Obama Wants to Ease Cuban Embargo

About time. The utter ridiculousness of the Cuban embargo is apparent to anyone without an axe to grind.

Even better, the U.S. must improve its relations with S. America. We'll have opportunities as Chavez and Morales run their economies into the ground and consolidate more and more political authority, as Brazil straightens itself out and rises as an important international economy, and as the Cuban regime collapses or reforms. We need to start extending olive branches now; not to the leaders of these countries, who don't suffer much from embargoes anyway, but to the citizenry. Cuban-Americans who travel back to Cuba and/or repatriate some of their incomes can be the best P.R. tool we could imagine. It's a resource which should not be neglected.

Update: Thomas Barnett concurs.