Taxes--They're Landis' Fault

!@#damn Commies Taxin' Everythin'! I Oughta Go Off the Grid and Live Off Shootin' Squirrels for Dinner!: yep, if you didn't think blaming poor Floyd Landis for the entire downfall of the previously pure and drug-free sport of cycling was enough, and as if the boy weren't already having a crappy enough week being blamed for the breakup of antidoping program honchos ACE right before he has his last-ditch appeal at CAS, now there's a brand new outrage to stick on him: he alone is sucking up your precious tax dollars that could be used to fill deserving potholes in your own neighborhood with his malicious selfish whining about "Justice this!" and "Fair play that!" Leaving aside that no-one's been crying about using tax dollars to exonerate a pack of couch-glomming overpaid baseball players whose necks and biceps clearly increased in size from toothpicks to actual redwoods over the suspicious span of about a week, and that I actually have no idea how much the agency at issue is publicly or privately funded, it's a public body, assclowns, just like the same court that I help pay for that your !@# gets dragged into for OUI after your four-hour tailgate before a Pats game or the schools that educate your kids on collective civic responsibility in commie socialist criminal-coddling high-school government class. You want a nice fast cheap club-wielding private vigilante squad instead of pesky expensive due process rights? You go convince Pat "Dick" McQuaid and the same self-righteous teams that engage their athletes in systemic doping to personally pony up for one! AP newsflash: Landis also to blame for Pat "Dick" McQuaid's hemorrhoids, Dick "Dick" Pounds scrofula, the high price of gasoline, the subprime market collapse, that infernal hangnail Bjarne Riis just can't shake...

Rebel(lin) With a Cause: moving on to riders who haven't had the prime of their careers mangled so badly it no longer matters in practical terms whether they actually doped or not, quiet 36-year-old veteran Davide Rebellin slaps away the surging jailbait and holds on to the slimmest of leads and an onslaught of frantic challenges to keep the win at Paris-Nice as fine former Contador teammate/emerging Classics specialist Luis Leon Sanchez snags the stage after a brutal series of attacks in the last few kilometers. Yeeeee-haaaaah! The Italian tifosi, however, are left wondering, "what the hell is wrong with Cunego?" As Gilberto Simoni said, you can't milk that Piccolo Principe baby-prodigy rep forever! Meantime, road warrior Kristin Armstrong utterly demolished an impressive international field at the Exeter time trial, and, in body-count news, poor Linus Gerdemann snapped his femur at Tirreno and is off the bike for six weeks, bad news for young but high-caliber High Road. Get better soon Linus!

Punk-Ass Move of the Year Award: yep, it's early in the season, but I'm fairly confident that disgusting as this beautiful sport can be--and it's been pretty damn disgusting of late, let's face it--nothing can match the sheer low-rent bottom-dwelling scumsuckery of accosting grieving father Kevin Van Impe for a submit-or-be-banned doping control as he fills out the paperwork for his lost infant son's funeral arrangements. Of course, it must have made sense at the time, because naturally the first thing a parent thinks of when they lose a child is to run to the bathroom to jam an EPO-loaded syringe into their !@# to soothe their loss and prepare for the upcoming spring Classics. The riders, in response, showed handsome solidarity for once by delaying the start of Paris-Nice a few minutes in protest. What the hell were those soulless amoral freaks even thinking?

A Note from the Racejunkie Marketing-and-Raging-Insecurity Department: okay, so I've been asked to add some links and stuff and I've added 'em. And I'm happy to do it, but frankly, I'm still something of a tech nit, and this does take a bit of time. Now I need feedback from both my faithful readers--you want me to keep it up, or not? Either way is good by me--though I must admit, anything that gives me an excuse to screw around on the computer looking at Roberto Heras videos for two hours is worth it, and I've got you to thank for that. So what's the word, (both of you) folks?