Luckily $50 a Day Goes Far in a Socialist paradise

Congress is trying to up restrictions on travel to Cuba. You may have to wait to until next year to get your hands on the cigars and putas though:

WASHINGTON - Democrats controlling Congress are trying to loosen restrictions on allowing people of Cuban descent to visit their relatives on the island.

But efforts underway in Congress — including a measure adopted by a Senate panel on Thursday — appear unlikely to loosen the restrictions before President Bush leaves office in January.

Bush opposes efforts gaining steam in Congress to ease a longstanding embargo and recently-toughened travel restrictions on Cuba. His veto promises have carried the day despite majority support for loosening restrictions on travel to Cuba and trade with the authoritarian state.

The Senate panel would block enforcement of restrictions imposed in 2004 on family travel to Cuba. Prior to the 2004 policy change, Cuban-Americans could travel to Cuba once a year to visit relatives, spend up to $170 a day and visit for an unlimited duration.

Now, family visits are limited to once every three years for no more than 14 days. Spending is capped at $50 per day.

Read the whole story here.

Expanding Freedom (and Irony) in Cuba

Cellphones, microwaves, computers, DVD players; Cubans now have the freedom (but not the resources) to purchase those electronics. Next up: The right to vacation in Cuba, just like an European tourist!

Cubans will be allowed to stay in the hotels beginning at midnight Monday, said employees at several Havana hotels. Word of the change came from Tourism Ministry officials, the employees said.

For most Cubans, the measure is largely symbolic, as hotel rates are unaffordable. Tourist hotels in Cuba can cost anywhere from $60 to more than $200 a night -- well out of reach for most Cubans, who earn fewer than $20 a month on average.

They Knew About Our Health Care and Still Defected?

Cuba's such a great place to live, that every Cuban wants to defect, or float across the ocean clinging to rafts made of cereal boxes and duct tape; just so they can tell us how fucking great their place is. Viral marketing...or something.

TAMPA, Fla. -- Five members of the Cuban Under-23 national soccer team left their hotel Tuesday night and and then Wednesday night two more players left the team, raising the possibility they all may be trying to defect.

Too bad for the team. They started Olympic Qualifying with a strong showing against the US playing them to a draw. Full article here.

Charlize Theron is Probably Reprehensible

Actress Charlize Theron, who's produced a new documentary, East of Havana, about teenage rappers living under the Cuban dictatorship, told CNN's milquetoast Rick Sanchez during an interview yesterday that the U.S. is, like Cuba, not free. Here's my transcription.

Sanchez: Do you think the lack of freedoms in Cuba are parallel to the lack of freedoms in the United States?

Theron: Well, um, yeah, I would compare those two.

[...]

Sanchez: Sounds like you don't have a very high opinion of the United States...

Theron: Oh my God! You're so wrong... I absolutely love... Why do you think I live in the United States?

[...]

Theron: I want to make out with you right now.

Video here If Broadway Joe can't get away with this shit -- hey, at least his meltdown was funny -- then neither should Ms. Theron.

In Theron's defense, she did have some more thoughtful words on the topic for the Miami Herald yesterday:

Theron said that many of the young people she met questioned Fidel Castro's regime.

'I think the younger generation is starting to say, `You know what -- it doesn't work. We're not happy. We want to have freedom of speech. We want to be able to travel,' '' she said.

OK, fine. But such questioning may not extend to her co-filmmakers, who -- though they give the de rigeur shout out to freedom in this Latina interview -- also link to some equally de rigeur 'Oh, the wonderful Cuban healthcare/education/arts' bullshit from the film's MySpace page.

If you're looking for a better way to spend your time on something Cuban, go check out 1997's ¿Quién diablos es Juliette?, the true story of a young prostitute who is the inspiration for and subject of a documentary hatched on the spot during the filming of a music video starring Fabiola Quiroz-Brown, the Mexican wife of Stone Roses frontman Ian Brown. Good stuff. Honest.