Deep Throat, Steroids & Torture

I grew up without a television and was convinced baseball was something that just happens on the radio. I'll take a ballgame called on the radio over television any day. In the hands of an artist, you can smell the fresh cut grass and starched uniforms; radio is magic.

Why on Earth has Congress spent millions of dollars on the giant cavity search for steroids in baseball over the last several years? Seriously? Two wars, fraudulent elections, health care crisis, illegal wiretapping, Katrina, loose nukes...and we picked baseball? For twenty months, jacked up ball players were the priority. Over four hundred pages of findings...for what?

Who gives a shit!? I wonder what I'd get on my hot dog should I ever make it to a real ball park. I wonder how long my beer would stay cold.

So, you're a die hard fan and want "organic baseball." Solution? Make the National League the "Organic, Free-Range League"; no steroids, no Designated Hitter, and tofu dogs. Let the American League become the "Juiced, Super-Size-Your-Bat League"; mega steroids, they can keep the DH, and beer bongs. No interleague play until the Monsanto-Organic Valley World Series. Let the fans decide. Personally, I like homeruns. But I LOVE low scoring pitching duels.

Don't get me wrong...my favorite stories from my Pop, right after "then the bear attacked me!" were about his string of pitching no hitters.

How many hours did Congress preside over inquiries into steroid use in baseball? How many of those hours were we simultaneously waterboarding detainees?

President Bush said "The use of performance-enhancing drugs like steroids in baseball, football, and other sports is dangerous, and it sends the wrong message -- that there are shortcuts to accomplishment, and that performance is more important than character." He also said, "We do not torture."

In the final years of the Clinton administration, we had a Paris Hilton-does-Macy's moment; splurging over $40 million on Ken Star's salacious porn gathering mission of the blue drescapade. I forgave Bill Clinton when I found out Monica wore a size 14 GAP dress; imagine that; the President of the United States likes healthy girls who actually eat entrees! If you're the leader of the "free" world, you should have an "assistant" to insure you never become so stressed out that you push the red button out of sexual frustration. What? Think about it!

Maybe if W had an intern, we'd have never gone into Iraq.

As I write this I am still thinking, WTF?

A Presidential BJ and an "enhanced" ball hitter get full blown multimillion dollar Congressional investigations. I know, they sound related.

War crimes...well, hmmm.... we need to think about that! Why is this hard?

A-Rod, I am sorry. Bill, I am so sorry. You were a matter of national security, apparently.

Dick, as in Cheney, no worries, baby. You kept us safe. Thanks.

Now, would someone please waterboard Sean Hannity so I can feel better about the lack of Constitutional Crisis Concern? Please?

www.waterboardseanhannityforcharity.com

Comments

[tapeatsbill]

and as someone once said, I think it was a singer, "even the President of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked."

[tapeatsbill]

Shanynn - you rock. If American League would be the juicer league and the National the organic league, then it would follow that Republicans would be American League and dems the National.

Republicans were so hard core they went into attack mode over the "blue dresscapade" and genetic material and went to impeachment.

Our dems are such babies that they can't go into launch investigation mode when actual, real crimes have been committed.

Loved your commentary Shanynn

Keep it up.

[YesWeCanada]

Good job on contrasting the hipocrasy.

[tlgeiger62]

You sing it Sister!!!!

[WilliePilgrim]

Well, it is important to not confuse what we see on TV disguised as News Journalism. Of course it has some, but from the perspective of their corporate owners and for that matter, most of their audience, they like it nice and juicy with the kinds of features that would naturally fascinate any respectible troop of baboons: sex, violence, status, cheating, shifting allegiances, delicious food, bright colors, blood, the weather...­.and more sex.We're not called Naked Apes by Desmond Morris just to be cute.
The more eyes on the tube the more money from advertisers.
Of course a healthy dose of misinformation and perspectives based on lowest common denominators in our culture, are all part of it.
Luckily, we also have a few genuine investigative journalists who are pursuing a more rigorous exploration, examination and analysis, though it's too boring to anything but a superficial treatment for TV and Radio, and increasingly, it's becoming harder to find even in the vanishing newprint bizz, and we have this Blog and a lot of other sources which are actually serving up good stuff. And for once, I am not being sarcastic. Keep up the good work.

[thnk4selfagain]

I feel your concern about the Constitutional crisis and the lack of education or perspective on it when copared to . I am bewildered why others, the media and most politicians, do not or will not publicly discuss the danger this counrty has faced and may continue to face by a renegade adminstration that effects a totalitarian-like hijacking of our government using the DOJ. Obviously, there is too much self-interest by these parties and not enough loyalty to the Constitution. How can Obama's economic team assert we are a country of laws to defend exorbitant Wall Street bonuses, but no one, *no one* from the Obama adminstration (Holder aside) states these same words when it comes to torture by the US. I thought I helped to elect a Constitutional scholar.

[thnk4selfagain]

Should be "compared to the coverage, discussion and resources devoted to relatively unimportant sexcapades of the Pres and steroid use in sports." Whew, today is not my day.

[Steven Anderson]

Great Article! I hope to see more...a lot more. Steroids..­.I watched a documentary which concluded that less than ten people were confirmed to die from steroids in a year and it gets more attention than heroin. Also, just about anything goes for steroids these days from what I understand. I took Human Chorionic Gonatropin every day for at least 10 years with the rest of my vitamins because it was on the A list by my nutritionist and heard now that this is now supposedly a no-no...

[reallyenuff]

Not sure you're married, but as me and my buddies say, "you could get some". Smart, cute, apparently sensible(!), and likes baseball stories... what more could a guy want?

Now, I had a no-hitter string of my own I'd like to share with you....

[demfriend]

Thnaks for asking the question I have been asking for all to see and the answer is??? I have been confused by the Obama response as I know he is very much a teacher of the Constitution so he does know what it says and yet to let the previous administration completely off the hook for war crimes bothers me to the core. Too many of our young, brave and our best are dead and maimed as a result of these criminals lying and making war based on oil and anger at Saddam for trying to kill Bush's daddy. It is a time of great shame we are looking at and our response to this must be directly what we should be expected to have if we are to believe what we have believed since the USofA came into being. Why did we have pride in our country before if we are only to sweep this under some rug and pretend nothing happened? If we were to look at these people as if they were representing another country would they get a pass from us? For us to once again hold our heads high we must, we have to treat these people like they are what they are.

[kwalters]

I voted for Obama cautiously­...knowing full well he voted for the disgusting and flat out wrong FISA bill. Obama voted to provide retroactive immunity for law breaking telecoms and basically put the President above the law. There is no justification for that vote...NON­E.

[MagnusAvarus]

Keep it up girl ;-)
This is damn funny! Doing Alaska proud.
Will Rogers and Mark Twain knew that
if you can break the barrier with laughter
sometimes you can even get 'em to think.

[Willow712]

I used to be a prison nurse. in a correction facility in Colorado. They drum it into our heads over and over that it is not our job to "Punish" the inmates. Their punishment is their incarceration. Our job is to keep the public safe by containing these people.

Doesn't the Geneva Convention state that all you have to give is your name, rank and serial number? Gitmo should be for containment, not for torture. They got no habeas corpus rights, they have been tortured at times. Hm, sounds like the ideal way to make a terrorist.

In my opinion, when they have their multimillion dollar investigation of Clinton, he should have walked in, leaned into the microphone and said, "My private life is nobody's business. Back off." And walked out.

Torture, on the other hand? Its everyone's business.

[bobash]

Damn, you're good.

[research]

the CONservatives Patron Saint BARRY GOLDWATER:

"I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. [applause]

Let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue."

Way too many of us and congress believe this

recipe for endless world war.

We need some self restraint, or all is lost.

[mollyjackson]

Vice President Cheney asked for the release of these memos back in March, not just yesterday after the Obama administration released these memos. So the Obama administration goes halfway. The Obama administration releases the memos that describe the kind of torture -- and, by the way, we're now calling anything that causes any discomfort torture. It's like women being allowed to get away with saying their husbands torture them if they shout at them. Those are about the kind of restraints we're putting on interrogation now. I'll guarantee you -- I don't know this -- but the morale among the counterterrorism people in the field has got to be in the basement after all this, especially since there are memos that Vice President Cheney just referenced that show the success of the techniques, and the Obama administration does not release those.

[Prakosh]

Since over 130 people died in American custody and at least 35 of them have been confirmed to have died from injuries sustained during interrogations it would seem that most of these tactics did contribute to death, of course if you have been listening to Limbaugh go on and on about face slapping you probably don't think anything that causes death is torture. How can you be sure that "the memos that Vice President Cheney just referenced that show the success of the techniques"? He swore up and down that Iraq had "reconstituted nuclear weapons" too. And of course he said that Iraq had WMDs as well. . . we never found any of those did we. Let's just say that Cheney doesn't have a lot of credibility. This is a man who was so scared he took his house off Google earth. Has anything happened to Joe Biden since he put the house back on Google earth? NO!!! Cheney is a paranoid individual who still hasn't dealt with the fact that he was generally wrong about almost everything.

[kwalters]

mollyjackson: WHAT??? SERIOUS???

"...by the way, we're now calling anything that causes any discomfort torture. It's like women being allowed to get away with saying their husbands torture them if they shout at them..."

Are you attempting to marginalize torture? Most people are upset about detainees being WATERBOARDED. Or being put in a coffin-sized box loaded with catepillars or stinging insects. Or being put in stress positions for hours at a time. Or being sleep deprived for days and days.

ALL OF THIS...IN OUR NAME...WIT­HOUT CHARGES...­WITHOUT HABEAS CORPUS!!!!

What America did you grow up in? Maybe you need to hop a time machine and go back to the era of the Stazi in East Germany or better yet, back to Hitler's Germany...

[pjburke]

First of all, its FORMER Vice President Cheney. Joe Biden is THE Vice President.

Next: The Court ordered those legal memos to be released. There is no "halfway" to it.

Next: FORMER VP Cheney had six years to declassify and release whatever he wanted. He didn't. Instead, Cheney ordered the CIA to destroy 92 interrogation videotapes­... probably because they showed torture... which is a war crime. Cheney's blowing smoke. There are no memos showing any "success."

Next:

Torture is described with fairly rigorous precision in the Criminal Code.

The legal memos describe, and attempt to legalize (after the fact), actual acts of torture.

The restraints that we're putting back on is to stop interrogators from beating, choking, drowning, freezing, or shooting any more detainees to death... all of which have been done, and are already documented. Referrals for criminal investigation were made... but the Bush DOJ ignored those referrals, letting those cases quietly die.

We're ending the practice of guards sodomizing and raping the young children of female detainees in front of them... and filming it in order to terrorize those women by showing it to them again, and again, and again.

We're ending the practice of interrogators slicing detainees genitals with razor blades and burning them with lit cigarettes and live electric wires.

You can get the Red Cross report online and find out what was done in our name.

But you won't.

[AlaskanLady]

Shannyn is one of the most articulate, insightful radio hosts in Alaska. I listen whenever she speaks.

[mollymac]

She is great! Finally a voice of reason and funny too!