13
   

Bonds Convicted

 
 
Cycloptichorn
 
  1  
Reply Fri 15 Apr, 2011 11:04 pm
@snood,
Quote:

In other words, just how the **** can you say with conviction that pot doesn't harm anyone?


I haven't seen convincing evidence that it does, either from an anecdotal level or a research level. I think there are people who have problems with it, but no more so than ciggies or alcohol, other drugs which are considered socially acceptable.

However, there are many other drugs that I have seen wreck people's lives, so I have a different opinion of them. Steroids are one of those drugs, and they carry very negative connotations in my mind specifically because of the negative effects I saw they had in the lives of people I knew when I was younger. I rate them right up there with meth and heroin and coke, in terms of how it can take a person and really change them.

Quote:
I find that statement as another example of your tendency of late to make broad unqualified statements as if they are empirical fact.


I think it's always appropriate to ask someone if what they are saying is intended to be their opinion, or a categorical fact. I'm not the world's leading expert on Marijuana or studies relating to the effects of using it. But I have enough experience with it to have an opinion about it.

Cycloptichorn
snood
 
  2  
Reply Fri 15 Apr, 2011 11:25 pm
@Cycloptichorn,
Cyclops said:

Quote:
I haven't seen convincing evidence that it does, either from an anecdotal level or a research level. I think there are people who have problems with it, but no more so than ciggies or alcohol, other drugs which are considered socially acceptable.


Whoa big fella. What is being "socially acceptable" doing in an exchange about what absolutely is or is not harmful to people? If I didn't think much more of your reasoning abilities, I'd think you were trying to slide in a total non sequiter to enhance your argument. You know dang well there's a whole world of "socially acceptable" items and practices that aren't good for you.
electronicmail
 
  1  
Reply Sat 16 Apr, 2011 07:12 am
@snood,
snood wrote:

Whoa big fella. What is being "socially acceptable" doing in an exchange about what absolutely is or is not harmful to people?

Who pays is the issue. Mehtadone is more harmful than pure heroin but we're stuck with it offered free and heroin not.

Free needles are relevant. So are free abortions. It all comes down to $$$$$. Screw principle. You just came out of the egg?
0 Replies
 
Ragman
 
  1  
Reply Sat 16 Apr, 2011 09:51 am
All these discussion about marijuana and what-not begs the issue, IMHO. The problem I see the is central to the OP topic are two-fold:

1. These drugs were illegal at the time and he (Bonds) and he signed a contract that prohibited their use. Other athletes cheated, broke the law and lied about it under oath - even after getting caught. Based on this illegality, this is a deserved legal case.

I hate that it cost taxpayers so much (or even anything) to prosecute. On principle it's intrusion of 'Big Brother' at its ugliest. However, as an example of fairness and my flight of fancy, I'd love to see the entire Fed gov't being tested, starting with the House and Senate.

2. Use of PEDs and the MLB enforcement of the ban with fair and even-handed testing of it are somewhat important issues to me. Hopefully, as a result of this issue being elevated, PED vigilance may filter down and help children from NOT getting involved with it. Like it or not, agree or not, major leaguers are role models and at the worst, they're trend-setters.

Perhaps all this will call attention to parents of the mini-athletes and raise their consciousness about the deadly dangers of PEDs. Perhaps they'll be far more vigilant of their kids and less dumb about the possibility their kids could be tempted to use PEDs. Maybe with all this publicity parents will get to know the road-signs of what 'roid rage looks like and stop their kids from damaging their lives.

That is more important to me as as an issue than pot use as the dangers seem more clearly defined by medical research as being dire.


All that being said, I'm very against more important hot-button but related issues. I'm against corporate drug-testing for most applicants. The exception being for workers in public safety/police, air-traffic control and military. Otherwise, I'm against it in the workforce.

However, I recognize this as a hypocritical stance. I think I do...?
cicerone imposter
 
  1  
Reply Sat 16 Apr, 2011 10:12 am
@Ragman,
Hey, Ragman, well stated, and I agree. The issue of use of PED ends when they sign a contract not to use them. That's a very important point. Also, the use of drugs if it doesn't endanger others is also a good point.

That's why drinking alcohol, then driving is against the law. It can kill others, and themselves.
0 Replies
 
Cycloptichorn
 
  2  
Reply Sat 16 Apr, 2011 10:16 am
@snood,
snood wrote:

Cyclops said:

Quote:
I haven't seen convincing evidence that it does, either from an anecdotal level or a research level. I think there are people who have problems with it, but no more so than ciggies or alcohol, other drugs which are considered socially acceptable.


Whoa big fella. What is being "socially acceptable" doing in an exchange about what absolutely is or is not harmful to people? If I didn't think much more of your reasoning abilities, I'd think you were trying to slide in a total non sequiter to enhance your argument. You know dang well there's a whole world of "socially acceptable" items and practices that aren't good for you.


I only use it as a short convention. Of course there are a whole world of things which aren't good for you, but they aren't illegal, because they aren't bad enough for you or those around you to necessitate intervention.

I'm not on a mission to prove that pot isn't bad for people or that I'm somehow special. I'm not. I'm not trying to show that I have higher morality than others or that they have consistently made wrong decisions while I have made the right ones. I'm just expressing my opinion that, yeah; there are meaningful differences between different subjects which allow us to make judgments that one is more harmful to a person or society than another.

In the case of Bonds, the behavior is odious in my mind, because he wasn't using drugs for his own enjoyment, he was using them to cheat. He's no different than a guy who is caught with an ace up his sleeve, or someone who corks their bat.

Cycloptichorn
Ragman
 
  1  
Reply Sat 16 Apr, 2011 10:21 am
@Cycloptichorn,
... but the point is that it is far different corking a bat, 'cause of what damages this behavior does to society-at-large. Corking the bat does precious little damage to society-at-large, even though it's cheating. A far bigger damage PEDs do (as it relates to a practice that is not only cheating but) is that it represents a real danger and a potential physical damage that breaks a legal contract agreed upon and sets forth a poor example and major health risk to child athletes.
Robert Gentel
 
  1  
Reply Sat 16 Apr, 2011 10:25 am
@Cycloptichorn,
Cycloptichorn wrote:
In the case of Bonds, the behavior is odious in my mind, because he wasn't using drugs for his own enjoyment, he was using them to cheat. He's no different than a guy who is caught with an ace up his sleeve, or someone who corks their bat.


Sure, but I would object just as strongly to the government getting this involved in a corked bat scandal as well. For baseball fans this may sound super important but I think the government has better things to do than spend this much time on cheating in sports.
0 Replies
 
Cycloptichorn
 
  1  
Reply Sat 16 Apr, 2011 10:26 am
@Ragman,
Ragman wrote:

... but the point is what damage do these practices do to society-at-large. Corking the bat does precious little damage to society-at-large, even though it's cheating. A far bigger daamge is PEDs as it relates to a practicve thaty is not only cheating but it represents a real danger and a potential physical damage that breaks a legal contract agreed upon and the poor example set forth to child athletics.


Yup, though I would say that corking/cheating leads to a lack of trust in the validity of the sport and league, which is damaging to society at large.

Cycloptichorn
0 Replies
 
cicerone imposter
 
  1  
Reply Sat 16 Apr, 2011 10:27 am
@Ragman,
I think "cheating" in sports is a very fine line, because athletes use every advantage they can get by "enhancement" of their equipment. The edge they get from perfecting equipment can be the difference between winning and losing.
Cycloptichorn
 
  1  
Reply Sat 16 Apr, 2011 12:29 pm
This problem could easily be solved by having two leagues - regular, and 'anything goes' - any enhancement you wish to use, that is legal in the country to use, you can use.

Not just drugs, either. I've seen some reconstructed sports limbs for athletes who have had an amputation that are bad-ass.

Cycloptichorn
0 Replies
 
Ragman
 
  1  
Reply Tue 19 Apr, 2011 10:12 am
@cicerone imposter,
Athletes have won just fine without PEDs. And if no one uses them, they will win, alos...but with their honor intact and the spirit of fair play intact as well.
0 Replies
 
hawkeye10
 
  1  
Reply Sat 9 Jul, 2011 06:16 pm
@edgarblythe,
edgarblythe wrote:

Former San Francisco Giants outfielder Barry Bonds, whose record for most home runs in Major League Baseball has been under a cloud, was found guilty of obstruction of justice by a jury.

After eight years and millions of dollars. Was it worth congress's time and our money?




By Roland S. Martin

Quote:
CNN) -- Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds were long considered first ballot Hall of Famers, but the steroids scandal that has dominated baseball since the '90s has destroyed their reputations and could very well keep them out of Cooperstown.
Clemens is spending his days in a federal court in Washington accused of lying to Congress about his own steroid use. Bonds is appealing an April conviction of obstruction of justice for giving an evasive answer to a grand jury, but was acquitted on the more serious charges.
What's amazing is that federal prosecutors have spent years going after Bonds and Clemens, and at best, all they are going after them on is supposedly lying to a grand jury or Congress? Don't get me wrong, we are supposed to tell the truth and nothing but the truth, but looking at the amount of time and dollars spent by the feds on these two baseball players, you would think they were drug kingpins.
Yet while this is going on, the biggest crooks in the world, who almost singlehandedly took down the United States economy with their shady banking practices, are kicking it in their private suites at the baseball park, enjoying the huge bonuses that continue to flow on Wall Street.
Lady Justice is supposed to be blind. But if you screw millions of Americans out of billions of dollars, and force the federal government to bail your firm out with billions of dollars, then prosecutors won't even bother to knock on your door. But lie to a grand jury about injecting yourself with steroids? Your world will be turned upside down!
This really shouldn't be an either/or scenario. But with the nation's unemployment rate at 9.2% and the country still trying to dig itself out of a cataclysmic situation that culminated in the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, surely the American people should get some satisfaction out of seeing Wall Street fat cats walk the perp walk and have to answer to their activities in court.
But we don't see any of that. Instead, all we see today are federal prosecutors talking about baseball and syringes, and Casey Anthony's attorneys gloating about getting their girl off.
It is unfathomable to think that Wall Street executives are getting off scot free and continue to get million-dollar bonuses. It's shameful to listen to them whine about the clamps being put on them by federal regulations, when it was lax oversight and the total relaxation of rules that allowed them to go haywire, all in a search for quarterly profits to boost their personal wealth, and sink ours.
It's degrading to watch Wall Street's protectors in Washington -- Democrats and Republicans -- cry mightily about onerous regulations and suggest that anything meant to protect consumers from these dastardly devils is a "jobs crusher."
Sorry, folks, I really don't care about Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds and steroids. Spend all day if you like arguing about the integrity of the game. What's more important is the integrity of the legal system, where there is supposed to be fairness in going after wrongdoing.
The feds have fulfilled their obligations with baseball. And they have struck out when it comes to holding Wall Street accountable.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/07/09/martin.baseball.congress/index.html?hpt=hp_c2
0 Replies
 
ossobuco
 
  1  
Reply Sat 9 Jul, 2011 06:48 pm
After a very quick review of the thread, me, I'm sorry about roids and some other compounds entering into who wins some race.

I do think that is unfair.

I also think it doesn't always work out. I see Tiger as bulking up to his own detriment.

So, maybe, natural will win anyway.
0 Replies
 
 

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