Certainly, any embargo that exists to starve a poor country that poses no security threat to its neighbors into submission is “brutal.” Particularly so because it became clear decades ago that the embargo wasn’t going to work. For at least 30 years it served no strategic purpose but to make Cuba poorer and reinforce…

None of those countries were colonies in the 20th century except for Jamaica, which didn’t face economic embargos and doesn’t even come close to comparing favorably to Cuba in almost any standard of living measure. Castro was a repressive dictator, but it’s important to point out that the government the U.S. overthrew…

“Plenty of other countries manage to develop first-world levels of literacy and health outcomes without murdering scores of their own population.”

A fairly typical response to bad public policy is cutting off your nose to spite your face (see: Brexit, Trump.)

#qbwinz

Sorry, but when you use phrases like “due to his mentality” it puts you squarely in the first camp.

There are two reasons you might believe Blaine Gabbert is a better choice to start for the 49ers: 1) You know nothing about football and can’t critically analyze QB skill sets and play; or 2) You are offended by Colin Kaepernick’s racial politics to the point that you hate him more than you want the team to win. Which…

This would be a defense if he hadn’t thrown an interceptable pass once every 18 attempts last year (32nd in the NFL) and ranked 34th in accuracy % and dead last in deep accuracy % http://presnapreads.com/2016/03/29/2689/

Partisan has nothing to do with it. The FBI absolutely has its own biased agenda about who it does and doesn’t prosecute, it just isn’t based on partisanship. For example: name the last person as or more powerful than Hillary Clinton who has been indicted by the FBI? That’s a good place to start in understanding the…

at the same damn time, at the same damn time.

College athletes don’t get many guarantees from schools so they have to read into these little things to get an idea of how important they are to a program and how well they’ll be treated. So long as there are other offers, most guys are best going to a school they know values them enough to get this stuff right.

This is really great, I’m going to be sure to listen to your other casts. My Latin teacher told us that the word Barbarian comes from a crude imitation that Romans would do of their speech: “Bar bar bar bar.” Is there any truth to this?

I’m often unsure of the line between cynicism and idealism myself—they rarely seem to be all that much at odds if I can manage to adjust my ideals to an evolving understanding of reality. I default to the Green Party here because—thanks to the highly improbable outcome of the 2000 election—it’s the most likely to get…

The only justification for voting Democrat you’ve offered here is resignation towards the status quo and contempt for everybody else, which—if you add in a healthy dose of fear—has more or less been the party’s raison d’etre for a couple of decades now. But you’re again responding to things I haven’t said and…

Nobody said voting for Jill Stein will singlehandedly fix the Democrats. Nobody said Jill Stein was influential. Right now, the most effective argument you’re making is for not voting at all—which I admit is a difficult argument to disagree with given that at the federal level, the United States effectively an…

Right now our Senators are ranked 12th and 34th in “progressiveness.” 16 of 38 Democrat members of the house have a progressive rating of D or F by the same survey.

Actually, it does. Jill Stein getting 5% of the vote in California moves the CA Democratic party to the left and sends the message to the national party that their establishment presidential candidate is in danger of losing here in the primaries next time if his/her policies and record resemble Hillary Clinton’s.

Protest votes aren’t about moral superiority: they are an invitation to the major parties to court your vote. If used tactically in a presidential election—ie in places where they won’t hand the country to Trump—voting for Stein tells the DNC that their candidate isn’t good enough for me. There will never be a…

Yes. This reminds me of vitriol directed at 9/11 truthers. Yes, they are almost certainly wrong about everything, but isn’t the real issue that nobody trusts the government or media to tell the truth about national security issues? That’s not a crazy person’s fault, it’s the fault of the very sane liars who lie at…

This.