The very next day after Willard Romney confessed paying taxes at a rate likely more meager than mine or yours—but refused to even prove that lame assertion by providing 10 years of returns—the Obama campaign offered a compromise: How about five years? Aaaand… Romney’s handlers once again climbed inside their candidate’s body and pressed the button that extends his middle finger.
Free Pussy Riot! Protests, outrage, and arrests erupt in Russia after the punk outfit is sentenced to two years in prison on charges of “hooliganism”—AKA staging a mock prayer, aimed at Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, in the country’s national cathedral.
Our cars’ mouths are fixed tightly to, and slurping greedily from, giant straws stuck inside Saudi Arabia’s oil fields.
WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange is sleeping in a converted office at Ecuador’s London embassy, where his hosts have also installed a shower and a sun lamp to keep him from going mad. Sometimes they let him send out for pizza. British officials say the standoff—guards outside the Embassy—could last for years.
United Nations peace monitors are leaving Syria after waking up one day and realizing that, you know what, there actually isn’t any peace to monitor.
South African police leaders have come up with a defense for the massacre-by-bullets of some 34 armed and striking miners: “Self defense.” It’s not the first bout of bloodshed at the restive platinum mine. In the week before, 10 people died, including cops and security guards.
Arizona answers the president’s plan to spare young immigrants from deportation by approving a xenophobic executive order that bans otherwise eligible young people from getting driver’s licenses and signing up for healthcare.
Jefferson Smith, mayoral candidate, still has a lousy driving record. News his insurance company can use!
Facebook’s stock price has dropped 45 percent in the three months since the company went public. There’s a word for that: Terrible.
This is a story about a body that fell out of a casket before a funeral. That is all.
One of Steve Jobs’ stolen iPads wound up in the hands—naturally—of a Bay Area party clown, His name is Kenny. Kenny the Clown. He used it to play Michael Jackson songs and Henry Mancini’s delightful Pink Panther them.
THIS IS THE BEST COVER OF A TERRIBLE 20-YEAR-OLD REDNECK ANTHEM SONG EVER. AND YET? INEXPLICABLY, NO ONE IN THE AUDIENCE IS CLAPPING AND/OR SHOUTING.
One correction: the sun lamp provided to Julian Assange was provided by his mother, who also mailed him a laptop.
Also: I watched the video of the miners being executed by the South African police (watch it too, if you’re so inclined to watch a massacre). The police line opened up on a crowd of charging miners, the police had fully automatic weapons and were firing indiscriminately into the crowd. I can’t tell by the video if the miners were armed with machetes, but it’s likely. Then the police provided no aid to the wounded (like in Portland), instead letting them bleed to death like dogs. It was a horrible act, as the miners are striking for better wages and working conditions, and the police were surrounding the miners with barb wire to lay siege to their encampment. They’re going to cut off food and water until the miners surrender. If anyone doubts the utility of arming a population with “assault rifles”, just imagine yourself as a miner in South Africa right now.