Obama Vs Mcain and Russia

[BC]

The reason is Florida's electoral votes.  Any party who attempted to open up trade and tourism with Cuba while Castro is in power would lose the sizeable Cuban vote in Florida and most probably lose Florida.  Florida was the swing state in both of Bush's narrow victories as well as Clinton's first victory.

Yes, Cubans know.

Gator,

Thanks for explaining.. never made the connection before.. - will chock this up as the lesson for today.

[BC]

You'll find lots of Germans in Cuba too not to mention South Florida Cancun and DR.  They love the beaches!

Saturday at the beach here in SoCal, we had a large extended family of Germans on holiday next to us.  Great people..kids were super.  It's nice to see all those automobile dollars coming back to us!

Ronnie,

I'm talking like a zillion German teenagers on a rampage.. something like the college vacation invasion in FL IIRC.  A bunch of extremely loud kids puking on the beach just isn't my thing anymore..  I lived in Germany for 17 years and saw nothing even close..

I hear the Spanish officials have cracked down a bit though..

Yeah with the EUR the way it is, US has become a reasonable destination for more and more EU folks.. Happy to see such interaction.

[Erwin]

Kievstar.. this one's for you.

http://www.kyivpost.com/nation/29538/

RE: Cuba.  Am I the only one who is baffled that the US has done virtually nothing to bring Cuba into the modern western world after the SU collapse?  Surely Cubans can see what their long alliance with Russia has got them.

I vaguely recalled watching a documentary program on the history channerl a while back addressing this very issue. As presented in this program, our Governent was apparently considering the possiblity of annexing Cuba, but was discouraged from so doing by the majority Christian or Evangelical conservative Republican at that time because the majority of the Cuban people are Catholics. Hence, Cuba never become a U.S. state or territory. 

It was not clear from his program how these Republican could feel this way about this given most of the Puerto Ricons are Catholics  and Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory.

FWIW...

Best,

E