Diversion away from the communist's cyber-terrorism, which this pathetically weak ass president will never do anything about?

By the way, I heard on Fox News tonight that Newt Gingrich referred to this as an act of war.

Pat

Argument goes something like: A kid in his mom's basement sends an email to a Sony admin with a link to a zip file holding Kate Upton's request for his love services. The big dummy opens it on his Windoze box.
   
Then the same basement bound kid notifies Sony he has the ability to mount a nation-wide Spec-Op attack on thousands of movie theaters. Sony folds.
   
Kids in basements across the world dust the Doritos crumbs off their keyboards when when they learn of this coup.

--

All the recent intrusions into big retail networks were due to incompetent administrators, not amazing cyber gurus. One can create Internet services with multiple thick layers of security that make them very difficult to crack remotely.

"Big government" wants to perpetuate the notion that our Internet infrastructure is vulnerable to justify its intrusive spying. Placing blame where it belongs, on cracked companies, won't help Big Brother get bigger.

Get the people in florida to start voting.for.democrats.  they are an important swing state

Weak president?

bin Laden is dead and Putin's Russian Ruble is collapsing.

As for voting, Democrats won the Cuban vote in Florida in 2012, 52-48 that will grow. 50-49 was the overall vote. That GOP block is already gone. I think it went 80-20 for Reagan.

Newt if he was referring to North Korea, he is 100% correct and I would have voted for him over Obama, the only Republican I would have done so.

Wait im having a tough time reconciling this. You own a gun and still voted for zero?

You voted for the guy that passed restrictive gun laws in Massachusetts?

I am having a hard time understanding you.

During his political career, Romney clashed with the NRA during separate runs for U.S. Senate and governor in Massachusetts. In fact, Romney was a prominent Republican voice for gun control, and even limited the use of assault weapons while governor of Massachusetts.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/mitt-romney-gun-conrol-nra-assault-weapons-colorado-shooting-theater-2012-7#ixzz3MJrQ8dyL

Obama is looking for background checks, anyone have a problem with that?

Some more on the liberal that you voted for.

During his 2002 gubernatorial campaign, Romney had been a supporter of the federal assault weapons ban, and had also said he believed "in the rights of those who hunt to responsibly own and use firearms."[126] On July 1, 2004, Romney signed a permanent state ban on assault weapons, saying at the signing ceremony for the new law, "Deadly assault weapons have no place in Massachusetts. These guns are not made for recreation or self-defense. They are instruments of destruction with the sole purpose of hunting down and killing people."[127] The law extended a temporary measure that had been in effect since 1998 and covered weapons such as the AK-47, Uzi, and MAC-10.[127] The same law also modified some other aspects of general firearms licensing regulations.[127]

That's a good point Wolfie and fact. I will say Republicans in general favor gun rights, it has been proven they can be bought and paid for. We have NO CONSERVATIVES anymore, just RINO's. Look what just occurred in Washington. They passed a budget bill that puts taxpayers on the hook for 303 TRILLION dollars in derivatives NOT IF they crash and burn, BUT WHEN they crash and burn. Passed legislation put into place is there for only one reason, it is PLANNED to be used. The bankers know what's coming and they damn well made sure AGAIN the taxpayers will foot the bill. Of course aided and abetted by Congress, both sides of aisle. They were working the phones and sending their lobbyist in droves, nothing new. But Romney is a politician, and being one said what the majority wanted to hear in that Liberal State of Mass. Unfortunate that the pro gun, pro constitution folks were outnumbered in that state. Same go's like wise to the other states, NJ, Maryland, Conn, RI, Virginia now. Rural Virginians will suffer because of newly elected Gov(DEM) and that surrounding DC lib crowd. Also massively supported by Bloomberg. As far as Cuba, as a hunch on my end, it was a geopolitical move. The powers that be would like some form of relations because they do not want Russia back in and close by. Well at least try. I look for further US assistance to Cuba $$$$$$. Bankers(money changers) run the show, always have, always will.

I am no Romney shill, and I didn't vote for him or Obama.

But, there is another way to look at Romney.  He represented his constituency even when it went counter to his personal beliefs.  He looks at what the people of his state wanted their government to do and did his best to execute that. 

Further, he executed what he campaigned on, again even when it was counter to his personal views.

When he ran for president he said he would take a different stance...One that would reflect the views of the people of the nation, not the people of Massachusetts.  And I think he would have kept his word

There are a lot of reasons to not vote for Mitt Romney.  But his track record was that he represented the people that elected him and I believe he would have done the same in the white house.

I didn't vote for him because I didn't care entirely for the views of the Republicans that did and did not vote for him.

Back on Topic...

I don't think this Cuba stuff is a diversion.  I think the time for sanctions against Cuba really fell with the Soviet Union.  That was 25 years ago.  About time we started making nice with them.

And I don't really care much about North Korea hacking Sony.  And I don't know why that would be any president's fault.  If Sony can't secure their network that is their own fault.  In order to enable the president to have the power to protect Sony from cyber attacks, we the people would have to cede a huge amount of freedom in the virtual world.  And I personally think that would be a very bad thing.

It is bad enough the amount of personal freedom we already give in the name of security.

Well said gentleman.

I live in NYS and everyone thinks its a Democrat state, thats only statewide. The GOP runs nearly every county and local and here we have a thing called "Home Rule." That gives the local level lots of power, aka the GOP as most of your taxes are derived by the Tax Rates that the GOP puts in place.

Now onto guns.

I used to be a member of the NRA and quit when the 1st President Bush quit.

I then joined the NYS NRA affiliate and was very vocal. I warned the president not to put all his support with the GOP, they were not to be trusted. After Sandy Hook, the GOP that ran the Senate passed more restrictive gun laws here.

Even though their enrollment increased, I did not renew out of disgust.

This year 3 Democrats that voted for gun laws were voted out. The Republican Senator that made it happen, was voted BACK into office.

The 3 Republicans that won the seats, were sponsored by the GOP Senator that passed the law financially to the tune of millions.All while they were running commercials to repeal gun control.

Something that will never happen as they would have to go against the guy that promoted them.

Same in Congress, Republicans ran on stopping Illegals and Obamacare. The 1st thing these guys did? Was cut a budget deal financing both in exchange for campaign cash and bank deregulation.

I vote for the best candidate but in my humble opinion both parties are the same, but there is one big difference, when the Democrats say they are going to do something, they do it.

One last rant, time for state licensing with national reciprocity and a opt out for anyone that does not want in. (If you opt out, you cannot carry outside your state) This will never happen as the NRA and the GOP needs a Wedge Issue and while they are riling up the vote and making cash, we get nothing.

We have no one working in our best interests.

Hear ya about the NRA.  I maintain my membership, but then give them an earful each time they call.  I also donate regularly to the SAF.  I think the first best battle ground for these rights is the courts as the case law tends to stand for a very long time.

Just want to add a very important matter that took place in Cuba this past summer. Putin did a tour in the Southern Hemisphere in July. His first stop was Cuba. Deals were struck and one of them was Cuba's debt of 35 billion to Russia be forgiven except for 10%. Western bankers can't have that. Besides, the territory is to close and vital. www.politico.com

Cuba has me intrigued, I want those cop killers returned to the US. I will not trust them until they do that.

Cuban American History

The critics of President Obama's actions on Cuba are trying to fit a decades-old problem into a post-9/11 "Axis of Evil" mindset. But while conservatives are condemning Obama for "coddling dictators" (just as they once attacked him for "palling around with terrorists"), their attack requires forgetting a huge amount of history. Here is what you need to know—and what they have forgotten.

Many Americans have thought of Cuba as an enemy for more than half a century. Today's critics of President Obama argue as if tensions began during the Cold War, when in 1960 Fidel Castro's Cuba partnered with the Soviet Union, and have simmered ever since, almost bringing the world to war in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

A deeper view of history offers a very different picture. For more than 150 years, both American and Cuban leaders have dreamed of tying the nations together.

In the late 1840s, Cuban slaveowner Narciso López led a series of revolts in an effort to gain independence from Spain, preserve slavery on the island, and ally with the United States—specifically, with the slave South. López's efforts failed and he was executed in 1851, but a few years later, Franklin Pierce's pro-slavery Minister to Spain, Pierre Soulé, pursued a similar plan on behalf of the United States. Soulé and others drafted the secret Ostend Manifesto (1854), which argued for a U.S. purchase or annexation of the island and, when made public, led to a diplomatic crisis that almost erupted in war.

When military conflict came, in the Spanish American War of the late 1890s, the United States and Cuban revolutionaries allied in opposition to Spanish rule. This time, the Cuban leader was far more radical than López: José Martí, a poet, journalist, professor, and revolutionary who had spent decades as an exile in New York City and whose writings and efforts contributed greatly to the resistance against Spain. Martí's death at the Battle of Dos Ríos in 1895 produced a surge of Cuban and American sympathy for the revolution, and thus in both life and death Martí played a prominent role in bringing the United States into the Spanish American War and into a relationship with Cuba that would last for half a century after the war's end.

Over the course of those decades, from 1895 until 1959, the United States participated both openly and covertly in Cuba's political evolution, helping install and remove numerous leaders. Fulgencio Batista was at the center of those histories, from the time he led a 1933 military revolt that overthrew Cuba's president through his own 1940 election to the presidency and finally a 1952 coup that returned him to power. In his earlier days Batista was more like Martí, a revolutionary dedicated to social reform and the people. But by the 1950s, he had evolved into a strident anti-Communist with deep ties to U.S. CORPORATE interests on the island. So when Fidel Castro and his fellow Communist rebels led the 1959 revolution that overthrew Batista, the U.S. severed its longstanding ties to Cuba.

Here is what Obama's critics are missing: the fact that Cuban-American connections have evolved, shifted, and most of all, endured, across nearly two centuries. Pioneering Caribbean scholar Edouard Glissant described the Americas as created through a process of "creolization," of interdependent relationships and influences across many nations. In announcing his decision, President Obama put it more simply, quoting none other than José Martí: "Todos somos Americanos." Indeed we are, and if we start there, we can realize that 1960 to 2014 need not define the future of the U.S.-Cuba relationship. Indeed, it doesn't even define the past.

Ben Railton is an Associate Professor of English Studies at Fitchburg State University and a member of the Scholars Strategy Network.

Your Cuban history is correct. One matter in today's current economic environment is that there is a disdain torwards the Dollar Reserve Status and it's implications to other countries. But more important is the alliance of the BRIC nations and various other nations that have been and continue to make deals outside useing the Dollar. It's a time consuming and piece meal endeavor, but none the less ongoing. One fear I think is the West realizes this plan to shed the dollar and will do what it takes to thwart those efforts. Currency wars usually end up as real wars. The U.S. is 18 trillion in debt, ,with any where around 200 to estimated 300 trillion in unfunded liabilities. Mathematical nightmare and impossible to payoff. Sure the Dollar is king and other currencies are suffering and plunging.  But that will push more for a different currency of exchange.

Well, my 2 cent son this.. my step dads mother was cuban. Her family were wealthy plantation owners till castro took literally everything they had. they came to the US with what they could carry. Not a single one of us will ever spend a dime there.