In an interview with ABC News yesterday, the President finally came out of the closet — kind of. He stated for the first time on the record that he supports gay marriage. But he stopped short of promising any executive or legislative action toward this cause. How convenient. Just the night before, North Carolina voted by a wide margin for a constitutional ban on gay marriage, becoming the 30th state to pass such a ban.

I admit that Obama’s vocal support for gay marriage is monumental. I also recognize that the issue of gay marriage is the next social battlefield in America. However, I hope this election does not get bogged down with social issues. High unemployment, the poor housing market, and a disaster of impending debt are the urgent and important issues. No one is going to be able to afford gay wedding ceremonies, easily accessible birth control, or teenage abortions if we don’t fix the economy.

That’s what killed Rick Santorum. I think Republicans and even some Democrats respect a politician that opposes gay marriage. There is a plausible argument there. Gay marriage seems contrary to the original definition, intent, history, and overall institution of marriage. But when a politician goes out and asks for a (federal) Constitutional ban on gay marriage, it seems zealous. In today’s modern times with real economic and international problems, do we really need to amend the Constitution of the United States for the sake of marriage? As much as I like Rick, I think he let his social convictions get the best of him.

To some people (the economy be damned!) gay marriage is a human and civil right. But I disagree. A right is not something the government can give you; it is something they can’t take away from you. I believe this is the big misconception of liberal thinking and the entitlement culture. Freedom to choose your work, life, home, and leaders is a right. But jobs, education, and healthcare are not rights. You are not born with them. Marriage is the same. Who you choose to be with is a right, but government benefits and recognition related to this choice are a privilege. I think the only right that is compromised in prohibiting gay marriage is the right not to be discriminated against. Heterosexuals can marry who they are naturally attracted to, but homosexuals cannot.

Homosexuality is not an uncommon phenomenon. It has been around since the beginning of time, and is a small part of all of us. But as much as I respect the nature and history of homosexuality, I do not support nor encourage it. All other social factors being equal, homosexuality is atypical to, and less salutary than, normal romantic and sexual behavior. In the realm of evolution and biology it is deficient in that it does not perpetuate the species. Also, acts of sexual intimacy between gays require at least one form of sodomy, which is traditionally less sanitary than conventional intercourse. There are also inherent disadvantages in parenting. To me, these are signs of human dysfunction that I find hard to promote.

However, I don’t condemn homosexuality either. I believe almost all homosexuals have a neurologically wired mental and emotional disposition to it. They engage in relationships and sex with other consenting homosexuals, without hurting others. I like gays, but they usually don’t like me, because of their liberal politics and hyper-sensitivity. And despite my sharp comments on evolution and sodomy, I don’t believe they have anything to be ashamed of.

People might ask me, what if your son or daughter were gay? I would love and support them. I might even support gay marriage on the political front, but for very selfish reasons. I would do it to show my kids support, not because I felt it is was right in my heart. The same if I were gay. I would want my kids to be straight. Not because of the social challenges they might face, but because I would want my kids to have all the things heterosexuals take for granted and homosexuals have to compensate for in their relationships. More than anything, I would want them in the body they feel most comfortable in.

Many liberals try to frame gay marriage as a civil rights issue, which to me is an absolute joke. Homosexuals are fighting for nominal recognition with gay marriage, not human integrity. Not being married (single people for instance) is no less dignified in society today than being married. Black folks and other minorities on the other hand fought for voting rights, criminal justice, safety, and civility. Gays have these rights already. Any claim of equivalency between the two movements is ludicrous. A similar weak equivalency was made by teachers and union clowns in Wisconsin between their protest and the Arab Spring. One group was fighting for more leverage in contract negotiations, the other for the right to walk down the street without being shot at or imprisoned. Preposterous comparisons.

The shame is that these beliefs too often fall along religious lines. I am Christian, but I really don’t think my religion plays a role in my beliefs. You shouldn’t need to be Christian to think homosexuality is a bit unnatural. The same goes for abortion. I hate the way abortion falls along religious lines too. Do you really need to believe in God to think that terminating a living fetus with lungs and a heart and a little brain is not the right thing to do? How does that not transcend religion? I’ll never get it.

Despite all the strong opinions that gay marriage and abortion might invoke, they are not the pressing issues of this country in the 2012 election cycle. But if they were, I would propose a tradeoff. Get all the Republicans to support gay marriage, and all the Democrats to support a repeal on Roe v. Wade. Because in reality, Pro-Choice people don’t want to murder, and religious folks don’t’ want to discriminate, even if each ignores these acts as “murder” or “discrimination” in the first place.

As far as the President’s statements, the guy is playing politics. He knows his very liberal base is unenthusiastic. In fact, they have been downright disappointed with him on this issue. But he stayed away from supporting gay marriage to keep independents and moderate republicans within reach. Now he has a sense that they are no longer in play, so he’s coming out. The President never ceases to amaze me on how he will say just about anything the uninformed masses want to hear. But that’s for another blog.

The thing I really don’t understand about gay marriage is why do homosexuals want to fight for marriage so badly. If they have civil rights, and can attain the rights bestowed by civil unions, then why marriage? Don’t they know that 50% of marriages end in divorce? Don’t they know that marriage kills otherwise healthy relationships? Wait until they get a taste of divorce over the next couple of decades. Then you will see gays first in line to repeal gay marriage. What better excuse not to pop the questions than, “I’m sorry honey, it’s against the law”?

Conditions in Florida are dry and hot. General conflagration has not broken out but that is not from any lack of ignition. There has been a sudden squall but whether it delivers more rain than lightning remains to be seen. George Zimmerman is in custody, surrendering without incident with the public release of the charges against him.

This should be a moment of great relief, should it not? The Martin family has consistently said that what they want is Justice for Trayvon, as the copyrighted phrase has it. Further they have said that what they desire is an arrest and a REAL investigation inverting the usual order. The implication is that there has not been a real investigation until now, the one delivering charges of second degree murder on a set of facts that the original Sanford based prosecutors thought warranted no charges at all. It is easy to understand why observers might think that so but mostly because of faulty information or explicit DISinformation, all of which will now be hashed out in open court, as it should be, while much of it has been hashed and re-hashed in the public sphere. Here is another helping of hash, including leftovers that have since gone sour.

The initial cause of outrage has become moot as it has proven to be false. The Martin family advocates originally stated three untruths: first that Zimmerman never was taken into custody on that fatal night. That falsehood stood nearly unrebutted until the release of a security video showing Zimmerman in handcuffs at the cop shop. Team Martin also declared that the crime scene was never attended to in any meaningful way but we have since seen video of the usual technicians and procedures being performed promptly and as competently as we can tell. The third falsehood was that Zimmerman’s pistol was never taken in as evidence. This also we know to be a flat inversion of the facts. 

So the original story has proven to be a fraud, in its compilation describing a scene truly outrageous even if all Zimmerman had said were true and complete. Indeed this was the position of the earliest Trayvonists, a principled stand on legal procedures, a bandwagon I joined early and dismounted early as well. The image of friendly cops inquiring almost not at all about the shooting of a young man, under whatever circumstances, was revolting and I revolted as much as anyone (twting and fbing it March 20th) but when the key elements proved to be fabrications I was outraged afresh at the fabricators. Few seem to have followed. Instead any criticism, objection or simple scrutiny of the facts or the players is proof of racism. Even the observation of peripheral facts like the clearly illegal laying of a bounty on Zimmerman’s head is racist. Any notice that the President’s gratuitous racial solidarity with the Martins is improper is racist. Anything but a blind eye turned to Trayvon Martin’s public adherence to modern thug culture is racist. Surprise at this designation of Zimmerman as a “white Hispanic” is racist. Needless to say, all these racist expressions make you complicit, if not a gleeful participant in the infanticide that Zimmerman’s actions represent.

This while the antagonism for Zimmerman, like the support for Obama, is openly and frankly racist. It is the Administration at large that wants the two conflated. The US Attorney General who now sits over a “civil rights” investigation of the Martin shooting embraces in maudlin approbation the disgraceful pig, Al Sharpton, a filthy criminal who launched his wretched career with a hoaxed rape of a black girl by a spectrum of prominent white men in New York law enforcement and government prescribed by Sharpton. While that fraud collapsed, Sharpton suffered not at all, evading a civil judgement by further fraud. Continuing on, Sharpton turned a protest over a traffic accident into a howling anti-semetic mob that burned a store to the ground killing seven people. Those incidents barely begin to tell the tale of this lunatic who stands at the height of the black power structure now in the ascendent. Holder attends a convention of Al’s National Action Network, delivers a completely uncritical and full-throated endorsement of those National Actions which lately have included perpetuating those three formative lies of the Trayvon movement and all the others that have come after.

Is Holder some marginal figure? He seems poorly known in his home district. Domestically he is second only to the President himself in power and yet has even greater responsibility in the area of law enforcement. Quaint notions of fairness or neutrality are not ignored or discarded, they are actively destroyed on the national stage for reasons of racial solidarity. That is the only reason for Holder’s blatant contempt for electoral laws of all stripes. His actions against the simple requirement for real identification at polling places demonstrates that well enough but the very election of Obama gave the real truth of this man’s poisoned mind. The scurrillous and contemptible racist fascists, the so-called New Black Panther Party (having only cosmetic distinction from the murderous gang that gives us sitting Houseman, Bobby Rush) were taped driving off voters from a Pennsylvania polling place with threats and brandished weapons. Holder quashed the legal case against them that was already successful showing that he serves not just a race-based administration of the law but a fealty to the lowest, worst and most dangerous elements of society. There is no question and at this point can be no debate. Obama and Holder openly promote, seek and practice a government OF the black people, BY the black people and FOR the black people, not simply in government largesse but in the application of ALL laws; civil, criminal and regulatory. The fact that the Panthers and the Team Obama leg-breakers that brought similar tactics to the Texas Caucuses and elsewhere mostly practiced their violence on fellow blacks and Democrats is not mitigating but should be enlightening except that such enlightenment is also quite thoroughly racist.

Now the witch’s brew of racial animosity fomented by figures in government and without threatens to over-boil. No one turns down the heat. No one. Has the President or the AG denounced in the mildest terms the bounty that STILL publicly hangs over Zimmerman’s head even as he surrenders himself promptly to the authorities? Absolutely not. Has there been a single word from ANY black leader condemning the open calls for Zimmerman’s murder or the lurid threats of murder against whitey wherever he is found? Absolutely not. Have even the celebrities like Spike Lee who giddily publicized the address of ANOTHER Zimmerman and called for a lynching party to visit suffered ANY opprobrium? Absolutely not. Has a single black leader called for calm and restraint even as criminal charges, the supposed goal of the movement, been laid? Absolutely not. Nor will you.

There is no surcease on any front because no one in this parade of disgrace ever gave a fuck about Trayvon Martin or ever will, and that includes Trayvon Martin, a nihilist punk, self-named on twitter, SLIMM@NO_LIMIT_NIGGA. What limits did he feel himself above? You can guess or you can click but you will not be surprised. He drew his name from a profane rant glorifying criminality and violence. Looking away from this reality that figures like Bill Cosby and Steve Harvey occasionally struggle against is a large reason why Trayvon and numberless boys like him enjoy a cloaking field with their own parents and people that absolves them of responsibility even to pull their pants up. The idea that these lost boys might have to be saved from themselves and the monied exploiters of their ignorance before they are saved from Nightriders is too large and terrible to contemplate, therefore it remains uncontemplated.

So we enter a darkened wold on a path we have been on as long as any of us can remember. OJ was the trial of LAST century. Zimmerman’s will be the first trial of this one but not the last, most likely this is the opening blow in a long, long campaign in what has been a long struggle already. Look for no easing of tensions for those in charge are not in the easing business. Already the arrest of Zimmerman has proven anti-climactic and unsatisfying. Second degree murder? That is an insult, a recognition that Trayvon was a second-class citizen; this is what the ignorant who called for something named “justice” already are saying. If Zimmerman is granted bail though he has demonstrated he is no flight risk, this will also be a racist affront. Any change in venue will be a racist attempt to subvert the locals’ just outrage. Jury selection that weeds out those who sport a Pussy Ass Cracker t-shirt will be the subject of outrage at the justice system at large. The defense attorneys will be harassed, at least. The judge will need lifelong bodyguards around the clock regardless of the outcome and if there is a conviction, the absence of the death penalty will bring the name Troy Davis back to every throat. Already there is a national campaign, quite open, to murder Zimmerman once he sets foot in a jail and we know who owns the jails when the lights are out but even his head on a skewer will assuage not a single heart because outside and inside the prison walls the grotesque conveyor belt of murder will continue as the real driving motor is NOT white racist hit squads running amok (and if it were, Jorge would be unwise to sit with them). It is young black men who are killing young black men and if you were conspiring to see that disaster accelerate you could hardly do better than to cripple both law enforcement and legitimate self-defense as the Trayvon imbroglio is doing at an alarming pace. The astonishingly numerous voices celebrating their own liberation at the sight of Zimmerman in handcuffs will not sing for long as the gunfire in the ‘hood is undiminished; perhaps increased.

And what if the worst occurs? Even a cursory understanding of the law implies that this second prosecutor, Corey, has overcharged. The facts as we know them would have to diverge wildly from the facts as Corey can prove them to support murder 2 and if she does pull it out an appeal on dozens of grounds is assured; fair trial being foremost. What will happen if after all this Zimmerman walks free? Well, remember what happened when OJ was acquitted?

Not that.

There has been a spark in Florida. Whether it proves igniting depends on the condition and volume of the available fuel. It has been hot and dry across the nation for some time so we should be cautious with cigarette butts and any other sort of burning. In that case, maybe Al Sharpton should have stayed home. Too late for that now. He has broken out the tropical suits and the high-humidity hair treaments. Rev Sharpton has been one of the leading voices championing Justice for Tayvon as this movement is aptly known, calling for patience and support for the Martin family as they brace for the possibly imminent arrest of their son. 

The details of that evening are combustibly in dispute but some of the evidence is in the public domain. 911 calls record the last words of George Zimmerman, age 28, the community watch captain in this modest gated community. The one thing that is certain is that the Sanford police explicitly told Zimmerman NOT to approach the “suspicious” character who turned out to be seventeen year old Trayvon Martin. But he did, according to Martin, accosting him from the rear, gun drawn and trying to restrain Martin. He resisted this ununiformed, armed stranger and struggled with the gun resulting, accidentally he says, in a single shot being fired that killed Zimmerman instantly. Martin was taken into custody without incident, questioned in the presence of his father and counsel and released.

There are witnesses to this twilight exertion but in some regards they conflict. One question is, who was sitting on whose chest? If, as Martin contends, the larger Zimmerman was straddling him about to rain his fists down on his face, Martin would have a good claim of self defense, although he contends the shooting was accidental. But the sounds of dismay on the 911 call were plausibly coming from either participant. Martin claims it is him. The witnesses who only heard and did not see are split as to whether it is Martin or Zimmerman. The one who claims to have seen the conflict at dusk but at a distance, says it was Martin over Zimmerman at close quarters.

The coroner’s report and forensic investigation are not in. From the cop shows we know that the technicians will be able to draw many of the finest details from their art. If the bullet was fired from above, it is in the ground and will be unearthed if it hasn’t already been. If it was fired from below they will be able to tell that to a certainty. A grand jury is impaneled and will decide on an indictment of Tayvon Martin, the most probable charge would be one of manslaughter.

But waiting for indictments is not everyone’s cup of tea. The Florida latino community is up in arms. They complain that this clear crime, the open murder of a young husband defending his neighborhood from what everyone agrees is a crime wave, is being brushed under the rug. Racial overtones are unmistakable. The black community argues for cool heads and patience with the system. Sharpton offers counsel and support as Trayvon’s legal team is assembled from pro bono bigfoots and a sharp array of media defenders.

In the mean time Zimmerman’s family remains in seclusion. The patriarch of this family with Peruvian roots and cousins of all colors has released a statement defending his late son from media charges that he was overzealous in his position with the neighborhood watch, that he may have assaulted Martin for racist reasons. Neighbors mostly agree as he has aided more than a few with crime problems in this thoroughly integrated development. Unfairly adverse and conspicuously perverse media treatment has been brought down on a dead man, possibly killed in the legitimate execution of a public trust though neither paid nor trained to do so, George’s survivors say.

Justice For Trayvon moves forward. It is a sensation across the social media sites. #Justicefortrayvon trends on twitter. Meaning? Meaning a lot of people are publicly talking about it, for good or ill. There is real approbation for it though as the movement is collecting large sums of cash from small, dispersed and diverse donors. The newly formed JusticeForTrayvon Trust has seven figure deposits and takes more every day. Martin will have the finest in representation, that seems certain. In addition to straight material support, Martin also enjoys energetic demonstrations at the local courthouse, though he is not there, and in cities around the country.

While Colonel Sharpton moves things forward on the front in Florida, General Jesse Jackson is defending the supply lines. Jackson is on a flying tour speaking before La Raza groups and making other public addresses regarding the concerns of the national hispanic population that Zimmerman’s death is being subsumed under a cloud of black racial solidarity. Jackson made it a point repeatedly to explain that hispanics, blacks and indeed all “persons of color” owed it to their posterity to stick together, making a solid and growing majority as long as hispanics and blacks stay in step. But when questioned about what this might mean specifically Jackson asserted “…blacks are under attack in this country.” and the attempt to short circuit due process for Martin was an example of it.

Gun control groups and their antagonists have also made hay. Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law is under public assault with Martin as a hook though the facts of the case aren’t really germane. Those who abhor guns completely raise a horrified cry that Zimmerman actually carried his legal and licensed firearm. Look, look! they say. Your gun will not save you. It is more likely to shoot you. The gunners say, quite rightly, the guns are already out there. We will not disarm.

The most shameful response, though it may still prove the most prudent, has been from the so-called white community. It is unchronicled anywhere but if you are white, you know what it was. It was a great big PHEW!! and a pantomimed wipe of sweat from our brows as the unlikely named Zimmerman was revealed in his stock photo to be of hispanic origins. We will officiate and spectate at this one and quite happy we are to be off either end of the hook. But no, honky-crackers. ’tis not to be. Yes, as a practical matter, in the media and that miasmic stink we call a culture, this will be a racial melodrama like Westside Story without the romance, but you are still involved. There is the potential for a fissure in the Rainbow Coalition to open like the Cracks of Doom, exposing the lava beneath and swallowing those in the front rows. This could well be a good thing. If caused by agitation and animosity, it will prove to be a very bad thing indeed. Are Americans of any color doing their duty by voting Present? No. If the bigs of race and government are determined to hash these things out on the front lawn, so be it. AG Holder called us cowards to our whiny little faces years ago. And he was right. It’s time for courage then, even if it is rum courage, to say the simple things we all know.

Justice for Trayvon and justice for George are one and the same thing. These are not opposed ends and should not enjoy opposed camps. Justice will involve a full, public and contested airing of all the facts modern inquiry can produce. Does that mean a trial and only a trial? No. It may well be that the facts will not support a charge even of manslaughter. Should the district attorney of Sanford make such a charge without evidence, the city would be in for a nasty Sharpton-fueld lawsuit and probably will be anyhow. If the evidence on the spot that evening were thoroughly cut and dry does anyone truly doubt the police would have made their charge? Why? Believe it or not, all the infuriating and contradictory elements of our system of justice are there for a reason. If the shoe were on the other foot, would the Zimmerman camp want the benefit of the doubt and an open system of trials; Due Process, as we call it, apply to him? I suspect so. All the self-clicked photos of black Americans in “hoodies” that are papering the virtual earth imply, I hope, an objection to being railroaded rather than tacit support for violence, however justified.

Yes, I am certain this is the case in America’s big heart. I say extend to Tayvon at least half of the patience and forbearance recently, if improvidently, shown for Casey Anthony but lay on the same scrutiny. From that case Florida should know that justice is often denied through no lack of effort or competence by the authorities. Still, we live with it. We swallow it. We participate in it as honestly as we can because the alternative of frustration and revenge is far worse. We can be thankful that there has been at least ONE figure acting with propriety. When asked to comment on the Florida controversy at an unrelated Rose Garden press conference this morning, the President declined.

The Island Hopping Campaign has been a wild success. Romunist advances have swept through the distant outposts of Guam, the US Virgin Islands and American Samoa which were left undefended. Only Puerto Rico produced some mild resistance from Rickist forces, crushed with the tried strategy of Divide and Scavenge. It may be a hard sell to blame malign and invidious Division for Mitt’s seventy-five point blowout. After all, how could one possibly get three-fourths of anything without smoothing over existing rifts and gently sweeping together the available bits? Such objections assume that Mitt Romney follows the Geneva Conventions. Nothing of the kind. Mitt went nuclear. Rick, that dope, never had a chance. He played it straight, going off to Puerto Rico for the old elbow-rubbing style of politics that is standard from Dicksville Notch down to Eureka, California. Taking on one of the main questions for our fellow Americans in the territory of Puerto Rico, the pasty but Catholic candidate said that any admission of that territory into the Union was contingent on English becoming the primary language of governance. It is unlikely that Team Santorum could be ignorant of the controversy and its potential for blowback. It is a century old. Only a seventh of Puerto Rico is fluent in English. For Crackologists, no es bueno, especially when Romney took the opportunity to declare that he was a-okay with Spanish being the chief language of the 51st State.

It’s all played for a bit of a larf. It is evidence of Santorum’s incompetence that he exposed himself to such an obvious counter-stroke. He forgot Rule #1 which is to tell the people what they want to hear. Actually DOING what you said? That is the concern of some staffer who has not even been hired yet. Could it be that it is Romney who misspeaks? No, he knows his game. The question of English being officially declared our Official Language has been soft-pedaled. Romney-style Republicans do not want to alienate the Latin Vote as it is called, not that they speak Latin. Rather we mean these folks spring from Catholic lands where they have a Latin mass which, Basic Crackology would say, makes this Santorum Country, something Romney could not allow. The difficulties of those who do not speak English would mostly be remedied by also employing Spanish. This the Latin Vote and most certainly the Puerto Rican Vote desire us to do. Those who resist, who claim that, as Churchill thought, English is a uniquely unifying institution most hospitable to Liberty or simply observe that English is already somewhat entrenched in the nation, these are plotters against your abuela; her dignity, if not her life. No matter that the French/Creole speakers in Louisiana and the native speakers in Samoa have likewise a long claim to their own tongue and a need for drivers licenses. Let us have our courts, our Legislatures, our documents and our functionaries all be bi-lingual! So Mitt implies with swift ascent rather than hard declarations. Let us have them also in Portuguese if there proves to be a Brazilian or Angolan voting bloc. Tagalog has a million American speakers as does Vietnamese. By inference Candidate Mitt promises to indulge all these lingual interest groups just days after his gustatory tour of the Old Confederacy where he heartily dined on grits and catfish while giving similar assurances on strengthening the border to the yokels who consider THAT a priority. Rick, like the unlucky Hiroshiman caught in an outhouse at Ground Zero, can only gape in amazement and cover his nudity.

This is the sort of back-handed play that makes the talking heads snigger and the gunslingers swoon. So what if Candidate Romney’s mouth has written a check that President Romney’s ass would have difficulty honoring? He shattered the target with a direct hit and gathered the bits under his own standard. The votes are counted, fools! Any collateral damage to the nation is hypothetical. Any damage to Romney’s prospects will be assuaged by the same quick ruthlessness applied to some other question. This is one smoooothe cold cat. We have barely seen the beginning of his treachery, the only upside being that there are several deserving objects who, like Santorum, apprehend not the inevitable blow and deserve it far more.

Mitt is wracking up an array of endorsements, allies and expendable myrmidons with his every step. In his row of pawns sit many improbable figures in defense of Ted Kennedy’s favorite Republican. From the world of books and barks comes Ann Coulter, no less. As fervently as she ever denounced Bill Clinton so has she now embraced Mitt Romney. From her position as the unthinking man’s Rush Limbaugh she sells her avowed principles of thirty years. For what? We do not know. She does not know but talks like she has a chit against Romney’s patronage meaning she is slut, rather than whore, as all whores know to get their compensation up front. This is a risky venture for Coulter. She makes her millions selling books, teasing fifteen dollars out of the pockets of working, inquisitive Right-leaning consumers who relish her duck-attack style applied to their perceived enemies, of which Romney is almost foremost. She must have early on decided that Romney’s inevitability was no PR gambit, or that she could make it real. But there are no contracts among mafiosi, or at least none to which you would want to be a party. Will Coulter be Secretary of State or head HUD in a Romney Administration? Will she get the exclusive right to his biography? No Ann. No. Posting or rewarding a creature like you would cement Willard’s image as a Rightwinger, as you hope him to be. Mitt is as far to the Right today as he is ever going to get which is far further to the Right than he really is. Rewarding your snivelry will cost, rather than pay. It could be that your destruction would grease his wheels the tiniest bit and when you stand, exposed like Santorum, Mitt will poke his tongue hard into his cheek, as you do, Ann, to let us all know he zinged you good.

Another of Willard’s wingmen is that all too familiar frat pledge, the over-proofed loaf of self-regard we know as Karl Rove. The Boy Genius, W called him though his claim to either mantle is dubious. This statistician with imperious habits has a belt full of scalps, mostly Republican. Recall his long tenure shepherding Bush and a few other well-heeled Republicans through the thickets of grumpy Constitutionalists that hinder, occasionally, a candidate from running as Santa Claus in striped pants. He invented the now archaic Compassionate Conservatism; a rhetorical stipulation that gave in to the premise that there is something incompassionate in ordinary conservatism. Did he do this for purely tactical reasons or does he really believe that the Entitlement State can be broken of its habit of devouring the populace and harnessed to a Republican bandwagon? It seems the latter as he is as ignorant of the full costs of his projects as Obama is of his. Rove extends his ignorance as a shield about Romneycare, aping Mitt in his dismissals, his revisionism and his head-shaking bewilderment that anyone could object to criminal enforcement of mandated medicine or really believe the astronomical costs already accruing. Like Ann, he works on speculation. While a free-lancer now, he is certain that Team Romney will be free with the juice when possible. Karl Rove BACK as Chief of Staff? Well Karl, you are an able fellow and you certainly can spin a poll but we don’t really want Bushies running around in our set shots. Besides, you do more good for the cause out there in the trenches! But what that cause might be, other than electing the fellow signing the checks, is completely mysterious.

Rove is the gunslinger’s gunslinger. If he slept on his Left side one night he could wake up as James Carville. But there is another Romney supporter who has always claimed to be uncompromising, an absolutist and above all, an Incorruptible Man. He is the most crucial of all Romney’s Republican Guard though he is not even thoroughly a Republican. The specimen now on the slab is Ron Paul. No wonder honest, decent people flee in shrieking horror from politics given they contain a perversion like Paul. The gentleman does eschew the labels of Left and Right but he claims to be an anti-Statist. He claims to be an anti-Socialist. He claims to be against debt, against war, against earmarks and foreign entanglements and aid and the Drug War and all those things his young fans are genuinely against. And yet he is not against Romney. Oh no. It will stun the man of common honesty that such a baroque fraud would be engaged in or even COULD be engaged in on the public stage but there is no doubt from the analysts, the opinionators and most especially among the other candidates; Ron Paul is Romney’s personal attack dog, bird dog and lap dog. In debates Paul never touches his master nor the master his cur. The hapless doofs who think they showed up to a frank free-for-all find that as individuals they face a tag-team. From above and the Left, they face Romney, The Willard of Oz who denounces their bean counting as cruelty. From below and the Right, Paul denounces them as insufficiently “conservative” whether for spending or war-making. Yet somehow neither ever finds the other an inviting target. The secret accord is even more pronounced in the State-to-State campaigns. Paul’s ads hit all, except Romney, the candidate MOST repugnant to principled Libertarianism. The Virginia primary was exemplary. Through late, ex poste facto and opportunistic backroom dealing all the other candidates were wiped from the Virginia ballot excepting Mitt Romney and Ron Paul. Ordinarily something like this would have the Paul crowd in an uproar and often they uproar without such provocation. Other competitors for the Not-Romney crowd have been squeezed out of contention, in part through their own poor performances but also they have been caught in a pincer maneuver with Romney as anvil and Paul as the trip-hammer. Does Romney make explicit promises to Paul either for himself or consideration for his son, Rand? We go only from their otherwise inexplicable behavior and our knowledge that Mitt was the victim of a similar alliance between McCain and Huckabee, something he would not want to happen twice. With the two natural antagonists tidal-locked in a tiny orbit, the whole sham is exposed. As much as anyone else, Paul is in business for himself and has decided that Mitt is his best chance to get his bread buttered.

So what is there to do? Not much but not nothing, either. The wave of destruction has passed through Georgia but other States do await. I suggest a zombie apocalypse or as near to that as we can manage. Ignore the synchronous cries of the Done Dealers. Let every poll of every sort in every State be flooded. Vote for anyone but Romney, even Paul as a last resort. Bachmannites, Perrians, Sons of Cain and I think even the Good Pawlentians could STILL vote for their guy, gal or hermaphrodite. Nearly all the biggies secured their place on the primary ballots through the party rules. They are still there. Even Huntsmen could finally do some honorable service. If you can’t bear Santorum’s Sanctimony, Newt’s Newroses or Paul’s Paucity, vote for your favorite Martian. Whoever it is. If you can’t do that you better STILL get your ass up and head down there. Write in, if possible. If there are no write ins allowed pitch an ever-lovin’ fit about it. The goal? Well, we may not be able to stop Romney at this point but we sure can stop that Brigham Young half-wit from running up the score. Maybe we will even get some news coverage. Mitt will not like it which means all good people should love it.

And then Mitt, we’ll see you at the convention where all there is are boots on the ground. Air power will be useless.

Mister Jones wore a jumpsuit with thermals and waistcuffs. He smiled and waved, as best he could, to his family in the gallery. Three generations of Jones women attended; his mother, grandmother and sister. Also attending was a handful of ladies from the Brown family including Tyairr Brown, quite a normal looking toddler except that she did not toddle. She sat in a special pram with a thick foam harness that held her upright as her spinal chord has been severed at the ninth thoracic, right around the height of her elbows. Today was Judgement Day for Mister Jones. His most recent crimes and my peripheral role in them, you already know.

He took a guilty plea to no surprise from anyone. Ms Tamera Brown, Tyairr’s mother was not in court although according to the prosecutor she was free to show up and speak. Having made her own guilty plea to related charges she is on probation and has lost custody of her daughter. Her sister has taken the child into her own care and it seems to be good care indeed. That lady spoke to the details of Tyairr’s injuries, her prognosis and the reality of the daily round for a paralyzed infant. She expressed no animosity for the man in the dock though the Brown ladies stared sternly while the Jones girls quietly wept.

You may have wept also. A series of pro-forma questions were asked, one being to state your name for the record; “Marcus D’Angelo Jones.” What is your age as of today? All of Jones’ words were a mere mumble. “Twenty-five or twenty-six,” he said. It seemed to not surprise the judge that he was unsure of his own age. So your birthday is September sixth, nineteen eighty-six, right? He shrugged microscopically. You are twenty-five today… as of today. And how far did you advance in school? “Sixth.” Sixth grade? A nod. Again, an unsurprising statement. Are you able to read, write and understand english? This was the first one Jones seemed to genuinely consider, “Um, not good.”

But good enough. The state prosecutor, a thin and efficient woman, consumed nearly all the half hour or so of the proceedings with a recitation of his history, a record of crimes heinous and hilarious extending back a decade. He is in the habit of swiping cars, employing them in other crimes and fleeing the police however briefly. He was on probation sixteen days before the last incident. He has robbed. He has assaulted. He has dealt and consumed drugs including attempting to sell candies as crack cocaine to get money to buy crack cocaine although some crack cocaine was already in his possession. But on that icy night when he bolted through rush-hour traffic with the police in pursuit his blood work-up reveals he was under the influence of exactly nothing. No coke. No pot. No barbiturates or any other prescription medicine including those that he was supposed to be taking to keep him level. BAC 0.00%

So what did get into Marcus Jones? If he was especially fearful of incarceration he was in fear all his life. A social worker, a stout white lesbian, has made a career out of him. Or so I hope though perhaps her days are filled with other men like Marcus Jones. Perhaps worse. But she and his public defender stood lovingly with him before the judge and the various eyes in the gallery while his tale was told. Boxes of county-issue tissues are all around the courtroom. The bailiff dispenses them. The mood was one of resignation reflecting that of Marcus Jones.

The prosecutor dealt crisply in mathematics. Taking into account all the re-imposed sentences, the default warrants, the record of criminality, insanity, depravity and the dire  costs she came to a sentence of twenty-five years, having whittled that down from a theoretical maximum of life plus one-hundred and thirteen years without the possibility of parole. In my previous estimate I did not take into account the volume and severity of Mister Jones’ record though I stand by my original calculus. He has drawn one-seventh or so of the maximum; the life sentence is owing to the kidnapping charge which would have applied whether Tyairr were injured or not.

And what of those injuries? Absent this crushed life the whole event would yet be a giggling affair; an urban scene from The Dukes of Hazard. A mother and two sons were almost killed on the sidewalk but were basically unharmed as Jones took flight over them, careening off the curb. The prosecutor told this tale well. It is good she did, taking her evidence from dash-cam video (that was not shown), as the officer involved has since been murdered in the line of duty. She took us on a wild ride, detailing each bump and dash including the original failed chase where the clearance of my Liberty took Jones and company over urban obstacles that a high-speed cruiser could not attempt. Inside the car, all was chaos. Tyairr was not strapped in although I found a baby seat when I went to the scrap yard. Jones was not strapped in. Tamera Brown was not strapped in but has previously testified that she grabbed her baby from the back seat and clutched her to her chest. It is the opinion of the spinal surgeons that it was the inflating airbag that broke the little girl’s back although certainly her subsequent rough treatment was aggravating.

So Mister Jones has gone away, not far but for a long, long stretch. What is twenty-five years though, to a man who does not know how old he is? If it were me, I would be three years from release now. The last twenty-two years of my life have passed so quickly I can barely score them. Will they pass more quickly for Marcus Jones? Or will this be, in his experience, a sentence to eternity? Will a grey and crumpled ex-con one day meet a vibrant, if crippled, twenty-seven year old woman of accomplishment and brio and receive her kind dispensation? Or will he be hooted into hanging himself by angry denunciations? Almost certainly we will never know. The world will turn without Marcus Jones and that turn seems to be accelerating rapidly. Alone in his cell he will be unaware of it, as unaware as he was of the weight of his crimes until caught, and perhaps still. He had little to say for himself and nothing exculpatory. “I’m sorry for the people I harmed. Especially my mother,” was all he entered into the record. I happened to ride the elevator down with his public defender, a smart young woman in colorful rainboots as today is a most dismal Monday. “How much will he actually do?” I asked her.

“Every day,” she answered without looking.

“Every day?”

“Every day of it. Have a good one,” she said as the doors opened to her floor.

In December of 2010 my car was stolen from a packed pay lot on a Thursday afternoon. The cops thought it a routine event, and to them it was. The sentiment was that most likely it would turn up in a day or so, probably that very evening. As it happened it was a couple weeks before it was identified, chased and destroyed as a result. The offender, a Marcus Jones, 24 years old, drove my Jeep squarely into a light pole and grabbed his girlfriend’s five month old daughter to use as a human shield, leaving the mother at the scene with an impressive cache of marijuana and cocaine. He was apprehended but claimed to be an innocent bystander who had picked up the abandoned baby on this night of icy, driving winds. That diversion failed, as did his first attempt at legal defense. He told the court he was hearing voices. The State shrinks called BS on that. He complains that he is suicidally depressed, as well he may be, now facing some twenty charges including kidnapping and the considerable weight to his conscience added by the fact that the child in question is permanently paralyzed from her injuries and facing her second birthday in a few months’ time. Monday morning he will either plead guilty and receive his sentence or plead not guilty and receive a trial. I will attend. The grave nature of the baby’s injuries have been reported in no media I can find. A functionary of the Atlanta prosecutors’ office told me of the sad fact while informing me of the court date and their desire for my presence to add, however sparsely, to the bill of atrocities laid on this career criminal. All the parties involved, probably including the judge, are black. 

No one is supposed to mention that, or remember it, or draw any inference from it. We have been cowards on matters of race, as Eric Holder informed us some years ago and there is scant incentive to change course now. In fact the carrots and sticks are arrayed to mark out a single course of determined, practiced ignorance; a platonic ideal of non-judgemental even-handedness which in practice is a program of leniency and forbearance that explains away even wanton depravity like this as mundane; regrettable but unsurprising. I deliver the same diagnosis as the Fulton County psych-squad did to Mr Jones. I call bullshit. I call it loud and long.

My exposure to black people, black culture and black behavior could only be more complete if I were black myself, in which case I would be even more subject to the peer pressure to circle the wagons; said pressure I recognize and thoroughly renounce. Marcus Jones speaks and acts far more for his race than, say, Magic Johnson or local philanthropist Luducris. But with precious few exceptions, they all speak from the same hymnal. I predict Monday’s proceedings will be quick and without rancor from anyone. Jones will plead guilty, have his prison sentence commuted to the time already served in lock-up with rehab, community service and a levy of restitution that will never, in the meagerest fraction, be paid. If it goes otherwise, I will inform you but in this case and any like it, expect the expected.

This is not to say that an identical set of circumstances might occur with a white malefactor. Dangerous loons abound. But just as certainly as Mr Jones will be excused the firmest punishment on racial grounds, the others will not. If they escape the full weight of the law it will have to be through old-fashioned luck, pluck or skillful lawyering. Their race will be no asset. Who can deny it?

Oh, we know who. The criminal justice system is diabolically weighted against the Black Man. This is a white man’s world! as I have been volubly reminded on several occasions. Thank providence for repeated confrontations, they hone your skills. On MARTA or in the precincts or just on the street it is common for racial grievances to be hollered at the nearest white face. Common indeed. But even these ruffians are perplexed by a simple truth; that while it may be arguable that this is a White Man’s World, it is irrefutable that this is a Black Man’s Town. Nearly all of the city and local government is black from bottom to top with minor exceptions, one of which was Judge Rowland Barnes. We say “was” as this man was shot to death on the bench by Brian Nichols while under the delusion, he claims, that he was an escaping slave. Nichols, not Barnes. So he was convicted then? Isn’t that a triumph of The System and a counter-argument to your vile race-baiting, white boy? No. What criminal, in the dock for rape, could beat up a (black) female deputy, turn her gun on his judge as well as a few other people and then not be subject to execution in a capital punishment state? Only a black one. He played the race card with great skill making a capital charge impossible given the jury pool and perhaps the preferences of the DA. Hey, he thought he was Kunte Kinte! Do we believe that? No, but for the sake of racial solidarity we shall pretend that we do.

A similar state of affairs obtains in our schools. Complaints abound that black students are subject to much harsher punishments than non-blacks (though hispanics split the middle). This is not and cannot be anything other than invidious racial profiling and dogpiling. In the popular treatments, the immediate question of whether black students offend at a greater rate or with greater severity is written right out as further racism. In the academic treatments, they claim they find no evidence of this, but they have not looked very hard. Where the student body is largely black you will find the teachers are largely black and management uniformly so. Does this make a difference? Where the situation is inverted it certainly does. White dominance in any office, in any field, in any corner of society is taken as racism on its face by those who make their millions casting all Brothers and Sisters, like Nichols, as runaway slaves, absolved of any legal or moral code excepting only race loyalty, and even that is situational. Clarence Thomas or any other black figure that is other than a Rainbow Coalition enthusiast is bleached out culturally. He is an Oreo, an Uncle Tom as are the few students who do manage to buck the tide that makes Jay-Z some sort of hero and book learning, even discernible english, the mark of the sellout. But where black officials blatantly gorge themselves on the blood of black children; selling the educational opportunities of our entire city for six-figure contracts, it is the children who take the hit. The cannibals are lionized and, of course, the charges against them dismissed as racial animosity.

What foundation there is for complaining of continued invidious racism against our black citizens is limited to the area of drug crimes. Yes, the famous sentencing divide between crack and coke does exist and is most unfavorable to the crack-smokers. On this obvious fact all the other charges are hung. But the Drug War is obsolete, illogical and damaging for all while it is condemned by nearly NO high figure of any color. Is Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson, Jr or Sr against the Drug War on principle? Ah, heck no. Here we find race solidarity selectively applied as even black bigwigs in government or media can expect lenient treatment as opposed to a street thug like Marcus Jones who will murderously flee rather than face even the small risk of further, lengthy confinement. His only hope would be to learn to rap on the cell block and gain his Get Out Of Jail card for later use. Better to game the system on the front end as his looney-tunes defense attempts to do, and go for a race-assisted acquittal.

What nasty disparities exist however, you will find at the federal level where only the biggest fish are taken for cleaning. The vast majority of offenders will sit in State or municipal courts. In Atlanta the black defendant may take heart while the victim of any hue had best expect little in the way of justice. The much revered Judge Marvin Arrington went a bit too far (or just too publicly) in having bailiffs clear the court of white faces to administer some tough talk to augment his breezy sentencing but his admission of impropriety altered exactly nothing. Still the chambers have a revolving door; still it is a march of recidivists and still laughable sentences are handed down for repeated, heinous crimes which are not even served, being likewise commuted for reasons of racial solidarity by paroles, pardons and judicially ordered mass releases. When even attempted murder with the most obvious and well-witnessed malice draws essentially NO penalty because the thug in question goes to a prominent black college, what hope is there for deterrent punishment? And when the gangsta culture with all its violence, misogyny and naked race hatreds is rewarding a reputation for thuggery with millions, where does the weight of incentive lie? Even further does the Black Ship of Race turn into a malignity which blames, perpetually, its prey for its predations.

Chuck D, eschewing his “slave name” (at least the slave surname) made a pile with Public Enemy; a pioneering institution of rap and hip-hop but STILL is a grievance merchant of the most odious stripe. The title of one album is exemplary of this infectious mindset. “It takes a nation of millions to hold us down!” This millionaire of free enterprise and free speech complains that now, and no doubt, for always, even the record label is no more than a slavemaster and its captive contractors, merely slaves. This while responding to semi-decadal challenges to his wisdom, that he and PE firmly believe in equality, racial and otherwise. Needless to say, denying obvious bunkum like this is also racist. Well, strap in for some amazing racism then. Chuck, you have it twisted. It has taken a nation of millions to prop you up! No one has been holding you down except other black hands and black minds; said impediments you wave as badges of black honor on your black holidays and in your black classrooms paid largely with white funds; taxed or donated.

Which brings us to the obvious target of my redneck race-assed ire. Yes, that is Barack Hussein Obama although he is merely the tip of a black iceberg that has already done so much to damage this nation and all her people. There is scarcely a black public figure out there, excepting only the few, courageous black conservatives, that are not now on record as blissfully and intentionally ignorant of politics, economics, the law, current events, geopolitical issues or indeed any substantive aspect of public affairs. These Public Enemies frankly state, as Samuel Jackson did, Obama’s policies never meant shit to them. Indeed, they never could tell one from another as the brutally revealing youtube archives show. The campaign and vote for Barack Obama was, is and shall ever be nothing but an exercise in race solidarity, the country or simple decency be damned. Literally. As fake preacher Jeremiah Wright damned America so is every vote or other act of support for Barack Obama or his legion of race-hustling self-dealers a damnation of this country and ALL its inhabitants of any color. The white Obama vote? This is nakedly marxist when it is not nakedly ignorant and pusillanimous. The black electorate holds the white voters in thrall, including a program of thuggish intimidation. The threat is to be denounced as a racist if there is any objection to a racist regime destroying all it finds within its tentacles.

The upside? It is vast and just. The black population, whether explicitly on handouts or merely serving a market that would not exist without handouts, is thoroughly dependent on the balance of the nation. Now, whether we care to or not, we cannot continue the exertions that have propped up the black seventh of this country. No, no. The accounts are as exhausted as the hearts, so bitterly disappointed at the valueless assessment black Americans have laid on their chance to be, yes, full and equal participating citizens. Blacks have spat on America and white Americans in particular for fifty years while drawing their sustenance from us. Expect no wisdom or regret at this; that would be as unmanly as treating a woman or a baby with something approaching respect. That doesn’t change the fact that black America trucks in greenbacks; dollars, not just bling-bling. YOUR pockets are being picked just as quickly as anyone and you have forgotten or renounced the habits that could refill them. As that old gag headline reads; World Ending, Blacks Hardest Hit. This applies to the political and fiscal world as well. It’s the end of the world as we know it so maybe, just maybe, one braindead ghetto loser who has taken his baseless grudges out on the innocent will feel the pinch. Good thing it was a little black girl he maimed, otherwise the Troy Davis crowd would be down there bustin’ him out.

An alarming thing has happened and the most alarming bit is that no one is alarmed. Things seem to be proceeding apace in Egypt and the intellectuals are salivating at the prospect of a new Egyptian constitution, to be drafted by around June. That doesn’t leave much time so they are soliciting advice from foreign corners and from one corner was dislodged sitting Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader-Ginsburg who used the occasion to suggest that under no circumstances should the Egyptian reformers consider the US Constitution as any sort of guide. It is, after all, laughably aged and enfeebled. Much better ore is to be had in the post-War world. Look right at 10:00 to see where she swallows the Constitution she has sworn to defend in one gulp. Most emphatically does she advise the Egyptians NOT to look at this document for guidance even as she describes the ordinary Rights of public participation and arrest that have been made real in the world, in large part, because of the attention given them in our Constitution and the spread of these, through means fair and foul, to every aspiring society.  How the Egyptian fellow did not show shock or even surprise is a bit mysterious but a larger puzzler is how this could have been on youtube for a week and only now drawing attention. Hopefully this was a clever bit of disinformation. The dimmest Cairo cabbie could not fail  to realize, Ginsburg is a Jew. Perhaps the State Department and the Justice came up with a plot of reverse-psychology. “Ruthie,” Hillary might have told her. “You go in and you tell ‘em, don’t you look at our Constitution. There is NOTHING in there for you, and they will tear into it like Bill through a Ladies’ Auxiliary!” But no, with the specifics and enthusiasm it is plain, this is Ginsburg Unplugged.

Her condemnation of our Constitution is sotto voce. She seems to only complain of its age. Glass houses, Madame Justice. Glass houses. I’m sure her objections are fleshed out in her writings from her lengthy career as head of the ACLU. What we have from this interview, however, what she has boiled down to an essential essence that might aid the new leaders of a turbulent desert nation, is a chirpy, if vapid, endorsement of the South African constitution. Certainly it exceeds our Constitution on grounds of freshness; if it were an American citizen it would just now be able to drive. But it is a prodigy, leaping past the old tatters of  parchment. The SA constitution, in contrast to our own, “was a deliberate attempt to have a fundamental instrument of government that embraced basic human rights… ” As a Supreme Court Justice, she must indeed know her stuff.

We know what Ginsburg is on about. She mentions a couple other documents but all attempt to secure the rights in our Bill of Rights (except, always, the Second Amendment) and mostly do so in language aping the First, Fourth and Fifth Amendments. So that cannot be Ginsburg’s indictment. Plainly what she desires although even she knows enough to speak only vaguely, is to have Constitutional mandates in the US promising healthcare, housing, education, food, water and “social security”, a term obviously ripped from the American fabric though not our Constitution. Who can doubt that this is also what Obama has in mind when he complains that the US Constitution is flawed and encumbering? So what lucky city is going to reap the hotel taxes and bar tabs generated by a New Constitutional Convention? Sadly there will be no such boon. Obama and his Progressives do not seek to add the South African provisions under public scrutiny. Rather they will redefine federal food aid as an Establishment of Justice, federal housing subsidies as Ensuring Domestic Tranquility. Pay-offs will Provide for the Common Defense. Tuition grants Promote the General Welfare. Government doctoring is a  Blessing of Liberty secured to Ourselves and our Posterity. These are the building blocks of A More Perfect Union. So says Obama. So says Ginsburg and Kagan; Sotomayor, Breyer and Kennedy but also Alito, Roberts, Scalia and to the least extent, Thomas. Also Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and yes, even the adamant Ron Paul. Rush Limbaugh is on board as well, as is Mark Levin, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly, George Will, Charles Krauthammer or anyone else on the so-called Right. And quite probably YOU and everyone you know. How do we know this? Actions speak louder than words but we have BOTH and perhaps the most revealing of all are not actions but in-actions; not the words spoken or written but those unspoken. The most revealing of all are those words forbidden to speak. What is the Cow Most Sacred that to even mention her name in any but adulatory terms is to be torn out of the American ledger? You know and I know, it is that term adopted so fully and respectfully from America to South Africa. Social Security.

The professional talkers who reap bags of cash and decibels of applause for their embittered pronouncements and have no elections to lose will defend Social Security in terms both strident and dogmatic. Even the secular-saint Reagan is found to be a New Dealer at heart. All the Constitutional gyrations that are rightly denounced as subterfuge as regards Obamacare or other new iterations of wealth redistribution are swallowed whole cloth as regards Social Security. Limbaugh is as willing to explain as Hillary that, Social Security is not “socialism” in any sense and by the way, the OTHER guys are out to destroy it! The protege of Ed Meese, Levin, will calmly explain that the Commerce Clause is the foundation for Social Security and Medicare as well. This while he draws the line acerbically at the diktats of Obamacare and Romneycare that say, you will not pay us for your medicine but rather we will tell you whom to pay, how much and what you will get for it. Paul Ryan stands no further than Howard Dean from the justifying principles of these programs; he just aspires to make them actuarially sound. Ron Paul? Yes, he does denounce them in Constitutional terms but what is his solution? To continue them except with an opt-out for the young.

Both the Paul and the Ryan plans have one thing in common with ALL the other solutions out in the public realm, that is they DO NOT TOUCH current beneficiaries or those with about ten years until eligibility. This is mathematically impossible. You can’t just sever those paying in from those receiving the payments even if they stay flat (which they will not). Where do the truly mammoth amounts to make up the difference come from? Only from taxes, borrowing and printing. So just as the youthful opt-out is working in his first office job, he is neither paying into nor drawing from Social Security but somewhere, if he is not taxed into poverty, there is either an auctioneer or a high-speed press operating at high speed in his name. And in the meantime when he DOES save for his own infirmity, he has no guarantee of returns. He has no guarantee of his principle. These are the inevitable burdens you lay on a prostate America when you press your claims.

Who? Me? I’m not “pressing” any claims. I’m filing for my entitlements. And hey, didn’t I pay for ‘em?

This is the fatal rub; the deadly misconstruction and it is what separates the ten Articles in the American Bill of Rights and rights delineated under Chapter 2 of the SA constitution. The Rights in the Bill of Rights don’t require anyone to do anything for you to enjoy them. Rather the Bill of Rights is a menu of restrictions laid on the federal government and its subsidiaries. Citizens “shall not be denied due process of law…” not provided with anything except the restraint of the authorities. “…shall not be infringed.” That is plain and definitive language and as adamant as law can be. The equivalent South African codice has thirty-two sections, each with sub-sections and indexed paragraphs. Our Bill of Rights can be plainly seen in the first half though it is watered down like a cheap cocktail. It bargains away the clarity of our First Amendment for a slew of claims now dressed up as Rights. It seems the citizen is wildly empowered; he has a claim against the state for his subsistence. In South Africa this was expressly meant to atone for Apartheid. You will find the same arguments in America claiming reparations for slavery (but improperly). So there is a powerful pseudo-moral case for the claims as just compensation. Its morality is false however since government has nothing to give unless it is taken first from The People; so the claimant, if he considers himself a free, equal, sovereign citizen; one among many, holds nothing but a chit from himself which he honors with taxes (whether those levies are called “taxes” or not). This only applies while we recognize One class or sort of citizen. Once you assert that say, white people owe me. Or rich people owe me, and you write that class out of protections you reserve to yourself, we say good-bye to Equal Protection. No one has Rights but everyone will have claims, to some extent, of being ill-used. So their claims then become sacred rights while all an unconsensual debt can ever be is a license to enslave which was the problem in the first place.

Even if one still asserts a theoretical superiority for a system of common holdings based on “just” claims, it must be admitted that it does not work. Even for the Soviets there was a practical limit to printing roubles; phony money to pay any claim. If all claims, legitimate or not are honored then in short order no claims, legitimate or not, can be paid. It can’t work. It is a math based on the infinite of human wants converted to claims against human industry but painted as Civil Rights. There are only two ways out once embarked down this road; one is for large numbers of citizens to forgo their claims, just or not. Unlikely.The other is for everyone to press their claims to the maximum until the pot is drained and smashed to bits. The State based on claims will die and the claims with it. Rough freedoms will return because no one will be paid to stop them. Trade and thievery, enterprise and loot will thrive. Then by necessity genuine charity will replace the system of claims, now defunct. This happy time will persist so long as the new State is restrained, which is the function of the Constitution. One would think a Supreme Court Justice, or at least SOMEONE would know it.

2012 is looking up. The first good news in months comes from the last poll before today’s Iowa caucuses. It reflects a tectonic upset of preconceptions in its leaderboard which shows Santorum third with 18%, Romney with 19 and Ron Paul, first among statistical equals, at 20. The best of it? Newt is not only fourth but down far enough (4 points) that he is excluded from the headlines. It seems the rally of those who actually recall Gingrich from his days in office was not in vain. The Newt Boomlet is deflated, for now, and if Iowa can discourage him from continuing she will have done the nation a great service. Sadly, piling on Newt has not become the national fad it deserves to be but there is another, longer suffering target of the dogpile, a man in public office so long he has a grown son who is a Senator. Of course we refer to the Texas Houseman, alleged Republican but frequent Libertarian, Ron Paul.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way and Paul has endeared himself to many of us simply by mussing up Romney’s hair. Regardless of policy differences, no American or Republican should be content to see a coronation where an election should be, even if it is just the primaries. Write-ins and phantom candidacies, even of fictitious characters have performed this function in the past but appearances to the contrary, Ron Paul is no Donald Duck. Get beyond the wardrobe and there are clear, long articulated policy prescriptions and principled analysis of the economic political maelstrom that swirls outside your window. That Paulism has new popular appeal cannot be denied. This is why you suddenly find Romney and the other presumptives giving a Strange New Respect commensurate with his proven effect on record sales.

Miss Clarkson’s experience was double-edged though. In this she proves to be more like an Average Jolene, taking to twitter with an insight that seems pretty pedestrian… supporting a long-time local political figure for higher office, and finding herself twitslapped silly. Anyone expressing the mildest tolerance or adherence to Paulism in a public venue has had a similar experience. Don’t you know he’s a racist? Don’t you know he’s an anti-semite? Don’t you know he hates gays? Don’t you know he is a misogynist? Don’t you know he’s a nut? And as it happens, no, I do not know any of those things and having examined the charges am no closer to doing so.

Our opposite numbers go nuclear right off, playing that old race card and its relatives in the Diversity Deck. Like Social Security, these have long been the heaviest hitting of political weapons. The simple existence of the charges is dispositive, at least for anyone on the Right. Farrakhan, Wright and their numberless admirers are reflexively excused their repeated racist, sexist and gay-hostile pronouncements, not least because of their powerful associations but mostly for purposes of political solidarity. Paul enjoys no such immunity even though he inhabits a policy desert in between Right and Left. Isn’t this the kind of guy the media is always onto us about? Why is Ron Paul not a “centrist” as so many people claim to want? This we will examine but in any event Ron Paul is a man without a country, or at least a party. Those who could be counted on to defend Pat Buchanan on grounds of fairness or consistency will say not a word either in exculpation of Paul or denunciation of the gathered stoning party. The excuse before today was that Paul was irrelevant. He is a pygmy, as the polls reveal, so not a fit topic says the conservative press, such as it is. But like their colleagues, the far more numerous liberal gunslingers, these guys seem not to know what year it is. The internets are awash with original content, dug up newsletters from the ancient days of direct mail as well as video and transcripts. My not too thorough delving here reveals that Paul’s alleged racism, even if he is proven to have written the offensive matter, basically boils down to some straight talk about welfare. Paulism and Cosbyism share many tenets on the subject of entitlements and race. His antipathy to women is construed from a critique of sexual harassment law and culture that Herman Cain and Bill Clinton would boldly support from a cloak of anonymity but no need to inquire of such compromised sources as you will find similar arguments even from “feminist” writers, ie the definition of sexual harassment must be as clear as other legal precepts. Madness! Likewise his hostility to homosexuals is revealed in skepticism of the global AIDS research juggernaut; skepticism that has been born out by events. It seems that these ARE the “smoking gun” in the view of the press, as these were the beanballing questions tossed Paul by Chris Wallace on Sunday. On these matters, as regards the Conventional Wisdom, especially among Republicans, Paul’s crimes seem to be little more than being right too soon.

If the polling is being properly done (always a mystery), it should be little surprise that these mendacious attacks have fallen flat. Indeed he who hit hardest and soonest, Gingrich, has fallen the fastest. Who thought a bitter defense of racial gerrymandering would benefit them in a Republican primary? Team Newt can ill afford such blundering so here’s hoping it continues. The other Paul antagonists continue in a different vein. Until recently it was sufficient for any talking head to denounce Paul as “an extremist”. The issues and the nature of the extremity are never roundly disclosed so we must go a-dousing. The centerpiece of Paulism, as everyone knows, is strict Constitutionalism.

Strict. Constitutionalism.

If there were ever a phrase designed to light up a Republican dial group, this would be it. You will find no poor reception with any other focus group either. So the pros have a real problem on their hands. Their candidates can’t go around denouncing Strict Constitutionalism, much less Constitutionalism. Talk about tanking the meters! Yet a vast fraction if not a near totality of the projects, programs and policies put forward by EITHER party or both, lie clearly outside the Constitution’s enumerated powers. Paul does fall well short here on the matter most pressing on us today; that would be the explosion in entitlements that is happening concurrent with a collapse of their various funding schemes. Paul declares forthrightly what any Republican office holder will only whisper if he says so at all, which is that Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and the whole family of support payments, subsidies and open graft that pad the silken pockets on Wall Street as much as the threadbare jeans in the ‘hood are starkly Unconstitutional. Locate the article in the Constitution that allows them, if you doubt it. Strain and struggle as you will. At best the Frugal Socialists, Bachmann’s one quotable expression, will trot out a reading of the Commerce Clause that is so expansive as to make all but the structural prescriptions in the Constitution a dead letter. Yes, this is strongly related to Romney’s Fault, in that he denies the propriety of Obamacare on the same grounds that he will admit the virtues of Romneycare. But the principle is the same for all the candidates on nearly all the issues. Even Bachmann, as she den0unces, rightly, the New Deal and Great Society relics as socialism, does not say they must be abolished like segregated schools. Oh no. And neither does Paul. While denouncing the lawlessness and futility of the programs (and there is a good case that anything called a “program” is Unconstitutional) his solution is less sound and less worthy by far than even the marginally useful Ryan Plan. Paul hopes to allow youngsters of around 25 to opt out of the bigs of SS and Medicare but makes no paring of benefits to anyone else. This sets them on an easy glide path, he claims, while the shortfall can only be made up from general revenue or some other dunning that would have the same effect overall as the massive tax hikes everyone is trying to avoid, yet which are scheduled in short order. The only way this makes sense, other than just being daft, is if the plan is to collapse and destroy the entitlement state as quickly as possible. Needless to say, that doesn’t focus group well with anyone except maybe me.

On other fiscal matters the competing Republicans and even prominent Democrats claim to be eagerly on the Paul bandwagon. Spending cuts? Everyone wants spending cuts. Tax increases? No one wants tax increases. Suspicion of the Fed, an end to Venture Cronyism, a sound dollar… everyone claims to want what Paul has been selling for thirty years. So what is the beef? The generic talkers put it well, you have heard them repeat from their scripts; yeah, he’s great on domestic policy but nuts on foreign policy, so no go. And that is ever the end of it. Somehow anyone who might consider a global withdrawal of American forces to inside our own borders or at least to a limited presence is flat out insane or, the allusion goes, an anti-semite, a secret jihadi even. Now, I am among the folks who supported the Global War on Terror in nearly every particular and was neither surprised nor appalled when President Obama proved, against his campaign claims, to do likewise. But even an old warmongerer like me knows that, short of some epic reforms, in short order the entire federal budget will be taken up by debt service and entitlements. There won’t be a thin dime for even a volunteer, unpaid armed forces, much less anything we could fight a real war with. The foreign policy, you see, can only exist if the nation exists and with ANY candidate or indeed the incumbent, the nation is on a collision course with a stern brick wall. Does anyone ever say of Romney, well, I am on board for his defense policies, basically Bushbama, but his Romneycare is going to bust the budget which destroys the foreign policy anyhow? Nope, this sturdy logic is never heard in apposition to clear stupidity. Yet the supposed hazards of “isolationism” trump everything else. Or so the vested interests arrayed against Paul demand you to believe.

It hasn’t worked in Iowa. Hopefully this anticipates a denting of media/political constructs generally, an outcome every person of sound mind and good will should desire. For this we can thank Ron Paul and his supporters, among whom I do not sit, by the way. If I were participating in that barbaric practice of the caucus I would be for Santorum for reasons of comparative, not absolute, virtues. Paul has stood by his convictions and principles to an extent unparalleled in modern history, which is actually no great extent but baby steps are better than no steps at all. At the least he has prevented an early and noxious consensus that would have made our actual preferences moot. Thank you, Doctor Ron. May the best of you prove contagious.

In days of old when knights were bold the French used to call being gay, The British Disease. Of course the yobs called it The French Complaint. With today’s accusations against the Brits from the French, it amounts to a similar near stalemate. France is pushing back on the ratings agencies warning that their Triple A is about to be cut. Mes amis, cut them, not us, you know why? Blah blah. It’s the classic diverting behavior of the addict, in this case the addiction is to printing money. And that is one I can understand quite well. I’m about ten stitches away from running off a few Benjis myself at the Kinko’s. But it doesn’t “work” for me or them in that the practice, like treating anemia with leeches, makes the underlying conditions of which the downgrades and high borrowing costs are a symptom, fatally worse.

But the ratings agencies DO have it right, at least in regards to France vs Britain. Sarkozy’s peeps point to minor advantages they have over Cameron’s crew on macro numbers like debt:GDP, total size and overall growth. The margins are not impressive although some of it was surprising. I thought Britain had more growth than France even now but nothing goes with snark like a bit of cherry picking which I’m not about to try to rubbish piecemeal.

The reason France is clearly a worse credit risk than the UK is obvious. While Britain is in the Common Market they never did adopt the Euro. They are still sound as a pound. Generally this would mean that the larger currency zone, clearly the euro, has more in headcount, reserves, assets and taxing power, which they do, and is therefor a better risk. But there has been chicanery going on for decades. Sure there has been in London as well but even if the British situation IS mathematically worse than France’s, they have more control over their affairs going forward because they are NOT stuck to the Euro. France derides the British for Greek-style, if not quite level, overall debt. But Greece’s staggering and un-repayable debt is also France’s debt, at least in part. It is Britain’s and ours to some extent as well due to Credit Default Options in everyone’s hands. Not yours? Wrongo boyo. If you have a penny on deposit anywhere in any banking system of any type you ALSO have exposure to Greek debt. But Euro users have more.

What the French spokes-hommes don’t seem tu realize though is that there are an unlimited number of downgrades to go around. This is the predictable, logical conclusion of spreading the highest ratings around without limit for years. The basics of academic grade inflation and Trophies For All invaded finance long ago. This is how Greece was able to get into its famous trouble in the first place. Oh, the problem is Greece is undercapitalized because they pay 5% on their bonds. So what we will do is get rid of the drachma, have a common currency and then the Greek bonds will sell like German bonds. Because in effect that is what they will be.

The only way this buffoonery could ever have persisted is if the Greeks had altered their four thousand year old habits and become something resembling Germany or at least France in economic terms. That’s not necessarily impossible and if the world properly valued fine olive oil and knew how to use it, Greece could indeed have the wherewithal to match hard currency borrowers. The thing is they have had some twenty years to do that, counting the preliminaries to the Euro rollout, and they didn’t do it. Actually they worsened on this score dramatically. The easily borrowed money went to pad out public payrolls and entitlements, paying off cronies in limitless number. While absconding with Germany’s credit card Greece did nothing to lighten the tax burden on their own populations which would have kicked up their growth. Again, quite the reverse.

So the enterprise to make Greece more like Germany or France has instead exported Greek spending and accounting norms to the EU core. The long-ago and nearly failed escape under John Major from the euro is the one asset Britain has over all the rest. It is proving the most valuable. Admitting that fact is the one thing the Eurocrats can never do because those countries that DID adopt the Euro did so with rigged referenda served with utopian propaganda that has now crumbled under the onslaught of reality.

The whole episode is crapulent and I remark on it at length only to demonstrate the futility engaged in at the highest levels of finance and government. If you are watching stocks, they are oscillating wildly and rising overall. Remember though that nothing is better for stocks than inflation. In any case, what are these asset prices moving on? Oh, good news from Europe. Some “deal” is announced and they go up! Bad news from Europe is always the same news which is to say that the last good news we told you was bullshit. Stocks then plummet.

Just this week the DOW spikes, on what? Italy had a great bond sale. Yeah, 6.5%. Six-point-five percent! That is GOOD news! Okay, but the NEXT DAY, hmm, well turns out the Italians are NOT going to be able to cut back the way they said… And they’re back up to 7%. :-( and down goes the DOW on this pantomime when in reality, as long as there is a Euro, Italian bonds and Greek bonds and Portuguese bonds are in effect Franco-German bonds. They are all on one raft. What matter if this corner or that of it seems a bit drier for the moment?

Where does it end? and when? Simple. Somewhere someone figures out the Greek debt will never be paid and they say No to another bailout. So the Greeks go elsewhere; No, no and NO is all they hear. But their government is racking up expenses, bills, just like a household. Now they can’t borrow at a rate that does not bankrupt them. This is the point where we are now. So they hike their taxes. Guess what? that collapses their economy so they now have HIGHER tax rates and LOWER government revenue. More businesses fail, cutting tax revenues and SPIKING people on government benefits, salaries or pensions. So they have no choice. They stop redeeming bonds. Then they can’t borrow a penny, can’t send out their paychecks, much less their welfare checks. It doesn’t matter who is on strike, no one is getting paid. Not in euros anyhow.

The Greek bonds are worthless so the CDOs, the contract insurance on them (the instruments that tripped up Corzine), have to be paid from other assets, which are what? Other sovereign bonds like, say, France’s. Now France, whatever else they have done (which was not much better than Greece) is burdened with the Greek debt. Okay, big deal! What’s a little Greece? But then there is Italy. And Portugal. And Ireland; really the majority of the Eurozone. And just the ordinary debts of Germany and France are already at an absurd level. If they are a tiny bit less absurd than Britain’s, still, the euro-junkies are closer to the fire.

I hope no one is looking for advice other than the simplest; hold your babies tight. Rather this is a notice. Basically we are screwed; or the existing fiat currencies of the world are screwed. When you hear “Good News from Europe!” if it isn’t something on the order of the whole Eurozone cutting their spending in half, it is not good enough. The finger-pointing, blame shifting and plumbing theft has been going on at least five years and is now breaking out into the open. It’s hot-potato, musical chairs, blind man’s bluff, liars’ poker and russian roulette all going on simultaneously. You can’t win if you don’t play. You can’t win if you DO play and you are not invited to play in any event. We are all just sheep for the shearing; EVERY BODY! The French are desperate to escape their own encounter with the clippers. They will not. Not this time, froggie. Nor you, fritz.