American Weekend

Given the date it's hard ignore the recent acceptable electoral results - or lack thereof, in both Honduras and Iran. It's not beneath me to comment of those events, in fact, it's quite the opposite - I'm beneath it. But as an American, let me say thank God we stomped British ass centuries ago, because it would suck to have to live in a country with political unrest and suffrage issues. Of course, Iran is hardly democratic, especially compared to Honduras, who is / isn't having a military sponsored coup, but the key issue is knowing that your elections will go off without any fraud or leadership overthrow. Other than the 2000 election theft, we've been pretty good with that too...

Best of the week: It's late breaking and there's not a lot of clear concise intelligent real details yet, but this is terrific.

"Once I decided not to run for re-election, I also felt that to embrace the conventional lame duck status in this particular climate would just be another dose of politics as usual, something I campaigned against and will always oppose," Palin said in a statement released by her office. So as soon as you didn't want to run for office again, you decided not to finish the job you were elected to? Nice follow through. College kids not thinking about grad school, just go ahead and drop out now too. Let's hope this dummy is really serious about a presidential campaign, so she can get bitch slapped even harder than the last election.

Runner up: Noted Washington Redskins H-Back and burgeoning internet “personality” Chris Cooley was driving around in Wyoming last week, because...well, that's what Chris Cooley does. He doesn’t knock up recently acquainted women or handle firearms like most football players, or even play Madden all day. Nope. Dude is in a truck driving around one of those square states on the map. He then encountered one of the three possible things one could encounter in Wyoming - a dead cow. The other two things, for the record, are living cows and extreme boredom. From Cooley’s blog:

We were cruising around on our new land in Wyoming the other day and we found an old dead cow. So we decided that we would get rid of it by setting it on fire. Needless to say, it was a success.

I hope it was a success. Can one screw up setting fire to a cow? Is there a class involved? I’m sure it’s a major at Ohio State (still hating on you for Attack Attack!).

Worst of the week (tie!): Two awesome stories of idiocy!

A 16-year-old girl in Connecticut thought she heard her mother being assaulted by her boyfriend and rounded up some friends who beat him up, only to learn later that the couple actually were having sex. One of the teens beat the 25-year-old man with a bat and others punched him, police said. He suffered a black eye and several bruises.

The girl, two 17-year-old boys and Dilyen Langdeau (above 18, so we get your identity!) were arrested and arraigned, charged with assault and conspiracy. The 34-year-old woman, Melanie Arnold, denied she was screaming, and said her daughter thought she heard a slap and believed an assault was happening. "Instead of asking what was going on, they assumed and took matters into their own hands...Now they have to learn a lesson." That lesson? Figure out what the fuck is going on before reacting.

The teens knocked on the bedroom door and Arnold opened it, according to the couple, who recently broke up (not surprisingly). The teens rushed into the room and the man, Roger Swanson, said he didn't have a chance to explain himself. He said he tried to get away, but the teens chased him down and started beating him in the house. In summary, here's the math: A 34 year old, with a 16 year old daughter, was sexing up a 25 year old, and their dirty nasty sex prompted Our Gang to lay a beating. Classic.

Meanwhile, in Florida, a pet Burmese python measuring more than 8 feet long broke out of a terrarium and strangled a 2-year-old girl in her bedroom. Shaiunna Hare was already dead when paramedics arrived.

Charles Jason Darnell, the snake's owner and the boyfriend of Shaiunna's mother, discovered the snake missing from its terrarium and went to the girl's room, where he found it on the girl and bite marks on her head. Darnell (32) stabbed the snake until he was able to pry the child away. "The baby's dead!" a sobbing caller from the house screamed to a 911 dispatcher in a recording. "Our stupid snake got out in the middle of the night and strangled the baby. She got out of the cage last night and got into the baby's crib and strangled her to death."

Authorities removed the snake alive from the home, placing it in a bag then inside a dog crate. As you can imagine, Darnell did not have a permit for the snake, which would be a second-degree misdemeanor according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. He has not been charged, but investigators were looking into whether there was child neglect or if any other laws were broken.

The snake will be placed with someone who has a permit, pending an investigation into the girl's death. Because it must be allowed to kill again...hopefully the owners. The Humane Society said including that death, at least 12 people have been killed in the U.S. by pet pythons since 1980, including five children. Burmese pythons are not native to Florida, but they easily survive in the state and can reach a length of 26 feet and weigh more than 200 pounds. Some owners have freed pythons into the wild and a population of them has taken hold in the Everglades. One killed an alligator and then burst when it tried to eat it. Scientists also speculate a bevy of Burmese pythons escaped in 1992 from pet shops battered by Hurricane Andrew and have been reproducing since.

This country is great, even if most of our citizens are not.