Cuba can’t depend only on Euros from European tourists for economic support.

Amateurs whose loyal lapdogs insist they are the best in the world.

I have been involved in immigration issues for friends of my Mother dealing with relatives from the Eastern Bloc and Russia. It is a nightmare. There is no clear path to follow. Things happen more by chance than pattern.

There should be a booklet that tells people what they have to do, what documents they need, what forms they need to fill out. Every time I been involved things have changed.

You mean… professional baseball?

That nut-case policy toward Cuba cost me a chance to hear the great Cuban jazz pianist Chucho Valdes live in a scheduled concert in Houston, on the city’s free concert series in the Hermann Park shell. Everything was arranged; they didn’t bother to block him and his band until they were at the Havana airport. Yes, the U.S. blocked him, not Cuba. The city promoters were hard pressed to find a local band to substitute on the very day of the concert. (The band they found was very good; our Latin music community here is second to none. But they didn’t have Chucho.)

Bastards. No, not the band; the officials who blocked Valdes from coming here. I hope that Hell for them is an endless series of Florence Foster Jenkins recordings.

Unfortunately, that stupid loophole has about as much of a chance of getting closed as we have of dumping our whole insane Cuba policy. The Repugnacons (and, sadly, far too many Democrats) don’t want to piss off the Calle Ocho crowd, so a bunch of head-in-the-sand reactionaries get to control what is arguably one of the most important sectors of our foreign policy, to the detriment of the real interests of the nation–and the achievement of the goal the Cuban exiles themselves want, getting rid of Castro.