The Sad Decline and Stupid Fall of Aaron Walker

 

Most people don't study history beyond the absolute minimum that they're required to school, which is too bad. Because of this, folks are usually inclined to see conflicts as being struggles between good and evil.

Actually, that's only rarely the case. Far more often such battles are what I like to call "scumbag on scumbag violence." The war between Hitler and Stalin is the most famous example of this, but hardly the only one.

Christ, even I forget that from time to time and find myself wanting to jump in on the side of who I perceive to be "the good guys." I was certainly prepared to do so this past spring when the story of Brett Kimberlin and Aaron Walker exploded on the blogosphere. And after I read this, I really wanted to get involved.

As you might have noticed, I didn't. Here's why.

First, too many of the main players on "my side" of the psychodrama were involved with the Brietbart empire. And anyone who has paid attention over the last four years knows that they are chronic liars. They've broken multiple stories that were later discredited, in whole or in part, within weeks if not days. Brietbart's Boy Wonder, James O'Keefe, was facing the very real prospect of federal prison time because of his sleazy tactics, which even Andrew Brietbart himself had to distance himself from.

I decided years ago to wait for the other shoe to drop before commenting on a Brietbart story. And there's always another shoe waiting to drop.

Second, I became uncomfortable with the narrative that was building around Kimberlin himself. You couldn't read anything coming from the right about Kimberlin that didn't describe him as a "convicted terrorist," which is weapons-grade nonsense.

I'm of the firm opinion that Brett Kimberlin is a Very Bad Man indeed, and his criminal history seems to back that up. He was convicted of major drug importation and perjury before he apparently decided to get into the big time. That resulted in what became known as the Speedway Bombings, and that's where I have a major problem with the narrative.

According to contemporaneous mainstream media sources, Kimberlin was having an odd relationship with the underage daughter of his then-girlfriend. The girl's grandmother objected and was shortly thereafter murdered. From what I understand, the Speedway Bombings were conducted to distract the police from investigating the murder. It's important to note that Kimberlin wasn't charged with or convicted of having a sexual relationship with the girl or the grandmother's murder. But he was convicted of the Speedway Bombings.

However, that conviction wasn't under any domestic terrorism statute that I'm aware of. Nor do the Speedway Bombings constitute "terrorism" as anyone who speaks English as a first language would understand the word.

Dictionary.com's primary definition of "terrorism" is "the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for political purposes." Nobody suggests that the Speedway Bombings were a political act. If the court proceedings and the media are to be believed, they were an attempt to obstruct justice. That's awfully bad, but it isn't generally accepted as terrorism.

The Sppedway Bombings would make Kimberlin a murderous asshole (because nobody sets bombs without understanding that they could kill somebody, and one of his victims later committed suicide as result of his injuries,) but that does not make him a terrorist.

I've lived my life convinced that words mean something, and I tend not to trust anyone that doesn't share that conviction. Phrases like terrorism either mean something, or they don't. And Brett Kimberlin wasn't exactly Timothy McVieigh or Abu Nidal.

So the Breitbart folks began losing me right at the starting gun. Kimberlin is plenty bad, but they worked their hardest to make him even worse, which further raised my suspicions.

Kimberlin is also wildly litigious in a way that the left has made a staple of their discourse. A previously unknown liberal blogger named Seth Allen was sued by Kimberlin for writing about him, which is where Aaron Walker comes in.

Kimberlin v. Allen was litigated in Maryland. Walker was a claims compliance lawyer from Virginia, without standing before the Maryland bar, who decided to act as Allen's lawyer (or not, depending on who you believe or on what day. Walker has repeatedly referrred to Kinberlin's attempt to get him to "break privilidge", which wouldn't apply.).

Kimberlin sought the identity of Walker (who writing under the name Aaron Worthing at the time) in an attempt to silence and discredit him. As most of you know, Walker was subsequently "outed" and he and his wife were fired from their jobs at Professional Healthcare Resources, Inc. According to Walker and his allies, this was due to Kimberlin's "harassment."

Walker however has proven to be an untrustworthy narrator. His other blog, Everybody Draw Mohammad - which was written under the name Aaron Worthing - becomes important in judging his character at this point.

Even though my real name is out there for anyone interested enough to find it, I write under a pseudonym, mostly because it amuses me and I'm too lazy to change it. I have absolutely no problem with anyone doing exactly the same thing.

On the other hand, I don't ask anyone to do anything under their own real names that I myself wouldn't do in public, without the cloak of anonymity. If you don't believe me, Google away!

Everybody Draw Mohammad operated under a different model. Walker asked his readers to submit what would be considered blasphemous cartoons under their real names and locations, while suggesting that they would invite violent retribution. In fact, he invited said violent retribution to be directed his way. He actually dared them to, saying "Come on, bitches. Aaron Worthing, Manassas, Virginia. But if you bring it be ready; we practice the Second Amendment here, newly reinforced by the MacDonald decision."

The only problem is that he never disclosed that he wasn't really Aaron Worthing. He says that he did this because his wife wouldn't let him, which is among the most piss-poor excuses for anything that I've ever heard. Walker's subsequent writings, both private and public, indicate that he thought the prospect of violent reprisals were very real and he asked his contributors to undertake them while he lied to them about his own identity.

That, I thought, was the beginning of the other Brietbartian shoe dropping. Even though I had then decided that Walker had engaged in one of the sleaziest blogging tactics imaginable and that I didn't trust him, I still gave the rest of his story the benefit of the doubt  and kept my mouth shut. The fact that I had determined that everybody in this story was swine certainly helped.

For reasons that still strike me as being beyond the edge of sanity, Walker decided to sue Kimberlin. And that's where the Walker narrative falls apart, since it was only a matter of time before discovery materials leaked. Liberal blogger Bill Schmalfeldt started publishing them this week.

Lest I start being accused of being in the tank for anybody here, I should offer my opinion of Schmalfeldt, which is that he's a coward and a pain in the ass. He has no compunction after going after whomever he sees fit, but defensively warns his targets that retaliating is unwise because he has Parkinson's. And he does this repeatedly. Hardly an article of his can be read without hearing about Parkinson's and his suffering of it makes any of his antagonists look like shits.

Schmalfeldt uses his infirmity as both a sword and shield, making him at least as much of an asshole as Walker is. Both of them are operating from their self-perceived victimhood and seeking to be rewarded for it.

Having said that, Schmalfeldt's discovery dump (which I can't help but believe is illegally obtained. His arguments to Walker's lawyer are, in my opinion, nothing short of a mockery of common sense) are invaluable in further determining both the merits of Walker's case and his character.

As it happens, Walker's separation from Professional Healthcare Resources, Inc is a little more complicated than he would have you believe.

Throughout this mess, Walker has maintained that this is about his "First Amendment rights," which is categorical nonsense. In this case, Congress isn't stopping him from saying anything, which is sort of what the First Amendment protects him from.

In fact, if Walker has anyone to blame for infringement of his First Amendment rights, it's his former employer. When he notified PHRI of his predicament (apparently well before before Kimberlin did,) Walker himself said that he wrote under an assumed name so as to "keep this from affecting me in real life," a consideration he encouraged his contributors at Everybody Draw Mohammad to disregard, in large part because they thought he did.

In most states, employers retain non-contract empolyees "at will." That means that they can fire them for any reason, including "off-the-clock" activities, like blogging. I wholeheartedly don't agree with this premise, but most Brietbatians do until it bites them on the ass, especially if that ass happens to be liberal. I also think that it's a major breach of Internet protocol to snitch to employers what you've said online but so far as I'm aware, it isn't actionable.

Walker ends each and every one of his posts with, in part, this: "My wife and I have lost our jobs due to the harassment of convicted terrorist Brett Kimberlin."

That also turns out not to be true, at least not according to his correspondence with PHRI's outside counsel, Jim Hodges. Walker first notified PHRI of his blogging activity, including Everybody Draw Mohammed, the morning that he learned that Kimberlin discovered his identity. There is nothing in the discovery dump that indicates that Kimberlin or his associates had notified PHRI of Walker's activities before he was terminated. In fact, the first mention of "protests and formal diplomatic actions" comes 31 days after Walker was fired.

I will grant you that Bill Schmalfeldt might not be releasing all of the documents that he has, and I'm almost willing to bet that he's not. He's every bit the partisan hack that everybody else is in this shitstorm and he very much has a dog in this fight, in so far as he he doesn't often describe what Kimberlin was convicted of "40 years ago," which isn't exactly true. And Kimberlin wasn't convicted, as Schmalfeldt will have you believe, of a crime. He was convicted of dozens of them.

According to Hodges' email to Walker, Walker wasn't fired for Everybody Draw Mohammad, although it points out that it was in itself more than enough cause. Walker was dismissed for, quite literally, sloppy lawyering. From what we've seen thus far, that's incontrovertible. Furthermore, our boy Aaron was handling his blog-related legitation in his office, on company time. If you can show me an employer who thinks that's kosher, I'll show you somebody that every blogger on earth should go to work for right away.

Walker has also taken multiple stands on the possibility of radical Muslim violence against him, depending on his interests at the time. He actually invites it under his supposed name at Everybody Draw Mohammad, but minimizes the possibility it in his correspondence to PHRI

He says in public that he bought a gun to protect himself from both fanatical Muslims and Brett Kimberlin, but minimizes the danger of both to his employer.

Once PHRI had access to his writing, what were they supposed to do? If "terrorist" Muslims or the "terrorist" Kimberlin were going to threaten his life, as he said in public that they were going to do, where better to do it than where they can reliably find him during daytime hours? Does Aaron Walker's "First Amendment rights" also guarantee him the right to endanger everybody who happens to be in a building with him?

Again, I'm not trusting everything that Bill Schmalfeldt is putting out there as concrete fact. I don't trust him any more than I trust Aaron Walker. But Schmalfeldt is putting up some documentary evidence (no matter how illegally gained or, possibly, published.) That's something Walker hasn't done. He's asked us to take everything he says on faith and that faith is increasingly ill-deserved.

The fact is that the narrative that Aaron Walker has spent months putting up is rapidly falling down. Despite the fact that I don't like him or his politics, the Schmalfeldt narrative makes sense and the Walker one simply doesn't. I have no doubt that if Walker himself had a subordinate in his position, that he wouldn't hesitate to fire him.

The only reason I care about this story at this point is that well-meaning conservatives are being expected to finance this fraud and score political points from it. And it's nonsense, from beginning to end. Pretty much everyone who has inserted themselves in this tawdry, dumb drama has an interest in it that they're not telling you about.

Both sides are using it to drive up readership and donations to their respective cause. Both sides hiding important, material facts that you ought to know before you separate yourself from your hard earned money.  And both sides are using "lawfare" to mitigate their retarded Internet pissing matches.

If you give money or support to either side, you pretty much deserve what you get, which is bound to be ripped off. 

Caveat emptor, folks. Caveat emptor.


The Full Disclosure Part of the Program:

1) I had a pissing match with Aaron Walker on Twitter a few months ago about Mitt Romney's tax reform plan, which ended with him blocking me because he thought I was talking to him like he was an idiot, which he was. I'd show you that transaction, but he blocked me before I could finish.

In my personal opinion, Aaron Walker isn't especially bright and wildly touchy about it for somebody who insists on being a loudmouth blogger. I get called all kinds of shitty things. I only block people for it when they bore me.

2) I also got into it with Lee Stranahan, who I believe is the worst person walking the Earth today, on Twitter.

During the Treyvon Martin clusterfuck, Stranahan took it upon himself to name a woman who had accused George Zimmerman of molesting her, even though the statute of limitations had long expired. The allegation became public due to leaked grand jury testimony, but so did Stranahan's identification of the witness.

It was then that I first said in public that I was glad that I hadn't involved myself in the Kimberlin saga and Stranahan immediately blocked me.

Weeks later,Schmalfeldt republished Stranahan's address on the web and ol' Lee ran to the police like a pussy and started begging people on the Internet to buy him a new house, mere weeks after revealing a potential molestation victim's name. So fuck him. He might be the worst scumbag of all.

3) I follow pretty much everybody's allies in this stupid story on Twitter (except for Walker and Stranahan, who blocked me because they're dipshits,)  I don't, however, interact with Kimberlin's allies because I don't want to associate myself with people willing to defend someone willing to commit murder, however long ago that was. I'm pretty "pro-life" that way.

4) I linked to Walker's arrogantly self-described "blockbuster post," but nothing from Kimberlin for the simple reason that Kimberlin hasn't bothered put anything out there under his own name. What I won't do is let Kimberlin have an internet sock puppet make his case for him.

5) the use of Brietbart or any variation thereof should not be taken to mean that those I ascribe the term to are employees of Brietbart,com (although several of then were) or acted with Andrew Brietbatrt's knowledge. Most of the activities contained in this article occured after his death on March 1, 2012. The descriptor should be taken to mean known associates of his or those who engage in his style of sleazy journalism.

6) I'm of a mind that convicted criminals - particularly those convicted of perjury or fraud - should be prohibited from being involved in the operation of tax exempt organizations in any way. The Breitbratians are more than willing to imply that Kimberlin should be barred from doing so, but aren't willing to say the same about, say, Ali Akbar of the National Bloggers Club, which makes them massive hypocrites. Republicanm criminals are still criminals and, given the party's "tough on crime" stance, are probably worse.  

My position is that if you're convited of a crime that inherently involves dishonesty, the government shouldn't later allow you to operate a tax-exempt organization that depends entirely on honesty and transparency. And that should apply to both Brett Kimberlin and Ali Akbar. Neither should be in the positions that they are, in my opinion.

If you can't vote, you shouldn't be heading a 501(c)(3) and since most Republicans feel that convicted felons shouldn't vote, ever, that puts Mr. Akbar in a precarious position, shouldn't it?



In fairness, if either Aaron Walker or Brett Kimberlin (or their legal representatives) want to respond to anything that I've said in this space, I shall let them do so, unedited. It should, however, be understood that I will assume no liability for anything that is said in their responses and shall indicate so in same. If I have made any factual errors, I will be glad to correct them, provided that on the record evidence of such is provided to me.

So far as I'm aware, neither side has afforded this opportunity to the other. My impartiality is guaranteed since I believe both sides are whining cunts, neither deserves to win, and both are wasting valuable court resources.

Having said that, any communication to me in this regard should be considered for publication. I don't like any of you, nor am I willing to be serectly spun by you. "Off the record" and "Deep background" won't apply in this case. If you write to me, do so expecting that you'll be writing to the public.

More likely than not, I'll unfollow everyone involved on Twitter and in Google Reader sometime next week. This isn't a "free speech" case as much as it is moron-on-moron violence, and I can visit my ex-girlfriend's old neighborhood to see my share of that.

Why Capitalism is Best of All

There's no end to the people who bitch about capitalism. Sure, they're leftie academic assholes mostly, but not exclusively. Hipster jerkoffs and associated fuckheads have also gotten into the game.

It's stunning how little these people know about history, even including the history of their own political movements. Generation Xers and everyone younger should look at their parents, the godawful fucking Boomers, who remain history's greatest monsters.

If you look at your parents and aunts and uncles, there's a better than even chance that at least half of them were hippies. These days? None of them are. In fact, around 1973, they busied themselves going to graduate school, becoming investment bankers, buy homes with two car garages and shitting out little cocksuckers like you. And not only is that what your family did, so did Jerry Rubin.

The fact is capitalism won. The Stalinist Chinese and Godless Vietnamese are hyper-capitalist, while North America and Europe have essentially returned to the Gilded Age. Not only has capitalism triumphed, it managed to defeat a century's worth of constraints on it through globalization and deregulation.

It's even better than that. Capitalism's victory is so overwhelming that it has relieved pretty much everyone of the need to know anything at all about economics. That's true of both the political left and right.

Republicans and Tea Partiers, along with their misfit cadres on the Internet and in the media will tell you that "Marxism is on the march!"

Really? Where? All statements like that tell me is that no one knows what Marxism actually is anymore. I haven't heard anyone anywhere advocating that the workers take control of the means of production in at least a generation. And you know what? Neither have you. Fidel Castro and whichever Kim is currently run North Korea know that to be nonsense. The only people who believe that are Glenn Beck, a few McCarthyite Revolutionary War reenactors deep in the asshole of South Carolina, idiot bloggers and a GOP that has managed to somehow embrace both cynicism and ignorance.

There's nothing funnier to me than an assload of hillbillies cheering some scumbag lobbyist who declares that "Government sucks! And here to prove it are Representative Michele Bachmann, Senator Jim DiMint and Governor Sarah Palin!"

Not only is Barack Obama to the right of all but a very few elected officeholders in the democratic world, he's largely to the right of the GOP of the Reagan era.

The left is just as bad, if not actually worse. Democratic socialism has largely turned out to be neither and the leaders of liberal political parties; such as (but not limited to) Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Jean Chretien, Paul Martin and Michael Ignatieff have repudiated everything their followers used to believe in while their followers celebrated them for winning because of it.

Here's a neat fact. Both the individual health care mandate and cap and trade were revolutionary Republican ideas in the early 1990s that the left came to embrace as the right drifted off into a fantasy world of counter intuitive economic nonsense, religious superstition, foreign adventurism that is alien to historical conservatism and rape-based politics.

In modern electoral politics, there really isn't a left anymore. In large part that's why Tea Party shitheads keep waving the bloody shirt of Saul Alinsky, ... who died in 1972. Were it not for the fact that he would have made Earl Butz so uncomfortable, Barack Obama would have fit in Gerald Ford's Cabinet.

You know what the left has got? Occupy Wall Street: a leaderless and idealess motley crew of unwashed assholes who are against something, but aren't quite sure what. And until they figure it out, they'll shit on a police car. The only people who think Occupy Wall Street is worth anything are idiot celebrities and washed-out, cynical political hacks who govern to the right, but need to sell badly written books from time to time.

If these unwashed fuckheads think that they're going to change a corrupt and oligarchical banking construct by laying around a fucking park until the cops club then about the head and shoulders, all the corrupt and oligarchical banking system need do is wait until those retards choke on their own fucking tongues, which is inevitable!

Occupy is the political version of a 35 year old broad who thinks she's a witch and can only cum by cutting herself. And no reasonable person is ever going to buy into that fucking nonsense. Comparing Occupy to the Tea Party is little more than a demonstration of how stupid some people are. The Teapers are organized and, no matter how retarded their message is, at least they have one. And it took a lot of money to get that many people to dress that oddly in one place at one time.

Even the most perverted version of capitalism is going to snap the necks of those worthless fucks, each and every time.

You know why? Capitalism has something that Occupy is never going to have. Kate Upton's tits.

If there's one thing I've learned from life, it's that cute blonde girls with their huge jugs hanging out always win! And I'm far more partial to brunettes. But facts is facts!


The pictures in this post are from Miss Upton's advertising campaign for Skullcandy headphones. The only thing I've ever heard about the product is that is that it's a worthess piece of plastic shit. But I'm willing to buy three of them on the off chance that one of her fantastic udders falls out during the next commercial. Six, if we find out if she's completely shaved like all the best women are.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter how much pain and suffering that subprime mortgages and an utterly deregulated derivatives market has demonstrably caused. If you attach a cute young blonde with giant, exposed milkbags to either, nine out of ten Americans will jump on the bandwagon all over again.

Don't believe me? Go to an Occupy encampment next spring and count the Skullcandy headphones.




Pictures and video lovingly stolen from Popoholic

Why I (Sort Of) Hope Romney Wins

Over the last few weeks we've seen what is perhaps the clearest example of just how full of shit Republicans are.

Remember how through September you couldn't avoid hearing about "skewed polls" that were part of a direct conspiracy to suppress Mitt Romney's vote? Whether you tuned in Fox News or read practically any blog, you heard about it 24-7. Not only was it wildly annoying, it was impossibly stupid.

Then Romney won the first debate (in as much as you can "win" one of those silly spectacles,) and viola, we're now in the third consecutive week of not hearing Republican whining. Instead, those assholes are doing victory laps because their guy is seen to be winning in the national polls. They're still wrong, but it beats the constant pissing and moaning like liberals.

As you'll see, I'm incredibly consistent. I said in public that the national polls mean shit in a presidential race when Obama was ahead and I'm still saying they mean shit. Because the presidency is decided in the Electoral College, the state polls are the only ones that matter. And the state polls aren't being overly kind to Mitt Romney, especially in Ohio.

The president has had a pretty consistent lead in Ohio's "poll of polls" and without the Buckeye State, Romney's path to 270 is incredibly difficult, whereas Obama's isn't. Without Ohio, Romney has to come from behind in a number of different states where he hasn't maintained leads or has been stubbornly tied throughout his national surge. The way I see it, Obama is still the heavy favourite to win. As a matter of fact, I'll go out on a long limb and predict that the president is reelected with roughly 300 electoral votes. It could be as low as 280, but it could be as high as 320.

There's been a lot of talk over the last week of Obama winning the Electoral College while losing the popular vote. I think that's unlikely to point of not seriously addressing because that only happens about once a century and has never happened to an incumbent president.

That's not to say that it wouldn't be hilarious. After listening to Republicans lecture everyone about the primacy of the Electoral College, I'd really like to see them marching in the streets like Al Sharpton. That would make me smile.

Of course, it doesn't really matter who wins because America is fucked either way. Even if Obama had a serious budget plan (which he doesn't,) he isn't going to have a Congress willing to pass it. And the Romney-Ryan plans are nothing short of a fantasy. There's no way that it'll accomplish what it's suppose to even if it was enacted, and there's no hope that it'll ever be enacted.

An Obama second term will look a lot like the last two years have, with nothing getting done until the United States finally defaults on its debt and the universe implodes. A Romney Administration, on the other hand, will be the funniest thing imaginable, at least until the United States finally defaults on its debt and the universe implodes.

Willard Mitt Romney hasn't exactly been a profile in courage through his life, given as he is to saying whatever whoever's in front of him wants to hear. That means that his chances of standing up to the vicious shitheads in the House Tea Party caucus and introducing a sane plan that could pass a Democratic Senate are virtually zero.

The plan that he's touting - major tax reform - isn't going to pass either house of Congress. The cuntish and evil lobbyists that control both parties aren't going to allow the elimination of high end tax loopholes which, by themselves, don't come close to paying for an across-the-board rate reduction; and nobody's going to vote for the four big middle class deductions that actually would.

If there's one universal rule about politicians, it's that they'll always vote for cotton candy for everybody. That being the case, I can see Romney peeling away the three or four Senate Democrats necessary to reverse the Byrd Rule and pass the enormous tax cuts through reconciliation, but not the deduction repeal that pays for the mess.

When Romney reinvented himself as "Moderate Mitt: King of the Reasonable Cats" on October 3rd, he specifically said several times that he "would not pass a tax cut that adds to the deficit." But like everything else about the Romney campaign, this is an example of almost majestic lying cocksuckery.

You see, Republicans generally and the Tea Party specifically don't believe that tax cuts ever "add to the deficit, despite decades of mathematical evidence to the contrary. Even though it's never actually happened before, they think that tax cuts will stimulate enough growth to not only pay for themselves, but the trillions in new spending that they'll also pass.

Not only has Romney promised $2 trillion in new military spending that no one's actually asking for, it's important that the Tea Partiers are actually becoming politicians. It's easy for them to take a stand on spending when the opposition controls the White House and their proposed cuts have no realistic chance of passing. But when they have a pliable puppet like Romney as president (and Grover Norquist has said in public that the GOP only needs a "rubber stamp" in the Oval Office,) it's more likely than not that they'll be exactly the same spending machine that Bush's Republican Congress was.

One of the iron laws of politics is that voters only like fiscal discipline in theory. That is to say when someone else's spending gets cut. So, yeah, the poor will probably get gutted but the big-ticket middle class entitlements will either stay as they are or actually expand, just as they did under Bush. If you think that the proposed Medicare and Social Security plans are going to pass, you're kidding yourself, especially when they're put in legislative language and the real transition costs are laid out in black and white.

The same goes for promise to "repeal and replace" Obamacare. If you think that's going to happen, you're either an idiot, you haven't been paying attention, or you hope Romney's lying. Mitt has said on numerous occasions that he'll keep the parts of the Affordable Care Act that everybody likes, which happens to be most of it. He only wants to get rid of the individual mandate that pays for it.

Simply put, if you elect Romney, the Tea Party effectively ceases to exist. A President Romney would presumably like to be reelected and the fucking Teapers lacked the balls to invent themselves before President Bush was safely exiled to Dallas. There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that these idiots will stand up to a president of their own party.

Watching the self-declared "fiscal hawks" on Fox News and in the jerk-off blogosphere revert to form and justifying the deficit marathon that Romney and Tea Party House creates would be the funniest thing I've ever seen. Watching them  spend between two and four years blaming an underperforming economy on Obama, as calling Obama out for doing the same to Bush is going to make me smile.

Look, I get that well over half of my American readers are going to vote for Mitt Romney and I'm not delusional enough to pretend that I'm going to change anybody's mind. But I guarantee you that what I described above - or something very close to it - is going to happen in the event of a Romney presidency.

And watching that will be worth your voting for him.

Mitt's Magical "Binders Full of Women"

I've said it before and I'll say it again; if you believe that the trajectory of a political contest is in any way determined by debates, I'm pretty sure that you've sustained a pretty awesome head injury.

There are maybe a half-dozen moments from political debates that anyone remembers today, and that's more than anyone can remember even the morning after one of those stupid spectacles. This is because they're almost entirely meaningless and should be done away with as soon as possible. You don't learn a goddamn thing from them and, by the time they finally come around, the tools participating in them have already been on TV for two fucking years.

Of course, I watch them. But that's only because you don't have to. I'm a glutton for punishment and sometimes knowing bizarrely esoteric shit gets me laid. If you can explain how that works, I'm all ears.

Anyhow, I watched the Second Titanic Battle of the Witless last night, and I pretty sad to see that Barack Obama pretty clearly won it, if only by actually showing up awake this time. I was having a really nice 12 days of not hearing fuckheaded Republican hacks constantly wetting their pants about "skewed polls." Having said that, since the Joe Biden-Paul Ryan debacle last Thursday night, said Republican fuckheaded hacks have been constantly wetting their pants about the moderators.

Here's one of my much celebrated trade secrets behind caling elections: The side that's bitching and moaning the loudest about meaningless shit is almost always the side that's losing. Now you know.

So, I watched the big debate last night and it was pretty much what I expected: Both candidates relentlessly lying about things that traditionally have nothing to do with the executive office of the president; such as student loans and oil drilling. All things being equal, I was delighted that neither side mentioned the death penalty, the Pledge of Allegiance orWillie Horton. Elections that are about nothing usually go for that trifecta.

But there was one thing that amazed me, if only because it was just so incredibly odd.

The candidates were asked about pay equity for women, which also has nothing at all to do with the executive branch, or even the federal government, under the Constitution. The President gave his standard meaningless liberal boilerplate answer, which probably made broads smile.

Then Romney took the mic ... and things got Well and Truly Weird.

CROWLEY: Governor Romney, pay equity for women?

ROMNEY: Thank you. And important topic, and one which I learned a great deal about, particularly as I was serving as governor of my state, because I had the chance to pull together a cabinet and all the applicants seemed to be men.

And I -- and I went to my staff, and I said, "How come all the people for these jobs are -- are all men." They said, "Well, these are the people that have the qualifications." And I said, "Well, gosh, can't we -- can't we find some -- some women that are also qualified?"

 And -- and so we -- we took a concerted effort to go out and find women who had backgrounds that could be qualified to become members of our cabinet.

I went to a number of women's groups and said, "Can you help us find folks," and they brought us whole binders full of women.

Now I'm a pretty old guy, well into my fifth decade of my utterly useless existence on this big blue marble of poisoned doom we call Earth. I've become a rather worldly breed of cat in lo, my many years. I don't want to get too deeply philosophical about this, so I'll just say that "I've seen a million faces, and I've rocked them all" and leave it at that.

But only very rarely have I been brought "whole binders full of women." In fact, it only happened in one place.

This was back in the early 90's at a place called the Fairbanks Hotel. Back then it was in the Dufferin and Lawrence area of Toronto, near my dearly departed father's office at the time. The ground floor of the establishment was a strip-joint, which was serendipitous because strippers just happen to be my favorite people in the whole world. I also think that Dear Old Dad might have been the establishment's loan officer, but I don't know that as a certainty because I didn't care.

So I went. How could I not? After all, I'm widely regarded as the Ferdinand Magellan of strange poontang, and properly so. You have your Spice Islands and I have mine.

It was an experience unlike any other, before or since. And I was maybe 21 the first time I darkened the door of the Fairbanks.

And what a door it was. To get through it you had go through a metal detector, the only time outside of court or an airport that I had to do so. And the doormen were especially surly Chinese gentlemen. Come to think of it, the patrons were all especially surly Chinese gentlemen, too. This lead to numerous rumours that the Fairbanks was run by the Triad, which it almost certainly was.
That was something else that I didn't care about. Ah, youth!

As I remember it, there was no stage, which was unusual for a peeler joint. And there were no dancers wandering about constantly pestering you for a dance. It was also almost impossible to get a drink in this place, something else that you never see with places that make their money wirh naked girls.

Instead, what happened was that a somewhat less surly Chinese gentleman would bring to the table, you guessed it, a "binder full of women" Said women were exclusively Asian, but what women they were!

Because I'm the curious sort, I asked what was up. It was explained to me that very few of the dancers spoke any English at all, which couldn't be more serendipitous because the only people I like more than naked women are naked women that don't speak English. You'd be surprised how many problems you can get around that way. Really, you would!

It was all so innocent. You'd point to the picture of a young lady that struck your fancy, and she's be brought to you within minutes. Also, this was in Ontario's Dark Ages, when lap dancing was illegal. This is something that no one had bothered telling the dancers in their native tongue because they would spend as much time (and money) as you had creating enormous and unmistakable snail trails across the crotch of your pants.

Like I said, it was a magical time and one I won't soon forget. Sadly, the original Fairbanks burned down in the mid-90s. I thought it was gone forever, along with the best years of my life. It might put a spring in President Obama's step to learn that a great deal of my student loan was spent there between 1992-'93, not long after he graduated from Harvard Law, full to the brim of idealism. He had his dream and I, my friends, had mine.

Last night wasn't an entire waste. After nearly two decades of trying, I finally felt connected with Mitt Romney in a way that didn't involve us both being ruggedly handsome and willing to say whatever was necessary to get what we want. It was as close to spiritual as I probably get.

And to think that it all happened over binders full of women.



Epilogue: Not too long ago, I learned that the Fairbanks hath been reborn near Dufferin and Eglinton. Just seeing it from the street, to quote Axl Rose, "reminds me of childhood memories." So to anyone who says that you can't go home again." I say "fuck you!"

If'n I'm of the right mind (and assuming the money doesn't run out) I might just go back someday.

...When Hulkamania Runs Wild on Your Wife

Look, it seems perfectly natural to me that when you're in a bad mood, your friend's wife or girlfriend should carnally gratify you. This is especially true when you have a penis "the size of a thermos you'd find in a child's lunchbox." Don't ask me how I know that, just know that I do.

I figured that this was just one of the things that friends do for one another and that it happened every day. That's, as Dionne Warwick, Stevie Wonder, Elton John and Gladys Knight told us, what friends are for.

Apparently, I lead an ... unusual life, because that doesn't happen every day. At all. At least not if the furor surrounding the Hulk Hogan sex tape is to be believed.

I'm sure that you can all imagine my shock at this turn of events. After all, I'm internationally famous as a "glass-half-full" breed of cat and could hardly have expected everyone to be so uncivilized.

The Hulkster has had a hard time of it this past decade. He was married to a shrew, his son is a monster and I'm pretty sure that his daughter is a man. Worse, all of it was documented on reality TV until the family dissolved in a tawdry mess of acrimony, divorce, stupidity, prison and Brooke's recording career.

If, after all of that, the Artist Formerly Known as Terry Gene Bollea doesn't deserve to knock a piece off of his best friend's bangin' lil' wife, then none of us do. And some of us very much do deserve that, such as myself and Mel Gibson (and always before the jacuzzi, never after!) Christ, I'm constantly amazed that so many people don't appreciate the way the way the world really works.

I'm not going to lie to you good people, though. There were parts of the tape that confused me deeply. Such as Hogan's best friend being Bubba the Love Sponge, who is little more than an unfunny Howard Stern impersonator with an impressive talent for getting fired. I was also mystified as to how someone like that could marry a hot piece of ass like Heather, the Hulkster's paramour in the tape.

I was nothing less than shocked that a low quality black and white camera was employed to record the festivities. These are wealthy people and the video wasn't shot in 1986. Just how low-rent can you get? I always thought that white trash should be kept away from technology and now I know it.

And condoms? What the fuck is that supposed to be about? I thought these people were all friends!

If you're anything like myself and Hulk, there is literally no end to the issues that you have with prophylactic intercourse. First, they actually do cut down the sensation. Second, they're too small. I could start a completely separate blog devoted to nothing but stories about rubbers snapping in half as they try to envelop my mighty, mighty wang. Because I'm all about the scientific method, I'd like to recommend an experiment to you. Get a thermos from a child's lunchbox. Then try rolling a condom over it. Try not to do this in a schoolyard. It almost never ends well.

But this wasn't supposed to be about me, was it?

The bastards at Gawker only put up a heavily edited version of Hulkamania running wild all over Heather Clem, but they have a wildly entertaining description of the encounter.

It opens with Hulk Hogan performing oral sex on the woman as she lays on the bed. Then another man's voice can be heard from inside the room off-camera and both Hulk and the naked woman engage in idle chit-chat with the mystery man. Because the woman closely resembles Mrs. Clem, some have suggested that the voice of the mystery man is, in fact, Bubba the Love Sponge. If this is true, Bubba has no problem sharing his wife with his best friend.

"You guys do your thing," this man says. "I'll be in the office if you need me."

See, everybody's friends! And if friendship isn't about eating out your friend's wife until he decides to go to his office, I just don't know what is.

Hulk strips down. His tan line is exposed and his hairline is vulnerable and silly without the do-rag, but there is sex to be had regardless. Hulk must get hard, though, and the woman is eager to make that happen. Her fellatio is successful and Hulkamania is about to run wild on her but then his cell phone rings. He checks it because he thinks it might be his son, Nick. The ringtone on Hulk Hogan's phone is a song by his daughter, Brooke Hogan, called "About Us" featuring Paul Wall. He is a proud father.

There's so much wrong with that paragraph that I'm not even sure where to begin. So I won't.

He stands on the side of the bed and the woman scoots up from the pillows and resumes giving the former WWE heavyweight champion of the universe a blowjob. It is a slow, dutiful blowjob and Hulk is thrusting himself into her mouth to speed up the process. This goes on for a few minutes and at one point Hulk examines the canopy bed curtains in a way that suggests he'd like to purchase this particular style for his own canopy bed some day. She takes a break. She spits loudly. She resumes for a few seconds, but it appears the spit has worked because Hulk mutters something in a growly sex voice. The woman removes him from her mouth and spins around on the bed like an excited puppy. She stands. They grope each other and stare at each other. "What did you say?" she asks, laughing and tying up her hair in a pony tail. Then they both laugh because there was a miscommunication during the sex act and they don't want to feel awkward.

"You got a rubber? I want you to climb on top of me," Hulk repeats, but not as sexy as it was the first time, which she didn't hear. Yes, she does have a rubber. Then we watch Hulk stand up and clumsily attempt to roll a condom on to his erect penis which, even if it has been ravaged by steroids and middle-age, still appears to be the size of a thermos you'd find in a child's lunchbox. Hulk hurls his massive body on to the canopy bed and the woman climbs on top, finally, and they begin. There is lots of squealing and moaning from her and she says stuff like, "I want to make you cum" and, "Your dick feels so good inside me"—that sort of thing. There is light spanking from Hulk done to show he supports her efforts and is close to orgasming.

Then, Hulk grunts. Hulk grunts more. Then Hulk grunts like he's doing an impression of old Hulk Hogan grunting right before he's about to cum/come. Climax happens for both participants and they seem pleased with the results. The woman provides two tender kisses on Hulk's upper chest. Hulk says, "Mmmk," because he's a little bemused by the situation he finds himself in on this day as we'll soon find out. Here's how Hulk explains his reaction to the woman he just had sex with:

"The rubber almost came off," he says.

She's not concerned. "It did what it was supposed to."

Hulk thought that was funny and makes her repeat it.

Needless to say, what rubbers are "supposed to do" is evil and direct violation of God's Law. Jizz is an expression of love and, as such, is meant to fly freely, thickly coating everyone and everything within a three-mile radius, especially the much-admired canopy bed curtains.

If you're a worldly man and you want to buy pretty bedding without looking like a homosexualist, you batter and spoil it with your goo and offer to buy replacements. Then your sneakily buy a set for yourself. Not only do you get your gay accouterments, you appear gallant in the process! Jesus, am I the World's Last Ladies Man?

But this isn't supposed to be about me, is it?

She does so and then peels off the rubber from his penis and carries it away. She holds the condom full of Hulk jiz like it's a random dirty sock she found in the dryer. Hulk is still coming down from his orgasm and is making quick, loud Tony Soprano wheezes.

"Oh my god," he exhales. "Can't believe I have to drive back home. Fuuuuck."

The woman giggles, climbs back into bed with him and reminds Hulk that this is why he should move to this neighborhood. They engage in some cuddling for a couple minutes but Hulk does have to go because he has to go meet his son Nick who was presumably no longer in prison during the time this was filmed. Playful banter resumes amidst the afterglow. Hulk gets up naked and accepts the invitation from the woman to take a shower. But then he tells the woman that he's shocked that the fucking took place at all because he'd just eaten ten minutes before he got there and "felt like a pig." He had sashimi. He smacks his large stomach and makes his way to the shower.

Hulk begins to put on his clothes. "Bubba's shirt," he says when he puts on his shirt. He's pulling on his jeans one giant leg at a time, still mumbling. The woman is naked in bed and not at all concerned by his early exit. She does suggest that he go talk to the mystery man in the office before he leaves. But Hulk has to go meet his son Nick at midnight. Then Hulk tells a story about how Nick's new girlfriend has a twin sister who called Hulk on the phone. Hulk reveals that the young woman inquired about his divorce and, if that's true, she would like to be the first to go out with him.

Hulk sits on the bed and puts on his socks. "You're a hot commodity," the woman says to Hulk. "Yeah, right. Huh," Hulk says.

Even Hulk Hogan needs to be told he's handsome sometimes.

Everybody needs to feel pretty. God knows I do.

It also strikes me as appropriate that the Hulkster wore Bubba's shirt after fucking Bubba's wife. After all, friendship runs both ways, doesn't it? On the other hand, wearing a Bubba the Love Sponge t-shirt probably isn'r the best way to fuck girls the same age as your own children. But I don't think that overpriced Ed Hardy horseshit is the way to go either, and the assholes who wear that seem to get laid all the time, so what the fuck do I know?

Forget everything that your parents told and what you read on coffee mugs. Apparently all is not well that ends well. As it happens, Hogan is suing everybody in sight over the release of his fuck tape for $100 million, including Bubba, Heather and Gawker. He broke out his formal black t-shirt and bandanna for the occasion, just so you know he's as serious as cancer.

And that might be the silliest little lawsuit of ever. Firstly, do you think that either Bubba or Clem has a $100 million? I don't. And since Hulk loosely fits the definition of a "celebrity," there's no way that he wins against Gawker. He. his thermos-sized cock and their shenanigans are loosely defined as "newsworthy" and therefore covered under the First Amendment. If you don't believe me, ask Tommy Lee.

And for $100 million, he should've at least gotten her ass. If the Hulkster has any cause for complaint here, it's that. Oh, and that he only lasted for less than half an hour. What the fuck is that about? Why else would you say your prayers and take your vitamins unless you were going to fuck for at least three hours? Seems like a waste of my time to me.

But this wasn't supposed to be about me, was it?

In the end, I just want to know when a little wife-swapping became such a big fucking deal. Jesus, it's as if some people lived right through the 1970s and didn't learn a goddamn thing.

The Story of My Life

Workin' on a Dream: On Celebrity Endorsements and the Idiots Who Give a Shit About Them

You know what? I was actually thrilled when Republicans took the position that celebrities should, in the words of idiot talk-show host Laura Ingrham, "Shut Up and Sing." As a matter of fact, I wouldn't have had too much of a problem with Republicans trying to commercially stomp to death people like Bill Maher and the goddamned Dixie Chicks if I didn't instinctively feel that they were insanely, cuntishly hypocritical.

All too often, the very same people who wanted the Dixie Chicks tried for treason just because they made an entirely reasonable remark on stage in London turned out to be the same shitheads who rushed to the defence of a has-been like Ted Nugent when he suggested that guns be put in the mouths of Democratic presidential candidate. It's also hard to forget that Andrew Breitbart became a celebrity for the sole purpose of telling other celebrities to shut the fuck up, while painting himself as "free speech warrior."

That hypocrisy was put in stark relief when Republican bloggers and Fox News shitheads were actually assaulting one another over who would give Clint Eastwood the sloppiest blowjob following his delusional incantation at this summer's Republican Convention.

Then there's the strange and sad case of Stacey Dash. In all honesty, I didn't even know what her name was until week when she endorsed Mitt Romney for president. I always just thought of her as "that super-fucking hot Black chick from Clueless." And I've never seen Clueless.

Now I know her name, but think of her as the super-fucking hot Black chick that was in Clueless and endorsed Mitt Romney. Oh, and I know that she's the new GOP blogger super-hero of the moment.

Do her political views make me want to see her movies any more or less? No, but only because I don't think I've seen a movie that she's been in in the first fucking place. As a matter of fact, I might want to eat her ass more than I used to because I at least know what her name is now, and I've usually (but not always) found that a helpful seductive tool. And, she has a magnificent ass, especially for a 45-year-old woman. That fucking thing is gorgeous!

Do I think that she deserved the supposed racial animus (and I say "supposed" because I can't be bothered looking it up, just like every other blogger that has written about it) that she received from liberals as a consequence of her blog endorsement? Obviously, I don't. If anything, cries of "racism!" are something that I see as cheap stunts from both sides of the spectrum  because they have little else to say. Moreover, they minimize the impact of the real racism that still exists. It's called the Law of Diminishing Returns. Look it up.

As I've said repeatedly, Republicans didn't discover racism until they invented Michael Steele and sexism only occurred to them when Sarah Palin fell into their throbbing little laps, as evidenced by all of the Hillary Clinton jokes that circulated for sixteen years, a number of which were actually funny. All things being equal, I'm amazed that they haven't turned a black female Mormon like Mia Love into a secular saint already, although I fully expect them to. And that would be even funnier because a statistical majority of Republicans don't recognise Mormons as Christian. At least not until they win an election.

Having said that, I think that Republicans are showing both their hypocrisy and their desperation when they go out of their way to fit Ms. Dash for a friggin' cape. They so want some taste of glimmer that they'll embrace a woman that may as well as have been in the Witness Protection Program for the last 18 years to get it. If you think that Republicans haven't gotten into the "identity politics" game, you're kidding yourselves.

Everything you need to know about celebrities is that they aren't all that different from race horses. They get famous because they work on one facet of their lives to the exclusion of everything else. They might very well win the Kentucky Derby, but they're just as likely to kick your balls off when they aren't running to the finish line.Just look to Lindsay Lohan as one example.

Anyone who expects celebrities to talk about anything other than what they do for a living without drooling on themselves might as well be drooling themselves, too.

Mediate's Andrew Kirell falls into this trap with his "Open Letter to Bruce Springsteen."

Dear Mr. Springsteen:

You disappoint me.

This is not some right-wing rant against “Hollyweird” liberals and their penchant for supporting President Obama and the Democratic Party. Your recent re-endorsement of President Barack Obama doesn’t offend me on its own — everyone saw it coming. But what offends me is what you are abandoning by diving headfirst into the endorsement game.

Let me explain:

Do you remember the speech you gave on nearly all 100 tour dates of the 2008 Magic tour? Lord knows I remember it, having seen you three times that year. Before each performance of “Livin’ in the Future,” you gave a little political rant. It went something like this:

“Over the past six years we have, unfortunately, had to add to the American picture: rendition, illegal wiretapping, rolling back of civil liberties, no habeas corpus if you’d like to defend yourself against charges brought against you. These are things that not only attack our Constitution but attack who we are and our very selves.”

Remember that? The song itself, you explained, was about sleeping through all those awful Bush-era changes: “We’re livin’ in the future and none of this has happened yet,” said the catchy chorus.
Except now we are livin’ in the future… and all of this is happening still.

By and large, President Obama has continued the George W. Bush-era policies of rendition (see here), illegal wiretapping (see, um… the PATRIOT Act renewal?), rolling back of civil liberties (NDAA, executive overreach, etc.), and other unsavory things like, you know, drone strikes that evaporate innocent civilians via remote control.

Bush was awful. I was with you on that one. Even though I am turned off when my favorite musicians use their concerts as a gigantic soapbox, I appreciated that you were at least ranting on behalf of civil libertarian values.

But now, after spending six years being the most outspoken musical advocate against Bush-era civil liberties encroachments, you openly endorse a man who has willingly continued these exact “un-American” policies?

Either you are a political fraud or just blinded by the light of partisanship.
Both possibilities are truly disappointing.

Look, I get it. By no means am I saying you should have endorsed Mitt Romney. For all we know, he would be even worse than Obama on these issues — especially given that his foreign policy advisement team is made up of Bush’s favorite circle of neocons. Yikes
.
Maybe you truly hesitated before making this official endorsement. Maybe you deliberated for hours and weighed the options: “Should I fully endorse the man who has, thus far, governed the exact opposite of my professed values? Or do I give a tepid endorsement that reflects my hesitance here?

Or do I endorse a third party? Or maybe I stay out of this race entirely?”

But I doubt it.

Again, I understand that no one can realistically expect you to show up to these Iowa and Ohio rallies and say something like: “Yeah! Woo! After much hesitation and doubt, I’ve made the tough decision to — despite a multitude of disappointments — endorse this president for re-election because he is the lesser of two evils in my mind! Woo! Yeah! Four more years!”

I guess I just naively expect that someone who used their multi-million-dollar stage as a soapbox to rail against such governmental abuses would feel enough conviction about those issues to remain consistent and principled.

Perhaps you could have endorsed someone like Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson or even Green Party candidate Jill Stein — both of whom espouse the exact views you spent years touting on tour. Or maybe you could have abstained altogether in order to send a powerful message.
Instead you’re just another cheerleader for those in power… when the power is in the hands of your preferred political party.

I hope you reconsider.

Sincerely,

Andrew Kirell
PS – All will be forgiven if you would just release the “Electric Nebraska” tapes.

There are any number of reasons that this letter is complete nonsense.

First, Bruce Springsteen is a partisan Democrat. He always has been and there's no reason to believe that he'll change his affiliation this late in life. Like almost every partisan voter out there, Springsteen is not unlike a trained dog. He barks, heels and rolls over just like he was trained to. And if you're reading partisan political blogs all day, you shouldn't feel all that superior to The Boss.

Second, Springsteen - like most celebrities - has very little to do with his own life. The reason that Joe Walsh's "Life's Been Good" was such a big hit was because it reflects the way those people actually live. They "have accountants to pay for it all." Stars structure their lives in such a way that they don't have to do anything other perpetuate what made them famous in the first fucking place. That's why they're always so shocked when they go broke. and that's why the rest of us laugh our asses off when they do.

If you really expect these people to be serious political philosophers, then you're even dumber than they are. If nothing else, they have very valid reasons for being wholly ignorant. All they have to do is write songs, play guitar, pretend to be someone else for a few months a year, or have a bangin' ass on them. You're at least supposed to be living in the real world.

If you relate to people like Bruce Springsteen or Stacey Dash in any way, you should probably be committed. And sterilized. It isn't their job to be "consistent and principled."

Third, rendition began under Clinton, not Bush. Christ, Mr. Bill was actually proud of this. Anyone that doesn't get that probably shouldn't be advising anyone how to vote.

Fourth, Nebraska is pretty much perfect the way it is. Releasing the electric demos would suck and ruin a great album. Who in the fuck would want Bruce to do such a thing and still consider himself sane? And anyone who would suggest such a thing is less worthy of being listened to on matters political than even Springsteen himself.

The worst part is that I actually agree with Mr. Kirell. If you want to affect real change, liberals should vote for the Greens and anyone who believes in anything other than a Big Jesus Government should vote for the Libertarians. The Democrats aren't liberal in any substantive way and anyone who thinks that the Republicans are the party of small government just hasn't been paying attention.

In the end, I think we should all come together in admiration of just how nice Stacey Dash's naked nipple looks and stop giving a shit about what she thinks. I\m more than a little disappointed that she isn't completely shaved, like all the best women are.

Hammer to Fall: Why Conrad Black is Wrong About Tom DeLay

I have a certain amount of sympathy for Conrad Black. While I refuse to refer to him as Baron Black of Crossharbour because I think British royal titles are moronic unless you slay a fucking dragon or something, I do respect his intelligence and feel that a great injustice was done to him over the last decade.

I'm not going to argue Black's guilt or innocence, but I'll believe until the day I die that the United States didn't have jurisdiction to prosecute him, especially for the obstruction count that he was convicted of. All of the actions prosecuted in United States of America v. Black occurred in Canada, so fuck the United States.

The fact that Hollinger was a NYSE traded company are essentially meaningless. If that alone justifies the application of American criminal laws on foreign nationals foe actions outside the territorial U.S, then foreign nationals would do well to de-list their stock there. The Americans are out of control when it comes to the extraterritorial application of their fucking laws and that isn't going to change until it bites them in the pocketbook.

I also admire Mr. Black's advocacy of criminal defendants, which is something that all conservatives should engage in a lot more often.

If you believe that conservatism is predicated on a distrust of the power of the state and the competence of the state to wield that power responsibly, it only stands to reason that you would side with the most vulnerable potential victims of said power. Instead, too many conservatives have for too long advocated for increased government power against the individual in the criminal justice system. Worse, in arguing for that, they have insipidly put forth that the relevant parts of the Constitution don't mean what they actually say.

Sure, our friend Conrad had to feel the cold boot of the state himself before he came around to this view, but that shouldn't make his current writing any less worthy of your respect.

That's why I'm more than a little sad about this article of his.

In this context, Tom DeLay is, to use another hackneyed American media expression, an authentic American hero. I had hoped that after the chief of staff of the former vice president, Scooter Libby, had been convicted by a rabidly partisan jury when there was no conclusive evidence, only an uncorroborated difference of recollection with a journalist; and then six-term senator Ted Stevens was convicted on the basis of what was subsequently found to be wrongful withholding of exculpatory evidence, that the executive and legislative branches of the federal government might awaken to the threat that the rogue prosecutocracy poses to them. (Justice came too late for Senator Stevens; he lost his place in the Senate, very narrowly, a few days after the erroneous judgment, and died in an air crash after his conviction was reversed.) To paraphrase Scotland Yard in vintage murder cases, no man or woman in America is safe from this monster.

Yes, Ted Stevens was fucked over in a Kafka-esque nightmare. The fact that he was very probably guilty of something matters not a fucking whit. Justice demands that he be prosecuted with something specific and the government go out of its way to play fair. That didn't happen, and the fact that the prosecution team wasn't immediately sent before a firing dquad at dawn shows just how seriously the Justice Department takes justice.

On the other hand, there was no shortage of "conclusive evidence" regarding Scooter Libby's factual guilt. Libby lied to the FBI and perjured himself before a Grand Jury and there were several respected and disinterested eyewitnesses who testified to that effect. The only injustice in his case was that President Bush commuted his sentence, especially so shortly after the Clinton impeachment saga, which was essentially about the same thing.

And Tom DeLay is a two-legged fucking monster. To suggest that he's "an authentic American hero" is nothing short of laughable. DeLay is the undead, walking embodiment of everything that's wrong with politics generally and the Republican Party in particular.

During the Clinton impeachment, Speaker Newt Gingrich was finally kicked out of politics for well over a decade. DeLay and his fellow Texan and blood-enemy, the appropriately named Dick Armey were just below him, as Whip and Majority Leader respectively.

In simpler times, Armey would have become Speaker upon Gingrich's resignation and DeLay Majority Leader. But the Republican House conference was still somewhat sane back then. They knew that both of those twisted fucks would have been a public relations disaster. So they elected Robert Livingston Speaker.

Unfortunately, Livingston was also fabled for his love of strange pussy and was forced to resign just as the Articles of Impeachment against Clinton were being voted on. DeLay then essentially hand-picked the obscure and incompetent Dennis Hastert as a puppet Speaker. Armey was effectively bypassed and himself resigned in 2002, allowing DeLay to enable Bush to engage in the wildest spending spree in American history.

But absolute power was never quite absolute enough for young Tom. So he went out about using his influence with the Texas legislature and the state's mouth-breathing goof of a governor, Rick Perry, to engage in some unprecedented and probably unconstitutional redistricting in 2003, designed to increase the GOP's national House delegation at the expense of the Democrats.

Even that wasn't enough. Texas has an age-old law banning corporate contributions to state candidates. DeLay figured that he could work around that by funnelling the corporate contributions through the Republican National Committee, who would then launder them back to his preferred legislative candidates in Austin. That's money laundering and that's a fucking felony.

Conrad Black sees it differently.

Tom DeLay is fighting a good fight and has taken his tormentors most of the way toward the highest appeals court in the tenebrous thickets of Texas criminal justice, while denying them their almost inevitable moment of glee and self-satisfaction by avoiding imprisonment thus far as he pursues his appeal, which was heard Wednesday. The issue is $190,000 of contributions to his PAC, which were given to the Republican National Committee, which funneled them into seven Texas House races where the Republicans were successful, which allegedly facilitated a favorable redistribution of federal House of Representatives seats that durably advantaged the Republicans.

It has now come down to whether the state’s money-laundering law covers transfers made by check—like so much American legal skirmishing, serious points and the fate of human beings are gradually reduced, amidst mountainous enrichment of the rapacious American legal system, to arcana too absurd for any normal person to take seriously. PACs in Texas are allowed to support parties but not candidates, and the issue comes to whether this was a conversion of contributions gradually and by stages and without specific intent or a guilty mind, to a technically illegal end, or if it was an active and multilevel conspiracy to violate (ridiculous, vague, and unworkable) election-financing laws. The fact that the question even has to be put at this point, after it has been batted round and through various courts for over five years, should be enough to establish the reasonable doubt whose absence the law requires for criminal convictions, but which, by the miraculous operation of American criminal justice, is almost never found to exist.

Black's argument in this case is ridiculous on its face.

The fact that DeLay's PAC sent the donations through the RNC is evidence enough that he knew that sending them directly to his state candidates was illegal. That tends to demonstrate a consciousness of guilt and can lead reasonable people to conclude that he conspired to violate the state law on corporate contributions. I'm shocked that he wasn't convicted of conspiracy, too.

I'm inclined to agree with Black that most campaign finance laws are "ridiculous, vague, and unworkable" and I'd just as soon have them all done away with. But I very rarely get my way, and the law is the fucking law. Furthermore, "a conversion of contributions gradually and by stages" should make a reasonable person more inclined to believe that there was a "specific intent or a guilty mind," not less. A person who thought that their actions were lawful would have dumped all the converted contributions at once.

If this is the stuff that makes Tom DeLay a "hero in the martyrology being created by the antics of the American prosecutocracy," then Rod Blagojevich might properly be something akin to a saint.

As I mentioned earlier, I support Conrad Black's scrutiny of American justice. It's long overdue and he could bring serious conservatives to where they should have been decades ago. Too many people are essentially losing their lives because the government is more powerful than they are and richer in resources.

Having said that, sometimes a motherfucker is just guilty beyond words. And Tom DeLay is such a motherfucker.


Neat Editorial Note: None of the above should suggest that Tom DeLay isn't a clever little cocksucker. You see that photo at the top of the post? That's his booking photo.

DeLay was indicted in Travis County, which is Austin. He turned himself in after a warrant was issued in Harris County, which surrounds Houston. Apparently Harris County is the single Texas jurisdiction that doesn't include anything that indicates that you've been charged with a crime in their booking photos.

That allowed DeLay to make his arrest look like a campaign photo. Which was genius!

Where We Are or "So Is Romney Going to Win, or What?"

As the great and good H.L Mencken taught us, "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public." Perhaps truer words were never spoken and that's a quote I endlessly keep in mind when I pontificate about U.S politics.

The United States is perhaps the first country in human history to become a superpower despite being home to a population that isn't all that serious about its government. Yes, a lot of that is a problem of democracy itself, but Americans take it to an entirely different level. Elections in the United States aren't so much of a national dialog as they are American Idol. And even J.Lo and the guy from Aerosmith couldn't take American Idol seriously, even they they made a shit-ton of money from it.

It's true that in other democracies folksiness is a factor (after all, Vladimir Putin is shirtless all the time for a reason,) but in America it's the only factor. If I took ten Americans off of any street and ascribed Mitt Romney's policy positions to Barack Obama, I guarantee you that at least six of them wouldn't question it for a second. And six is a very conservative number. It's probably closer to eight and it could very well be nine.

This isn't just the age of "the low-information voter," it's an age where almost everyone falls into that category.

Both sides of the political divide describe 2012 as "the most important election in our lifetime," which proves that both sides are idiots or that they think you are. This is little more than a shitheaded talking points war between imaginary "socialism" versus an imaginary "free market."

Neither party is serious about anything, which is why I've repeatedly implored my American readers to consider voting for the Libertarian Party candidate, Gary Johnson. Obama and Romney both have ridiculous economic policies that will eventually bankrupt the United States, although I'm of the considered opinion that Romney's will (assuming that he's telling the truth, which is, I grant you, a huge leap of faith) do that much faster.

I've been saying for years now that Romney would be the Republican nominee and that Obama would beat him. That's not because I think that Obama is particularly precious as much as that he didn't meet the metrics by which an incumbent president usually loses. Having said that, if Obama wins, this will only be the second time that the United States has had three back-to-back two-term presidencies (the other one being 1801-1825, with Jefferson, Madison and Monroe.)

Was I thrown a little bit by the disastrous first fake debate presidential debate? Sure, a little. I never figured that Obama would allow himself to be disassembled like that, or more importantly, allow Romney to baldly pivot the way he did unchallenged. That was nothing less than shocking.

On the other hand, debates are essentially meaningless. George W. Bush was involved in six presidential debates and, by objective standard (which his own people will tell you, as evidenced by Robert Draper's on-the-record book Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush lost all of them.) That didn't stop him from being president. In the first debate of '84, Walter Mondale beat President Reagan so thoroughly that serious people were questioning Reagan's very sanity. Reagan still won 49 states.

Much has been made of the national polls, where Romney currently leads of ties Obama. "Lagging indicators" aside, they don't mean shit. National polls reflect the popular vote, which doesn't decide the presidency. The aforementioned President Bush won the Oval Office despite losing the popular vote by 500, 000 ballots. John F, Kennedy won by a more considerable Electoral College margin, even though he only won the popular vote by 118, 751 votes.

The Electoral College doesn't always follow the popular vote and Obama still has a far more comfortable path to 270 than does Romney. For Romney to win, he would have to be absolutely flawless and he hasn't managed to do that in the last decade that he's been running.

However, the tightening of the race has spared me for ten days of Republican whining about "skewed polls" which was unbearably fucking annoying when they were doing it, and exposes them as hypocritical cocksuckers now that they're not. Unfortunately for everyone, they've now moved on to bitching about "biased moderators," proving that supposed conservatives have taken up the formerly liberal cult of perpetual victimhood.

You what would please me endlessly? If Erick Erickson says anything at all negative about Candy Crowley's handling of Tuedsay's debate. Of course he won't, because they're both on the loving payroll of CNN and I have a deep, abiding, and incredibly logical suspicion that Comandante Erickson's pocketbook comes first. And that goes a long way in explaining why horseshit like this (and this and this)  is exactly that.

If you buy anything a glorified blogger with a Big Media contract has to say to you about the Big Media, carefully exempting their own employers, then I don't know what to tell you other than that you're probably an asshole.

In my completely unbought opinion, which remains free of nonsense bugaboos like a biased media or skewed polls, I still think that Obama's good for 300 Electoral College votes and I'd put money on his winning at least 270.