Who Writes This Stuff?

Yesterday USA Today ran a headline that said “Oldest U.S. death row inmate dead at 94″. He died of old age. I had to flip to the front of the magazine to make sure I didn’t pick up a copy of The Onion by mistake. It sounds like some kind of joke. Sadly, it isn’t.

Viva Leroy Nash (a complete piece of shit) was sentenced to death in 1983 for the murder of a shop clerk he killed shortly after he escaped from prison. He was in prison for killing another shop clerk shortly after he was released from prison. He was in prison that time for killing a police officer.

Here’s a picture of him so you know what he looks like, except for the piece of shit part. I added that so no one could dispute that he is (was) a piece of shit.

Here’s a nifty little bit of info for you. It costs more to keep an inmate in prison for a year than it does to get a college education. In Virginia they spend about 28,000 dollars per year per inmate. In California they spend 45,000. California really likes criminals, I guess. Nash was imprisoned in Arizona. I have no idea what Arizona spends, and I don’t care. It’s certainly a lot.

So let’s recap. A piece of shit killed one, two, three people, finally got sentenced to death, spent twenty seven years in jail and died of old age at a cost of at least 756,000 dollars to you and I. This is assuming Arizona spends about as much as Virginia on inmates. In reality this number is much higher, as Arizona probably spends more than Virginia and I did not include the extra costs of appeals or the medical care Nash was provided late in his life. So, congratulations, America. You just spent about a million dollars on a piece of shit.

You’re doing it wrong.

What kind of upside down country has this become? It’s like we’re in a department store and we can either buy Mountain Dew for 50 cents or we can buy the shitty Kroger Moon Mist for 756,000 dollars. We picked the Moon Mist! The Moon Mist is human waste that should be purged, and we still pay millions of dollars for the Moon Mist! Then we wonder why we owe something like 3 trillion dollars to the Chinese.

Speaking of the Chinese, in China, criminals are executed in public immediately following their sentencing. They are executed via shooting and their family is sent a bill for the cost of the bullet. As much as I can’t stand communists, they sure know how to do one thing the right way.

As if it isn’t already more screwed up than a Chuck Palahniuk novel, USA Today reported that the asshole’s lawyer, Thomas Phalen said

he had a deep fondness for a man he called “an old cowboy.”

“He was born in 1915 and he was sent to prison in 1930,” Phalen said. “Think about it — he had 15 years of life in southern Utah, at a time when Utah and Arizona was the wild, wild West — and he went to prison in 1930, and he remained in prison for the next 80 years, more or less.”

I’m glad you’ve morphed this asshole into a human being that meets your warped cowboy fantasy, Thomas Phalen. I hope someone with some decency sends you a mail bomb. Really. You’re demented.

As for the main issue here, America, next time you’re standing in the soft drink aisle and your broken moral compass won’t allow you to make the smart decision then call me. Call Mike Leon. I would happily take the trash out for you. And I’ll even pick up the tab for the bullet, America.