Marian Jones vs. Lance Armstrong – Who wins

• Here’s a rant about fairness: Remember Olympic track star Marion Jones? She served 6 months jail time in 2008 for admitting to lying to a grand jury about using performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs). She lost everything – the respect and admiration of fans, her home, her gold medals, millions of dollars and more.

  After being a world champion, Olympic gold medalist and NCAA champion in two sports (basketball and Track & field), she’s anonymous, discredited and was severely punished.

  I believe that Lance Armstrong perpetrated an immensely larger fraud, massive cover-up and countless lies, threats of lawsuits and coercion of those who knew he used PEDs. The timing of his admission is suspect; the statute of limitations for prosecution passed – so there’s no threat of jail time for him for all the lying he did to grand juries and others. His public “admission” to Oprah is something we all already knew that he did. He had been outed and was apparently the last “clean” cyclist from his era.

  Everything about it is a cowardly PR move. His fake shame is galling. No doubt he is an unusual athletic specimen and I personally have great respect for his mental and physical toughness. However his allegations that “everyone used PEDs” so he was simply doing what everyone else was doing and “leveled the playing field” rings hollow. Lance then continued to lie while others took the fall. That is unheroic. He was simply the highest profile cheater and lied for the longest time.

  Marion was high profile, too. She shamefully admitted her role in the BALCO scandal, admitted to lying about it and served her time. Oh yeah, Marion had two toddlers at home during her federal sentence, but she did her time and moved on. No PR machine provided her a script – she tearfully admitted her participation (ironically also to Oprah…) and took her punishment like a….woman.

  Will Lance pay the price for his lying? Will he get a pass because of all the good he’s done with Livestrong? Not for me – his golden-boy image is permanently tarnished – yellow, but not in a champion yellow-jersey way.  Just yellow and cowardly.

Oakland’s 2012 Crime Wave out of control… surprised?

Oakland’s 2012 Crime Wave out of control… surprised?

I go to Oakland occasionally to visit relatives, or I pass through on my way to the Bay Area.  Always am cautious, lock my car and stay indoors when I’m there.  The city has the bad reputation.

Sadly, 2012 was a banner year for murders in Oakland, California. In a city where it is unfortunately a part of daily life for many, it was a particularly awful year. Among the murders there was a crazed gunman who opened fire at a small college. Not sure how many people he killed in that rampage, but it was too many. It contributed to a spike in the already-too-high-number of Oakland murders.

The real problem with Oakland (and MANY other cities and communities in California and heck across the U.S.) is gang members killing people.  Sometimes they actually hit their intended target – another gang member, but all too often they hit someone just trying to go to the grocery store, or take their child for a walk.   THAT is screwed up and way too many people live in fear.  I am definitely hyper-alert and fearful when I visit Oakland.

Now, it really grates on me to always hear these murders referred to as “gang violence.”   Calling it “gang violence” takes the responsibility of the killer – usually a shooter – and makes it into an uncontrollable,  impersonal problem, an unfortunate accident or occurrence.  Calling the murders “gang violence” minimizes the destruction of lives and lumps the losses and deaths into something that we are seemingly helpless to prevent.  It’s like people’s deaths were caused by a swarm of bees, the flu, earthquakes – stuff in the natural world that we cannot predict, nor control.

Well, it’s time the police chief (or in Oakland the temporary substitute chief) start to clamp down and control the gang members.  The police everywhere need to quit apologizing for the city having too many murders.  It’s time for all police chiefs to stop saying sorry to their citizens for not protecting them against thugs. They can’t predict when an idiot is going to pull the trigger and spray a crowd with bullets.  It’s not the police who are indiscriminately firing guns into their enemies or into someone who “disrespected” them.

The shooters are bad people who are often members of gangs and who are making the conscious decision to pull the trigger and fire a weapon at another human being.  They are not a swarm or a plague – they are rotten, terrible people who do not deserve to walk among those of us in civil society.

It’s time to charge felons in possession of firearms, and anyone committing a crime with a firearm with a federal felony with mandatory federal jail time.  Notice I said “charge,”  not necessarily convict.  I’m not trying to circumvent the justice system here – but I want harsh, mandatory sentences and  justice when it’s due.

The innocent victims deserve no less than our harshest punishment for the ultimate crime – murder of another human being.

Baby steps….

Blogs. Weblogs.  I’ve read hundreds of  ’em.  Some are intimate snapshots of people’s lives.  Some are retreads of news and they seem to lack personality or fresh ideas.  Some blogs give me the feeling that I’ve peered a bit too far into the psyche of someone and maybe I don’t really want to know them in real life.  But peeking occasionally into their thoughts satisfies my curiosity. 

So I’m starting out blogging.  I will still read other blogs to satisfy my curiosity and will of course get lots of inspiration from the news.  Many sources of news – fair & balanced, harshly biased, allegedly unbiased, entertainment, sports – all of it!  I’m a news junkie – was a Broadcast News English major so following news of all sorts seems to be hard-wired in me.   

There’s a lot of interesting, wacky stuff going on in our world. This blog will serve as my sounding board and reaction to events that happen.  Sometimes the perspective will be belly-button type scrutiny.  Others musings may be more universal in nature.  Regardless, I hope it’s an interesting journey for all of us.