*Written by Rob Rimes.

I had a long weekend but it is now over. My time in Gainesville with my cousin and friends was a blast, as I haven’t actually been partying too hard over the last month. This trip was a good way for me to drown in bourbon, Irish whiskey, tequila, Long Islands, Guinness, ginger beer and Pabst. I’ve been trying to be healthier in an attempt to lose weight and potentially live a somewhat longer life but even with my more health conscious attitude, my inner party monster still needs to be entertained and unleashed every now and again. What better time than with other party monsters that I genuinely cherish in a wild college town during graduation weekend? There was no point in taking any prisoners, as we ran roughshod over downtown Gainesville leaving no bottle unturned. A few days later, my stomach still hurts and my head is still swimming in a sea of 86 proof delirium – a special shout out goes to 1.75 liters of Old Crow Reserve.

To those who might find my more health conscious behavior a bit unsettling, there is no need to worry. It’s not called selling out when you do it because your liver hurts and you’ve been pissing blood. The blood part was not related to the booze but it was still a wake up call to straighten my shit out some what. Have no fear though, I will not go soft and become a shell of my former self like so many writers and artists who went clean only for their work to suffer and lose its appeal. Trent Reznor immediately comes to mind, although his Academy Award for a very boring and minimalist film score probably proves me wrong but only if you take the Academy seriously and turn a blind eye to their petty politics.

Anyway, my first night in Gainesville on this latest trip was intense. It started almost immediately with two Guinness Draughts and four Long Island iced teas while I watched my friends play pool. I didn’t participate in the contest because I was enjoying my own game of drown the writer in the dark and dingy corner of smoke and neon light. It is a one-player game but the odds are always steep and the challenge is never dull. Needless to say, I won the bout and went on to fight in other bouts in other venues for the remainder of the 48 hour tournament.

The weekend wasn’t all about completely succumbing to vices however. I mean, I never came across any other substances to entertain myself with and that’s fine, the booze was enough. I did get to spend a lot of the time talking politics and economics with the college kids, some of them a part of the Occupy Gainesville movement. Now while we didn’t see eye-to-eye on solutions, we did agree on the vast majority of the problems. My job, from my standpoint, was to try and get them to understand that you can’t just blame the banks for the madness. The government is just as responsible as is the Federal Reserve. Truth is, they were really receptive to a lot of the things I was saying. Now I had half a dozen conversations with a dozen or more people but for the most part, other than two or three close-minded joiners, they got what I was saying and left the conversations with the intent to look into their new perspective on these matters themselves. One of them even promised to pick up some of the books I wrote down for him on a napkin (titles by Ron Paul, Murray Rothbard, Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek, Henry Hazlitt, Milton Friedman and more modern authors Jeffrey Tucker and Stefan Molyneux – who has a ton of free e-books).

One interesting thing I discovered among talking to multiple college kids, is that their only real beef with Ron Paul is his pro-life stance. I told them that it is an issue I also disagree with Dr. Paul on. However, I told them that if you look at the rest of his platform and like it, writing him off over one issue is a bit careless. Especially since Dr. Paul thinks that it should be an issue left up to states and not the federal government regardless of his personal opinion on it. Most of these kids understood that but had a hard time envisioning a country were states’ rights were protected, at least on this issue. I explained that you cannot pick and choose issues and that the rule had to apply with everything. If you make one exception, you will make plenty more. They got and respected it but still had a bug in their ass about it and I get that. I then spoke to them about Gary Johnson who is basically a clone of Ron Paul policy-wise but is pro-choice instead of pro-life. Most of the people I talked to had not heard of Johnson and were actually pretty excited upon finding out his stance on the abortion issue. They also liked that Gary Johnson was not a Democrat or a Republican. I didn’t bring up all the issues they said they had with Obama however, as there were a lot more than what they had with Paul. Regardless of this, they will probably vote for Obama again even though they claim they are opposed to war, Gitmo and a plethora of other issues he has failed them on.

Now don’t get me wrong, not everyone was cordial. There were those few dumb bastards in the mix and fucking with them and sending them off in a self-conlficted rage was quite amusing. One kid was calling for anarchy and at the same time was calling for government to step in and regulate the banks more. Point is, this kid’s whole world-view was completely hypocritical. On one hand, this kid (and those like him) want to scream “Fuck the man!” and “Fuck the police!” while on the other hand want the government (the man and the police) to step in and regulate everything even more than they do now. I don’t understand how so many young people can’t seem to make a correlation between these two things? You want the government who is bought and paid for by the banks to regulate the banks? You can’t see how this is completely asinine, let alone how this is what has caused all these problems to begin with? Your solution to the problem is more of the problem itself? Does the meth addict break the cycle by taking more meth? No, the meth addict dies! Common sense is like a disease in the hipster socialist-anarchist psyche.

The ones who are so passionate in their ignorance don’t even care about the real crux of the problem. They want to continue to buy into their conflicted and hypocritical indoctrination and smash anyone who doesn’t swim in their sea of shit. On top of that, they don’t want to better themselves, they want to stay at the bottom so they can continue to bitch as they wallow in dirt and filth because if they were to try and actually get out of it, they’d be outed as a “sell out” or even worse a “hard-working capitalist pig consumer”. Yep, keep pointing your Djarum-clutching fingers as you slur your PBR-soaked words kiddies.

Not all is lost on the generation after mine however. Amongst the sea of those I dealt with, only a few were bad apples and completely hopeless. I remember myself at that age, as I had a similar view of the world. It was someone challenging me on my preconceived notions that got me to pay attention and learn how this whole game really works. If at least one of those kids breaks free from the mold and is affected by our encounter, my debt is repaid. I enjoyed the friendly and civil debates and even had fun with the assholes. In the end, it is about standing your ground and living by your own code not the code of some undefined group whose ideology is lesser than the sum of its parts.

I got home, feeling pretty good about how most of the weekend went down. I also felt great for ignoring my responsibilities for a few days while not even paying attention to what was going on in the news. I didn’t really miss anything, other than Rick Santorum finally wiping away his bitch tears to endorse Mitt Romney, which just gave me flashbacks to 2008 when he was riding that Romney train hard. Something tells me that if I had the same debates with Santorum supporters that I had with the college youth of Gainesville, it wouldn’t have been as civil. I hope that all of those sweater-vests the Santorumites bought up like quaaludes at a disco are constructed of Iranian dog hair and Chinese asbestos. It would be the perfect ending to such a vile group of people.

The Colombian prostitutes entangled in the Secret Service sex scandal could have been Russian spies, Sen. Chuck Grassley suggested Tuesday.

“We’re looking at something that is very, very serious when national security might not be protected properly,” Grassley told Radio Iowa. “Who knows who might be using prostitutes? The Russians are famous for that to get information out of us.”

(PHOTOS: Secret Service prostitution scandal unfolds in Colombia)

In a letter last night, the Iowa Republican called on the White House to answer questions about an internal review that cleared the advance team of any involvement in the scandal. Secret Service agents and military personnel are accused of bringing prostitutes back to their hotel before President Barack Obama’s trip to Cartagena, Colombia, earlier this month.

“You find a lot of problems come from a culture within the agency,” Grassley said on Radio Iowa. “Now, I don’t think the Secret Service would have that sort of a culture, but this may be the tip of an iceberg.”

This is less about prostitution than the president’s safety, he added.

“The issue here isn’t just people messing around with prostitutes, the issue is the security of the president of the United States and the issue is any national security implications that it might have because of the secrecy and the documents and things of that nature,” Grassley said.

Source: Politico.

It’s an exhilarating, if somewhat mystifying, experience to find yourself a supporting player in a modern media maelstrom. It’s even more instructive to learn that a dust-up over a few words can obscure a much more significant message.

“My first thought was, this is what they do in China on party matters if you talk off script.”

Those words were spoken Sunday night by Jon Huntsman, the former Utah governor and Republican presidential candidate, in a public interview with me at New York’s 92nd Street Y. Huntsman was describing how his comments about the potential appeal of a third party got him disinvited to speak at a Republican National Committee event in Florida.

Before dawn, websites were reporting the quote under headlines like “Huntsman compares GOP to Communist Party of China.” By sunrise, Huntsman was on “Morning Joe,” scoffing that “bottom-feeder” blogs had taken his comments out of context. By midday,Buzzfeed–the target of Huntsman’s critique–had posted a lengthy video excerpt from my interview to argue that no, he had not been taken out of context.

For what it’s worth, I don’t think Huntsman was painting with a brush so broad as to compare the Republican Party with Communist China. For one thing, Huntsman is not yet under house arrest with his Internet access forbidden.

But here’s what the dust-up missed. If you take all of what he said to me over some 90 minutes, it is all but certain that John Huntsman is not going to be a Republican much longer.

CONTINUED at Yahoo News.

24-year-old single mom is known as Dania, she says agent offered $30 for $800 service.

One of the agents tried to brush off his girl, the single mother of a 9-year-old son known as Dania, the next morning with only $28 in cab fare. She caused a ruckus, demanding her full payment, so  cops got involved and word reached the US Embassy.

There were reports in Washington that more may be gone by the weekend.

Source: NY Daily News. Video at link.

A Secret Service agent preparing for President Obama’s arrival at an international summit meeting and a single mother from Colombia who makes a living as a high-priced escort faced off in a room at the Hotel Caribe a week ago over how much he owed her for the previous night’s intercourse. “I tell him, ‘Baby, my cash money,’ ” the woman said in her first public comments on a spat that would soon spiral into a full-blown scandal.

The dispute — he offered $30 for services she thought they had agreed were worth 25 times that — triggered a tense early morning struggle in the hallway of the posh hotel involving the woman, another prostitute, Colombian police officers arguing on the women’s behalf and American federal agents who tried but failed to keep the matter — which has shaken the reputation of the Secret Service — from escalating.

Sitting on a couch in her living room wearing a short jean skirt, high-heeled espadrilles and a tight spandex top with a plunging neckline, the woman described how she and a girlfriend were approached by a group of American men at a discotheque. In an account that tracked with the official version of events coming out of Washington, but could not be independently confirmed, she said the men bought a bottle of Absolut vodka for the table and when that was finished bought a second one.

“They never told me they were with Obama,” she said. “They were very discreet.”

A taxi driver who picked up the woman at the Hotel Caribe the morning of the encounter said he heard her and another woman recount the dispute over payment. When approached by The Times, the woman was reluctant to speak about what occurred. As she nervously told her story, a friend gave details that seemed to corroborate her account.

CONTINUED at the NY Times.

My Two Cents: Secret Service agents and hookers, gotta love it. I hope they didn’t skim out on our tax dollars by forgetting to bring McChickens and angeldust to the party. End Two Cents.

A prostitution scandal involving the Secret Service has grown in scope, with the disclosure that U.S. agents and military personnel had been with at least 20 women in hotel rooms before President Barack Obama arrived in Colombia for a summit with Latin American leaders.

Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan, facing questions on Capitol Hill about whether the escapades could have jeopardized the president’s security, said he had referred the matter to an independent government investigator.

Sullivan said the 11 Secret Service agents and 10 military personnel under investigation were telling different stories about who the women were. Sullivan has dispatched more investigators to Colombia to interview the women, said Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.

CONTINUED at AP.

The world is rife with alcoholic lore. That’s lore regarding alcohol, not told by alcoholics. Well, there’s plenty of both. But what about all those rules we learned in college? Beer before liquor, never been sicker. More bubbles, more buzz. Different kinds of drinks get you different kinds of drunk. In vino, veritas. For all the legends, there is a shortage of scientific data to confirm or challenge the conventional wisdom… until now!

It’s Friday afternoon, you’ve made it through the long week, and it’s time for Happy Hour, Gizmodo’s weekly booze column. A cocktail shaker full of innovation, science, and alcohol. Have you heard the one about getting schnockered?

So here’s the deal. I planned to examine some of the more common booze myths and read all of the studies that had been done on those subjects, and then presto! Myth proven, or debunked. But guess what? There really haven’t been many controlled studies that addressed our questions. Why? Because controlled studies are expensive. Who would pay the tab—Jack Daniel’s? The best we could hope for would be a Kickstarter project funded by thousands of curious drinkers, and we couldn’t sit around and wait for that to happen. So we poured some drinks and picked up the phone.

CONTINUED at Gizmodo.

Two British tourists were barred from entering America after joking on Twitter that they were going to ‘destroy America’ and ‘dig up Marilyn Monroe’.

Leigh Van Bryan, 26, was handcuffed and kept under armed guard in a cell with Mexican drug dealers for 12 hours after landing in Los Angeles with pal Emily Bunting.

The Department of Homeland Security flagged him as a potential threat when he posted an excited tweet to his pals about his forthcoming trip to Hollywood which read: ‘Free this week, for quick gossip/prep before I go and destroy America?’

After making their way through passport control at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) last Monday afternoon the pair were detained by armed guards.

Despite telling officials the term ‘destroy’ was British slang for ‘party’, they were held on suspicion of planning to ‘commit crimes’ and had their passports confiscated.

CONTINUED at The Daily Mail.

*Written by Rob Rimes.

I was late watching this debate, as I had to check the replay. Unfortunately, I wasn’t home and I was unable to take serious notes on it. I was at my boss’ house due to it being the annual national sales meeting for my real job and between the alcohol and festivities, this thing was hard to watch in any serious sort of manner. I regret not being able to give it my full attention but the whiskey and wine were flowing, the girls were distracting to say the least and the copious amounts of food transplanted from several of the world’s most exotic regions somehow took precedence over watching the most recent episode of ‘Three Tyrants and a Wizard’. I do apologize as I have been trying to chronicle every damn one of these things but there are just so many, seven this month alone, and turning down a chance to literally spend the night at a party thrown at the mansion of the Indian version of Caligula is incredibly hard to pass up. Bourbon soaked tits are better to stare at than three dudes arguing over their dicks and the fourth shaking his head because America’s fallen so far that we’re literally having a debate about three dicks.

Now I did go back and read the transcripts from the debate and I did watch Ron Paul’s highlights – the only important parts, as the other three’s highlights would’ve put me to sleep in my hungover stupor. If it wasn’t for my boss’ brother handing me a Bloody Mary when I walked through the office door this morning, I’d probably be curled up in a ball under my desk hiding from the flickering power-draining headache-inducing fluorescent lights over my head. Needless to say, I am not a Bloody Mary fan by any stretch of the word, as it just conjures up the thought of drinking vodka with some ketchup spilled in it, but that fucking cocktail hit the spot today and I’m about 70 percent recovered from guest-starring in the Bollywood version of ‘Eyes Wide Shut’.

I know I’m rambling about my drunken escapades and that might disinterest you, as you came to this article to experience my certain style of critique on these things, so for that I’m sorry. I will do my best to give you the rundown of the debate, as I saw it between nude champagne showers and Chilean sea bass dodgeball.

So I’m just going to go down the line and analyze the candidates one-by-one starting with Rick Santorum. He started by talking about illegal immigration, border fences and telling the story about his immigrant family for the umpteenth time. He got into it with Ron Paul on foreign policy and failed miserably as he tried to cover up the fact that he’s a goddamned idiot on the affairs of Central and South America. I’ll write more on this when I get to Ron Paul, who owned Santorum like a twenty dollar prostitute. Santorum goes on to bitch about Fannie and Freddie and in turn blasts Newt and Mitt for playing personal politics and distracting everyone from discussing the real issues. On the subject of space, Santorum said that America is a frontier country and space is the next frontier to conquer. He calls for the private sector to be more involved with NASA but doesn’t fully support government being out of it. On health care he goes on and on about how awesome he is for trying to create health savings accounts. If you were so awesome, you would’ve got it done pal! He then gets into a health care argument with Romney that is neither interesting or worth writing about but what the hell, I’ll give you the nutshell version. Basically it went something like this:

Rick Santorum: “Fuck Romneycare”
Mitt Romney: “But it was only at the state level Ricky Baby!”
Rick Santorum: “I don’t care Mitt! You’re a bitch and you gave Obama the blueprints to evil!”
Mitt Romney: “Ricky Baby, you’re so silly!”
Rick Santorum: “Jesus Bible! No health care for the gays!”

Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich spent most of their time arguing about who was a bigger bastard while both looked like big bastards. Mittens talked about “self-deportation” again. If these guys believe in such a thing as an effective way of handling a situation, can we get them to believe in “self-governance”? If they trust those illegal immigrants to leave on their own accord after sneaking in here in an effort just to come back in a way that is much more difficult, they’ve got to believe that we’re all capable of managing every other aspect of our lives? I mean, they are putting blind faith into something so farfetched that they’ve got to be down with just saying “fuck it” and letting us run our own shit, right?

On the immigration subject, Newt says that Romney is the most anti-immigrant candidate out of the four. Romney gets all pissy and pulls his two Latino cards. The first he pulls is Marco Rubio, the Cuban American senator that came to his defense on immigration. The second card Mitt pulled was Mexico, as his father was born there. I was born in a hospital bro, that doesn’t make me a doctor!

Romney and Gingrich argue about immigration for awhile and then they argue about Fannie and Freddie and who is the biggest crook. Newt, once he gets away from the lame feud for a minute, goes on some tangent about making a moon base. Newt later said that Jacksonville was going to get big pimpin’ because the Panama Canal was widening and would bring them more boat traffic. Shortly after that we were treated to a Santorum-Gingrich-Romney three-way which was like stumbling upon a middle-aged homosexual version of Cinemax at three in the morning. It was a bitch and rant fuck fest that no one in their right mind needed to see, unless of course you’re into middle-aged gay men. If you are, I mean absolutely no disrespect. Do ya thang homegirl!

Fuck all these queens, let’s get to Ron Paul, the only adult in the room. On immigration, he says that if we had a working healthy economy we wouldn’t be so worried about the immigration issue as we’d be looking for workers to fill jobs. He adds that the way we are handling our borders is actually harming our economy. He points out that we don’t have the right amount of resources on the border and that we should pay more attention to our border instead of the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

On the Latin America issue, Ron Paul says, “Free trade is the answer.” He throws in the fact that we’d be a lot better off if we practiced free trade with Cuba. He adds that he doesn’t like the idea that America thinks that they can go down to Central and South America and try to dictate which kind of leaders they need down there, as it is none of our business. He says that the best way to influence other nations isn’t by telling them what to do, it is by practicing friendship and free trade. Paul then references Santorum who said that we have to stand up for these nations. Paul explains that standing up for nations often times comes with us imposing ourselves on the people of these countries while picking their dictators, undermining their government and sending them a lot of money. He warns that this sort of tactic always backfires and the people we are “supporting” end up hating us. Ron Paul calls Rick Santorum’s ideas on foreign policy the “bully way”. Paul adds that he knows a better to way to work with people other than using force. Santorum shakes his head, mumbles some stupid crap and then changes his tampon while wiping his bitch tears. Checkmate Paul!

Ron Paul is asked if Mitt and Newt should return the money they’ve made off of Fannie and Freddie and he responds to thunderous applause when he says, “That subject doesn’t interest me a lot.” Paul says that Fannie and Freddie should have been auctioned off right after the crash came. He said that if it was sold, the problem would’ve been “cleansed” by now. Ron Paul says that he’s been trying to prevent this stuff which is why we need to end the Federal Reserve.

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asks says that Ron Paul, if elected, would be the oldest president ever. He asks Paul if he would make his medical records public to show the people that he is healthy. Blitzer basically wants to paint Ron Paul as a geezer who could croak tomorrow and I find the question to be repugnant, just as I found it distasteful when the same issue was brought up with Ronald Reagan years ago. Paul said that he’ll prove how healthy he is by delivering an open challenge to all the other candidates to face him in a 25 mile bike ride in the heat of Texas. Ron Paul face-palmed the shit out of Wolf Blitzer and the other candidates with that answer. He also took a shot at Wolf himself when he jokingly pointed out that there are laws against age discrimination and that Blitzer should be careful. Wolf, after getting bitchslapped, tries to cover up the stupid question by asking the other candidates if they’d release theirs. What a tool.

On space spending, Ron Paul says that he would only approve funding on stuff that fits under defense. He says that going to the Moon and Mars is fantastic but that it could be done better by the private sector if their hands weren’t tied. Ron Paul then takes a shot at Newt, saying that he has stretched the truth with all his “balanced budget” claims from the days when he was Speaker of the House. Ron Paul is taking solid shots backed by facts and there is nothing that can be done about it when he brings these guys a dose of the truth. Strangely, Newt Gingrich was very polite and gracious to Ron Paul all night and gave him props for his ideas in several areas.

In the end, the debate was lightyears better than the NBC debate a few days prior. CNN does the best job, in my opinion, and I’ve watched every single one of these debates. Kudos to Wolf for rocking the house, even with a few prickish questions. Ron Paul owned the motherfucker, Santorum did decent if you are into his religio-fascist bullshit while Newt and Mitt looked like a few bickering Tinas arguing over the last pack of Lee Press-On Nails at K-Mart.

And that’s all I got because I immediately returned to my whiskey-scented orgy on the south lawn.

Grading Scale:
Grade A+: Ron Paul
Grade C-: Rick Santorum
Grade D+: Newt Gingrich
Grade D: Mitt Romney

*Best debate moment in recent memory:

Congressional officials said President Obama has used his recess appointment powers Wednesday to name a head for the controversial newConsumer Financial Protection Bureau in a move Republican lawmakers said amounted to an unconstitutional power grab.

Mr. Obama made the appointment of former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray even though theSenate, which has the power to confirm nominees, considers itself still in session.

But the White House argues Republican senators stonewalled the nominee for so long that Mr. Obama had no choice but to circumvent them.

In making the appointment, Mr. Obama rejected the precedent set by former President Clinton and the precedent Mr. Obama and his fellow Democrats set under President George W. Bush in 2007 and 2008.

“Although the Senate is not in recess, President Obama, in an unprecedented move, has arrogantly circumvented the American people,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican.

GOP House Speaker John A. Boehner called the move “an extraordinary and entirely unprecedented power grab by President Obama that defies centuries of practice and the legal advice of his own Justice Department.”
“The precedent that would be set by this cavalier action would have a devastating effect on the checks and balances that are enshrined in our Constitution,” the Ohio Republican said in a statement.
Administration officials told the Associated Press they anticipate the move may be challenged in court.

The president is expected to introduce Mr. Cordray during a trip to Ohio Wednesday, and in prepared remarks the AP reported Mr. Obama will callSenate Republicans’ ongoing blockade of his nomination “inexcusable.”

CONTINUED at the Washington Times.