Obama Exits, Trump Enters

Trepidatiously, Cuba Awaits!

       Today is Friday, January 20th, 2017. It marks the final day...or at least half-a-day...that Barack Obama will serve as America's 44th, two-term President. The photo above depicts one of the highlights of Mr. Obama's eight years as the world's most powerful and most important leader. He was at the Grand Theatre in Havana and is shown waving to the Cuban people. His trip to Cuba back in March-2016 was the first by a sitting U. S. President since 1928 and fittingly it revealed his abiding respect for democracy and his courageous respect for the Cuban people. Prior to Obama, a handful of revengeful miscreants had, since the 1950s, used weaknesses in the U. S. democracy -- namely Congress and apathy from unpatriotic Americans -- to cruelly punish totally innocent Cubans in their fervent quest to regain control of the island -- ala the Batista-Mafia dictatorship that spawned Revolutionary Cuba. The sheer undemocratic cruelty of the failed and despicable quest succeeded in making a lot of selected people rich and powerful in Miami and Newark while also, in the United Nations, creating an astoundingly unanimous 191-to-0 worldwide condemnation of America for a Cuban policy that not a single one of America's best international friends or the best democracy-lovers anywhere can possibly justify.

      On Dec. 17-2014 President Obama boldly defied Miami, Newark and Congress by announcing his plans to normalize relations with Cuba. The President then proceeded to live up to that grandiose promise, a task and decency that no previous American leader had either the guts or the intelligence to tackle.

        Mr. Obama's Farewell Speech as President was delivered before 20,000 teary people in Chicago on January 10, 2017. He made it a point to stress that he wanted his "engaging the Cuban people" to stand very tall as one his most significant legacies.

      President Obama's inroads in Cuba will be everlasting, at least in memory. His White House successor quickly named a transition team that included seven cream-of-the-crap Cuban counter-revolutionary diehards who, beginning Jan. 20-2017, will begin to dismantle all that Mr. Obama's has wrought regarding a sane Cuban policy. Those miscreants will likely succeed, bolstered by a bought-and-paid-for segment of Congress, an intimidated or incompetent U. S. media, and a generation of Americans unwilling or unable to defend their democracy.

       The U. S. embargo against Cuba, in effect since 1962, is now listed as the longest and cruelest in history ever imposed by a powerful nation against a weak nation. Only President Obama had the intelligence, decency and courage to seriously and sincerely attempt to correct that abomination, which insults America and democracy far more than it insults little Cuba.

       In Cuba last March President Obama tried to assure the Cuban people that they did "not need to fear a threat from the United States." At the time he surely did not anticipate that yet another Republican president dictated to by hardline Batistianos would succeed him as America's next Commander-in-Chief.

       Even in his final hours as President, Mr. Obama tried to impose and inject democratic principles into a Cuban policy that daily shames America in the eyes of the world. "Wet Foot-Dry Foot" has for decades been one of an endless string of Congressionally mandated U. S. laws designed to hurt totally innocent Cubans on the island while also greatly benefiting the revenge, economic and political motives of an unsavory minority. Laws such as Wet-Dry Foot served the ulterior motives of a few, decade after decade, while grossly discriminating against everyone else, mocking democracy as the Batistianos and their sycophants gleefully cheered, cheers  prior to and probably after Obama. Yesterday -- Thursday, January 19th, 2017 -- USA Today had a major article entitled: "OBAMA MEETS PRESS FOR LAST TIME." Again Mr. Obama sanely explained why he tried to normalize relations with Cuba and in the process erased, at least for a time, the insanity of extremely discriminatory items such as "Wet-Dry Foot." President Barack Obama told USA Today very correctly that it "treated Cuban immigrants completely different from folks from El Salvador or Guatemala or Nicaragua or any other part of the world. You know, that was a carry-over of a old way of thinking that didn't make any sense in this day and age, particularly as we're opening up travel between the two countries." 
          IN OTHER WORDS, the democracy-loving President Obama believed that Banana Republic practices from the vile Batista-Mafia dictatorship in Cuba should not forever mock the proud U. S. democracy.

       This illustration was done by Yasser Castellanos and is used courtesy of HavanaTimes.org. It references one of President Obama's final efforts to apply democracy to America's Cuban policy. Lady Liberty for the first time in decades is telling Cuban immigrants they will be treated just like other would-be immigrants. Unmindful of either democracy or America's worldwide image, the Batistianos starting Jan. 20-2017 will have the money, the Congress, and the White House to once again dictate their will regarding such topics, but that will not distract from what a great leader, Mr. Obama, has tried earnestly to correct.

       A superb First Lady for the past 8 years, Michelle Obama, like her husband, will impact America's democracy in the future after exiting the White House today. Mrs. Obama accompanied the President on his historic trip to Cuba in March of 2016. The photo above shows her talking respectfully with female Cuban university students. Far more than any American President and First Lady since 1959, Mr. and Mrs. Obama fervently believe that totally innocent Cubans should not forever be punished by a revengeful minority in a foreign superpower that has wickedly and self-servingly tried for six decades to bring about regime change against a Revolution that overthrew the extremely wicked Batista-Mafia dictatorship. 

       This interesting photo is courtesy of the European Pressphoto Agency and the New York Times. It shows a group of 16 Americans atop a mountain range in Bolivia. In the center wearing a stocking hat and yellow shirt is Malia Obama, the oldest of the two impressive Obama daughters. Malia is now 18 and she is taking a year off {before entering Harvard} to explore some non-classroom ventures. The Bolivian mountain guide told the New York Times that Malia Obama was "very humble, chatty, and spoke Spanish very well." 

       The President of Bolivia since 2006, Evo Morales -- like more than a few other democratically elected Latin American Presidents -- is a huge fan of the Cuban Revolution and not too fond of the United States, which he has accused of trying to unseat him and "others like me because of our positive Cuban policies and because of their remaining imperialist designs on Latin America." Since 2008 Bolivia and the United States have not exchanged ambassadors. But, according to the New York Times, President Obama called President Morales to inform him that Malia Obama was about to visit Bolivia. President Morales promised President Obama that his security apparatus would assist in every way it could to assure her safety.

 America's 44th President. 

His decency and fairness will be missed.

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