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?

Texas Wants to Require Aborted Fetuses to be Buried or Cremated

The proposed regulation, which is being written by the Texas Health and Human Services Commission and therefore not an actual law, will require abortion service providers to bury or cremate the remains of any abortion or miscarriage that takes place on their premises.  It exempts such procedures that take place in the home.

So, basically, we have Texas women being told that if they might miscarry, the last thing they should do is see a doctor.  Or, if they see a doctor, they need to get their asses home as quickly as possible or they will have to pay for a funeral.

Abortions are, at least, a choice.  Not that anyone who makes that choice should be forced into cremating or burying the remains of that procedure.  Basically, that regulation exists to make the choice more financially daunting and to shame the mother into making a different choice.

“That’s a baby,” the regulation cries out, “and to remind you of what an awful person you are, we are going to make you attend a funeral service for that baby.”

The basic idea here is to keep abortion legal but to make it so difficult, a woman will decide to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term because it is easier than the alternative.

A Really Bad Article About Aliens and God

So the basic central premise of this article is since we haven’t found any aliens, there must be a god.

The existence of god notwithstanding, what bothers me here is the assumption that if there are aliens in space, we should have been able to find them by now.  It ignores two really basic facts:

1.  Space is really fucking big.
2. Interstellar travel takes a really long time because of fact #1

Since we really don’t know what form alien life would take, we also don’t know how many aliens would develop interstellar travel in the first place.  Also, when we point a telescope at a star fifty light years away, we need to keep in mind that whatever information we can get from that star is fifty years old.

NASA can back me up on fact #1.

So we find a star.  Then we have to find out if that star has any planets.  Then we have to find out of any of those planets are in what we believe is the “habitable zone.”  Then we have to find signs of intelligent life.

From fifty light years away.

It’s pretty amazing we can even figure out that star has planets, don’t you think?  Yet what this author seems to want is for us to find a spaceship somewhere in the night sky when that spaceship is the relative size of a proton in an atom.

That is fifty light years away.

Basically, this article says “aliens don’t exist because I don’t understand interstellar distances therefore god.”