Torn Asunder

[The Publisher wishes to commend the actions of our office intern Alfonso, who secured this column after a two-day chase through the woods. Despite the author having stripped naked and smeared himself in mud in an attempt to hide from contact with human life, Alfonso was commendably able to track him down, pry it from his hands, and transcribe the following handwritten pages, though they are incomplete. We wish him a full and speedy recovery.]

I am writing to you from a secret, undisclosed location somewhere in South-Central Ontario. I'm at a lake retreat, surrounded by forest. It's the sort of place a militia survivalist would seek out to await the ending of the world with a massive supply of beer and cigarettes, and so suits my purposes perfectly after the events of the last few days and my burning need to channel some dark energy.

Still, the situation here is admittedly precarious. The door to my cabin has no lock and can be blown open with little more force than a heavy cough, so the only thing that seems to be keeping the bears out is their own lack of opposable thumbs. It's folly to rely on that of course, but at least I'm armed to the teeth.

Perhaps more accurately, I'm as armed as I dare trust myself to be in these ghastly new circumstances: a Super Soaker Barrage 9800 is my primary line of defense. It may sound like a children's toy but anyone who says that hasn't taken a blast full force in the genitals - it packs enough pressure to shatter a human femur and is complimented by the 200 rounds of water balloons I have at my disposal which, with a little luck, will distract a large predator large enough for it to accidentally choke on the latex.

But I'm not here for the hunting or all of the convenient ways to be gruesomely killed. I'm here to escape - escape my work, escape the news, escape the internet, escape the city and people. If I am to have any hope of surviving the upcoming Republican National Convention I was always going to need some downtime to lower the blood pressure and detox the liver, but it's been a wretched and destructive week and now I want just the opposite; with any luck I can drink and smoke and sun my way to a massive stroke before I am forced to return to what we may now only generously call "civilization" and that infernal convention.

It's hard to describe the phenomenon that seems to be casting a shadow across the United States these days. For a few hours the other night I thought the country was literally going to rip itself apart and we were all going to watch it happen live on Twitter. That place as it exists now bears little resemblance to their great national mythos; it's hard to say Home of the Free and Land of the Brave about a society where an entire race of people effectively remain second class citizens, peaceful protests become ambushes and bloodbaths, and it's all still basically business as usual.

I would like to write about Black Lives Matters, and admit that every time I'm out late for a run in my hoodie, or whenever been pulled over for gratuitous speeding, I've always secretly been thankful that I'm not Black (or Trans, Muslim, or Camp, for that matter). There's a stark contrast between the reality I get to live in and the one African Americans are forced into every day, increasingly captured in horrifying videos of unarmed and innocent men being shot to death by police officers so irrationally terrified as to be rabid.

I would also like to write about the Dallas police force, and lament that it was members one of the most progressive and positively reformed police organization in the country who became victims, while they were standing amicably side-by-side with peaceful BLM protesters, tweeting pictures together until the shots began.

All of those thoughts are valid and worthy of their own piece but somehow I feel like this is the chill of something even bleaker than the systemic racism that haunts us. This Thing seems to go beyond Black Lives Matters or the Police, beyond Democrats or the GOP, beyond religious extremism. Beyond all of that. This is like entropy made manifest; it is a force of nature. As if the Republic has reached some critical mass and is now flying apart into chaos at the atomic level. What bonds of fellowship that have held it together so far are fraying, and whatever is left of the American Dream is distorted into something twisted, like the kind of American Dream you imagine springs from the imagination of the National Rifle Association.

Jesus, how big of a hard on do you think Wayne Lapierre was sporting, watching Dallas explode as if it was a new and particularly aggressive form of pornography? It was like his own personal fuck dungeon - Texas' open carry law meant many bystanders were carrying rifles out in public when the ambush started, which just added to the confusion and put even more lives at risk. So much for the "what if everyone just had a gun?" line of thinking, no? In fact the potential for a situation like this to become a complete mess is exactly why Texas police forces have always had problems with the open carry laws pushed by the NRA and their subby-gimps in the legislature.

Buy when you're bankrolled by the companies that make these things, suddenly every problem looks like something to be fired with a hair-trigger. Guns become your solution to every problem, even the ones caused by too many guns. Throw another SMG on the grill, dear. There's plenty more where that came from. So let's be honest with each other Wayne, Dallas was your little paradise isn't it? Guns (especially the insidiously vicious assault variety) for everyone! Except maybe blacks, of course - your silence after "he was openly carrying a gun" was the justification for the execution of Alton Sterling was just fucking deafening all the way out here in the forest.

There was a time not all that long ago when, like most men of a certain age, I loved guns. The noise, the action, the power, the precision. No more. It is now impossible for me to separate my personal affinity for the things from the gun lobby, which profits directly from sales and thinks the next justice on the Supreme Court should have "maximize proliferation of death and fear" added right into the oath of office.

The blood of the dead in Dallas and Baton Rouge and dozens of other places are on your hands, Wayne, and your hypocrisy over Alton Sterling makes your racist undertone plain. A massacre every now and then is just what the NRA wants: it stokes white fear and black suppression, furthers the discord on all fronts to drive everyone to the local hunting supply store to save them from having to confront the reality that is the United States today, and convinces cops that it's always better to shoot first and get acquitted later.

We are truly becoming a post-fact world where Boris Johnson can destroy Europe, Donald Trump can destroy the Presidency, and the combination of cheaply acquired weapons of mass destruction with a refusal to reconcile the American myth with the American reality can destroy countless lives on all sides, all because of feelings, and the prioritization of fear over information and compassion for fellow human beings.

Forget evidence and body cameras which show an overwhelming problem with the relationship between police and their communities, forget experts and studies which show non-violent and inclusive community policing and gun control make everyone safer, forget the golden rule and the fundamental tenet that we all deserve the same dignities...pass the ammunition and let's stomp someone who looks different than us or makes us feel strange or bad - we're scared, Goddammit.

[At this point the pages Alfonso was able to recover become illegible and smeared in mud, we apologize for the abrupt ending and promise normal service will resume shortly.]

Adrift

Walk away me boys, walk away me boys,
and by morning we'll be free
Wipe that golden tear from your mother dear,
and raise what's left of the flag for me

The shock of it all still has many of us in a stupor, like the Blitzkrieg has rolled through and we're all wandering around in the ruins of Europe. One minute I was drinking a bottle of cheap French Merlot with the BBC on; the next I was staggering through the middle of the night, passing drunks talking about how Donald Trump is just misunderstood. Fuck me we're in some vile times, but one global catastrophe per column, I suppose.

The casualty reports of the BREXIT vote are still coming in and it will be years before the full extent of this calamity is known, if it can ever be so understood: Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn faces a revolt from within his own party after yet another - and most appalling - example of his lame and dismal leadership, and the Pound Sterling was being beaten unconscious in back alley while the results were still coming in. Over the course of just a few hours the British economy tanked at a rate not seen since before the Great Depression. Billions, perhaps trillions, have been wiped out.

The damned thing even had a real body count: MP Jo Cox, a champion of diversity who pushed hard to help refugees, was murdered by a reactionary nutjob trying to Make Britain Great Again, and on the big night Nigel Farage still had the audacity to squeeze the words "without having to fire a bullet" through his gopping fish-faced mouth while announcing British independence. The whole European Experiment which has provided for the most peaceful and prosperous decades that continent has ever known, has been put at risk and fascist upstarts in France and the Netherlands are hungrily eyeing the bleeding and vulnerable EU. Christ, I can't wait to see the Charlie Hebdo issue about this.

At least I can take some comfort knowing that one of the casualties of the night was David Cameron, that Pigfucker. After appeasing the lunatic fringe of his party and fending off an encroaching UKIP in the previous election by recklessly tossing off a promise to hold the referendum, his hog is thoroughly skewered and roasted. Well deserved. Next time, David, remember that voters who can be convinced to vote for Nigel "doesn't everyone call them Chinkys?" Farage is probably best left alone and not worth chasing.

This is different than an election defeat, there's a sharper sting to it. With elections there's always the prospect of getting them back the next time around. The next two or three years may be rotten but at least we can think the next cycle is a fresh start. It's much harder after a referendum, which may never occur again and can't be taken back nearly so easily. Even if it could be, in time, so much of the damage is already done. It's unsettling to watch a country vote itself into near complete irrelevance.

Boris Johnson is my bet to be the next Prime Minister. He's one of the best educated dopes on the face of the Earth and his buffoonish persona is as worrying as it is hilarious, but if the ship is going down we might as well have a song and a laugh while we're at it.

And make no mistake mate, the ship does indeed appear to be going down. In Northern Ireland Sinn Fein is back to whispering about a vote to unite with the Republic and that may gain serious traction. Scottish nationalists, only recently defeated in no small part by the argument that only staying in the United Kingdom could guarantee their place in the EU, are already planning the next vote on independence and it's becoming harder to argue that they're better off where they are now...stuck sharing a country with a Middle England full of small minded bigots who really don't seem to like brown people unless they can cook a good curry, and don't understand why they (and of course, nobody else) bothered to win the war just to be ruled by Belgians and Germans anyway.

At least we can look forward to watching whoever leads the Conservative party struggle and twist through the politically dire consequences that await them no matter what they do. It's possible they or Cameron will go down in history as the last Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and it will be almost entirely by accident - a reckless promise tossed off without much consideration to bring the whole temple down on your own head in order to placate a few malcontents on the right. Empowering racists, and dodging facts and evidence to further divide an already divided country. Swinefuckery: it's a new entry in my political lexicon and that is going to be the definition. Jesus, remember when these people owned 1/4 of the Earth's surface? Only mad dogs and Englishmen went out in the noonday sun back then, and the rest of us used to be able to tell one from the other.

The world is getting smaller and more integrated whether these people like it or not, and theirs virtually nothing they can actually do to stop it. Leave campaigners seemed to play on a portion of the British psyche that acts like the kid in high school who won a gold medal in track and field in Grade 11 and that's been their whole life ever since. So glorious was that victory that it has outshone anything else since, it's how they define themselves.

No progress is possible, no modernity enacted if it might challenge that mythos. Remember the good old days? They ask, repeating the mantra of the Jeremy Clarkson school of Political Theory, Why did it all have to change? Who needs a comprehensive and coherent set of trade, travel, and safety regulations dictated by some faceless paper pushing nerd in Brussels? Nevermind peace and prosperity, I bet he can't even finish a 500m dash!

Or is a 546 yard dash for those still operating in backwards nonsense? For the foreseeable future, I suppose it might be.

So Long, Stephen

If today was your last day and tomorrow was too late
Could you say goodbye to yesterday? Would you live each moment like your last?
Leave old pictures in the past, donate every dime you have?
If today was your last day?

Stephen Harper is leaving politics. I've waited a decade to type that sentence, and I bet most of you have waited nearly as long to read it.

I can't say it comes as much of a surprise: Former Prime Ministers (especially defeated ones) carry a rank smell with them wherever they go. They are suddenly a specter, haunting Parties who are eager to move on after an election.

The clock has been ticking on Mr. Harper's departure since shortly before 11pm on October 19th but due deference must be paid to the riding and the few thousand voters who actually elected him, and Stephen Harper has been present (if silent) in the Commons for the last six months. Finally, however, the jig is up: He will sit there no more. Nobody wants another Diefenbaker, some wizened old imp wandering the halls of the Centre Block terrifying young MPs like a Mad King stalking the ruins of his old palace. No, it's much better to leave now...especially now that the trial of Mike Duffy is finished and he no longer needs Parliamentary Privilege to protect him from involvement in that court case. It's funny how timing works out, no?

I will always remember him as the man who could drive his opponents into a mad animal frenzy, barking and frothing at the mouth, just by affecting that attempted half-smile of his and calmly saying one of his pre-loaded phrases like "My friends, that's simply not true." Oh, how they hated him; they still do: even now, months after his defeat, you can easily find a pack of rabid Harper haters on Twitter at any time of the day or night.

He is moving on to become a "public intellectual". I'm not sure what that means but I can only imagine the kind of ad he'd run against anyone else who deigned to style themselves like that. It apparently involves setting up a Foreign Policy institute. Hah! From the man who threw a temper tantrum by locking himself in the closet of the Brazilian foreign minister; the man who blew off the UN to deliver a partisan attack speech at a Tim Horton's, and then blamed the opposition for Canada losing a Security Council seat.

Foreign Policy Institute? Jesus, best of luck with that, my friend. I hope somebody's told him it's going to involve more than just driving four-wheelers up north.

Abacus has him as the least popular former Prime Minister of our times: I won't begrudge anyone their feelings for the man. After all, his premiership was marked by more than his fair share of fell deeds, and his bastardly attitude ensured he would have no bridges left to cross at the end. For all of our howling and rending of garments at mere mention of his name, his mark on this country is hard to find.

I promised myself that some part of this column would be more than just the simple shitstorm of a long-blocked colon suddenly released. So I will muster some nice things to say about the 22nd Prime Minister of this country. Stephen Harper is a master politician who played the game well, it can not be denied. I have said many things about him these past ten years, but I'd be damned fool to argue his skill as a political actor: He forged a new political party, held it together through sheer force of will, led it to big electoral successes, and nearly succeeded in killing and supplanting the Liberal Party.

But the price of his power was to lose any semblance of a national vision. Once, in beta-testing, it's possible he had Big Ideas for this country. By the time he arrived at the Langevin Block, however, they were watered down to pablum. Stephen Harper's great plan for Canada seemed to be a slightly more dysfunctional version of the country as it is today but with him at the centre of it forever, and for me that lack of imagination is the truly unforgivable part. He was content to remain a tinkerer, fiddling with little knobs here and there in the relentless pursuit of electoral wedge issues he could exploit to remain tinkerer-in-chief for a few more years.

All governments in power long enough become obsessed with nothing other than remaining in office, but the Harper Conservatives arrived in Ottawa in 2006 with the attitude and contempt of old hacks. The only thing he seemed to delight in, the only vision he truly tried to enact, was the conversion of our political landscape into a nuclear wasteland. Carpet bombing opponents years ahead of elections with nasty negative ads questioning their intelligence, patriotism, and masculinity.

Eliminating the per-vote subsidy to exacerbate the power of wealthy donors in political campaigns, gaming the contribution rules to screw with their opponent's leadership races, gutting the power of Elections Canada to promote the very act of voting...none of his most egregious crimes were about reshaping the country, they were always just about keeping him afloat and In Command for another election cycle.

When even they weren't going to be enough to stop Justin Trudeau, the Conservatives finally took a hard right turn and began shoveling the years of goodwill they'd built up in immigrant and minority communities into the boiler. Running back to their bigoted, small minded base with xenophobic nonsense like a national dress code, 'Barbaric Cultural Practices' hotline, and their contemptuous response to the international refugee crisis.

For all his skills in the Dark Arts, for all of his willpower and personal strength, the speed with which the current Liberal majority has been able to begin rolling back the Harper legacy is a testament to just how shallow and ineffectual it was to begin with.

Indeed, years from now Stephen Harper will be remembered most as a caretaker Prime Minister whose chief accomplishments, aside from a remarkable record of fraud and skulduggery by his administration, will be the elevation of a new generation of unprincipled cutthroat politicos in the Conservative party like Byrne, Soudas, and Novak. It will be the legitimization of asinine fuckwits like Rebel Media. It will be the fracturing of the Conservative party which now runs frantically, arms flailing, from the policies and record they were so quick to defend just a few months ago and into the political doldrums for the foreseeable future.

That is the legacy he has left us with. We've been stuck in an isolation chamber for ten years and have reemerged with nothing to show for it but complete exhaustion and the unshakable feeling that the whole experience has just been a complete waste of our time and energy.

The man was so uninspired it's taken me two weeks to finish writing this column. We lost a decade to his mediocrity and I continue to be drained of my Chi just trying to recount it here, so I will leave you simply. It was time for you to go away a long time ago, Stephen, but I suppose better late than never.

Screening

Summer is here in force, and even though I'm slowly roasting to death I'm determined to enjoy every minute of it. Normally this season is a mixed bag. Sure, it provides some tremendous things that remind a man like me why life is worth living: Gorgeous bikini-clad women bouncing their way to the beach, late night cigars in plastic easy chairs, the shift in winter diet from heavy ales to lagers and white wines and champagnes...but I have a heart of ice that melts as soon as the temperature rises above freezing and leaks through my pores to make an obscene mess.

Exercise has helped, and carrying around 50 fewer pounds than I used to buys time in the sun before I turn into a puffy red-faced hog. Still, mine is not a body that is optimally designed for summer. This year is different, though. First, training to run a half marathon is forcing me to become close friends with sweat and heat and like a hostage with Stockholm syndrome I'm started to enjoy the mild discomfort of it all. Secondly I have a screen door again, and the reason that is excellent requires a few belts of scotch and a trip down memory lane.

Sometime around 2011 - three lifetimes ago - some thoughtless fool broke my balcony screen door during a barbecue. We were outside enjoying some sunshine and burgers when there was a loud crack and a twang as a flimsy piece of silver metal wheel flew past our heads. "Hit the deck!" I shouted as the door came off the rail and slammed loudly on the floor. "It's the goddamned Libyans!" (I had recently written some unflattering things about Colonel Ghadaffi in the dying days of his regime and he seemed like just the sort of rotten prick to dispatch one of his famous female assassins to get his own back).

In the end it turned out not to be a seductive Bedouin murderess but a dumb drunk, sliding the poorly constructed door faster than its design apparently allowed.

I called my bumbling landlords and reported the incident, which they promptly noted and then informed me they would do nothing: In a shell-game strategy straight out of the Stephen Harper and Michael Fortier school of facilities management, the balcony doors portfolio had been outsourced to a company which would come in, once a year, and perform all the year's necessary maintenance then. As it turned out, I had missed the window to get it fixed or replaced for that year by mere weeks.

"Bastards!" I shouted, but to be honest it never bothered me at the time. Ottawa's weather is so extreme that almost every month of the year you want your house sealed up as tightly as possible to keep the cold either out or in, and it would be unfair to say the loss of a working screen door had seriously crippled me. Still, my wife wanted it dealt with and it would be silly to have a spare, broken, screen door sitting on my balcony forever, so I had them put me on the list for a replacement and that was that.

Five goddamned years passed. The wife left me, I've grieved, developed a whole other almost-marriage, and watched it fall apart in that time. I've completed two different long-form census questionnaires since it broke. Gadaffi's been long dead and Libya has gone through a whole second civil war while I've been waiting. Every Province and Territory has had an election cycle, and both Stephen Harper and Michael Fortier long since swept away; all the while I haven't been able to enjoy the comforts of a screen door. Unconscionable.

I checked in periodically throughout the last half-decade, just to make sure I was still on a list. Oh yes! Any day now, they'd say, and I would smile because I knew they were lying. This year, however, they finally went too far: The Greedheads were compelled to justify this year's rent increase by outlining the extraordinary expenses they'd invested in the property. Sure enough, a million dollars on patio door repairs was right there on the front page of the document, which came to my door along with a form that announcing that my pre-authorized payment had expired and my rent was five days overdue.

I sent them a cheque, along with a letter copied to the Ontario Tenant Board containing some damning photos. "If you're going to make me shell out an extra half-percent to fix the patio doors," it read, "you should probably actually fix them." I then threatened to provide the deposition from my divorce, which had been dated in 2012, notarized, and clearly stated that the common-law marriage had fallen apart due to "Irreconcilable differences re: Fucking with the landlord over a broken screen door vs Just getting on with life and being a grown up."

The notice came swiftly that my door would be replaced and today it was finally installed. Victory!

So now I'm sitting here with my windows and balcony door wide open - screens letting the humid hot air waft in. It's made the apartment uncomfortably hot and even as I write this I can feel my gonads merging slowly right into the leather chair, but it's all worth it. The unit has excellent air condition and I don't even pay for it - a benefit for which I'm sure the bumbling landlords are kicking themselves for offering - and I'm sure that once the satisfaction of my personal vengeance has dulled and I get tired of picking up my balls I'll seal the place up and let sweet technology keep me comfortable.

But for now? Fuck 'em. It's summer right now and it should feel like it: There are beers to drink and cigars to smoke and summer nights to enjoy. In three months the United States will be in full-swing General Election mode and we can run for our drug dealers and assisted suicides and law suits then. I intend to enjoy this state of affairs until the last possible moment, sweat, sunburns, and all. How could anyone not?

March Mayday

Today is the March For Life, an annual event where hundreds of people describe themselves as tens of thousands and descend on downtown Ottawa to loudly protest abortion.

I should have realized it was today - my mind has been in such a fog that I've regularly lost track of the date and time. To compensate and clear my head I've been walking everywhere now. It was on my walk early this morning, halfway between my yuppie neighborhood and Parliament Hill that I noticed the path was unusually full of youths. They were all wearing matching fluorescent green and blue shirts with bearing some variation of "Respect for all lives!" and "Human Rights For Unborn Humans!" slogans.

The clothing looks like some vision of the future concocted in a 1990s daycamp but the underlying creepiness of eager teenagers, sober and smiling and talking about "youth group" was straight out of Pleasantville. For a moment I was gripped in panic. Jesus, where was I? When was I?

When it all came together I knew I was truly screwed. This thing is going to take up the whole day. All of the downtown core will be swarming with and decrepit old men in Knights of Columbus uniforms and church marms along with the scores of children they bus in to shore up the numbers and appear youthful.

We are be beset on all sides by the Faith Militant. Stick close and don’t trust anyone you wouldn't drink with in a strip club.

Over the years it has become clear that there are only two types of children attend the March for Life voluntarily: those who would step over their own grandmother for a day off of school on a sunny spring day, and tomorrow's League of Young Fascists. The former make a habit of disappearing into the crowds to visit the Rideau mall and likely can't name a single apostle, the later - those who don't end up running illegal daycares or militia groups - will eventually become United States Senators and run for President.

Both of those groups, along with those too young or mentally competent enough to object as their parents or teachers stick a "Praise Jesus My Mother Didn't Abort Me" sign in their hand and haul them down Elgin street in front of the national media, are here in droves. That's where the real horror show begins.

This isn't a rant about fetuses or conception. Opinions on what does or doesn't constitute a human being bore me...it's a designation I think should be denied to those who can't navigate a shopping cart around a grocery store. Besides, by and large that argument is over: the definition we have now seems to work well enough, satisfies our judiciary, and thus far hasn't been struck down by a bolt of lightning.

Oddly, this rant isn't even about Conservative MPs shouting about the Liberal Government of Death on the steps of Parliament - which, by happy coincidence, will spend today debating a bill on physician-assisted suicide! (Hah!)

No bub, this one is about how this town is flooded with the adults who describe themselves as protectors of all life from Womb-to-Tomb (except for "Godless atheists, queers, Hillary supporters, anyone who needs stem cell treatments, and whoever Jason Kenney tells us we need to bomb"), and take children out of publicly funded religious schools to use them as pawns for their own doomed attempt to govern the rest of us according to religious doctrine.

They accuse secularism or MTV or political correctness for brainwashing their children with wicked ways, but they're the ones goading them into shouting that their opponents are all baby murdering lesbians. This whole thing is exhausting.

Burned

Editor's Note: Despite the author's contention that he'd "be damned if I'm going to write more than one of these things per week you blood sucking vermin!", we were able to goad a short special edition after the results of last night's Indiana Primary for which we are extremely grateful.

It is tragic but somehow fitting that Ted Cruz's homeland was literally on fire at the same time that his campaign was being burned to the ground metaphorically - like he'd finally cracked the secret of some Bad Sorcery just in time to project his own demise through space and time. It certainly feels like the kind of thing that human turdbag would do. The images coming out of Fort McMurray are like some place unearthly and terrible, and that there are still no casualties reported yet could be the first piece of good news all year.

We are all bereft. Discordia, you fickle tease, you've left us with a Trump nomination without even a fun convention: The holdouts have surrendered and the last vestiges of the old Republican Party are being swept away. The GOP now belongs to Donald Trump; whether it will survive that ordeal or not remains to be seen.

The phony war is over now, bub, and the real Blitzkrieg is about to begin: 2016 will be a contest to see whose negative numbers drive down their turnout the least. On one side stands Clinton with a massive war chest, the steely eyed glare of someone who has been waiting for "her turn" for a thousand generations, and a capacity for ruthlessness that could make your blood run cold. On the other is the biggest reality show circus in history peddling the kind of populist venom Americans always pretend they don't like, but to which they have long been debilitatingly addicted.

If the stage is set, so be it. Everybody take a breath before we dive into the next act.

Everyone Wants Indiana

As I write this Ted Cruz is giving the a press conference from Indiana and it's the damnedest thing I've ever seen. If there is some perfect combination of desperate and honest and stupid that can render sentient life dumbfounded this thing has come pretty close.

There he stands, flanked by Carly "there's a bizarre alternate universe where I'm the Vice President" Fiorina and his wife, taking Donald Trump to task for his bullying nature, pathological lying, and woman-hating insecurity. He's apparently and righteously terrified of a future where his young daughters are exposed to President Trump's open philandering misogyny. "I dread to think of them coming home from school repeating his vile attitudes towards women.".

Fair enough Ted, but you also don't want them coming home with any idea of how to use a condom or a bathroom so let's dispense with the bullshit: Donald Trump is going to be going up against Hillary Clinton in the November election. It's been pretty apparent for some time but tonight's Indiana Primary should render it inevitable.

Sanders will stick around for a while longer - heck, he may even win tonight - but the Democrats' system of proportional delegates means anything less than thunderous, bowel-shattering blowouts in all of the remaining states keeps him so far behind (far further behind Clinton now than she ever was behind Obama in 2008) that a recovery is possible only in a child's imagination.

The surest sign of their doom is their insistence that they're going to take it all the way to a convention even after Clinton clinches it, relying on a sudden change of heart from the same Superdelegates that are an affront to democracy when they're in the other camp. Don't feel bad about it Sanderistsas, Bernie did a remarkable thing going from polling-in-single-digits to actually keeping Clinton on her toes, but it's over now and that party's coalescing around that unlikable stiff is virtually assured.

At any rate, I expect Sanders and the GOP holdouts Cruz and Kasich will all stay in no matter how utterly fucked they are after the Hoosiers are through with them.

I'm ashamed to confess to you readers: he's a Goober but I'm rooting for Ted Cruz tonight. He has almost no hope - his polling has been trending steadily downwards and Trump is likely to triumph handily tonight - but a Cruz win may keep his dying campaign on life support just long enough to deny Trump the support he needs win in the first ballot and give us the nuclear bomb of cable news coverage, a contested convention.

O Discordia, Bitch Goddess of Political Machinations, hear me! Give me a contested Republican convention. If we are to suffer the spectacle of a Trump nomination let us have such a spectacle as to burn our Great Decline into history: days of chaos, rumors and deals, fistfights on the floor, an endless Twitter stream, Cleveland in flames, and news graphics packages big and bright enough to trigger sexual arousal.

If you demand it, I will bring burnt offerings of cigarette ashes to your holy altar of pizza boxes and beer cases from July 18 to the 21, where we will read from the 2016 RNC Rules printed on sheets of blotter acid and take a communion of single malt.

You get whatever you want, just stall Donald a little longer and give us this convention.