Obama's Cuban Imprint

 It's Becoming Indelible 
{Tuesday, June 21st, 2016 }

         USA Today is using the above photo to report that coffee -- not rum, cigars or sugar -- will become the first Cuban product to be sold in the United States in half-a-century. The photo shows a Cuban tending to coffee plants in the Sierra Maestra Mountains in eastern Cuba. The revelation unearthed by Alan Gomez reflects another crack in the U. S. Cuban embargo that, till the Obama administration, had sated the revengeful, political and economic desires of an unsavory minority, hurting everyday Cubans the most. Mr. Obama's corrections are continuing.

       In 2014 Maria Contreras-Sweet was confirmed by the United States Senate as President Obama's nominee to head America's Small Business Administration. Yesterday -- April 20th -- she arrived in Cuba to further President Obama's efforts to normalize relations with the island. Her mission, and the President's, is two-fold: {1} Open up a market in Cuba to help America's small businesses; and {2} help the Cuban people who have been hurt since the 1950s by all presidential administrations prior to Mr. Obama's.

    Maria Contreras-Sweet was a child when she moved with her family to America from Mexico. On Monday and Tuesday this week, she and her staff will huddle with Cuban officials as well as Cuban entrepreneurs to try to facilitate "mutually beneficial alliances." She carved her business credentials by founding a bank that served people the big banks ignored. "President Obama wants to help the Cuban people and the American people," Ms. Contreras-Sweet said, "and so do I. Aligning U. S. small businesses with Cuban small businesses will accomplish that."

President Obama's Secretary of Commerce is Penny Pritzker.

      This photo, taken by Yamil Lage, shows U. S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker in Cuba. It was a business trip but she graciously spent considerable time with everyday Cubans, especially children like the little girl above. Ms. Pritzker is a multi-billionaire in the U. S. but she cares deeply about helping Cuba and also helping non-billionaire American businesspeople.

          By appointing talented and caring people like Penny Pritzker {above} and Maria Contreras-Sweet, President Obama laid the groundwork for his plans to normalize relations with Cuba, reversing six decades of pure animus directed at the nearby island by right-wing Americans and revengeful Cuban-Americans. While President Obama himself has very respectfully visited Cuba, he also continues to send people like Penny Pritzker and Maria Contreras-Sweet to Cuba to deal kindly with the much-maligned Cubans on the island.

         Immediately prior to Obama, the Bush dynasty and other powerful Republicans had spent six decades making a plethora of anti-Castro Cuban exiles super-rich and super-powerful. President George W. Bush's Secretary of Commerce from 2005 till Obama's arrival in 2009 was Havana-born Carlos Gutierrez who is shown above sending a thank-you smile to President Bush.

      Carlos Gutierrez was born on Nov. 4-1953 in Havana, Cuba. His family owned a pineapple plantation. As a young man, Gutierrez worked for the Kellogg Company in Mexico and later became CEO and Chairman of the famed American company. His wealth and his anti-Castro fervor made him attractive to the Bush dynasty and the Republican Party, and he took advantage of that power to hit back at Fidel Castro.

        Like a lot of rich and powerful anti-Castro Cuban-Americans in the U. S., Carlos Gutierrez is not without controversy. As the Bush Secretary of Commerce, he was particularly and not surprisingly cruel in regards to Cuba. For example, when 240,000 Cuban homes were destroyed by devastating back-to-back hurricanes, some nations actually sent material and economic help. Representing the U. S., Commerce Secretary Gutierrez held news conferences teasing and mocking Cuba by saying he had X-amount of tax dollars ready to send to Cuba as long as the Cuban government wasn't involved. Cuba assumed he meant to use the hurricanes as an additional excuse to send money to dissidents on the island, not to help devastated Cubans. 

But lo 'n Behold, guess what!!

       The very rich Carlos Gutierrez is now 62-years-old and America's FORMER Secretary of Commerce. He is co-chair of the lucrative Albright Stonebridge Group. Amazingly, he now supports President Obama's efforts to normalize relations with Cuba and he has even paid a friendly visit to his native country. He says, "The Cuban people are the biggest losers in the policy of Cuba isolationism." ABSOLUTELY AMAZING!! WOW!! I wonder if he cleared that comment with the Bush dynasty?

        The latest U. S. superstar to visit Cuba is Jon Bon Jovi, the legendary Hall of Fame musician. He, his wife and a group of their friends just returned from a 3-day trip to the island. They toured historic sites as well as the nightly entertainment circuit in Havana. Bon Jovi said, like the Rolling Stones, he plans to do a concert in Cuba.

Bon Jovi was born 54 years ago in New Jersey.

And:

       If you think American voters are frantically trying to find non-establishment politicians they think are not bought-and-paid-for, Europe is way ahead of us. The new mayor of Rome is 37-year-old Virginia Raggi who came out of nowhere as a "non-establishment" candidate and ran away with over two-thirds of the votes. Rome, the Eternal City, is to be congratulated for finally having a female Mayor, Ms. Raggi.

         Meanwhile, in the good ole USA, Dr. Jill Stein is running for President of the United States. Despite a media blackout, at least so far, she somehow has gotten $4%, 5%, and 9% of the votes in three recent national polls. Not that many Americans have ever heard of her but, apparently as they increasingly see her name on the ballots, they assume she is "non-establishment," an assumption that spawns votes.

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