WINNING AT ALL COSTS: PERFORMANCE-ENHANCING DRUGS IN PROFESSIONAL SPORTS

By Ronald Fox

 

Although many people believe the recently revised PED policy established for major league baseball, which includes stiffer penalties and more frequent testing, have effectively terminated the PED problem in baseball (the NFL,NBA, and NHL policies are much weaker, significantly not including blood testing, which is necessary to detect human growth hormones), I think this is wishful thinking. The use of PEDs must be understood as a product of a cheating culture that has crept into professional sports. The incidence of PED use may have slowed in baseball, but I suspect this may be only a temporary lull. Until the value system that sustains cheating in professional sports is changed, the problem will not go away.

 

MAY BONEHEAD ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH (2014)



With the recent release of the 2014 Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, it was easy to predict that bonehead deniers would see a need to reaffirm their denial credentials.  Sure enough, they emerged from under their rocks.  This month's bonehead absurdity candidates put their gross ignorance on display in offering the following comments about climate change.


1.  This whopper comes from conservative pundit Charles Krauthammer:

“What we're ultimately talking about here is human sin, through the production of carbon. It's the oldest superstition around. It was in the Old Testament. It's in the rain dance of the Native Americans. If you sin, the skies will not cooperate. This is quite superstitious and I'm waiting for science that doesn't declare itself definitive but is otherwise convincing."

2.  Despite the IPCC Report, which concluded that there is increased certainty that human behavior is causing ice caps to melt, sea ice to collapse, water supplies to be stressed, heat waves and heavy rains to intensify, and coral reefs to die,  and its follow-up report, the National Climate Assessment, which concluded that climate change has already widely affected the U.S. and the worst is yet to come, Republican Party office holders and most of their conservative constituents remain in denial about the reality and growing peril of global warming.

Phronesis has decided to select the GOP as an organization candidate for the May Bonehead Absurdity award.   The following quotes are representative of absurd Republican ignorance, many of them coming from politicians with presidential ambitions:

• Ted Cruz (R-Tx):  "The last 15 years, there has been no recorded warming."
• Bobby Jindal (R-La):  Global warming is a "left-wing environmental theory."
• Rick Santorum (R-Pa):  Calls climate change "a beautifully concocted scheme."
• Ran Paul (R-Ky):  Says "The earth's 4-5 billion years old . . . and you're going to say we had four hurricanes and so that proves a theory?"
• Mario Rubio (R-Fl):  "I do not believe human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it. . . and I do not believe that the laws they propose we pass will do anything about it, except destroy our economy."
• Dana Rohrabacker (R-Ca):  "Global warming is a total fraud."

And, perhaps, the topper:

• Joe Barton (R-Tx):  Noah's . . . great flood is an example of climate change, and that certainly wasn't because mankind had overdeveloped hydrocarbon energy."

3.  Here's another climate change idiocy, this one from Wheel of Fortune host Pat Sajak, who on May 19 said:

“I now believe global warming alarmists are unpatriotic racists knowingly misleading for their own ends."

And the winner is . . . . .

JIM DUBBS RESPONSE TO WONDERING WHAT’S GOING ON IN UKRAINE

I think this insightful response from Jim Dubbs to my essay on Wondering What's Going On In Ukraine deserves to be circulated to subscribers.


It seems to me the seeds of the crisis involving Ukraine were planted by the policy of Bush I and Clinton to voraciously expand NATO membership to countries formerly in the Warsaw Pact.  Since these countries along Russia's borders formed what was historically a "cordon sanitaire" (Iron Curtain to Churchill fans), or sphere of interest at a minimum, for the Soviet state, this US policy could hardly be seen a nothing less than a provocation to Putin  -- a push for US hegemony.  (Bad enough, especially in a geopolitical sense, that Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Albania and the Baltic countries joined NATO -- after all they had at one time or another be independent states -- but Ukraine, lordy, it was where ancient Rus began.)  

This provocation had to be tolerated by a weakened Russia in what was gleefully but fleetingly called the unipolar world.  That description of the world doesn't quite work anymore for the US, given the quagmires of Afghanistan and Iran, upheaval in the Middle East, the rapid rise of China.  Sort of like DeGaulle for France after WWII, Putin has rekindled a Russian nationalism that must be satisfied.  And he knows that NATO doesn't have the capacity to resist, at least militarily.  And as for economic sanctions, what can he fear if the head of Exxon-Mobile still comes a'courtin?

Come to think of it, while Lenin may have indulged in a bit of hyperbole when he said that the capitalist will sell us the ropes to hang them, he was on to something.

J.Dubbs

WONDERING WHAT’S GOING ON IN UKRAINE

By Ronald Fox

 

Are you like me wondering what’s really going on in Ukraine? Russian president, Vladimer Putin, is steadfast in claiming that the CIA was behind the unrest that brought down Viktor Yanukovych and replaced him with a government favorable to the West and is still calling the shots of the Kiev government. The Obama administration has been unequivocal in denying Putin’s claim and blaming him for the unfolding crisis. The mainstream American media has wholeheartedly accepted the Washington version; the media in Moscow, not surprisingly, has sided with Putin's position. 

  

Which claim is correct? I can’t answer this question. What I can say is that I have little trust in the jingoistic coverage that has dominated mainstream media in the U.S, or what President Obama and Secretary of State, John Kerry, are telling us. I also have no reason to believe Putin’s account. So like any critical thinking person, I am left confused as to what’s going on.

 

THE UKRAINE CRISIS: NEOCONS RESURGENT

 

By Ronald Fox

 

Oh how times have changed. The cooperation that led to the joint US-Russian diplomatic initiative in Syria and efforts to achieve a nuclear weapons agreement with Iran, seem a faint memory, laid to rest by the crises in Ukraine and the Crimean Peninsula. This is disconcerting to me, and I’m sure to many others who hoped the Syrian initiative established a foundation for future Washington-Moscow diplomatic collaboration. Neoconservatives, however, couldn’t be happier. The Ukrainian uprising and the Russian annexation of Crimea have resurrected the neo-conservative geopolitical perspective. That’s right, the same neocon thinking that steered us into the catastrophic wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, with all the death and destruction left in their wakes, not to mention the squandering of nearly $1 trillion in American taxpayer dollars. Instead of joining other half-baked notions in our historical hall of infamy, neo-conservative thinking is once again captivating Official Washington.

 

JUSTICE FOR COLLEGE ATHLETES: NORTHWESTERN FOOTBALL PLAYERS TAKE ON THE SYSTEM

By Ronald Fox

 

One of the best features of America is that our citizens have the right to protest for rights. Virtually every achievement in social justice in the US has been precipitated not by reasoned action by our leaders to “do the right thing,” but by direct citizen protest actions. This is a rich history of which we Americans can be proud.

 

Taking on established practice has not been easy given that protectors of the status quo have inertia on their side and possess far greater power resources to deploy. They have fiercely fought citizen demands for fairness and justice, especially when citizen gains would come at their expense. Such is the situation today with the group of inspired Northwestern University football players challenging their university, the N.C.A.A, and, by extension, state legislatures.  They have the audacity to want to form a union.

 

APRIL 2014 BONEHEAD ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH



(NOTE:  A preliminary draft of the April Bonehead Absurdity  candidates was inadvertently posted a couple weeks ago.  My apologies.  Now all the candidates and the winner can be announced.)


1.  Democrat Rep. Bruce Braley:  Braley, who is running for the Senate in Iowa, slammed the state's senior senator, Charles Grassley, as "a farmer from Iowa who never went to law school."

This may be the all-time greatest bonehead comment.  To pop off in such an arrogant fashion to voters who take pride in their state being part of the "Corn Belt,"  and whose conservative instincts makes them highly suspicious of intellectual elites, is mind-boggling. 

2.  George W. Bush:  In an interview with  daughter Jenna Bush Hager on TODAY Friday, the former president recalled an encounter with Vladimir Putin that he claimed revealed a lot about the character of the Russian president.  The comment reveals Bush's keen insight.

“As you know, our dear dog Barney, who had a special place in my heart — Putin dissed him and said, ‘You call it a dog?’’’ Bush told Hager.

3.  John Coleman, co-founder of the Weather Channel and long-time weatherman at KUSI in San Diego, claims scientific knowledge as the basis for his opposition to climate change.  Although the following statement was from last year, it reflects a position he has repeated on several occasions in public statements, including recently upon his retirement:

"It [global warming] is the greatest scam in history.  I am amazed, appalled and highly offended by it.  . . . . Some dastardly scientist with environmental and political motives manipulated long-tern science data to create an illusion of rapid global warming."

4.  Rush Limbaugh:  Referring to gay marriage, which he called immoral, Rush Limbaugh told listeners to his radio program:  "The institution of marriage had been targeted for destruction, essentially, and the road to destroying it is being paved."  This coming from a man who is currently married to his fourth wife.  Good thing divorce is not a technical and literal destruction of marriage.

5.  Cliven Bundy:  It doesn't take much these days to become a conservative folk hero.  Refuse to pay government fees for grazing cattle in a federally protected habitat, then gather a self-styled militia to fend off Bureau of Land Management officials, and Fox News will confer hero status.  This will give you a celebrity platform to pontificate your social philosophy.

Referring to African Americans, Bundy told New York Times reporters:
 

"They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton . . . . . . .and I've often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn't get no more freedom. They got less freedom."

And the winner is: