"How could Oklahoma botch an execution? If there’s one thing I would expect Americans to know how to do by now, it’s kill somebody.”" - From @TheTweetOfGod

...A Modest Proposal (apologies to Jonathan Swift)...Oklahoma has again highlighted the moral bankruptcy of the so-called "Bible Belt" by torturing to death inmate Clayton ("Botched It") Lockett, who mumbled and writhed on his gurney for 45 minutes before dying of a massive heart attack rather than by the lethal injection that was supposed to murder him...referring to Lockett’s vein, Oklahoma's director of corrections Robert Patton said “the line had blown”...so here's my proposal for Oklahoma, Texas, Virginia and other leading State death merchants -- send your executioners to Saudi Arabia for some on-the-ground training in how to stone people to death or for beheading lessons - both arguably more humane and effective...

...Or they could take lessons from Texas....The Lone Star State of Execution was enthusiastically looking forward to its next killing, scheduled a mere two weeks after Oklahoma murdered Lockett...Governor Rick ("Scary") Perry proudly noted on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that “I’m confident that the way that the executions are taken care of in the state of Texas are [sic] appropriate”...David Dow, a law professor at the University of Houston, had a more succinct assessment: “I think Texas probably does it as well as Iran”...
                    

 They do kind of look alike!

...enough hypocrisy to go all around, and around...new National Basketball Association Commissioner Adam Silver ("Bullet") promptly banned Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald ("Not Very") Sterling from the league for life for racist comments he made to his girlfriend, one V. ("Vamp") Stiviano...Sterling was recorded ordering her to stop hanging around black people...the ironies are endless...Sterling is 80 and white with a fake last name...he tries to hide his age by putting so much artificial coloring on his hair that he looks top-heavy and and tries to hide his ethnicity by legally changing his real last name from Tokowitz to something conspicuously Anglo-sounding but with no family connection whatsoever...Stiviano is 31, part African-American (yep - we didn't make that up!), with no known first name (maybe her Sugar Daddy could come up with a white-sounding one for her), and zero identifiable credentials other than the obvious, who has been prostrating herself (literally and figuratively) to a racist old fool for years...according to a lawsuit brought by Sterling's wife against Stiviano, "V." has received a Ferrari, two Bentleys, and a Range Rover from good ol' Don, not to mention another $2 million or so in cool cash for "services rendered" (wink wink)...the NBA for its part is now puffing out its chest with righteousness despite having tolerated and enabled this guy for over 30 years...and all the NBA players are suddenly parading their new-found moral indignation but were more than willing to continue playing their kids' games for creeps like Sterling so they could collect their obscene salaries without interruption and have raised not a single peep about Sterling's sexism or other owners' gay-baiting actions...as John Mellencamp might say, ain't that America!...

Sterling and his Vamp:
"This girl is half his age" (well, not quite)

....speaking of leadership, and the lack thereof...President Obama has hit a new low in approval ratings as even his supporters are thoroughly disappointed by his actions and non-actions...Deporter-in-Chief, spy agency defender, drone cheerleader, drug law defender, foreign policy double-talk and failures...New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd on April 30 contrasted the President's lack of leadership to the NBA Commissioner's strong action: "You should take a lesson from Adam Silver, a nerdy technocrat who, in his first big encounter with a crazed tyrant, managed to make the job of N.B.A. commissioner seem much more powerful than that of President of the United States..."...Ouch!...but true...

Sterling Silver

"Uh...do you have...uh...another bullet for...uh...Assad?"

...the "Christian way of life," Southern style (I)...after winning an election pledging to “defend our Christian way of life,” Representative Vance ("Fancypants") McAllister (Hypocrite-LA) figured he should spread a little love among his staff...but he didn't figure on getting caught on videotape passionately kissing a married aide while leaving a tryst with her...the aide's husband said "I loved my wife so much...He has wrecked my life”...in response, McAllister took a page from the playbooks of fellow "family values" Republicans Sen. David ("I like prostitutes") Vitter and Sen. John (“put your pants on and go home”) Ensign, and Gov. Chris ("fire the women and call them stupid") Christie and forced the staff aide to resign while declaring that he has no intention of doing so himself...touchingly, though, he promised to come clean with his wife...another real "family values" Republican...

...the "Christian way of life," Southern style (II)...Georgia Governor Nathan ("Straight") Deal has signed legislation that allows anyone to carry guns anywhere, including into church...just in case any stray Roman soldiers get any  funny ideas about the good old days...we're sure Jesus feels relieved...

...Patriot Wars...Mr. Cliven ("Hoof") Bundy, a rancher in Nevada, would like you to know some Patriot-style truths about them people he calls "Negroes"...“I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro...because they were basically on government subsidy, so now what do they do? They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves"...what Mr. Bundy doesn't want you to know is that he is an expert on government subsidies because he has poached his cattle on government land for years and refused to pay published land-use fees, and now owes the government (i.e., me and all other taxpayers) over $1 Million...two Senators and the Texas Attorney General fell all over themselves praising his American character...and now Sen. Rand ("Pathetic") Paul (Racist-KY) and Dean ("Ain't he a") Heller (R-NV) are tripping all over themselves backpedaling from Bundy's moronic, racist comments... for Paul at least, this is curious, since he previously has expressed his belief that discrimination against blacks should be legal and the Civil Rights legislation should never have been enacted...

               

Some of Mr. Bundy's supporters

...time to drown our thoughts of all these creeps...so this month we'll go with Blue Moon Belgium Wheat beer...now on tap at the Gaelic Nation...
- the Brewmeister -