, which lies immediately to Florida’s north. DeSantis made a jab at Abrams — a progressive who narrowly lost the 2018 gubernatorial race to Governor Brian Kemp (R-GA) — by comparing her to communist Cuban dictator Raúl Castro.
“If Stacey Abrams is elected governor of Georgia, I just want to be honest, that will be a cold war between Florida and Georgia,” he said. “I can’t have Castro to my south and Abrams to my north, that would be a disaster. So I hope you guys take care of that and we’ll end up in good shape.”
Castro succeeded his brother, Fidel Castro, as Cuba’s leader in 2011. Raúl Castro stepped down as first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba in 2021 and was replaced by Miguel Díaz-Canel.
Abrams <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-stacey-abrams-announces-she-is-running-for-georgia-governor-in-2022">announced</a> her intention to run in the 2022 race at the end of last year. “Regardless of the pandemic or the storms, the obstacles in our way or the forces determined to divide us, my job has been to just put my head down and keep working toward one Georgia,” she said. “Because in the end, we are one Georgia.”
Among other facets of her <a href="https://staceyabrams.com/policy/#healthcare">platform</a>, Abrams promises to implement “high-quality, affordable child care” for children from kindergarten through fourth grade, to “cultivate school programs that proactively support LGBTQ+ kids,” and to “defend the rights of women and families” to exercise their “reproductive rights.”
Abrams has spent the better part of the past four years insisting that she actually <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/28/magazine/stacey-abrams-election-georgia.html">won</a> Georgia’s last gubernatorial race. Indeed, Abrams’ recent announcement immediately provoked mockery from conservatives. Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) fired: “Wait I thought you said you were already the Governor.”
In 2019, Abrams <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-stacey-abrams-still-promoting-unfounded-molly-prince">told</a> MSNBC: “I think the election was stolen from the people of Georgia.”
“I don’t know that empirically, I would have won,” she explained. “But if you add together the thousands of people who faced extraordinary long lines, who faced hurdles that should not happen in a democracy, the votes that we know were not counted, the secretary of state who was also my opponent in the race purged more than 1.4 million voters over basically an eight-year period.”
In October 2021, Abrams <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/stacey-abrams-i-come-from-a-state-where-i-was-not-entitled-to-become-the-governor">said</a> she came from a state where she was not “entitled” to become governor, again hinting that the election was stolen from her.
“Just because you win doesn’t mean you won,” Abrams said while campaigning for former Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe. “We’ve got folks who are ready to take back what they think is theirs, but they are not entitled to our progress. They are not entitled to our justice. They are not entitled to our vote.”
“I come from a state where I was not entitled to become the governor, but as an American citizen and a citizen of Georgia, I’m going to fight for every person who has the right to vote to be able to cast that vote,” she continued.

Stacey Abrams

‘Castro To My South And Abrams To My North’: DeSantis Says Florida And Georgia Bound For ‘Cold War’ If Stacey Abrams Becomes Governor

Raul Castro

Ron DeSantis

On Friday, Raúl Castro said he would resign as the leader of Cuba’s Communist Party, signaling a close to more than six decades of Castro family rule.
The Washington Post <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/04/15/cuba-raul-castro-communist-party-congress/">reports</a>, “Sixty-two years after a band of revolutionaries set Cuba down the path of confrontation with Washington – and unleashed waves of exiles that reshaped American cities – the last of the Castro brothers, towering figures of the Cold War, announced he will surrender official power.” According to the outlet, “Fidel Castro’s younger brother has hinted for a decade at an expiration date to his public life,” but the 89-year-old “said he would step down as first secretary of the Communist Party.”
Castro made the announcement during a speech on the first day of the Communist Party’s eighth congress. NBC News <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/cubas-raul-castro-confirms-stepping-head-communist-party-rcna689">reported</a> Castro said he had “fulfilled his mission” and was “confident in the future of the fatherland.”
“Nothing, nothing, nothing is forcing me to make this decision,” said Castro. “I believe fervently in the strength and exemplary nature and comprehension of my compatriots, and as long as I live, I will be ready with my foot in the stirrup to defend the homeland, the revolution and socialism with more force than ever.”
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Comrade Raul Castro steps down today as the First Secretary of the Communist Party in Cuba after a lifetime of service to the revolutionary cause. Venceremos! <a href="https://t.co/fEMvujqYpP">pic.twitter.com/fEMvujqYpP</a>
&mdash; Vijay Prashad (@vijayprashad) <a href="https://twitter.com/vijayprashad/status/1383085873739235329?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 16, 2021</a></blockquote>
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The Associated Press <a href="https://apnews.com/article/fidel-castro-miguel-diaz-canel-raul-castro-cuba-be9643a492b1803b67e29c8de467f7e9">reports</a>, Castro did not say who he would endorse as his replacement, “but previously indicated he favors yielding control to 60-year-old Miguel Díaz-Canel, who succeeded him as president in 2018 and is the standard bearer of a younger generation of loyalists who have been pushing an economic opening without touching Cuba’s one-party system.” Castro <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/cubas-raul-castro-confirms-stepping-head-communist-party-rcna689">described</a> those comrades as &#8220;full of passion and anti-imperialist spirit.&#8221;
“Raul Castro stepping down as head of the Communist Party in #Cuba isn’t real change,” tweeted Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida earlier this week. “But real change is already underway nonetheless.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Raul Castro stepping down as head of the Communist Party in <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Cuba?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Cuba</a> isn’t real change
But real change is already underway nonetheless
&mdash; Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) <a href="https://twitter.com/marcorubio/status/1381944695408975874?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 13, 2021</a></blockquote>
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More from the AP:
<blockquote>The Communist Party is made up of 700,000 activists and is tasked in Cuba’s constitution with directing the affairs of the nation and society.
Fidel Castro, who led the revolution that drove dictator Fulgencio Batista from power in 1959, formally became head of the party in 1965, about four years after officially embracing socialism.
He quickly absorbed the old party under his control and was the country’s unquestioned leader until falling ill in 2006 and in 2008 handing over the presidency to his younger brother Raul, who had fought alongside him during the revolution.
Raul succeeded him as head of the party in 2011. Fidel Castro died in 2016.
For most of his life, Raul played second-string to his brother Fidel – first as a guerrilla commander, later as a senior figure in their socialist government. But for the past decade, it’s Raul who has been the face of communist Cuba and its defiance of U.S. efforts to oust its socialist system.</blockquote>
According to the AP, Castro’s resignation comes at a “difficult time” for Cuba, citing the COVID-19 pandemic, an economy that shrank 11% last year, long food lines and shortages, along with “discontent” that reportedly “has been fueled by the spread of the internet and growing inequality.” NBC reports, “the country’s challenges have led to public discontent at levels rarely seen since the 1959 communist revolution.”

Memorial Tribute For Fidel Castro Held In Santiago De Cuba

Raúl Castro To Step Down As Leader Of Cuba’s Communist Party

Communism

Cuba

Socialism

Despite his raging liberalism, I have long been an admirer of Nicholas Kristof. It takes a man of immense courage to do what he did in bringing the terrible truth about Communist China to light for all to see. He has also taken a stand on behalf of young conservatives who suffer discrimination on college campuses, a stand for which he received an enormous amount of hate mail from his lefty readers.
That being said, he screwed up &#8212; big time &#8212; in his <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/18/opinion/sunday/cuba-healthcare-medicare.html?emc=edit_nk_20190118&amp;nl=nickkristof&amp;nlid=7176898320190118&amp;te=1" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">latest column</a> in The New York Times. His essay is dedicated to telling his readers why &#8220;Cuba has the Medicare for All that many Americans dream about.&#8221;
A little background, to explain my dismay.
I spent two weeks in working class areas of Cuba in 2014. I stayed in Havana for some of the time, but it was the city of Santiago de Cuba that left the biggest impression. In Santiago de Cuba, I stayed next door to a nurse, who upon learning I was an American, asked if I could spare any clean pillow cases and bedsheets. She explained that there was a cholera outbreak going around Cuba&#8217;s hospitals. Cholera had been eradicated in Cuba a century earlier, but Cuban hospitals are so filthy and neglected that the disease has made a strong comeback. (In Venezuela, the largest recipient of Cuban medical slave labor, the once extinct disease of Malaria has been revived. Communism may be Godless, but it seems that Cuban Medicare for All works its own miracles in resurrecting dead plagues.)
I was not allowed to see the hospital for myself. Had they known I was coming, they may have prepared, like they did for Michael Moore (a Cuban girl who&#8217;s uncle is a doctor in Cuba once told me that &#8220;Sicko really bothers me because he [Moore] went to my uncle&#8217;s hospital and they were notified months ahead of time. More than enough time to set up a front.&#8221;) Instead, I was shown a clinic that was pristine &#8212; and it was empty. As far as I can tell, the common people are not allowed in that clinic.
It wouldn&#8217;t be surprising. Cuba is by far the most class segregated society I have ever seen. A Cuban worker explained to me that while they hear endlessly from the government about the &#8220;American embargo against Cuba,&#8221; the real problem is the &#8220;internal embargo&#8221;&#8212;the embargo that the government elite has imposed on the Cuban people to keep them from participating in the economies of the elite and the outside world.
Not only is there physical separation from the elites, but there is even a separate currency. The Cuban people use the Cuban Peso (CUP), whereas the government elite and the tourists use the Cuban Convertible Peso (CUC). The CUC is worth 25 times the value of the CUP, and the nation&#8217;s tourist areas, luxury restaurants, and other attractions for foreigners will not accept Cuban pesos, effectively keeping the native population out. The Cuban government also uses the two currencies to make it more difficult for Cuban workers to keep more of their money; Cuban workers employed by foreign companies, for example, are only allowed to keep 8% of their salaries once they are converted into CUP.
Mr. Kristof apparently visited a different Cuba than I did.
His column, titled &#8220;Why Infants May Be More Likely to Die in America Than Cuba,&#8221; tells us that &#8220;Cuba is poor and repressive with a dysfunctional economy, but in health care it does an impressive job that the United States could learn from.&#8221;
Thus:
<blockquote>
According to official statistics (about which, as we&#8217;ll see, there is some debate), the infant mortality rate in Cuba is only 4.0 deaths per 1,000 live births. In the United States, it&#8217;s 5.9. In other words, an American infant is, by official statistics, almost 50 percent more likely to die than a Cuban infant. By my calculations, that means that 7,500 American kids die each year because we don&#8217;t have as good an infant mortality rate as Cuba reports.
</blockquote>
Notice the reference to &#8220;some debate&#8221; about the accuracy of the Cuban Communist regime&#8217;s official statistics. He returns to this later in his essay:
<blockquote>
There are also allegations that Cuba fiddles with its numbers. The country has an unusually high rate of late fetal deaths, and skeptics contend that when a baby is born in distress and dies after a few hours, this is sometimes categorized as a stillbirth to avoid recording an infant death. Dr. Roberto Álvarez, a Cuban pediatrician, insisted to me that this does not happen and countered with explanations for why the fetal death rate is high. I&#8217;m not in a position to judge who&#8217;s right, but any manipulation seems unlikely to make a huge difference to the reported figures.
</blockquote>
It does not seem to occur to Mr. Kristof that the Doctor he was speaking to, an employee of the regime, may be lying. It should be noted that the allegations Mr. Kristof refers to &#8211; detailing how the Communist regime is lying &#8211; are widespread, and were recently stated by a man who watches events in Cuba very closely. &#8220;Totalitarian regimes don&#8217;t have the best history of accurate reporting,&#8221; Senator Marco Rubio <a href="https://nypost.com/2014/02/28/how-cuba-is-exporting-repression-to-venezuela/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">said</a> on the Senate floor. &#8220;In Cuba there are instances reported, that if a child only lives a few hours after birth, it&#8217;s not counted as a person who ever lived and therefore doesn&#8217;t count against the mortality rate. &#8230; Any time there&#8217;s any problem with the child in utero, the mothers are strongly encouraged to undergo abortions.&#8221;
Mr. Kristof may have been taken on a Potemkin village tour. At one point in the article, he refers to health problems resulting from more and more people who are overweight. Almost everyone I saw was underweight, and I actually acquired one Cuban&#8217;s ration book from the previous year. Not many people can get fat on rations that small.
Mr. Kristof writes that:
<blockquote>
Missing a prenatal checkup is much less likely in Cuba because of a system of front-line clinics called consultorios. These clinics, staffed by a single doctor and nurse, are often run down and poorly equipped, but they make health care readily available: Doctors live upstairs and are on hand after hours in emergencies.
</blockquote>
As noted earlier, the consultorio I saw in Santiago de Cuba was devoid of the common man. It was just another part of what Rubio described as a &#8220;three-tiered system where foreigners and government officials get health care much better than what&#8217;s available to the general population.&#8221;
Additional evidence that there was a Potemkin element to his trip is in the fact that not everyone Mr. Kristof spoke to was honest about who they are. I want to give one glaring example of such a person who is quoted in his essay:
&#8220;It&#8217;s no secret that most health problems can be resolved at the primary-care level by the doctor, nurse or health worker nearest you,&#8221; said Gail Reed, the American executive editor of the health journal Medicc Review, which focuses on Cuban health care. &#8220;So, there is something to be said for Cuba&#8217;s building of a national primary-care network that posts health professionals in neighborhoods nationwide.&#8221;
This is not the first time Gail Reed has been quoted in the New York Times. In 1983 she was interviewed through the fence of the Cuban embassy in Grenada, which was surrounded by US Marines that liberated the island from the Cuban-puppet &#8220;New Jewel Movement&#8221; regime. From the Cuban side of the fence, Reed angrily complained about the murder of Cuban-backed Communist Maurice Bishop by other Cuban-backed Communists. &#8220;The killing of Bishop is [was] not authorized,&#8221; she said to the Times. Unlike the multitude of other assassinations Castro was involved in, this one was &#8220;Not authorized.&#8221;
Ms. Reed was in a position to know. At the time she was married to Julian Torres Rizo, Cuban ambassador to Grenada. When Reagan liberated Grenada, the Marines found tons and tons of documents. Reagan tasked Herbert Romerstein, head of USIA&#8217;s office to counter Soviet &#8220;Active Measures&#8221;, with analyzing the documents. Romerstein wrote that &#8220;The documents of the New Jewel Movement&#8217;s Central Committee and Politburo show that Cuban Ambassador Julian Torres Rizo and his wife, American-born Gail Reed Rizo, played a major role in directing the NJM and the Government of Grenada.&#8221; Every year since 1983, Grenadines celebrate October 25 as Thanksgiving Day, the day the Cubans &#8212; Ms Reed and her comrades &#8212; were driven from their island. She went back to writing for the Cuban state media.
Ms. Reed, the former Elena Cheucescu of Grenada and propagandist for Cuban Pravda, has reinvented herself as an &#8220;expert&#8221; on Cuba&#8217;s healthcare system. She has spent a lifetime as a mouthpiece for the Castro tyranny, and her latest incarnation as &#8220;the American executive editor of the health journal Medicc Review, which focuses on Cuban health care&#8221; is no different.
Kristof even included the Cuban regime&#8217;s favorite scapegoat:
<blockquote>
It&#8217;s also notable that Cuba achieves excellent health outcomes even though the American trade and financial embargo badly damages the economy and restricts access to medical equipment.
</blockquote>
According to the Obama administration, in the person of Susan Rice, responding to one of the routine outbursts from the Cuban delegation to the UN in <a href="https://babalublog.com/2009/10/31/bloqueo-embargo-hah-neither-says-obama-u-n-rep/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">2009</a>: &#8220;It is erroneous to charge that U.S. sanctions are the cause of deprivation among the Cuban people. The U.S. maintains no restriction on humanitarian aid to Cuba. In fact, the U.S. is a major source of humanitarian assistance to the Cuban people and the largest provider of food to Cuba. In 2008, the United States exported agricultural products, medical devices, medicine, wood, and humanitarian items to Cuba. In agricultural products alone, the United States sold $700.1 million of goods to Cuba. Once again, in 2008, the United States was Cuba&#8217;s fifth largest trading partner.&#8221;
Someday the people of Cuba will be free from the tyranny of Communism, and can tell the world about the lies of the regime. Until that time, we are cursed to have to deal with people who believe the propaganda.

MITSOTAKIS: Nicholas Kristof Must Have Visited A Very Different Cuba

Fidel Castro

Nicholas Kristof

Cuba&#8217;s government is being accused of censoring text messages in an attempt to suppress opposition to its new proposed constitution.
Hearing that text messages with hashtags opposing the new constitution were being blocked, Eduardo Sanchez, 23, decided to test it out for himself, <a href="https://www.local10.com/news/cuba/anti-constitution-text-messages-blocked-on-cuban-cell-phones">WPLG Local 10</a> reports. Sanchez posted a screenshot on Twitter showing several text messages he claims he sent and a screenshot of ones he claims were actually delivered. 
Text messages containing pro-constitution hashtags, such as &#8220;#YoVotoSi&#8221; (I Vote Yes) and &#8220;#SomosContinuidad&#8221; (We Are Continuity), were successfully delivered, he says, while text messages containing opposition slogans, such as &#8220;#YoVotoNo&#8221; (I Vote No) and &#8220;Abstencion&#8221; (Abstention), were not.
In his tweet, Sanchez wrote that he believes ETECSA, the state-run telecommunications company, is to blame.
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Acabo de comprobarlo. <a href="https://twitter.com/ETECSA_Cuba?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@ETECSA_Cuba</a>, una sociedad anónima cuyo accionista mayoritario es el Estado (no el Gobierno) censura términos no favorables a la aprobación del Proyecto de Constitución. Mayra Arevich debe dar explicaciones sobre este uso patrimonial de los bienes públicos. <a href="https://t.co/bGPbbb08lo">pic.twitter.com/bGPbbb08lo</a>
&#8212; Eduardo Sánchez (@Eduardo_SG_) <a href="https://twitter.com/Eduardo_SG_/status/1082399038060879872?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 7, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
If enacted, the constitution would ensure that the Communist Party faces no opposition since it is the &#8220;superior political power of society and of the State.&#8221; An older draft from July included no mention of communism, but it was later added back in after concern from citizens, according to state-run media.
The draft for the proposed constitution includes several new provisions, including creating a Prime Minister position that will be nominated by the President and then confirmed by the National Assembly, the <a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/cuba/article223980880.html">Miami Herald</a> reports.
The constitution has been widely praised for seemingly starting to acknowledge private property, but in reality, the most recent draft will only allow property to be owned at the discretion of a state regulator on a case-by-case basis, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/05/opinion/sunday/cubas-next-transformation.html">The New York Times</a> notes.
A provision of the draft that has been denounced by <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/08/cuba-new-administrations-decree-349-is-a-dystopian-prospect-for-cubas-artists/">Amnesty International</a> requires approval for art and performances to determine if the content misuses &#8220;patriotic symbols&#8221; or is &#8220;immoral or vulgar.&#8221;
The constitution was recently approved by the National Assembly and could be ratified if approved by a referendum on February 24.
Cubans were only first allowed to use cellphones in 2008 and <a href="https://www.local10.com/news/cuba/cubans-continue-connecting-to-newly-unveiled-mobile-data-service">were reportedly</a> given 3G mobile service last month by the state-run telecommunications company, which has so far only provided enough cellphone towers for 66% of the population.
WiFi packages are also offered to Cubans by the government, with packages ranging from $7 for 600 megabytes to $30 for 4 gigabytes of data. With Cuba&#8217;s average monthly salary at just $30, many Cubans can only afford the lower-priced package, which isn&#8217;t enough to watch a single hour of Netflix with standard definition. 
Cuba recently celebrated its 60-year-anniversary of adopting communism after the now-deceased dictator Fidel Castro took over the country. <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/11129/7-things-you-need-know-about-fidel-castro-aaron-bandler">Under Castro&#8217;s reign</a> the government imprisoned, tortured, and murdered thousands of people. &#8220;Castro jailed and tortured political prisoners at a higher [per capita] rate than Stalin during the Great Terror&#8221; and &#8220;murdered more Cubans in his first three years in power than Hitler murdered Germans during his first six,&#8221; <a href="http://townhall.com/columnists/humbertofontova/2016/11/28/why-all-that-dancing-in-the-streets-of-miami-n2251645">Humberto Fontova</a> writes.
The constitution has been paraded as a way for Cuba to adapt to the modern age, but it doesn&#8217;t look like much progress is coming anytime soon to the communist-controlled island.

Communist Paradise? Cuba Allegedly Censoring Text Messages Critical Of New Constitution

Cuba will have a new president on Wednesday, and for the first time in decades, his last name won&#8217;t be &#8220;Castro.&#8221;
Wednesday morning, the Cuban National Assembly met to vote in a successor to Raul Castro, who took over in 2008, when his brother, Fidel Castro, became too sick to lead the Communist nation. In effect, the Castro brothers have been at the helm of the small island country since the late 1950s.
The vote will be by secret ballot and the results will be available on Thursday, but surprises are unlikely. Castro&#8217;s vice president, Miguel Diaz-Canel, is expected to be named Cuba&#8217;s president; he&#8217;s Castro&#8217;s chosen successor, and he&#8217;s been groomed for the position for decades. Raul Castro may be giving up administrative power, but he will still exercise control over Diaz-Canel as head of the country&#8217;s Communist Party, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/in-cubas-national-assembly-raul-castro-marks-last-moments-of-his-familys-rule/2018/04/18/82f82cd4-4293-11e8-b2dc-b0a403e4720a_story.html?utm_term=.070b3f0b3a41">The Washington Post reports</a>.
Americans shouldn&#8217;t expect much change from the Castro era to the Diaz-Canel era. They&#8217;re both party loyalists, and Diaz-Canel is younger and more skilled at handling the administrative aspects of the job of &#8220;dictator&#8221; &#8212; something the Castro brothers struggled with even as they maintained an iron rule over the island nation for nearly 60 years.
It&#8217;s also not likely members of Cuba&#8217;s Communist Party will &#8220;go rogue&#8221; with their votes.
But, WaPo points out, there is one glimmer of hope: along with voting on Castro&#8217;s immediate successor, Cuban legislators, Cuba&#8217;s National Assembly, will vote on the 32 members of Cuba&#8217;s ruling council, and some of those members, revolutionaries from the 1960s who are now elderly like Castro, may choose to leave with the man who helped lead the revolution, making way for younger, more modern leaders.
They&#8217;ll still be Communist, of course, but younger legislators might be more open to concessions that open Cuba up to the larger world in productive ways.

End Of An Era: Cuba’s Legislature Opens Session To Replace Raul Castro

On Friday, President Donald Trump excoriated the Obama administration&#8217;s &#8220;completely one-sided deal with Cuba&#8221; and prompted the White House to announce new restrictions to travel and dealings with the communist island nation.
While Trump claimed he was &#8220;canceling&#8221; Obama&#8217;s entire &#8220;deal,&#8221; the White House&#8217;s actual announcement lays out changes to policy that only partly alter the last administration&#8217;s diplomatic position.
Here are 5 things you need to know about Trump&#8217;s new Cuba policy:
1. Trump will impose new travel restrictions for Americans looking to vacation in Cuba and roll back the previous president&#8217;s flexible allowances. &#8220;Obama allowed U.S. visitors to travel to the country under 12 different license categories, including for educational purposes, religious reasons, journalistic activities and family visits. There was also a general license. Tourism was still prohibited, however,&#8221; <a href="http://thehill.com/policy/transportation/338211-how-trumps-cuba-policy-impacts-us-travelers">reports</a> The Hill, adding:
<blockquote>
Trump is eliminating the so-called people-to-people trips, a sub-category of education that enables Americans to design their own trips and go to Cuba on their own. That method has been one of the more popular ways that U.S. travelers have been seeing the island since Obama announced his changes.
Under Trump&#8217;s new restrictions, Americans will only be able to visit Cuba as part of a tour group if they want to go to the island for educational purposes.
</blockquote>
The feds are being directed to enforce the new travel restrictions aggressively. If you&#8217;re thinking about skirting the rules and traveling to Cuba anyway, be warned, you could end up in serious legal trouble, including civil fines up to $65,000 per violation. Visitors must keep detailed records of their schedules and activities on the island for five years. The Treasury Department&#8217;s auditing will be monitored by the Inspector General to make sure all goes to plan and nobody slips through the cracks.
2. Trump will explicitly enforce a ban prohibiting any commercial interactions with Cuban companies owned or affiliated with the the communist regime&#8217;s military or intelligence divisions. By clamping down on monetary transactions that may help the Castros, Trump is hoping to isolate and weaken the regime once again.
3. Commercial flights between the United States and Cuba will not be affected by Trump&#8217;s new policy. Commercial flights will resume, allowing the seven U.S. airlines that fly nonstop to Cuba to continue their business. However, due to newly imposed travel restrictions, we may expect airlines to pursue less ambitious flight schedules to Cuba in anticipation of less travelers. Obama first opened up commercial travel with Cuba last summer. It was the first time in 50 years that Americans were boarding commercial flights to the long-ostracized island nation just south of Florida.
4. It&#8217;s unclear when Trump&#8217;s new policy will go into full force. While the Treasury and Commerce departments have 30 days to begin drafting the new codes. After that, the pace at which the administration wants to enact these rules will be self-determined.
If you&#8217;re planning on traveling to Cuba anytime soon, don&#8217;t worry. Your trip will likely proceed as planned without any serious obstacles.
&#8220;That means that travelers who have already scheduled a trip to Cuba can still move ahead with their plans, as long as the new regulations have not taken effect yet,&#8221; explains The Hill. &#8220;In writing new rules, the Treasury Department is expected to spell out exactly what will happen to people who book trips before the new rules, but travel after their release.&#8221;
5. Cuba has pushed back against Trump&#8217;s new policy, calling it a &#8220;grotesque spectacle.&#8221;
&#8220;We will never negotiate under pressure or under threat,&#8221; <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/19/cuba-donald-trump-policy">said</a> Cuban foreign minister Bruno Rodriguez.
Rodriguez also said his country will refuse to return U.S. fugitives who have sought asylum in Cuba.
&#8220;It was a grotesque spectacle straight from the cold war,&#8221; <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/19/cuba-donald-trump-policy">stated</a> the foreign minister during a trip to Vienna. &#8220;Cuba will make no concessions on its sovereignty and its independence, will not negotiate over its principles and will never accept [imposed] conditions.&#8221;

5 Things You Need To Know About Trump’s New Cuba Policy

Barack Obama

Donald Trump

Trump Administration

Even in communist-repressed Cuba, a single ray of the light of freedom can shine for a moment before it is extinguished by the Cuban government.
Just as the government-controlled May Day march celebrating communism was about to start in Havana, one lone intrepid protester, having broken through security, which included government agents along the length of the parade, sprinted in front of the parade <a href="http://www.wptv.com/news/world/protester-with-us-flag-disrupts-start-of-cubas-annual-may-day-parade?llll&amp;utm_content=buffer75cf8&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=twitter.com&amp;utm_campaign=buffer">holding the American flag aloft.</a> He stayed ahead of <a href="http://www.whio.com/news/world/protester-disrupts-start-cuba-annual-may-day-parade/3gAn90LrgzKL9wgv0EohHK/">two security agents</a> until he was swarmed by other officials because he tripped over his own feet. He was then tackled, lifted off the ground and carried away in front of Cuban dictator Raul Castro, as well as military and civilian leaders and foreign dignitaries.
Two of the guards shouted &#8220;Long live Raul!&#8221; and &#8220;Long live Fidel!&#8221; One guard struck the protester in the face.
In September 2015, members of the Santiago-based dissident group Patriotic Union of Cuba approached Pope Francis, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/cuba-pope-arrests_us_55fef33ce4b00310edf76d24">crying out to him</a> before they were arrested. Prior to the Pope&#8217;s visit, Nelis Rojas de Morales, secretary of the International Coordinator of Former Cuban Political Prisoners, sent a list of political prisoners to the Vatican. But Cardinal Ortega, who arranged the Pope&#8217;s visit, <a href="https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/abandoned-pope-will-cubas-political-prisoners-abandon-all-hope">denied the existence of political prisoners</a> in Cuba during two interviews with Spanish language media.
Hundreds of thousands of people participate in Havana&#8217;s May Day march, which is organized by the government&#8217;s state-run workplaces.
What will happen to the man is unknown, but if the past history of Raul Castro is any indication, it won&#8217;t be pretty. Castro and his brother Fidel were responsible for <a href="https://www.quora.com/How-many-deaths-was-Fidel-Castro-responsible-for">thousands of deaths</a>; here&#8217;s a picture from over 50 years ago of Raul Castro helping a man with his blindfold moments before the man was executed:
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COURAGE: Single Brave Protester Defies Castro, Sprints With American Flag In Front Of Thousands As May Day March Begins

In less than 24 hours, President Obama has overturned decades of US Cuba policy. With roughly one week left in the Oval Office, Obama chose to end the &#8220;wet-foot, dry-foot&#8221; policy that has granted Cuban refugees and dissidents landing on U.S. soil the privilege of legal residency. Obama <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2017/01/12/obama-ends-wet-foot-dry-foot-policy-cubans/96505172/">stated</a>, &#8220;Effective immediately, Cuban nationals who attempt to enter the United States illegally and do not qualify for humanitarian relief will be subject to removal, consistent with U.S. law and enforcement priorities. By taking this step, we are treating Cuban migrants the same way we treat migrants from other countries.&#8221;
While less generous than Cold War era policies toward Cuban migrants, the &#8220;wet-foot-dry-foot&#8221; policy was implemented by the Clinton administration in 1996 as a way to curb to strike a balance between a markedly lax Cuban immigration and one that still leaves open the door to the Castro regime&#8217;s most helpless victims.
To make the journey across the Florida Straits, Cuban migrants would often build cheap rafts or pay unscrupulous human smugglers just so their children could have a future in the United States.
But even that small glimmer of hope has been turned to darkness, thanks to the Obama administration. Cuban migrants without visas will now be subject to the same laws as every other immigrants crossing into the country illegal. That means that deportation laws now apply.
The Castro regime has long demanded the U.S. abandon its special treatment of Cuban migrants. Havana argued that such a policy cast unfairly demonized its communist island and gratuitously encouraged its people to make a treacherous and often deadly odyssey north. Never mind the fact that Castro&#8217;s thugs were jailing and executing journalists, freethinkers, democracy activists, homosexuals, religious clerics, and dissidents.
In a cynical play at diplomatic appeasement, Obama has seemingly submitted to the Castro regime&#8217;s demands as part of his push to thaw relations with Cuba.
He reopened diplomatic ties with the island nation in 2014 and has been working to lift the economic embargo and soften relations in any possible ever since.
Claiming that status quo with Cuba hasn&#8217;t been working, the legacy-obsessed president angered many Cuban exiles who asserted that Obama was normalizing a dictatorial government.
But these grievances have fallen on deaf ears.
In a long-winded, self-conscious <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/12/17/statement-president-cuba-policy-changes">statement</a> issued by the White House on Thursday, President Obama protested that he had only the best interests of the Cuban people at heart.

Obama’s Final Revenge: Screws Cuban Refugees

Democratic Party

Fidel Castro may be dead, but his spirit is alive and well in the suffering of the Cuban people. The boom in tourism following the Obama administration&#8217;s normalizing of relations with Cuba has had unanticipated consequences&#8211;namely, a shortage of food.
According to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/08/world/americas/cuba-fidel-castro-food-tourism.html?smid=tw-share&amp;_r=1">The New York Times</a>, restaurants that cater to tourists are buying food in bulk, causing prices to surge, and product to disappear from store shelves:
<blockquote>
While the influx of new money from tourists and other visitors has been a boon for the island&#8217;s growing private sector, most Cubans still work within the state-run economy and struggle to make ends meet.
</blockquote>
President Raul Castro reacted to the shortages by issuing price caps on certain foods within the government-run markets. This, of course, has caused many sellers to move to the limited co-op markets, or go underground.
The Cuban government lost <a href="http://www.cubahistory.org/en/special-period-a-recovery.html">approximately 80% of its imports</a> when the Soviet Union collapsed, causing a swift devolution in agricultural productivity. Failure to properly invest in the agricultural sector following this collapse led to continued food scarcity. However, with tourism booming, that scarcity is becoming properly dangerous.
The New York Times quotes University of Havana economist, Juan Alejandro Triana:
<blockquote>
&#8220;The government has consistently failed to invest properly in the agriculture sector&#8230;We don&#8217;t just have to feed 11 million people anymore. We have to feed more than 14 million&#8230;In the next five years, if we don&#8217;t do something about it, food will become a national security issue here.&#8221;
</blockquote>
This is communism in a nutshell. The government takes control, it fails to make proper investments because it lacks the diffuse intelligence of a free market populated by millions of individual minds. Scarcity of a product&#8211;food, toilet paper, or other basic necessities&#8211;becomes a critical problem, and the government steps in with price caps. These price caps drive sellers to the black market, or out of business entirely, further exacerbating the problem.
A free market avoids these issues entirely. As Kal Kelly of the <a href="https://mises.org/library/cause-food-shortage">Mises Institute</a> writes:
<blockquote>
&#8230;the underlying cause of any shortage is the lack of a free market, since genuine shortages cannot appear in a free market. Instead, while prices of goods would likely rise at the onset of reduced supplies, the goods in question would always be available at some price&#8212;and the higher the price, the more the supply would increase to meet demand, which would then of course reduce the price.
</blockquote>
Despite Raul Castro&#8217;s slight venture into capitalist markets, Cubans still remain largely under government employ, making approximately <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brookings-now/2015/07/17/10-economic-facts-about-cuba/">$20 a month</a>. With tourist restaurants gobbling up the sparse supplies that are available, price caps sending sellers underground, and low government wages keeping citizens impoverished, the situation will only become worse.
Castro&#8217;s chimeric mix of communism and heavily restricted capitalism simply isn&#8217;t working. Until control is relinquished, and communism is abandoned, the Cuban people will continue to suffer.

Communist Cuba Opens to Tourism, So it Has No Food for its Citizens

As world leaders bent over backwards to praise Cuban president Fidel Castro &#8212; a dictator so brutal that his own people braved the sea in <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/scottbeyer/2016/03/01/what-is-it-like-to-escape-cuba-by-raft/#564a1afd190c">makeshift rafts</a> hoping to make landfall in Florida to escape his island prison &#8212; president-elect Donald Trump showed us all why millions of Americans cast votes the way they did on November 8th.
Upon hearing about Castro&#8217;s death, Trump posted a four word tweet that struck just the right tone. &#8220;Fidel Castro is dead!&#8221; he tweeted, using a joyful exclamation point.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Fidel Castro is dead!
&#8212; Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/802499192237080576">November 26, 2016</a></blockquote>
Trump&#8217;s initial sentiment was short and sweet, a breath of fresh air after eight years of listening to a pedantic lecturer-in-chief.
The president-elect followed his tweet with an extended statement posted on Facebook, unapologetically detailing the utter cruelty of the Castro regime.
&#8220;Fidel Castro&#8217;s legacy is one of firing squads, theft, unimaginable suffering, poverty and the denial of fundamental human rights,&#8221; stated Trump. He concluded his statement by offering a message of hope to the oppressed Cuban people.

<img decoding="async" loading="lazy" alt class="media-element file-default" data-fid="14304" data-media-element="1" height="768" src="https://dw-wp-dev.imgix.net/2019/09/screen_shot_2016-11-28_at_10.25.38_pm.jpg" width="992" />On the heels of his refreshingly truthful statement about Castro, Trump shared his vision for US-Cuban relations, implying that President Obama&#8217;s efforts to lift the sanctions on Cuba have done little to alleviate the suffering of the Cuban people.
Keeping his options open, Trump suggested that he plans on renegotiating the Cuban &#8220;deal.&#8221; In true businessman fashion, the real estate mogul made a point of saying that he&#8217;s willing to walk away from Havana if Raul Castro and his corrupt regime fail to agree to a &#8220;better deal&#8221; for Cubans and the United States. 
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
If Cuba is unwilling to make a better deal for the Cuban people, the Cuban/American people and the U.S. as a whole, I will terminate deal.
&#8212; Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/803237535178772481">November 28, 2016</a></blockquote>
Following the president-elect&#8217;s lead, Vice President-elect Gov. Mike Pence shared his own two-cents about his hope &#8220;for a free and democratic Cuba&#8221; in the wake of &#8220;tyrant&#8221; Castro&#8217;s death.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
The tyrant <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Castro?src=hash">#Castro</a> is dead. New hope dawns. We will stand with the oppressed Cuban people for a free and democratic Cuba. Viva Cuba Libre!
&#8212; Mike Pence (@mike_pence) <a href="https://twitter.com/mike_pence/status/802557437786066944">November 26, 2016</a></blockquote>
With a series of statements, Trump and his team sent a strong signal that the next four years will be the nothing like the last eight. The sitting president failed to even hint at the fact that Castro was a mass murdering thug who once asked the Russians to nuke America. To his credit, Trump was more presidential in one weekend than President Obama has been for his entire tenure. He showed more moral clarity than almost every world leader combined (looking at you leftist dictator-lover Prime Minister Justin Trudeau).

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Trump Gives AWESOME Statement on Castro Death

Justin Trudeau

Mike Pence

Over the weekend, murderous dictator Fidel Castro died at the ripe old age of 90. It was a taste of long-delayed and insufficient justice for one of the worst human beings to inhabit the planet, but that did not stop lamentations from the left. President Barack Obama, who re-enshrined relations with the Cuban regime under the Castros, issued a statement welling up with tears: &#8220;We know that this moment fills Cubans &#8211; in Cuba and the United States &#8211; with powerful emotions, recalling the countless ways in which Fidel Castro altered the course of individual lives, families, and of the Cuban nation&#8230;we offer condolences to Fidel Castro&#8217;s family.&#8221; Mass-murderer-worshipping former president Jimmy Carter mourned, &#8220;We remember fondly our visits with him in Cuba and his love of country.&#8221; Secretary of State John Kerry cried, &#8220;Over more than half a century, he played an outsized role in their lives, and he influenced the direction of regional, even global affairs.&#8221; Clinical idiot Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called Castro &#8220;remarkable&#8230;a larger than life leader who served his people who served his people for almost half a century. A legendary revolutionary and orator, Mr. Castro made significant improvements to the education and healthcare of his island nation.&#8221; The New York Times called Castro &#8220;the fiery apostle of revolution&#8221; and headlined, &#8220;A REVOLUTIONARY WHO DEFIED THE US AND HELD CUBA IN HIS THRALL.&#8221;
Here are a few thoughts.
The Left Doesn&#8217;t Mind Communist Dictators. Castro was one of the most evil people of the 20th century. And the West has forgotten that because the American left treasures leftist evil. It&#8217;s why college students still wear T-shirts with mass Che on them. It&#8217;s why Americans take Hitler seriously, but make jokes about Stalin, who murdered far more human beings. Communism isn&#8217;t a horror, according to the left &#8211; all of its attendant horrors are just means pursued to justify a worthwhile end. The left has soft-sold communism since Stalin &#8211; Walter Duranty of The New York Times won the Pulitzer Prize after whitewashing Stalin&#8217;s genocidal starvation of his own people to demonstrate that communism worked. Castro was a low-rent Stalin, and the left is still soft-selling him. They worked so hard to soft-sell him (Ed Sullivan called him Cuba&#8217;s George Washington) that they covered up the fact that Lee Harvey Oswald had reached out to the Cubans before assassinating JFK, instead blaming American racism.
Castro Was Deeply Evil. Castro conspired with mass murderer Che Guevara to overthrow General Fulgencio Batista, then began a guerilla campaign resulting in his takeover of the island. He immediately exiled priests, destroyed religious schools, nationalized businesses, imprisoned and murdered his enemies (he had hundreds shot within months of entering Havana). <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualprofile.asp?indid=912">Here was Che Guevara</a>: &#8220;To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary. These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail. This is a revolution! And a revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate. We must create a pedagogy of the paredon (the execution wall).&#8221; Castro imprisoned more of his citizens by percentage than Hitler or Stalin. He asked the Soviet Union to nuke the United States during the Cuban missile crisis. Castro supported terrorist groups ranging from FARC in Colombia to Shining Path in Peru and the communist Sandanistas in Nicaragua. Hundreds of thousands of Cubans fled, many drowning in the ocean as they attempted to sail to Florida; at least 2 million Cubans fled Cuba between 1959 and 1992.
Communism Impoverished Cuba. Cuba was one of the richer nations in Latin America when Castro took over, with a per capita GDP of approximately $2,000. By 1999, per capita GDP in the nation was just $2,307. <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualprofile.asp?indid=912">DiscoverTheNetworks.com</a> explains, &#8220;the average daily wage for an agricultural worker in Cuban in 1958 was $3. The average daily wage in France at the time was $2.73&#8230;.In 1958 Cuba had a higher standard of living than any Latin American country and half of Europe.&#8221; As <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/fidel-castros-communist-example-1480189319">The Wall Street Journal</a> points out:
<blockquote>
The Cuba that Castro inherited was developing but relatively prosperous. It ranked third in Latin America in doctors and dentists and daily calorie consumption per capita. Its infant-mortality rate was the lowest in the region and the 13th lowest in the world. Cubans were among the most literate Latins and had a vibrant civic life with private professional, commercial, religious and charitable organizations. Castro destroyed all that. He ruined agriculture by imposing collective farms, making Cuba dependent first on the Soviets and later on oil from Hugo Chávez&#8217;s Venezuela. In the past half century Cuba&#8217;s export growth has been less than Haiti&#8217;s, and now even doctors are scarce because so many are sent abroad to earn foreign currency. Hospitals lack sheets and aspirin. The average monthly income is $20 and government food rations are inadequate.
</blockquote>
As for that fabled Cuban healthcare, it&#8217;s nonsense. It&#8217;s good for those who are willing to pay cash from abroad, and horrible for those living in Cuba. As Jay Nordlinger of <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/432680/myth-cuban-health-care">National Review</a> put it, &#8220;Hospitals and clinics are crumbling. Conditions are so unsanitary, patients may be better off at home, whatever home is. If they do have to go to the hospital, they must bring their own bedsheets, soap, towels, food, light bulbs &#8212; even toilet paper. And basic medications are scarce&#8230;. Doctors have been known to reuse latex gloves &#8212; there is no choice.&#8221; As for the infant mortality rate, it&#8217;s low because Cuba aborts kids who are in distress in the womb.
None of this will stop the left from praising Castro, because all excesses in the name of the collective are good. Castro, we will hear, just went a bit too far to tear down the system, but had the right idea.
This is why the left must be fought at every turn. From Castro to Chavez, from Stalin to Mao, the left has always supported the worst people on the planet, so long as they&#8217;re pledged to destroying individual liberty in the name of collective fairness.

3 Thoughts On Fidel Castro’s Death And Why The Left Laments Him

On CNN&#8217;s State of the Union Sunday, anchor Dana Bash did her dead-level best to ensnare Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) in a logic trap. Unfortunately for Bash, Rubio saw the gotcha question coming from a mile away, and utterly nailed his response.
<blockquote>
BASH: &#8220;Senator, you called President Obama &#8216;pathetic&#8217; for offering condolences to Fidel Castro&#8217;s family, but, you know, he wasn&#8217;t the only world leader to do so. Even Pope Francis sent a telegram expressing sentiments of sorrow. As a practicing Catholic, what&#8217;s your reaction to that?&#8221;
</blockquote>
During Bash&#8217;s self-satisfied question, one can practically hear producers high-fiving and popping champagne in the background of the CNN news room. Then came Rubio&#8217;s response.
<blockquote>
RUBIO: &#8220;Well, as a practicing Catholic, I believe in the theological authority of the Bishop of Rome, and that&#8217;s what Pope Francis is. On political matters, however&#8211;particularly our foreign policy issues, I don&#8217;t necessarily believe that that binds those of us in the faith in terms of issues of foreign policy. I still respect it, but it&#8217;s a very different thing. Pope Francis is the leader of a religious organization, the Roman Catholic Church. Barack Obama&#8217;s the president of the most powerful country in the world.
What I called pathetic was not mentioning whatsoever in that statement the reality that there are thousands upon thousands of people who suffered brutally under the Castro regime. He executed people, he jailed people for 20-30 years, the Florida straits&#8211;there are thousands of people who lost their lives fleeing his dictatorship. Not to acknowledge any of that in the statement, I felt is pathetic, absolutely.&#8221;
</blockquote>
Rubio knocked it out of the park.
Asking questions in the manner that Dana Bash did is a very common tactic of the Left. They try to trap conservatives in a logical box from which they cannot escape without contradicting themselves. With Rubio, it was a simple set-up: The leader of your faith, whom you deeply respect, offered &#8220;sentiments of sorrow&#8221; for Castro&#8217;s family. President Obama did the same. You called Obama pathetic. That means you called Pope Francis pathetic as well. Gotcha!
Unfortunately for Bash, there&#8217;s a weak link in her argument. She failed to distinguish the difference between the roles Pope Francis and President Obama play on the national stage.
Francis, as the leader of the Roman Catholic Church, exists outside the realm of politics as we perceive it. In this specific instance, his job wasn&#8217;t to condemn Fidel Castro. Rather, he was to accomplish two objectives with his telegram: express condolences to Raul Castro for the death of his brother, and offer prayers for the people of Cuba going forward in the wake of Fidel&#8217;s passing.
Cuba is a majority Catholic nation, and as such, it was even more imperative that Francis make a declaration of some sort. The fact that he eschewed referencing Castro&#8217;s innumerable atrocities doesn&#8217;t mean he accepts them.
Here&#8217;s Pope Francis&#8217; <a href="http://en.radiovaticana.va/news/2016/11/26/telegram_for_the_death_of_fidel_castro/1275046">telegram</a> in full:
<blockquote>
&#8220;Upon receiving the sad news of the death of your dear brother, His Excellency Mister Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz, former president of the State Council and of the Government of the Republic of Cuba, I express my sentiments of sorrow to Your Excellency and other family members of the deceased dignitary, as well as to the people of this beloved nation. At the same time, I offer prayers to the Lord for his rest, and I trust the whole Cuban people to the maternal intercession of our Lady of the Charity of El Cobre, patroness of this country.&#8221;
</blockquote>
Barack Obama, on the other hand, is the President of the United States. As the leader of the free world, Obama has the power to embolden despots by refusing to condemn them, or engender change by challenging their behavior. He chose to do the former, and it was craven.
Here&#8217;s President Obama&#8217;s <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/11/26/statement-president-passing-fidel-castro">statement</a> in full:
<blockquote>
&#8220;At this time of Fidel Castro&#8217;s passing, we extend a hand of friendship to the Cuban people. We know that this moment fills Cubans &#8211; in Cuba and in the United States &#8211; with powerful emotions, recalling the countless ways in which Fidel Castro altered the course of individual lives, families, and of the Cuban nation. History will record and judge the enormous impact of this singular figure on the people and world around him. 
For nearly six decades, the relationship between the United States and Cuba was marked by discord and profound political disagreements. During my presidency, we have worked hard to put the past behind us, pursuing a future in which the relationship between our two countries is defined not by our differences but by the many things that we share as neighbors and friends &#8211; bonds of family, culture, commerce, and common humanity. This engagement includes the contributions of Cuban Americans, who have done so much for our country and who care deeply about their loved ones in Cuba.
Today, we offer condolences to Fidel Castro&#8217;s family, and our thoughts and prayers are with the Cuban people. In the days ahead, they will recall the past and also look to the future. As they do, the Cuban people must know that they have a friend and partner in the United States of America.&#8221;
</blockquote>
The highlighted portion of Obama&#8217;s statement was particularly egregious. Obama&#8217;s declaration that Cubans are filled with &#8220;powerful emotions, recalling the countless ways in which Fidel Castro altered the course of individual lives, families, and of the Cuban nation&#8221; can only be compared to the obtuse way one might compliment someone&#8217;s cooking after forcing down a terrible meal. In just 56 words, President Obama whitewashed decades of barbarism, inspiriting Raul Castro and those like him.
Political leaders and religious leaders exist in very different worlds, and their jobs require very different approaches. It&#8217;s the responsibility of the president to condemn dictatorship, atrocity, and oppression. Obama failed to do this, and is rightly being called pathetic for his failure.

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