Shit that Pissed me Off This Week – 11/16

Wisconsin Lawmakers want to Pass a Bill to make it Legal to Arrest a Federal Official who is Doing his job

This is not all of the members of the Wisconsin Legislature, mind you.  Just nine of them.  One of them says the Affordable care act is “unconstitutional” (even though the Supreme Court said it wasn’t) and that is his justification for supporting a law that would get a federal employee arrested for trying to do his job.

You can’t make something unconstitutional by saying so.  That isn’t the way the system works.  If it did, I’d say the Citizens’ United ruling was unconstitutional and Super Pac’s would be instantly dissolved.

As a lawmaker, you don’t get to pick which laws you follow.  That’s not the job you got hired to do.

You can try to change laws.  You can try to make laws better.  You can’t decide that the supreme court got it wrong (even if you believe they did) and then start enacting laws based on what you think they should have ruled.

Aw fuck it! We can just assume that whoever wrote the dissent got it right, can’t we?

Either you believe in our system of government and you work within the rules or you shouldn’t have run for office.

Woman Dies in Ireland Because Doctors Wouldn’t Give her an Abortion

While abortion is legal in Ireland to save the life of the mother, doctors in this case weren’t sure if the mother’s life was in danger until it was too late.  Given the choice between saving the mother’s life and possibly going to jail for breaking the law, the doctors chose to save their own skin.

OK, that’s probably not what they were thinking but when you have a law that could land someone in jail if they perform a procedure that might save someone’s life but will result in the death of their unborn child, the odds are pretty good that most doctors will take the path that is less likely to land them in prison.

So in this case we have a mother who was miscarrying and wasn’t going to have a baby anyway and instead of saving her life, they let her die.

You want to know what is wrong with making abortion illegal?  Aside from the idea that women are basically slaves to the state for nine months?  This would be a fine example.

Disney has Bad Timing

OK, so this week I was chaperoning a bunch of seventh graders on a trip to Disney World.  On Wednesday, we were at the Magic Kingdom.  The park was open until 1:00 AM that night and the kids wanted to shut down the park.

That didn’t happen.  We got them out of the park around 11:30 and they were all pretty beat.

So we got ’em on the bus and about half of them were standing up and asleep on their feet.  Then we got told the bus was going to be delayed for five to ten minutes while they were putting up a christmas tree at the Contemporary Resort.

I’ll bet this tree would have lookd just as nice two hours later.

So here’s the thing – they knew the park didn’t close until 1:00 AM and it must have occurred to them that folks leaving at that time would have exhausted children.  Couldn’t they have waited until – say – 2:00 in the morning to put up that tree?  During the pre-holiday season, they typically work 24 hours a day installing Christmas decorations so it stands to reason that they could have been installing them somewhere else.

It was the perfect way to ensure that the final impression everyone on our bus had of the parks was a negative one.  Bad planning, Disney.

Hostess Brands Closing

Never mind the fact that now Woody Harelson’s character in Zombieland will never be able to find a Twinkie.  Never mind that wonder bread is quite possibly the most unhealthy bread in the history of bread.

The management is blaming the whole thing on a strike by their workers and while that may be final straw, it seems pretty obvious they were in bad shape long before the strike happened.  Do they take responsibility for running the company poorly?  Nah.  Just blame it on the greedy workers.  It’s all their fault.

Maybe the striking workers were told that the company would close if they went on strike and they didn’t believe it.  I don’t know.  So what?  If the company was that close to the edge, I don’t honestly think it was the strike alone that was the cause.

I would think the best road to profitability would be to encourage more states to legalize weed.

And now I’ve gotta go to Target and pick up as many boxes of Ho-Ho’s as I possibly can.

Mitt Romney is a Sore Loser

Given the number of stupid things Romney got caught saying during the campaign, it shouldn’t be a surprise that he keeps saying them once the campaign is over.  In this case, he attributed his loss to the government handouts Obama gave various minority groups rather than – I don’t know – his own shortcomings.

Because in this business, you need to do whatever you can to make sure your wealthy donors can’t blame you for defeat.  Instead, you have to blame your opponent for dirty tricks.  Like keeping the promise he made to pass health reform.  Like it or not, that was what Obama said he’d do, wasn’t it?

So he did it and now Romney lost because Obama effectively bribed voters.

Romney’s cynical assessment of voters is one of the reasons he lost.  Unless he accepts his own responsiblity for losing, he, and by connection his party, will have learned nothing.

The good news is we have pretty much reached the point where we shall never need to speak of Mitt Romney again.

Paul Ryan on the other hand….

The State of Oklahoma Erects Ten Commandments Monument With Spelling Errors

First off, we have the recognition of one religion as more important than any other.  That’s already unconstitutional and will embroil Oklahoma in a costly legal battle that they are most likely going to lose.  One wonders why lawmakers from any state are so fixated on the ten commandments as the most important issue on their agenda.  What it seems like they want to do is waste state funds on legal battles rather than actually legislate.

Ooooooooklahoma where our god comes sweeping cross the plain!

The Ten Commandments are not the ultimate law of the land.  In fact, they are actually unconstitutional.  At the very least, the commandment that says you shall have no other god before the Christian god violates the separation of church and state.  If I believe in a different god, that is completely fine.

Now given that they are going to go through the trouble to erect a monument to what they believe are the most important laws in history, it would seem to me that they might want to make sure the folks responsible for making the monument actually spelled “sabbath” correctly.

When you are forcing your religion down everyone else’s throat, however, spelling is a secondary consideration.