I wasn’t going to post this. I wrote it yesterday to relieve some tension, but I figured what the heck. …

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I hate politics. I just have to say that every now and then.

Forget the money spent on all those Acme products in hopes of catching The Roadrunner, or the millions spent to catch Roger, Barry and Lance. We’ll never get it back.

What stands out the most to me in the stumbling, bumbling, fumbling effort by the government to slap a face onto its “War Against Steroids” is that we the people walked away with one lousy conviction for obstruction of justice.

That one went to Barry Bonds, whose sentence for his alleged crime was 30 days “mansion” arrest. And even that is under appeal.

Remember my rant about that one? As ego-free as I am, it was one of my better ones.

It was short and sweet. Warning: This one won’t be short, because it’s a long flight from D.C. to Houston, and it won’t be sweet, because I just spent a week in D.C.

Lets hope we can now put the steroids investigations behind us. I know they have been a pain in my butt for far too long.

Politics.

Why isn’t that a four-letter word?

I thought baseball needed to do something about steroids, so I didn’t have a huge problem with Congress holding hearings about steroids use in the sport.

My thought was that at least for a day or two those idiots on Capitol Hill would be distracted from messing up something else.

Plus I figured if Congress called out Major League Baseball, its brain-dead commissioner and the sleazy owners who were raking in the profits from the home-run derby the game had become, something would be done to stop the madness.

But, as they tend to do, these clowns took it too far.

The first dumb thing they did was ignore the owners. Congress subpoenaed a group of players, forcing them under threat of being cited and tried for contempt of Congress if they didn’t show up, but the politicians didn’t demand even one owner show up to talk about their role in the Steroids Era.

Do you want to know why? Come on, that’s a clown question, bro. You know why.

But to be fair, here is the coachspeak from Congressman Henry Waxman, a California Democrat, gave to that question before the 2005 hearings.

“We’re just trying to set a framework here,” he said on Meet the Press. “What we’d like baseball to do is admit they have a problem, show what they are doing to fix it, and make sure that we can set the record straight for young people. This is bad. This is bad for their health and it’s bad for the kids.”

You wanted baseball to admit it had a problem, yet you didn’t force any team owners (AKA campaign contributors) to sit down and testify that they didn’t know what was going on? How convenient.

Oh, and don’t get me started on that crap about doing it for the kids.

Even at the end of the Clemens fiasco the government was still running that tired, fake, false line that the gullible public falls for almost every time. It’s for the kids.

They tried to tell the jury that because of Clemens kids were thinking about getting on steroids.

Give me a freaking break. Before Congress got involved, kids weren’t sitting around middle schools thinking they need to get on HGH because Roger Clemens used the stuff. Talk about a crock.

You people will fall for anything won’t you?

If Clemens was doing television commercials touting the benefits of HGH, then I could imagine Little Johnny saying, “I gotta get me some of that Clemens juice.”

But you know darn well that wasn’t happening. Until the government got involved nobody on the planet knew about or even admits to hearing about Clemens and performance-enhancing drugs except for Brian McNamee, one of the worst witnesses in the history of bad witnesses.

Yet, this was for the kids?

Y’all fall for that so easily that a few years ago you let the weasels in Texas government throw a few million dollars away to drug test all these steroid-using high school athletes.

Remember that mess?

What were the numbers? A whopping 21 positives out of more than 51,600 tests, which is a 0.0004 positive result rate.

Hell, we might as well start giving high school boys pregnancy tests. Back then, the uninformed legislator who pushed that “for the kids” crap upon you called me out like I was the crazy one for questioning his waste of taxpayer money.

I wrote that it was ridiculous to start a testing program for something so few were doing. We have bigger problems in our high schools than steroid use among athletes (hello … KIDS CAN’T READ), and as much as steroid use is bad for children, education is a better way to stop it than drug testing.

Regardless, since he had no idea how many high school athletes were using steroids, it was obvious to me that it was a waste of money.

His response:

“It is true, I don’t know (how many athletes are using steroids). That is precisely the reason I authored the bill creating a testing program. A primary benefit of the testing is to get a handle on our problem and see exactly what its scope is, along with deterring potential use.”

Yeah, $3-4 million to “get a handle” on our “problem.” No, politicians are our damn problem.

Yeah, I’m rambling. I’m rambling because politicians make me sick. And this stupid United airplane doesn’t have DirecTv, or a movie, or the Internet, or any magazines, or pillows, or one LOUSY DATGUM BLANKET, and I’m freezing.

Just the word politics pisses me off. It’s a four-letter word that elicits four-letter word responses from me.

Put an “ician” on the end of it and my one-word response gets longer too, 12 letters long, if you know what I mean and it starts with an M. Yeah, manipulation or maybe manslaughter. What dirty word were y’all thinking?

I tried to interview several of the Congressmen who were part of the Committee on Government Oversight and Reform, but, as you might imagine, they’re not exactly talking to people like me these days.

One had his spokesperson, who didn’t want to be quoted, send me an email to inform me that the Congressman was referring me to Waxman, because “it was HIS investigation.”

Three others said they couldn’t comment because of the judge’s gag order. I informed them the judge lifted the gag order. I guess it is a coincidence that all of their email and phone systems have suddenly shut down since then, because I haven’t heard back from any of them.

Waxman’s spokesperson told me he was traveling last week and unavailable. What about this week? He would probably be unavailable this week too. What about next week? He might not be available next week either, but he would make sure to include me on the email list when the verdict comes out so I could get his statement. Then, it was he only said he “may” have a statement after the verdict. I’m waiting.

You get where I’m going here? You don’t think that had Clemens been found guilty of all charges these rascals would have been holding live press conferences all over the place?

If I covered politics I’d be looking for these slimy scoundrels beneath the rock under which they hide. But did I mention that I hate politics? Oh, I did?

I love covering sports, because there is so much joy and triumph to cover. Politics is one big dirty mess. Always has been, always will be.

If you have family and friends who are politicians, tell those miscreations (another 12-letter M word for your Scrabble board) to stay the hell away from sports and I’ll stay the hell away from them.

And when did all airline food start coming in a box? This ain’t food. This is the stuff you buy at the zoo to feed the animals.

I’d better put this laptop away before the flight attendant has me arrested upon arrival.

As it is, my testy emails to several congressmen the last few days are subject to get me audited and put on the no-fly list.