Round One
Boner Candidate #1: BECAUSE WE NEED TO PUNISH THEM.
SALT LAKE CITY (KUTV) — When news began to circulate early Wednesday morning that Utah lawmakers were going to consider $120 million worth of bonuses for Utah’s overworked, overstressed teachers, you could almost hear the shouts of joy across the state. Each teacher was looking at a $1,500 bonus for their remarkable efforts in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, Speaker of the Utah House Brad Wilson (R-District 15) dropped an amendment that caught some on the budget committee off guard. Wilson proposed excluding teachers whose school districts had not made an in-person schooling option available to their students. The bombshell was targeting one school district in particular — the Salt Lake City School District, the only district in the state currently holding classes solely online. “As policy makers, that’s sometimes what we do,” said Rep. Brad Last of Hurricane. “Money talks, and we can potentially bring about actions by providing incentives.”
Boner Candidate #2: I’M NOT DEAD YET
(KUTV) — Reported for dead — but very much alive. It’s the real life experience for a southern Utah man, who spoke to 2News a week after his “obituary.” Bob Seager, of Cedar City, went into a drug store Wednesday to get a prescription, only to be greeted by a stunned clerk. “A girl at the counter, a sweetheart, said ‘Bob Seager, you’re alive!’” Seager recounted with a smile. “We’ve had more fun with this.” For his 85th birthday, Seager’s wife of nearly 65 years, Barbara, sent a notice into the Iron County Today newspaper. “My daughter and I wrote up a happy birthday column,” said Barbara. But what went in as happy birthday, came out as no more birthdays. “Did you check your pulse?” 2News asked Bob. “As a matter of fact, I did,” he said, laughing. Then calls came to their home, said Barbara, “to give their condolences and to say how sorry they were.”
Boner Candidate #3: OH MIKE…YOU HAD TO CANCEL A PARTY? BOO HOO.
WASHINGTON – Secretary of State Mike Pompeo canceled his final major holiday party of the year Wednesday after his exposure to a person who tested positive for the novel coronavirus forced him into quarantine, according to two officials familiar with the situation. The decision caps a run of indoor holiday parties hosted by Pompeo, his wife, Susan, and his top aides that health experts and U.S. lawmakers warned could turn into superspreader events at a time when the novel coronavirus has killed more than 300,000 Americans. The State Department has hosted hundreds of diplomats and dignitaries since last week for indoor gatherings with holiday music, drinks and photo lines that resulted in the type of close congregation and maskless situations that facilitate the airborne transmission of the virus through respiratory droplets. Pompeo, one of President Donald Trump’s most loyal confidants, stood out among Cabinet officials for approving holiday events that disregarded Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines against large indoor gatherings, while other departments such as the Pentagon switched to hosting virtual holiday functions.
Round Two
Boner Candidate #1: HE WAS HEROICALLY STANDING UP FOR PRESIDENT TRUMP.
HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — A former Houston Police Department Captain was arrested and charged for running a man off the road and pointing a gun at his head in an attempt to prove claims of a massive voter fraud scheme in Harris County, according to a news release from the Harris County’s DA’s office. Mark Anthony Aguirre, 63, was arrested by Houston police Tuesday and charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, a second-degree felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison. “He crossed the line from dirty politics to commission of a violent crime, and we are lucky no one was killed,” Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said. “His alleged investigation was backward from the start – first alleging a crime had occurred and then trying to prove it happened.” According to court documents, Aguirre told police that he was part of a group of private citizens called the “Liberty Center,” who were conducting a civilian investigation into the alleged ballot scheme. According to Aguirre, he had been conducting surveillance for four days on a man who was allegedly the mastermind of a giant voter fraud scheme. Aguirre told authorities the man was hiding 750,000 fraudulent ballots in a truck he was driving.
Boner Candidate #2: LET’S GET ‘EM INFECTED.
“[I]t may be that it will be best if we open up and flood the zone and let the kids and young folk get infected” in order to get “natural immunity…natural exposure,” Alexander wrote on July 24 to Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn, Caputo and eight other senior officials. Caputo subsequently asked Alexander to research the idea, according to emails obtained by the House Oversight Committee’s select subcommittee on coronavirus. Alexander also argued that colleges should stay open to allow Covid-19 infections to spread, lamenting in a July 27 email to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield that “we essentially took off the battlefield the most potent weapon we had…younger healthy people, children, teens, young people who we needed to fastly [sic] infect themselves, spread it around, develop immunity, and help stop the spread.” Fauci rejects pursuing herd immunity- ‘That’s certainly not my approach’
Boner Candidate #3: I THINK MY MOM’S DOCTOR IS MY DAD.
DETROIT (WXYZ) — A woman says a Detroit family doctor fathered hundreds of babies, which included her. The woman says she took a DNA test and traced it back to her family’s doctor. Jaime Hall says Dr. Peven, who’s now 104, admitted to fathering her and potentially hundreds of others and says it was a group of doctors who were doing this for decades. “I go, ‘I think my mom’s doctor is my dad,’” Hall said. The woman says she couldn’t believe it when she took a DNA test through ancestry.com. The results came back to her family doctor being the person who fathered her. “I said did you ever think that DNA would bring back all your biological children to you? And he said, ‘Oh, no,’” she says after she went to his home to ask him about the DNA results. Hall says she wasn’t the only person who took a test. Shortly after, she received a call from a half brother. “He had done more research in this and said, you have another half brother that you can call today. It’s his birthday and he’d love to get a sister on his birthday,” Hall said.
