Obama shakes hands with Raul Castro.

At the Mandela memorial.

"According to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, three of the best options for women seeking greater equality are..."

"... Cuba, Nicaragua, and Burundi."

[W]ith such a wealth of data and intellectual prowess at their disposal, how did the authors [including Laura D’Andrea Tyson, former chair of President Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers, and Ricardo Hausmann, director of the Center for International Development at Harvard] arrive at the conclusion that the United States ranks 23rd in terms of closing the gender gap, whereas Nicaragua is 10th, Cuba 15th, and Burundi just edges us out, coming in 22nd? I [Weekly Standard writer David Adesnik] contacted both Tyson and Hausmann to inquire about the study’s counterintuitive results. Both of them referred me to Saadia Zahidi, a senior director at the Forum as well as coauthor of the gender gap report. Zahidi committed to providing additional information, although none has yet arrived. Thus, I had to figure out for myself why advanced statistical analysis might indicate that the women of Cuba, Nicaragua and Burundi face less discrimination than those in the United States....

"Snowden has ticket to Cuba, may go to Venezuela: Russian reports."

Put that into your conspiracy theory.

UPDATE: Email from CNN: "Edward Snowden, the man wanted on U.S. espionage charges, has arrived in Moscow, WikiLeaks said in a Twitter post on Sunday. The organization has said it helped Snowden leave Hong Kong, but it has not revealed what country could be his final destination."

May I recommend — for publicity purposes — hopping across the steppingstones of the world, hitting each traditional or present Enemy of America?

ADDED:

Flew in from Hong Kong thanks to Wikileaks
Didn't get to bed last night
In my head I heard conspiracy theory freaks
Man, I had a dreadful flight
I'm back in the USSR
You don't know how lucky you are, boy
Back in the USSR, yeah 

"Obama said 'chill, you gonna get me impeached'/But you don't need this shit anyway/Chill with me on the beach."

Jay-Z in his "Open Letter" which is — according to the NYT — "lash[ing] out at members of Congress who have raised questions about the legality of his recent trip to Cuba with Beyoncé, his wife."

On Friday, Representatives Ros-Lehtinen and Diaz-Balart said in a letter to Adam Szubin, director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control, that the trip looked like a tourist visit. “Despite the clear prohibition against tourism in Cuba, numerous press reports described the couple’s trip as tourism, and the Castro regime touted it as such in its propaganda,” the letter said.

But the Treasury Department responded that site-seeing [sic] was allowed during the off-hours on an educational visit and Jay-Z and Beyoncé had fulfilled their educational obligations by meeting with the La Colmenita theater group and talking with students at the Superior Art Institute.

I'm reading these lyrics, and I don't think he's (just) lashing out at the critics in Congress.

Politicians never did shit for me
Except lie to me, distort history

Do the "politicians" include Obama? Reread that part I put in the post title. I think he's challenging Obama to drop the charade. Imagine Obama taking Jay-Z's advice, deciding he's not a politician and he doesn't need this shit, and he should just say and do everything he really wants, get himself impeached and move on to better things, AKA the beach.

Jay-Z calls himself "the Bob Dylan of rap music" and riffs on the "Idiot Wind" lyrics:

Idiot wind, the Bob Dylan of rap music
You're an idiot, baby, you should become a student
Oh, you gonna learn today
Where the fuck have you been
The world's under new management
The new role model, fuck this Zoolander shit

Here are the lyrics to Dylan's "Idiot Wind" if you want to compare them to Jay-Z's "Open Letter." They are so much more elaborate and interesting that it makes the phrase "the Bob Dylan of rap music" sound as though it were meant as an insult to rap music.

But more importantly: "fuck this Zoolander shit" is directed at Obama, isn't it? Is it mocking Obama as phonily posing, like the movie character the male model Derek Zoolander?

I've never watched that movie past the first half-hour or so, but now, I'm reading the plot summary, and I see "Zoolander" has a political assassination plot!

[T]he fashion industry has been behind several political assassinations, and the brainwashed models are soon killed after they have completed their task.... As Derek takes the runway, Mugatu's disc jockey starts playing "Relax", activating Derek's mental programming....  

So what's Jay-Z talking about? I don't like seeing even oblique references to assassination in statements about the President.

Also in the Jay-Z song: "Wanna give me jail time and a fine/Fine, let me commit a real crime...."  And: "You know whenever I'm threatened, I start shooting, bark/Catch a body, head to Houston." Bark? Does he really say "bark"? Does that mean "Barack"? At least he said "Houston" and not "Dallas."

"In 1511, Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar set out from Hispaniola to form the first Spanish settlement in Cuba..."

"... with orders from Spain to conquer the island. The settlement was at Baracoa, but the new settlers were to be greeted with stiff resistance from the local Taíno population. The Taínos were initially organized by cacique (chieftain) Hatuey, who had himself relocated from Hispaniola to escape the brutalities of Spanish rule on that island. After a prolonged guerrilla campaign, Hatuey and successive chieftains were captured and burnt alive, and within three years the Spanish had gained control of the island. In 1514, a settlement was founded in what was to become Havana."

In Cuba, today's "History of" country.