American Millionaires Buck Bush for a Cuban CigarDecades-Old Embargo Doesn

[Judi Lynn]

American Millionaires Buck Bush for a Cuban CigarDecades-Old Embargo Doesn't Stop Stogie Seekers


Russian Olga Mikhailova from Moscow, enjoys a cigar during the opening of the Cigar Festival in Havana, Cuba Monday Feb. 21, 2005. (AP Photo/Jose Goitia)
By MARC FRANK

Feb. 27, 2005 — Cuba put on its annual cigar festival this week. And while President Bush's crackdown on travel to the Caribbean island kept the usual entertainment personalities and executives away, there were plenty of Americans among the cigar aficionados from around the world feasting on shellfish, sipping rum and smoking the world's most popular premium cigars.

Cuba sells some 120 million hand-rolled premium cigars each year, 70 percent of the world market not including the United States, where they are banned under the 43-year-old trade embargo on the communist-run country. Some four million genuine Cuban cigars and a few million fakes are consumed in the United States each year, trade sources estimate, despite being prohibited under the embargo.
(snip)

Jose Lugo, Canada's chief Cuban cigar distributor, said 2.7 million premium hand-rolled Cuban cigars were sold in Canada last year and 500,000 machine-made ones. He said that 40 percent went to Americans.

"Movie stars come in or send others for cigars all the time," he said. "Last year one of New York's most famous baseball players bought some boxes at around $500 a box of 25. I asked him how he got them home and he said he came in a private jet and his trainer would mix them in with the dirty laundry before going back."
(snip/...)

http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=529474&page=1

[VegasWolf]

1. Sort of like the Catholics ignoring the pope over masturbation! n/t

[proud patriot]

2. what I wouldn't give for proof Rush Limbaugh was there

Drooling

[jakefrep]

3. Our Cuban policy IS stupid...

...because nobody has the stones to stand up to the loudmouth crackpots in Little Havana (Miami).

[Mika]

4. I guess majority votes in both houses against the sanctions doesn't count

For four years in a a row.

The bills or amendments get killed off in committees each and every year despite majority votes.

Some kinda "democracy" we have here. :shrug:

---

www.freethefive.org

[cosmicdot]

5. and, what I find bizarre is that so many prominent Republicans ...

support and lobby increasing trade with Cuba ...

it's time to move forward


they even have an organization (using the word 'humanitarian' to soften things, I'm sure - the word 'humanitarian' and 'Republican' just seem to clash) to support it ... names like:

"The AHTC Advisory Council includes David Rockefeller, former U.S. Trade Representative Carla Hills, President Reagan’s National Security Adviser Frank Carlucci (from Poppy Bu$h's Carlyle Group), former U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Paul Volcker ...Dwayne Andreas of Archer Daniels Midland, Peter Coors of Coors Brewing Company..."

http://www.ahtc.org/AHTCTestimony02.html
http://www.ahtc.org

"Americans For Humanitarian Trade With Cuba (AHTC), a national organization that includes blue-ribbon leaders such as David Rockefeller, Frank Carlucci, Carla Hills and Paul Volcker, endorsed legislation introduced today by a powerful and unprecedented group of Republican Senators meant to head-off recent Bush Administration moves to cut back agricultural trade and travel to Cuba.

"The Agricultural Export Facilitation Act was introduced today by U.S. Senator Larry Craig (R-Idaho) with other leaders including Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Dick Lugar (R-Ind.), Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) and U.S. Senator Max Baucus, Ranking Member of the Senate Finance Committee, for a total of 20 cosponsors, half Republican, half Democratic."

http://havanajournal.com/politics_comments/3021_0_5_0_M/

[Judi Lynn]

7. Great links! The 2nd one indicates there is ongoing work in Congress

on specific legislation to end the travel ban, etc., etc. Some DU'ers have watched yearly as it appears the matter gets solved correctly, just as Mika stated, only to see ALL progress stripped in committee, out of sight, behind everyones' backs so it never makes it to the bills for votes.

_Bush doesn't want to be put on the spot internationally vetoing measures everyone, including almost every country in the General Assembly at the U.N. supports in removing the travel ban and grotesque economic warfare against Cuba. What country WOULDN'T have horrendous trouble carrying that load, combined with 45 years of U.S. sanctioned terrorism? (_{Bush *41} having given an administrative pardon to one of the mass-murdering Cubana airliner bombers, Orlando Bosch, co-murderer of 73 human beings in October, 1976, including the entire Cuban fencing team and students from Guyana.)

Maybe it'll be harder to keep everyone in the dark this year, at least, as the number of Americans waking up on the Cuba issue increases. If people call or write their Congresscritters it could make a big difference. Many of them, both Republicans and Democrats, work all year long each year trying to get relations with Cuba normalized, and take us all out of the 1950's.

[Vogon_Glory]

8. Don't Underestimate Tom DeLay, Cosmic Commie-Killer

Generalissimo Gee Dubya is not the powerful pug keeping the trade and travel restrictions in place. Tom DeLay has been a Castro-basher for years. When the restrictions were to be lessened in the last years of the Clinton administration, it was DeLay who began to tighten the restrictions even further.

If Tom DeLay wasn't already in their corner, I very much doubt that the Diaz-Balart brothers and Ros-Lehtinen could continue to force US taxpayers to fund their family feud.

Getting rid of the travel restrictions and the embargo is a two part process. First--find a way to send DeLay packing. Second, find someone who can beat the Republicans in 2008.

[Judi Lynn]

9. Yep, they'd be screwed without Tom Delay.They already lost Jesse Helms!

They're just about OUT of protectors, and patrons, aren't they? Only Dan Burton, and "lesser" "luminaries" if such a thing is possible!

It'd be very decent to finally see Tom Delay stagger into the sunset. You can always depend on him to howl, whenever there's legislation concerning Cuba, that Cuba is the nightmare of the civilized word, and he pounds his meaty little fists, and gets beet red in his less than memorable face. As he howled, in 2001, and captured on C-Span:

``Allowing travel to Cuba is a terrible mistake,'' said Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, the majority whip. ``The tyrant is teetering on the brink of an abyss. Why in the world would we reach out now and draw his evil, abusive regime back to safety? Let it fall!''
(snip)

http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/us-cuba/cuba-travel.htm

He repeated, "Let it FAWL. Let it FAWL." Omigod.

We need a break from this nonsense.


Three Cuban-"exiles," (and nephews-by-former marriage (their aunt Mirta) to Fidel Castro) Diaz-Balarts, Mario and Lincoln, and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. Cuban "exile" Robert Menendez is behind Indiana Republican Dan Burton.

[Vogon_Glory]

10. Tom DeLay And Castro's Passing

It is my fervent hope that the voters of Sugarland, Texas will finally get so disgusted with their representative that when Fidel Castro finally passes on, Tom DeLay will hear all about it from within the confines of the Texas Department of Corrections.

I shouldn't be surprised if DeLay loses his seat before Fidel Castro loses his. I suspect that either hard-working prosecutors will find something grubby that sticks to DeLay like superglue or (less likely) the "righteous" of Sugarland will have to confront the character of the fellow they keep re-electing.

[cire4]

6. Wasn't Norm Coleman caught smoking a Cuban a few months ago?

More hypocrisy from the Republican party. I guarantee that every cigar-smoking Republican owns at least one case of Cuban cigars.

I guess the trade embargo doesn't apply to the Reich-Wingers. Only to the average American....What corrupt bullshit..