Shit that Pissed me Off – 8/12
Some may ask why I keep writing about all the stupid shit Donald Trump does. Simple – there is a remote possibility that I will convince one person to change their vote. I don’t care if they vote for Clinton. Maybe they will vote for Johnson. Maybe they will just not vote for President. I don’t care. I just want Trump to get creamed.
Because if Trump does OK or, fuck me, actually wins, he’s the kind of candidate we will start to see all the time. I can’t figure out why any of us would want that.
Here’s what he said this week:
“If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks,” Mr. Trump said, as the crowd began to boo. He quickly added: “Although the Second Amendment people — maybe there is, I don’t know.”
Now there are three possible explanations for what he meant.
- He actually was suggesting that someone should assassinate Hillary Clinton to ensure she doesn’t get to appoint Supreme Court Justices.
- He was just saying they were a powerful voting bloc and everyone is over-reacting.
- He was making a joke
If we examine the ramifications of each statement we come up with these possible conclusions:
- HOLY FUCK!
- So, in other words, he was too stupid to realize that what he said could easily be interpreted as a veiled threat against his opponent. By association, his followers were too stupid to realize that his rhetoric is dangerous and could incite violence.
- So it can’t be both 2 & 3 even though various folks from the Trump camp have indeed claimed both 2 & 3. If it is a joke, then it means he was well aware of what he was saying. In which case: HOLY FUCK! Making a joke about killing your opponent isn’t any better!
None of these scenarios look good for Trump. They look worse for people who continue to make excuses for him.
While cupping may also be a sexual position (not to be confused with spooning), it is also a pseudoscientific nonsense practice in which a suction cup is used on the skin to pull up aching muscles. The argument is that it is sort of like “massage in reverse.”
Basically, this is bullshit. It is pseudoscientific claptrap that is no better than a placebo.
Now if it has a psychological effect on some athletes, I guess that’s fine for them.
Thing is, when Michael Phelps shows up with a bunch of circular bruises on his body, reporters start writing stories about the practice without doing any research around whether or not there is actually any scientific evidence that it works.
Is there any harm? Physically no, probably not.
But people make money off of this stuff. And it doesn’t work.
I realize we can all recognize that people are making money off of Suicide Squad and that, also, didn’t work. The difference is Olympic swimmers have cupping bruises on their shoulders. They aren’t showing up dressed like Harley Quinn.
Although I confess I would find Olympic swimming a lot more interesting if they did.
Donald Trump was Being Sarcastic
So earlier this week, Trump made a joke or maybe he didn’t.
Not content to rest on his “I say stupid shit all the time” laurels, he later stated that Obama and Hillary were the “founders of ISIS.” When pressed a day later, he said that was exactly what he meant.
Then he tweeted that the media didn’t get sarcasm.
Fucking media. Totally misunderstanding him all the fucking time.
Look Donald, if everyone keeps misunderstanding you, the common denominator is probably the problem. Guess who the common denominator is?
What bothers me, again, is his followers. Because their mindset went something like this:
YEAH! Fuck Obama and Hillary for creating ISIS! I mean, Trump was also for drawing down trooping in Iraq but he didn’t do it (because he wasn’t President even though if he was President he totally would have done it but not really because only fucking OBAMA could have created ISIS)!
What do you mean he didn’t mean it? Of course he meant it! Obama and Clinton are totally the co-founders of ISIS!
God you liberals are so stupid! He was being sarcastic! He never said that was exactly what he meant (even though he did)!
This took place over 48 hours.
When your reality shifts that fast, there are typically psychedelic drugs involved.
The Daily Beast Outs Gay Athletes
In what was supposed to be a humorous article (I think), journalist Nico Hines decided to try to pick up athletes at the Olympic village. He didn’t have a lot of luck on Tinder, so he decided to give Grindr a shot instead.
Even though he is straight, he insisted that he wasn’t lying “unless you consider that a straight guy being on Grindr is lying.”
Um…yes. I’m going to call that lying.
Anyway, he managed to find a few gay athletes on Grindr, and he proceeded to describe them with enough detail that anyone with moderate Google skills could figure out who they were. He also admits that some of these athletes come from extremely homophobic countries.
Somehow, it didn’t occur to him or his editors (oh wait – he’s an editor) that outing these athletes was a bad (and potentially dangerous) idea. It took The Daily Beast about 12 hours to take down the article and issue an apology.
What I’d like to see, however, is an apology from Nico Hines. Lots of people are suggesting he should be fired. Doing that, of course, ignores the culture that allowed such an article to be written in the first place.
He could start by admitting that misrepresenting yourself on Grindr is, in plain point of fact, lying.
North Carolina Man Shot a Black “Hoodlum”
We can hope this situation will turn out better than the killing of Trayvon Martin. But I’m not optimistic because this is a case of one dude being alive and claiming he felt threatened and another dude being dead so he is unable to say anything at all.
In this case, we have a man who fired a “warning shot” at people who were not on his property. Now someone is dead. And it may surprise everyone to learn it is not the guy who fired the warning shot.
He had it coming. Amirite?
He claimed the people in the street had guns. There is no evidence to support that. But there isn’t a good way to disprove it either. Convenient, right?
I wasn’t there. I don’t know what happened. I do know that a young man is dead and his only offense is that he was black.
Given the next thing I’m going to write, I think it is important to note that the gun used to kill this young black man was legally obtained.
In a self fulfilling prophecy, however, if this man is convicted of murder, he will be a criminal and the cartoon will still be accurate! Brilliant!
This week’s Meme that Pissed me Off
This cartoon is fairly old but it has shown up in the feed of a friend and it just pisses me off because it completely misrepresents the debate on this issue.
You want to know how this is for dummies? Because only dummies believe that most gun control advocates want to take away your guns!
This ignores that a significant amount of gun violence is caused by legally obtained firearms. It assumes that only illegal firearms are used in gun crimes.
It also assumes that the goal is a completely unarmed populace. We’ve been told that Obama is coming for our guns for a long time. He doesn’t have them yet. And he never will.
Because that’s not the goal. The goal is to make our population safer. There are legitimate disagreements on the best way to do that. Obfuscating those disagreements with this kind of idiocy doesn’t help.
I’m pleased the criminal is white, though. That’s gotta count for something.
Grail Diary 