How to Almost feel Sorry for Mitt Romney

Watch this video of ol' Mitt trying to cajole a crowd into chanting his name:





Also, is it my imagination, or did he just refer to Paul Ryan as "it?"

I'm pretty sure he said "that's quite a guy, isn't it?, Paul Ryan!"

What the Fuck, Texas?

Texas School Wants to Make it Easier To Spank

By ABC News | ABC News Blogs – 11 hours ago

Officials at a Texas high school plan to ask their board tonight to change a policy requiring that spanking punishments be administered only by employees of the same gender as the student to receive the punishment. That proposed request comes on the heels of outcry after a male vice principal in the district administered legal spanking punishments to female students.

So, let me see if I have this straight. A man paddles a couple of high school girls. There is understandable outrage. And your reaction to the outrage is to change the rules to make this okay? 


 

"The Texas Education Code and our local policies state that if a parent or guardian does not want corporal punishment administered to his/her child, for each school year the parent or guardian must provide the district a separate written and signed statement to that effect. Otherwise, the use of corporal punishment is permissible," Mike Kelley, superintendent for the Springtown Independent School District said in a statement.

So, unless the parents specifically demand otherwise, you think that it's perfectly okay for school officials to beat children with a wooden paddle?

 

Yeah, you must be proud of yourself and your ability to hit a kid with a club.

Her mother, Anna Jorgensen, agreed to the punishment as long as her daughter was OK with it, but was surprised the spanking was administered by a man, she told local ABC affiliate WFAA.

As far as Jorgensen knew, she said, school policy mandated that males spank males and females spank females.

She said her daughter's buttocks were red and appeared blistered due to the force of the spanking.

How is this acceptable? What kind of lesson do you think that girl is going to learn from this? That the people who supposedly care about your well-being can be expected to blister your butt now and again if you displease them?

Seems like the perfect approach, assuming you want these girls to grow up like this:

The day after her daughter's paddling, Jorgensen called the vice principal to complain, but was told it was "normal for her bottom to look like this after receiving swats." 

You know, it's normal to look bruised and bloody after a car wreck, too, but that doesn't mean that car wrecks aren't horrible things which should be avoided at all cost.

 Another student, Jada Watt, said she mouthed off to the same male vice principal, and received the same punishment, which was observed by a male police officer.

A police officer? The cops in this town have nothing more important to do than watch teenage girls getting paddled?

Her mother, Cathi, said she "wasn't expecting a bruise."

"A swat is a swat, yes it is and they do sting. But to bruise a child? If I had done that, they would have called CPS on me," Cathi Watt told WFAA, referring to Child Protection Services.

"Two men giving her a swat behind closed doors, that is creepy," she added.

That is extremely creepy. Underage-S&M-porn creepy. 

So what is the school district's response to this potential sexual abuse-prone situation?

Springtown ISD Superintendent Mike Kelley told WFAA that he will ask the board to eliminate the requirement of same gender spanking.

He said the same-sex spanking policy can be difficult to observe in smaller schools where aren't enough female administrators around to mete out punishment to female students.

Oh, well, if the requirement is making it inconvenient for you to blister the buttocks of the children left in your charge, then by all means!

 Watt and Jorgensen object to any policy change. They don't believe men should hit women under any circumstances.

Great. How about adults shouldn't hit kids of any gender? 

Crazy Redneck is Crazy

So this showed up at the home of some nutbag in Austin, TX:





And in light of the empty chair/Clint Eastwood thing, some people suspected that maybe this might be the homeowner's retarded way of hanging the president in effigy. So a reporter from Burnt Orange Report called the guy up and asked him about it.

 I called the homeowner to ask about his display, citing my concerns as a fellow Austinite. He replied, and I quote, "I don't really give a damn whether it disturbs you or not. You can take [your concerns] and go straight to hell and take Obama with you. I don't give a shit. If you don't like it, don't come down my street."

Sure, that's just about the type of reasoned, rational response I would expect from a person who would lynch a folding chair.

I wouldn't be surprised if this really had nothing to do with President Obama. This guy could actually be pissed off at chairs.

 

Thet thar sumbitchin' chair had no right to talk to Mr. Eastwood thet way!  Tellin' him to go do stuff to hisself, thet ain't right! Goddamm smartass chairs, always talkin' 'bout shit what they don't know about. Thet goldurn chair was the worst character on Pee Wee's Playhouse, I tell ya wut! Chairy! Chairy my ass, more like Fairy if'n ya ask me. Any o' them smartass chairs start sassin' me, I'll fuckin shoot hiz ass!

Oh, and now the homeowner has fixed the problem with the display. He has added a miniature American flag to the chair.

Which really just clarifies nothing. Is he lynching America? Is it only American-made chairs he's mad at? Who knows.

Wonkette adds this interesting little tidbit to the story. Apparently, in 2010, the homeowner was awarded "Yard of the Month" by the neighborhood homeowners association:

 It was August 2010, at the head of Teatard Mania, so he hung a man made of teabags with a “watermelon flavor” sign around the neck and, in case you didn’t get it, a small sign underneath that said “The Slow Drip of Liberty” and then next to it, “For Whites.” SUBTLETY.

Now I'm really confused. If the homeowner is a teabagger, why would he hang a man made of teabags? Wouldn't that represent him and his fellow knuckle draggers? And if the teabag man is the villain, why does liberty drip from him? I'm starting to think this guy might not be all there.

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!