The Dickson Medal for Best Oral Advocacy

Congrats to Paul Alexander - today's King of FAIL.

This story deals involves the death of a two-year old girl - so if you're not up to being depressed by the sorry state of the human condition, here's a link to the proper way to play the PENIS game.

It was exactly seven years ago when a two-year old girl died from the brain injuries she sustained during her beating.  There was a lengthy investigation including wiretapped phone coversations which produced the Crown's killer evidence - vaguely ambiguous confessions of guilt by a distraught woman who recently lost her two year old daughter.  They laid charges and went to trial.  Paul Alexander was on the Prosecution team.

Then they got an unambiguous confession.  From the boyfriend.  Ooops.  The same boyfriend who, in the wiretap recordings, asked the mother if she suspected him of doing anything to the girl.

But apparently in Prosecution Land, you aren't allowed to change your mind or ever admit mistakes - so the show went on.  The boyfriend's confession was declared phony and made-up.  Besides, the confession couldn't be used because of some legal stuff about self-incrimination which I don't understand.  Perhaps it was the system's self-awareness kicking in - I mean considering the quality of the investigation they had, any subsequent work focusing on a new suspect would probably be a waste of resources.

Don't get me wrong - the mother's no saint.  There's even a possibility that she's actually guilty and not merely Prosecution Land guilty.

One year ago, the jury came back deadlocked.  The Prosecution had the option of having the judge determine the verdict, but opted not to.  Probably because of the difference between how judges and juries understand "reasonable doubt" when looking into the murder of an infant.

So the Crown got a do-over, which was in the process of winding up when the jury sent a note to the judge.  The note asked if the annoyingly distracting man in the gallery could be removed.  Apparently there was this guy sitting immediately in the front row, who was making faces and rolling his eyes and acting like a total Dickson Medal winner.  Paul Alexander.  In civvies.  Sitting in the audience, as in not part of the Prosecution team.  Still trying to influence the trial by acting like an idiot and suceeding to the point where he managed, on his very own, to get another mistrial declared.

It's been half a decade since charges were laid and now we've had two mistrials.  Prosecution wants another do-over, which is pretty fucking rich considering they literally have no one to blame for this except for someone employed by the Crown.

In another case involving jury issues, Gillian Guess was convicted of obstructing justice for boinking the accused in a trial where she was on the jury.  In her conviction, the definition and meaning of obstruction of justice was discussed:

The offence of attempting to pervert the course of justice has been authoritatively defined, in this court and elsewhere, as "the doing of some act which has a tendency and is intended to pervert the administration of public justice".

There's certainly a whole lot less reasonable doubt about Paul Alexander's guilt of obstructing justice than there is in the case he's so desperate for a conviction on - but only one of these cases is ever going to trial.  Which is a shame because then we could expect some guidelines on proper behaviour for Crown attorneys in a court of law.

With regard to Mr. Alexander, I guess he should probably stick to fluffing what he's good at.  His oral skills may be exceptional, but his acting is so over-the-top and unbelievable that it distracts from the action.

UPDATED (bonus actually added - (update 2 and deleted from where it shouldn't have been)) BONUS for SMcG: Paul Alexander's VANOC blog.

Sunday Audition: Who Benefits From All This Junk?

The rallying cry of the week - Don't Touch My Junk.  There have been ll sorts of responses to the incident, from outrage at the TSA's degrading and humiliating procedures to support for the minor inconveinence that is proven to make all of America over nine thousand percent safer.

And it's not just the TSA that's been commented on recently, John Tyner the man who taped his encounter with the attempted enhanced patdown has ben hailed as a hero for personal rights as well as a bothersome troublemaker.  In fact, the deranged fringe leftest of the left hold him up as a symbol of the entitled chauvinist society they love to disparage, by pointing out that women, especially large breasted ones, children and minorities have been undergoing these types of outrages for years.

But the one group that has escaped speculation in this case is probably the group that bears the most blame.  High-speed rail advocates.

Whenever situations like this arise, the first question that should come to mind is "Who Benefits?" and the obvious answer is mass transit activists.  Every single indignity forced upon air travellers, from taking off their shoes and not travelling with toothpast or shampoo to choosing between posing for naked photos or being groped and fondled by a stranger.  Each and every one of these serves to bolster the support for a network of high-speed rail.

And consider also, these screening techniques have always been implemented in response to a terror attack.  The shoe-bomber forced us to stand around in socks at airport screening.  The tranatlantic liquid explosives plot cost us the freedom to bring fluids in our carry-ons.  And this latest assault on a persons and privacy is the result of the Christmas underpants bomber.  And while the grand total of damages directly caused by those attacks were that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab burned his crotch - these were all very serious incidents.

The evidence couldn't be more clear.  Train advocates are terrorists.

World Toilet Day 2010

Today is World Toilet Day.  This is actually a serious thing, with an awareness raising campaign called The Big Squat and everything.  I found out about World Toilet Day too late to set-up a Big Squat of my own, but I can blog about it.

First, yeah - a serious thing - what with thousands of children dying daily from poor sanitation.  There's a cholera outbreak in Haiti right now.  Poor sanitation affects the weakest of us most - children, the elderly, the disenfranchised, girls and women in patriarchal societies.  There's a Donate link at worldtoilet.org, but if that's too cheeky an organization for you, just google "sanitation aid" or "sanitation ngo" for places to dump your spare change.

Secondly, okay - that's the moral part out of the way.  This blog isn't about making the world a better place or easing suffering or any feel-good shit.  It's about juvenile humour and whatever catches my easily captured attentio...oooohhh SHINY!

Uh - yeah, one of the issues about sanitation is that it's a taboo topic in a lot of places.  People don't talk about it out of embarassment or societal pressure or wevs.  Well that's one area where I can be of help.  I don't get embarassed easily and have difficulty understanding societal pressure.  So I'm going to use the rest of this post space to - as Willow Palin would put it - talk shit.

SPACE POOP.
MAIL POOP.
AGRO POOP.
COFFEE POOP.
By the light, of the silvery POOP.
And of course, PENIS.

Animal Sex With Isabella Rossellini

via Boing Boing

I learned something new about my hometown. All the PENISes that Isabella Rossellini used in her animal sex pr0n came to be displayed here in LEAFS SUCK.

We did an exhibit at the Royal Museum in Toronto, which is a museum of natural history. And then they were taken by a new museum called the Lightbox, which is a museum of visual art. It has taken all of our penises, 22 different penises, some of which are six or seven feet tall. They asked us, they wanted it to be kept so we gave it to them.

It's actually the Royal Ontario Museum. The ROM is an interesting building as it has been expanded many times in it's near hundred year history - the latest of which was the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal. The building now looks like a normal stodgy old early twentieth century institutional structure with a bizarre science-fiction-y growth. Plus it's full of dinosaurs!

image by Gisling [GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], from Wikimedia Commons

The Little Paper Tht Grew Like a Cancer

FailBlog reminds me that we have shitty newspapers up here in LEAFS SUCK too.

Bonus: I didn't know that FailBlog had a spinoff for Win. So as a palate cleanser for the potential serial rapist joke, here's something we all like putting in our mouths - PENIS.

Eat My Shorts

A lot of electrons have died for commentary about the catfood commission report. Some insightful things have been said - about stuff like how the "middle class" is getting screwed and how the rich will make out like bandits. About how you get stupid ass shit like the Bowles-Simpson report when you ask moronic idjits like Bowles and Simpson to do stuff. SRSLY, the way to reduce the deficit is with tax cuts? WTF?!?

Anyways, here's the part that really got me riled up:

But the plan would not count Social Security savings toward the overall deficit-reduction goal that Mr. Obama set for fiscal year 2015, reflecting the chairmen’s sensitivity to liberal critics who have complained that Social Security should be fixed only for its own sake, not to help balance the nation’s books.

IOW, Bowles and Simpson are suggesting massive cuts to Social Security - not for deficit reduction, which was nominally their mandate - but because of Fuck You, You Dirty Fucking Apes.

I'm Sorry.

As a resident of LEAFS SUCK, please allow me to say that I am very sorry.

UPDATE: For teh Malignant and others who missed out and the wonderous awesomeness that is Lake Shore.

I'm Terribly Surprised Too.

Generally speaking, I have a great deal of respect for Talking Pants Marshall. D00d is actually doing it and not just grousing and making do with the snarky commentary like some lazy ass bloggers who don't update very often*.

But even the folks we have regard for can sometimes do shit that's pretty sad. For example, here he tries the snarky commentary bit.

It is indeed surprising that other folks have confirmation bias. Whereas Josh knows that there is no message that can be read from Tuesday's election results. GOP overperformed in the House and underperformed in the Senate. Major Tea Party candidates got thrashed but without their energy the GOP couldn't have done as well as they did. It was an election of contradictions. Exactly like he'd been predicting in the weeks leading up to it.

Now it's possible that as the campaign was drawing to a close, Josh didn't believe that Tuesday was going to be undefinitive and impossible to read. It's possible he was playing up the uncertainty because he runs a news site and uncertainty is good for page views. I don't think that view makes him look any better.

*Note, despite the recent burst of activity - I am not participating in National Win A Prize For Blogging Everyday Month.

QOTD: Harry, That Was Tight.

From the Senate Majority Leader.

I’ve had some tight races, but this wasn’t one of them.

Snap. It's true too, in '98 he beat John Ensign by something like four hundred votes. He beat Sharron by forty thousand. This wasn't even a close race.

2010 Peri-Mortem

Krystal Ball got smoked 2 to 1. This was my most off preditction, as I thought it might be.

House is going to be minimum 238 R. That's my second most off prediction.

Senate. I forgot about Murkowski. I'm going to count her as an R. So the results are 51-47, with Washington and Colorado too close to call. Currently they're looking to go one each for 52-48. Had Pennsylvania and Illinois broke the other way... The two close races are close, but they'll have to get closer to drag on to the New Year. Also, since control of the upper house isn't in question, the stakes aren't that high.

Harry Reid. The press should write your obituary more often. Cookie 4 Me on that one. Which brings us to the Coven of Crazy Ladees. O'Donnell, Angle and Demon Sheep Fiorina. All defeated. iCarly has the honour of also belonging to the triumvirate of woman who would buy their seats. Whitman and McMahon also defeated. Other than Senate control, these five contests are a silver lining in an otherwise really bad night.

As for Prop 19, 55-45 isn't even close. I was way wrong on that call. But I'm one to look on the bright side of life - Prop 19 opponents were way better funded. And the Prop 19 base of under 25's was way too stoned to go out and vote. It's a good thing that Boxer and Brown didn't need those youth votes - you punks oughta be ashamed. And STAY OFFA MAH LAWN.

So, a bad night for the Democrats who did much worse than I predicted but slightly better than the mainstream projections. But the interesting thing is that it was also a bad night for the Tea Party. Sure they got Rand Paul, but they lost a shit-ton too. Joe Miller with the GOP nomination and Palin campaigning for him, was beat by a write-in campaign. In Alaska, the poster-child state of entitled white d00ds living off of government subsidies - uh I mean rugged individualists. By a write-in campaign. The 55-45 defeat for Prop 19 is also the margin that Arizona's Prop 106 passed by. And yes, the Tea Party platform did get a win there, but 55% support for banning the hated Health Care Reform? In Arizona?

So it looks like the big winner of the night is establishment Republicans. Which means more internecine warfare on the right. SO a victory also too for the popcorn industry.

Prediction 2010

Okay midterm time. Just under 10% unemployment, economy in the shitter, screeching idjits yelling everywhere about keeping government out of Medicare. What's it going to be?

House:
Projections have Dems losing fifty seats or more. I'm an optimist.
Dems 210 to Repubs 223 with 2 seats too close to call and absentee ballots have to be opened. They split one each before the end of the week.
Krystal Ball is still a major underdog but a sentimental favourite so I'm predicting that she'll win even though it's pretty close to hopeless.
Senate:
Dems 51 + Sanders and Lieberman - Repubs 46
One race to go to recount land, but I don't know which one. It gets tied up until the New Year.
Harry Reid keeps his seat. Like I said, I'm optimistic. And probably quite delusional. Still not as delusional as Sharron though.

Prop 19. Gotta keep hope alive. Prop 19 passes and Meg Whitman is crushed by the pot enthusiast turnout. iCarly and the demon sheep are also swept aside by folks who just want to light up. Now all you West Coast stoners, make it happen and DON'T FORGET TO VOTE.

Cockblocked from Anal-yzing

And in the other story that's captured my attention today, your mom's crotchless panties the Update 10:46 AM.

One of the emails Breitbart posted does suggest that the town hall he was invited to participate in is supposed to be broadcast on the air, but ABC spokesman Schneider clarifies that this doesn't mean Breitbart was asked to appear

Wheeee! ABC taps Big Andy to do election Anal-yzing, but is aware that it may be a controversial move, so they jam in weasel language to keep him in the online ghetto. Andy falls for it and starts preening about his role as an Anal-yst for ABC (Asses, Butts and Cabooses). No one could have predicted that people would be upset! Including the ABC Newsroom. ABC pushes the EJECT button on Big Andy and cockblocks him from any Anal-yzing.

Fantastic. Andy gets totes screwed over by ABC's careful use of misleading language. The poetic justice is scrumptious.

Uh - Okay, I Forgot to Title the Post.

HOLY FUCK. Set your stupid-ass bullshit blockers to max folks, this one's a humdinger.
Althouse's latest post is part of one of the batch of next conservative blog putrage. Apparently Obama is practically Nixonian in his keeping of an enemies list. Proof? Check it out.

House Republican Leader John Boehner plans to hammer President Obama during an election-eve rally on Monday night, for his use of the word “enemies” during an interview with Univision radio that got huge play in the conservative blogosphere.

OMG! Obama's all about teh ENEMIES of TEH STATE! TOTALITARIAN SOJALLESMASM!!one!

The president said: “If Latinos sit out the election instead of saying, ‘We’re gonna punish our enemies, and we’re gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us’ — if they don’t see that kind of upsurge in voting in this election — then I think it’s going to be harder. And that’s why I think it’s so important that people focus on voting on November 2nd.”

Uh- wait, that doesn't sound so bad.

In remarks prepared for delivery to a rally in Cincinnati with Rob Portman, the GOP nominee for Senate in Ohio, and John Kasich, the GOP nominee for Ohio governor, Boehner says:

“Ladies and gentlemen, we have a president in the White House who referred to Americans who disagree with him as ‘our enemies.’...Mr. President, there's a word for people who have the audacity to speak up in defense of freedom, the Constitution, and the values of limited government that made our country great. We don't call them ‘enemies.’ We call them ‘patriots.’”

There you have it. Not voting is PATRIOTIC.

UPDATE: Kudos to Althouse commenter Irene who points out that Althouse has cried about this Wolf before.

The pattern apparently is: Obama does something (encourages Latinos to vote, talks directly to CEO's of major corporations instead of their Special Interest Group, &c.). It upsets a Republican who then mischaracterizes it as some sort of "ENEMIES LIST". Althouse calls Obama Nixon. I think she must have a Google Alert for "Obama enemies list".