I’m from Miami and my background is Cuban, so I’m pretty much in line with the sort of voter (or, at least, the offspring of the sort of Cuban-born voter) that the Republican candidates were catering (and/or pandering) to when talk turned to Cuba during Monday night’s NBC debate.

So it’s with painful awareness that I admit to being fully aware that these four men aren’t generally very concerned about Cubans in the U.S. beyond recognizing that we’re a demographic they’d like on their side come election time.

Who knew that almost fifty years later, the legacy of President John F. Kennedy would arouse such passionate feelings in people? Chris Matthews, who was on Real Time with Bill Maher tonight to promote his new book about the late president, was naturally very defensive of the Kennedy legacy, and went at it rather passionately with fellow panelist Andrew Sullivan over Kennedy’s foreign policy credentials and whether he was a militaristic hawk while in office.

90 miles and decades removed from the United States, the island of Cuba persists as a stubbornly living relic of the Cold War, excommunicated from the Western world just enough to make everything from its music to policy to its health care system a mystery. It was to explore this latter element that CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta found himself Havana last week, from where he told Mediaite his first impressions and expectations on the island, and worked on an upcoming documentary on swimmer Diana Nyad‘s attempt to traverse the stretch of water from Havana to Florida.

The debate began with the two most similar candidates– Minnesotans Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Rep. Michele Bachmann– pulling no punches in disparaging each other’s records. It wouldn’t take long for the two most different candidates to have at it, and the foreign policy conversation between. Rep. Ron Paul and Rick Santorum delivered just as much as the experience one among the Minnesotans.

The ‘Tea Party’ as we now know it has become the major driving force for conservatives in this decade, exhibiting major power to engage people politically and get out the vote. Thus it isn’t shocking that many are attempting to harness some of that energy, but the latest spin-off of the Tea Party– a Latino-centric get out the vote effort named the “Tequila Party”– highlights a serious misconception in the media of Latin Americans as a monolithic group with similar political leanings and concerns.

In September, Fidel Castro dropped a bombshell that should have elicited more comprehensive responses from both major media outlets and leading political figures alike. Without much prompting, the ailing former leader bluntly proclaimed that communism isn’t working for Cuba. While the failures of “share-as-we-go” economics have been known for some time now, Castro’s comments may preface major changes in U.S.-Cuba relations.

Cuban ex-tyrant and current mascot Fidel Castro has been duped by the imperialist media! Castro trusted The Atlantic‘s Jeffrey Goldberg enough to grant him an interview, and instead of quoting verbatim his every six-hour harangue on the virtues of Marxism, Goldberg found fascinating a nugget of regret the Comandante let drop: “the Cuban model doesn’t even work for us anymore.” This means “exactly the opposite” of what it says!

Earlier this week, Raul Castro agreed to release 52 Cuban political prisoners. The release came after bilateral talks with Spain and was prompted in large part by activist Guillermo Fariñas‘ 130-day hunger strike, who, upon hearing the news, thanked the people of Spain and called off the hunger strike. Naturally, the largest anti-Castro Cuban American blog on the web would be fuming about this outrageous development.

Cuban blogger Orlando Luis Pardo reported earlier this week on citizen journalism portal All Voices that award-winning writers Manuel García Verdecia and Rafael Vilches Proenza were fired from their jobs and expelled from the local writers union for improper use of the Internet.

Following the news of the assault on Yoani Sánchez and other bloggers by security forces last Friday in Havana, the United States has decided to intervene. Late on Monday, the Department of State issued the following statement, openly denouncing the Cuban government and promising “inquiries” on the status of the bloggers:

Yoani Sánchez, one of the most notorious voices of Cuban dissidence, said she was kidnapped and beaten last Friday by state security agents. Mediaite spoke with Sánchez, who is resting at home — on medical orders — by phone from Havana last night.

Yoani Sanchez, a Cuban blogger known for her critical online missives about the communist government, was detained and beaten yesterday on her way to a march, CNN is reporting. Sanchez’s website Generation Y gets around 1 million hits per month, and the government says she’s “gone too far,” according to her account of Friday’s kidnapping.