They say that, “A bad penny always turns up”. We now have another example of the truth of that old proverb.
Convicted felon and former KKK-dipsh!t David Duke is back in the news these days. Seems as if he’s announced he’s running for office yet again. This time, Duke’s announced that he’s running for the US Senate from Louisiana.
Duke does this periodically. He ran for the Louisiana State Senate in 1974 and 1979 – as a Democrat. He also ran for President in 1988, also as a Democrat; when that didn’t turn out well, he successfully obtained the Populist Party nomination. He’s run for a number of Louisiana and Federal elective offices since. The only public office to which he’s managed to get elected was the Louisiana House of Representatives in 1989 – in a special election where his runoff opponent was stupid enough to come out in favor of raising property taxes in a suburban district; Duke ended up winning by just over 200 votes. (That gig didn’t last very long for Duke; his tenure in office ended in 1992.)
Duke is a former Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, and has been described by some of his former colleagues in that organization as “nothing but a con man”. He also used Klan funds to largely remodel his home in the 1970s, justifying this by claiming that “most of his home was used by the Klan”.
Duke’s also a convicted felon. In 2002, he pleaded guilty to mail fraud and filing a false tax return in conjunction with a mail solicitation scam (he admitted to having engaged a multi-year direct-mail solicitation campaign from which he diverted funds to support personal investments and gambling trips); he did 15 months time. Predictably, he now claims the charges were brought to derail his political career.
Duke’s also managed to get arrested and thrown out of the Czech Republic in 2009. He managed to get himself banned from Europe’s Schengen area by a Swiss court as well.
He’s also made apparently bogus “secret squirrel” claims, claiming to have participated in clandestine missions in Laos in 1971. (Duke’s father worked in Laos at the time; Duke visited in 1971, and his father managed to get him a short-term job teaching English to Laotian officers. Duke managed to get himself fired.) Those claims have been effectively discredited by former Air America pilots, who’ve pointed out that Duke’s claims are don’t square with their operating procedures; Duke also can’t recall the name of any airfield in Laos from which he flew.
Oh, and for completeness: Duke’s also a racist, an anti-Semite, a Holocaust denier, and IMO an all-around evil bastard. (I probably shouldn’t have to spell all of that out since he’s a former KKK Grand Wizard, but unless I do maybe some might not make those connections.) He also apparently formerly wore Nazi regalia on a regular basis and sold Nazi literature out of his office.
Nice guy. Too bad he hasn’t yet consumed excrement and afterwards expired.
Unfortunately, neither being a convicted felon nor a freaking racist idiot nor a damned liar are disqualifying for Federal elective office. So he’s running for office yet again.
Wonder if it’s time to break out those old “Vote for the crook – it’s important” bumper stickers again. Hopefully the Louisiana electorate will body slam the old racist fool hard enough this time that he finally quits politics for good.