RFK Jr: Okay, Now He’s Just Trolling Us

Robert F. “Little Bobby” Kennedy Jr, winner of multiple Green Weenie Awards (most recently for suggesting the Koch brothers be jailed as war criminals or something) is now out with a column singing the praises of Cuba. That is so 1980s, dude! Can’t you do better than “literacy” and “universal health care”?

Despite its poverty, Cuba has managed some impressive accomplishments. Cuba’s government boasts the highest literacy rates for its population of any nation in the hemisphere. Cuba claims its citizens enjoy universal access to health care and more doctors per capita than any other nation in the Americas. Cuba’s doctors, reportedly, have high quality medical training.

Unlike other Caribbean islands where poverty means starvation, all Cubans receive a monthly food ration book that provides for their basic necessities.

Even Cuban government officials admit that the economy is smothered by the inefficiencies of Marxism, although they also argue that the principal cause of the island’s economic woes is the strangling impact of the 60-year-old trade embargo – and it is clear to everyone that the embargo first implemented during the Eisenhower administration in October 1960 unfairly punishes ordinary Cubans.

The AmericanThinker, which flagged this column, notes a glaring hypocrisy in this last paragraph, commenting:

Now, the odd thing is that leftists claim that Yankee imperialism impoverishes Latin America through trade.  The so-called Dependencia theorists have it that trade is bad (so do the critics of “globalization”) because it concentrates wealth in American hands.  But the Cubans and Kennedy claim that trade with America would enrich Cuba.

Heh. Kennedy admits that Cuba is “still a dictatorship,” but given Kennedy’s obvious authoritarian streak it’s not at all clear whether he thinks this is a feature or a bug. Perhaps he’s worried that normalization of relations might erode the authoritarianism he envies.

Meanwhile, I hear it is snowing back in Washington DC today. (Double heh—it’s 75 degrees here on the California central coast; I’m wearing shorts and am about to go for a late afternoon run on the beach.) Anyway, it’s a great time to remind everyone of another one of Little Bobby’s great hits—his prediction a few years back that soon we’d see winters without snow in Washington because of . . . oh you know what it’s because of:

In Virginia, the weather also has changed dramatically. Recently arrived residents in the northern suburbs, accustomed to today’s anemic winters, might find it astonishing to learn that there were once ski runs on Ballantrae Hill in McLean, with a rope tow and local ski club. Snow is so scarce today that most Virginia children probably don’t own a sled. But neighbors came to our home at Hickory Hill nearly every winter weekend to ride saucers and Flexible Flyers.

In those days, I recall my uncle, President Kennedy, standing erect as he rode a toboggan in his top coat, never faltering until he slid into the boxwood at the bottom of the hill. Once, my father, Atty. Gen. Robert Kennedy, brought a delegation of visiting Eskimos home from the Justice Department for lunch at our house. They spent the afternoon building a great igloo in the deep snow in our backyard. My brothers and sisters played in the structure for several weeks before it began to melt. On weekend afternoons, we commonly joined hundreds of Georgetown residents for ice skating on Washington’s C&O Canal, which these days rarely freezes enough to safely skate.

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