"What I said is what Barack Obama said, in terms of Cuba, that Cuba made progress on education." -Bernie Sanders to Joe Biden at South Carolina's Democratic debate, Feb. 25, 2020.
"He (Obama) did not in any way suggest that there was anything positive about the Cuban government!…” -Joe Biden angrily responded to Sanders.
How’s that again, Joe? Because: "Cuba has an extraordinary resource -- a system of education which values every boy and every girl.” -Barack Obama, Havana, March 22, 2016.
More idiotically (or alarmingly) during the same speech Obama also hailed Cuba’s famous “doctor diplomacy” (i.e. Human Trafficking using slave doctors) “No one should deny the service that thousands of Cuban doctors have delivered for the poor and suffering."
But didn’t Bernie--during that 60 Minutes interview-- double-down on his Cuba praise, comes the response?
Sure, but again he was only aping Obama, who at a town hall meeting in Argentina two days after this Cuba visit himself “doubled-down” on his Cuba praise: “You (the Castro-regime) have made great progress in educating young people. Every child in Cuba gets a basic education -- that's a huge improvement from where it was. Medical care -- the life expectancy of Cubans is equivalent to the United States, despite it being a very poor country, because they have access to health care. That's a huge achievement. They should be congratulated.”
As your humble servant has often pointed out here at Townhall, hailing Castroite Cuba’s healthcare and education is not exactly newsworthy for a prominent Democrat, and certainly didn’t start with Bernie Sanders—or Barack Obama. In fact, it’s more of a rote recitation that rolls off some Democrat tongues more effortlessly –and probably more gratifyingly – than the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance.
Interestingly, Bernie started using that very defense only after it was pointed out here at Townhall, in an article quoting Obama, among many other Democrats.
In case Bernie plans to stay in the race, and his staffers need more debate ammo, next time you might mention that Joe’s wife, Jill Biden herself, (while in Cuba making a tourism commercial to boost the income of the terror-sponsoring Castro regime) dutifully recited the Democrat Cuban healthcare and education mantra. Or so she was quoted by the KGB-trained communist apparatchiks she was partnering with in Stalinist Cuba. To wit:
“Jill Biden in Cuba to study Cuba’s achievements in health and education," read a headline in Stalinist Cuba’s media, Oct. 6, 2016.
More interestingly, during Jill Biden’s co-production with communist apparatchiks of her Potemkin tourism commercial to boost the income of Castro’s military and secret police who majority own Cuba’s tourism industry—during this apparently gratifying endeavor, Biden’s frequent escort was a Cuban lady named Josefina Vidal.
The KGB-trained Vidal was expelled from the U.S. in Oct. 2003 for her suspected operational links to Cuban spy Ana Belen Montes, responsible for the deepest and most damaging penetration of the U.S. Department of Defense in recent history. Montes was known as “Castro’s Queen Jewell” by the intelligence community and was convicted of the same crimes as Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. Today Montes serves a 25-year sentence in federal prison. Only a plea bargain saved her from frying like the Rosenbergs. If Jill Biden suspected Vidal’s background, she gave no indication.
While Joe Biden served as U.S. vice president, President Obama, employing executive order after executive order, whittled down the (so-called) Cuba embargo and opened a U.S. economic lifeline to the terror-sponsoring Castro regime to a point where the cash-flow from the U.S. to Cuba (mostly in remittances and the tourism spending Jill Biden so graciously boosted) exceeded what the Soviets used to send Cuba at the height of their Castro-sponsorship. No small “achievement.”
As a result—and in a thundering refutation of the liberal/libertarian/Castroite propaganda line that an avalanche of U.S. tourists and their dollars would magically convert Cuba’s Stalinist rulers into Rotarians and their fiefdom into a Caribbean Switzerland—during this Obama/Biden-engineered deluge of U.S. dollars, Castroite repression increased both in Cuba and in their Venezuelan colony.
And speaking of Cuba’s colonies. When President Reagan was fighting tooth and nail to arm the anti-communist Nicaraguan Contras in their desperate fight against the Soviet/Cuban colonization of their homeland, Senator Joe Biden was just as desperately fighting against the anti-communist freedom-fighters.
Three different times (in 1984, 1986, 1987) Senator Joe Biden voted and lobbied AGAINST Reagan’s attempts to help the anti-communist Nicaraguan Contras, who were being helped by many Bay-of-Pigs affiliated Cuban American heroes including (Che Guevara captor) Felix Rodriguez as volunteers. Years earlier Biden had distinguished himself by voting and lobbying AGAINST helping the anti-communist South Vietnamese against their Soviet-lavished mass-murdering enemies.
Granted, Bernie Sanders as a failed politician was in no position to provide the aid and comfort to the worldwide Soviet onslaught against freedom as was Senator and later Vice President Biden. But it’s a record Sanders must certainly envy.