Friday links! Love it or shoot somebody edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 1 Comment

America

Let us take a moment to note that the guns are real in the photograph above, but the guitars are not. Somewhere there is a continuum of fantasies that runs from Rock Band controllers to the Bushmaster AR-15 with extended clip. I call that continuum America, and the good news is that you are in it. The bad news is that 350 million other people are in it, too, and their fantasy nation is slightly different from yours. Today is Friday, and America is the dream we dream together. Won’t you wake in a cold sweat with me?

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Traffic stats show Colorado turned to pornography after Super Bowl

By Dan Brooks in Contemporary Media 3 Comments
The Seahawks ram it through the Broncos' tight little defense.

The Seahawks ram it through the Broncos’ tight little defense.

A. Ron Galbraith sent me this fascinating analysis of traffic on Pornhub.com during and after the Super Bowl, which suggests that Denver fans continued to have a hard time when the game was over. Get ready for more of that kind of talk. During the Super Bowl, internet traffic from Colorado and Washington to the web’s most popular pornographic video site deviated from average by -51% and -61%, respectively. After the game, Seattle traffic remained 17% below average, but Denver traffic was 11% higher than usual. It appears that Broncos fans drowned their sorrows in Kleenex, which gets weirder the longer you think about it.

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Yes.

By Dan Brooks in Republican Candidates 3 Comments

Pictures into which dicks must be Photoshopped immediately

Last night brought shining victory to the even more conservative alternative to the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney: Rick Santorum has won Minnesota, Colorado and Missouri. That last one doesn’t really count, since it was a non-binding primary that does not award delegates for the national convention. The first two can be dismissed, too, because those states are evidently full of people who think Rick Santorum should be president. But the altar/alter boy cannot be stopped, and he vowed to take his campaign all the way to this summer’s convention in Tampa and, eventually, make it illegal for women to wear pants.

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Citing “job implications,” DA drops charges against money manager

By Dan Brooks in Class Warfare 5 Comments

A card from "Oligopoly," the board game which I personally invented with no outside input whatsoever

A Colorado district attorney has dropped felony charges against Martin Joel Erzinger, the money manager for Morgan Stanley Smith Barney who allegedly fled the scene after striking a bicyclist with his Mercedes in July. Props to Pete “Bones” Jones for the link. Also, for expedience, the reader should add “allegedly” to virtually every sentence in today’s blog post. I’m going to skip it from here on out, but I don’t want the alleged Erzinger’s lawyers to use their allegedly bottomless sack of money and influence to sue me for alleged slander—which they could easily do, since Erzinger is allegedly a law unto himself. Eagle County prosecutors essentially admitted as much when they explained that they had reduced charges so as not to jeopardize Erzinger’s ability to make even more money. As a securities dealer, he would be required by NASD regulations to reveal any felony conviction to his clients, and that simply would not do. “Felony convictions have some pretty serious job implications for someone in Mr. Erzinger’s profession,” said DA Mark Hurlbert, “and that entered into it.”

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Colorado governor race offers glimpse of conservative future

By Dan Brooks in conservatism, corporatocracy, populism, Reactionary Populism, representative democracy, rumormongering, Tea Party 5 Comments
Tea Party protestors in Greeley, CO protest the runaway taxation of the Obama administration, which taxes at exactly the same rate as the Bush administration.

Tea Party protestors in Greeley, CO protest the runaway taxation of the Obama administration, which taxes at exactly the same rate as the Bush administration.

There is a storm brewing across our great nation. From Spokane to Schenectady, decent, hardworking Americans who watch television at 4pm are joining together to question their federal government. “Why do you continue to exist?” they ask. “Why can’t we get back to the government we had in 1789, which apparently included Medicaid and Social Security? Have you heard that a black guy is President now?” They are the Tea Party, and they object to taxation and spending. They may also be entirely the creation of the country’s second-biggest cable news network, owned by the world’s 132nd-richest man, but that doesn’t stop them from being a legitimate political party. Sort of. And nowhere is the newly-consecrated Tea Party so influential as in Colorado, where the GOP has chosen as its candidate for governor Scott McInnis, largely because he has the Tea Party’s backing. Kinda. The important thing is, he’s winning. I guess. To hear Fox News tell it, at least, the awesome power of the Tea Party has swept Bill McInnis to certain victory in Colorado. Except maybe they made it all up.

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