'ROID (OUT)RAGE
by J. B. Cash
It is an outrage how the House Committee on Government Reform, which is investigating steroid use in baseball, is handling the scandal. When the committee was formed the most relevant question on the minds of the fans concerned the situation with Barry Bonds and his imminent assault on the career home run records of Babe Ruth and Henry Aaron. However the committee did not even order Bonds to appear! Instead they went after two white players, Mark McGwire and Jason Giambi. Also ignored was Gary Sheffield, another figure at the center of the BALCO scandal.
Testimony has been leaked from the BALCO grand jury that Bonds and Sheffield admitted to taking a BALCO created performance enhancing substance called "the clear" although they profess not to have known what it was. Note that accidentally or unknowingly ingesting a banned substance is still a violation and is enough to be suspended or banned by the Olympic committee. I guess in baseball ignorance of the law IS an excuse.
The Republicans who control the committee are in power solely due to the support of the most powerful voting bloc in America: white men. And what a poor return we get on our investment! Aside from the wreckage they are visiting upon our economy we only ask of them that a strong military keep our borders safe. Yet our southern border is as leaky as a sieve. Our troops cannot move one mile south to defend the Rio Grande but we can send our sons and daughters a half a world away to foreign lands to die for rich Arabs and powerful Jewish interests.
Republicans also continue to strongly support affirmative action, translation: replacing better qualified white men with someone else. And now they are taking OUR sport, the one where white men play most of the positions, hold most of the records, make up most of the fans, managers, coaches, GM's, and scouts, and instead of going after the non-whites that are soiling the record books they are concentrating on those few white players that may have the smallest complicity in the steroid scandal. Where are the two black players in this investigation? Why is Bonds not at this inquiry? He is the biggest name and the biggest violator.
And furthermore, what gives Congress the authority to police the drug policy of a private organization  Major League Baseball? Why do the Republicans, supposedly the party of "small government," think that they have any legitimate role in deciding the drug testing policies of private citizens? It is one thing for them to pass laws. And that they do by the ton. It is quite another for them to profess to know what is the best way for a group of citizens to decide how to manage their business.
This phony grandstanding is typical of how far our government has strayed from the limits imposed upon it by the Founding Fathers, who operated under the auspices of all that embodied the ideas that make up what can be considered classic white society. There is no constitutional or moral authority for the Senate to act in this manner. But so what. While our society devolves under their self-serving reign they use the power of the government to merely parade their faces across the TV and newspapers in search of votes.
Here are the players that can reasonably considered to be associated with baseballs steroid scandal. Barry Bonds, Gary Sheffield, Sammy Sosa, Jose Canseco, Rafael Palmiero, Ken Caminiti, Mark McGwire, Jason Giambi (and by extension his little brother Jeremy). That makes two black players, three hispanic players, and three or four white players. We can assume all of them have used steroids. It was just something that was done at one time by people that spend a lot of time in the weight room. Like pot and 1960's college students it was almost a rite of passage. It was wrong and it is time to make amends.
So now that we have an investigation under way that promises to bring about some policy changes, what do we know about these particular high profile people? The two black players involved, Bonds and Sheffield, have several times denied knowledge of use. At first they denied ever using them then they denied knowing that what they were taking was steroids when the evidence against them became too weighty. An impossible claim that ranks with Bill Clinton's ludicrous admission on marijuana that "he didn't inhale."
Of the three hispanic players, with the exception of Canseco, who cannot deny it since he is trying to profit from his use with a tell-all book, both Sosa and Palmiero have denied, under oath, to a U.S. House committee, ever using them. The three white players  McGwire, Giambi, and the recently deceased Caminiti  have either admitted, or in the case of McGwire implicated himself in the use by "taking the Fifth" and refusing to answer the question. The fourth white player, Jeremy Giambi, admitted and apologized all on his own.
Here you have the difference between those that grow up in a white culture and those that do not. For whites the truth is an important concept. White culture bases the integrity of its institutions on the concept that people will be honest. Respect for government authority is also a key component of white society. Without it you have the anarchy you find in so many other non-white governed places on the globe.
So the Giambi brothers and Caminiti, all of Italian descent, could not find it in themselves to carry the weight of the big lie anymore. McGwire, an Irishman, could not bring himself to lie to a Senate committee and refused to answer, which is one of the few constitutional rights left, the right not to incriminate oneself.
On the other hand Bonds, Sheffield, Sosa, and Palmiero, have grown up in an environment where the morality that makes up the foundation of white culture does not exist. They find it easy to evade, stall, and even lie under oath rather then simply just tell the truth. There is rarely such a clear and stark indication of the differences in morality between white and non-white athletes. It brings to mind the lying of ex-President Bill Clinton under oath as one of the reasons black leaders considered him "the first black President".
Edited by: Don Wassall
by J. B. Cash
Testimony has been leaked from the BALCO grand jury that Bonds and Sheffield admitted to taking a BALCO created performance enhancing substance called "the clear" although they profess not to have known what it was. Note that accidentally or unknowingly ingesting a banned substance is still a violation and is enough to be suspended or banned by the Olympic committee. I guess in baseball ignorance of the law IS an excuse.
The Republicans who control the committee are in power solely due to the support of the most powerful voting bloc in America: white men. And what a poor return we get on our investment! Aside from the wreckage they are visiting upon our economy we only ask of them that a strong military keep our borders safe. Yet our southern border is as leaky as a sieve. Our troops cannot move one mile south to defend the Rio Grande but we can send our sons and daughters a half a world away to foreign lands to die for rich Arabs and powerful Jewish interests.
Republicans also continue to strongly support affirmative action, translation: replacing better qualified white men with someone else. And now they are taking OUR sport, the one where white men play most of the positions, hold most of the records, make up most of the fans, managers, coaches, GM's, and scouts, and instead of going after the non-whites that are soiling the record books they are concentrating on those few white players that may have the smallest complicity in the steroid scandal. Where are the two black players in this investigation? Why is Bonds not at this inquiry? He is the biggest name and the biggest violator.
And furthermore, what gives Congress the authority to police the drug policy of a private organization  Major League Baseball? Why do the Republicans, supposedly the party of "small government," think that they have any legitimate role in deciding the drug testing policies of private citizens? It is one thing for them to pass laws. And that they do by the ton. It is quite another for them to profess to know what is the best way for a group of citizens to decide how to manage their business.
This phony grandstanding is typical of how far our government has strayed from the limits imposed upon it by the Founding Fathers, who operated under the auspices of all that embodied the ideas that make up what can be considered classic white society. There is no constitutional or moral authority for the Senate to act in this manner. But so what. While our society devolves under their self-serving reign they use the power of the government to merely parade their faces across the TV and newspapers in search of votes.
Here are the players that can reasonably considered to be associated with baseballs steroid scandal. Barry Bonds, Gary Sheffield, Sammy Sosa, Jose Canseco, Rafael Palmiero, Ken Caminiti, Mark McGwire, Jason Giambi (and by extension his little brother Jeremy). That makes two black players, three hispanic players, and three or four white players. We can assume all of them have used steroids. It was just something that was done at one time by people that spend a lot of time in the weight room. Like pot and 1960's college students it was almost a rite of passage. It was wrong and it is time to make amends.
So now that we have an investigation under way that promises to bring about some policy changes, what do we know about these particular high profile people? The two black players involved, Bonds and Sheffield, have several times denied knowledge of use. At first they denied ever using them then they denied knowing that what they were taking was steroids when the evidence against them became too weighty. An impossible claim that ranks with Bill Clinton's ludicrous admission on marijuana that "he didn't inhale."
Of the three hispanic players, with the exception of Canseco, who cannot deny it since he is trying to profit from his use with a tell-all book, both Sosa and Palmiero have denied, under oath, to a U.S. House committee, ever using them. The three white players  McGwire, Giambi, and the recently deceased Caminiti  have either admitted, or in the case of McGwire implicated himself in the use by "taking the Fifth" and refusing to answer the question. The fourth white player, Jeremy Giambi, admitted and apologized all on his own.
Here you have the difference between those that grow up in a white culture and those that do not. For whites the truth is an important concept. White culture bases the integrity of its institutions on the concept that people will be honest. Respect for government authority is also a key component of white society. Without it you have the anarchy you find in so many other non-white governed places on the globe.
So the Giambi brothers and Caminiti, all of Italian descent, could not find it in themselves to carry the weight of the big lie anymore. McGwire, an Irishman, could not bring himself to lie to a Senate committee and refused to answer, which is one of the few constitutional rights left, the right not to incriminate oneself.
On the other hand Bonds, Sheffield, Sosa, and Palmiero, have grown up in an environment where the morality that makes up the foundation of white culture does not exist. They find it easy to evade, stall, and even lie under oath rather then simply just tell the truth. There is rarely such a clear and stark indication of the differences in morality between white and non-white athletes. It brings to mind the lying of ex-President Bill Clinton under oath as one of the reasons black leaders considered him "the first black President".
Edited by: Don Wassall
