Why, it was part of a cultural exchange : A visit by American pop star Beyonce and rapper husband Jay-Z to Havana last week was a cultural trip that was fully licensed by the U.S. Treasury Department, a source familiar with the itinerary said on Monday. The longstanding U.S. trade embargo against Cuba prevents most Americans from traveling to the communist-led island without a license granted by the U.S. government. Some lawmakers are not happy : In a letter dated on Friday, reports Reuters, U.S. Representatives Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Mario Diaz-Balart, asked Adam Szubin, director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control, for “information regarding the type of license that Beyoncé and Jay-Z received, for what purpose, and who approved such travel.” . . . . “Despite the clear prohibition against tourism in Cuba, numerous press reports described the couple’s trip as tourism, and the Castro regime touted it as such in its propaganda,” the letter said. “We represent a community of many who have been deeply and personally harmed by the Castro regime’s atrocities, including former political prisoners and the families of murdered innocents.” . . . . Sen. Marco Rubio also had strong words about the trip and issued a statement Monday accusing the Obama administration of not properly enforcing the law that bans tourism: “U.S. law clearly bans tourism to Cuba by American citizens because it provides money to a cruel, repressive and murderous regime. Since their inception, the Obama Administration’s ‘people to people’ cultural exchange programs have been abused by tourists who have no interest in the Cuban people’s freedom and either don’t realize or don’t care that they’re essentially funding the regime’s systematic trampling of people’s human rights,” said Rubio. I am not a fan of the policy of prohibiting people from traveling to Cuba. I understand the purpose of the ban, but I am generally for freedom. My default position is that we should be able to travel where we want to travel. But if the ban should be lifted, it should be lifted for all — not just those who are friends with Obama.
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Beyonce and Jay-Z Had Official Permission to Travel to Cuba
Meanwhile no WH tours for us to see “the people’s house” and Obama threatens the Easter egg roll. In a government gone crazy, where is the common sense? Via The Weekly Standard: As it turns out, Vice President Joe Biden’s London stay in February was not the most expensive part of his trip. A government document released on February 14,
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Cost Of VP Biden’s Hotel Stay For One Night In Paris On Our Dime? $585,000!
My late mother loved that joke about the cowboy who gets shot full of arrows by a band of Indian braves. When his buddies find him in terrible condition, they ask him if it hurts. “Only when I laugh,” he answers. One thing you learn quickly when living in Israel: the security of the State of Israel is a laughing matter. Citizens trying to survive in the trying political atmosphere over there learn to chuckle the doomsayers into oblivion. They guffaw, they cackle, they bellow, and they howl with laughter at every amusing situation that arises in the military realm. Today they are all laughing again… at President Obama. Well, not at his policies officially. Nah, they would never do a thing like that. They view him with “the highest respect,” as Jackie Mason says. They are only laughing because his limo got towed. Apparently the genius who is in charge of getting the President from place to place was not aware that the limousine runs on diesel, not regular gas. This fellow issued an executive order to start the Keystone Kops Pipeline, but the Kops refused to go on petrol. The Presidential party was forced to abandon the auto stationary and hitch another ride. Now the last thing a serious commentator should do would be to see a metaphor in this fiasco. It would be ridiculous to advance the notion that the arresting of forward progress due to an intrinsic misconception as to the nature of the object, the subject, the energy and the catalyst is somehow symbolic of the failure of vision that is the Obama Mideast policy. Yet we can hardly help but to ponder all the wizardry that has led to this point. The great Cairo speech designed to bring us closer to the Muslim world. The confession that the CIA should not have interfered in the Iranian government in the 1950s, when there is still no evidence that ever happened. The Syrian morass, the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the Benghazi killings, none of these make us look any smarter or nicer. The Iranians have shown no sign of letting our famous “crippling sanctions” slow them down any. All in all, that region has certainly grown no safer or friendlier since the United States elected a guy middle-named Hussein. Nor has the famously peripatetic Hillary Clinton era in the State Department made any visible inroads on any front. If all that incompetence provides any occasion for concern, wait until the Kerry-Hagel axis takes hold. The good news for Israel is that the President does not like to undertake adventures that do not lead to quick results. There are no quick fixes in Israel, so the process is too unwieldy and unrewarding. To date he has limited his mangling of the relationship to such petty gestures as walking out on Netanyahu in the White House to go eat supper. Now to liven things up, the White House leaked word that Obama would try to win the hearts of young Israelis by going over Netanyahu’s head to address them directly. In that vein, Obama decided to snub the Knesset and speak to students at a convention center. His State Department put out a video in advance of the trip and put up a map showing Israel with Jerusalem and the Golan Heights lopped off. This kind of death of a thousand cuts may work in places where folks take themselves too seriously but not in Israel. This is the country where Jimmy Swaggart got off the plane after a sex scandal to be greeted with a sign proclaiming “Pro-Israel is the best position.” I was there myself when James Baker landed and was met by this banner: “Baker, go make your own bread…” They figure they can outlast a guy like Obama. They can hold his car at the impound lot for four years. They can keep him waiting for a foursome at the golf course in Caesarea. They can nod their heads attentively while he explains to them that no President before him has read so extensively about Judaism. And they can give him a crate of Jaffa oranges as a door prize. As for anything substantive changing, now that is cause for a good laugh right there. It’s like the old joke about the pale man with the pointy teeth entering a man’s bedroom at night. The man lifted his silver cross but the vampire just laughed and kept approaching. “Did they sell me fake silver?” the man wondered. “Oh, no, my brother-in-law only sells genuine artifacts. The only problem is I am Jewish…” Photo: UPI
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Israel in the Tank for Obama
Scary what the Obama admin wants to do with our money. Via The Hill: Secretary of State John Kerry had hoped to offer considerably more aid to Egypt than the $250 million he announced during his trip to Cairo but was blocked by Congress, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-Calif.) said. “This is
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House Republicans Blocked Kerry From Giving Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood Regime An Additional $200 Million…
Via Mediaite: Former NBA start Dennis Rodman stood by his controversial trip to North Korea and remarks about its dictator Kim Jong-Un on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos. Rodman downplayed his trip that some are calling “basketball diplomacy” saying that he is not a diplomat while brushing aside allegations about North Korean death camps
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Dennis Rodman Wouldn’t Apologize For “My Friend” Kim Jong Un’s Murderous Regime: “We Do The Same Thing Here”
