The Weak In Rock

If the story that ESPN ran today in which John Rocker claimed that not only MLB and the MLBPA knew about his performance enhancing drug use in 2000, but actually gave him advice on how to do it effectively then MLB can kiss their anti-trust exemption bye-bye.

I have no doubt in my mind that Congress will subpoena Rocker to testify before them, and come down on Bud Selig and the league like a proverbial ton of bricks.

As I’ve said many times, I don’t care about drug use in sports.  I find the subject tedious and overblown by lazy reporters who can’t think of anything else to write about, but considering the sheer amount of bald-faced lying that the league has done to the US government about the subject and the lack of patience for such things among legislators it won’t surprise me at all if Congress makes good on their threat from several years back to revoke the anti-trust exemption from baseball.

While I’d love to see Bud Selig and Donald Fehr twist in the wind, the economics of professional baseball make it very unlikely that MLB minus its anti-trust exemption would be a viable business in many of the cities that now have MLB teams (including Oakland).  So, this development is not a good one for fans.

On the other hand, John Rocker has been demonstrably full of shit for a long time, and this may just be his way of trying to make himself into a poor man’s Jose Canseco.

Technorati Tags: John Rocker, MLB, MLBPA, anti-trust exemption, Congress, Bud Selig, Donald Fehr, Oakland, Jose Canseco

We bought Ryan a Wii for Xmas.  That is to say, I visited pretty much every mall in the East Bay and eventually found a store that wasn’t sold out of them.  For a day, Ryan thought I ruled.  Then he went back to his usual pre-teen programming.

At first, we like the Wii as a family.  It came with a nifty game that featured simulated bowling.  Karen still rules the roost on that one.  And I am the all-time home run champ in the baseball game that is on the Wii Sports disk.  Fun.

Then darkness fell.  Or should I say, Ryan bought Guitar Hero.

I’d messed around with Guitar Hero before but never really tried to play it.  Suffice to say, I rule at virtual guitar slinging.

There’s one problem.

The consensus among my fellow musicians is that if you’re a halfway decent guitar player in meat-life then you’ll blow goats at Guitar Hero.  Oops.  I’ve beaten the game on the easy level and am 3/4 of the way through it on medium.  I even got a 300 note streak on Metallica’s “One”.  Crap.

I’m a hack.

Side note - pretty clever on the part of the makers of Guitar Hero to fill it with classic rock anthems.  Way to keep The Kids ™ on the straight and narrow musically.

Side side note - I unlocked the video of John Lydon and Steve Jones talking about rerecording “Anarchy In The U.K.” for Guitar Hero.  Advancing age has turned Johnny Rotten into a softy.  The man admits to his gaming addiction in the video and that he loves Guitar Hero.  I would pay real money to see John Lydon rocking out to “Slow Ride.”

Technorati Tags: Wii, Wii Sports, Guitar Hero, Metallica, John Lydon, Steve Jones, Anarchy In The U.K., Johnny Rotten, Slow Ride

Ok, I’m home sick today, so I guess I no longer have any excuse not wade into the muck regarding the Presidential nominating contests.  Well, of course I could be taking a nap, but what the hell.  You only live once.  *cough*

During the last Presidential election I expended a ton of personal energy blogging on behalf of the Democrats and John Kerry in particular (there’s a special circle in hell for me just for that).  So, I suppose it’s natural for my readers to ask me, frequently, why no words about this current political poop storm.  The answer is a simple one, so I’ll lay it on you…

They all suck.

That’s right.  You heard me.

The one candidate I sort of liked, John Edwards, was a non-starter.  He was linked to a failed bid for the White House in 2004, he’s from a state that doesn’t garner much attention on the national stage, he’s done nothing but campaign since he and Kerry lost to Bush/Cheney four years ago and his wife has had a relapse of breast cancer.  On some level I think the guy should be taking care of his wife, but I like him, and I think he’d have made a decent President.  However, I knew he had no chance running against rock stars like Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton.

Now someone is going to probably get mad at me for saying Obama sucks, but I’m sorry, he does.  He’s fundamentally invested in the corporate system and has spoken highly of it on numerous occasions.   And that’s the biggest problem I have with him.  John Edwards is right - it’s the corporate power in this country that is the source of most of our problems.  You name it - health care = profit motive.  War in Iraq = profit motive.  Social inequity = profit motive.  Unless you’re willing to tackle the source of the problem you’ve got no hope of solving it.  So while in a contest between virtually any Republican and Obama I’m probably going to vote for him, I don’t like him and I don’t trust him.

Next.

Hilary.

Harumph.

Look, let me make this very, very simple.  If Hilary Clinton becomes the 44th President of the US of A that will mean that we will have a guaranteed period of 24 years during which no one whose name was not Bush or Clinton will have been President.  24 years.  There are nations in this world whose entire government has not survived 24 years in a row.  And if the GOP stays in as much of a sorry ass-eating mess as it is right now during her first term then she’s pretty much guaranteed a second, which will make it 28 years of Bush/Clinton hegemony over the chief executive office in the US.

Ladies and gentlemen, there’s no way to put this nicely.  That is fucked up.

Never mind that Bill Clinton, whose legacy Hilary is running on, was a opportunistic, lying sack of crap whose great achievements in office were mainly screwing over people on welfare and staining an intern’s dress with his semen.  Never mind that Hilary’s plan to reform health care includes fines and jail time for anyone who refuses to purchase health insurance.  Never mind that the Clinton’s are the best recipe for uniting and reviving the lunatic fringe right wing of the GOP.  Never mind that stuff.  If we want to continue to pretend we have any scrap of democracy left in our government we CANNOT elect Hilary Clinton to the Presidency.  Because if we elect her then we’ve given up, and eight years from now we can expect to see Jeb Bush running for the nomination of his party, winning it and ascending to the White House.

I’ll say it again.  That’s fucked up.

So I will not, under any circumstances, be voting for Hilary Clinton.  Nuff said.

On the GOP side they suck just as much, but in different ways.  John McCain now pretty much has to have a heart attack or get hit by a bus in order to avoid being the Republican nominee.  There was a time when I liked McCain, but he blew that when he started bending over for the evangelicals who control the GOP.  There’s a chance, now that Romney has bowed out of the race that the McCain camp will realize that the evangelicals have been marginalized and he’ll tell them to screw themselves, but I doubt it.  He’s likely too afraid that doing so would encourage them to run a third party candidate who would siphon away votes from him in the general election.

McCain has painted himself as an independent, but he’s not really.  He’s a war hawk and as much a tool of the military industrial complex as Ronald Reagan was.  And since he’s politically chickenshit he’ll probably grab either Mike Huckabee or Mitt Romney for a running mate to try to round up as much of that GOP evangelical vote as he can, and to try to set up a candidate to succeed him as President should he get elected.  It’s a sure bet his running mate will be much younger than he is to blunt any campaign criticism from the Democrats about his health and age.

Now that Romney’s out there’s not much point in repeating all the text that’s been written about his flip-floppery and opportunist politics.  And Huckabee’s got no chance of winning the nomination.  None at all.  Although I must admit I love his idea of shutting down the IRS and switching to consumption taxes.

Yes folks, once again we’ve got lousy choices before us.  But as H.L. Mencken said, “Democracy is the theory that holds that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”

We’re going to get it good and hard this year.  Again.

Technorati Tags: Presidential election, Democrats, John Kerry, John Edwards, Bush/Cheney, Barack Obama, Hilary Clinton, Republican, 44th President, Bill Clinton, GOP, Jeb Bush, John McCain, evangelicals, Ronald Reagan, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, H.L. Mencken

I laughed so hard it hurt.  Enjoy…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InZNBcJTmWs 

Thanks to Tom “High Strung” Young for the link.