This is absurd

Just when I think that my government has reached a nadir of arrogance and stupidity I came across this item. It seems that the Treasury Department has actually barred the Cuban national baseball team from participating in the upcoming global baseball tournament because it violates the archaic embargo we have against that country.

The entire idea around this tourney was to raise the international profile of the sport after the IOC dropped baseball from the summer Olympics starting in 2012. This tourney is a multi-nation, World Cup style event with the blessing of MLB, and featuring the biggest stars of the sport playing for their national teams. Also it is meant to highlight the popularity of baseball not just in the obvious places like the States, the Dominican Republic, and Japan but also in lesser known baseball hotspots like Australia and the Netherlands (there are a multitude of dyke-softball jokes here but I'm just going to let it go)

The bottom line is that a baseball tournament without any Cubans is like an accounting convention without any Jews...it makes no sense!! Even more confusing is that we allowed a Cuban Olympic team into this country during the '96 games, so what makes this different? Why do we choose this topic and this time to hold the line? To the rest of the world our insane policy towards Cuba comes off as petty and childish, mostly because our policy towards Cuba is petty and childish.

In the 44(Hammerin' Hank Aaron's #) years that this embargo has been in place we have scooped a number of communist and autocratic nations into our loving embrace, but not Cuba because we allow a small number of senile old men in south Florida to dictate U.S. foreign policy. Now we have allowed them to once again embarrass the United States, their over-courteous host, and at the same time destroy any legitimacy that this tournament would have.

You have to admit though, 44 years of maintaining the same policy in the face of ceaseless, unmitigated failure takes a lot of balls. But have no fear folks because MLB and their fearless leader, commissioner Bud Selig, are on the case. They have petitioned the Treasury Department to grant a dispensation to the Cuban team ala the '96 games. I for one have a lot of confidence, after all when was the last time Bud Selig ever fucked anything up?