Boners

Boner of the Day for July 18th, 2019

Round One

Boner Candidate #1: I’M A PERSON OF COLOR.

“He does not offend me,” Rep. Mike Kelly said Tuesday in reference to President Donald Trump’s racist tweets. Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) said Tuesday that he was not offended by President Donald Trump telling four congresswomen of color to “go back” to the “crime infested places from which they came.” Kelly, who is white, argued he too is “a person of color.” “They talk about people of color. I’m a person of color,” Kelly told Vice News. “I’m white. I’m an Anglo-Saxon. People say things all the time, but I don’t get offended.” Almost all early sources of the term “person of color” refer to people of mixed African ancestry and later black people generally. While the exact definition of “person of color” has varied over time and place, in the U.S. today it typically refers to any person who is not white or of European descent. The president’s tweets targeted Democratic Reps. Ayanna Pressley (Mass.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (Mich.) — progressive freshmen congresswomen who have been outspoken critics of Trump and his administration. In the seemingly unprompted attack, Trump said the congresswomen should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came” before criticizing the U.S. Three of the four congresswomen were born in the U.S., while Omar immigrated from Somalia as a child. In the wake of his comments, Democratic lawmakers publicly condemned the president. On Tuesday, the House passed a resolution officially denouncing Trump’s words as racist. The 240-187 vote was split along party lines, with only four Republicans voting with their Democratic colleagues. Most GOP lawmakers have defended the president’s remarks or dodged questions about whether they were racist, but a few have spoken out against him. Kelly was not one of them. Read More

Boner Candidate #2: I WAS HOPING TO MAKE ENOUGH MONEY TO BUY A GOOD TOUPEE.

Police in Spain arrested a man in Barcelona’s international airport for allegedly trying to hide over $30,000 worth of cocaine under his toupee.  According to authorities, a Colombian man on a flight arriving from Bogotá caught their attention last month because he “looked nervous” and was wearing an oversized wig under his hat. This behavior prompted police to search the man. After asking him to remove his hairpiece, they discovered that the man had half a kilo of cocaine stuck to his head. Per Reuters, the Spanish police at the Barcelona-El Prat airport seized over 100 kilos of cocaine last year. In the statement for this incident, authorities claim “there is no limit to the inventiveness of drug traffickers trying to mock controls.” Read More

Boner Candidate #3: USE THAT TAX CUT MONEY.

A Republican senator moved Wednesday to stall for the moment legislation providing compensation to 9/11 workers, sparking an emotional appeal on behalf of those sick and dying after responding to Ground Zero. Although lawmakers for several weeks generally declared broad support for the measure to extend a victims compensation fund, the objections of two conservative senators suggest its Senate passage may stall or require more political muscle to enact. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) spoke out on the Senate floor Wednesday after Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) proposed that the bill be approved by unanimous consent. Under Senate rules, an objection from a single senator can block a measure offered via unanimous consent. Paul said he objected because any program that would last decades “should be offset by cutting spending that’s less valuable. We need, at the very least, to have this debate,” he said, adding that he would offer an amendment on the cost of the bill when it reaches the Senate floor. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) also has placed a hold on the legislation, according to advocates. Paul’s objection angered Democrats, who have been able to muster bipartisan support for the bill, which has 73 co-sponsors in the Senate. A spokeswoman for Paul said the senator wasn’t seeking to block the bill, but rather to add a provision to pay for it. Paul’s office said he is proposing cutting $2 billion a year from other federal programs, including agriculture, housing, and mandatory spending. Read More

Round Two

Boner Candidate #1: NOW WE KNOW WHY HE KEPT RUNNING AWAY.

Authorities now know why a 66-year-old man kept running away. His wife was keeping him detained in a home that was unsanitary. The woman who ABC4 chooses not to name in order to ensure the man’s privacy was arrested last month. She was booked into the Salt Lake County jail for the exploitation of a vulnerable adult. The 66-year-old man has mental disabilities according to a probable cause statement filed by Salt Lake City police. The home was shut down by the Salt Lake County Health Department after inspecting it last month.

In June, the man was found near a grocery store in Salt Lake City. According to the city’s dispatch, police were notified about him. In December, the same man was reported missing but was found the same day. He was then returned to his home. This latest episode was different. According to a search warrant to inspect the home, the man told police he was being neglected by his wife. The search warrant claimed he lost 75 pounds. His feet were covered in feces. Inside the home, police found feces scattered on walls and floors. The search warrant claimed his wife refused to allow police in the home. That’s when police obtained the search warrant and were able to go inside. Once the warrant was served police said she smelled of feces and urine too. Their daughter who suffers from cerebral palsy was also living in those conditions. Read More

Boner Candidate #2: SEEMS TO ME MR. MERRILL IS FIXATED.

Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill, a Republican contender in the 2020 U.S. Senate race, has set off a new controversy after saying Americans’ fixation with “homosexual activities” has, in part, caused the country’s moral decline. Merrill, 55, is running to defeat Sen. Doug Jones, a Democrat who won the seat in 2017 after his Republican challenger Roy Moore was accused of soliciting sex from underage girls. According to an April poll by Mason-Dixon, before Merrill entered the race, Moore was the top pick among Alabama voters. “The foundational principles which we have grown up as a nation are no more,” Merrill said at a Fort Payne town hall over the weekend. “There are no more good TV shows on like ‘Gunsmoke,’ ‘Bonanza,’ ‘The Virginian,’ ‘Andy Griffith,’ ‘I Love Lucy.’ We don’t have those shows anymore. We’re too interested in homosexual activities.” When sharing an example of what he called Americans’ preoccupation with “homosexuality activities,” Merrill cited media coverage of the U.S. Women’s National Team’s World Cup victory earlier this month. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about,” he said. “What the national media chose to focus on is the fact that these young ladies’ sexual orientation was more significant than what they accomplished on the field of play,” which Merrill said “was to separate themselves from any other team like them in the history of the World Cup.” Read More

Boner Candidate #3: IT WAS CHEAPER THAN AN UBER.

One airport parking valet thought he’d come up with a clever way of getting around while his car was in the shop for repairs: use the vehicle of one of his customers because she was out of town and would never find out. The hole in the plan was the unexpected situation caused by the bad weather: Joyce Johnson tells NBC affiliate WISTV that she flew out of Columbia for New Orleans, but had to cut her trip short by one day because of the floods. She had left her 2008 Toyota 4Runner at the Columbia Metropolitan Airport, with Republic Parking, and was shocked to find it was gone when she landed. The people at the airport parking company had no idea where the car was, and Johnson spent about 4 hours with them, looking for it in every lot. They eventually called the valet who had parked it and he said it was there – they’d just have to wait for him to arrive and he would take them to it. As it turns out, the valet, identified as Shaquvis Marquise Darnell Dev Smith, had left his keys on the wall and taken Johnson’s. He didn’t need his anymore because his car was broken down and, since he didn’t have a means to get by, he thought he could take Johnson’s car and no one would know as long as he brought it back before she landed. He also told the court at his bond hearing on Monday that taking a client’s car was “cheaper than Uber.” He was still charged with using a vehicle without permission and was released on a $8,000 personal recognizance bond.     Read More

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