Cuba in Trump's Crosshairs

A Great Floridian Is Worried!!
{Wednesday, April 5th, 2017}

    This week -- April 3rd, 2017 -- CBS News blared this major headline: "Florida Congresswoman Worried Trump Administration May Reverse Obama Policy on Cuba." That bold, astute, caring Congresswoman, of course, is Kathy Castor. Ms. Castor is by far the best and the bravest Florida member of the United States Congress since the Batista-Mafia Banana Republic in Cuba was chased to its new stronghold in Miami by the Cuban Revolution on January 1, 1959. Ms. Castor was born in Miami 50 years ago but has represented the Tampa-St. Petersburg area in the United States Congress since 2007. She has been the only member of Congress from Florida since 1959 to have the decency, the guts and the respect for America and Democracy to fight for a sane Cuban policy, not one dictated by the most vicious remnants of Cuba's brutal, thieving Batista-Mafia dictatorship. Congresswoman Castor told CBS News this week: "There are some real hardliners that are pressing to roll back the progress that we have made on Cuban engagement. I'm hopeful the Trump administration will not do that and they're also hearing comments from Chambers of Commerce, families, and entrepreneurs that are growing businesses in Cuba. Why would we go backwards...when for the first time in 50 years we're seeing business on both sides of the Florida Straits grow?"

       The sheer decency and sanity of Congresswoman Kathy Castor regarding Cuba is generally ignored by the mainstream U. S. media that is simply too afraid and too incompetent to depart from the Cuban narrative espoused by only the most ardent revenge-seekers against the Cuban Revolution. So CBS by merely quoting Kathy Castor is a rare display of guts and fairness from the mainstream U. S. media.

     In 2016 when President Obama himself traveled to Cuba and was very engaged in a bold series of Executive Orders regarding Cuba, Congresswoman Castor was on the island to encourage the President and to do her job representing the best interests of her constituents in the Tampa area, especially U. S. businesses desiring commerce with Cuba. As noted, she remains the only Florida member of Congress with the decency and the courage to be ashamed about a Batistiano-driven U. S. Cuban policy that properly gets a 191-to-0 condemnation in the United Nations. This week Ms. Castor told CBS that an American Cuban policy dictated only by biased extremists both shames and harms America, not to mention 11 million totally innocent Cubans on the island. She told CBS April 3rd, "I know they {the extremists} argue that nothing has changed in Cuba, but to the contrary, a lot is changing in Cuba. Young entrepreneurs are building businesses on the island. What we've got to do is lift the embargo...so we can build on the progress that we've made." 

        Last week two of the Cuban-American/Miami-based members of the U. S. Congress -- Mario Diaz-Balart and Marco Rubio -- made headlines with their typical Cuban extremism. Diaz-Balart, whose father was a key Minister in Cuba's Batista dictatorship, offered to trade his Republican vote on the Heath Bill if his Cuban dictates were adhered to by President Trump. Diaz-Balart wanted to give Cuba "90 days" to do his and the atrocious Helms-Burton bidding or...ELSE. That particular grossness by Diaz-Balart was so extreme that he was finally excoriated in a Miami Herald editorial written by the Miami Herald's most extreme anti-Castro, Cuban-born Editorial Writer Fabiola Santiago who blasted Diaz-Balart for...amazingly...using his anti-Cuban extremism to harm the thousands of Miami Cuban-Americans who were benefiting from the current Health Care bill that Diaz-Balart eagerly seemed willing to trade away if Trump would back his anti-Cuban extremism. Miami's Rubio is as extreme as Diaz-Balart when it comes to benefiting from anti-Cuban extremism. Rubio last week made headlines by bragging that he had met "three times" with Trump to expound on his anti-Cuban extremism, which demands that Cuba conform to his extreme dictates.

      A handful of Miami-based Cuban-American extremists...such as Rubio, Diaz-Balart, & Ros-Lehtinen in the United States Congress..are allowed to endlessly dictate America's Cuban narrative and Cuban policy because neither the U. S. citizens nor the U. S. media has the guts or the patriotism to challenge them.

       Havana-born Fabiola Santiago since 1980 has been the most consistently vicious anti-Castro reporter, columnist, and now editorial writer for the Miami Herald. When she of all people writes a scathing editorial criticizing Mario Diaz-Balart's anti-Cuban extremism in the U. S. Congress, I believe it is high-time for even timid Americans to realize that allowing the son of a former Batista Minister to make and promote extreme anti-Cuban decisions in the U. S. Congress is, to say the least, an insult to democracy and to America. 

       Miami-born Kathy Castor, who has represented Tampa in the U. S. Congress for the past decade, incredibly had her sane and decent views expressed April 3rd by a CBS News report. That was amazing and extraordinary because normally the mainstream U. S. media is too afraid and too incompetent to air anything other than the self-serving anti-Cuban extremism of the most extreme remnants of the extremely cruel Batista-Mafia dictatorship from 1950's Cuba. Most of the two million Cuban-Americans in South Florida, from Tampa on down to and including Miami, agree with Kathy Castor but there appears to be zero chance that such a moderate Cuban-American can get elected to the U. S. Congress. Meanwhile, Kathy Castor continues to wage a brave fight to infuse America's Cuban policy with some sanity and decency.

This photo is by and used courtesy of Dany del Pino.

        You see, Congresswoman Kathy Castor does not believe the United States of America should be engaged, decade after decade, in hurting precious, totally innocent Cuban children...such as these two...to sate the self-serving appetites of a few extremists. The current 191-to-0 condemnation of America and Americans in the United Nations stems solely from the fact that Americans have allowed this to happen...generation to generation. The little girl above is expressing a childish opinion to the little boy on their embargoed and besieged island but she is too young to understand that the embargo and the targeting is aimed at them from the richest and strongest nation in the world. But Congresswoman Kathy Castor from Tampa understands it...and one day this little Cuban girl and this little Cuban boy will too.

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