Amid the multiple nationwide media mentions of the David Walker draft campaign supporting Walker’s platform of social security and health care cuts, was there ever any real grassroots “Walker Fever” spreading anywhere? One indication is the number of people who voted to support Walker’s presidential candidacy: out of 313 million Americans, only 692 people.

Another indication of actual “Walker Fever” would be a large number financial contributions from all sorts of Americans. The public won’t gain any direct information about the contributors to the draft Walker committee until July, the next disclosure deadline mandated by the Federal Election Commission (FEC). Watch this space for disclosures.

But independent expenditure data already indicate that the Walker “fever” may have been no more than a beltway media illusion. In its official registration as an “Independent Expenditure-Only Committee” on April 24 2012, the Committee to Get Walker Running informed the FEC that:

This committee intends to make unlimited independent expenditures and consistent with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia circuit decision in SpeechNow v. FEC, it therefore intends to raise funds in unlimited amounts.

But if the Committee spent any funds, they must have been in very limited amounts indeed. According to the FEC, once the Committee’s expenditures topped $10,000, reports of any expenditures must be made to the FEC by midnight on the day after the expenditure has been made.

I invite you to search through Independent Expenditure reports between the dates of April 1 2012 and May 25 2012 (that’s today). You’ll find no indication whatsoever of any expenditure made by the Committee to Get Walker Running, or by any other independent expenditure committee with “Walker” in its name for that matter.

The only symptom of “fever” apparent here is hallucination.

Nearly 10 people across the country have called the hotline of the National Fashion Association after small children placed the packets on their feet and attempted to go jogging. “The rapid onset of bubbles, particularly when these packets are misused on a rainy day, can be pretty scary,” says Michelle Bondler, publicity director of the Shoewear Alliance for Public Safety.

The question of why so-not-actually-that-many preschoolers have been strapping the new detergent pods to their feet in the first place is a puzzling one. One possibility, according to Buffalo River University Associate Professor of Home Economics Dae Z. Chen, is that they evoke brand strong suggestions, especially for youngsters who are regularly exposed to television advertisements. “The colorful presence of the Nike swoosh on the Tide packets in particular is instantly apparent,” explains Chen. “Over and over again, our kids have been told to ‘Just Do It.’ We should not surprised when 3-year-olds do as they are told.”

The National Fashion Association’s alert does not name particular products or brands, but advises consumers to be on the lookout for children with an intense curiosity regarding the objects. Reached for comment, an industry spokesman told Irregular Times that starting in summer the packets will be shipped with shoelaces attached to discourage use.

In the just plain idiotic category goes S6779, a bill written by Republican New York State Senator Thomas F. O’Mara. The law would give any person, business or organization the right to force the removal from a web site of an anonymously written piece of material unless the true legal name, IP address and street address of the writer is posted along with the original written material and confirmed by the owner of the web site where the content is posted.

The law is necessary, says Senator O’Mara, to protect “a person’s right to know who is behind an anonymous internet posting”. Who says people have a legal right to know what other people are saying about them? The Constitution of the United States has no such provision in it, and neither does the Constitution of the State of New York.

In fact, the Constitution of the State of New York may prohibit pieces of legislation of the sort that Thomas O’Mara has introduced. The state’s constitution declares, “The legislature shall not pass a private or local bill in any of the following cases: Changing the names of persons…” It seems to be that there’s a good argument to be made that S6779 is a law that forces people to change the names people use for themselves, and is therefore unconstitutional.

Our national Constitution has a little old thing in it that’s called the First Amendment. The First Amendment guarantees both the right to free speech and freedom of the press, both of which would be denied by the censorship facilitated by S6779.

If the New York State Assembly and Senate pass this bill, what’s next? Is there going to be a law prohibiting a spoken conversation without the prior exchange of drivers’ licenses?

Thomas O’Mara justifies his censorship legislation by saying that bullying online must be stopped. Why must online bullying behavior receive especially harsh treatment, while offline bullying gets a free pass?

This legislation seems like an attempt to stifle all speech online. It contains no provision requiring proof of bullying, or restricting the censorship to cases in which bullying is even alleged to be involved.

Besides, the legislation is poorly written, with a loophole a mile wide. It only applies to web sites that enable interactive discussion: “a web site including social networks, blogs, forums, message boards or any other discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages”. So, even if this bill was passed, “cyberbullying” could go on as before, using web sites where there is no comment or discussion function.

Another idiotic flaw in the legislation is that it contains no restriction on the original date of publication of material. That means that, if Senator O’Mara’s legislation were signed into law, if a person published this poem…

I walk in loneliness through the greenwood
for I have none to go with me.
Since I have lost my friend by not being good
I walk in loneliness through the greenwood.
I’ll send him word and make it understood
that I will be good company.
I walk in loneliness through the greenwood
for I have none to go with me.

…on a blog with a comments section, then anyone could legally force the censorship of the poem. The poem, you see, was created by an anonymous writer over 800 years ago. It would be impossible to find the street address of the writer, and so the poem would have to be removed.

For that reason, I hereby rename S6779 as The Thomas O’Mara Medieval Poetry Censorship Act.

If writing bills like this is how Thomas O’Mara chooses to spend his time in the New York State Senate, why don’t the voters in his district just send him home to avoid further embarrassment?

Could it be that the Facebook primary revenue generating model, with finely targeted advertising based on Facebook’s ability to conduct dazzlingly detailed data mining operations against its users, is a piece of junk?

I wouldn’t depend on Facebook’s advertising for any business of mine. This evening, Facebook posted the advertisement you see here, telling me that I can ship my golf clubs through FedEx. The thing is, I don’t own golf clubs. I don’t play golf, ever. What’s more, the nearest FedEx drop-off center is a 30 minute drive from where I live, and I have only used it once. I ship using the U.S. Postal Service.

Before that, I saw an ad on Facebook telling me of a company that can help my law firm get more clients. That would be very helpful for my income, but then, I don’t have a law firm. I’m not a lawyer. I’ve never even worked as a paralegal.

This afternoon, Facebook showed me an advertisement from a company bragging that it has the best frozen hog semen in all of America and Asia. That might interest me, if I was a pig farmer. I’m not. I don’t want to be. I don’t raise any livestock, not even chinchillas.

It seems to me that Facebook’s supposedly brilliant advertising system ends up firing a lot of blanks. How long will businesses pay Facebook to send their messages to people who couldn’t care less? How long before Facebook’s sinking stock price reaches zero?

Exactly what about Nostradamus’ prophecies for Summer 2012 is forbidden?

Is Nostradamus himself forbidden? Well, golly, it’s not like he’s going to move anywhere, being dead and all.

Is it forbidden for you to read Nostradamus’ prophecies? Er, no. All of Nostradamus’ quatrains (four-line poems, folks) — are available for you to read right here.

Maybe they’re just forbidden during the Summer of 2012. If so, then you should check back this time next month and see if the above link works. A broken link? It must be a conspiracy? No broken link = nothing “forbidden.”

I just can’t figure out what’s forbidden here. If you know the answer to this riddle, let me know. There surely must be an answer; our newspapers never lie to us.

No Labels, May 19 2012: “Listen up #Washington: Stop fighting. Start fixing! Plz RT if you agree.”

And yes, in case you were wondering: No Labels’ headquarters is in Washington, DC.

We see Sherlock Holmes cast himself off a building, and bludgeon his head in a bloody mess that no one could survive… but then at the end, we see Sherlock Holmes alive! But how?

The clues are obvious… “Dr. Watson, please look at me up here, just keep your eyes up at me… It’s a trick. It’s just a magic trick.” Sleight of hand… get it? You see what the magician tells you to see, because you’re just a dope, and the producers of the TV show are geniuses at manipulating you.

Ha ha ha. How brilliant… but who cares?

The flaw in Sherlock Holmes stories, as they were originally written, and now as they’re being transmitted to the TV screen in this new series, is that the tales are all about how marvelous Sherlock Holmes is, making the rest of us idiots by comparison. The problem with Arthur Conan Doyle’s originals was that there often weren’t any clues at all to enable readers to think through puzzles as Holmes did. Holmes just had secret knowledge.

Now, the TV show’s producers are doing the same thing. They simply have some secret about how Sherlock Holmes survived, and we can speculate about it, but we can’t know… until Season 3 begins.

Readers, am I missing something?

Photo: ArckiiART

The New York Times (you know, “All the News That’s Fit to Print”) refuses to cover it anywhere on its front page, where over a hundred other news headlines sit.

Photo: OccupyWallStNYC

Among the stories the New York Times decides is “fit to print” on its front page — unlike the news of thousands of people taking over Times Square in protest — is the exclusive breaking news that Van Cliburn is going to sell one of his pianos.

Photo: OccupyWallStNYC

You read that right: “it comes as no shock that you have to tow the obama regime line or you will lose your job at the Fox entertainment network.” It will come as no surprise to anyone watching FOX News over the last decade that they just love Barack Obama and are conspiring to keep him in office. Why, those FOX News anchors are nothing but commie pinko Tinky-Winky hugging sushi eaters.

Why should it be surprising that different parties have different ideas regarding unsettled areas of policy? Politics is all about handling differences of opinion about how things should be done. That’s why people disagree about politics. That’s why conflict exists in politics. We should be surprised, and even suspicious, if there ever appears to be an easy political solution about which everyone agrees. When you find someone calling for “bipartisanship” or “unity” on an issue, pay close attention. The solution usually involves the suggestion that one side in a conflict change its mind.

Read the article under the above headline and that’s what you’ll see: legislators staking out positions and trying to get other legislators to move to theirs. It’s all right for politicians to charge one another with forsaking “bipartisanship”; they’re understandably seeking advantage in conflict. The rest of us, on the other hand, don’t have to lend that term any credence.