If Trump wins, everyone loses.

When talking about Trump the politician, even if you're a fan of the guy, you have to admit that a gigantic part as to why he's a viable candidate is because he's a massive celebrity. I'm not saying that's the only reason, although I personally believe that the same people who vote for Trump would vote for Honey Boo Boo if hers was the only name they recognized on a ballot. I'm just saying that him being a household name hasn't hurt him. Actually, he's turned out to be pretty damn good at using his celebrity status- he makes enough headlines to stoke the disenfranchised portion of today's Republican party.  A little more than seven months into his campaign, and his opponents haven't gotten close to matching the hype.  (Although, to be fair, unlike another candidate, he hasn't commissioned his own rap song... yet.)

What everyone thought was a gimmick, though, has suddenly turned out to be a serious campaign. His style of blasting uncensored, balls-out bigotry has somehow stuck with enough people to not only gather attention, but significant political support. Since July 2015, Donald Trump has lead in the Republican polls in Iowa and New Hampshire (although as of now, Cruz is beginning to close the gap in Iowa.)  When he makes fun of a reporter with a disability, he does so in front of tens of thousands of people. 

Actors, musicians, politicians, celebrities, and whatever occupation describes Sarah Palin have actually gone in front of television cameras-that they knew were recording-and said that they endorse Donald Trump.  Holy shit, it's becoming abundantly clear- some people want Donald Trump to win the primary!

Republican primary campaigns, at least within the last two decades, have been races to the middle- contests to see who can smile, nod and quip their way to the largest demographics, while winking and nodding to the uber-active, guaranteed-to-vote extremists.  Here is where the Donald should have faltered- he's currently catching a ton of criticism for his recent stump speech at Liberty University, in which he confirmed suspicions that he doesn't actually know fuck-all about Christianity.  His tax plan increases taxes on the wealthy. Actually, if you want to see the departure from the right-wing norm, ask him how he feels about universal health care- and he's still crushing the primary.

Should he win the primary, he'll switch gears.  He'll probably start listening to the Christian advisers he hired in September (worst The Apprentice ever) and immediately veer towards the center, to grab as wide of an audience as he can against Bernie or Hillary, but for now, and until it actually seems to slow his campaign down, you can still expect more of the same vile, ignorant shit that comes out of this mans mouth.  Why should he stop, when he's the only one saying what his base is thinking?

While other candidates roll out slogans like “Unleash the American Dream” and “A New American Century” (or... just their not actual first name with an exclamation point?) Donald Trump fires off “Let's Make America Great Again.”  I'm no expert in linguistics, but doesn't supporting this man mean endorsing the idea that America isn't great? I'm not sure, but I would suggest that the majority of the conservative populace wouldn't wear a hat that says “America isn't great anymore” to the Republican National Convention. Doesn't matter.  Not even implying the ultimate GOP heresy is enough to derail the Trump train.

Despite what should be a classic tale of how to piss off voters until you're cast into political oblivion, he has legions of people who want him to win the Presidency.  According to some polls, his approval ratings are rising.  But putting his name on general election ballots certainly wouldn't help Republicans. By every possible indication, Donald Trump would get curb-stomped by any Democrat in a general election.

If you're a Republican, this has three major consequences:  The first is that your political arguments will be represented on a national stage by somebody who is absolutely terrible at articulating them. Unless the average voters political views boil down to “Fuck veterans, Mexico, Islam, and women" between now and November, or Trump walks his clown-shit crazy comments back far enough (something I don't believe he's capable of), he will lose.

The second is that you're losing at least another four years of the presidency.  The Republican Congress under Obama openly stated that they wanted to "ensure he was a one-term President." Which probably won't work here, because of reason number three:  When Trump gets destroyed in the general election, his stink will carry over to every single Republican candidacy for at least the foreseeable future. 

Every single Republican will have to distance themselves from Donald in ways I can't even try to predict.  Right now, Donald Trump is polling heavy with the average, middle of the road conservatives.  That will stop when he loses in the general election, and then there needs to be a massive change in the message of the GOP.  Like Jeb Lund said, "the difference between Trumpism and the rest of the Republican party is basically ten beers."  How do you possibly separate yourself from the central emotional base of your ideals? This is important- Trump is running with the Republican Cliffs-notes, and when you lose the nuances that normally buffer the nasty parts away from the public eye, you lose the entire argument.  And if there's one thing that Donald (and America) hates, it's a loser.

However, at this point, maybe only losing the general election is the best thing the GOP can hope for. Trump has said repeatedly that he would run as an independent if he wasn't given the nomination, which would turn any 2016 Republican candidates' brutal uphill battle into an even more hilarious impossibility. Even then, the fracturing of the party between the Trumps and non-Trumps would be the point in time where we'd see the full separation between the people who endorse the honest, outspoken craziness as opposed to the subtle hidden craziness. After that, you might as well ask the Castro brothers what color they'd like for the carpet in the Oval Office in eight years or so.

So unless you're one of the people who genuinely believes that, in spite of reason, data, and common sense, Donald Trump can win the presidency- who really wants him to win the primary?

Democrats might; for no other reason that it's a lay-up.  However, I don't think anyone has enough confidence that the people who'd vote so that Trump doesn't get into office outnumber the people who would vote to put him there.

Additionally, this isn't just any position the man is running for- this is the Presidential nominee of a major American political party, and that means something. That's symbolically important, not just for one party, but for the entire country. Letting this person win the nomination means sending a God-awful message to the rest of the world. Our arguably staunches ally is having debates as to whether or not they'll let the man into their country. Do we really want him to be the voice of a faction, just for the sake of a political victory? Even with a win, we implicitly acknowledging that a great number of us support the kind of bigotry our own Constitution insists we abhor.

Perhaps I'm wrong. Maybe Trump actually does have a reasonable plan to fix flaws in the government, and is just taking a crazy route to get there. Or, maybe I'm in the minority, and most people are aligned with the character he's portraying- an unhinged, unholy blend of Ted Nugent and orange soda that's playing this game out of genuine interest, and not complete boredom. Perhaps we'll just get lucky, and he'll decide he's over it and wants to go back to making millions by going bankrupt.

Nobody wins if Trump does.

Sam lives and works in Austin, TX, and is a little sad that 1/4 of these articles have been about an asshole with a combover.  Follow him on twitter, or give him better article ideas at swellbo@gmail.com

Fuck off, Micro-transactions.

You know what? It's time. For the sake of everyone involved, I'm calling it. It's time to shit-can micro-transactions. They were interesting at first, then funny, then annoying.  But now, they exist only to infuriate and divide us, and it's time for them to go away. Micro-transactions are the hybrid offspring of a pyramid scheme and Donald Trump's presidential campaign.

I understand how they came to be, and I understand what they intend to do. In theory, it should be great to play a game before deciding if you want to invest money into it. I understand that it's also supposed to be in the best interest of the consumer to decide how much money they want to spend playing a game. And the free to play, micro-transaction model is a decent barrier against piracy. These should be good things! And yet, all they've accomplished is separating lonely, rich, or stupid people from their money to chase extemporaneous bullshit.

By continuing to buy into this trend we're supporting a money vacuum that's only interested in the art of game-making as it pertains to manipulating people- those with lots of expendable income, problems with addictions, or incapable of understanding the concept of money, to click away billions of dollars to play with a Skinner box.  

If you love video games, you should care.  That money could be used to finance developers who want to create meaningful digital experiences, instead of repetitive activities that either increase or decrease in difficulty depending on the number of dollars you want to throw at them.

The first thing we have to realize is that there are things that freemium games simply can't do. First, they can't surprise you. How can they? You're paying a dollar at a time because you know exactly what it is you're paying for. And that's important. Would Ocarina of Time be as great if it was sold to you an hour at a time? No. You want to have adventures because you know that once you've completed them, you're entitled to the satisfaction that comes with overcoming obstacles. Can you really be happy with winning a game if the strategy involved handing over real, actual money whenever you were stumped? The notion of a rewarding challenge vanishes when you simply pay to turn down or completely erase the difficulty level.

Best case scenario, the challenge comes from trying to complete the game without paying, something that every game company has to consider the worst case scenario. 

They can't develop a narrative, or, more accurately, they can't do it without people feeling completely scorned.  "Want to see if Guybrush Threepwood becomes a pirate?  Only three more dollars!"

And that's just the single-player games. When you add MT's to multiplayer games, you're venturing into even more frustrating territory. Why bother playing against others, when the strategy of the game boils down to “spend more than the other person.”

What if this was applied to chess? Who the hell wants to play a chess game where you're playing 16 pawns against 16 queens because the person at the other end of the board gave twenty more dollars to the game creator than you did?

That's what's really at stake here.  If you want to keep playing games, then, like developers or publishers, you depend on other people to play and buy games.  And all the free to play, pay to win model will do is scorn people away from an industry that's on the verge of something awesome.

Look, from the very little I understand about game development, I can't say that a freemium game is easier to make than other types, but by common sense, I feel pretty confident when I say that putting together a game that's thematically interesting, mechanically balanced, and emotionally satisfying is a lot more difficult than, say, not doing that. Were I in the position of the game developer, I would want a system that makes it easier to make money for less work. But that can't be what we are here for.

Look, I understand that for many people, the goofy games on your phone are simply meant to be time killers. That's awesome. But there's no reason that we shouldn't want our time killers to be better, and they won't be- unless we understand what it is that we're investing our time and money into. It's possible to have great experiences with games of every single genre, but it means taking risks and thinking about gaming from the standpoint of an artist, or a gamer.  Microtransactions, I would bet a huge amount of money on, were the brainchild of an accountant, and making art solely from the perspective of making money never goes well.  Ask this guy.

Furthermore, freemium games never end. This may sound like a small complaint, but hear me out. The reason that we saw such awesome transitions between games during the first two decades or so of the medium is, put very simply, after a game was released, the people who worked on it started working on something different.  But the micro-transaction model is meant for you to spend perpetually; the only incentive to end the game is to manage costs.  When people get bored and want to move on, then we can innovate.  Until then, they give us real money for a non-existent currency, and the cycle continues.

This simply will not sustain, long term.  If we keep capping creativity for the sake of extending the profits, people will see through the gimmicks and start doing different things, like exercising, and fuck that.

Inevitably, this will go away. Some crazy ass developer will take a gamble and produce an absolutely awesome mobile game- one that people want to play for reasons other than psychological manipulation- and it will change everything. This will work- people already spend 22 billion dollars every year, the vast majority of which is payment for additional content on free games. But when people who only got into games to waste time see the Android equivalent of Half-Life, there will be an awesome new shift towards innovative games- games with puzzles that require actual thought and skill, not a set amount of time or a credit card number. You'll see games get sold based on the personification of their characters again. You'll see interesting themes. You'll see fascinating stories. You'll see people start playing games, things you love and relate to, for reasons other than the time they saw Kate Upton on a commercial.

You'll finally see what a completely interactive touch-screen controller can do when it's attached to the display. You'll see people playing demos of games, and then depending on the outcome of a demo, and then either buy a game, or take a pass. I can't fucking wait.

Sam lives in Austin, TX, and is still bitter about his addiction to Farmville.  Follow him on Twitter or email him at swellbo@gmail.com

David Bowie: The Impossible Man

It's not fair to call David Bowie a musician, in the same way it it's not fair to call Barack Obama a lawyer.

He transcended what it meant to be a human being- whether it was sex, or money, or fame, or food- any basic instinctual hole that we mere mortals thirst for, he never even seemed to need. He was a trickster god, a fool who held the power almighty.

Nobody could ever figure him out. When it came to his sexuality, his beliefs, his relationships, his politics, he was simply too good at coming close to being understood just before he morphed into something different. He was everything. He rebelled against everything. He was a chameleon who reflected society back at itself in absurdity while playing some of the greatest music of all time.

His music is experience that didn't fit into two genres, let alone one. His albums all built upon each other- his initial self titled debut consisted of Baroque pop and sing-song ditties, songs called “Sell me a Coat” and “Come and Buy Me Toys,”- unironic, instrument forward songs that precede the music everything thinks of when they hear David Bowie's name. Here, one would say, is where he became something else; a giant.

These dance hall sounds built the foundation for everything that was to come afterwards- incorporating the head banging riffs and bluesy solos into Space Oddity, the hard rock notions of and glam rock that came from an alternate persona (Ziggy Stardust)- and then, he built on those, well into an incredible career that lasted more than 35 years.

His music was the intersection of everything that was musically happening at the time. His personae reflected everything that was culturally happening at the time. The man began and ended genres and cultural eras by himself.

He had been battling cancer for nearly 18 months before he passed, and was writing and recording an album for the majority of that time. He kept his cancer a secret, as Rolling Stone's Joe Levy reported. Bowie told him that he wanted his art to speak for itself- while he was writing an album about coming face to face with his mortality.

He was a real life science fiction character. In his art, he was a universe traveling warrior against the forces of the banal, and nobody tried to prove him wrong because everyone was too scared to find out it wasn't true. That's what he meant to us.

His final album, Blackstar, is his final message to humanity- you aren't just hearing the words of Bowie, you're hearing his Gospel. “I'm not a film star, I'm not a pop star, I'm not a gang star- I'm a Blackstar.” Wikipedia says that a black star could refer to any number of hypothetical cosmic anomalies, all of which involve the reference of a black hole- A constant, hypothetical, all powerful entity. If that's where he is and what he's doing (and frankly, he's never been wrong before), he'll be there longer than any of us will be anything. If anybody earned immortality, it was David Fucking Bowie.

Everything was art for Bowie. He inspired people constantly, despite the changing world around him, because he changed faster than the world. I'm starting to honestly believe that the only reason any of us were lucky to have him was because he sent himself back in time to change history for the better. So, when I think about it, maybe David Bowie didn't die- he just went somewhere he was needed more.

And finally, I'll say this to the end- nobody would give anything resembling a shit about Zoolander if it weren't for the David Bowie cameo as the judge of a fashion “walk-off.” The inclusion of Bowie in that role is a tribute, because if David Bowie ever said you weren't cool, then dammit, you weren't cool.

Sam lives and works in Austin, TX, and wants to be an alligator, a space invader, and a rocking/rolling bitch for you.  Follow him on twitter or send him your favorite Bowie lyrics at swellbo@gmail.com

The real horror of Making a Murderer

While I'm quick to loathe spoilers, I really wish somebody would have just told me that I was going to be disappointed by Making a Murderer. I, like probably many others who watched this show, expected a real life translation of True Detective.  Who committed the murder?  Avery?  The corrupt police?  Martin Shkreli?

Although you really should go watch it right now, I'll throw the spoiler alert here, because in order to understand who the real perpetrator is in Murderer, you need to know how the story ends.

Here goes.

Steven Avery, a Wisconsin man who could modestly be described as a troubled human, was falsely imprisoned for 18 years in under suspicious circumstances. DNA evidence got him released, and he was in the late stages of a 36 million dollar lawsuit against the sheriffs department and the Wisconsin Attorney Generals office, but within the weeks after key prosecution elements were deposed, Avery was charged with the murder of Teresa Halbach, a vehicle photographer who occasionally worked with him. Much of the evidence was suspect, but admissible, mostly due to decisions made by the judge, Patrick Willis, at the request of the prosecution, Kenneth Kratz, and he was convicted.

(Much of the prosecutions case was, at best, circumstantial, and at worst, complete bullshit.  This article, while published by a less than credible source, outlines most of the almost hilariously suspect evidence presented by the prosecution.)

Eventually, jurors found Avery guilty of intentional first degree murder and felony possession of a firearm.  They did not, however, find him guilty of mutilating a corpse, which is strange, because the fact that the corpse was mutilated was, in itself, one of the key pieces of evidence pointing to Mr. Avery's guilt.

Now unless you're certain that everything is on the up-and-up with the prosecution (which would put you in a minute percentage of people) you never find out who actually committed the crimes for which they convict Avery. Intentionally or not, MaM opens like it's a gritty real-life who-dun-it that appears to inch closer and closer to a logical, satisfying conclusion, but then shows you the sad, horrible truth- we'll never know what actually happened. 

Here's the real monster- this is all by the design of the system that prosecutes him.  Their jobs are to take this man and make him a murderer, if in no other way by convicting him.

Ask any trial attorney, and they'll tell you- The justice system is not designed to investigate crimes, just to convict people.

At a glance, the convict-first-and-ask-questions-later approach makes sense. People get accused of crimes.  These people need to be investigate, tried, and if guilty, prosecuted, and no taxpayer wants to pay a prosecutor who doesn't convict anybody. Therefore, the more convictions, the better, right?

It would certainly appear so.  Currently fewer than 8% of cases go to trial because of plea bargains- meaning automatic convictions.  It's like a cheat code for the prosecution.  

Prosecutors all across the country depend on this. Want proof?  See what would happen if everyone who took a plea bargain decided to go to trial. Another spoiler here: it would destroy the court system.

So if you're a prosecutor who depends on what is essentially a life-ruining auto-fire button, and you want to make sure nobody spills surge on your career Game Genie, the most effective method is to insure that a defense in a fair trial is so goddamn expensive that it's virtually impossible.  

Forget the fear of a more severe sentencing- just going to trial is crazy expensive, to the point where just being accused of a crime can ruin your life, and that's assuming you aren't already poor.

Trial lawyers are expensive.  An attorney costs $2000-3000, or over 400 hours of work at minimum wage (that's for a misdemeanor, by the way- move on to felony cases and you're talking about years and years of working just to pay for an accusation.)

But even being the gun burning godless hippy that I am, I know this is a necessary evil.  It takes time to build cases, gather evidence and talk to witnesses, but it needs to be done.  That's how you find the truth, which I think most people want if they think that, you know, something needs to happen to people accused of a crime.  

But with the amount of money involved, you would demand (or at least expect) that there would be a lot of resources dedicated towards finding out exactly what happened, so that one could be certain the correct person is charged appropriately.  But as Making a Murderer documents so, so brutally, it ain't happening.  

The system is meant to generate convictions, not convict appropriately. This distinction is the most horrifying aspect of the series. You can't look at a single element in the prosecution in this case without wondering which circle of bureaucratic hell these people came from.

The judge of the murder trial, Patrick Willis, is in charge of the courtroom, meaning that he is obligated to provide a fair environment to try Avery.  He doesn't do this, exactly. He allows the prosecution to present, as evidence, the results of an FBI test on Mr. Avery's blood that's demonstrably unreliable-which just so happens to help the prosecution.  He doesn't allow the defense time to test the exact same blood. He doesn't allow pre-trial instruction for the jury, in which they would be told that the most notorious man in the county should be treated fairly, since his previous rape charge is irrelevant to the case (something you would expect a fair prosecution should favor, since their case shouldn't really involve any event that didn't happen, especially one that didn't happen 23 years prior.)

One of the many times I found myself screaming "What the fuck?" at my screen was watching Judge Willis during Avery's sentencing.  Willis doesn't directly address Avery until this point, where he goes on a dramatic, hand wrenching monologue, claiming that Avery's crimes have been more and more severe (presumably this includes the crime he didn't commit, but whatever.)  If you hadn't seen any of the show until this point, you'd think that the judge had never laid eyes on the man. 

Which I suppose would be fine if Willis wasn't almost entirely responsible for the environment in which the jury heard all of the evidence, and what evidence could be heard. The man was able to help the prosecution as he saw fit, help determine the outcome of the trial, but now switches to now be the executioner, so to speak, all in the name of protecting the public from a man who was abused by the system he controls.

You get to watch a judge hand-hold the prosecution, and then watch his false disgust as he pretends to finally acknowledge that he knows Avery is guilty.

Judge Willis is not an outlier.  There's a long history of judges working in secret against the prosecuted.

Prosecutors get several unfair advantages against the defense in every criminal case everywhere, and it's no different with Avery. Kenneth Kratz, the district attorney, works behind the scenes with the investigators and lab technicians, even sending them notes telling them the exact evidence he wants them to find to help his case. 

Think about that for a second. If it were to have come out that Avery's attorneys were asking detectives for specific information and evidence that would help acquit their client, it would have gathered so much drama and traffic that Nancy Grace would have had an on-the-spot involuntary orgasm. 

Key thing to remember:  The prosecution should have the exact same relationship with the evidence that as the defense should have- and that means that the prosecutor doesn't get to say things like “put Teresa in [Avery's] bedroom” to the woman running the DNA tests.

Even the lawyers representing Avery are just pieces in a broken system.  They are there to convince the jury that the system is working against their client in ways that are unfair- but they're really there because they're getting money in exchange. 

And they are getting paid.  In a phone call between Avery and his brother, you hear that the Avery family is selling their salvage yard to pay for the two attorneys.

Steve Avery's family is losing their business, and in exchange, these men try to use their experience to defend him from a system that was supposed to treat him fairly.

It sounds like it's fucked up until you realize the convictions are actually the point of the whole process. If it's expensive and impossible, it's because it's supposed to be, enough so that people with less than Steve Avery don't even have the opportunity to contest (and probably fail) in the way that he does. Is your life's work enough to pay two men for four months of their time?  No? Guess it's time to take the plea bargain.

All in all, it's cashing in on convictions, monetarily or through some variety of vendetta satisfaction, or, in the least crazy scenario, people getting to use their specific authority and agency to tamper with evidence to make their jobs a little easier. It's a lot easier to convince somebody of Steven Avery's guilt when they hear details such as his blood being in the car (which totally didn't come from an easily accessible and clearly tampered-with blood sample in a storage area by the police department,) his nephew's bullshit confession, or how the victims keys were magically found on his bedroom floor 8 days after the investigation started, by a policeman that wasn't supposed to fucking be there.

What's important to remember about this particular documentary about this particular investigation is NOT that it's unusual. Cops plant evidence all the time. If Murderer is supposed to convince us of anything, it's that the legal system worked against Avery exactly as it usually does- the intent was never to investigate an incident for the sake of truth, or justice; although the people doing the investigation will always admit that if nothing else, justice can be a byproduct.

How can they do this?  Four reasons:

1. Nobody cares about the defendants.  This is a big one. These people aren't saints. Steve Avery was, by a few different accounts, a complete piece of shit. But if you believe in the idea of justice, then if it was anybody from Steve Avery to his idiot nephew to Steve Buscemi or Shamu, the trial and the punishment would be the same.

If the crime is the same, the punishment is supposed to be the same, and if the punishment is the same, then the trial must be consistently fair.  Disagreeing with this means that you'd have to be OK with a loved one having the same trial that Steven did. If you would argue for a fair trial or yourself, then you would have to argue the same rights for Avery. 

2. Nobody knows as much about the law as those involved, so we have to assume that people in charge are making correct choices. The law is a thing that has become more and more complex, and people who make a living understand that law are usually able to understand the basic economics behind being a lawyer- you have a supply of knowledge and experience, and the best way to capitalize on your resources is to ensure that the ratio of supply and demand work more towards your favor. Through years of subtle decisions made by like minded people, intentional or not, the true winners of our court system are lawyers- people who can understand the intricacies of the codes they write themselves, all the while charging people for the translations.

3. Supply and demand. This could be fixed by reducing the supply, i.e. changing laws to prevent unnecessary arrests, but one of the biggest reasons that can't happen is that there would be a lot of political push-back by people who depend on the industry created by these arrests- the DEA, the ATF and others receive their funding because the laws are written to maximize their need, if they have anything to say about it. Not to mention the private prison enterprise, which has capitalized on light-speed convictions by profiting from fuller prisons. (We're now at a point where entire industries have formed on a steady nation-wide conviction rate- something that sounds insane when you say it out loud.)

4. Judges are publicly elected, and when you're trying to advertise your accomplishments against your opponents, there needs to be some sort of metric to brag about.  John Oliver already covered this. (Patrick Willis, the judge who oversaw the murder conviction for Avery, ran unopposed for the majority of his terms. He retired in 2012.) As stated briefly, the judge has a much greater incentive to ensure a high conviction rate lest he be thought of as inefficient- it's much easier to brag about a 100 percent conviction rate than it is to explain that you carefully attempted to understand the position you were put in, ensured fairness to everybody, and used intelligent consideration to make the correct choices in the short time of a Green Bay Packers TV time-out slot.

The combined choices of all people involved have slowly created a system that is at the very least unsustainable and at the very worst a bastardized night terror of the framers idea of a fair trial.

What this means is that the deck is stacked so hard against the accused that there is almost no chance of financially, socially, or even medically recovering from an accusation, let alone conviction. 

Is that really the country we want to live in? With no agenda in this case, do you really think that the prosecution took the right steps?

The counter-argument to this is simple:  The man is, most likely, guilty. Regardless of the blood sample clearly being tampered with, or the obvious motives and vendettas against Mr. Avery held by people at every level of the Manitowac justice department, or any number of reasons that this trial was a fucking sham-he did commit the crime, prison is where he belongs.

Unfortunately, we can't be sure. We'll never be sure. And that's where the whole thing has just gone so horribly, horribly wrong. Steps were made long before Steven Avery stood trial to ensure that he and people like him weren't brought to justice, because without the truth, there is no justice. It's a lot neater to prosecute without investigating and call yourself the authority. Never mind what's true- finding the truth takes effort, effort costs money, and we all now know that given the choice, we'd all rather put our money somewhere else.

Sam Wellborn is now going to re-enact the murder from Making a Murderer, where the victim will be played by a Pop-Tart with butter on it.  Follow him on Twitter, or e-mail him at swellbo@gmail.com for some more old-school NES/Game Genie references.