February 22, 2008 - it's Friday and I had a fun day of problems. We're doing a pot luck at work for lunch, so I went out around 10:30 AM to Publix to pick up some cheese for my cheese and crackers that I'm providing. On the way there, while rolling up my window (and by rolling, I mean pressing the button to put up my window...no one actually rolls up windows anymore), the window decides that it doesn't like functioning like a normal window, and decides to come out of its track. So that was a disaster. I spend the rest of the day figuring out what I'm going to do. In the end, I have plans to drop the car off tomorrow at the dealership to be looked at. Back at home Ellie and I go to the gym, then we go out to Bonefish Grill for dinner. We hadn't been out in a while so this was a nice treat. We both had wanted to check this place out anyway, so it was a good combination of going out to eat and trying a new place that both of us wanted to check out. It was late after dinner so we went home and just watched tv until bedtime. I've been doing some thinking and reading about Cuba lately, especially with news of Fidel Castro stepping down and being replaced by his brother, Raul. That's a pretty sweet gig. Live in a communist country and the only thing you need to do to become the next leader is be the brother of the current leader. It doesn't matter if you are 76 years old. That's young compared to Fidel, who was 81! But anyway, I don't really want to get into current politics in Cuba, I am more interested in the underlying details of why citizens from the United States cannot visit Cuba. It is not because they are communist. Look at China for an example of a communist country that does EXTENSIVE trade and tourism with the US. There must be more to this than gets talked about in the media. And there is. Let's back track about 200 years. The United States, after having won independence from England, begins massive expansion. But getting goods from Europe is time consuming and costly because of the great distance they travel. If only there were some other, closer source that could provide us with goods? Ok, how about Cuba, that country conveniently located less than 100 miles off the coast of Florida? It's only problem is that it is not "Cuba", it is really "Cuba - owned and ruled by Spain". Well the early Americans realize that it if America deserves independence from England, and we are needing goods provided by Cuba, it would be a great acquisition to our new country to buy Cuba from Spain. Let's not worry about what the Cubans want. We'll just give them plenty of money and they'll be cool with it. Only they weren't. After the United States successfully liberated Cuba from Spain, they thought it would be the beginning of a lucrative rule over the Cubans. Only the Cubans had different ideas. They wanted their own independence just like the United States. And maybe they don't like a Federal Republic government system as much as we do. They like the idea of working towards common goods, and keeping money in their country. So all of the businesses that were being run by the United States, which send money from Cuba to the US, were slowly being "nationalized". Cuba was making sure that they would be independent by hitting us Americans where it hurt the most - in our wallets. Well the government of the US didn't like this very much. We wanted to make as much money as possible off the resources and work of the Cubans. When Cuba started taking this money away, we did what any rational country would do...we hit them with sanctions and embargos. This escalated on both sides for the next 100 years or so. Meanwhile, the Cubans realized they needed to trade with someone, and if it wasn't going to be the US, who better to trade with than the Russians (or at that time, the CCCP, or the Soviet Union). Only there was something else afoot politically at that, referred to as "the cold war". Well, we didn't like Russia, and we didn't like Cuba, so it made pretty good sense that if we were going to do this right, we had to cut off all citizen access to Cuba, so that our government could show those darn Cubans who was the boss. But things didn't play out exactly as planned. Instead of resenting their respective governments for making such a stupid decision, both the Americans and the Cubans rallied around the propaganda being fed them by their governments. In America this fueled anti-Cuban and anti-Communist hostility, and in Cuba this fueled anti-American hostility. Well the good thing here is that with travel eliminated, there were not going to be any civilian altercations, and with "the cold war" in effect, despite it's threatening name, there actually was no physical war, just a stalement and arms race. So here we are today, still reeling in the effects of our greedy forefathers of the newly formed United States who thought it would be a quick and easy acquisition of Cuba. They thought it would be like going down to the bank and getting a loan to buy a new house, and instead we've had to deal with ridiculous sanctions that have isolated a country and held back what could have been incredible economic prosperity both for exports in Cuba and tourism from the cruise industry to Cuba.