Marco Rubio, presidential candidate

Born in Miami, Florida in 1971, Rubio is the son of Cuban immigrants. After earning a bachelor's degree from the University of Florida in 1993, he went to the University of Miami for his law degree. Rubio's political career began with his election to the West Miami City Commission in 1998. He was elected in the Florida House of Representatives the following year. In 2009, Rubio won his campaign for the U.S. Senate.

Both of his parents worked hard to support the family. His father spent years as a bartender. 

Rubio became interested in public service early on. He has told the press, "I gained an interest in politics and history from my uncle Fernando, who would teach me about everything: Etruscan history, how to build a Mongol bow, Talmudic law and Zionism, quantum gravity, making ham and cheese sandwiches, and electoral strategy".

The UN General Assembly and the Castro dictatorship

People like to say USA economic sanctions on the Castro dictatorship should end because they don't work, or because the USA lacks the moral standing to criticize and punish human rights abusers. 

I started out to write about the United Nations' yearly vote condemning the economic sanctions, to argue that a vote should be held condemning the dictatorship. But then I realized the UN isn't too focused on freedom of the individual. It's a nations' club, focused on what's good for each nation's ruling class. And this means the UN will never vote to condemn the Castro family dictatorship. 

The actions taken by any power, including the USA, to condemn or punish the Castro dictatorship will be driven by the Cuban people, be It Cubans living abroad or in Cuba, and their allies. This is a war, but the sides are both Cuban. 

Yoani Sanchez, blogger for freedom

The senile dinosaur, Fidel Castro 

One side is the dictatorship, the military and communist party oligarchs, allied with corporate interests and the international left.

Buena Vista Social Club plays for Obama

On October 15, 2015, the Cuban band "Buena Vista Social Club" played for President Obama at the White House. The band included Omara Portuondo, seen in this photograph holding the microphone: 

As we know, President Obama has been quite proactive trying to establish a close relationship with the Castro family dictatorship. At first I thought he intended to establish diplomatic relations (which is fine, the USA has diplomatic relations with lots of fairly hostile nations which abuse human rights).  But Obama is going beyond having relations and is actively endorsing the Castro regime, and its past and continuous human rights abuses with a series of very poor moves. This includes decrees to gut economic sanctions, as well as very chummy photo ops with Raúl Castro: 

                                                Raul Castro  with Barack Obama 

I bring up the White House event because Portuondo happens to be one of the "high profile" individuals who signed an open letter supporting the Black Spring in Cuba (this refers to a wave of arrests carried out in 2003, while the world was distracted by the US blunder in Iraq). Portuondo is seen as a high profile defender of that garbage regime, there was no need whatsoever to put her up in the White House, period. Doing that on top of those chummy loving looks  amounts to a "f**k you" to the hundreds of thousands of people robbed, jailed, tortured, exiled, murdered, and destroyed by the dictatorship. 

Laura Pollan with the Ladies in White

References:

Article by Yoani Sanchez about Laura Pollan, the deceased leader of the Ladies in White (winners of the 2005 Sakharov Prize)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/yoani-sanchez/first-anniversary-of-the_b_1965824.html

Buena Vista Social Club visit
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/barackobama/11935057/Buena-Vista-Social-Club-play-Cuban-music-at-White-House-for-first-time-in-50-years.html

The black spring
https://cpj.org/reports/2008/03/cuba-press-crackdown.php

The letter Portuondo signed
http://www.rebelion.org/hemeroteca/internacional/030419mensaje.htm

My personal pledge to reduce my emissions

I hear the UN is having a meeting in Paris, something they call COP21 run by the UNFCC, with IPCC, WMO, and SMERSH consultants. The meeting has been going well, most nations  pledged to reduce their emissions. This included large CO2 polluters like China, India, the EU, and the United States of Obama. 

Trying to figure out the climate mess is complicated 

However, although the meals are great and the side shows very entertaining, the 200 nations participating in this conference can't agree on the punishments the UN will use to enforce the CO2 emissions. This is seen as a top priority by meeting leadership (Christiana Figueres, and a French guy sent by President Hollande to represent him). 

Christiana Figueres, a professional UN bureaucrat, former Costa Rican embassy secretary who graduated from Wellesley in Renaissance Poetry, has given up on her knowledge of science to convince participants they need to give the UN much more power, to punish each of them individually, if they emit too much CO2.

 She is so frustrated she seems to be advocating Chinese style dictatorship, which she feels offers a better system to give the world cleaner air and redistribute income (I guess she didn't get the memo that China is now run by ruthless capitalists and has more billionaires than the USA?). 

Therefore, whereas the nations of the world aren't likely to agree on anything practical, and whereas we need to reduce greenhouse emissions, I hereby pledge to reduce my personal emission from my "business as usual" case, by taking the following steps: 

1. I will not heat my swimming pool, the plans to install the pool heaters in 2018 is hereby cancelled. Instead I will use the heated pool at the club. 

2. I will reduce the private jet travel by 50 %, travel business class on trips shorter than four hours.

3. I will drive a manual transmission diesel engine powered BMW. 

4. I will end all of my personal methane emissions by 2100.

Note: my Business as Usual case assumes I own a home with a 25 meter heated swimming pool, ride my personal jet 30 times a year, drive a 2005 Hummer, and live an additional 87 years.