ROUND ONE
Boner Candidate #1: IMPORTANT THINGS TO DO DURING A PANDEMIC
Idaho Gov. Brad Little signed two bills into law that will make life harder for transgender youth and adults in his state. Two of those bills have sat on the desk of Idaho Gov. Brad Little for days, and Monday night he signed them into law on the eve of this year’s International Transgender Day of Visibility. One is House Bill 500, dubbed the “Fairness In Women’s Sports Act” introduced by former Cal-State Fullerton head women’s basketball coach-turned Idaho Republican legislator Barbara Ehardt. “Our country is facing an unprecedented health crisis, and Gov. Little and members of the Idaho Legislature have prioritized attacking transgender student athletes with this discriminatory and unnecessary new law,” said Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, deputy executive director for the National Center for Transgender Equality. “State leaders should focus on protecting public health and safety, not on attacking vulnerable youth who want to play on a team with their peers. With so much suffering right now, Idaho is making sure trans kids suffer more.” Until now, Idaho has allowed transgender youth to compete in sports consistent with their gender identity. Thus far, no trans student athletes have come out in Idaho’s high schools, but a college student joined NCTE in denouncing the governor’s decision, in a statement. Read More
Boner Candidate #2: A K-POP APRIL FOOL
K-Pop star Kim Jaejoong faced backlash on social media after he reportedly falsely claimed — as part of an April Fools’ Day stunt — to have been hospitalized in Japan for the coronavirus.
Multiple K-pop websites reported Wednesday that Jaejoong initially posted on Instagram that he’d been infected “as a result of my negligence, ignoring the cautionary words shared by the government and those around me.” He later edited the caption to claim it was a prank to raise awareness and keep people alert amid the pandemic that has sickened almost 10,000 people in his home country South Korea, and killed 165, reported Forbes. The post has since been deleted. “A person’s individual actions can have such a big impact on society as a whole. I am so sorry to those who may have been infected because of me,” wrote the singer-songwriter in his initial post. “My foolish judgment to live as though it couldn’t happen to me is why I am like this today. I am currently hospitalized. I am reflecting on my past a lot and feeling both grateful and sorry,” he added. Jaejoong later edited the caption after his representatives announced they were attempting to check on his status, according to Forbes. Jaejoong is currently in Japan. Read More
Boner Candidate #3: WE HAVE PLENTY OF VENTILATORS; BROKEN VENTILATORS
WASHINGTON — President Trump has repeatedly assured Americans that the federal government is holding 10,000 ventilators in reserve to ship to the hardest-hit hospitals around the nation as they struggle to keep the most critically ill patients alive. But what federal officials have neglected to mention is that an additional 2,109 lifesaving devices are unavailable after the contract to maintain the government’s stockpile lapsed late last summer, and a contracting dispute meant that a new firm did not begin its work until late January. By then, the coronavirus crisis was already underway. The revelation came in response to inquiries to the Department of Health and Human Services after state officials reported that some of the ventilators they received were not operational, stoking speculation that the administration had not kept up with the task of maintaining the stockpile. In fact, the contract with a company that was maintaining the machines expired at the end of last summer, and a contract protest delayed handing the job to Agiliti, a Minneapolis-based provider of medical equipment services and maintenance. Agiliti was not given the $38 million task until late January, when the scope of the global coronavirus crisis was first becoming clear. It is not known whether problems with the ventilators predated the contract lapse, but maintenance of the machines did halt. That delay may become a potentially deadly lapse. Read More
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ROUND TWO
Boner Candidate #1: OH, HE’S JUST A COCK-EYED OPTIMIST
Vice President Mike Pence said Wednesday that President Donald Trump is merely being “optimistic” with remarks that downplayed the coronavirus outbreak. Pence was pressed during an appearance on CNN by politics anchor Wolf Blitzer to explain why Trump hadn’t ordered a national lockdown in the days since he had stopped “belittling the enormity of this crisis.” New White House projections, Blitzer noted, suggest as many as 200,000 people may die from COVID-19 in the U.S. if the current state-by-state advisories and restrictions are maintained. Pence rejected the criticism. “I don’t believe the president has ever belittled the threat of the coronavirus,” Pence said, adding: “He expressed gratitude and confidence in health care workers in this country, and the American people can be assured President Trump is going to continue to be confident that we will meet this moment.” Trump, however, has repeatedly contradicted public health officials about the threat of the coronavirus. Even this week, after acknowledging the seriousness of the pandemic, he has attacked state governors asking for equipment and suggested that hospital staffers are squandering masks or stealing them “out the back door.” Earlier, the president repeatedly compared the outbreak to the seasonal flu, which has a much lower fatality rate and is much less contagious. “We lose thousands of people a year to the flu. We never turn the country off,” Trump said at a briefing last week when he argued for a loosening of national social distancing guidelines. Read More
Boner Candidate #2: I HATE TO SAY THAT IT SERVES THEM RIGHT, BUT…
AUSTIN, Texas — Two weeks ago, amid the coronavirus pandemic, about 70 students from the University of Texas at Austin partied in Mexico on spring break. The students, all in their 20s, flew on a chartered plane to Cabo San Lucas, and some returned on separate commercial flights to Texas. Now, 44 of them have tested positive for the virus and are self-isolating. More students were monitored and tested on Wednesday, university officials said, after 28 initial positive tests. The Austin outbreak is the latest to result from a group of college students who ignored social-distancing guidelines, went on traditional spring break trips and have now tested positive for the coronavirus. Many of them appeared to be under the mistaken impression that young people are not as likely to get the coronavirus as older people are. Students at the University of Tampa, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and other colleges have tested positive after returning from spring break trips to Florida, Alabama, Tennessee and elsewhere. The defiant attitude, at a time when millions of Americans were hunkered down at home and staying away from school, work and relatives, was embodied by Brady Sluder, a young man on spring break in Miami who declared from a packed beach: “If I get corona, I get corona. At the end of the day, I’m not going to let it stop me from partying.” Mr. Sluder, whose television interview was shared widely, later apologized on Instagram. Read More
Boner Candidate #3: HEY, THE SHOW MUST GO ON
Grand Rapids, MI — The show must go on — even for flashers. An accused Michigan serial flasher, who claims to have exposed himself to strangers for more than 20 years, finally has been busted. Kent County sheriff’s deputies arrested Steven Pastoor of Grand Rapids, Mich., after discovering him nude below the waist March 25, according to court documents. “We believe him to be responsible for several dozen indecent exposures over the last almost 20 years,” said Lt. Joel Rood of the Kent County Sheriff’s Department. Pastoor, 56, has been charged with indecent exposure by a sexually delinquent person and aggravated indecent exposure, reported Michigan Live. He was released Monday on bond, according to Michigan Live. Read More
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