Shit that Pissed me Off – May 17th

Minnesotans for Marriage Are Worried that People think They are Bigots

Same-sex marriage is about to be a reality in Minnesota but the folks over at Minnesota for marriage tried their best to lie their way into a victory.

They warned folks that if the marriage law passed, people who believe that marriage is between one man and one woman would be labelled as “bigots” (because they are) and “prosecuted under the law” (which is complete bullshit).

See, the law says that same sex couples can get married.  You don’t have to like it.  There are lots of laws different groups of people don’t like.  Not liking a law is completely legal and nobody is going to prosecute you for it.

I don’t like the fact that churches are tax exempt and yet, nobody has arrested me for thinking that way. I’M BEING PERSECUTED!!!!

Now if your job is to issue marriage licenses and you refuse to issue them to a same sex couple, you might lose your job because they are legally allowed a marriage license.  You don’t get to re-write the law to suit your “deeply held religious beliefs.”

However, suggesting that people will be prosecuted for believing that same-sex marriage is wrong is a great example of inciting homophobia.  All they are doing is trying to make people afraid of homosexuals. They seem to imply that once homosexuals have rights, they are going to trample all over everyone else’s.

That’s what bigots do.

This Week’s Meme that Pissed me Off

I’m tired of overly simplistic and paranoid assumptions about people who are for reasonable gun control.  Check this one out:

So please explain to me how expanded background checks will make good people “helpless.”

Assuming they can pass the background check, they will still be able to get their gun, right?  And if they can’t pass a background check, they are probably the bad people that we’d prefer to be harmless, right?

And since the number of people advocating for complete disarmament are a tiny minority, it seems silly to suggest that the gun control lobby is trying to take guns away from everyone because they fucking aren’t!

So how about we stop with the alarmist bullshit, OK?  If you want a gun so badly, you can still have a gun.  OK????

Disney Decides to Re-Design Merida (and then decides not to) Because She was Apparently not Attractive Enough

Yeah, that kid was just not skinny and busty enough to be a true Disney Princess.  Let’s sex her up because we know that’s what little girls want!

The response has been…well…pretty negative (so negative that Disney pulled the new design off their web site on Wednesday).  It seems like Merida was plenty popular already.  Why change her to appeal to people when she is already appealing?

Was there research on this or did some idiot executive decide that the best way to get ahead in life was to ensure that more little girls had a bad body image?

I could say more, but I’ll let my friend John Kovalic over at Dork Tower do the talking:

Yes.  That just about covers it.

UPDATE:  Disney has been crying “whoa whoa whao!  That wasn’t what we wanted to do at all!  It was just this one drawing!” That may well be true.  It was still a massive miscalculation.  I’m leaving this one in as I wrote it, though, because I love John’s cartoon.

Michele Bachmann Did not Actually Threaten to Leave Minnesota if Same-Sex Marriage became Legal

It must have been wishful thinking that suckered so many people into believing that an article from The Daily Currant was actually the real thing.

I saw it shared so many times on Facebook and Twitter and every single time, someone had to break the news to the poster that it is a farce.  Bachmann has made no such threat.  She is planning on staying right here in the great state of Minnesota.

I keep getting my hopes dashed where she is concerned. In the last two election cycles there was talk that she was “vulnerable.”  But she wasn’t.

She’s coated in teflon.  The people who love her can’t recognize the crazy and the rest of us are left pondering what is wrong with all the people who love her.

She’s not leaving folks.

Also – check your sources.

John Boehner Wants People to go to Jail as a Result of the IRS Scandal

This whole thing looks very very bad and I’m not about to excuse the targeting of specific political groups just because I’m ideologically opposed to them.

Isn’t it interesting, though, that Mr. Boehner wasn’t calling for anyone to go to jail during the financial crisis a few years back?  When the government screws up badly (and this was a really bad screw-up), he wants heads to roll.

When the private sector screws up far worse, he doesn’t seem to give a crap if anyone is held accountable.

That is the problem with the extreme partisanship in this country right now.  It is subtle.

Boehner has every right to be angry about the IRS targeting Tea Party groups. I’m not disputing that.

Hey, they are a group that doesn’t like paying taxes! Let’s audit the fuck out of them!

Thing is, he should have been just as angry at the corporate stooges who threw people out of their homes, cost the government billions of dollars and still made millions of dollars.  But he wasn’t.  Makes you wonder who’s paying his salary, doesn’t it?

A Kentucky High School Principal Encourages Teachers to Break the Law and Teach Creationism

At a newly formed Christian educator support group, Principal Bryce Hibbard gave lots of advice on how science teachers could circumnavigate the separation of church and state to get creationism in front of their kids.  He even told teachers it was sort of OK to talk about it (it isn’t).

As a parent, this just creeps the fuck out of me.

Creation “science” is bad science.  Worse, when the bad science is exposed, the basic response is to stick fingers in ears and loudly chant “BIBLE BIBLE BIBLE BIBLE!!!”

The desperate attempt to cling to a bad idea (creationism) is bad enough.  The desire to impart that idea to children from a position of authority is inexcusable.

If you want to teach creation “science,” you should not be teaching in a public school.

I constantly worry that my children will be exposed to these ideas in the classroom, which should be a safe environment.  If I want them to hear the “science” of creationism, I will send them to Sunday School.

House Votes to Repeal Obamacare. Again.

House Republicans hate Obamacare almost as much as the love their bibles.  They hate it so much, they want to make sure that they vote it down as often as humanly possible.

They want their constituents back home to know that while they are not personally going to do anything about skyrocketing healthcare costs, they are sure as hell going to hold regular symbolic votes to show that they think what Obama did (with the help of congress), wasn’t a good idea.

In fact, there are 70 new Republican members of the house and, as John Boehner said, they hadn’t had a chance to vote against Obamacare yet (cue the sad Hulk music).  Fortunately, they took some time out of their busy schedule on Thursday to make sure those 70 could go back to their constituents and say they had voted against Obamacare.

Because they aren’t Communists like Obama! Or Socialists! What do you mean those two aren’t the same thing…?

The House holds useless votes all the time so I shouldn’t get so annoyed.  This, however, is the 37th time they have held a useless vote about the same fucking thing.

I think their constituents have gotten the message.