Viva Barack Cubano

That hopey changey stuff is working out pretty well, thanks.

The United States and Cuba will re-establish diplomatic ties and open their long-shuttered embassies on July 20, the Cuban government said Wednesday.

Cuba’s foreign ministry made the announcement after the U.S.’s top diplomat in Havana delivered a letter from President Obama to Cuban President Raúl Castro. 

The move is the biggest step yet in Obama’s push to end hostilities with Havana that date back to the Cold War, which he announced in December with Cuban President Raúl Castro.

President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry will speak about the plan on Wednesday morning, according to a senior administration official. 

The Obama administration cleared the biggest obstacle to the shift after it formally dropped Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism in May. 

But U.S. and Cuban negotiators still had to work through thorny issues, such as freedom of movement for American diplomats in Cuba and their ability to speak with people outside of the government.

Anticipation for the move built earlier this month after flagpoles were installed at the U.S. and Cuban interest sections, which have served as the countries’ informal diplomatic missions. 

Obama and Castro agreed last December to begin restoring long-broken ties between their two countries.

The two leaders met in April in Panama, the most significant interaction between U.S. and Cuban leaders in five decades.

No big deal, we'll only have embassies opening up in a few weeks after 50 years or so of diplomatic silliness.  Of course, the moment America elects a Republican president, will they close the embassy again?  Republicans like Marco Rubio have vowed to block any nominee as Ambassador to Havana and that's just for starters.

Somehow being on the wrong side of history yet again doesn't seem to bother the right.

Kentucky, Same-Sex Marriage, And November

If I were a clickbaitin' kinda man, I'd have entitled this one "Did Justice Kennedy Just Hand The 2015 Kentucky Governor's Race To Matt Bevin?"  Or I'd be a Lexington Herald-Leader writer, which amounts to the same thing.

Political fallout from the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to legalize gay marriage will likely show up first in Kentucky, one of the few conservative states where Democrats still control state government. 

The issue has already split two of the state's most powerful Democratic leaders five months before voters go to the polls to elect six statewide officers, including governor and attorney general. 

It began in March 2014 when Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway — a former U.S. Senate candidate who is now running for governor — decided not to appeal the initial federal court decision that overturned Kentucky's same sex marriage ban. During an emotional news conference at the Capitol, he said that to appeal would be to defend discrimination. 

However, Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear later overruled Conway and hired private attorneys to defend the state's ban in federal court. 

"His job as governor was to take the emotion out of it and say, 'What's the rule of law going to be?" said Colmon Elridge, Beshear's longtime aide. "And the only way to do that was to get a final ruling from the Supreme Court." 

For more than a year, Beshear never strayed from that sentiment. Asked repeatedly about his views on gay marriage, Beshear said his personal opinion didn't matter. He was simply appealing the decision in the hopes that the court would rule, one way or another. 

Even Elridge, who has worked closely with Beshear for eight years, doesn't know how he feels about it. 

"It's interesting, we just have not talked about it," Elridge said. 

Conway, meanwhile, has faced critics who suggest he ignored his duties as attorney general. While Republican nominee for governor Matt Bevin criticized the Supreme Court's ruling, he especially targeted Conway, who he said "abandoned his oath of office." Bevin said Conway's "failure to do his job ... disqualifies him from being elected to the office of governor." 

"How can voters trust him not to break his oath again?" Bevin said.

Bevin's an idiot, but he's an idiot leading the polls right now, albeit not by too much.  Still, the race shouldn't be this close considering voters thought Bevin was a nutjob that made Mitch McConnell preferable just last year.

We'll see how things go, but I expect to see Conway start getting very tough with Bevin soon.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2015/06/29/3923245_gay-marriage-ruling-faces-political.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&rh=1#storylink=cpy

StupidiNews!

• The United States and Cuba have come to terms on reopening diplomatic embassies and reestablishing normal relations, a move already being opposed by Republicans.
• Yet another black church has been burned down, this time in Greeleyville, SC, a church that prveiously had been burned down by Klan supporters 20 years ago.
• Greece has defaulted on its loan and is now unable to secure financing as the government of PM Alexis Tsipras has not made a scheduled payment of nearly $2 billion...
• ...But rumors that Greece has accepted basic terms from its creditors as a compromise move has rallied markets ahead of Sunday's referendum.
• The expected six-month "orderly transition" away from NSA bulk metadata collection has been approved by the federal government's surveillance court.