Domestic Violence "Science" on Trial with Jodi Arias

Guest Op-ed, from R. Tarpaeian

Alyce LaViolette, domestic violence expert extraordinaire with over 30 years’ experience, is giving battered women a black eye.  She is the star witness for the defense, brought in to convince a jury that Jodi Arias, who admits to the brutal slaughtering of her ex-boyfriend Travis Alexander, was actually a battered woman—a domestic violence victim.

Bear in mind that this murder was particularly gruesome. Arias stabbed Travis 29 times, one cut an ear-to-ear throat slashing, and for good measure shot him in the face with a handgun.

Other than Ms. Arias’ own testimony after the fact, there is no evidence to support any allegation of domestic violence on the part of Mr. Alexander. There is, however, ample evidence that Jodi Arias stalked Travis, and of course eventually savagely butchered him.

It should come as no surprise that Ms. LaViolette has come under severe criticism. Feminists and “battered women’s advocates” fear that she is doing irreparable harm to their cause.  She is being criticized as a typical defense shill, no different than one of the other expert witnesses for the defense, psychologist Richard Samuels. He attempted to paint Arias as a sympathetic victim who suffered an abusive childhood. Because Arias eventually admitted to the murder only after floating several alternate realities (including one claiming that two ninjas did the deed), the primary goal of the defense is to avoid a murder-1 conviction that could bring the death penalty.

Enter domestic violence expert Ms. LaViolette.  

As everyone knows, using behavioral “scientists” of one breed or another in criminal cases is standard operating procedure.  Everyone in the courtroom recognizes these people as hired guns. They are hired only if their analysis bolsters the side’s case. It’s a game. After they lend their expertise in the direct, the opposition attempts to discredit them in the cross-examination.

But it is a big mistake to view Ms. LaViolette through this lens.  She is not just a hired gun who, had she been hired by the prosecution would have testified just as authoritatively on Mr. Alexander’s behalf. There is ample evidence that Travis was afraid of Jodi. Friends warned him that she was dangerous. The state has a much stronger case that Jodi Arias fits the “batterer profile,” someone that could carefully plan and commit the ultimate act of domestic violence, which after all is what this trial is about.

She stalked him. She was obsessed with him. If she couldn’t have him, nobody would. Her behaviors are in line with many of the classic benchmarks of “abuse” defined by the “experts” such as LaViolette—one of which asserts that an “abuser” will eventually kill “his” victim if there is no intervention.

But there is no circumstance that would ever find Ms. LaViolette defending a male victim of domestic violence. In fact, under intense cross-examination she admitted that she had never served as an expert witness on behalf of a man.

But rest assured Alyce LaViolette knows men very well. Most of her employment has been counseling “batterers,” a profitable business these days. Had the prosecutor been on the ball he could have easily discredited LaViolette at jump street by simply asking her about the circumstances of the men in the “batterers groups” that she runs.

Are they all guilty of beating women? Undoubtedly some of them are—but most people don’t understand the legal machinery involved in domestic violence allegations. An accusation of domestic abuse, something routine in a contested divorce involving custody of children, usually results in an “abuse protection” order. Once in place, it requires literally nothing other than a verbal claim to haul the man into court for a criminal prosecution of a technical violation of the abuse protection, or “restraining,” order (which is “civil” in nature when issued, but transforms to criminal when a violation is alleged).

Men are prosecuted for ridiculously innocuous things, such as phoning their child at a day or time not “allowed” by the restraining order; happening to be in the same public place as the “victim,” or even being intentionally invited by the “victim” for the express purpose of entrapment.

Once accused, the punishment often results in probation to avoid a jail sentence if the accused successfully completes a “batterers program.” Besides her forensic career as a domestic violence expert witness, which pays her $300 an hour, this is what LaViolette does. She runs batterer programs for men who have been accused of domestic violence.

Another pertinent question the prosecution could have asked is: Do the men LaViolette treats volunteer for her counseling? Well, in the first place, if they don’t, they go to jail, as it’s a condition for probation.

Once wringing this admission from LaViolette, the prosecutor should have then probed her on the issue of guilt or innocence of the men assigned to her program under threat of jail time. Do they ever claim innocence, i.e., that they were falsely accused? 

Well, under the rules of these batterer treatment programs, this can’t happen. In order to be admitted into the program the men have to sign a lengthy document that among other things requires them to confess to committing domestic violence. And of course, if they refuse to sign they violate probation and... go to jail.

This then, is the captive audience for LaViolette’s treatment. If it sounds like something out of Stalin’s Soviet Union, it should. These are, in fact, re-education camps.

Back to LaViolette’s defense of Jodi Arias.

Ms. LaViolette is symptomatic of all domestic violence experts. When confronted with a situation where a woman has abused, battered, or even killed a man, the response is always the same: 1. Deny.  2. Minimize. 3. Excuse.

If this sounds familiar, it should. It’s part of the standard mantra of domestic violence pseudo-science.  It is presented in the canonical literature as the pattern of responses by (always) male perpetrators of domestic violence when confronted. First they deny that it happened. Then they minimize the extent of the abuse, and/or they attempt to excuse it by blaming the victim for doing something to provoke them.

Battered women advocates like LaViolette at first even refused to acknowledge that domestic violence runs both ways. Unbiased research, what little there is, has shown going back to the late seventies that women are at least as likely to initiate domestic violence as men. Eventually they were forced to acknowledge it, as even LaViolette grudgingly did on the stand once or twice. But having been forced to admit that female-on-male domestic violence exists they then resort to... minimizing and excusing it. They claim that the frequency of women abusing men is insignificant , and in the same breath are careful to remind us of why women do what they do... i.e., they rationalize it by claiming that the man was ultimately responsible because of some past actions and behaviors.  They excuse it.

And this is exactly what LaViolette attempted to do on the stand to support the murderess, Jodi Arias.  The only problem is that she is trying to excuse an unbelievably brutal murder using testimony solely from the murderer! Incredibly, in response to a juror’s written question directly putting it to her if the gruesome butchery of Travis Alexander wasn’t the “greater act of domestic violence” than those supposedly committed by Travis as represented to her by Jodi; she actually answered “No.”

Alyce LaViolette, with her 20-page CV, and her 30-some-odd years in the field, is not an aberration. She is the face of victim-feminism, of a worldview that has indoctrinated two generations of women and men into believing that relationships between men and women are based on power and control, rather than love and reciprocity.

It is no secret that many of the women in this arena have evolved into lifestyles that exclude men from their beds. It is no secret that the majority of lesbianism is the product of learned, adaptive behavior. To believe that women who suffer bad marriages and turn into man-hating harridans (often disguised as compassionate, well-meaning, learned “educators”) and “discover” a latent sexual preference for women that was actually innate, is almost as absurd as believing that incarcerated men who turn to homosexuality were born that way but just required the right environment to discover their true sexual appetites.

Quite frankly, the notion that women—or men—who are incapable of having intimate relations with the opposite sex are gainfully employed as experts presiding over any aspect of male-female relationships should give pause to any rational person. Surely, it’s time to recognize that the inmates have been given the keys to the asylum.

Alyce LaViolette defending Jodi Arias as a victim of domestic violence is Exhibit A of the corruption of the behavioral sciences. I won’t say that psychobabbling behavioral experts have no place in the courtroom... they do: as criminal defendants.

It’s time to take the keys back. 

# # #

RTarpaeian@gmail.com

Predator Drones and American Exceptionalism

It’s estimated that US drone attacks have killed between 3,000 and 4,500 people since 2002... and that less than 10% of those were the actual targeted terrorist killers. Among the “collateral damage” are about 200 children.

Now, I will listen to arguments that these remote-control killings are necessary and justified; however, if that is what you believe, you cannot, in my opinion, make any claim as to the US’s moral leadership in the world. The argument that “the behavior of {country X} is worse,” doesn’t cut it. We now, as official policy, strike and kill people in other nations with whom we are not at war. We also have a policy of (foreign) assassination. Furthermore, we practice torture and often employ agents in foreign countries to do this work (“extraordinary rendition”).

So, if you believe this is all justified, fine, but please put aside any claims to any moral superiority.

The idea of other countries acting this way­—targeting victims in the US with the use of drones, for example—is of course, unthinkable. But this notion that we alone are justified in such action is the original meaning behind the expression “American exceptionalism,” which was first used by the Brits under Tony Blair. It did not mean that the US is exceptional in the sense of “the best,” it meant that rules that apply to everyone else do not apply to us.  We are the “exceptions” to the rule. We are exempt. For whatever reason, the usage has since changed to reflect the more pedestrian interpretation.

So, “American exceptionalism,” in its original coinage, is in fact the justification for killing people in foreign countries by remote control. Can you say “manifest destiny?”

The post-9-11 CIA Predator Drone attacks on al-Qaeda targets in Afghanistan began under President Bush. But they have vastly increased under President Obama’s tenure. Now, why is this so?  Isn’t Obama a ‘leftist’?  Didn’t he campaign on closing Guantanamo, ending the Iraq War and in general reining in military excesses? Was he some kind of closet right-wing militarist who showed his true colors once he gained the office of Supreme Commander?

Of course not. When faced with the reality of the military-industrial complex, he and his cabinet, including (former) Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, lacked the personal strength and will to oppose them. This is one of the pitfalls of hiring a weak chief executive.

What would have happened if Obama or (W) Bush were president during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962?  Would either of them have had the will, wisdom and personal power to say ‘No’ to the Joint Chiefs’ recommended course of action?  Would we still be here today if it wasn’t someone of the caliber of John Kennedy in the White House at the time? Perhaps it takes someone who has experienced the horrors of war firsthand, such as an Eisenhower, Kennedy or a McCain, to man-up to the task of responsibly executing the job of Commander in Chief of the world’s most powerful nation.

An open letter to Scott Brown: Why I'm Blanking the Ballot

Guest Op-Ed from the Zedman (ZedmanZee@gmail.com)

Dear Scott Brown

If the current polls hold up on Election Day, you will no longer be my senator.  Based on the direction of your campaign after the past few weeks, it would be a safe guess that your staff’s post-mortem will dwell on the margin of female voters. What could you have done differently that would’ve decreased that margin by just a few precious percentage points?  You co-sponsored the reauthorization of VAWA. You reminded us again and again how you are “pro-choice”.  You support the Lilly Ledbetter Act. You even changed your position on “marriage equality.”  What more could you have done to pander to women voters?

Well, Mr. Brown, perhaps you forgot something: Me.

As a hard-working middle-class man and father, my political positions tend to align against those of the Democratic Party. Quite frankly, as a white, male heterosexual, a “negative-3-fer” in the jargon of political correctness, I refer to the Democratic Party as the “party of identity politics.”  Essentially, I consider a vote for a Democrat as a vote intrinsically against my own interests, either an act of self-loathing... or insanity.

Case in point is the absurd Lilly Ledbetter Act. As though employers actually pay women 72 cents on the dollar for what they would pay a man. Why would anyone hire men if they could enjoy an immediate 28% reduction in payroll costs by hiring a woman? The debunking of this “unequal pay” factoid has been known for two decades and is just a couple of mouse-clicks away for anyone who cares to know the truth. It is a comparison of what women earn on average to what men earn on average, and is wholly a function of the actual type of work that they respectively choose as well as the time-on-the-job differentials that arise naturally between the sexes for the obvious reasons.

Back to “me.” Regarding my demographical profile, any Republican candidate should regard me as “his base.” But on Election Day, I will be BLANKING THE BALLOT.  I will not go as far as some friends who plan to actually cast their vote for your opponent. I have the decency to merely not vote for you. You will lose my vote, a vote that by all rights you should have received since your opponent is someone who apparently is not even aware of the existence of half of the human race.

You refused to meet with representatives of the Fathers Rights community who could’ve educated you on the evils of VAWA.  It’s often said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but has there ever been a better example of this time-worn cliché than VAWA?  This is a law that funds and promotes the demonization of men and the criminalization of fatherhood via pseudo-scientific, agenda-driven social “science” and the consequent laws and criminal and judicial policies and procedures that are dutifully enacted by pandering politicians such as yourself. Not only that, but it actually contributes to real domestic violence via the promotion of laws such as our notorious Ch. 209A “Abuse Prevention” law, which allows a woman to criminalize a father, kick him out of his home, and take away access to his own children based on hearsay evidence: simply telling a judge that she “fears” her husband.

The next time you read of a domestic violence homicide, you might want to search for the often unreported details of the 209A “restraining order” that the victim had obtained against the perpetrator.  Fact: it is impossible to know how many potential domestic violence homicides were prevented by the issuing of a 209A restraining order. Conversely, it is possible to know how many such crimes were motivated by the issuance of a 209A order.

Consider being the recipient of such an order as a divorce tactic that restricts you from having any contact whatsoever, including third-party contact, with your own (typically infant) children. Wouldn’t that make one... angry?  Try, the angriest you have ever been in your life. Something that can feel like a death sentence, something that makes life not worth living. Would such a person be deterred from personally enacting “justice,” in their minds, by an order that is punishable by a two-and-a-half-year jail sentence and a fine?

Thus is exposed the logical fallacy in the conceptual basis for the existence of this law.

It is unquestionably unconstitutional, but until the proper authority declares it as such, it is the law, and for those tens of thousands of fathers that have been victimized by it over the years, those who live in a de-facto police state, I encourage them all to also BLANK THE BALLOT on November 6.

Male politicians like you need to understand: there will be consequences for willfully discarding the rights of men—and especially rights of fathers’— for political expediency.

Shame on you, Scott Brown.

-Z

Romney: the Republicans' Folly

Conservative pundits are befuddled.  With the terrible state of the economy—and things not trending well—why is Obama on track to win a second term? Why can’t Romney make any headway—after all, he’s a successful businessman, right?  He should be tailor-made to wrest the office from an incumbent who has not been able to turn the economy around. Well, here’s a clue: I’m a conservative, and I’m not going to fill in a ballot for Romney in November.

The reason why the election isn’t close is because the Romney/Ryan ticket has—incredibly!—lost the working middle-class vote!  Yes, you heard me.  The Democrats have actually made a better case for the middle-class vote. Those people care about Medicare and Social Security; much more than they care about the tax rate for people earning more than $250,000. The only segment of the electorate that Romney will win handily is those very same $250,000+ income folks.  The Dems are obviously going to win the entitlement class and the diversity crowd. But without a solid majority of the working middle class, the Republicans have no chance.

But even if that was not the case, the candidate that ‘sensible’ Republican pundits pimped for, Romney—how was that again, because he was the candidate most likely to beat Obama?—is manifestly unfit for the office and this is abundantly clear to a large swathe of voters cutting across all demographics.

I’m not talking about simple disagreement with the man’s positions—I’m saying that he is manifestly unfit, and shame on the party intelligentsia for not realizing this when the campaign began and we had a chance to have one of the other candidates—several of whom would have ultimately proved to fare better against Obama.

Here is why Romney is unfit for the office:

1. A person who throughout his entire career has reversed positions on serious, profound issues—not to mention ephemeral things like healthcare mandates—simply because it appeared to be expeditious at the time, cannot and should not be trusted with the highest office in the land. This cynical strategy of Romney betrays an actual disdain for the voter, if not for democracy itself. This is the reason why I would never vote for him.

2. Romney’s wealth from the latter part of his career at Bain Capital is not the kind of capitalist success that the millions of unemployed Americans want to see in the Oval Office. ‘Equity capitalism’ is not about job creation, it’s about the financial ‘instrument’ paper wealth creation more akin to the excesses of Wall Street that were responsible for the financial crash. Romney obviously refuses to release his tax returns because what is in them is something that would be even more injurious to his Fat Cat reputation than the condemnation he gets now for refusing to release them.

3. The president of the United States is not just a metaphorical CEO of state; he has to have a knowledge of, and presumably an interest in, international relations. Romney is a BEAN COUNTER. He may be a very good bean counter, but that’s all he is. His positions on foreign policy, such as they are, were clearly crafted by the same cynical political calculus that led him to flip-flop time and time again throughout his career: Set up a task force to analyze public opinion on Obama’s various foreign policy positions. Identify those for which there exists a sizeable opposition. Adopt those contrary positions as your own.

So, I blame Republicans who pushed for the unelectable Romney during the primaries, wrongly believing that among a field of weak candidates he had the best chance of beating Obama. He didn’t. The other candidates may have had whole constituencies that had to be written off—but none of which were large enough to guarantee a victory for the Democrats.

We all know the Latin for "buyer beware"—caveat emptor. But what’s the Latin for “buyer’s remorse”? It’s what Republicans nationwide are going to have come November 7.

My advice to the party? Concentrate on the Congressional elections, and try to prevent a negative coat-tails effect from the disastrous top of the ticket.

Woo Hoo! Let’s Hear it for Women’s Choices at the DNC!

Here is the message delivered by a parade of people of all sexes at the DNC (Democratic National Convention) last night:

Only women are deserving of choices.

Implicit in the steady drone of calls for “choices” for women is the unspoken notion that men are not worthy of choices.  If this was not the case, the calls would be for choices for all.

The full message, simply reduced, is:

Women have choices, men have obligations and responsibilities, carved out of the choices made for them by women.

“Choice,” of course, is the code word for birth control, which for these folks includes abortion.  Under this choice-for-women, responsibilities-for-men paradigm, consider the following scenarios:

1. Husband and wife in intact marriage. Wife gets pregnant. For whatever reason, she decides to abort. She is under no legal (or moral, according to the Democrats) obligation to even inform her husband of her “choice,” let alone ask for his approval to kill his child, whether or not he is the father of the child.

Woman: choice. Man: none.

2. Man and woman have sex. Woman intentionally fools man, telling him she was taking birth control. Woman brings baby to term. Man must pay woman child support and additional costs such as health insurance and eventually college. Child support can be sizeable fraction of man’s income – up to a third – and payable up to age 23 in some states.

Woman: choice. Man: none; responsibility and financial obligation for up to 23 years.

3. Man and woman in relationship have sex. Despite best intentions, woman gets pregnant. Woman wants to abort pregnancy; man does not, and offers to raise the child. Tough luck, bud. Not your choice.

Woman: choice. Man: none.

4. Man and woman in relationship have sex. Despite best intentions, woman gets pregnant. Woman wants to have the baby; man does not. Tough luck, bud. Not your choice. If you don’t decide to marry, you are responsible for child support, refer to (2) above.

Woman: choice. Man: none; responsibility and financial obligation for up to 23 years.

Last night there were repeated shout-outs to feminist heroine Sandra Fluke and her brave stand for another “choice” denied women by (presumably) men: the “right” to mandate that her employer-provided health insurance include free coverage for her birth control meds.

How is it that this “choice” – a matter of a monthly expense that I’m told costs about $30 a month at a pharmacy – is a rallying cry whereas the infinitely more profound and expensive “choices” denied men exampled above are ... nowhere mentioned?

Why? I just told you, stupid! Women have choices—men don’t.


So, the question, as always, remains. When do I get my choices?


And last but not least on this list of outrages that should be sufficient to dissuade any self-respecting man from ever casting a vote for a candidate from this party: the infamous redefinition of “rape” courtesy of the Republican senatorial candidate from Missouri Todd Akin. He infamously asserted that pregnancy from rape was “really rare” because “if it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

Aside from the questionable biology, what incensed feminists was the word “legitimate.” From coast to coast came the calls of outrage: Akin and the Republicans are “redefining” rape.

But the real redefinition of rape happened a long time ago. The time-worn and universally accepted meaning of rape used to be a forceful act of sex committed by a man on a woman. It could be broadened to account for male-on-male rape such as happens in prisons. The notion of female-on-male rape is largely a physical impossibility. So, the universal features of rape, as evidenced throughout history’s literature used to be:

• Male perpetrated
• Using force

Additionally, a man forcing sex on a child does not rest on the question of force as children are by definition biologically not sexually mature and should never under any circumstances be subject to a sexual act from an adult.

It was feminists who redefined rape to what it is today: a malleable definition that a woman can use after consensual sex, even at a later date, to identify herself as a victim of rape. If she is intoxicated or under the influence of drugs, she does not have possession of her reasoning faculties and hence can claim to have been raped. Some college campuses have adopted a list of sequential behaviors that must all be verbally assented to before an act of consensual sex can be safe ... i.e., not rape. Also, we have the muddy area of “statutorial rape,” whereby an 18-year-old boy can have his life destroyed for having consensual (and loving) sex with his 16-year-old girlfriend, should circumstances arise where this is desirable to the girl and/or her family.

This redefinition of rape is the outrage, as countless men from all walks of life have had their lives destroyed by spurious illegitimate rape allegations.

Any self-respecting heterosexual man with some measure of life experience and a modicum of intelligence who votes for this party deserves the scorn, condemnation and mockery of his fellow men.

Review: The Newsroom

The Newsroom episode 3 excerpt

Aaron Sorkin played it smart this time, not wishing to take a chance with the networks for his latest effort, The Newsroom, which premiered Sunday on HBO. Like all his work, this is another feelgood, liberal circle-jerk, where Sorkin essentially has conversations with himself through the guise of his characters.

It’s hard to put my finger on exactly what it is about Sorkin’s work that I find so… obnoxious. It’s more than just the smug, self-righteous politically correct content, which is just his stock-in-trade.  It’s more than that. There’s something nauseating about his characters and how they interact. The dialogue. From the snap-crackle gay repartee between like-minded liberals taking gratuitous potshots at conservative straw-men to the supposedly sexually-charged dueling between principal characters, there’s something really ... obnoxious about it.

Perhaps this contributed to the early demise of Sorkin’s last “opus,” Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, which quickly sunk in the ratings despite “critical acclaim”—not just the repellent, smug, self-righteous liberal politics embedded in everything Sorkin writes.

News anchor Will McEvoy, played by Jeff Daniels, is the “good” Republican, a standard device Sorkin uses so we can tell the good ones from the bad. In episode 3, “112^th Congress”, even “good” Republican McEvoy finally balks at the extreme danger posed by the Tea Party, and turns his nightly news broadcast into a crusade to educate his audience on the perils of sincere but gullible Tea Partiers who are manipulated by their evil paymasters. The Tea Party doesn’t merely threaten the viability of his party, if the public isn’t educated in time, they can destroy the nation as we know it!

In his wisdom, Sorkin reluctantly acknowledges the necessity of an opposition party. No, no, a one-party (Democratic, of course) system would not ultimately best serve the Republic, he charitably concedes. He seeks to save Republicans from themselves. Hence, The West Wing’s “good” Republican presidential candidate Arnold Vineck (played by Alan Alda, in a truly inspired bit of delicious irony) and now The Newsroom’s Will McEvoy. 

Note, Sorkin finds no need to clutter up his narratives with good and bad “progressives”. You won’t find any racist African-American Al Sharptons or man-hating lesbian feminazi versions of Hilary Rosen in his dramatis personae to confuse the storytelling.

Like Studio 60, The Newsroom will undoubtedly reap “critical acclaim” from the Hollywood elites. Because it’s on HBO it isn’t subject to the brutal bottom-line ratings metrics that routinely kill the vast majority of all new major network shows, even the occasional good one. Will poor ratings be sufficient to kill it on HBO? I hope so.

The supposedly charged dialogue between McEvoy and his ex-love newly installed as his producer, doesn’t just not work—it makes me cringe.

I watched The West Wing to laugh—not with it, but at it.  But I won’t be watching any more of The Newsroom even for laughs.  I can laugh at the transparent liberal politics, but I can’t sit through watching these characters talk.

Dancing Master Mitt

So let me get this straight:

The Republicans have picked a candidate for president who implemented a state government healthcare initiative that among other things required all residents to buy healthcare insurance and fines them if they don’t. 

Furthermore, this candidate made his money (unlike his father whose business actually built THINGS) through vampire capitalism: where financial entities realize immense revenue for themselves and their stockholders through the manipulation of ”financial instruments” that typically result in the closing down of factories, killing businesses, contributing to local economic misery and unemployment. 

And this on the heels no less of the greatest economic meltdown since the great depression that was due to the financial sector -- specifically, where exotic “financial instruments” were used to gamble with billions of dollars of people’s savings and pension funds, etc.

This dancing master, who over his political career has tiptoed from being against abortion before he ran for Governor of Massachusetts, to supporting a “woman’s right to choose” while campaigning for the Governorship… back to the other toe against it when he was running in the presidential primary,

… from being pro-gay rights when he was running for Senator in Massachusetts against Ted Kennedy

…to being against gay marriage when he was Governor of Massachusetts (or was he…?  No one really knows for sure…)

… from being in favor of creating state law mandating that Americans buy healthcare insurance under severe financial penalty when Governor of Massachusetts

… to being so adamantly opposed to the mandate in Obama-Care which -- wait for it … mandates that Americans buy healthcare insurance under severe financial penalties  -- that he promises to “repeal Obama-Care on Day One”…

...is about to be tapped out.

And the punchline to this joke is…

wait for it…

The Republican voters that chose him over his rivals in the primaries did so because …

wait for it…

he had the best chance of beating Obama!

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

And what about the vaunted conservative CHRISTIAN RIGHT that supposedly wields so much clout in the party? Well, they’ve apparently given their seal of approval to someone who believes that humans are the spirit forms of aliens called Thetans who were trapped in a volcano by their evil alien foes the Markabians --

--Oh, wait a minute, that’s Scientology. I get them confused. Ignore this last part.

Hahahahahahahahahaha

You can’t make this stuff up!  Thanks Republicans! Great job, once again. 

George Bush in 2000. Sarah Palin in 2008. And now Dancing Master Mitt.