Raffy & Rove

You don't have to care about baseball to get into this story, as long as you despise that #@%$! Bush!

A close compatriot of President Bush squats in a scandal so malodorous it led news shows from coast to coast. It's a scandal that some say is too hot for Bush to comment on. But there was the President, speaking without a stammer or stutter on this issue of pressing national concern.

There was only one curious twist. The scandalized bosom buddy was not the bosomy Karl Rove, but Baltimore Orioles first baseman Rafael Palmeiro...

Rafael Palmeiro and the Politics of Distraction
Common Dreams

Good analysis by Dave Zirin! The major points (and I'm paraphrasing):

• Bush weirdly front-burnered the steroid issue in his 2003 State Of The Union address in order to distract us from the build-up to his war!
  
  
• That came back to bite him this week when his friend & campaign donor Rafael Palmeiro became the first star ballplayer to be caught in the ensuing crackdown (leading Bush to express complete support for Raffy, as he has for Rove)!
  
  
• Steroid snitch/Palmiero accuser Jose Canseco--newly credible after Raffy's bust--says that when Bush owned the Texas Rangers he knew his players were juiced!

Zirin concludes:

We should press Palmeiro on what his friend in the owner's box, the former cheerleader from Yale, did and did not allow. We should take these Politics of Distraction, which Bush hoisted into our lives and drop the whole stinking, steaming, anabolic load on his front door.

* * *Update: Zirin writes Edge of Sports, a weekly column about sports and politics! You can read archived installments & subscribe for free here!