Shit that Pissed me Off – 4/28
San Antonio Mayor Implies Atheism Causes Poverty
Actually, that’s not what she said. A lot of Atheists are kind of up in arms and the thing is, I think what she said is worse than if she just targeted atheists.
Asked what causes poverty, she responded:
To me, it’s broken people. People not being in a relationship with their Creator, and therefore, not being in good relationship with their families and their communities, and not being productive members of society. I think that’s the ultimate answer.
So yeah, she could be talking about atheists. But let’s assume, for a moment, that what she meant was broader. She meant that people are poor because they don’t have a good relationship with god. God literally looks down from heaven (or up from heaven given that Earth is a sphere and we don’t actually know where heaven is located) and says “those people don’t go to church enough. I’m going to make them poor.”
I guess that makes sense if the god we are talking about is Loki.
It suggests that the only people who are productive members of society are people who have a good relationship with their creator. That would obviously exclude people like Bill Gates, who is an open atheist. He’s clearly not being productive.
It would also include people who call themselves Christians but don’t really go to church or do much to support their faith.
Basically, she’s blaming poverty on a lack of belief in god.
It seems silly to me given that Jesus was poor and I thought his relationship with god was supposed to be pretty solid. Poverty is not caused by god. It is caused by people. People who, like San Antonio Mayor Ivy Taylor, treat poverty as some sort of punishment which people deserve.
They suggest that if we just get poor people to church, god will fix them. Never mind that the poorest states in our nation are some of the most faithful. Faith has nothing to do with poverty. Belief in god doesn’t make you rich or poor any more than atheism makes you rich or poor.
Her answer is insulting to poor people. And atheists. And people of faith. When it comes to hitting a tone-deaf home run, she killed it.
Shit that Pissed me Off – 4/21
For Easter, Someone Decided to Vandalize an Atheist’s Truck
In Crookston, Minnesota, there aren’t a lot of atheists, I’ll wager. I would go so far as to guess even fewer are out about it.
Jeff Carter had a couple of magnetic bumper stickers on his truck that made it clear he’s an atheist. That’s cool, right? I mean, one truck with a few atheist slogans is hardly a problem when there are probably dozens (or hundreds – I didn’t bother to look up the population of Crookston*) of vehicles with Christian bumper stickers in the same town.
Apparently flaunting your atheism in Crookston is not cool, though. At least not cool to the (I assume) Christians who vandalized Carter’s truck.
Jesus rose from the dead! Praise god! Let’s go write some Christian shit on an atheist’s truck!
How do we know they are Christians? Because they wrote phrases like “Jesus is Great” and “God is Life” on his truck. Now I suppose it is possible that a couple of Crookston Jews pissed off at Carter’s atheism but decided they should frame some Christians but that might stretch the imagination a bit too far.
And look – I know these assholes are not indicative of almost every other Christian in the country. Even the ones who voted for Donald Trump. They are outliers.
They serve as a reminder, though. The next time a Christian complains about how they are being oppressed by modern society, remember that there aren’t a lot of atheists going around vandalizing cars with Christian bumper stickers.
I assume because they aren’t really sure what to write on the car. “Science is great?” “I totally came from a monkey (even though I didn’t – monkeys and I share a common ancestor)?” “Atheists make better cookies (citation needed)?”
*I lied – It’s 7,904
Shit that Pissed me Off – 4/14
United Airlines Fails Spectacularly at Customer Service
United Airlines had a fully booked flight but also had several employees who needed transport to where they would be working the next day. They asked passengers to give up their seats for an $800 travel voucher. Nobody volunteered.
Maybe because it was a Sunday night and they all had work the next day. And their boss wasn’t going to pay them for the day off. What a bunch of selfish pricks.
Anyway, rather than upping the offer (which they totally could have done), the airline opted to pick people at random. And one guy didn’t want to go. So they had security drag him off the airline in front of a bunch of cell phone cameras.
As you might imagine, it has been a bad week for United.
I’m not the only person who remembers when this was United’s ad slogan, right?
But it has also been a bad week for the passenger who was dragged off the plane. As soon as his name became public, news organizations began to dig into his past and it turns out he’s not a perfect person.
I’m shocked to discover that as everyone else I’ve ever met is completely perfect.
His past transgressions have nothing to do with not wanted to be forced to take a different flight after he paid for his ticket and the airline made some poor planning decisions.
The response from a few corners of the internet have been, basically, he deserved it.
Um…no. The guy was violently removed from the plane. Not removed from the plane. Violently removed from the plane.
You can argue all you like how three other people voluntarily left after being randomly selected. Doesn’t matter. Beating people up just isn’t something you should be doing unless they are a Nazi.
And in spite of all the muckraking our media has done over this fellow, they have not been able to turn up any evidence that the guy is a Nazi. So I’m going to say the beating was entirely unjustified.
He didn’t deserve it. That’s the problem with this whole “let’s wait for all the facts to come out” mentality. It doesn’t matter what type of guy he was. It doesn’t matter if he was a little bit belligerent when told he’d have to leave the plane after buying a ticket.
He was violently removed from the plane. He didn’t deserve it. That is the only fact that matters.
Shit that Pissed me Off – 4/7
Trump Corner – We Bombed Syria
Look – as someone who has done a lot of improvisational theater in my life, I have a lot of respect for improvisation.
But Donald Trump feels like an improvisational President. Syrian President Assad uses chemical weapons on his own people and Trump’s first response is “we should do something.”
So everyone responds by saying “yeah – OK – can you be a little more specific?”
And Trump responds by saying “BOOM! Just bombed a military base! How do you like that something?”
Well, Donald, you did the second part but I don’t think you really understood the first part.
And everyone is like “?????”
Never mind that Trump pretended to be a dove on the campaign trail and managed to convince far too many people Hillary Clinton would have us in a war with Syria before she finished her inauguration speech. Never mind that this bombing run did nothing to prevent the next chemical weapons attack on civilians.
In the end, it is military theater. It makes Trump look tough without actually risking anything. Nobody really cares about what is going on in Syria anyway. I mean, we care in the sense that it sounds awful but we don’t care in the sense that it affects our lives in any tangible way.
Kind of like the way that military strike affected the actions of Assad.
Shit that Pissed me Off – 3/17
Democratic Congressman Makes Me Defend Kellyanne Conway
I was on vacation for the last two weeks and that means I need to play a little bit of catch up.
Now let’s be clear that I think Kellyanne Conway is a tool. Her job is to go to the press and ignore their questions as a way of obfuscating all the stupid bullshit our rich white President tweets out. More on that later.
However, the controversy around the following picture is a bunch of bullshit.
Conway is taking a picture of her President surrounded by black people in an attempt to make it look like he has a lot of friends who are black. I could totally make fun of that because I’m pretty sure Donald Trump knows as much about the black experience in America as Ben Carson.
But instead, people like Democratic Congressman Cedric Richmond made fun of conway for being barefoot on a couch. I suppose the implication is that she slept her way to the top or something while ignoring the fact she was instrumental in getting Donald Trump elected.
I can hate her for that. But I also have to respect her for that. And in spite of the bad taste it leaves in my mouth, I have to defend Conway on the grounds that you don’t get to make that kind of joke about her.
Given all the stuff she does that is completely horrible, shouldn’t it be OK to shy away from calling her a slut because she’s taking a picture with her shoes off? Do we lack so much creativity as a society that when we are presented with a woman we don’t like, we can find no other outlet to criticize her than shaming her for not behaving like we think a woman should behave.
Conway and her President will do and say so many stupid things in the next 24 hours (pick any 24 hour period), it seems like wasted effort to focus on something so unimportant.
Shit that Pissed me Off – 2/3
I’m sorry I took the last two weeks off. Life intrudes sometimes.
We all know that we are entering week three of the Trump Presidency. I am trying to figure out how to write my blog so it isn’t just a weekly rant on all the horrible things Trump says and does. But I’m two weeks behind and he has been busy.
There is a lot of other stuff going on that pisses me off. It’s just that Trump is so fucking noisy.
Donald Trump Didn’t Threaten to Invade Mexico
Look, we all know that I don’t like our current President very much. I think I have very good reasons for believing he will go down as the worst person ever to run our country.
But I’m feeling like I need to stick with stuff he’s actually done. And therein lies the problem.
Earlier this week, Trump had a phone call with the Mexican president. Shortly after the call, news organizations reported that Trump had threatened to send American troops across the border to deal with some “bad hombres.”
“Bad Hombres” is the name of my Los Lobos cover band.
A few hours later, it was reported that such a threat never happened.
Days later, however, a bunch of my liberal friends are still talking about Trump invading Mexico.
In a world where Trump is openly hostile to any news organization that doesn’t kiss his ass, the press actually has a responsibility to make sure what they report is accurate. Trump is doing all sorts of shady shit. Hell, this week he said this during remarks about Black History Month
Last month, we celebrated the life of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., whose incredible example is unique in American history. You read all about Dr. Martin Luther King a week ago when somebody said I took the statue out of my office. It turned out that that was fake news. Fake news. The statue is cherished, it’s one of the favorite things in the—and we have some good ones. We have Lincoln, and we have Jefferson, and we have Dr. Martin Luther King. But they said the statue, the bust of Martin Luther King, was taken out of the office. And it was never even touched. So I think it was a disgrace, but that’s the way the press is. Very unfortunate.
If you read the transcript of the speech, it was almost entirely about him. This isn’t made up. It’s something he actually said.
And what was he talking about? The way the press keeps reporting shit that didn’t happen. In this case, of course, it was a mistake the reporter in question corrected almost immediately.
The press has to do better. In the rush to break stories these days, they don’t take the time to verify what they are reporting. And that allows Trump and his minions to do all sorts of horrible stuff because they can point to the small number of erroneous reports as a reason why nobody should believe anything the press says.
And to all my liberal friends out there: please let’s all make sure we know what the fuck we are talking about.
Shit that Pissed me Off – 1/13
Note: I didn’t write about the work the Senate made to begin the repeal of the Affordable Care Act this week because, while it really does piss me off, it is also an extremely complex maneuver and I’m not sure any of us completely understand what is going on. Least of all the Senators who voted for it.
Let me just say before I proceed, however, that anyone who can, with good conscience, vote to re-establish a pre-existing condition clause, is a complete waste of a human being. It may well be true that they won’t end up re-establishing that clause. A vote still exists in which Senators are going on record supporting just that.
Vaccination Safety Committee To be Headed by Anti-Vaxxer
At least this is the claim made by anti vax proponent Robert Kennedy. We’ll see if it really happens.
Look, I know vaccinations are controversial. And I try to be sympathetic.
Then I remember I have two vaccinated children on the autism spectrum and that every single study about vaccines has concluded vaccines do not cause autism or any of the other things anti-vaxxers claim they cause. And I read quotes like this, which could be referring to my family:
I employed the term [holocaust] during an impromptu speech as I struggled to find an expression to convey the catastrophic tragedy of autism which has now destroyed the lives of over 20 million children and shattered their families
And I stop being sympathetic because this fucker is talking about my kids. My kids who have full lives and are wonderful human beings and whose existence has shattered my family not one single bit. Autism is a hurdle my kids have to jump over. Most of us have hurdles they need to get over. To suggest their hurdle has shattered my family is the sort of thing someone who doesn’t even have the basic understanding of the autism spectrum would suggest because they are an ignorant jackass.
Yeah – this kind of thing gets me pretty worked up.
Anti-vaxxers may make me just a little bit crazy.
It is bothersome enough that our President-Elect (fuuuuuuuuck) denies climate change. That he also seems to jump into bed with anti vaxxers suggests that the American People elected someone pretty much willing to believe any crazy conspiracy theory pops up so long as it doesn’t involve him.
You have to give him credit for being equal opportunity when it comes to denial of scientific data. Climate Change denial comes from the right and anti vaxxers typically come from the left. Donald, however, has a big tent and there is room for everyone who thinks scientists reach conclusions just to fuck with the rest of us.
Shit that Pissed me off – 1/6
Boy Scouts Bar Transgender Boy
Due to a lot of factors, my boys aren’t really involved in scouting any longer. I am supportive of scouting and even though I’m aware of the larger issues that surround the Scout’s continued public disapproval of LGBTQ kids (and atheist kids for that matter), I’ve seen some attempts by the organization to soften their stance.
The people my kids have worked with are good people and whatever the national chapter of the Scouts may choose to do, our troop is a good troop that, I think, would not engage in this kind of discrimination. If my kids were still engaged in Scouts, I don’t think I’d pull them over this because I’d be punishing my kids by taking away something they enjoy.
And that makes me kind of crazy. Because on the one hand, I wouldn’t want to punish my kids for being who they are. On the other hand, the Boy Scouts just punished a kid for being who they are.
As we move (slowly) towards acceptance of homosexuality in our society (even as some fight to be able to discriminate free from consequence), transgender rights has now become a new arena and I fear this fight will be harder because people don’t get it.
I do not understand why people are transgender and therefore I will hate them for it.
If you’ve spent your entire life being totally comfortable with your gender, you have no way of understanding someone who is identified as a boy because they were born with a penis but has spent their entire life playing the role of a boy.
As an actor, I get to stop being a character I don’t like when I’m done with the performance. Someone who is pretending to be a gender with which they do not identify never gets the chance to step off stage. They are constantly pretending. And it is exhausting.
Giving them the freedom to stop pretending ought to be something we all celebrate. It ought to be something that makes us happy because we ought to want other people to be happy.
I mean, aside from pedophile priests. You gotta draw the line somewhere.
But we don’t give a fuck about that because we are more concerned with who is peeing in the stall next to our kid. Our kid doesn’t care because they just want to get back to the playground. They probably didn’t even notice the person in the stall next to them.
Our own discomfort with the idea of gender identity is the problem. If we are cool with the gender identity we were assigned at birth, we can’t understand why anyone else isn’t.
The Boy Scouts should be a place where young men (and by that I mean people who identify as young men) can learn how to be responsible adult men. Part of that responsibility should be learning to accept that we aren’t all the same. Their rigidity is disheartening to say the least.
Shit that Pissed me Off – 12/9
Mall of America Hires a Black Santa Claus and Racists Lose their Shit
For four days, US Army Veteran Larry Jefferson was the official Santa Claus at the Mall of America. He was also black. The result was a whole lot of black kids got to sit on the lap of a Santa who looked like them. Sounds awful.
It sure was to these racists who believe that white characters should stay white no matter how mythological those figures might be.
A black santa is as outrageous as a female President!
The racists spouting their hatred for the concept of a Santa that wasn’t pasty white got so out of hand, the Star Tribune had to shut down comments on the article.
Now I will admit that the legends that gave rise to Santa Claus would certainly suggest a white Santa Claus is more accurate than – say – a white Jesus. However, it would seem to me that if we can embrace the idea of Billy Bob Thornton as (a drunk) Santa Claus, the idea of a black Santa shouldn’t result in anyone – what’s the phrase I’m looking for – giving a shit.
So in the giving spirit of the season, let’s give ourselves some time to reflect that a black Santa Claus is a good thing. And remember that every time someone uses the term alt-right, what they really mean is “racist doucebag.”
Speaking of Alt-Right, How about This Asshole Who Called out a Trans Student on Stage?
Milo Yiannopoulos, whose name is a pain to spell and is so much of a creepy fuck that I’m not even going to try, was invited to speak at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He’s well known as an outspoken racist and anti-GLBTQ crusader. As you might expect, a lot of students were upset he was coming.
Free speech is a tricky thing. I mean, does the guy have a right to say what he says?
Unfortunately, yes. Should he be given a paid platform to say these things?
I don’t think he should. I think he should be swept out the door with the other insects we don’t want to kill but also don’t want in our homes. But I understand that Universities have a responsibility to expose students to all perspectives.
Now I will argue that if they want to expose kids to thinking from the right, people like Condoleeza Rice might represent a better option than Milo Yo-yoasaurus. I don’t agree with her on a lot of things but she’s not a racist.
In any case, Milo Yog-Sothoth was given the platform to speak and he was a racist and homophobic fuck, which shouldn’t have surprised anyone. However, he went so far as to show a picture of a trans student and use her dead name.
That, my friends, is bordering on a violent act. The trans community already faces challenges that are unparalleled. What Yorkshire Puddingpolos did to this student is unconscionable.
Fortunately, Yip-yip dogapus doesn’t have a conscience. So he’ll keep saying this shit. And people will keep paying him to say it. In the name of “fairness.”
Crazy Ass Dude Almost Shoots up a Pizza Joint Because of a Conspiracy Theory
In an act that isn’t being labelled terrorism because the perpetrator was white and nobody ended up being killed, a dude walked into a pizzeria in Washington D.C. to “investigate” a bullshit conspiracy theory that the restaurant was a front for a child prostitution ring run by the Clintons.
That’s fucked up. Even more fucked up, the son of incoming National Security Advisor Lt. General Michel Flynn tweeted his support for the conspiracy theory (but just barely avoided tweeting support for the gunman). Essentially he said, “until you prove the theory is false, we will keep talking about it.”
Even former President George W Bush doesn’t understand your logic.
The problem with conspiracy theories is you can’t prove them false. The people who believe them will constantly find new reasons to support the idea it is a conspiracy and all your proof to the contrary is just more evidence of a cover up.
In the meantime, it is doing real and demonstrable harm to actual human beings and to an actual business. If Donald Trump gave two shits about anyone but himself, he would use Twitter to debunk this kind of nonsense rather than using it to whine about how Saturday Night Live is making fun of him.
Business Pre-Emptively Sues State Over Being Forced to Video Same-Sex Marriages
Carl and Angel Larson, who are “good Christians,” are concerned their wedding video business might be sullied should they be forced by anti-discrimination laws to video a same sex couple getting married.
So concerned are they that their religious right to discriminate might be infringed, they are suing the state of Minnesota to ensure they don’t find themselves in that situation. The lawsuit, in effect, says that anti-discrimination laws are unconstitutional.
Look, given that our President-elected by Russia is likely to appoint justices friendly to this kind of religious freedom bullshit, it is probably best for same-sex couples to stay away from businesses like this one because the resulting lawsuit might have extremely dubious consequences. But what do you do when the businesses pre-emptively go to court?
And I’m left to wonder, is this what Jesus meant when he said “turn the other cheek?” I mean, these people aren’t being asked to shoot pornography. They are being asked shoot video featuring a couple of guys (or girls) who love each other getting married while surrounded by their friends and family. Kinky.
Oh wait – they aren’t being asked to do that. Yet. They just don’t want anyone to ask them because if they say no, they are going to look like assholes.
Too late.
North Carolina GOP lost the Governor’s Office So They are Going to Hamstring the New Governor
Sore losers like the North Carolina Assembly are quite possibly worse than sore winners (Donald Trump). In this case, the NC Assembly is so upset the people of their state elected a Democrat to the Governor’s mansion, they called an emergency special session to limit his powers.
Of course, they claim they were going to do that anyway. They just feel they need to do it faster because of who the people elected.
The legislation was passed to limit appointments made by the Governor and to also create road blocks between plaintiffs and the State Supreme Court are so blatantly partisan, the lawmakers passing them should be embarrassed. Elections have consequences. Parties lose.
Well…maybe parties lose in the United States.
The Democrats are already well aware of this fact.
When a party loses, the worst thing they can do is this kind of scorched earth legislation. Their own constituents should be telling them to stop being assholes and accept that a Democratic governor should be able to do the same fucking stuff a Republican governor was able to do.
I try to convince myself that the Republican party wants what is best for people and they just disagree with me on ideology. When they engage in this kind of sore loser bullshit, however, it is hard for me to think of their party as anything but a party unwilling to share power with anyone.
Shit that Pissed Me Off – 12/2
Donald Trump Doesn’t Like Flag Burners
President-Elect Trump (fuuuuuuuuck) tweeted this week that flag burners should go to jail for a year or lose their citizenship. Nothing about how burning the flag is a constitutionally protected right and he just doesn’t like it. No – he thinks people should lose their citizenship if they burn the flag.
While Trump fills his cabinet with individuals who will repeal or cripple the Affordable Care Act (which is sure as fuck going to affect me and my family), we talk about flag burning.
OK, so let’s talk about it. And let’s ditch the “flag burning is a reprehensible act but it is protected” part of the conversation. It’s as if we all need to hold up our hands and protest that we don’t like something because so many people are bothered by it.
And that is what pisses me off. Who gives an actual fuck? Has anyone ever been harmed by the burning of a flag? I mean besides the person burning the flag who might have, you know, gotten a burn because they were holding a burning piece of cloth?
Why have we, as Americans, decided that burning the flag is a despicable act? It’s a flag! A piece of cloth. It is not our country.
That the flag has become a sacred relic is embarrassing. So let me step up and say I don’t have an issue with anyone burning a flag. I’m reasonably certain that a country with enough nuclear capability to turn every other continent into a pile of atomic slag is strong enough to handle a few flags on fire.
Oh fuck! Someone’s burning a flag! Send in the tanks!
I’m sick of the feeling that before we say something (flag burning, abortion, Hillary Clinton) is OK, we have to acknowledge how awful it is.
There is nothing awful about burning a flag. Our freedoms are not irreparably damaged when a flag is set on fire. In fact, our freedoms are enhanced. Burning a flag is an act of defiance but it is also an act of celebration.
It celebrates our right as citizens to openly criticize our government. Have we forgotten how many places on Earth that is not allowed? Is that really what we want here?
If it isn’t, then nobody should say “flag burning is a horrible act.” We should, instead, say “flag burning is a celebration of our constitution.”
And the thing is – this is all a distraction. Flags don’t get burned a lot. In fact, they hardly ever get burned at all. The fact we are talking about something that almost never happens is a ridiculous waste of time.
Our response should be “huh. Someone burned a flag. I wouldn’t even know about this if it weren’t for the 24 hour news cycle.”
Now who the fuck is in Trump’s cabinet again?
Grail Diary 