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Post a Comment On: Steve Sailer: iSteve

"Baseball diplomacy?"

16 Comments -

1 – 16 of 16
Anonymous Big Bill said...

No! Cuba should stay as it is: a worker's paradise.

Russia was wonderful in the 1970's before Glasnost. A couple bars of Lux soap and some cheap pantyhose, maybe some antihistamines, could get you screwed, blued and tattooed. And now you want to deny us the only remaining country (and in our hemisphere!) where the common workingman and tourist can get the same deals on communist sex. No and no!

5/14/08, 5:19 AM

Anonymous simon newman said...

Wouldn't ending the cold war with Cuba go against the Bush-Cheney White House's "We're just plain evil, we want the worse for everyone" policy?

5/14/08, 5:52 AM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

this is the most incoherant post ever put on this site.

5/14/08, 6:23 AM

Anonymous bbartlog said...

You don't get it. Our Cuba trade policy is driven by the domestic corn and sugar lobbies, who don't want the competition from cheap Cuban sugar (corn syrup is cheaper than our expensive domestic sugar, but would be much less competitive against Cuban sugar). The Cuban exiles are just a useful smokescreen for the lobbyist payoffs - do you really think that a few hundred thousand people in Florida have enough pull to move all of Congress?
At any rate, the time might still be right to normalize relations - not for the reasons you mention, but because the demand for sugar and corn is currently at such high levels that ADM et. al. might let down their guard and allow it.

5/14/08, 6:54 AM

Blogger RobertHume said...

I'm not sure where you're going with this, Steve, but here's something related:

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com
/archives/2008/05/brent_scowcroft_1/

Brent Scowcroft: US-Cuba Embargo Makes No Sense
Tuesday, May 13 2008, The Washington Note

5/14/08, 7:24 AM

Blogger Born Again Democrat said...

Just what we need, another free-trade and immigration deal with a close neighbor! BTW, the fact that Cuban doctors would be tempted to practice in America illustrates one of the neglected downsides of third world immigration: it generally hurts the majority of poor people left behind in the poor countries from which the immigrants come. Bleeding heart liberals should be especially attuned to this side of the equation.

5/14/08, 7:26 AM

Anonymous poolside said...

That type of arrangement is very common in soccer.

Players aren't traded one for another; they are "transferred" to another team via a lump sum paid to the club that holds their contract.

The acquiring club then negotiates a separate deal with the player.

The club receiving the cash infusion can then use that money to obtain new talent.

5/14/08, 7:56 AM

Anonymous testing99 said...

Steve, this whole post is just way out there.

Iran is trying to bully the US out of the Gulf (strategic US objective since 1945) by making war on us as much as possible. This includes killing our guys in Iraq with Iranian troops, or confrontations with the US Navy. Acts of war that weak GWB has reacted to by flopping over like a wet noodle.

Iran needs oil at $300 a barrel, to keep afloat Ahmadinejad's huge welfare state that keeps rural areas from starving. Which means control of the Gulf through either intimidation of the US (aided by Carter-Bush weakness) or outright war with nuclear umbrellas (Iran likely already has nukes, it's why they are so aggressive).

We probably need tit-for-tat (sponsoring terrorists right back at Iran) but lack the will.

The flipside is Cuba. It's a hereditary fiefdom run by the Castro family. That problem is not going away any time soon. The Exile community doesn't like their relatives in chains. Cuba's bad economy is the result of being run as the personal estate of Fidel and Raul. Not the embargo (there is plenty of trade with the EU and Canada).

We ought to plan for intervention in Cuba when the hereditary fiefdom collapses, so we don't have half of Cuba floating over to Miami. That's one of the reasons we have a military. There's no Soviet nuclear umbrella over the Castros any more, we should have gotten rid of them years ago.

Baseball diplomacy is useless since it just sticks a band-aid over the Mugabe-like problems of Cuba. Traced to one family -- the Castros.

5/14/08, 9:31 AM

Blogger Dutch Boy said...

More Latin American baseball players? Phooey! The national pastime is starting to look like a maquiladora already!

5/14/08, 10:05 AM

Blogger keypusher said...

Bush already said that Raul's changes amounted to nothing and that he would keep the embargo in place. So that little opportunity has been nipped in the bud.

http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSN2856539220080308

5/14/08, 2:18 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Is testing99/evilNeocon off his meds again today?

5/14/08, 6:06 PM

Blogger TGGP said...

The Miami exile community will never allow opening up relations with Cuba.

testing99/evilNeocon, give me the name of ONE U.S soldier killed during Bush's administration by an Iranian. Just ONE.

5/14/08, 7:16 PM

Anonymous beowulf said...

Evil99 is making my head hurt--

you realize that President = Commander in Chief under the US Constitution but not, curiously enough, in either high school student councils or the Islamic Republic of Iran?

Whether Ahmadinejad is crazier than you are is irrelevant, he has no military troops under his command. He's subordinate to the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Commander in Chief of the Iranian armed forces.

When Khamenei puts an army into Mexico and bases a fleet in Cuba and then publicly threatens to overthrow our government or to annihilate us, that's when we know the Iranians are being aggressive. In truth, the Iranians restraint is rather impressive. They know if they can turn the other cheek until next January, its likely the next US president won't be a crazy person.

Then again, Iran's use of the Iraqi National Congress to manipulate neocons into launching a war against its mortal enemy Iraq was, perhaps, the most stunning intelligence triumph since the end of World War II. They so owned us on that, they can afford to be magnanimous.

5/15/08, 12:36 AM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

The situation in Cuba is indeed ridiculous, but that is entirely the doing of the Castro regime. Cuba is free to trade with every country in the world except the U.S. It chooses autarkic socialism because opening up its economy would threaten the ruling group.

5/15/08, 3:01 AM

Anonymous Simon Oliver Lockwood said...

A posting system wouldn't work in a free Cuba, any more than it could work in Venezuela or the Dominican Republic. Japan is both big enough and rich enough that it can support a professional baseball league that pays its top players enough so that they're not tempted to circumvent the rules given the adjustment cost of playing in a foreign country.

5/15/08, 11:51 AM

Blogger Neutrino Cannon said...

You have a remarkably good idea there Mr. Sailer. Your comment about cell phones and developing nations is particularly true, although in African stupid regimes have managed to blunt many of the benefits.

I could see a semi-nontotalitarian Cuba being a popular tourist destination for the Liberal elite (you know, more than it is already), since it's lack of development has kept the environment pristine, and it's got free education and socialized healthcare and all those other things that make them swoon. Just make the Stuff White People Like blog mandatory reading for anyone putting up a tourist-oriented hotel in Cuba, and you'll make money hand over fist!

5/16/08, 11:52 PM

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