YANQUI COMING! – AT 11:22 A.M. ET:  President Obama is on his way to Cuba.  Aren't you excited?  I'm sure he wishes he had Desi Arnaz with him.  From AP:

HAVANA (AP) — Eyeing a new future with the U.S., Cubans are preparing their famed capital for a long-awaited visit by President Barack Obama, who will make history when Air Force One touches down in Havana on Sunday.

Obama's visit to the island nation will serve as a powerful symbol of the relationship that the U.S. and Cuba are now forging. For Obama, the 2 1/2-day trip offers one of the last, best chances to advance the diplomatic opening with President Raul Castro before Obama leaves office early next year.

Ahead of Obama's arrival, American flags were raised in parts of Havana alongside Cuban flags, an improbable image for those who lived through more than a half-century in which the U.S. and Cuba were bitter foes. Cubans have been hard at work cleaning up Old Havana in recent days and giving buildings a fresh coat of paint, as the city buzzed in anticipation of Obama's visit.

Will some brave reporter ask why the buildings weren't painted earlier?

Yet while Obama remains a popular figure in Cuba, the jubilation that surged here in the early days of detente has been tempered by the absence of tangible improvement in most people's lives.

What a shock.

"I haven't seen anything" change since Washington and Havana renewed ties, said Roberto Albar, a 68-year-old retiree. Pointing to his decaying house near the sea, he added, "That's falling down, and the poor are still poor."

Nonetheless, he sees the thaw as a sign that both countries can benefit from the relationship: "We are practically neighbors," Albar said, and Cuba's political system "doesn't mean we have to be enemies."

In a reminder of how tightly Cuban society is still controlled, the Castro government announced a virtual shutdown of Havana during Obama's stay, and few Cubans expected to see him in person.

Extensive closures of main boulevards were planned during the day, and the city's seaside Malecon was largely deserted in the morning except for a few cars, joggers, fishermen and pelicans.

Still, the historic significance of Obama's visit was impossible to overlook. Not in nearly 90 years has a sitting American president visited Cuba.

COMMENT:  The main beneficiaries of the "detente" will probably be the Castro brothers and the big American corporations who yearn to make profits in Cuba.  These are the very corporations the American supporters of Castro have always despised.  Irony.

March 20,  2016