Remember when I posted a while back about Cuban musicians (including the fantastic Ibrahim Ferrer) not being able to get US visas for the Grammy Awards?

Turns out it's a new blanket policy -- every Cuban musician who's applied for a visa since November has been turned down, for a total of 151 so far.

I'm still waiting for a government official to delineate how these musicians' presence would be "detrimental to the interests of the United States." The government is saying that these musicians, such as the Buena Vista Social Club crowd, not to mention the wonderful Los Van Van are "Castro's cash cows" and are "part of the regime that oppresses."

Errr...exactly which oppressive regime are we talking about here?

We trade with Vietnam, China, and other Communist countries. We trade with dictatorships such as Uzbekistan. We trade with countries with incredibly poor human-rights records, such as Indonesia. But the republic will evidently fall if we let some Cuban musicians in.