Public opinion is split on Afghanistan: slightly over half the population thinks it’s a bad idea to send more troops to Afghanistan; the rest were on Twitter posting pictures of themselves puking in a trashcan and never finished the survey. A select few – who I like to call the No Fucking Ways – actually believe the following: 1) That we are in a “war” against something or somebody 2) That we can “win” this war 3) That John Wayne could fly – and 4) That democrats want to turn tail and quit like a bunch of pansies… Unfortunately this group is either in Congress or on Fox News.

It’s not going to happen. The Afghans will never have Starbucks and malls and millions of mindless drones that go to work and go home and watch television and drink beer and watch football. It’s not going to happen.

Don’t believe me? Well I’m going to prove it with this here analogy:

Let’s say – and this could totally happen, and I frankly would encourage it – a big and mighty superpower, like China or the old scary Russia or, considering the current state of affairs, Estonia – demanded that we turn Rush Limbaugh over to an International tribunal of intellectuals for crimes against the global good. But we refused, claiming he was a United States citizen and the U.S. didn’t turn over it’s citizens – even Texans! – no matter how flatulent they were. Then, let’s say China bombed Texas and invaded it. Then let’s say they tried to instill Communism on Texans and make it illegal to hunt rattlesnakes or execute innocent people. Then let’s say, if they refused to cooperate, they were rounded up and forced to live in Oklahoma and watch Sooner games.

Wouldn’t work, would it? Shit no it wouldn’t! Sunburned would-be cowboys in wife-beaters – driving pick up trucks and wielding shotguns and swinging lariats – would come out of the woodwork to fight back – Republicans and Democrats alike! – banding together to fight against an occupation by communists. (Rush Limbaugh, for his part, would be safely ensconced in Idaho – a state long partial to bigots and hypocrites and potatoes.) Patriots from other states would sneak across the border with molotov cocktails and propaganda (Sarah Palin memoir); weapons from the United States that were smuggled into Mexico to fight U.S. drug enforcement agents would be smuggled back; insurgencies of all stripes – both big and small – would crop up everywhere – most of whom, if cornered in a bar, would freely admit to a palpable loathing of the man who started the whole thing.

Well, that’s Afghanistan: it’s Texas without the TEXAS-SIZE FLY SWATTERS! No amount of money and lives and political careers and fiercely lobbied privatized mercenary forces and torture chambers is going to turn the Middle East into Las Vegas. After all, that’s what Las Vegas is for.

Changes everything, doesn’t it? Probably not. Otherwise I wouldn’t be building a bunker. With the No Fucking Ways in charge of things, it might just be too little too late.

Wall Street – the epicenter of what is now being called The Great Recession (even though it’s a depression) – that worldwide phenomenon best summed up with Holy Shit! – is patting itself on the back and giving itself outlandish tax-payer supplied bonuses. Why? Because our economy is overly reliant on the stock market as an indicator of the economy’s health. Which is a travesty. Because it’s not really an indicator of economic health. Nobody is economically healthy right now. But the dow is over 10,000 points anyway. Why? Because corporations are making money, which is good news for investors and shareholders. Shareholders, for those of you who don’t know, is a term used to describe an extremely heavy group of naked sweaty gentlemen – and by heavy I don’t mean deep or profound, but grossly overweight – who meet once a week high above New York and make phone calls to different corporations letting them know that, despite the economy, they fully expect – not the same profit they got last year, but more. This starts a relentless cycle of short-term stupidity that drags the economy down further and adds to the unemployment line. Companies, who are expected to give the shareholders their money, have to lay off their workforce to cut down on overhead, and thus increase profit. Which does two things: one, it adds more people without income to the large group of people who aren’t going to buy anything that costs more than 99 cents. And two, it makes these companies incapable of sustaining themselves: they lose the manpower and ability to meet their obligations – and their output suffers. Then the whole thing starts all over again. An endless loop of corporate nihilism: Sales plummet. Workers get laid off. And shareholders demand ever more money while the government spends billions paying for protracted unemployment.

Further compounding the problem is who is getting laid off. Companies are more likely to lay off ten just out of school workers than one useless chickenhawk who does nothing but play golf with the boss once a week and fondle interns. There seems to be two types of workers in corporate America: those who actually do work, and those who don’t do any work but are very adept at office politics. Which is fine for short recessions. But for a prolonged recession, like this one, you end up with a whole host of companies across the landscape filled with overpriced perverts who don’t know how to do anything but tell fond yet tedious “stories” about the old days.

Profits are good. But sustainable profits are better. Shareholders and those whose souls they own, would do best to understand this. Because, if this thing keeps going the way it is, these companies will eventually cannibalize themselves; they will shrink and shrink and then nobody will profit – not even the shareholders. That’s right fat guys – that means you.

Note: I’m no economist, so this could be totally wrong. But I doubt it. I’ve seen it first hand in two recessions now and it boggles my mind. But feel free to set me straight…

Not since Torquemada has a hunchbacked evil bastard caused so many so much pain so consistently. Forget stabbing friends in the back; he’ll just up and shoot them in the face. (There have been plenty of evil bastards, of course; but they all had better posture.) Anyway, today a court in Italy found 23 CIA agents guilty of kidnapping stemming from their practice of Extraordinary Rendition of people the United States were suspicious of. They were sentenced to prison. Not that they will actually go to prison, as they have asylum here in the United States – which is THE place to live these days for those who answered the demands of the Bush Junta. Kidnapping was the least of their crimes. That was just the first step. Next these people who simply vanished from the sovereign countries in which they lived would find themselves in various “sites” around the world, where a whole host of nefarious deeds would be done to them in an effort to extract information from them. Sort of like the infamous scene in Marathon Man, where Dick Cheney is drilling holes in Dustin Hoffman’s teeth. He played a Nazi in that movie – and the parallels between that Dick Cheney and the real one are striking. But I digress. Mark Twain knew a hundred years ago what I know and what any sentient being knows: torture doesn’t work. Unless your goal is to thoroughly break someone’s psyche and ruin them as people, that is; if your goal is to actually get information from someone, it’s not remotely effective. Unless you want a whole bunch of made up bullshit. I know myself. And I know I wouldn’t even have to be tortured to make up all sorts of ill deeds if I thought it would make the pain go away. It’s no wonder that there was such a rash of false warnings about shopping malls being targeted. Either it was based off false information extracted from innocent people or it was ginned up fear from an administration that ran on lies and bullying.

Dick Cheney likes to go on and on about how torturing people is great and a wonderful way to foil plots and catch bad guys. When pressed for any sort of evidence, he instantly retreats to the tired old theory that to divulge such a thing would make us weaker or some nonsense. What I’m sure it does is make our soldiers – not prisoners of war – but targets of revenge. If we can’t honor our own propaganda, how can we expect others to? Exactly.

The most frustrating aspects of the behavior of the Bush administration is that they did all of the things they did even despite the fact that it defied any sort of logic or reason or research or knowledge of human behavior. We make the same mistakes over and over again expecting a different outcome: which is the definition of  - well, so much for that. Each new generation does something that has been done before – and failed before – but like Mickey Rooney – they try again anyway – because they’re better! Or different! And then: whoops! I married my mom again!!!

I can’t help but think that if Al Gore had been just a little less boring, this country wouldn’t be trillions of dollars in the hole funding quagmires oceans away in a desert among groups and fiefdoms and cultures we seem hopeless to understand. We wouldn’t be apologizing for torture while denying we ever did it; and we wouldn’t be closing a prison that isn’t closing anytime soon. Instead, 0ur money would be safely ensconced with treasury secretary Bernie Madoff on Capitol Hill near the Green House.

Welcome to Dick Cheney’s America. Where you’re innocent until brutally beaten into guilt. Where, if you won’t admit the crime you haven’t committed, you will when we Rendition you to a country that will get it out of you one way or another. If, despite all of that, you are still found innocent, there will be no recourse for you. No way to make those that caused you great body and psychic harm pay for their mistake. Because, heck, if every innocent person the United States tortured sued for damages, it would fill up our courts from coast to coast! It would take up lots of paper and time that the government simply can’t afford.

Sorry innocent tortured people. But the closest you can come to justice is shooting out your television screen when you see my (Dick Cheney! I’m selling a book!) ugly twisted soul on television lying up a storm about anything and everything and shitting in everyone’s coffee during my book tour. Or shooting out your television screen whenever you see George Bush is headlining – of all things – a seminar on motivation! (George and I both highly recommend shooting out your televisions. That way you’ll have to buy a new one – which will stimulate the economy!)

(For your daily dose of seriously depressing doom, go here: http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/index.html?story=/opinion/greenwald/2009/11/03/arar)

You don’t think I didn’t have this all figured out, did you? Did you really think I would order all these innocent people tortured if I wasn’t sure there was no way I could ever be punished for it? I may be a lot of things, but one thing I definitely am is one hell of a good war criminal. So good in fact that I’m still a fine and upstanding citizen, immune from prosecution, and allowed to practice my free speech on anyone and everyone. Instead of being locked up for all the bad things I like to do, I go on Meet The Press so I can call the President a fairy. That Bernie Madoff Ponzi Scheme? My idea. I met that guy at a cocktail party and told him I would torture him if he didn’t become a criminal. They say absolute power corrupts absolutely; and, in my case, although I have always been corrupt, it’s so gloriously true! Unless you’re a Canadian. Those fools admit their wrongdoing and make reparations! What a laugh those guys are! If I could I’d extremely rendition that whole country to Syria!

Have you heard about the Arar case? It’s a case study in my lack of any moral bearings whatsoever. And the power I wielded in the White House and the Justice Department – and what I could do with it. Some Canadian software engineer named Arar had the misfortune to go through New York on his way home to Canada from vacation. And that’s when we nabbed him. But he wouldn’t confess to his evil-doing: he kept going on about being innocent and whatnot, so – realizing if we sent him to Syria they would torture him – we put a bag over his head and – next thing he knows – he’s in a Syrian prison along with a whole bunch of questions for them to ask! Where he is repeatedly tortured. He confessed of course. Finally. To something he didn’t do, just so they would stop beating him with cables. On and on and on it went. Various painful forms of torture. Day in and day out – for over a year.  Finally, the Syrians concluded that he was actually innocent. Oh well. Omelettes and broken eggs and all that. Now he’s all pissy about the whole thing. He even sued John Ashcroft – which is fine with me: that guy is a dithering pansy anyway. But, unlike Canada, which actually admitted to their wrongdoing, looked into the matter and published a weighty document detailing how wrong they – and the United States – were, groveled for his forgiveness and gave him 11.5 million Canadian dollars.

As Arar could tell you, the United States doesn’t play like that. Nope. I made sure of that, you see. I’m untouchable, frankly. The way it works is, we just deny it ever happened. After all, the United States doesn’t torture! Ha! Ask me a question and “I don’t recall” the answer. Pretty simple really. You’ve got evidence you say? Well, what is the definition of evidence anyway? You see, when you have a lot of power you can do tricky things like decide what evidence is; and the very meaning of words themselves. If it’s something we don’t want it to be, we’ll just change it. And, if you want to testify in front of a grand jury about all of the punishments the Syrians conducted on you at the request of the United States, well, good luck getting into the country!

Okay, enough about how great my power is. I have a memoir to make up and some paper shredding to do. I also have to celebrate how timid and cowardly this administration is when it comes to my rampant criminality. They protect me at every turn!

Cheers!

Dick

In New York right now, the GOP is engaging in some public internecine warfare. The vote comes tomorrow and the GOP is urging its base to choose the more “conservative” of the two. In the automated phone calls that voters are subjected to, the following snippet can be heard:

Blah Blah Blah. Liberals suck – or something like that; and then: “Or do you believe in Republican conservative values, like thrift, personal responsibility, and family? Let’s tell the liberals, enough is enough.” – these calls went out in order to talk Republicans into not voting for the moderate one – i.e. not a dipshit – in favor of the hard-liner – i.e. demagogue fool.

You might not know this, and I didn’t either, but apparently one of the conservative values is Thrift. Who knew the Republicans were so concerned about saving money? They quadrupled the size of government; they spent a trillion dollars in Iraq; and they seem to be made up almost entirely of extremely rich bigots. And it’s been a long long time since an elected Republican showed much concern for thrift. I doubt there are too many Republicans eating Ramen soup to save money. Another conservative value? Personal Responsibility. This doesn’t seem to hold water either. In fact, right now the two individuals personally responsible for the current state of this country are in deeper denial than Pete Rose. Neither Dick Cheney nor George Bush have taken responsibility for a single misstep on anything. Not torture. Not the economy. Or making a huge leap towards socialism by buying into our country’s largest – and most incompetent – banks. Instead of taking responsibility, they choose to “not recall” what they did. Family. The conservatives claim this value to be firmly within their grasp. Yet it’s the Obamas who seem to be actually living this value conservatives hold so dear. We’ve seen a parade of Republicans fall on their family-value faces over the last year: whether it’s a governor hiking the Appalachian Trail in South America or a Senator going out of his way to find employment for his mistress’ boyfriend.

There comes a time when people wake up and realize that actions really do speak louder than words. You can claim something great in your mission statement  (you can bet Bernie Madoff didn’t have Ponzi Scheme anywhere in his mission statement); but if you can’t back it up, it’s time to change your tune. It’s time to rebrand yourself and start anew. For the Republicans, they can go one of two ways. They can either double-down on their current tactics of hypocrisy and latent racism – “Or do you believe in Republican conservative values, like largesse, cronyism and white supremacy?” – or they can come up with an actual viable alternative to what the democrats are doing. This is a two-party system we have. Republicans might want to at least try and make a play for being the second one.

The only way they are going to do that is communicate honestly on a platform that people can actually believe. Personally, I’m not holding my breath.

You say the word “tax” these days, you end up in a dark alley with a letter opener sticking out of your belly. It’s un-American to use such a word. In this year – 2009 for those keeping count… – the highest tax rate is 35%, which is for anyone who earns more than $372,950. Let’s contrast that with 1945: I’m not suggesting the earning power is the same – but for the sake of this argument it doesn’t matter – as there is no tax rate over 35% in 2009 – but in 1945, if you made 0ver $200,000, your tax rate was 94%. Which meant that you could keep a whopping 6% of your income! Granted, at the time we had a war to pay for – but still…that’s a decent chunk of change.

(for those of you who are into numbers, you can find what I referenced here: http://www.taxfoundation.org/files/federalindividualratehistory-200901021.pdf

Now, we’ll just work our way forward in time:

The history books tell us that the 50’s were booming. The war was over. Soldiers were home after kicking some real Axis of evil ass. And one of the most popular songs of the era was about a lollipop. In 1955, those who made over $200,000 paid 91% taxes – but that wasn’t the highest tax bracket; ,moving forward to 1970, anyone earning more than $100,000 paid 70%. Not bad! In 1980 – ditto. —-Then things started changing as a greasy haired simpleton was now at the helm; a former California governor who once acted opposite a monkey named Bonzo. In 1982, the highest tax rate goes down to 50%; but you only had to make $42,5o0 to be in the highest tax bracket. It was the beginning of the deterioration of the middle-class. But let’s keep going. By 1988, at the end of Ronald Reagan’s second term, the highest tax rate was merely 28% for anyone earning more than 113,300. Reagan was the inventor and greatest proponent of Voodoo Economics, the theory of which seems to be that the less you pay in taxes, the more taxes the government gets. Or something like that. Something that is simply not possible. The government spends more and takes in less was at the very heart of the Reagan way. No wonder then that in 1989 people were so fed up with taxes, and barely having to pay them, that George Bush the 1st had to go on record as promising “no new taxes.” A promise he couldn’t keep. As, well, what kind of government can spend money without having any? By 1991, the tax rate had to go back up to 31% for those making more than $41,075 to help make up for all the money the government wasn’t taking in the previous six years. It cost him re-election: despite a quick and relatively painless Gulf War 1, the tanking economy cost him his job. Clinton – because he was a liberal and not at all conservative – raised taxes back up to 39.6% for those making more than $140,000, paying down the deficit and balancing the budget – an act that the Republicans admired so much they shut down congress. It stayed at that rate for both of his terms. George Bush the 2nd, who is closer in both spirit and stupidity to Ronald Reagan than his father, managed to get it back down to 35% – which is where it stands today.

To even imply a tax on anything is to risk being drawn and quartered by a mad band of Glenn Beck supporters with muppets and pick axes. But we’ve got a stimulus package to pay for, two wars to fund, a health-care overhaul that could turn out to be many things – free not being one of them – as well as a host of other problems finally catching up us. We’re paying for the last 27 years of irresponsible tax policy. While it’s nice not to have to pay as much in taxes as The Greatest Generation did (just one more thing they did better than the Baby Boomers. They paid 90% in taxes and sang about lollipops!), there’s something to be said for paying for what we take. We want better education, better health-care, better infrastructure, social security, Medicare – and a whole host of other things, we just don’t want to pay for it. The Republicans would have us cut taxes even further. They seem to believe that the less you pay in taxes, the more that money trickles down. (Actually I don’t think they believe this at all; I think it’s just a faux theory they came up with to explain the reckless hacking they planned to do to the national treasury. That money – as they well knew – didn’t trickle down: it trickled into fuck pads and silicone breasts and three hundred foot yachts and stomach staples and anything else they felt like spending their money on.)

It’s clearly time for us to raise taxes. We’ve got an almost two trillion dollar deficit for this year alone. That 4.6% difference in taxes at the highest level is nothing to sneeze at: in 2000, after all, we had a budget surplus. Maybe the problem  is the word itself. Taxes. Taxes. Taxes. It hurts saying that word. What if the word was changed to – and we’ll take a page from Bush for this one (he’s not using it) – Freedom Surcharge. We could call taxes taxes and then add a Freedom Surcharge of, let’s say, 4.6 percent. It would be a lot harder for the crooks at the highest ranks of the corporate latter to complain about paying for our Freedom.

If you love America, you should be willing to keep it in business. Even if you’re Republican. Even if it means paying what you owe.

It’s all the rage these days. Athletes “writing” books admitting to things that will help them sell books. It all started with Jose Canseco, who admitted that the entirety of major league baseball was on steroids. Then Phil Jackson wrote a book about what a baby Kobe Bryant was and/or is. The Joe Torre wrote his book in which he spent a long time bashing A-Rod. Last week we had the Magic Johnson revelation that he no longer kisses Isiah Thomas on the cheek. And now this: Andre Agassi was using meth in 1997 when he dropped to #171 in the tennis world! And he has a book coming out!

It’s the virus of reality television and social networking creeping into publishing. America has an unquenchable thirst for other peoples’ deplorable behavior. The worse your actions are, the greater your sales will be. An athlete who wanted to write a book about – say – their career in sports, wouldn’t have a chance at getting published. An athlete who – say – had a great career in sports, but, nevermind that, liked to fondle panties bought off ebay before every game while snorting crack, would get a six figure advance and his/her own reality show on Bravo.

This can only be bad in the long run. Balloon Boy is just the beginning. If we’re not careful Joe and Janet Average will purposefully act in various depraved ways just to get noticed – because that’s what we seem to value; that’s what society holds dear. Being good at math or science isn’t valued. Being outrageous is. Which sends out the message that you can make it in life, not by pursuing academics, but by unleashing fifty pounds of fire ants into your neighbors house and tweeting about it.

We are turning into a nation of narcissistic boobs. Take this Joe Lieberman guy. His greatest accomplishment – aside from playing the father on Alf - is lying through his teeth to both sides of the aisle in order to get on CNN for doing so. He’s a congressional tease. He wants free drinks and his meals bought – sure – but he mainly wants attention. And he’s learned the best way to do this is to be completely and totally undependable and capable of just about anything. He’ll run for VP as a Democrat; promote war as a Republican; vote for civil rights as a Democrat; vote against health-care as a Republican; vote with the Democrats unless he votes against them; he rode the campaign bus with McCain and attended Obama’s inaugural dinner – he is a master at getting wooed by both sides. He’s the closest thing Washington has to Dennis Rodman — (who wore a dress to sell a book and painted his hair in the 1990’s – Dennis Rodman was a visionary and way ahead of the curve of our cultures values.)

It’s no wonder we’re in a recession: our countries minds are occupied not with the next great idea, but the next great gimmick.

Dick Cheney, the former vice-President, who spent an eight year period hidden away in a bunker, ordering tortures from a safe distance, only going out rarely, most notably to shoot someone in the face, is now accusing Obama of being “afraid” – to send 40,000 men and women to an untamed Middle East hinterland filled to overflowing with AK-47 wielding citizens who don’t appreciate being their fiefdoms being occupied by foreigners. What he sees as “dithering” might be – gasp! – thinking something through! Imagine that! A President who values human life! Had George Bush been a ditherer and not hopelessly handicapped by ignorance, we might not find ourselves in two ongoing wars…against…something or someone that has cost us trillions of dollars that could have paid for healthcare or gone towards the creation of an island off the coast of New York – let’s call it Fat Cat Island – where Wall Street derivative traders could be allowed to consume one another on live television – like Survivor, only with bankers. There are all sorts of things that money could have been better utilized for.

Afghanistan isn’t the hopeless quagmire Iraq was and is. It’s worse. It’s been breaking empires for centuries. It broke the British and the Soviet Union – and it’s slowly breaking us as well. Obama is merely trying to make some sort of sense out of it. All this talk of “victory” coming from the military is nothing more than a group of people at the very top of a corporation suggesting something that will help their bottom line. Bombing things is good business. It’s one of the few evergreen industries we have these days.

Obama – hopefully – is looking to find strategies that actually make sense. Sending weapons to Pakistan and hoping they use them to bomb the right people isn’t a good one: they’ll just hoard them and wait for an opportunity to use them against India or something. Better to help them build infrastructure and improve security in exchange for them taking action against a group of people that have worn out their welcome even in the country that created them.

But I don’t know anything. Unfortunately neither do the people who are supposed to. I don’t know what Dick Cheney’s problem is – but he’s absolutely completely wrong about everything. In fact, he’s going to write a memoir filled with all sorts of wrong things he’s done that he thinks were correct. I’m just glad the guy doesn’t like me the way he does his country – because he almost single-handedly wrecked it. He was no doubt the kind of kid you wouldn’t allow to borrow your toys. He’d almost certainly break them and then shoot you in the face if you complained about it. He needs therapy; not a book tour. This is the guy who assured the nation that the Taliban “was finished” – eight years ago. Which makes you wonder why they’re surging right now and why the same one eyed mystery man is still strolling the caves of the Khyber Pass safe and sound. This is the guy who turned war into a for-profit industry; this is the guy who is on the board of a for-profit prison that tortured its prisoners. He oozes corruption out of every pore. And you can bet his breath smells like a dead skunk stuck in a chimney for six months. He stands for everything loathsome and deplorable about the potential of man; the fact that he has been successful in his life is an ugly insult to all that is inspiring and just.

BOOGIE MAN

He is the great Boogie Man;

He is why kids keep their lights on;

He is the reason people

aren’t always nice

to their neighbors -

(that guy could be like Dick Cheney!)

He is a muse for the misformed -

and a beacon

to all who hope one day to grow up

and destroy everything.

His presence is usually presaged by a cold front.

Trees blow on windless days.

Thunder rumbles under a clear blue sky.

He is the boogie man;

the dark cancerous pimple

on the ass of the American Dream.

And he should shut up.

It’s great that we have a President that knows how to read. And think. And how to use his opposable thumbs. But it’s not good that he takes offense and feels the need to push back against every groundless story that he reads. Because – as most people know – the news is largely made up these days. How it works is, an editor gets up early and works out on the elliptical machine, thinking up possible stories to create that day. They make a list and then assign escaped convicts or full-time prisoners to fabricate a story. At which point it just simply comes into being as “news.” Usually on Fox. The White House – rightly – feels the need to push back against such nonsense. But there’s too much real stuff to deal with to take time out and fight back against gibberish. Because that’s exactly why such stories make their way into the world in the first place: to drive people crazy with their reckless fabrications. If the White House and the Democrats go out of their way to push back against stories only the most desperate would choose to believe then they are playing right into the GOP’s hands. They will waste their time in office trying to win arguments with fools and con men. That’s why people – and by people I mean slobbering psychopaths – like Glenn Beck have jobs. They are sociopaths who aren’t afraid to simply make things up on the fly and needle the other side. To fight back is to give these people legitimacy. The last thing we need is for the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Chuck Norris and Joey Plumber and that MNF country singer guy to be seen as anything other than goons.

My message to Obama would be to take a pass on the “news” and turn off the television and simply ignore the babble.

Normally I like to unleash my bile and vitriol at the stupidities I see in today’s media and political discourse. But not today. No. Today is about the person who simply HAS to be the worst actual real defense lawyer in the world. And I wouldn’t have known a thing about him if I hadn’t stopped channel surfing because I thought I saw Randy Quaid…

It looked like Anderson Cooper was interviewing Randy Quaid. And Randy Quaid was wearing a cowboy hat. I thought maybe it might have something to do with that bizarre hotel story in Marfa where he skipped out on his bill and got arrested. But no. This wasn’t a character actor playing up some goofy Texas stereotype. It was a real person more than living up to it. He was, specifically a defense attorney in Texas named David Martin. And, if you’ve retained his services you are in all likelihood either in prison or dead. The interview begins with him apologizing “for checking cows.” He is wearing a ten-gallon cowboy hat. It only gets worse from there.

He was being interviewed about the innocent man executed in Texas for setting his house on fire and killing his children. It’s a story that has been in the news lately because the governor of Texas, Rick Perry, has gotten involved – going so far as to stall any investigation into the possibility of Texas being the first state to openly be able to claim the murder of an innocent man – by kicking person after person off the commission created to investigate the case.

The executed man was Cameron Todd Willingham. He was no role model. But neither are lots of people. He might not have been guilty either. His “lawyer” was David Martin. And he was not on television to defend his client – but to attack him. Relentlessly. And he declared even the possibility of his innocence to be “hogwash”  and “absurd.” Absurd seems to be a big word for him – as he used it frequently as a rejoinder for everything. David Martin – worst defense lawyer in the world – is quoted in the New Yorker as saying that “98% of the time my clients are guilty as sin.” Which is all fine and good. This is America and I am a fan of freedom of speech and personal opinion. But I’m also a fan of justice. And, as expert after expert after expert have come forward and made abundantly clear – an innocent man, who tragically lost his three children in a fire, lost his freedom and his life – thanks, in part, to the WORLD’S WORST DEFENSE LAWYER and a crap sandwich of “evidence” bordering on the criminally ignorant. (For example, two details that led to Cameron Todd Willingham’s demise: he had an Iron Maiden poster in his house (he was 20 years old at the time the house burned), which the prosecution drummed up to mean that – rather than being a fan of heavy metal –  he was obsessed with violence; Also, he had a tattoo of a skull on his arm. Bad taste perhaps; but not indication of mass murder…

At one point in what is an entertaining (Nobody can stereotype the Texan like a Texan) and bizarre interview, the defense lawyer claimed that he knew his client was guilty because he and another lawyer got some lighter fluid and burned a piece of carpet and…it looked just like the burned carpet in the house! (My guess is it was black and charred and burned looking.) My next guess is that this guy is a stone cold idiot – a supreme embodiment of both inexcusable confidence and willful ignorance. (sort of like a certain ex-President who liked to wear cowboy boots and bomb stuff.) Now, I love Texas; my family is from there. But Texans are so full of their own propaganda that it’s flat out dangerous. They strut and amble the world over, causing all manner of havoc and mayhem everywhere they go. (I was once in Rome and asked my tour guide which tourists drove him the craziest. I was sure it would be America. But he said, no, he loved Americans. In fact he loved all of the people he has met; everyone, that is, but people from the “country” of Texas. He said they were loud and abusive and acted superior even though they dressed like fools with giant hair and were always drunk.)

I could go on and on about what a high-class boob this guy is – but no amount of words can do the guy justice – and there’s no point in satirizing that which is already a satire and a tragedy. So, without further ado:

watch the interview here:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5cFKpjRnXE

read the story here: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/09/07/090907fa_fact_grann/

I was glad to discover that I am not alone when it comes to thinking this guy is a jackass and an assessory to murder. And, of course, terrible at his job. Going on national television, as the clients’ defense attorney, to attest to his own clients’ guilt seems to go against the whole confidentiality and attorney-client privelege thing. I didn’t even know he was the defense attorney until half-way through when Anderson named him as such; the way he was talking and acting defensive I figured he was a prosecuting attorney. But I was wrong. Also, if you think 98% of your clients are “guilty as sin,” wouldn’t that limit your ability and motivation to prove otherwise? I mean, if you think about it, that sort of mentality grants you the ability to throw in the towel, not try at all, and only screw up 2% of the time. (Statistics actually show that in reality only about half of defendants are guilty of their crime (according to the New Yorker article) – which, now that I think about it, totally sucks.) You get what you pay for – and in the case of Cameron Todd Willingham – who had no money, he got a know nothing. In this country you are only as innocent as what you can afford. Which means half the people in jail are stuck there until they are rich enough to get out.

The gist of the articles below is that David Martin hurt his client by trashing him on national television. I don’t know about anyone else who watched the interview, but it seems to me he mainly trashed himself. And only gave more ammunition to the growing belief that a great injustice was done in this case. And a man is dead as a result.

Here’s what people who actually know what they’re talking about say:

An actual defense attorney defends his profession and stomps David Martin here: http://gamso-forthedefense.blogspot.com/2009/10/selling-out-client-part-iii.html

and here: http://bennettandbennett.com/blog/2009/10/david-martin-willinghams-trial-lawyer-speaks-up.html

and here: http://rantsofapublicdefender.blogspot.com/2009/10/if-you-cant-say-anything-nice.html

and here: http://blog.simplejustice.us/2009/10/17/never-smear-your-own-client-not-even-in-death.aspx

and here: http://brownandlittlelaw.com/blog1/2009/10/17/shameful/

and here (this was the lawyer who had the misfortune of trying to fix all the crap this moron got wrong): http://www.wacocriminallawblog.com/