Taking a step back....

Ugh.

Let’s give the chorus their happily ever after and imagine for a moment watching the evening news and watching Barry Bonds shackled at the wrists, clad in an orange jumpsuit heading for a vacation at the public’s expense.

The media orgasms and many have a warm glow. We hear plaudits about how the children have learned a valuable lesson from Bonds’ conviction.

Final price tag: somewhere between $60-100 million.

According to USDA 2007, just fewer than 11 percent of American households experience food insecurity. Put another way, 35.5 million Americans including 12.6 million children were not always sure when or where they would eat their next meal in 2006. With job losses mounting due to the global economic meltdown coupled with the increasing population we can be sure that the total is much higher today.

It is probably north of 15 million right now but we’ll just use 15 million for this; don’t you feel better now with Bonds incarcerated? Just think, there are 15 million children in the U.S. of A that will go to bed in the aftermath of this with three thoughts: “steroids are bad” "perjury is wrong" and “I’m so hungry.”

Of course, with government funding cuts coming to many school nutritional programs many may not eat anything of substance since there’s little at home and nothing at school.

But at least the children are safer with Barry Lamar Bonds behind bars. I’m sure they’re suitably grateful that the government, media and many overweight sports fans are so concerned with their well being that they cheered from the sidelines as perjury laws were broken, constitutional rights violated and money that could have been used to feed them were used by people determined to put Barry Lamar Bonds in the clink for perjury over his anabolic steroid usage.

Of course, this hasn’t happened yet much to the chagrin of many in the media and those that believe everything they read; the potential delay of Bonds’ trial as the government prosecution is looking to postpone it as they seek to appeal Judge Susan Ilston’s refusal to allow certain evidence to be used in court because of how it was obtained in some cases (such as violations of the fourth amendment and perjury as Jeff Novitzky apparently deceived the court, charging that the agent’s affidavit for a search warrant “did not disclose that a grand jury subpoena had been issued for the same material and that a motion to quash the subpoena was pending in the same district”—deceiving the court is perjury for those of you scoring at home).

However, if you want to protect the children you need to fight evil with evil; if Bonds commits perjury and breaks the law then the law must be broken and perjury committed and tens of millions of tax dollars be committed (even if children go to bed hungry) so justice can be done!

Barry Lamar Bonds is a bad man but if “society needs protected from big headed liars” as one enlightened person opined on the San Francisco Chronicle’s feedback section then might I suggest people equip their children with polygraph machines and a measuring tape as a means of defence against any “big headed liars” like Bonds that may menace them on their way to school? If a man from a van asks them to come aboard with the promise of candy be sure to train them to hook them up to the polygraph machine, ask them if they’ve ever used steroids and ask for a cranial measurement; if it checks out it’s all good!

Hop on board, eat the candy and enjoy the ride—what’s the worst thing that can happen since society is working hard to get big headed liars off the street?

Yes, Bonds is not somebody to look up to but from my point of view those that are hoping to see him do time regardless of the costs required (monetary and otherwise) pose a much bigger danger to children. Let them starve for their own good—malnutrition is bad but possibly growing up and playing major league baseball while denying using steroids is far, far worse so let’s do what’s right and make sure Barry Lamar Bonds suffers for what he did.

Hopefully one day folks will have their dreams come true and wake up to that glorious morning where they can begin their day with the heady knowledge that their quality of life is much better now that Bonds is behind bars.

I wonder how many will spend that first day going into the poorer sections of where they live and telling the hungry children that despite the rumblings in their stomachs they’re far better off than they were the day before?

Seeing as this has all been for their benefit we can only assume that the municipalities will have adequate crowd control personnel on hand to deal with the overflow.

Or not.

Yes, Bonds broke the law and may well skate but guess what? There are a lot of child molesters, brokers in kiddie porn and the child-sex trade out there that have broken the law and have yet to face justice.

Where do we want law enforcement and government money being spent on: eradicating these evils or making sure a surly ballplayer does hard time? Do we want to see eight figures spent of feeding children or seeing a PED using ballplayer that lied to the government but isn't named Miguel Tejada behind bars?

It’s about perspective—we’ve lost all semblance of it.

Best Regards

John