To sTiVo

Thank you for your response to my post.

Full disclosure:

I have been an Astros fan for 24 years. (I am driving 1000 miles this weekend to see the Biggio 3000 hits celebration, woohoo!!)

I cringed when the Astros signed Roger Clemens. The man is so arrogant that he named all his sons using names starting with K. He threw part of a jagged broken bat at Mike Piazza. I did not want this man on my favorite team.

That does not mean I rooted against the Astros when Clemens was pitching. It does mean I was relieved this year when he left the team.

I say this to clarify my personal position on Barry Bonds. Bonds has cultivated an adversarial persona. I don't know how much of this persona is due to the fact that he is black. At least some of it I am sure. But he has remained arrogant and obstinate even after admitting steroid use.

Of course I cannot speak for anyone else. But for myself, I would be hoping that Bonds would retire today if he played for my team. And I would never, ever raise the pathetic and disingenuous argument that "he never got caught" so we need to give him the "benefit of the doubt." He has admitted using steroid treatments. Nothing further is necessary.

P.S. Putting an asterisk after Bonds' record is nonsense. You cannot discount his home run record without applying the same discount to every record that is in any way associated with any game Bonds played in.

..with increasing numbers of girls picking up the habit ...

Biting your fingernails is a habit. Cigarette smoking is a drug addiction.

Calling this extremely addictive drug a "habit" does not make people less likely to begin smoking and end up with a life-long addiction.

He is set for life. As long as he doesn't get a prison sentence, he will spend the rest of his years earning six or seven figure speaking fees. That is assuming he doesn't play king-maker with some other nitwit.

The only hope of making this man pay for his crimes is to wait until there is a Democrat in the Oval Office to prosecute him, so he doesn't get his auto-pardon.

It doesn't matter how we judge him now, or how history judges him. Right now he walks away on top. And that is what sucks the most to me.

People who choose Biblical Received Wisdom over cognition believe that support for Israel is a requirement. There was some fundamentalist evangelist type (Falwell? Robertson?? One of those guys) who said that God would stop caring about the US if we stopped supporting Israel.

God is going to come down or send Jesus down or some such thing when certain conditions are met in the Holy Land. And the Holy Land is Israel. This is why it is an issue. This is why there are millions of people here in Flyover Country who hate Jews but love Israel.

It doesn't matter to most people in this part of the country what happens to Israel as a state. It is all about Old Testament prophecy and the Second Coming.

Should I hope he wins the Republican nomination, because he is such a non-viable candidate? Or should I dread him as the Republican candidate because he would make such a damaging president?

I can't imagine many people here in Flyover Country being thrilled by his candidacy. The mayor of New York is never going to play well in Oklahoma. Not that a Democrat would ever take this state in the current political environment.

I do still fear a Clinton candidacy though. She is so hated around here. Voters who would never leave their homes to vote for Giuliani would come out in droves to vote against Clinton. That would be damaging for Democratic candidates down the ballot.

I can't discern how Obama or Edwards would fare when it comes to getting Republicans out to vote against them. Neither of them has as big of an established hate-base as Clinton does.

But no matter who the Democrat is, there aren't that many people around here who would gladly vote for Giuliani.

The way I understood it, Giuliani was saying that he had spent as much time at Ground Zero as the cleanup workers in order to refute their claims that breathing the crap in the air had made them sick. Yes, he was grabbing a chunk of political capital as well. But mostly he was saying that he was there as much as they were, and he didn't get sick, so they have nothing to complain about.

This is about something much more vile than some cynical grab for the spotlight. This is about avoiding responsibility for telling lies that led innocent people to their deaths. This is about telling more lies to cover previous lies.

Talking about the time he spent with the Yankees, or talking about his other qualities, or talking about the amount of time other politicians spent at Ground Zero is actually hiding the crime. I don't think that's how we want to respond to this lie.

If he is prosecuted before the end of Bush's term, he will just be pardoned. If he is not prosecuted before the end of Bush's term, he may take advantage of the innate ineptitude of Democrats, get another Republican elected president, and just be pardoned.

If I could believe that one of the Democrats would win no matter what, I would say "wait." Otherwise, it may be necessary to go ahead and start now and take our chances.

I think it is crucial to the future of the US as a democracy to put this man in jail for a long time.

What to do, what to do.