Weird Headline of the Day

(via Yahoo!News)

Will Humans Eventually All Look Like Brazilians?

I did not doctor that. The headline totally reads: Will Humans Eventually All Look Like Brazilians?

 

I, for one, am looking forward to my new look!

The article starts off with a weird, creepy story  that is decidedly not Brazilian:

It really happened: Six generations of inbreeding spanning the years 1800 to 1960 caused an isolated population of humans living in the hills of Kentucky to become blue-skinned.

Apparently, this is a real thing, because I found this picture on Google images:

 

Hahahaha, just kidding. I found this one:

 

Yes, the blue-skinned product of 100 years of incest has a girlfriend.

 In Kentucky, he's considered a "catch!"

 Dennis Stacy, whose great-great-grandfather on both his mother's and father's sides was the same person — Henley Fugate — offered a simple explanation for the rampant interbreeding: In the old days in eastern Kentucky, Stacy said, "There was no roads."

Yeah, I don't care how many roads there weren't, I'd hike through every holler in Kentucky in my bare feet before I'd marry my fuckin' aunt!

Seriously, at least one guy married his aunt:

The hematologists' attempt to trace the history of the mutant gene revealed a gnarly Fugate family tree, contorted by many an intermarriage between first cousins, aunts and nephews, and the like over the generations.

 

 Buuuuuuughhhhh!!!!!!

According to Stephen Stearns, a Yale professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, before the invention of the bicycle, the average distance between the birthplaces of spouses in England was 1 mile (1.6 kilometers).

Bicycles? Before bicycles? It seems to me that the pre-bicycle world had a pretty decent method of transportation that would take a young, single fella to where non-related women lived.

 

So, anyway, what does this have to do with us all turning Brazilian?

Stearns says globalization, immigration, cultural diffusion and the ease of modern travel will gradually homogenize the human population, averaging out more and more people's traits. Because recessive traits depend on two copies of the same gene pairing up in order to get expressed, these traits will express themselves more rarely, and dominant traits will become the norm. In short, blue skin is out. Brown skin is in.

Except that most people tend to pair up with someone of the same race. No matter how much immigration and globalization there is, no one is requiring people to intermarry. 

Already in the United States, another recessive trait, blue eyes, has grown far less common. A 2002 study by the epidemiologists Mark Grant and Diane Lauderdale found that only 1 in 6 non-Hispanic white Americans has blue eyes, down from more than half of the U.S. white population being blue-eyed just 100 years ago.

And so the logical next step is. . . Brazilians!

  

Although, based on this scientific sample, no two Brazilians even look like the same ethnicity. 

I see at least 5 different skin colors in this picture of Ipanema.

A population forged from the long-term mixing of Africans, Native Americans and Europeans serves as an archetype for the future of humanity, Stearns said: A few centuries from now, we're all going to look like Brazilians.

 

Except them.

Well, I think it's great. Maybe we'll finally be able to win a World Cup!

 

U-S-A!  U-S-A!

Happy Birthday, David Bromberg

Musician David Bromberg turns 69 years old today. An amazing guitarist and underrated vocalist. I don't remember how I initially stumbled on to his records, but I do remember seeing him about 20 years ago at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco, and he did one of the best shows I've ever seen. Anyway, if you're not already familiar with Mr. Bromberg, you're welcome!

Soledad O'Brien Destroys another Idiot

This time, it's Rep. Peter King (R-)

  

Does every Congressman have a sash?

I have never seen a Congressional sash before.

Was he Miss New York?

He came on O'Brien's show and trotted out the tired old "apology tour" line. Soledad O'Brien was having none of it!

 

Me? Oh, nothing. Just sitting here being awesome!

KING: President Obama's policies in summer of 2009, he took his apology, I believe have not helped the United States. They have weakened our position in the Middle East. They have provided -- sent a very mixed message, a confusing message. Combine that with the way he treats Netanyahu and Israel, and the pulling troops out of Iraq without getting status of forces agreement, the apologies. . .


O'BRIEN: But you've been talking about an apology tour. . . Where do you see an apology? You called it an apology tour. You said the apologies. What apologies are you specifically talking about?

 

KING: I would say when he was in Cairo in 2009, when he was basically apologizing for American policies, saying American policies sometimes have gone too far --

O'BRIEN: Never once in that speech, as you know, which I have the speech right here. That was -- he never once used the word apology. He never once said I'm sorry. 

 

Okay, now Pete King is not going to let facts get in the way of a good narrative!

KING: Didn't have to. The logical -- any logical reading of that speech or the speech he gave in France where he basically said that the United States can be too aggressive --

O'BRIEN: That was on April 3rd in 2009. Right. But that's not apology. People --

KING: It is. I do consider it -- we're apologizing for -- we have nothing to apologize to the Muslim world at all. We have not sacrificed our ideals. 

True, if our ideals include torture, indefinite detention, illegal wars of aggression, secret prisons. . .

O'BRIEN: Everybody keeps talking about this apology tour and apologies from the president.

KING: It is.

O'BRIEN: I'm trying to find the words I'm sorry, I apologize in any of those speeches. Which I have the text of all those speeches in front of me. None of those speeches at all, if you go to factcheck.org which we check in a lot, they all say the same thing. They fact check this.

KING: I don't care what fact check says. 

Goddammit, I want this to be true! I don't care what the facts are!

O'BRIEN: There are fact checks. You may not care, but they're a fact checker. I'm reading the speeches.

KING: No. Soledad, what I'm saying is any common sense interpretation of those speeches, the president's apologizing for the American position. That's the apology tour.

There's a certain special way that these Republican men have of saying her name. It's so condescending, so smug. It's like "now, Soledad, you should know better than to argue with the grownups." It's really sickening.

That's the way it's interpreted in the Middle East. If I go over and say that the U.S. has violated its principles, that the United States has not shown respect for Islam, that's an apology. How else can it be interpreted?

O'BRIEN: I think plenty of people are interpreting it as a nuanced approach to diplomacy is how some people are interpreting it.

BAM!
Feel the burn, King!

 

King is pretty pathetic. I think someone told him to use the catch-phrase "apology tour," and he's bright enough to remember that and repeat it, but no one told him that he might have to back it up. "don't worry, Congressman, no one will ask you to explain what you mean, Oh, crap! He's going on the O'Brien show?"

 

Winner and still Champion!

The Balls on this guy!

Submitted without comment, except to say , stolen from Wonkette:
Oh, and he's referring to the Romney "47%" video:




What did Bill Clinton say? It takes a lot of brass!

Everyone loves a Fake Terrorist

Apparently, one of the more popular speakers at the Value Voters Summit was a con artist who peddles a story about having been a jihadi terrorist prior to converting to Christianity and so pleas pay me huge speaking fees and buy my book.

He goes by the name of Kamal Saleem, which is not his real name because if his former employers in the Muslim Brotherhood or Al Queda or whoever found out who he really is, his life would be in danger which is why he makes public appearances talking about his past life and, according to MoJo, His real name, Khodor Shami, is readily available in media reports and on the 990 forms of the nonprofit he publicizes at every opportunity.

So who would fall for such an obvious phony?

 

Oh, right!

 If you're looking for a good laugh, read the whole interview over at Mother Jones. Here's a little taste:

 "I was wondering," I asked, "which law enforcement agencies and intelligence agencies you've worked with?

"The majority of them," he said. "It was in Homeland. There were a whole batch of them."

Any specifically?

"Whole batch of them. All of them. Homeland."

That's a lot of agencies.

"Yes, it was a panel."

Curious, I asked where and when the panel had been held.

"I can't tell you that," Saleem said.

Oh, you know, all of them! Where have we heard that before?

 

So what kind of gibberish is Kamal peddling? Some crazy conspiracy theory about Barack Obama handing over America to some Islamic organization that will shut down all the churches and synagogues and, you know, the usual.

SALEEM: And when we surrender to them authority, and we apologize to everybody over there, in Islam that is a victory, and that is the start of the march now somewhere to take over the land, take over your country and fulfill your purpose and become united Islamic nations!

Because once you apologize to someone, there's just no way to stop him from taking over your land. He basically owns your ass. I apologized to my neighbor recently about the state of my lawn, now he keeps his dog in the master bath. His mother-in-law is moving into our garage next week!

 And, yes, I know, the "apology" thing is a bunch of bullshit. I know.

This is what happened. Egypt is the capital of the OIC -- the OIC meeting here in America with Hillary and her staff! You are about to introduce U.N. Resolution 1618, the hate crime bill, which will subjugate American people to be arrested and put to jail, and the churches and synagogues shut down and go underground. And if they still go they will be put in jail and be fined big time. Which will break the First Amendment and Second Amendment. 

Yeah, the Second Amendment isn't the right to bear Torahs. How would banning churches and synagogues violate the gun amendment?

Also, UN Resolution 1618 calls for protecting religious freedom. What kind of lunatics would possibly think that it could somehow be implemented in such a way as to close down churches and synagogues?

Oh, right!

This is about to be put as early as January. As early maybe as March, at most. Right now, it is on the table to be put together. We got something to fight for, and that fight is for our children, for our grandchildren, for our liberty! For our freedom! For the future! For the nations!

This was said at the same conference, by the way, that Paul Ryan addressed. And the same conference to which Mitt Romney sent a video greeting. These people are no longer the fringe. This is the new mainstream of the Republican Party.