Murder in my heart for the judge

"Tell me, Mr. Harrigan. How does it feel gettin' paid for it? Gettin' paid to sit back and hire your killin's with the law's arms around you? How does it feel to be so god-damned right?"

Answer: "Good."

When I was a lad my loving uncle took me to the cinema where we watched Sam Peckinpah's epic western "The Wild Bunch" and I have to say that it was a pivotal event in my life - A film that I will never forget and one that, in hindsight, altered my perspective on life and death. I'm not sure that this "red pill" had an altogether beneficial impact on my young psyche but, like it or not, it certainly shaped my thinking and upon repeated viewings over the years I've come to accept the great directors vision as mostly true (as far as day to day living is concerned) and plotted my life according to its overall themes while allowing for some necessary restraint. So when I heard Steve Bannon quoting the films dialog a few month ago in a 60 Minutes interview with Charlie Rose (of all people) it grabbed my attention and I thought to myself, now that's a political movement I can identify with. The subject at hand was insider reaction to the infamous Billy Bush tape of Trump bragging about grab'n some pussy and how easy it is to do when you're a celebrity - "they let you do it" (and, as an aside, I'd ask the rhetorical question: Haven't the revelations of the past month - Weinstein, Spacey, et al - proven Trump's statement to be true?) and how Bannon felt about it:

Rose: Did you lose confidence in anybody because they came to you at that point and said, "Look, he ought to get outta this race," other than Reince Priebus? I mean, did your attitude towards those people who said that, they were just wrong? 

Bannon: Absolutely. The Billy Bush Saturday to me is a litmus test. It's a litmus test. And I said it the other day to [White House Chief of Staff] General [John] Kelly during the Charlottesville thing, afterwards. It's a line I remember from the movie. "The Wild Bunch." William Holden uses it right before that huge gunfight at the end. "When you side with a man, you side with him," okay? The good and the bad. You can criticize him behind, but when you side with him, you have to side with him. And that's what Billy Bush weekend showed me. Billy Bush Saturday showed me who really had Donald Trump's back to play to his better angels. All you had to do, and what he did, was go out and continue to talk to the American people. … People didn't care. They knew Donald Trump was just doing locker room talk with a guy. And they dismissed it. It had no lasting impact on the campaign. Yet, if you see the mainstream media that day, it was, literally, he was falling into Dante's Inferno.

The line being cited by Bannon was delivered by Pike Bishop (William Holden) after the initial shoot out that opened the film - NOT at the end of the film "right before that huge gunfight" - and the placement in the script is crucially important because it's a concept - a code of honor actually - that propels the plot of the film and the motivations of its key characters right into the apocalypse. In this scene the Gorch brothers are griping about old man Sykes and his part in the botched hold up of the railroad office and threatening to cast him out of the bunch. Here is exactly what Pike says:

"We're not gonna get rid of anybody. We're gonna stick together, just like it used to be. When you side with a man, you stay with him. And if you can't do that, you're like some animal - you're finished! We're finished! All of us!"

In the mythical world of MEN this is an undeniably true sentiment, but as the film profoundly illustrates after this scene, the reality of poontang eats away at this code like a hungry Mexican whore wolfing down a plate full of taquitos.

egg-suckin', chicken-stealing gutter trash

Which brings us to judge Roy Moore from Alabama and the GOP's decision to cut his throat one month before a special election which he was almost certain to win. As the father of 3 girls I do not appreciate Moore's reported fixation on "dating" and molesting teenage cooze back in the day. Not very gentlemanly or proper for him to use his position of power and authority to cop a feel and then intimidate the victims of his unwanted advances into shame and silence. It makes me wonder how such a person could ascend the political ladder to become a judge in the first place and then run for an open senate seat without any of these rumors and accusations being reported - was his past behavior okay when he was merely A JUDGE handing down verdicts? What line needs to be crossed before a man's considerable (and well known) weakness gets exposed to the world and his reputation destroyed? Ask Harvey Weinstein. Ask Kevin Spacey. Ask Sen. Bob Menendez, oops, scratch that last one because the verdict is still being deliberated (Judge tells Menendez jury to 'take as much time as you need'). But for those familiar with the case it's clear that the senator from N.J. is guilty - even if the jury can't figure it out - and has been guilty for just about as many years as Roy Moore but the Democrat leadership plays a different game then the GOP.

So far there is little pressure on Menendez to resign. Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), who is expected to lead Senate Democrats after the 2016 elections, said in a statement that Menendez "is one of the best legislators in the Senate and is always fighting hard for the people of his state. I am confident he will continue to do so in the weeks and months ahead," Schumer said.

Make that "weeks and months and years ahead" because that quote from Cry'n Chuck was pulled from a 2015 WaPo article running down the case and explaining, if you read between the lines, that it was all designed to get Menendez to step down as "the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee" so that Obama could do his Cuba thing. As for allegations that Menendez toyed with underage prostitutes on his frequent visits to the D.R. with his longtime "friend" Salomon Melgen, well, "Judge in Menendez trial won't allow talk of prostitution allegations." Nothing to see here folks, move along - the allegations were made by right-wing media and "they were investigated but never corroborated by the FBI." Case closed.

Not so fast. I'm starting to get the rules of the game and it goes something like this: If we like you and can "work" with you then have as much sex with teenage girls as you want (especially hookers) but if we don't like you then we'll dig up anything from your sexual past and blast you with it. So Roy Moore gets sacrificed NOT because he's a reprobate child molester (of which there are many working on Capitol Hill - including Leadership) but because he won't play the game and will give the lazy senators even more heartburn than Ted Cruz and Mike Lee. It's a joke - a big fat lie foisted upon the good people of Alabama and the American people by a dishonest and corrupt political structure and their MSM megaphone = #FakeNews. I don't like what Judge Moore is accused of and, based on the interviews and reporting, it certainly appears that he did act like a cad with respect to teenage girls which means he's guilty in the court of public opinion - but there's still no verdict. So "take as much time as you need" Alabama before you hand down a decision and don't let any judge tell you what is, or is not, permissible evidence because you're getting played by some real egg-suckin', chicken-stealing gutter trash. Yes, they're going to kill Roy Moore right in front of you but that's when the shoot'n starts. In the immortal words of Pike Bishop - "Let's go."