Find The Kitty

Believe it or not, there is at least one kitty hidden each of the following pictures.

See how many you can spot!

Nominees for Horrible, Disgusting Scumbag of the Year

1) Graydon Smith of Seattle, Washington

SEATTLE -- A 31-year-old man arrested for domestic violence-related crimes claims he had a
The Seattle Weekly blog reports that a 31-year-old Seattle man, Graydon R. Smith, in jail awaiting trial on domestic violence charges had previously admitted to making his 19-year-old girlfriend sign a contract giving him permission to beat her up anywhere but on her pregnant belly. Yes, he forced his teenage girlfriend to sign a contract intended to legalize his freedom to assault her when the whim took him.

Back in April, Smith's girlfriend called the police stating that her boyfriend had threatened to kill her. She told them that she believed this was a real threat, because he'd assaulted her and forced her to sign a contract permitting him to attack her. So police gave Smith a ring, and while he denied making the death threats, he readily owned up to requiring the abuse contract. In a display of severe problems with our legal system, law enforcement went oh, sure, an abuse contract, that's not suspicious at all, and decided not to arrest him. (emphasis added)

At the end of last month, they were called again, this time by Smith's stepfather, who was punched when he tried to stop his stepson from choking his girlfriend. Police arrived to find the girlfriend bleeding severely. This time, they did what they should have done in the first place, and which would have spared the pregnant teenager further violence: they arrested Smith.

(source)

2) Dr. Dix P. Poppas, Cornell University

Alternet reports: . . .the head of the pediatric urology department at Cornell University's New York Presbyterian Hospital -- which is often ranked among the top 10 hospitals in the country -- has been operating on young girls who suffer from what he (and likely the girls' guardians) have decided is "clitorimegaly," or oversized clitorises.

In order to relieve these girls from what seems like little more than a cosmestic issue, Dr. Dix P. Poppas cuts out parts of the clitoris' shaft, saving the glans, or tip, for reattachment. Poppas triumphantly calls the procedure -- rebranded a clitoroplasty -- a "nerve sparing" one unlike the FGMs practiced in other countries.

How does the good doctor know that nerves have been spared? Well, Poppas and his nurse practitioner developed a series of sensory followup tests involving Q-tips, their fingernails and vibrators. But don't worry, a family member was always present in the room. As the resulting journal article notes, management of such situations requires a "compassionate and multidisciplinary approach."

3) Gail Posner, Late of Miami Beach, Florida:

When Ms. Posner died in March at age 67, Conchita and two other dogs inherited the right to live in her seven-bedroom, $8.3 million Miami Beach mansion, their comfort ensured by a $3 million trust fund.

In a 2009 interview with a blogger for browardpalmbeach.com, Ms. Posner said Conchita typically accompanied her on lunch dates and then shopping. Ms. Posner said she at one point considered getting the dog her own Range Rover, for transportation to the animal's weekly spa appointments for manicures and pedicures, but Ms. Posner decided to get herself a new car and gave the dog her gold Cadillac Escalade, she told the blogger.

(editor's note: by the way, she never earned a goddamned cent of that money. She inherited it from her late father, who was, according to the Wall Street Journal, "A master of the hostile takeover who became one of America's highest-paid executives, Mr. Posner pleaded no contest to tax evasion charges in 1987 and was later barred from involvement with public companies.")

Joe Barton is a Pathetic Little Kiss-Ass

From The Atlantic:

Texas's Rep. Joe Barton gave the opening statement for Republicans at today's House Energy and Commerce hearing on the BP oil spill. He immediately sparked controversy by calling yesterday's plan to establish a $20 billion claims fund for the oil spill a "tragedy of the first proportion" and "a $20 billion shakedown." Barton proceeded to personally apologize to witness Tony Hayward, CEO of BP, for the "slush fund" President Obama forced him to agree to:

I apologize. I do not want to live in a country where any time a citizen or a corporation does something that is legitimately wrong is subject to some sort of political pressure that, again, in my words, amounts to some sort of a shakedown.

You know, this was his opening remark. He had time to think about what he was going to say, to write it down, to read it to his wife and ask "how's that sound, hon?" It's not like this was some off-the-cuff remark, or an answer to some unexpected "gotcha" question, where maybe he could say that his words just came out wrong. This is what he meant to say.

Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) seems to think that BP is owed an apology. Not because they were being unfairly blamed for something that was not their fault, no he clearly acknowledges that BP has done "something that is legitimately wrong," he just apparently thinks that requiring them to pay for the damage that they have caused is just beyond the pale!

Paying for damage that your own wrongdoing has caused? Why that's nothing but a shakedown! I'm so sorry, Mr. BP. If I had my way, you'd be free to pollute any body of water in the Goddamned U S of A without having to worry about consequences. Why, a man like you should be allowed to plunder our villages, ravish our women and make slaves of our children! Why, it's the least you're entitled to! To think that you should be forced to pay for destroying the meager livelihoods of some beastly commoners, it just sickens me!

So, someone explained to Barton that this might not look great on his political resume' so he pretty quickly tried to walk it back:

From Yahoo News:

By midafternoon, Barton was back on the dais with a statement that was something short of what the leaders had demanded.

"I want the record to be absolutely clear that I think BP is responsible for this accident," he said. "If anything I said this morning has been misconstrued, in opposite effect, I want to apologize for that misconstruction."

okay, see, that's really not the issue. You never said or implied that they were not responsible for the spill, you just apologized to the person responsible for the very idea that he should pay for the damage for which you freely admit he was responsible. See, that's worse. If you thought that BP was somehow not responsible for the disaster, then it's just a problem of you being stupid and/or ignorant. But when you acknowledge that BP is indeed responsible, then there's no excuse for your stance.

Barton then issued, and House Republican leader John Boehner's office forwarded out a somewhat different written statement.

"I apologize for using the term 'shakedown' with regard to yesterday's actions at the White House this morning, and I retract my apology to BP," it began, and finished: "I regret the impact that my statement this morning implied that BP should not pay for the consequences of their decisions and actions in this incident."

NO. No, you didn't imply that they shouldn't have to pay. You apologized and called it a "shakedown." What the hell would motivate a person to act like this?

Barton has received $100,470 in campaign donations from oil and gas interests since the beginning of 2009, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Ah. Say no more. Please, say no more.

Advice For R&B Singers

Based largely on having heard Boyz II Men's version of "Misty Blue" on the Muzak at work.

1) PICK A NOTE.
There is no need to slide up and down the scale like a vaudeville trombone whenever a note is held for more than one beat. It's cheap, it's annoying, and it's cheesy. You never heard Aretha Franklin pull that crap, did you? Did you ever hear Sam Cooke do that kind of BS? Or Otis Redding, or Diana Ross, or Wilson Pickett? No. But then, they were the kind of singers that you would call, um, what's the word, good! They were good. They didn't have to resort to that cheap wankery to try to show off their vocal control, they just sang really, really well. You know who does do that? Hacks. American Idol contestants. Mariah Carey. It's weak and stupid, just knock it off.

2) Not every song needs to be remade. If it was good the first time, you're only going to suffer in comparison. If it sucked the first time, your version probably isn't going to suck any less. Now if you are a young Whitney Houston and you want to tear up Dolly Parton's "I will always love you," by all means go ahead! If you are a young Whitney Houston, you are going to sing the hell out of that song, and raise it to a whole new level. But you are probably not a young Whitney Houston, so try writing a new song.



3) If you do write a new song, try giving it a tune. Or a Melody. Maybe then you won't have to glissade over every note like Sideshow Mel's slide whistle.

4) Turn off the auto-tuner. I can not emphasize this enough. If you can't carry a tune on your own, maybe singing isn't for you.



And there is nothing clever about turning the auto-tuner up so that you sound like a robot. You're probably too young to remember Midnight Star, but this is from 1983:



And they probably weren't the first to do the robot voice. Either way, it's not original, it's not clever, and it's irritating as hell. Stop it.

Addendum: Of course they weren't the first, I totally forgot about Kraftwerk

Rex Duncan saves us from the Imaginary

From ABC News:

Oklahoma is poised to become the first state in the nation to ban state judges from relying on Islamic law known as Sharia when deciding cases.

The ban is a cornerstone of a "Save our State" amendment to the Oklahoma constitution that was recently approved by the Legislature.

Save Our State?
Seriously?
This is what Oklahomans need to be saved from? Judges imposing Sharia Law?
Is that really something that might possibly happen in Oklahoma? Is there some large Muslim population in Oklahoma that I'm unaware of?

Oklahoma has few Muslims – only 30,000 out of a population of 3.7 million. The prospect of sharia being applied there seems remote. But a chief architect of the measure, Republican State Rep. Rex Duncan, calls the proposed ban a necessary "preemptive strike" against Islamic law coming to the state.

Oh, a "preemptive strike." Yeah, those always seem to work out well.

"I see this in the future somewhere in America ," Duncan, who chairs the state House Judiciary Committee, told ABC News. "It's not an imminent threat in Oklahoma yet, but it's a storm on the horizon in other states."

No. No it isn't. Really, Rex, I promise you it isn't.

But let's pretend for a minute that it is. Let's say a state with a large Muslim population, like say, Michigan, decided to have its judges use Sharia Law to decide cases. And let's pretend that the appeals courts didn't throw out those decisions as blatantly, laughably unconstitutional. Let's pretend that that scenario could possibly happen at some point in the future. How does Oklahoma get involved? Would you suppose that as goes Detroit, so goes Tulsa? Somehow, the practice of American judges consulting Sharia Law spreads from Michigan down through Indiana, over to Illinois, through Missouri, Kansas and down to Oklahoma? Is this the new domino theory, because it's even stupider than the original one.

Or maybe this is the thought process. Oklahoma has oil. Oil attracts Ay-Rabs. now stay with me here, because this is where it gets tricky. The Ay-Rabs flee their home countries with the repressive Sharia laws, head to America, the land of the free, and immediately start replicating the oppressive system of the country they just left. In Oklahoma. Now they have oil, shitty weather and burqas, just like they had at home, and all they had to do was pull up stakes, leave their families, friends, culture and homelands, travel halfway around the world to a foreign land where they start over from scratch with the end result being that they are back to square one? Is that how it would work?

Hey, Rex. Maybe you should think about a ban on unicorns, or leprechauns.

Or maybe you oughta have bigger worries, like I don't know, this?
Oklahoma assesses damage after record rain

You should really concentrate on making sure that no one blames global warming for this.

Or perhaps you should be concerned about your state's apparent inability to construct a proper T-shirt.



Either way, I really wouldn't stress over the whole Muslim thing.