Shit that Pissed me Off – 9/18

A 9th Grader was Cuffed and Arrested Because he Made a Clock Was Muslim

I’m sure you’ve read about Ahmed Mohamed this week.  He built his own clock and made the mistake of bringing it to school and showing his teachers.  He was proud of himself because he made something cool.

His teachers were concerned he’d built a bomb.

Because, you know, most kids who want to blow up their school show the bomb off to their teachers first.

One more thing: REAL BOMBS DON’T LOOK LIKE THIS!

So this kid was cuffed and interrogated by police and then suspended for three days.  Because he built a clock.

Now if Ahmed had been white, I somehow think this situation would have turned out differently.  Strange given that most of the school shooters I know of were white.  Maybe school bombers are different.

As of right now, two important things have happened.  On the positive side, President Obama invited Ahmed to the White House, MIT invited him to their campus, and about five dozen tech companies already want to hire him.  Because fuck the people who got scared by a Muslim kid with mechanical skills.

On the negative side, he says he has learned his lesson and he won’t bring his inventions to school any longer.

Which is precisely the lesson he shouldn’t have been taught.

A Non Religious Mom is Forced to Undergo Religious Couples Counseling

If I walked into a therapists office and she started the session by saying “I’d like to open with a prayer,” I’d walk right out again.

In this instance, it seems like the victim tried to do exactly that.  So the court took away her children.

I don’t know the story behind this particular custody battle and if the mom was that close to having her kids taken away, there is a decent chance she really needed some therapy of some sort.

Which doesn’t really matter.  She could be a horrible mom.  The court has no business sending her to religious counseling.  And the counselor has no business bringing religion into a counseling session unless there is a request to do so.

Chris Kluwe Writes about Injuries and the NFL

As a fan of the game of Professional Football, I’m frequently reminded that the business of Professional Football is a cold, hard, money grab that uses the bodies of young men as a commodity.  The promise of fortune and glory is enough for many of these young men to ignore the way teams manipulate them so their billionaire owners can become even richer.

To that point, Kluwe’s article about how teams manipulate prospects into signing waivers that allow the team to avoid paying for medical bills once the player is cut is not shocking at all.  Teams are built to do one thing – turn a profit.  They will use any legal means to increase their profit.

So what if they throw a couple of young bodies on the fire in the process?  The kids weren’t going to make the team anyway.  Why should the team have to pay to repair that ACL they tore in a meaningless pre-season game?

Before I help you off the field, I need to know if you can pay for the care you are about to receive. If not, you’ll just need to play through the pain.

The answer is pretty simple: because it is the decent thing to do.  Just fix the kid’s ACL so he can get a job as a high school coach or pedal pub bartender, OK?  Stop the legal games and recognize you have a responsibility to fix these kids up before you send them off to life after football.

An Article about How a Single Mom Gets By on $7.50 a Day

Spoiler: She doesn’t.  Not very well.

She’s regularly behind on rent.  She is regularly behind on her cell phone payment (and fuck you if you think that having a cell phone is a luxury).  She can only work part-time because she can’t afford to spend too much on child care.

And here in America, what do we do?  We blame the victim.

It’s her fault for having a baby.  Even though we would have berated her more if she had gotten an abortion.

She shouldn’t have a cell phone because she’s probably just using it to play candy crush.  She should find a cheaper apartment and live within her means.

She just needs to pull herself up by her bootstraps.  Which she will do as soon as she can afford them.

Being poor is like being trapped in a maze the size of the United States and being told there is a way out if you just work hard enough.  And sure, there is a way out.  But you aren’t going to find it unless you are incredibly lucky.

And if you don’t find it, it’s your own fucking fault.

S.E. Cupp Interviews a Kim Davis Supporter and I Don’t Know Who Annoyed me More

S.E. Cupp is a conservative atheist (which is OK) who seems embarrassed to be an atheist (which is annoying).  She spends most of her time defending the religious right because she really thinks that all the other atheists need to back away from the persecuted majority.

So I don’t like her very much.

She interviewed a Kim Davis supporter and asked important questions like “hey – shouldn’t she follow the law and if she breaks the law shouldn’t she be punished?”

To which he responded “you mean like the attorneys general of certain states should have followed the law when they refused to defend anti-same-sex marriage laws that were on the books?”

I’m paraphrasing but you get the idea.

Um…NO YOU STUPID KIM DAVIS SUPPORTER!  Even if those people were breaking the law – and I don’t think they were – that has absolutely no connection to Kim Davis’ choice to break the law.

You are using the classic “well someone else did it so why can’t Kim Davis” defense.  Which isn’t a defense.  It’s just a bullshit dodge to avoid answering the actual question.

Kim Davis broke the law.  She did so knowingly.  There are penalties when you break the law.  She suffered those penalties.  Doesn’t matter what did or didn’t happen to anyone else.