Tossed into his rich and simmering ragoût of stupid was Mittens’ recent offer to take Obama to the closet – um, poor word choice – woodshed for a good old fashioned water-ski whooping. But no golf. He hears Obama is good at that. Presumably, Mitt would borrow the Presidential barge for the match. I don’t blame him. In 1981, he tried to do the whole middle class water-ski thing and managed to get himself arrested for disorderly conduct. Not a big, Earth-shattering deal, but a deal nonetheless. The story goes something like this:

The Salt Lake Scion Goes to Jail

The Salt Lake Scion, a true Masshole,was launching his boat at Cochituate State Park, MA. One of Cochituate’s finest took issue after seeing the boat’s registration painted over. After a ‘confrontation’ in which the ranger warned of a $50 fine, Mitt pulled out a crisp $50 and handed it to the ranger -  probably in much the same way he tips reporters after they write flattering stories. The Ranger promptly arrested him for disorderly conduct and everyone else stood around thinking, “Damn, I wish I could piss away $50 like that.”

The boorish Romney cash – valid only at the Salt Lake Tabernacle Gift Shop (sorry, no women allowed) – was bad enough. If I had defied the cop’s order to stop, I would’ve found myself prone on the pavement with a Glock to the back of my head or maybe even a pair of scissors in my hair.

Mitt, I know you’re a little thick, but here’s a simple example why your $50 payoff was just wrong.

Say I was speeding and was pulled over. I’m not allowed to throw a $50 out the window and assume that takes care of the whole thing. There are laws to be followed, and yes, they apply to you too. If I can’t just throw some money in the hat and drive off disregarding points on my license, higher fines for arguing with the cop, and additional fines for driving with Irish Setters strapped to the roof, neither can you. BTW, they apparently let you off the hook completely for having an unregistered boat so you should consider yourself lucky.

But he couldn’t leave it at $50 worth of dipshittedness. No, his defense was that he was wet and in a bathing suit when they hauled him off to the Natick lockup. His kids could see his embarrassment as he argued with the cops. Poor dears. I’m sure the cops were visibly moved by the sight of a grown man in madras swimming attire, especially when most of their clientele is vomit-covered and naked for their big night at the Soap on a Rope Invitational.

Ipso Facto, Caveat Emptor, Lorem Ipsum: INNOCENT!

He then went to court and defended himself by claiming the cop didn’t specifically tell him he would be arrested as a law-breaking swine – ipso facto, caveat emptor, lorem ipsum – he was innocent. He iced the cake by threatening to file unlawful arrest charges and backed that up using the firm legal principle that since the cop didn’t show up in court, he must be innocent.

Newsflash Newton, cops usually go to court on their own dime. No overtime. No pay at all. No water skiing with the kids and getting arrested for disorderly on a lost day off to attend to a shitheel like you. Shocking, I’m sure. Besides, what does the cop need a tax break for?

Um, Mitt? The rest of us don’t go to court. We’d be laughed out of the place for a story as lame as this. We pay the frickin’ fine, consider ourselves lucky that SWAT didn’t show up, and say, “Thank you for guarding my safety Mr. Law Officer, sir. I shan’t do it again. Have a good day!”

A very, very understanding  judge let you off, which explains why I’d never make it as a judge. Had you been in my court, I would’ve forced you to launch your boat – carefully supervised to ensure you do it legally this time – and I’d have dropped you overboard without your gold-plated water-wings.

Let me tell you buddy. You’re one lucky sumbitch.

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• Anarchist Mitt Romney arrested in 1981 for ‘disorderly conduct’ (dailykos.com)
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• Supporters of ex-cocaine user Obama fail to capitalize on recycled Romney arrest story (twitchy.com)
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Sometimes the stupid things catch up to them as adults. Mitt Romney is in that PR hell now. He supposedly led a group of boys – there’s that leadership thing he goes on and on about – and held down a kid with a ponytail, cut it off, and badgered the kid for being gay. That’s the sort of thing that causes kids to commit suicide these days. It probably did back then too, you just didn’t hear about it as often because suicide besmirched the family reputation so much it was hidden as often as not.

The Romney Hairborne Legion Attacks

One of the bully boys met the poor hairless sot later in life. He learned that, indeed, the kid had been gay and the Romneycut had been a life changing affair. The member of the Romney Hairborne Legion apologized. It came late, but at least the guy apologized and owned up to his stupid youth.

On the other hand, Mitt first categorically denied it happened. Then he said it, um, MIGHT have happened and if it did he apologized. He defended his stupid youth by passing off the incident, if it happened at all, as a “prank” and using the bee’s knees, 1930 buzzword of the day, “hijinx”. Very jolly. Very fun. Twenty-three skidoo.

Now I’ve been on the receiving end of bullying up close and personal and stupidly reciprocated a time or two. But, a wedgie is a prank. Holding someone down, roughing them up because they’re gay, and cutting off their hair is a prank only if by prank you mean something like waterboarding.

But hey, maybe it didn’t even happen. Never know. Mittens forgot. Besides, Mitt says he didn’t know the kid was gay, because, you know, that would’ve made everything different.

Now the Mittenites have ferreted out a passage from Obama’s book, Dreams From My Father, in which he cops to once shoving a girl because his classmates teased him about the possibility that she was his girlfriend. He yelled at her and she ran away.

Some conservative pundasses – like Sean Hannity – rejoiced at this “good news”. “We have uncovered somebody who has actually admitted to engaging in real inappropriate behavior as a youth.”  He pointed out that Obama also openly admits he used drugs and alcohol as a youth, saying it “puts Romney and the bully issue to shame.”

A Drinking, Stoned College Kid…Really?

Sean, a college kid who drank too much and fired up a doob or two…in 1980 fer chrissakes? Really? Now that’s some outlaw behavior. Real send ‘em to the gallows stuff. He even copped to inhaling. Nothing like your fellow anti-bully Rush Limbaugh’s brush with OxyContin and hydrocodone though. Good thing he took his rehab time to reflect on his contention that drug addicts deserved life sentences. Change is good, eh Rush? Especially when yours is the life being sentenced.

But if you’re truthful about your own youth – because let’s face it, if you are this stupid as an adult you must’ve been a colossal moran [sic] as a kid – you probably kicked the crap out of some kid every morning before smoking the third  joint of the day while cooling your bruised dukes with a 6-Pack of Old Milwaukee. But we’ll never know because I suspect your memory on that score is as bad as the Scion of Salt Lake’s.

No true blue conservative would ever engage in such brutish, bullying behavior except, well, George the Lesser. Sort of a reverse noblesse oblige and all that. His cocaine and Wild Turkeyfests are well known. He still looks and talks like he has a little Captain in him if you catch my drift. I’d wager Skull and Crossbones had some ass-kicking hazing rituals too. But let bygones be bygones shall we?

So yes, Obama admitted his dirty deeds. Admitted them without anyone even asking. Sean, your boy can’t even remember if it happened. But you know what? However lopsided the rights and wrongs appear to be in both these cases it doesn’t much matter.

Both of them did something wrong. But once you’ve done a wrong, there is really no way to stuff it back under the rock from which it came. It sticks to you like glue.

The only thing you can do is apologize and try to make amends. Adults, when charged with stupid childish behavior, do not say, “Mom! It’s OK if I do it, he did it too!”  To which any wise Mom (or voter) would answer, “Two wrongs don’t make a right.”

Two stupid kids don’t make a President either.

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• Presidential Campaign Becomes The Bully Versus The Bullied (lezgetreal.com)
• Borowitz Report – My School Days (mbcalyn.com)
• Mitt Romney Was A Gay-Bashing, Physically-Abusive Bully in High School (kylemarchand.com)
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Intellectual Bitches

SUNDAY! SUNDAY! SUNDAY! ACTION! ACTION! ACTION!

Yo! It’s No McRib, Fo’ Shizzle

Every High School Has One

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I sympathize with Kenlie Tiggeman, really I do. She is the BBW who recently found herself at the Dallas Southwest Airlines counter being told she needed an extra seat because she was a little more zaftig than the standard airliner milk crate could accommodate.

Now my 6-pack abs are really more like a single beer keg, but I still fit snugly into the 17-inch seats we all so comfortably luxuriate in. I don’t hang over the edges so much that my seatmates are forced to take a single breath that must last them for the whole trip. However, I do hang over enough that I find myself trying to be very small to protect the comfort of my fellow seatmates. I do this because it is my beer keg and they shouldn’t have to carry it.  But this is life. People are made in different sizes, as are airline seats. You can’t always fit a round beer can into a smaller can’s hole.

Southwest Needs a New PR Program

Given Kenlie’s case, one could make a strong argument that Southwest’s PR skills aren’t up to snuff. You don’t call customers “fat”. One could also reasonably believe that Southwest employees may not know about or follow policies to the letter – humans are like that, particularly when it involves a touchy subject like breaking bad and embarrassing news.  But, no excuses – especially if they expect the largest (no pun intended) segment of the population to pay good money to squeeze into their tube and be fed like squirrels on a diet of honey-roasted peanuts. That’s a tough meal for a supermodel; imagine the hunger of the largest of us.

Kenlie was insulted, which is a reasonable personal response. No one likes to be told they are big as a barn when, in all probability, they already feel like the size of two barns. Extra seats ain’t cheap either. Even if you had one you’d find yourself straddling two seats, providing that back car seat on the hump sort of feeling.

But shabby treatment and extra cost aren’t all that’s wrong here.  If one is so much larger than average, they need to buy an extra seat. If not, it’s like eating two meals at a restaurant and refusing to pay for one.  From your thinner seatmate’s view it’s like eating one meal, but paying for both to subsidize the large friend at the next table. Real estate occupied and paid for is the issue here, not emotions.

Tiggeman, who has since lost 120 lbs. said, “It doesn’t matter how far I’ve come. I have a long way to go, but no one sees it. All they see is my exterior – someone who is fat.”

You Can’t Stuff 10 lbs of Cellulite in a 5 lb. Bag

That is true and I’m right there with sistah. There are a million ways in which this perception is wrong, but Southwest’s perception that your exterior is wider than the interior of their seat is spot on. It’s physics really. You can’t stuff 10 lbs of cellulite in a 5 lb. bag.

Requiring a large person to fit into a seat to buy a second is a reasonable expectation, for you, the airline, and whoever has to sit next to you. Given the wide variety of seat and people sizes, airline seat customizations, and aircraft sizes I’m not sure an industry standard or federally mandated rule is practical or even wouldn’t make things worse.

Airlines should handle passengers with dignity, regardless of their girth, and airline rules should be clear enough so that passengers know they will have to buy extra seats as a condition of check-in.

So let’s try the one thing that is truly “one size fits all”, even if people are loathe to do it. Common sense.

Now don’t get me started about those $100 baggage fees and pay toilets in airliners.

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In America, we make money the old fashioned way – we steal it from the Joneses with whom we are trying to compete. We’re a country that firmly believes in the notion that more is better and that competition trumps everything. Money uber alles if you will. But, we’re also one of the most charitable nations on Earth. Name a disaster anywhere on Earth and we’re ready to help. Ordinary folks dig deep and donate clothing, goods, or even their own time to just about every charitable cause imaginable.

Some of us anyway.

A few charitable organizations have sullied the many with underhanded donation solicitations, non-stop phone calls and mailings, excessive administration costs, pricey leadership, or just plain chicanery. These organizations have forgotten they aren’t profit centers and that charitable organizations practice, well, charity.

People get ruffled about these charities for the same reasons they don’t want  to see any of their money wasted. You are sacrificing to help someone out and you don’t want a professional spamming and telemarketing company skimming most of the bucks off the top.

But just as we have a widening wealth gap, we’re also on the path to a widening charitability gap. Many Americans have gotten skin-flinty – down right mean about it too. This, of course, is their right. It’s their money and they can not create jobs with it or protest gay marriage with it or donate to the campaign of some of history’s biggest lunkheads. They can even demand the rest of us support their churches with our tax money…but aren’t allowed to complain about it without being accused of being an unpatriotic ner’do well.

Many of these people are the same ones that kvetch about taxes for anything, even the services they use, bought and paid for by those taxes. They believe poor people always have a choice to glom onto Uncle Sam’s tit or be the next CEO of Exxon.  By God, they pulled themselves up by their Harvard MBAs, connected parents, and hard-drinking frat brothers and they expect everyone else to do the same – even if they have none of those built-in benefits.

It isn’t all about public assistance though. Their donations of time and money are on the wane. It’s much more fun to golf instead of working for Habitat for Humanity or spend your money so you can build that second yacht you’ve always coveted.  You can’t even hear the drowning’s cries from your leather seat on Air Force One.

I like to think I do my part. I like to think I spread some of my own personal wealth (paltry though it may be to someone like Mittens) because I’m lucky enough to afford it. I volunteer for a variety of things. I think sharing is a good thing that brings not only pleasure, but much good for society. Really, everyone should jump on this bandwagon.

I’d like to think that all the, “I’ll get mine before anyone get theirs” folks are just having a bit of a charitability lapse.  I’d like to think that all those folks who believe their taxes are too high – including the corporations that end up with effective tax rates of zero or people who settle tax fights for, “pennies on the dollar” – eventually see what damage they are causing to the nation they profess to love. I’d like to think they will never feel the sting of poverty, or deadly disease, or hunger. And if they do, I’ll be in line to help them out. That is not Christian charity it is human charity.

But if they do, I hope it will teach them the importance of charity, because boy, are they going to need it.

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