Soft Touch Alert!
Jesse Ventura is leading a contingent of business cheerleaders to Cuba:

Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura arrived in communist-run Cuba on Wednesday with a group of top American food and agricultural executives, bringing California raisins and Perdue turkey pastrami to the largest U.S. Cuban trade show since the 1950s.

More than 280 companies from 33 states hope to recover a lost market for U.S. food products as they push for further lifting of sanctions imposed on Cuba after Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution.

Cuban President Castro and Ventura, whose trip to Cuba met with Bush administration disapproval, will open the fair on Thursday, said a spokeswoman for show's main sponsor, agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland Co. .

Other industry giants promoting their products in Havana are Cargill, ConAgra Foods Inc., Tyson Foods Inc. and Del Monte Foods Co.

But it's not trade they really want, it's trade on taxpayer backed credit. And Cuba is a famously poor risk.

Havana is also banking on the end of a U.S. prohibition on credit that has forced it to pay cash up front for the imports needed to feed Cuba's 11 million people.

Cuba has not recovered since the collapse of the Soviet Union more than a decade ago, and has exhausted most of its credit with suppliers in European and other nations.

European diplomats in Havana complain that Cuba is paying cash for its U.S. imports while it owes their countries tens of millions of dollars in past purchases.

"Cuba is an international deadbeat," Cason, the U.S. interests office chief, told reporters.

He warned U.S. companies that Cuba had defaulted on most of its loans, had the lowest possible credit rating and owed its international partners $11 billion.

"We don't want to be in that queue of people asking to get their money," he said in a statement read out to reporters.

"It's great to sell eggs for cash, but let's not stick the U.S. tax payers with a big, giant goose-egg," Cason said.

Not to mention that Cuba is a totalitarian regime of the most odious sort, and well known for its sponsorship of terrorism.

We know what the "business leaders" are. This hoedown merely establishes the price. And Jesse apparently loves pimping them.