Louisville, Ky. (WDRB) – Witnesses say Louisville Metro Police had to break up a fight early today at Jefferson Mall over the release of a new style of sneakers.

Officers were on the scene where witnesses told WDRB that 75 to 100 people were reportedly in a fight over pairs of the new Air Jordan Eleven Retro Concords.

One witness claimed that a security guard was trampled by the crowd waiting for several shoe stores to open early. That claim could not be independently verified, as WDRB News was not allowed inside the mall.

At least eight police cars were on scene. Sources with the mall claim they were already there to provide security.

From the Keynesian / Krugmaniac  perspective, look at all of the jobs this melee helped to create or save.  The riot police called in to maintain order and make arrests (plus overtime!), the booking agents who would log them into the jail, the ambulance drivers who would pick up the wounded, the therapists who could counsel them,  the locksmith to prepare new fences for the stores and the janitors to clean up the blood.  And, of course, the welfare office who cut the checks that allowed these folks with such misplaced priorities to use their cash on hand for something this important to begin.

This riot is probably the greatest thing to happen to this particular strip mall since October 2008.

“I got the love for the ‘Js,’ you feel me?” said Brandon Betts, a customer who purchased the shoes. ”Look at the box! The box is cold!”

“Man it’s crazy in there: people getting run over and security guards getting trampled and stuff,” he added. “They almost tried to arrest us!”

Sources with the Mall deny that there was a fight and say no police report was made out.

Correction:  No jobs were created for booking agents logging anyone into a jail for these various felonies.  And from North Carolina:

PINEVILLE, NC (WBTV) – Dozens of police officers had to break up fights and restore order at a local mall while shoppers were waiting for an overnight sale of a popular tennis shoe.

WTF is it about tennis shoes?  They don’t make you jump any higher or run faster.  Michael Jordan retired from basketball almost a decade ago.  Now, this could just be the cracker in me talking, but are tennis shoes important enough to add another candle to the Kwanzaa menorah?

You’ve got Umoja, Kujichagulia, Ujima, Ujamaa, Nia, Kuumbaa, Imani and Air Jordans.  Air Jordans being the last candle.  The highest.  The culmination of all of your race-based collectivist couch-sweating labors.

In a related story, Eric “We’re Cowards On Race” Holder brought a federal lawsuit against South Carolina today for daring to ask voters to show some form of identification in order to vote:

The Justice Department on Friday entered the divisive national debate over new state voting laws, rejecting South Carolina’s measure requiring photo-identification at the polls as discriminatory against minority voters.The decision by Justice’s Civil Rights Division could heighten political tensions over the new laws, which critics say could depress turnout among minorities and others who helped elect President Obama in 2008.A dozen states this year passed laws requiring voters to present state-issued photo identification, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Just how is this related to a story about people rioting over Christmas tennis shoes?  Maybe because if showing some form of official ID to vote was such a hardship that all of these people standing in line to pay $200 for a pair of tennis shoes could, I dunno, take their Granny or Auntie to the DMV to get a $15 driver’s license.  The wait would be less too as well as not being out in the cold.

Voting with Their Feet:

Do Blacks care more about tennis shoes than their right to vote?

 In Tennessee, we have to show a government issued photo ID to buy 8 tablets of Sudafed and enter our names in a DEA Registry if we want to effectively combat allergy season.  Yet, somehow, exercising your right to vote – the ultimate franchise – shouldn’t require anything more than showing up at the poll of your choice several times a day and show nothing save the cartons of cigarettes and “walking around money” that Eric Holder gave your preacher.

Taking time away from his busy schedule of murdering border agents, funneling illegal arms to and money laundering for Mexican drug cartels, AG Holder had these comments earlier this month regarding those who have an entire year to figure out a way to get a Photo ID in between their hectic tennis shoe rioting schedule:

Holder expressed concern about the new laws in the Dec. 13 address, saying: “Are we willing to allow this era – our era – to be remembered as the age when our nation’s proud tradition of expanding the franchise ended?’’

At the same time, Holder vowed to not let politics affect his department’s review. “We’re doing this in a very fair, apolitical way,’’ he said in a recent interview with The Washington Post. “We don’t want anybody to think that there is a partisan component to anything we are doing.’’

Of course, not.  Politics plays no part whatsoever in  suing those racists in red states for affirming the identity of their voters and preventing fraud at the polls using the same standard as buying a six-pack of beer or cigarettes.

And if you believe that, I have some Black Panthers standing outside of a voting station  in Philadelphia to sell you.

TRENTON— A top Republican said Wednesday that Gov. Chris Christie really is not running for president, even as political commentators began to use sexual imagery to discuss Christie flirting with the possibility.

That’s going to be a hard image to shake.

Lawrence E. Bathgate II of Lakewood, who has led fundraising for three presidents and a presidential nominee, said that after a series of high-level telephone calls, he is convinced that Christie is not headed into the GOP primaries for president.

“I heard him say that he wasn’t running last night. Everything I know, and everyone I’ve talked to — and it doesn’t get much closer than the people on the plane with him — say he’s not running,” Bathgate said in an interview.

Yes, it’s cheap taking shots at Christie.  To be fair, I’ll take cheap shots at Sarah Palin shortly.  But when he starts holding court about foreign policy – don’t start talking about exceptionalism and why we don’t have any but that you’re not going to do anything about it.  Are people on the right so hard up for a candidate that they’ve turned chubby chaser?

Same with Sarah Palin.  Go sell your books.  Go raise your kids.  Three and a half years of “I’m running / I’m not sure I’m running” blue balls are enough for me thank you very little.  Quit dry humping conservatives for attention.  My leg can’t take it anymore.

Via the NY Post: AFP/Getty Images Phyllis Siegel (rear) and Connie Kopelov (front) celebrate after becoming the first same-sex couple to get married in New York City the day the state's gay marriage law went into effect.

The Big Apple said “I do” to a new era of gay rights this morning and celebrated New York City’s first same-sex weddings.

Chelsea residents Phyllis Siegel, 76, and Connie Kopelov, 84, got hitched at the marriage bureau on Worth Street in Lower Manhattan at 9:02 a.m., setting off wedding bells across Gotham.

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who is openly gay, witnessed the ceremony that was officiated by City Clerk Michael McSweeney.

‘‘It was just so amazing,’’ said Siegel, who has been with her love for 23 years. ‘‘It’s the only way I can describe it. I lost my breath and a few tears.’’

Which brings me to Anthony Weiner.

The Internet, as I understand it, is best for sharing information, ideas and even feelings. We send our thoughts and feelings, our very spirit, over the airwaves, with astounding velocity. At times, as human beings, we want to attach the body to the feelings, as well. Photos of ourselves and loved ones. Pets. The view out our window. The image of a child’s purity.

Barring any further revelations about the underage purity of the children Mr. Weiner of the Incalculable  Certitude, may or may not have spanked his Hebrew National to – that might have been Mr. Barrwin’s most unfortunate turn of phrase in this curiously unsolicited defense of the wanky Weiner.

Photos to find love. To find sex.

My thought on Weiner is that he is a very busy man.

…

For high functioning men like Weiner and other officials who have lived through such scandals, who are constantly on the go, that leaves one tried and true source of a reliable high. The affirmation that comes when someone lets you know they want to sleep with you. Or even cyber-sleep with you.

“High functioning” weiners, aside the running sexting joke is that no one ever knew if the person on the other end was a hot co-ed or a beefy bear with the keyboard of a slutty angel.

One busy gentlemen may feel a bit betrayed if he comes home from his busy day at work to find his missus jilling off to a tattooed, unemployed construction worker who’s milking the coconuts to his veiny palm tree on the other end of the Skype connection.  Much less half a dozen construction workers.

Who can say?  Working for Hillary Clinton might be a walk in the park.  A park fraught with flashers in trenchcoats.  Or the ever-gracious  frotteurs on the subway who, above all others, understand how pressed for time you are.

This is sex for many people now. No time for Mateus and cheap spaghetti. No time for slowly moving toward one another with a combination of hope and caution, lust and integrity. One can push a button and get something beyond porn. Porn is essentially two dimensional. One sees and hears. Internet sexting can be perceived as three dimensional by adding the component of “feel”, regardless of how cheap and unearned those feelings are. That person on the screen is doing whatever they’re doing… just for you.

Is this a defense or a confessional?

We tell ourselves that these devices help us communicate more effectively. What they actually do is allow us to bypass the person lying right next to us, across the room from us or at an airport heading home to us, in order to meet our immediate, even inconvenient, needs. To bypass their moods, their current view of us and their own desires, or lack thereof.

Weiner is a modern human being. So he ensnared himself in things that modern humans do. When I first heard about his problems, I snickered and made jokes, too. Now, I’m sad for him, his family, his district and his colleagues.

Let he who is without sin…

So only the atheists should be allowed to criticize Weiner by Barwin’s standard.  Preferably ones who aren’t so modern or busy.  Lazy Luddites who are fapping in the ways of our forefathers.

Through all of this, there is an unreasonable assumption that Weiner only played Hide The Salami with himself and throughout his engagement and marriage that he never indulged in an extra-marital affair.  He’s earned it, right?

Running a self-styled gauntlet of leftarded bimbos and pornstars stands he, Integritous Masturbatus.

An undeserved presumption of innocence for someone who played fast and loose with anyone on Twitter who paid him a compliment.

Damn you, sexy Internet.  I’m a married man!  And oh so busy.

The Jimmy Swaggart of Class War continues to make promises he’ll refuse to keep:

Disgraced politician John Edwards is said to be deeply depressed – to the point of being suicidal - over the prospect of a criminal trial that could end with him being jailed if found guilty.

The 57-year-old former Presidential candidate reportedly told a close friend: ‘I won’t go to jail. I’d kill myself first!’

According to the Wall Street Journal Mr Young has described the tape as like ‘watching a traffic pile-up occur in slow motion – repelling but also transfixing.’

How auto-erotic.

After being sold for a dollar to a Far Left California Congresswoman, they’re taking The Nashville City Paper route and insulting their readership in an attempt to gain advertisers.  Is that how Old Media papers used to work when they were successful?  This week’s cover story:

How Dumb Are We?

NEWSWEEK gave 1,000 Americans the U.S. Citizenship Test–38 percent failed. The country’s future is imperiled by our ignorance.

Like all liberal attempts to fingerpoint, there are four more fingers pointing back at themselves.

Exit question:  If people are so stupid, how is this not the teacher’s union fault?  They’re the ones who failed to educate them about US history after all.  Did they miss that class in between Gender Studies and Ecology?

Correction: This is all Charles Maldonado’s wife’s fault.

I also hope that chiropractors are covered under the new Obamacare law given the twists and contortions of the antiwar Left, who never took advantage of a moment to STFU during Bush’s year long Rush To War ™ in Iraq, versus Obama “The Poet Warrior’s” week long, “cautious” unconstitutional intervention in a civil war that’s technically not our business at all.

What Fantasyland is this that we’re living in?

I just saw John Kerry and Carl Levin on Meet the Press saying that we’re doing all this, took our time to do it right with our Broad Coalition ™ or rather a Coalition of Broads and that at the end of the day we’re pretty cool with expending a lot of blood and treasure to leave Qaddafi in power.   This, for some reason, only makes sense if you’re a Liberal Democrat so may be our house commies can riddle me that one.

Funny that among all those consulted, Congress wasn’t. Congressman John Larson of Connecticut, head of the Democratic Caucus, says, “They consulted the Arab League. They consulted the United Nations. They did not consult the United States Congress,” one Democrat lawmaker said of the White House. “They’re creating wreckage, and they can’t obviate that by saying there are no boots on the ground. … There aren’t boots on the ground; there are Tomahawks in the air.”

Also, that in two closed to questions speeches that Obama has made the case for intervention so painfully clear that only an unAmerican dupe would deny him seeking justice for Libyan rebels of undetermined democratic commitment.  Even if you did support them it’s too little too late and if you leave Qaddafi in power without an occupation would you expect that he would not hunt them down afterwards?

This is beyond senseless and no high-minded journalists seem able to latch onto this headsnapping reversal of course from the people who opposed Iraq and Afghanistan for a decade.

Obama just asked US soldiers to risk their lives for nothing, in pursuit of a goal that is undefined if not ill-defined that puts their mission under the leadership and mandate of the worthless United Nations.

The same United Nations that is authorizing us to attack the chairman of their own Human Rights Council with such a narrowly defined scope as to be more of a threat to our own soldiers than to Libya’s.

God, I know I ask for too much as it is being that you have no real obligation to help me at all but please save our people from these professional morons and two-faced traitors.

In lieu of divine intervention, I will gladly accept MoveOn.org, Code Pink, International ANSWER and Women in Black anti-war rallies against this imperial President with added calls for his immediate impeachment.

Hilarity: Tubby Riefenstahl rips into Obama as if he was packaged in a Hostess Twinkie wrapper. Sacrelicious.

I guess he won’t be taking credit for all of the voters he steered towards Obama now, huh?  Success has a thousand Dreams of My Father but failure is a Kenyan orphan apparently.

In The Tank: Dukakis does his best Associated Press impersonation.

Poor Michael Dukakis.  Still trying to re-fight the electoral ass-kicking that muddied GHW Bush’s shiny wingtip.

Thanks to Salon’s War Room (see “The New Civility” – war – arghh!), it appears that Shortstack McRapeMyWife’s plan to launch the Dukakis/Mondale 2016 juggernaut continues apace. 23 years later and not one iota the wiser.

The Lee Atwater Boogie Man still lurks under his petite daybed.  He didn’t lose because he was cold to the question of how he would respond if his wife and daughter were raped.  He didn’t lose because he coddled rapists and murderers by sending them on weekend vacations.  No, it was those mean ole meanies who don’t fight fair.

Come for the asking Walter Mondale for good advice, stay for the comments where Obama is congratulated for being our first black Republican president who took a hard “right” once elected.  Cuckoo stuff.

Willie Horton is still available for comment.

At a joint presser with Felipe Calderon and President Davis, Jr., the Accomplice Press got their “one question”.  After applauding President Davis for his many words on Libya and a kinda, sorta answering his own question about imposing a useless “no-fly” zone, he finally gets to his well-thought out point – Hey, when are you going to intervene in that civil war between the NFL’s multimillionaire athletes and hundred millionaire owners?

Absolutely shameful.   Ben Feller of the AP should be fired before he gets back to the office.

At a time when Mexico is embroiled in an appallingly violent drug war that is leaving dozens dead, beheaded even, every single weekend.  At a time when gas is already over $4.00 a gallon.  Where governments in the Middle East are falling like dominoes or hanging on by gunning down innocents in the streets.  Where two US soldiers were assassinated by the Muslim offspring of the people Clinton “liberated” from civilization in Kosovo.  Where a Florida judge has ruled Obama’s landmark entitlement healthcare bill unconstitutional.  Where February 2011 had close to 400,000 people filed for unemployment benefits for the first time again two years into his Presidency.  When his Attorney General just stood before Congress yesterday and defended dismissing charges in a voter intimidation case because the defendants were the correct race.  When corrupt unions are assaulting taxpayers in the streets to preserve pensions that they don’t deserve and the country cannot  in any way, shape or form be able to afford.

Nah, use that one question to ask about pampered football players in the offseason.  Well played, sir.

Now wipe your chin off and ask for a towel.  The money’s on the nightstand as usual.

How else to explain naming a Liberadio-ing, democrat voting, Daily Kossifying, Dave Weigel worshipping, never-miss-an-opportunity-to-cheap-shot-a-conservative House Donkey like Adolph Klanheider to be his Communications Director?

To paraphrase The Godfather:

Don Corleone: [kisses Michael] Listen, whoever comes to you with this Klainheider recommendation, he’s the traitor. Don’t forget that.

You’re going to live to regret putting the enemy in charge of your message, Boots.