Mainly because she points out that neither she nor her parents have known any other El Presidante than Fidel Castro. They may not remember but I do that Castro's immediate predecessor was a gentleman name Batista. He was not a nice man and many pinned their hopes for Cuba on Castro when he overthrew Batista.

Alas, Mr. Castro chose Communism. The wealthy, privileged class that thrived under Batista while others starved moved to Miami. Since the US reacts to Communism much the same way that a dog reacts to a cat, nobody seems to remember that the Cubans that fled to Miami were the privileged elite that would lose their money, privilege, and power under a Communist regime.

So what now for Cuba? Unlike The Current Occupant, I'm not simpleminded enough to think that Democracy just naturally springs up in societies that have little in the way of democratic traditions. I would like the Cuban people to be able to shape their own future. A future free from heavy handed American meddling and the elitist Cuban ex-pat community in Florida.

Good Luck.

the media-connected, Swiftboat-spewing operatives who function in the shadows and the sewers - whew! only in my dreams could I come up with such polite vituperation. But I also agree with you. Our political discourse should be about principles, and ideas, and approaches instead of the viscous smears and lies we currently get, mostly perpetrated by the Republican party who seem to be concept free except for their cheering section chanting We Want Power, We Want Power, We Want Power.

Unfortunately, I'm also a realist (or, as some of my more trenchant critics would have it, a cynic). Not long ago, a friend of mine asked me what pundits I looked up to. I told him, None of 'em. When it comes to opinions, I roll my own - I don't need to borrow anybody else's. So all I want, as Joe Friday used to say, is "Just the facts, ma'am". Unfortunately, the pundits are notorious for giving you no facts, only selected facts, or even "facts" they make up. Since many people seem to rely on these pundits for their opinions, I don't see anything changing until the American people start thinking for themselves instead of relying on somebody else to do their thinking for them.

Why stop with 30 days? Sex is fun. Do it all you like, you can always make more.

The reason that American manufacturing jobs are running out of the country as fast as they can is because it's cheaper and easier to operate from a foreign country. The cost of labor both direct (wages) and indirect (benefits) is lower and the regulatory burden is much lower. Plus exporting is easier. Most other countries don't require a mother-may-I from the government to export (toilets wouldn't require an export license to be exported but you would need a statement from the State Department that there were no ITAR issues and they didn't fall into this fruitcake "dual use" category).

Regulation is like lying. You tell a lie and it's an odds on favorite that you're going to have to keep on lying to keep the original lie under wraps. Pretty soon you have such a briar patch of lies that you can't keep them all straight and you get caught in your original lie. Since regulators tend to be really myopic, they have to write more and more regulations to address the deleterious consequences of all the previous regulations until you wind up with a Byzantine labyrinth. The easiest thing to do at that point is to blow town and set up shop someplace where you don't need 20 permits just to collect logs at the bottom of a lake. You can rant and rave all you like but that's reality. And we're not afraid of it, are we?

And your economist buddies need a reality check. None of the mechanisms mentioned will do anything for deplorable working conditions.

I think it would be good to point out that Libertarianism has even less in common with Neo-conservatism than conservatism has.