Tea Bagger Dick Armey on Meet the Press

Congressman Harold Ford makes the case for government spending, answering Dick Armey, chairman of FreedomWorks. Ford asked Armey what is your alternative--nothing is not an alternative.
Too bad they cut to commercial cause I would've loved to hear Armey's response.
Ford also suggested that the tea baggers and the rest stop calling Obama a socialist and questioning Obama's intentions. In other words, let's all grow up and debate in a civil manner.
Armey is a much more reasonable and likable man on TV, even though off camera he engages in the socialist rhetoric and his organization uses fear tactics, inciting the already fearful. His website says "Congress could sneak through socialized medicine."
His wife calls him "honey."

Take Two on Cuba and Hugo and Guns. Why on Earth would anyone need an assault weapon. This gun issue strikes me as ironic. All the people who cling to their guns tie it to freedom. But they're all so afraid, walking around with their guns in their holsters, living in fear that they'll have to defend themselves. That's not freedom.

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U.S. and Cuba We're Getting Warmer

Raul Castro:

"We have sent messages to the U.S. government in private and in public that we are willing to discuss everything, whenever they want," Castro said Thursday in a speech in Venezuela. "Human rights, press freedom, political prisoners, everything, everything, everything they want to talk about." Politico

Hillary Clinton welcomes the gesture:

The U.S. and Cuba are trading the warmest words in their half-century cold war. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Friday called Cuban President Raul Castro's latest comments a "very welcome gesture."

After a series of overtures from President Barack Obama, Castro said Thursday that he is ready to talk with the U.S. and put "everything" on the table, even questions of human rights and political prisoners.

"We welcome his comments, the overture they represent and we are taking a very serious look at how we intend to respond," Clinton said while visiting the Dominican Republic on her way to the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad. The president is to fly Friday to Trinidad for the 34-nation summit, a gathering to which Cuba, as the region's only non-democracy, is not invited.
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Meanwhile, the head of the Organization of American States said Friday that he will ask its members to readmit Cuba 47 years after they ousted the communist nation.

Obama and Clinton had earlier said that Havana needed to reciprocate his "good faith" gesture of removing some of the restrictions that lock Americans and their money out of Cuba. But Castro's comments seem to be helping relations move forward even without a more concrete move by Cuba on issues that have long been U.S. sticking points. MSNBC

Poll: Most Favor Normal Cuban Relations

CNN: A new poll shows that two-thirds of Americans surveyed think the U.S. should lift its travel ban on Cuba, and three-quarters think the U.S. should end its five-decade estrangement with the country.


Fidel Castro led Cuba's communist revolution in 1959 and recently handed over power to his brother Raul.

According to the CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll conducted April 3 to 5, 64 percent of the 1,023 Americans surveyed by telephone thought the U.S. government should allow citizens to travel to Cuba.

And 71 percent of those polled said that the U.S. should reestablish diplomatic relations with Cuba, while 27 percent opposed such a move.

Both questions had a sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

The Obama administration has signaled that new rules on family travel and remittances to Cuba may be announced before President Obama goes to the Summit of the Americas on April 17.

A group of senators and other supporters unveiled a bill March 31 to lift the 47-year-old travel ban to Cuba.

"I think that we finally reached a new watermark here on this issue," said Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-North Dakota, one of the bill's sponsors. Read the rest.

Raul Castro Serious about Normal U.S. Relations

Update: The congressional leaders who met with both Raul Castro and Fidel Castro said in a press conference that the Castros are open and ready for normal relations with the U.S. They met with Raul for 4 hours. Bobby Rush said Raul Castro, president of Cuba, had a sense of humor and was down to Earth. He had a modest home, Rush said. He said that Americans have been lied to about the threat of Cuba for way too long.
They said that Fidel Castro asked: how can we help Obama? Fidel Castro was sharp and engaging, they said.
The leaders concluded that the ban on travel and trade needs to be lifted.
During the Q&A, the delegation said no demands of apologies were made by the Castros.

HAVANA – President Raul Castro met with six visiting members of the Congressional Black Caucus for more than four hours, his first face-to-face discussions with U.S. leaders since he became Cuba's president last year.
State television showed images of Castro, who holds the rank of four-star army general, wearing a business suit instead of his trademark olive-green fatigues and sitting down with Rep. Barbara Lee, a California Democrat, and other members of the American delegation behind closed doors late Monday.
"I'm convinced Raul Castro wants a normal relationship with the United States," Lee told The Associated Press after the meeting adjourned. "He's serious." Read more at the AP

Cubans crave better relations with the U.S. Students say they miss friends and relatives that have left Cuba. A must-see video:

Obama Vows Change On Cuba Policy

MSNBC: Now they have a problem: If Barack Obama follows through on campaign promises to ease restrictions on the island, he could chip away at the Castro brothers' best case for staying in power.

And if a new Democrat-dominated Congress takes Obama's moves even further, Cuban leaders may have a hard time maintaining their tight control over Cuban society.
"They'd have to throw out the whole script about American imperialism," said Phil Peters of the Lexington Institute, a Washington-area think tank.

Top Cuban ideologues are already worried.

"We have before us the immense challenge of how to face a new chapter in the cultural struggle against the enemy," Armando Hart, 78-year-old patriarch of Cuban communists, warned last week in Granma, the party newspaper.

If Cuban-Americans are allowed to visit more frequently and send more money to the island, it could spark "a new chapter in the ideological war between the Cuban revolution and imperialism," Hart wrote.
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The U.S. government's Cuba policy has been frozen in time since 1962, when it imposed the embargo with the aim of bringing down Fidel Castro's government at a time when U.S.-backed exiles mounted the failed Bay of Pigs invasion and Soviet missiles in Cuba pushed the world close to nuclear war.

Sporadic congressional efforts to end the embargo since then have failed, largely due to the political influence of powerful Cuban exiles who insisted on isolating Cuba and trying to strangle its economy to force Castro out.

But Castro, now 82, remained in power until he ceded the presidency to his brother in February due to illness. And Raul Castro, 77, shows no sign of making any fundamental changes.

The embargo is "a policy that hasn't worked in nearly 50 years," said Wayne Smith, a former top U.S. diplomat to Havana and a Cuba fellow at John Hopkins' Center for International Policy. "It's stupid, it's counterproductive and there is no international support for it."

Obama has promised to lift limits that President George W. Bush tightened on Cuban-Americans wanting to visit and send money to relatives. He also says he's open to a dialogue with Raul Castro — something the Cuban president has indicated he would welcome.