10 hot news items you might've missed

Mark Morford didn't. Heh.

Let's take it from the top, shall we?

1) Congressional Republicans are furious indeed that uppity Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) claimed, right there on the House floor and using a big piece of paper with large, clear letters they could actually read and everything, that the GOP's health care plan basically consists of hoping that sick people will just "die quickly."
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"This is an outrage!" said some not-really-outraged Republican congressmen I'd normally name here, but I won't because he's basically an amalgam of a whole slew of them and doesn't actually exist, per se.

"It's a total lie!" he said anyway. "Republicans often love it when people suffer long, slow inexorable deaths, particularly if it serves our political purposes. Remember Terry Schiavo? Hell, we would've been happy to drag her tragically comatose body around for a good two or three more years if she hadn't been allowed to pass quietly and destroy our big media charade of fake indignation," he did not add, before being devoured by invisible sharks.

2) Top Pentagon officials are calling for an end to the U.S. military's historical ban on allowing women to serve in submarines. [...]
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"After all, what young, tough woman in her right mind wouldn't love to be stationed for many, many months deep inside the bowels of a submersible, claustrophobic, phallic-shaped military weapon stuffed like a testosterone Bratwurst with young, lonely, homoerotically supercharged seamen, most of whom haven't seen a real female since 2008 and aren't allowed to relieve any 'tension' except with each other, and therefore and have so much pent-up sexual energy that they spasm uncontrollably every time they pass a loaded missile tube?" Roughhead did not add. "Insert seamen joke here."

Example of 'seamen joke':

You know what they say about being in the Navy...if you don’t sleep on your back.... someone will.

And the joke would be...?

6) Scientists have discovered about 850 mostly blind, pale creatures living deep underground in the Australian outback, with lots more to come.

The pallid, weak, delicate little creatures, collectively nicknamed "the GOP base," are both admired for their weird tenacity and also widely pitied for being so easily pulverized into goopy nothingness by the bright light of even a tiny hint of actual reality.

10) Study No. 3 wraps it all up in a sweet, if completely specious, little package, by suggesting that if your kid eats lots of candy every day, odds appear to be much better that he'll be arrested and go to prison later in life, presumably because he's already developed an addictive personality and Skittles are obviously a gateway drug to artisanal chocolate and anal sex and black tar heroin, which are themselves gateway drugs to becoming a full-on junkie, which will, in turn, make you a huge drag on the American health care system, in which case it would be much better for everyone if you'd just get it over with and die quickly. Thank you.

Stay healthy, Mark. Physically, that is. We need you.