Totals include reported contributions from PACs and individuals affiliated with Heavy Hitter organizations, which are defined as the top overall donors to candidates, parties, Leadership PACs and other committees. Contributions to outside groups like super PACs do not factor into an organization's designation as a Heavy Hitter, however the totals below do include contributions by Heavy Hitters to such groups, as well as contributions to candidates, parties, Leadership PACs and other committees. Furthermore, the totals do not include contributions to politically active nonprofits, which are not disclosed to the public.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
I have a midterm tommorow. I was hoping this was a thread about venting about tests

 whembly wrote:
I could've swore the R's outspent the D's last election, but I'm not finding anything.

 ScootyPuffJunior wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 whembly wrote:
I could've swore the R's outspent the D's last election, but I'm not finding anything.

They did. It's right here, under "2012 Presidential Race": http://www.opensecrets.org/pres12/index.php

 whembly wrote:
So... if I'm looking at this correctly...

So, for all the complaints about Super-Duper Republicans, NRA (ranked #50) and The Koch Brothers (ranked #59)... they ain't making the top 10 "Heavy Hitters" list.

Still don't like the Citizen United rulings?

I could've swore the R's outspent the D's last election, but I'm not finding anything.

Let's keep this civil and use this thread as a "catch all" for political discussion if you don't want to create a separate thread.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
Citizens United was the worst supreme court decision in my lifetime (or at lest that I know about). Money is not speech. It never has been, it never will be.

 d-usa wrote:
I am still an advocate of Nascar style suits with the names of donors on them for politicians.

 whembly wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
Citizens United was the worst supreme court decision in my lifetime (or at lest that I know about). Money is not speech. It never has been, it never will be.

Eh... I don't know about that... I consider Kelo much more egregious.

With respect to Citizens United... we probably need better transparency mechanism more than anything.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

 whembly wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
Citizens United was the worst supreme court decision in my lifetime (or at lest that I know about). Money is not speech. It never has been, it never will be.

Eh... I don't know about that... I consider Kelo much more egregious.

With respect to Citizens United... we probably need better transparency mechanism more than anything.

I don't know about "Kelo", so I wouldn't know.

Kelo v. City of New London, 545 U.S. 469 (2005)[1] was a case decided by the Supreme Court of the United States involving the use of eminent domain to transfer land from one private owner to another private owner to further economic development. In a 5–4 decision, the Court held that the general benefits a community enjoyed from economic growth qualified private redevelopment plans as a permissible "public use" under the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment.

 whembly wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

 whembly wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
Citizens United was the worst supreme court decision in my lifetime (or at lest that I know about). Money is not speech. It never has been, it never will be.

Eh... I don't know about that... I consider Kelo much more egregious.

With respect to Citizens United... we probably need better transparency mechanism more than anything.

I don't know about "Kelo", so I wouldn't know.

Kelo v. City of New London

Kelo v. City of New London, 545 U.S. 469 (2005)[1] was a case decided by the Supreme Court of the United States involving the use of eminent domain to transfer land from one private owner to another private owner to further economic development. In a 5–4 decision, the Court held that the general benefits a community enjoyed from economic growth qualified private redevelopment plans as a permissible "public use" under the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment.

 d-usa wrote:
I am still an advocate of Nascar style suits with the names of donors on them for politicians.

 DogofWar1 wrote:
If you're interested in Corporate Personhood, things could get even more interesting when the Court looks at whether corporations can have freedom of religion. Thus far the Court has sort of vaguely said they have some first Amendment rights, mainly speech, but they haven't exactly filled in the blanks.

Also I feel obligated to be in here on account of my name.

It’s only taken seven years, but a member of the mainstream media is finally asking “what are they thinking?”

That would be the formerly “respectable” Howard Kurtz, the Columbia J-school grad who wrote for the Washington Post and worked for CNN and the Daily Beast, before he fell from grace and landed at Fox News, where he writes:

What on earth is the FCC thinking?

The last thing we need is the government mucking around with news content.

The title of this Big Brother-ish effort by the Federal Communications Commission sounds innocuous enough: “Multi-Market Study of Critical Information Needs.” But it’s a Trojan horse that puts federal officials in the newsroom, precisely where they shouldn’t be.

Don’t take my word for it. The FCC says it wants to examine “the process by which stories are selected,” as well as “perceived station bias” and “perceived responsiveness to underserved populations.”

Perceived station bias? Are you kidding me? Government bureaucrats are going to decide whether a newsroom is being fair?

Keep in mind that the commission has the power to renew or reject broadcast television licenses. During Watergate, Richard Nixon’s FCC challenged two TV licenses of stations owned by the Washington Post. So mere information gathering can become a little more serious, given that enormous clout.

Well, read the whole thing, because it’s worth it (and read FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai’s rather heroic bit of whistleblowing on the matter, dated February 10, and finally getting some attention beyond the blogs) but before you go, allow me to answer Kurtz’ opening query:

“What are they thinking?” Mr. Kurtz, it’s pretty obvious; they’re thinking no one in the mainstream press has asked them a difficult or challenging question in 7 years, so why would they start now.
ould they start now.

--They’re thinking an obsequious press that couldn’t be bothered to sustain outrage over intrusions into its own phone and internet records won’t have a problem with the government parking itself into the newsroom.

--They’re thinking that if the mainstream press could forgive them for considering espionage charges against a member of the press — for doing what reporters are supposed to do — and then re-commence their habitual boot-licking, there is no real risk of media folk suddenly calling out a “red line”, or even being able to identify one.

--They’re figuring that with this president, the mainstream media has no idea what “a bridge too far” might mean. Nor, “abuse of power”; nor “cover-up”; nor “mendacity”, “incompetence”, “ineptitude” or “constitutional illiteracy.”

--They know that half the people in the newsroom are either married or to (or social buddies with) influential members of this government, and that everyone is all comfy and nicely settled in for the revolution.

--They know that the press willfully surrendered its own freedoms some time ago, in the interests of ideology, and so they really won’t mind a little editorial supervision from the masters:

. . .we no longer need wonder why the mainstream media seems unconcerned about possible attacks on our first amendment rights to freedom of religion and the exercise thereof. They have already cheerfully, willfully surrendered the freedom of the press to the altar of the preferred narrative. People willing to dissolve their own freedoms so cheaply have no interest in anyone else’s freedom, either.

--They know that if they like their newsroom, they can keep their newsroom, once it has been correctly updated. A Mad Man might sell the scheme as Prexy-Clean. Journalism “new and improved with powerful cleansing agents!”

I hope that helps, Mr. Kurtz.

And you are correct, by the way, when you write “if George W. Bush’s FCC had tried this, it would be a front-page story.” I expressed a similar sentiment in relation to this story, back on February 13.

But we have seen repeatedly that what was objectionable under a president with an R next to his name is barely worth a sigh when he or she carries a D. T’was ever thus.

Oh, you thought the press was serious when it ranted about “constitution shredding” and “the fierce urgency of now?”

Well, this is how career trajectories are ended, when one’s bright naivete cannot come to appreciate “nuance.”

Some may disagree, but I will dare to repeat myself, because I think I am right: The biggest problem in our nation is not the Democrats, or the Republicans; it is not the Obama Administration, just as it wasn’t the Bush Administration, and it won’t be future Clinton or Warren Administrations. Our biggest problem is that the press has voluntarily surrendered its freedoms for the sake of idols and ideologies..

Because this is true, our government is either factionalized, fictionalized and bombarded with daily media outrage and indignation, or it is given an utterly free pass, with no accountability required. Either way, it is a process of illusion, which gives assist to the necessary distraction, and that’s all.
I didn’t want to write about this today. The truth is, I don’t even want to write about politics, anymore, because it’s all distraction and illusion and theater.

I’d be happy to write about prayer and scripture, and nothing else, for the rest of my life, and maybe that’s what I’ll be doing, soon enough. But I am passionate about journalism, passionate about the need for a free press, and so I had to write, today. Without a curious press interested in protecting its own freedoms, there is no there, there. We might as well just put down the mics and turn out the lights, because it’s over.

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They know that half the people in the newsroom are either married or to (or social buddies with) influential members of this government, and that everyone is all comfy and nicely settled in for the revolution.

 motyak wrote:
I liked this bit

They know that half the people in the newsroom are either married or to (or social buddies with) influential members of this government, and that everyone is all comfy and nicely settled in for the revolution.

What revolution is he talking about?

--ABC News President Ben Sherwood, who is the brother of Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, a top national-security adviser to President Obama.
--His counterpart at CBS, news division president David Rhodes, is the brother of Benjamin Rhodes, a key foreign-policy specialist.
--CNN’s deputy Washington bureau chief, Virginia Moseley, is married to Tom Nides, who until earlier this year was deputy secretary of state under Hillary Rodham Clinton.
--White House press secretary Jay Carney’s wife is Claire Shipman, a veteran reporter for ABC.
--NPR’s White House correspondent, Ari Shapiro, is married to a lawyer, Michael Gottlieb, who joined the White House counsel’s office in April.
--The Post’s Justice Department reporter, Sari Horwitz, is married to William B. Schultz, the general counsel of the Department of Human Services.
--[VP] Biden’s current communications director, Shailagh Murray (a former Post congressional reporter), is married to Neil King, one of the Wall Street Journal’s top political reporters.

 d-usa wrote:
At least it's the media, so the revolution will be televised.

Shailagh Murray (a former Post congressional reporter), is married to Neil King, one of the Wall Street Journal’s top political reporters.

 whembly wrote:
- - - I didn't want to create a separate thread - - -

This caught my attention... because, dammit, this is what I was trying to articulate:

Over FCC Plans, MSM Finally a Bit Curious re Obama Admin

 sebster wrote:

 whembly wrote:
- - - I didn't want to create a separate thread - - -

This caught my attention... because, dammit, this is what I was trying to articulate:

Over FCC Plans, MSM Finally a Bit Curious re Obama Admin

We had such a good thread, opened with such a really a good article in your OP, and then you follow it up with this?

 whembly wrote:
I can switch hats...

 Ouze wrote:
I agree 100% that Citizen's United was a terrible decision and that Kelo was actually way worse. I'm not 100% sure how salient those are to the topic of midterm elections, though.

Still too early to call, you can't predict if a narrative-creating Todd Akin will show up.

My gutsy, "I haven't taken a look at numbers yet" feeling is the status quo will remain: Republicans will hold Congress (and gain seats), Democrats will hold the Senate (but lose seats, it will be very close).

A few weeks ago, I produced two Senate analyses. One focused on the relationship between the president’s job approval, the fate of Senate Democrats during the 2010 and 2012 elections, and what that would mean if this relationship continues through 2014. The second looked at Republican vulnerability in 2016 using a similar standard.

The first piece concluded that, based on President Obama’s job approval rating, Democrats have substantial vulnerability in 2014. This vulnerability is deeper than many analysts are willing to consider right now. Over the past two cycles, the president’s job approval has explained 58 percent of the variance in competitive Senate races in any given state. Given Obama’s current weak numbers, this seemingly bodes poorly for Democrats. Remember, the midterm map is the “reddest” Senate map Democrats have had to defend while Obama has been president. Their overexposure makes it something of a perfect storm scenario if things do not improve. This doesn’t mean that the problems are insuperable for Democrats. It simply means that the playing field is stacked heavily against them.

The second piece took a somewhat different tack. Instead of just looking at the playing field for 2016, it used that playing field as the basis for a simulation run in a neutral year to help better quantify Republican exposure. It concluded that unless 2016 turned out to be a good Republican year overall, that Republicans would probably have to win 53 or 54 seats in 2014 to feel good about their chances of holding the Senate two years later.

The present article takes the technique used in the second piece and applies it to the playing field described in the first. In other words, this is a “Monte Carlo simulation” to try to better quantify the amount of exposure Democrats are under this time.

First, a brief explanation of a Monte Carlo simulation is probably justified. As always, there are an awful lot of complexities and nuances that I can’t possibly fit into this piece. So just accept this as a starting point, to get a sense of what is going on. (I’ve bracketed the explanatory part with asterisks; if you’re not interested in understanding what’s going on, skip ahead.)

**

Monte Carlo techniques are varied, but at their root they involve generating a large number of random values within prescribed limits so we can assess the likelihood of a given outcome. For example, imagine a hypothetical situation where Democrats controlled a 50-50 Senate. Let’s also say that two Democratic incumbents were polling at 52 percent in polls with error margins of +/- five percentage points.

We want to know how often, statistically, the Democrats might be expected to win both seats and keep the Senate. Most contemporary analysts would approach this from one of two directions. Some analysts might note that Democrats led in both races, and should therefore feel extremely good about their chances. Others would note the error margins, label them both “coin tosses,” and call the battle for the Senate a tossup.

In fact, under these conditions Democrats would be solid, but not overwhelmingly solid, favorites to hold the upper chamber. Now, there is a mathematical way to answer this with precision, but it is complex and cumbersome, especially if there are 20 races to evaluate rather than two or if we need to simulate 10 variables instead of one. What we can do instead is to ask our program to produce random draws, centered on the two midpoints, with standard deviations that approximate half the error margins.

We then ask the program to generate some large number of draws, in this case 20,000. They will be centered around a mean of 52 percent for each Democrat, and 95 percent of the results will be within five points of that mean.

Democrats actually do well in each individual race: They win each one about 79 percent of the time. With that said, they only win both races 62 percent of the time. So even though both polls are technically “within the error margin,” Democrats should still be clear favorites to retain the Senate, although they should not be considered overwhelming favorites.

Notably, if we had three races with incumbents at 52 percent, we really would have a tossup Senate, with Democrats keeping it about 49 percent of the time. This is important: Even though each individual senator would be a 79 percent favorite to keep his or her seat, the odds would be slightly against the Democrats holding the chamber under these circumstances.

**

If this approach sounds familiar, it should. It is basically the one popularized by Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight, although his models are substantially more complex. And indeed, there are a number of complexities you’d want to build into an important model.

For this experiment though -- and this is a really important caveat -- we’re just trying to get a ballpark estimate of the relationship between the playing field and the Democrats’ chances of holding each seat, as well as what that means for the overall picture. So we might say that, based on presidential job approval, Democrats have a 20 percent chance of holding a particular seat. This is notable, but we should remember that one time out of five, the Democrats really will hold the seat.

Some candidates seemingly have better chances for beating the odds than others; there really are instances where, because of challenger quality or incumbent quality or both, we might actually bet on this being that “one time.” Virginia is a case where I suspect Democrats’ chances are substantially better than the president’s approval might suggest, given Mark Warner’s strength. On the other hand, I think the Democrats’ chances in South Dakota are probably worse than the odds suggest, even at relatively high Obama job approvals. In theory these would cancel each other out, but not always; I think the model underestimates Republicans in 2016 and probably overestimates them here, especially with respect to their chances of making huge gains.

With that said, I first looked at races The Cook Political Report currently rates as something other than “safe”; over the past 20 years, only two races that Cook Political has rated as “safe” at this point in the game have wound up switching hands, so we can be awfully confident that those seats are “staying put.” That leaves me with a universe of 17 competitive Senate races, 15 of which are held by Democrats, two of which are held by Republicans.

Second, using the technique outlined in my first Senate piece, I estimated what the president’s job approval would be in these states for each incremental increase in national job approval from 38 to 55 percent.

Finally, for each job approval rating increment, I ran 20,000 simulations for each race. The president’s estimated approval is used as the midpoint, and almost all of the simulations are kept within 10 points of that midpoint (two reasons: 1) no Democrat in a competitive race, with the possible exception of Joe Manchin in 2010, has run more than 10 points ahead or behind the president’s job approval in their state; 2) if you run the regression of job approval vs. outcomes, the standard deviation is five).

You can click here to see how often an average Democrat would be expected to lose each individual race to an average Republican at each job approval interval.

The next step is to total up our simulations, showing how frequently Republicans would win the Senate at each job approval interval for Obama.


This is a grim picture for Senate Democrats, suggesting that the president would have to get his approval above 50 percent by Election Day before they would be favored to hold the chamber. This is also consistent with what we’ve seen in polling, which shows the seven “red state” Democrats in truly severe states of distress, while Democrats in Iowa, Michigan, New Hampshire and Colorado are exhibiting surprising weakness. If these 11 seats are showing similar signs of weakness in November, Democrats will have an extremely difficult time holding the chamber. At Obama’s current 44 percent approval rating, we’d expect Democrats to lose somewhere between nine and 13 seats.

But let’s take it one step further. We’re probably right to be skeptical that Obama’s job approval will be, say, 55 percent on Election Day, just as it’s not likely to be 38 percent. Instead, let’s run simulations for his job approval. It has averaged 48.3 percent over his presidency, with a standard deviation of 4.35 percent. If we run our simulations around these values, we get the following overall distribution of outcomes:

Notably, there are situations where Democrats end up gaining seats. There are also, however, situations where the election turns into an absolute debacle for Democrats.

The most common outcome, however, is Democratic losses of between seven to nine seats. In about a third of the simulations there are more losses, and in about a third of the simulations, there are fewer.

Now, again, one might decide that, based on candidate quality and other issues, Democrats are poised to systematically end up on the high side of the probability calculus. I actually think this is probably correct. My general view is that this approach gets the odds right in the most commonly discussed races, especially since Republicans don’t seem poised to nominate weak candidates (for now). At the same time, though, weak Republican recruiting in places like Iowa and Minnesota, combined with unusually gifted Democratic incumbents in places like Virginia, probably means that the model overstates Democrats’ chances of losing more than eight seats.

One other possibility is that the relationship we’ve seen between job approval and Democratic outcomes won’t hold for this cycle. It’s been relatively strong over the past couple of elections, but that doesn’t mean it will continue. In fact, models that go back further in time give Democrats a much stronger chance of holding the Senate. My own sense is that, due to polarization, it now takes extremely unusual circumstances for a Democrat to win a state like Arkansas under a Democratic president (just as Lincoln Chafee couldn’t hold on in Rhode Island under a Republican president, despite being a very liberal Republican). But this might not hold true this year.

With all of that said, this is a very, very challenging map for Democrats. As things presently stand, the map probably makes them underdogs to hold the Senate. Barring some sort of change in the national environment or meltdown in the Republican nominations process -- neither of which is impossible -- Democrats are likely in for a very long night on Nov. 4.

A few moments ago, the body was treated to a report from the senator from Iowa about his recent trip to Cuba. Sounded like he had a wonderful trip visiting, what he described as, a real paradise. He bragged about a number of things that he learned on his trip to Cuba that I’d like to address briefly. He bragged about their health care system, medical school is free, doctors are free, clinics are free, their infant mortality rate may be even lower than ours. I wonder if the senator, however, was informed, number one, that the infant mortality rate of Cuba is completely calculated on figures provided by the Cuban government. And, by the way, totalitarian communist regimes don’t have the best history of accurately reporting things. I wonder if he was informed that before Castro, Cuba, by the way, was 13th in the whole world in infant mortality. I wonder if the government officials who hosted him, informed him that in Cuba there are instances reported, including by defectors, that if a child only lives a few hours after birth, they’re not counted as a person who ever lived and therefore don’t count against the mortality rate.

I wonder if our visitors to Cuba were informed that in Cuba, any time there is any sort of problem with the child in utero they are strongly encouraged to undergo abortions, and that’s why they have an abortion rate that skyrockets, and some say, is perhaps the highest the world. I heard him also talk about these great doctors that they have in Cuba. I have no doubt they’re very talented. I’ve met a bunch of them. You know where I met them? In the United States because they defected. Because in Cuba, doctors would rather drive a taxi cab or work in a hotel than be a doctor. I wonder if they spoke to him about the outbreak of cholera that they’ve been unable to control, or about the three-tiered system of health care that exists where foreigners and government officials get health care much better than that that’s available to the general population.

I also heard him speak about baseball and I know that Cubans love baseball, since my parents were from there and I grew up in a community surrounded by it. He talked about these great baseball players that are coming from Cuba — and they are. But I wonder if they informed him — in fact, I bet you they didn’t talk about those players to him because every single one of those guys playing in the Major Leagues defected. They left Cuba to play here.

He also talked about how people would come up to him in the streets and not a single person said anything negative about America. Nobody came up to him wagging their fingers saying, ‘You Americans and your embargo is hurting us.’ I’m glad to hear that. Because everyone who wants to lift the embargo is constantly telling us that the Castros use that to turn the people against us. So obviously, that’s not true. So I’m glad to hear confirmation of what I already knew to be true. I heard about their wonderful literacy rate, how everyone in Cuba knows how to read. That’s fantastic. Here’s the problem: they can only read censored stuff. They’re not allowed access to the Internet. The only newspapers they’re allowed to read are Granma or the ones produced by the government.

I wish that someone on that trip would have asked the average Cuban, ‘With your wonderful literacy skills, are you allowed to read The New York Times or the Wall Street Journal or any blog, for that matter?’ Because the answer’s, ‘No.’ So it’s great to have literacy, but if you don’t have access to the information, what’s the point of it? So I wish somebody would have asked about that on that trip. We heard about Mr. Gross, who is not in jail. He’s not a prisoner. He is a hostage. He is a hostage. And in the speech I heard a moment ago, I heard allusions to the idea that maybe we should — he didn’t say it, but I know the language, I know the code in this — that maybe there should be a spy swap. Here’s the problem: Mr. Gross was not a spy. You know what his crime was, if that’s what you can call it? He went to Cuba to hand out satellite radios to the Jewish community. But, we’re glad to hear that the Cubans are so nice to him that they let him walk 10,000 steps a day and do pull-ups and they let him build a necklace out of bottle cap tops. Very nice of them to allow him to do those things. How generous.

I wonder if anybody asked about terrorism, because Cuba is a state sponsor of terrorism. I wonder if anybody asked about the fact that, just a few months ago, a North Korean ship going from Cuba to North Korea was stopped in the Panama Canal and it contained items in violation of international sanctions against a government in North Korea that, a report just came out confirming what we already knew, has death camps and prison camps. And the Cubans are allowing them to evade these sanctions. Did that come up in any of the wonderful conversations in this socialist paradise in the Caribbean? I bet you it didn’t.

Let me tell you what the Cubans are really good at, because they don’t know how to run their economy, they don’t know how to build, they don’t know how to govern a people. What they are really good at is repression. What they are really good at is shutting off information to the Internet and to radio and television and social media. That’s what they’re really good at. And they’re not just good at it domestically, they’re good exporters of these things. And you want to see exhibit A, B, C and D? I’m going to show them to you right now. They have exported repression in real-time, in our hemisphere, right now.

Let me show you the first slide here. This gentleman here is the former mayor of a municipality in Caracas. His name is Leopoldo Lopez. And this is the National Guard of Venezuela pulling him into an armored truck last week. You know why? Because he’s protesting against the government. He’s protesting against the government of Venezuela, which are puppets of Havana, completely infiltrated by Cubans and agents from Havana. Not agents, openly, foreign military affairs officials involved in Venezuela. You know why? Because the Venezuela government is giving them cheap oil and free oil, in exchange for help during these sorts of repressions. So here he is, he’s sitting in jail right now because he’s protesting against the government. He’s sitting in jail right now.

So here’s the next slide. This is Genesis Carmona. She’s a beauty queen and a student in a city called Valencia. She’s on that motorcycle because the government in Venezuela and the thug, these so-called civilian groups that they’ve armed — another export from Cuba, a model the Cubans follow — they shot her in the head. She died last week. This is the government that the Cubans support. Not just verbally, not just emotionally, but with training and tactics. This is who they export — this is what they do. And she’s dead. And this is her being taken on a motorcycle to the hospital where they were unable to save her life because she was shot in the head by Venezuelan security forces.

Here’s another slide. Remember I showed you Mr. Lopez? These are his supporters being hit with water cannons — by water cannons in the street because they’re protesting against the government. This has been going on now for two weeks. This is the allies of Cuba, Venezuela, the puppets of Cuba. And this is what they do to their own people. Water cannons knocking people to the ground. Why? Because they’re protesting the government.

Let me show you the next slide. Here’s a demonstrator detained by police. Look how they drag him through the streets. This is in Caracas, Venezuela.

Let me show you another demonstrator. This is a student — by the way, these are all students in the street. You see this young man here? He was also shot in the head by security forces and pro-government groups in Caracas. This happened on February 11. This is what they do in Venezuela. This is what the allies of the Castro regime does, this is what they export. This is what they teach. This is what they support. And it doesn’t stop here.

Who are Cuba’s allies in the world? North Korea. Before he fell, the dictator in Libya, the dictator in Syria, the tyrant in Moscow. This is who they line up with. This is this wonderful paradise? By the way, this in and of itself deserves attention, what’s happening in Venezuela, in our own hemisphere. It is shameful that only three heads of state in this hemisphere have spoken out forcefully against what’s happening. It is shameful that many members of Congress who traveled to Venezuela and were friendly with Chavez, some even went to his funeral, sit by saying nothing while this is happening in our own hemisphere. And this wonderful Cuban paradise government that we heard about? This is what they support. Just this morning, the dictator that calls himself a president — never been elected to anything, Raul Castro — announced he is there for whatever they need to help them do this.

I listen to this stuff about Cuba and I listen to what’s happening in Venezuela, they’re very similar. Not just in the repression part, but the economics part. You know Venezuela’s an oil-rich country with hardworking people? They have a shortage — we don’t have an embargo against Venezuela. They have a shortage of toilet paper and tooth paste. Why? Because they are incompetent. Because communism doesn’t work. They look more and more like Cuba economically and politically every single day.

What’s the first thing the Venezuelan government did when these broke out? They cut off access to Twitter and Facebook and the Internet. They ran CNN out of there. They closed down the only Colombian station. Years before, they had closed down all the independent media outlets that criticized the government. Where did they learn that from? From Cuba. And yet we have to listen to what a paradise Cuba is. Well, I wonder how come I never read about boatloads of American refugees going to Cuba? Why have close to one and a half million people left Cuba to come here? But the only people that leave here to move there, are fugitives from the law and people that steal money from Medicare that go there to hide? Why? How come no American baseball players defect to Cuba? Why don’t any American doctors defect to Cuba if it’s such a paradise?

He cited a poll, ‘More Americans want normal relations with Cuba.’ So do I — a democratic and free Cuba. But you want us to reach out and develop friendly relationships with a serial violator of human rights, who supports what’s going on in Venezuela and every other atrocity on the planet? On issue after issue, they are always on the side of the tyrants. Look it up. And this is who we should be opening up to? Why don’t they change? Why doesn’t the Cuban government change? Why doesn’t the Venezuelan government change?

Throughout this week, I will be outlining proposals and ideas about what we need to do, the sanctions we should be pursuing against the individuals responsible for these atrocities. So with North Korea, we have sanctions. Why? Because they’re a terrorist government and an illegitimate one. Against Iran we have sanctions. Why? Because they support terrorism and they’re an illegitimate government. And against the Cubans we have sanctions. Why? Well, you just saw why. Sanctions are a tool in our foreign policy toolbox, and we, as the freest nation on Earth, are looked to by people in this country, and all around the world, to stand by them in their moment of need when they clamor for freedom and liberty and human rights. They look for America to be on their side, not for America to be cutting geopolitical deals or making it easier to sell tractors to the government there. We should be clear about these things.

But here’s the great news. I don’t know if they get C-SPAN in Cuba. I bet you the government people do. I hope you see that in America, we’re a free society. You’re allowed to come on the floor and you’re allowed to say and spread whatever you want. You think Cuba’s a paradise? You think it’s an example and a model that we should be following? You’re free to say that, here, in the press and anywhere you want. But we’re also free to come here and tell the truth. We’re also free to come here and denounce the violations of human rights and brutality. And I would suggest to my colleagues, the next time they go to Cuba, ask to meet with the Ladies in White. Ask to meet with the Yoani Sanchez. Ask to meet with the dissidents and the human rights activists that are jailed and repressed and exiled. Ask to meet with them. I bet you’re going to hear something very different than what you got from your hosts on your last trip to the wonderful Cuba, this extraordinary socialist paradise. Because it’s a joke. It’s a farce.

And I don’t think we should stand by here with our arms crossed, watching these things happen in our hemisphere and say nothing about them. I can close by saying this: Over the last week, I have tweeted about these issues. I get thousands of retweets from students and young people, until they shut them out, in Venezuela who are encouraged by the fact that we are on their side. What they want is what we have, the freedom and the liberty. That’s what all people want. And if America and its policy-makers are not going to be firmly on the side of freedom and liberty, who in the world is? Who on this planet will? If this nation is not firmly on the side of human rights and freedom and the dignity of all people, what nation on the Earth will? And if we’re prepared to walk away from that, then I submit to you that this century is going to be a dangerous and dark one. But I don’t believe that’s what the American people want from us. Nor the majority of my colleagues.