Convict Bonds with Evidence, Not Charges

I think that the Big Ragu is Novitzky. I couldn't see Ragu's face in the photos he posted a while back, but he does have the same sized biceps as Novitzky.

 

Any actual response to his response to your pile of bollocks?

Or are we back to the name calling again?

 

hey, i have an idea. hey ragu, why don't you juice?

 

I'm going to start sending a lot of smart guys here. I think we need to balance.

Striking out at Bonds
Thursday, November 22, 2007

By LANCE ROXAS
Northjersey.com


SO THE FULL weight of the federal government has employed its vast resources to indict the villain of our time, Darth Vader in the flesh, Barry Bonds.

Forgive me, however, if I don't share in the collective glee for this public witch hunt. And though I'm sure the feds have rounded up all the mobsters, terrorists, child pornographers, serial rapists, murders and corporate embezzlers already, and needed somewhere to focus their time, forgive me for pointing out the rank hypocrisy, naivete and stupidity of bombastic journalists and phony fans who share in the feds' zeal for Bonds' lynching.

This is a society that rewards taking risks to achieve market advantage, and that is all Bonds is guilty of. No argument to the contrary holds water.

These "hallowed" records that everyone speaks so piously about never cross generational gaps, and anyone worth his spit in integrity knows this.

Ruth hit juiced balls Tris Speaker would have loved to blast, and neither faced a black pitcher or a cross-country flight. And I'm sure Bonds would have loved to hit against less specialized relief and a smaller talent pool, and take advantage of the DH rule like Aaron.

The parks have changed dimensions, rotations have gotten longer, relief pitching is more specialized and the game continues to evolve. Records are broken, and who finds sanctity in the austerity of numbers.

But Bonds cheated, no?

Bonds did not cheat, and not only did he not cheat, he did what hundreds of other ballplayers were doing and not breaking Major League Baseball's rules up until 2003: He juiced, they juiced, they all juiced.

Homers fill the seats

The secret is Major League Baseball loved the juice because homers fill the seats. Where are all the asterisk fans clamoring for additional credit to those hitters who hit them off of juiced pitchers? Has anyone noticed the sharp decline in velocity over the last couple years or are we all too ignorant? Bonds should get extra credit for hitting homers off juiced pitchers if we want to be fair and just.

Where's the outrage for the Paul Byrds of the world, no soapbox speeches for him?

"But what about the morality and ethics of using drugs," the pious snivel. Oh, puh-leeeze people, nothing could be more two-faced and boldly hypocritical.

Our society is driven by rampant drug use and we make amorphous distinctions that fail to stand up to logic. People take painkillers to get back to work sooner. We applaud athletes who risk further injury by jacking themselves up on painkillers and "playing through the pain" for our entertainment -- those guys are heroes.

Soccer moms can take anti-depressants and psycho-stabilizers so they can "cope with life" and maintain their sense of self. We drink billions of dollars of beer and liquor every year to enjoy ourselves. We smoke billions of dollars in tobacco. And as a society we suck down billions of dollars in prescription drugs every year -- all of them with some side effect or risk -- for what? To improve our quality of life, or, at the very least, to enjoy to greater effect our time on earth!

And that's all Bonds did.

Doing what others do

Bonds took the additional risk of taking prescription medication -- without a prescription (oh, I know no one else has ever done that) to improve his quality of life. He risked possibly chopping a couple years off the end of his life to enhance the prime of his life; that's the same choice everyone who's taken any kinds of drugs has made.

Why is it anathema for Bonds to take drugs to improve his ability to do his job, double his income and entertain us in the process? It's not (though I'm sure none of you would take a drug to help you improve your abilities at work and possibly quadruple your income).

We let people risk their lives every day by drinking and smoking, which have no benefit other than personal enjoyment, but Bonds' improving his skills through medication is a moral outrage!?

Inconsistency

Let's be honest, we don't really care one iota about consistency or fairness. We care about patting ourselves on the back and assuaging our tinge of guilt and making ourselves feel superior to others. If Bonds had hit those homers for your team, you would cheer him mightily, just like Yankees fans cheer Giambi and Tigers fans applaud Sheffield.

If he weren't so surly, immodest and arrogant, if he made teary-eyed public apologies for his behavior, maybe he could get off the hook like others have for worse offenses, and why?

Because apologies allow us to feel morally superior when we have no right to be. They allow us to pump our chests full of false hubris and tower atop our soapboxes while casting stones in every direction from our glass houses.

It's cheap, hypocritical and phony, but Americans need their villains, and Bonds fits the bill.

Lance Roxas is an adjunct professor in the political science department at Kean University.

 

Doesn't matter that it was illegal, everyone else was doing it, and that makes it ok.

I don't see how illegal steroids equate to legal antidepressants, cigarettes and alcohol.

And Babe Ruth hit juiced baseballs? Really? Bringing up the "he didn't play against African-Americans" argument again?

Last I checked, the DH has been in baseball longer than Bonds, and in interleague play he has taken advantage of it.

If you think this guy is smart, I'm very sorry for you. This is an amalgam of all of the "Defend Bonds" columns that have been written over the past four years,

There is not one original thought in here.

By the way, were you going to respond to Ragu's response on Ellerman? Or is that by the wayside now you've found some "smart" writers to help you in your crusade?

 

Ragu's pounding his "Grand Juries aren't that important" tin drum again. The basis for the court order that Ellerman's in jail for violating was Rule 6e of the the federal code so, yes, there is one level of remove from Ellerman's having been jailed for violating the law regarding who may disclose what. However, he is nonetheless in jail for having disclosed that which he should not have disclosed to people to whom he should not have disclosed it. It's a cousin principle.

 

Typical creamora leap there. And yes, it is a big leap to accuse somebody of making things up just because further evidence of what they reported has not come to light, at least not yet. But of course, everybody involved in this entire case except Bonds is evil and unscrupulous, right? Just like only people who actually agree with your bullshit are intelligent.

Any chance we could at least get you to keep all your bullshit on one thread, creamora?

 

Ragu keeps answering specific points, granting some and shooting others down, then continues to ask the same questions, and Fenian Bastard and Creamora keep ignoring them in favor of their own wacked agendas. And around and around we go.

The basic point remains unrefuted: Barry Bonds lied when he said he didn't knowingly take steroids. And if this was indeed a witch hunt targeting him, it would be quite strange to give him immunity - along with dozens of other athletes called to testify. But only Bonds lied, apparently, which is why he's being prosecuted. Why is that hard to understand?

 

It isn't. Creamora understands it well. I'm not going to take his route and insult the intelligence of people who disagree with me.

Creamora just keeps throwing up smokescreens here and distractions there, trying to bury everybody in accusations and innuendo in a desperate attempt to justify the behavior of Barry Bonds. Keeping it simple just doesn't fit with his agenda, because in the simplest terms Bonds is a liar and a cheat. And I write that as somebody who has defended Bonds in the past and a long-time fan of his as a player.

 

Oh, my. Another 700 words, at least 650 of which were off the point. You did better bunging the Canadian health-care system.
Never said Ellerman was bound by 6E, or violated it. More straw, less interesting than it was before.
What I said was that the court order that Ellerman violated was a "cousin" to 6E in that both of them have to do with the confidentiality of grand jury testimony. Clearly, the judge that issued the order was concerned about the confidentiality of that particular grand jury because, otherwise, he wouldn't have issued the order and Ellerman wouldn't be in jail. Judges don't often do that. That's all I meant.
Now, what does it have to do with whether or not Bonds perjured himself? Probably nothing, except that the more tangled the overall legal thicket, the harder it is to get a perjury conviction because the more smoke there is to blow around.
And as for your increasingly passive-aggressive victimhood, jam it, OK?