News Bites!

Prominent conservatives from Sen Rand Paul to Sen. Ted Cruz to Texas gubernatorial candidate Greg Abbott disavowed the antics of the surprisingly still-relevant Ted Nugent after he called President Obama a “subhuman mongrel.” Well, I think pedos who croon odes to thirteen-year-old girls and acknowledge their attraction to underagers on VH1 Behind the Music documentaries are both subhuman and mongrels, but you don’t see me crying about it.

In an article for Vulture, talented douche bag actor Alec Baldwin announced his intention to henceforth shun public life and vented his beefs with everyone from Harvey Levin to Rachel Maddow to Shia LeBeouf. His only reason for existence at this point is to be liberals’ rough equivalent to Ted Nugent.

Pope Francis admitted that he once stole a rosary from the casket of a much-revered Buenos Aries priest. Even the Pope breaks the Ten Commandments. No wonder this guy is all laidback and nonjudgmental; he has a chip on his shoulder.

A federal judge threw out Texas’s ban on same-sex marriage, deeming it unconstitutional. Governor Rick Perry was apoplectic, angrily vowing to fight the ruling and stated  that “our longstanding moral values, in accordance with the teachings of Jesus Christ, hold that marriage here in the Lone Star State ought to be between one steer and one queer. Anything else just aint natural!”

The last living member of the Von Trapp family, which was immortalized in the film classic The Sound of Music, passed away at the age of 99. It took 76 years, but the Nazis finally hunted down and killed their target.

The first all-pro wrestling digital streaming service, the WWE Network, was plagued with technical issues at its launch this week, with many fans being denied access due to an overburdened server. In hindsight, perhaps Vince McMahon should not have hired the same people who did the HealthCare.org website. If you like your Wrestlemania, you can keep your Wrestlemania.

The founder of the Creation Museum, which is dedicated to disproving Darwinism in favor of Biblical accounts of humanity’s origins, attributed a recent financial bounty that will allow him to construct a 510-foot Noah’s Ark theme park to a “miracle” from God. Actually, it’s because last month he debated evolution with famed scientist and child’s television show host Bill Nye and the spectacle garnered attention and donors to the museum. Unwittingly,  the Science Guy turned this farce of an intellectual faceoff from Inherit the Wind to Inherit the Windfall.

According to a new book about the sex lives of the Founding Fathers, author Thomas Foster wrote that even George Washington was rumored to be gay by the newspapers of his day. The first president was a Freemason and that mysterious and often misunderstood group was alleged to be “engaging in anal penetration with wooden spikes used in shipbuilding.” Truth is, however, that partaking in such obscene behavior will not diminish the man’s image insomuch as the revelation that he was a liar. In his desperate search for wood in which to carve more spikes, that sonofabitch went around chopping at cherry trees and covering the tracks when his old man questioned him about it. Owning slaves was one thing, but this sordid affair has surely sullied his once sterling image.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer vetoed a bill that would have allowed businesses in the state to deny service to LGBT people based upon religious objections following a nationwide outrage and the NFL’s threat to relocate next year’s Super Bowl. Even local business groups and both US senators opposed the bill. However, there no comparable outcry or denial of major sporting events in the wake of Arizona’s 2010 racial profiling law. Nor was there much threat after the draconian policies of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio were widely publicized. How come disparaging and oppress gays has become (rightfully) shunned in America, but the same taboo has not been conferred to racism? After years of ranking at the bottom of the social scale, homosexuality has leapfrogged over most other minority groups to be rendered humanized in the eyes of most of the straight Caucasian mainstream. Yet, there’s nothing in the Bible or scripture that compels believers to ostracize and persecute black and brown people, so we know the Arizona law was about hate, not holiness. The LGBT community will inevitably attain social and legal equality, but African Americans and Latinos will unfortunately still be struggling against the tide. This just goes to show that you can be anything and anyone you want to be in this country. As long as you’re white.

Beloved director and comedic actor Harold Ramis died at the age of 69. At long last, he and Slimer can be together in peace.

Jared Leto won Best Supporting Actor for Dallas Buyer’s Club at the Academy Awards. Sure, he’s a method actor who usually portrays characters on the brink. But Leto also sacrifices subtlety for theatrics and his stint in generic emo outfit 30 Seconds to Mars set back popular interest in space exploration by an entire generation. Now we have to face the fact that Jordan Catalano has in is possession a little golden statuette bequeathed by the Academy Awards. Or, like, as I know them as, My So-Called Oscars. Whatevs.

Speaking of, Leto and even awards host Ellen Degeneres caught flak from the transgendered community for transgressions including offensive wisecracks and conspicuous omissions. The Dallas Buyers Club star was reprimanded for playing a transwoman despite his identity as a heterosexual male and for not thanking the trans community in his acceptance speech. Degeneres, who has made huge strides over the better part of the last 20 years for LGBT acceptance, roiled some with a joke about Liza Minnelli resembling one of her many drag queen doppelgangers. Another offense is that people are characterizing anything in Ellen’s current act as a “joke.” The wry, witty comedian Ellen was in the 1980s has been replaced with the lovable yet painfully unfunny daytime TV personality you see today sandwiched between Maury Povich and Judge Joe Brown repeats.

John Travolta was pilloried in the press and on the net after he spectacularly flubbed the name of singer Idina Menzel while introducing her at the Oscars. He’s also been mispronouncing his own religion all these years, referring to Christianity by the odd term “Scientology.”

Actor Seth Rogen sat before a congressional hearing on Alzheimer’s research and later called out on Twitter several senators who got up and walked out as he was preparing his remarks. To his credit, one senator offered the otherwise sound excuse “Sorry, for a moment there I thought I was watching one of his movies.”

Some stuff happened in Ukraine. Seriously, some fucked-up shit.

News Bites! Summer 2013 in Review — Part II: From Russia with LOLs

News of the Bored now presents to you the thrilling conclusion to the News Bites! special on Summer 2013. Apologies in advance if the picture to the left gave you herpes. Her pop might’ve had an Achy Breaky Heart, but considering the current trajectory of her career,Miley probably has an Itchy Scratchy Hoo-Ha.

New York City’s Department of Education wants certain words and concepts, such as dinosaur, poverty, divorce, Halloween and “homes with swimming pools,” banned from standardized tests so that students will not feel discomforted. Also to be prohibited: the word Fahrenheit as well as the specific number 451.

Honestly, the NYC Dept of Ed’s intention is probably not to police thought or engineer a generation of blindly obedient Sheeple fit for a looming Orwellian dystopia. Although that could be the effect down the line. The culprit here is the No Child Left Behind Act and its requisite standardized exams. The functioning modus operandi of the Dept of Ed is to establish a palliative testing environment so that its schools do not lose millions in federal funding thanks to subpar scores.  Schools nationwide take pains to micromanage the minutiae of testing locations and atmosphere, even matching students with particular teacher-proctors in order to maximize performance. These terms will not be taboo in classrooms (if that were so, then the banishment of slavery, warfare, loss of employment, and nuclear weapons would preclude any talk of the last few centuries of American or world history), just on the all-important standardized assessments. So, to the tweens and teens throughout our nation’s fine education system, I say: fear not, think happy thoughts and if you sneeze during the test, you’re expelled.

Ariel Castro, the Cleveland man who barricaded three young women in his basement for years for the better part of a decade, committed suicide after serving only a month of a life sentence. Hey Ariel. Being imprisoned against your will and brutally raped kinda sucks from the other end, dunnit?

Ugandan  war criminal Joseph Kony is reportedly cornered by US-trained regional forces and may be apprehended in the near future. In a video circulating online, Kony ruefully shook his fist in the air and roared “And I would’ve gotten away with it too if it weren’t for you meddling kids’ poorly-written tweets and cavalier Facebook shares!”

US military intervention in Syria was narrowly averted (for now). Secretary of State John Kerry’s next order of business is to make a snide, flippant remark about avoiding a government shutdown. The only catch is that the Republicans harbor even less regard for human life and common decency than the sarin gas-unleashing Bashar Assad. Maybe Vladimir Putin can reason with John Boehner?

The Alabama-born “Rapping Jihadi” Omar Hammami was murdered by the terrorist group from which he earlier defected. Hammami gained fame for his Youtube videos in which he spit awful rhymes about holy war. And you thought the East Coast-West Coast rivalry was hardcore. Try the Eastern Civilization-Western Civilization beef. Unfortunately for hip hop fans, the jihad on your ears may not be over. Following the dangerous precedent set by Tupac, Hammami will likely release far more material posthumously than during his short life.

A Miami man murdered his wife and posted a photo of the body to Facebook. And you thought the most horrific thing displayed on your feed would be photos of your friends’ ugly kids and endless requests to play Farmville 2 and Candy Crush Saga.

Pope Francis turned heads by repudiating the Church’s emphasis on divisive social issues like abortion and contraception, refusing to judge homosexuals for their lifestyles and declaring that atheists can get into heaven. Watch this, kids: an ecclesiastical schism!

President Obama and new Iranian President Hassan Rouhani have been secretly exchanging friendly notes with one another, possibly sowing the seeds of retrenchment on the decades long US-Iranian rift. If you think that’s something, check out their sexts. Sources say they’re Too Hot for Tehran.

Stop & Frisk, a New York City law enforcement program that allows police to randomly and warrantlessly search suspects without probable cause. Undoubtedly, this was the summer of the 4th Amendment and its proscription of “unreasonable searches and seizures.” From Snowden to Stop & Frisk, Americans finally realized that there are amendments to the Constitution after the first two. Crazy, I know.

“Twerk” and “selfie” were added to Oxford’s online dictionary. Why are the youth of America constantly creating new words for the popular lexicon when they haven’t mastered many of the basic English words we already have in use? On a side note, I’ve evolved quite nicely onto a cranky old geezer.

Scientists in Austria found that the vast majority of church holy water contains fecal matter. Among priests, this phenomenon is known as mixing business with pleasure.

Government contractor Edward Snowden leaked to the press details of the United States’ sophisticated domestic surveillance apparatus, which includes warrantless monitoring of internet communications and the compilation of metadata information on practically every phone call to or from the US. Obama dismissed the then-29 year old as little more than a hacker, but this belied the fact that his Justice Department charged Snowden with three offenses, one being espionage. Judging by the relentless prosecution and conviction of fellow leaker Bradley Manning, they were not bluffing.

Snowden first fled in exile to Hong Kong, but the city’s extradition treaty with the US did not portend a lengthy stay for the international fugitive. He then hopped aboard a plane destined for Moscow and was detained by Russian authorities upon passing through that city’s airport. The Kremlin later agreed to grant Snowden asylum for a single year, as a way to pour vodka on the White House’s wound. And why wouldn’t it? Vladimir Putin is known for his steadfast commitment to human rights and uncovering government corruption. In Soviet Russia, government leaks details from you!

Ironically, most of the mainstream media embraced the administration’s position and painted Snowden as a lowly high school dropout, hot girlfriend-deserter and traitor to his country. Liberal reporters quickly forgot their two months old outrage at President Obama’s Associated Press phone call records confiscation and FOX News temporarily shelved their denunciations of the IRS scandal to suddenly defend Big (Brother) Government. The erstwhile whistleblower had the last laugh, however, as the president announced planned reforms to privacy rights and National Security Administration collection of data. Trying to get Obama to do the right thing is sometimes like training a cat: you have to make him think it was his idea in the first place. And when he stammers “Jus– just so you know, I’m doing this because I want to, not because he’s making me, alright?” all you have to do is nod and reassure the Commander in Chief that his unwavering moral compass has once again righted the nation’s course.

Bloomberg writer Timothy Lavin called for an end to the artificial breeding of Giant Pandas and to allow the species to naturally die off because they are lethargic, tend to inbreed, and are a “hopeless species” that take far more than they give in return. Wait, I’m lost. Did he say pandas or human beings?

News Bites! 2012 in Review: It’s Mayan Prerogative

Incumbent Barack Obama faced off against Republican challenger Gov. Mitt Romney in the US presidential election. In case you Tivo’d the election and plan on watching it later, read no further. SPOILER ALERT! Obama won.

Superstorm Sandy made landfall in the New York/New Jersey area and resulting power outages left millions in the dark for weeks afterward. Either that or Chris Christie accidentally stepped in front of the sun.

RnB diva Whitney Houston drowned in a hotel bathtub in February and a toxicology report later found cocaine, marijuana, Xanax and other drugs in her system at the time of death. Her last words are suspected to have been “I believe that children are our future. Teach them well and leb blurb blub blub blub…”

Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum came from behind in the polls to squeeze out a win in the Iowa GOP caucuses. However, Santorum never duplicated this success, possibly because this is hardly the first instance in which his name was in the same sentence as the phrases “came from behind” and “squeeze out.”

Following the death of longtime Senator Daniel Inouye, Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie appointed Lieutenant Governor Brian Schatz to fill the seat. When it comes to Congress, Abercrombie sure gives a Schatz! The Santorum joke had to be a tipoff that I was going there.

Psy’s novelty song Gangnam Style became a Youtube megahit andpop culture sensation. The title of the world’s foremost portly, flamboyant, androgynous Korean whose downfall is desired by millions surprisingly does not go to Kim Jung-Un. What shame he has brought upon his family.

An online petition calling on the government to build a real-life Death Star  mustered the necessary 25,000 signatures to warrant an official response from the White House. Estimates for the endeavor hover around the $852 quadrillion mark, a figure that equals the combined GDP of every country on Earth multiplied by 13,000. It’s not as much as it first seems however; if construction began, it just means that the 2018 Pentagon budget will have arrived a few years early.

Congressional leaders and the president attempted to hammer out a deal to avert Jan 1, 2013’s “fiscal cliff,” which will trigger automatic cuts to military spending, tax benefits and federal agency budgets. Although these repercusions sound great in theory, they would raise taxes on the poor and middle class as well as possibly trigger another recession. Polls show that most Americans would blame the Republicans if the nation dived off the cliff, seeing as how President Obama’s reelection hinged on his economic policies and he enjoys a slim mandate. All that stands in the way is the inability of both parties to come to agreement on practically anything. So while Pelosi and Reid may want to forge ahead over the edge like Thelma & Louise, Boehner’s brethren will try to avoid plunging downward with all the success of Wile E. Coyote.

The NHL lockout caused sex toy purchases to surge in Canada. You’d think they would just use an empty Molson bottle.

Larry Hagman of “Dallas” and “I Dream of Jeannie” fame died of cancer at the age of 81. To find out exactly which cancer killed him, tune in to the next edition of News Bites!

Religious Right leader Bryan Fischer railed against environmental conservation and argued that the refusal of humans to deplete God-given natural resources would be an “enormously insensitive” affront to the Almighty. For an all-knowing, all-seeing omniscient supernatural being that created the universe and wantonly kills grandmas every single day with a snap of his fingers, God sure is a butthurt little crybaby.

Onetime Reagan Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork died at the age of 85. St. Peter was said to have denied him entry into heaven because of his extreme judicial philosophy. Borked again!

Colorado and Washington state voters passed referenda paving the way for legal recreational marijuana use. The Feds clearly have the upper hand in matters of state vs. federal law, but one can hope that Obama and his AG Eric Holder will heed the will of the people. A chief principle behind federalism is the maxim that states act as “labratories of democracy” (much like Massachusetts did for the Obamacare law). As with other social freedoms such as gay marriage, which likewise received majority support in several states this year, a few test cases are necessary to dispel the myriad myths and misconceptions that persist amongst the elderly and the hopelessly square. After they see that the tax revenue recreational marijuana accumulates outweighs the negligible-if-even-existent social ills, they’ll either come around or die off, to be replaced by a savvier and stonier generation. For Obama and his administration, all they have to do is lay off, let democracy takes its course and have Americans decide for themselves whether to disengage from the so-far unsuccessful War on Drugs at the local level. The movement needs a new bumper sticker slogan to guide it through the next phase towards terminating prohibition: Legalize Legalization.

A naked man allegedly high on bath salts was killed by Miami police when he was seen knawing off the face of a homeless man on the side of a busy highway. As far as iconic South Florida psychopaths go, this zombie guy is way more hardcore than Scarface. His picture should grace every subpar rap album for the next decade.

In retaliation for a US law that punished Russian human rights abuses, President Vladimir Putin signed into law a prohibition on Americans adopting Russian youth. So there goes my last ditch idea to free Pussy Riot.

A man blinded by vodka had his eyesight restored by whiskey. Alcohol really is the cause of –and solution to– all of life’s problems!

Two and a Half Men star Angus T. Jones urged people to stop tuning into the hit television show in a testamonial for his church, the Seventh Day Adventists: “Please stop watching it and filling your head with filth… Do some research on the effects of television and your brain.” Is he aware of the effects of religion on the brain?

In the aftermath of an elementary school massacre in Newtown, CT and a mass shooting in an Aurora, CO movie theater months earlier, NRA chief Wayne LaPierre called for more rather than fewer guns as a solution. First, he proposed armed security guards in every US school. Ironically, he then called for a mental health registry and insisted that if critics believed his plans were sheer lunacy, they could “call me crazy.” So, by his own admission, a self-described crazy man should be dispossessed of his weapons for the sake of kids’ safety. Yay! I’m now officially a part of the “Gotcha Media!”

Legendary astronaut and original moonwalker Neil Armstrong died in August at the age of 82. Continuing with tradition, Buzz Aldrin goes second.

Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock legitimately raped their respective Senate candidacies. Their losses were truly a gift from God.

The supposed Mayan Apocalypse, which was to conclude human existence as foretold by an indigenous American Precolumbian calendar, never came to pass on December 21. Don’t worry, doomsday preppers and all assorted idiots: as we speak, some dipshit is misdeciphering an Aztec amulet and posting online his inane prognostications for the endtimes. Let the madness begin anew!