It never occurred to me that Cuba and Hispaniola are virtually identical. I didn’t know they were only separated by about 50 miles, either:
With President Barack Obama easing a five-decade-old embargo on Cuba, no nation in the Caribbean has more at risk than the Dominican Republic, the region’s biggest economy. Every U.S. tourist that visits a Cuban beach undermines the country’s position as the region’s top destination. Each time a Major League Baseball franchise holds out to sign a Cuban prospect means less cash for Dominican players, the largest single contingent of foreign-born players in the big leagues.
“The Cubans produce the same things that we produce,” said Arturo Martinez Moya, a former economist at the central bank who authored “Dominican Economic Growth: 1844-1950.” “Their development will be based on the same sectors as ours because we live on two identical islands.”
The island of Hispaniola, home to both the Dominican Republic and Haiti, is just 80 kilometers (50 miles) off the east coast of Cuba, separated by the Windward Passage. The former Spanish colonies both have populations of about 11 million people and a topography marked by mountain ranges, fertile lowlands and white-sand beaches.
Of course, Cuba has a Bay of Pigs. And a Bay of Guantanamo.
Dare one ask if Haiti and the US BFF Papa Doc was a factor in the decision to embargo Cuba? That Papa Doc and Baby Doc would show those commies in Cuba what a capitalist dictator can do.
Haiti’s hallowed hotel
Yeah, and it brought so much prosperity to Haiti …
NPR Cuban Doctors Unsung Heroes Of Haitian Earthquake
Common Dreams
I just checked a list of countries by GDP per capita.
For Cuba (est. 2010, apparently the latest figure available) the figure was $9,900. This was higher than (in order of higher to lower, 2012 est. unless otherwise noted):
Jamaica, Ecuador, Belize, Guyana, El Salvador, Paraguay, Guatemala, Bolivia, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Haiti($1,300 GDP per capita, poorest in the Americas.)
Things should improve real soon for Haiti now that Mia Love is in the US House of Reps. Gonna send them more of that free market love wrapped around more copies of The Book of Mormon
That’s because they are not “virtually identical.” Say that to any Cuban with an ounce of sense and you will have to defend yourself. I have been to both islands…and played music with the people of both islands as well…and the feng shui of each place is remarkably different. So are the people and so are their music and cultures. You may as well say that Great Neck, L.I. and Hunts Point in the Bronx are “virtually identical.” Or that Haiti and the Dominican Republic are virtually identical.
Hunts Point and Great Neck are less than 15 miles apart and connect to the same bodies of water but they are as different as are the South Bronx and the Manhattan Upper East Side abodes of the Bloombergian .01%.
Just because two islands are relatively contiguous and some of their inhabitants speak mostly Spanish does not mean that they should be lumped together in any manner whatsoever.
AG
They mean in terms of trade goods and other items. There are a fair amount of countries that benefit off our embargo of Cuba.
Flat out every sale that goes to Cuba, every industry that we transfer to Cuba, and yes every sport that comes to Cuba… that’s coming out of someone elses pocket, and it’s not the rich.
When more people get a seat at the table what happens is everything all the other mid level and low level people have gets divided up again among them yet another time, and the people at the top get all the extra goodies.
The gains Cuba makes in say, rum, cigars, tourism, baseball, will not be “extra money for all”. Someone else will see their share of this all divided up yet again, and the people at the top will get all the extra goodies. That’s how humans work.
Is it the right thing to do, yes. Will it be good for Cuba, yes. Is some other shit hole going to take it in the ass economically, oh hell fucking yes!
Their different culture means nothing. What Cuba gains will come out of the hide of it’s equals. For every dollar into a Cuban home one will come out of another poor home.
Is Haiti still paying tribute to France?
iirc France recently wrote off the balance due.
Not to be outdone by the finest NJ has to offer the world that had a woman without Ebola detained by force and is now standing up for ignorant “Mommy’s know best anti-vaxxer” voting bloc, a physician pol weighs in.
Number of peer reviewed, quality medical reports that immunizations resulted in “profound mental disorders” for children? Zero.
But he “heard” somewhere this happens.
Also, we didn’t have mandatory vaccinations before and we did ok. So there.
But don’t worry. Paul is a Progressive Hero who opposes drones some of the time and supports war just not the process of how the wars started.
I know that pandering to the RWNJ “freedum” loving and “keep government out of my Medicare” bozos is part of their schticks, but they continue to display a level of ignorance and/or stupidity on Palin’s level.
But this isn’t even a big base of people that they’re pandering. Plus, it has a lot of cross-over with liberals in Southern California.
I think they’re just saying it because “Obama said the opposite”.
Fucking christ if vaccination becomes another partisan issue, we are so beyond fucked.
Paul may fear losing some of his “crunchy munchy” base. (The anti-science DFHs were almost always as wrong as the RWNJs.) I first ran into hippie-dippy anti-vaxxers in the early 1980s, fifteen years before the autism hoax appeared.
But your take — if Obama is for it; I’m against it — is likely more correct. Proof that both are too stupid for their current jobs.
Maybe they’re going for culling the herd. And are so irrationally arrogant that they believe their little darlings are too healthy to be impacted by epidemics.
The beautiful and horrifying part of life-threatening illness and disease is that the rich aren’t passed over; disease did not spare kings and emperors, and it won’t spare them.
Their right to do any stupid or foolhardy thing they want for themselves and their children ends when they endanger the lives and well-being of others. Even if the only ones put at risk for preventable diseases are them and theirs, they will demand extraordinary medical attention should what is unthinkable to them, and those costs get passed down to everyone else.
From When “Not a Scientist” Kids Stood in Line
On a related topic, Brian Burrough’s a first rate article Trial by Ebola Amidst all the real time hysteria, believe I connected the available dots better than most and defended Dallas Presby and possibly Dallas County officials. OTOH — I way overestimated the emergency planning and response capacity of the CDC. CDC budget cuts may have been a factor — but doubt that it can be shown to have been a significant factor in this situation.
The other GOP, MD POTUS wannabe weighs in. Unlike Paul, he appears to have learned some basic health science in his studies. (Not that he knows much outside of his area of expertise.)
Check that yougov poll. Vaccination mandates are split 43/43 in the millenials. In 20 years a huge chunk of the population won’t be vaccinated. Companies put a lot of crap in our food, and this has now come back to bite us culturally when people generalize that to the entire world view.
The only good thing is this might lead to a drive to improve vaccines for the non fools. Like say vaccines might need to be made more effective so those of us who get them aren’t screwed, or a test gets developed to check for the antibodies fast so people can revaccinate if previous efforts didn’t take.
That poll supports my observation that the young people in this country aren’t going to save it. Because they didn’t get seriously ill or see anyone die from polio, measles, whooping cough, mumps, chicken pox, etc., half of them seem not to have a clue as to why they didn’t. Ten year old kids a couple of generations ago were smarter than these no-nothings.
While I consider government funding for vaccine research integral to public health and support healthy budgets for it, current vaccines for classic communicable diseases are not deficient. Part of that efficacy is based on herd immunity which is why mandatory vaccination is good public health policy.
Its the dark side of the live and let live mentality. Waiting around for some generation to ‘sace’ the country means you’ll be waiting a long time. You need to put in the work. Ruy Teixeira has basically built his life on a lie.
But I dispute the idea that current vaccines are not deficient. They’re adequate in the system built for mass vaccination and herd immunity but something that is 66% effective on an individual level is just too low. We should be working to raise that as well as support mass or even mandatory vaccination.
What if that 66% (assuming that’s correct) immunity effectiveness for vaccines is as good as it can get? Not opposed to more money for more research, but currently, US scientific research is so infected with corporations, institutions, and individuals only in it to enrich themselves, that at the public health level we won’t be getting as much bang for our buck as we did a few decades ago.
It’s totally foolish not to require mandatory vaccinations. My bias in favor of very strong public health policies is showing. But it’s not an irrational belief thing — it’s the cheapest and most effective means to increase the health and well being of the most people.
Well as you said little incentive to improve but with it making a comeback it might. Besides with insurance covering vaccines and Obamacare insurance rates there us a bigger market than ever for vaccines.
66% number was in relation to mumps, so the second M.
http://www.cdc.gov/mumps/vaccination.html
Before the ACA, close to half of the births in this country were covered by Medicaid. That coverage continued through all the recommended immunizations. Also their are public health clinics (some in schools as in Los Angeles) and low/no cost clinics that fill in any gaps for child immunizations.