Shit that Pissed me Off – 7/14/17
Kid Rock Might Be Running for Senate
The article I link to claims it is for certain but it is also on Fox News so who actually knows, right? Still, there is a website and Rock says we should stay tuned for a “major” announcement so, for the sake of this blog post, let’s just assume he’s actually planning on running.
I mean, the Kid (I call him a kid because that is his name) can run. That’s the way of our Democracy. You don’t actually have to be an experienced politician to run for office. You’d think that it might be some sort of problem that someone applying for the job doesn’t have any actual qualifications but in politics, many people consider that a plus.
He would be the first male Senator with long hair so that would be breaking a barrier, right?
That is precisely why many of us are forced to say things like “President Trump.” My fingers hurt just typing that.
So Mr. Rock is going to run for the Senate. Probably. Or he’s using the whole thing to help sell his next album (for which I would have grudging respect).
As a musician, I have to say I would appreciate another Senator who is not a lawyer. I’ve always appreciated that Al Franken is the only comedian in the Senate and I’m pleased that I have someone representing my interests.
I’m not sure about Kid Rock, though, and it isn’t just because he’s a conservative. Rather, it is because I don’t think the gives two fucks about anything but himself. And in that, he and Donald Trump have a lot in common.
Trump Corner: Junior Tried to Collude with Russians
Speaking as a liberal, I’ve said very little about potential Trump campaign ties to Russia. Mostly, I’ve not done so because there is no evidence that it happened. I mean, there is a lot of suspicious activity and a lot of evidence the Russians may have engaged in election tampering on their own, but it is all a bit murky.
It is clear to me that Trump has tried to tamper in the investigation, which is a Nixon level screw up that may or may not lead to his downfall. However, there is no evidence of collusion with Russia.
And there still isn’t, as conservatives are quick to point out, because Donald Trump, Jr’s e-mails show only that he tried to collude with Russia.
His excuse that nothing came of it is one that other Republicans echo in a sort of “these crooks and liars are kind of awful but they are our crooks and liars so we’ll just let it go” kind of way.
Basically, we are asked to just let Junior off the hook because he didn’t actually cheat. He just tried and failed.
I mean, by that argument, we eliminate the crime of attempted murder because it essentially means someone tried and failed. No crime here!
And based on what I’ve read, Trump lite didn’t actually try to commit a crime. It was just unethical.
The point being made is the Trumps were willing to work with another sovereign power to rig the election. Whether or not that worked out is another matter entirely. The proper response should be “holy shit! We can’t support that kind of bullshit!”
Instead the response is “ehhhhh. We can’t let this distract us from fucking up health care.”
Another Hung Jury for White Police Officer who Shot his Daughter’s Black Boyfriend
So a third mistrial has been declared in the case against former Officer Shannon Kepler, who shot and killed a 19-year-old black man because he feared for his life when the young man tried to shake his hand.
Maybe he’s a germaphobe like Howie Mandel so he is genuinely in fear of his life every time someone tries to shake his hand.
Maybe not. Kepler says the young man had a semi-automatic weapon but strangely enough, no-one ever found such a weapon on the body of his victim or anywhere near the crime scene. One might assume that having been shot dead, the young man would not have had time to hide his gun quickly enough to implicate the man who killed him was not, in fact, in any kind of mortal danger.
I mean, he’d just been shot. Didn’t he know the rules???
Now I know someone is going to say that police have a job to do and yeah, they do have a job to do.
And someone else is going to tell me that people have a right to defend themselves and yeah, they do.
We’ve reached a point, however, where all a police officer needs to say is “I feared for my life” and even if they are off duty, as Shannon Kepler was at the time of the shooting, enough people buy that excuse and allow the bodies to pile up.
If Kepler had been on duty, I’m guessing this case would not even have gone to trial.
Speaking of Police on Duty – How about This Video?
The video in the link is fairly disturbing so consider yourself warned.
The video shows a suspect – Eugene Enrique Corona – kneeling in a posture of surrender. You would think the police would just cuff the guy.
Nope! They have their dog attack him and then scream at him to stop resisting. I’m not sure if they were referring to his resisting arrest or resisting being bitten by a dog.
Now I’m not here to excuse Corona for whatever laws he may have broken. To read the article, it seems like he broke quite a few.
But look – when a guy is kneeling with his hands behind his head, you don’t have your dog attack him, do you?
Now because Corona was, allegedly, breaking a shit ton of laws, it is unlikely these officers will face much more than a slap on the wrist for their behavior. And that’s the problem.
Fearing for your life is real and valid. But there is no reality where the lives of these officers were in danger.
And when you have the power to kill someone any time you “fear for your life,” you have a responsibility to be very careful. And yes – most police officers are careful with that power.
But if we can’t punish the shit out of the officers who abuse that power, we imply that it is OK to abuse that power. And I don’t know why any of us should be happy with that.
To take to an absurd extreme, a woman who gets a donation from a sperm bank would need to contact the father before having an abortion. And yeah, most women who go to a sperm bank aren’t planning on an abortion.
But let’s assume that their health is in danger. What then?
Now these absurdly extreme examples are stupid because it isn’t OK anyway. A fully grown woman should get to decide for herself whether or not to terminate a pregnancy. The idea that she is taking away the rights of the father in some way ignores the fact that the father doesn’t have to carry the baby to term.
This law is carefully disguised as a law about the disposal of the remains, which is clever, because it seems super compassionate. The dad should get to help decide what happens to the fetus. Isn’t that nice?
I don’t want to shit on Arkansas too much so let me observe that I think their state flag is very nice.
Again, doesn’t matter who the dad is. Could be a rapist. Or a sperm donor. Or one of eight guys a prostitute had sex with one night (and I’m not judging that because it is her body). Point is, the mother has to find the dad (or if she is under eighteen she has to tell her parents) and get their approval on the means of disposal of the fetus.
All of which takes time. And we understand, I hope, that these bills are about preventing abortions by making it take too long to get them.
Nobody gives a fuck about what the dad wants. They care about what they want. And what they want is for that woman to have the child and raise it in poverty because they don’t give a shit about what happens once she has the baby as god intended.
Some Jackhole Busts up a Statue of Buddha in an LA Neighborhood
Apparently, folks were using a planter on a street corner as a repository for garbage.
On the one hand, I respect those folks for not throwing their trash in the street. On the other, use a fucking garbage can. It’s not that fucking hard.
Someone put a statue of Buddha over the planter and that solved the garbage problem. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to solve the racism problem.
The statue has been vandalized multiple times and at least once the vandal was heard to be shouting stuff about ISIS and Muslim extremism and all sorts of things that suggests he doesn’t really understand Buddhism.
Now it is possible this guy is a Muslim extremist himself given what the Taliban did to a couple of Buddha statues in Afghanistan some time ago.
I think it’s more likely that this person thinks anything that isn’t a crucifix must be Islamic.
Vandalism is never a good thing. When it is being executed by stupid people, it is just sad. The anti Muslim rhetoric in this country is bad enough. When yo couple that with ignorance, shit like this happens.
At least this guy was beating up a statue and not an actual person. How long, though, before he takes the next step?
Now I hate to send people to his Twitter feed because he’s probably completely embonered by all of the attention but he’s also a blocking machine so if you want to tweet him to the point he blocks you, go for it. Any time he blocks someone, I figure he kind of loses because he can’t take the heat.
At CONvergence (a local sci-fi con I had some responsibility for creating), someone created feminist stickers and placed them out on the freebie tables. I never saw them myself.
Well, I saw people wearing them but I don’t frequent the freebie table so I never picked up one of my own.
Anyway, this kid (and he’s a teenager not a rock star) made a short video of himself ripping up and throwing away the stickers. Much like Donald Trump, Jr, he didn’t do anything illegal.
But it was a dick move. A move meant to show how edgy and clever he was. Except he was neither. He was just a dick.
Using the term “Just a Dick” in your Google search yields a lot of very amusing results.
He knows nothing about feminism other than he’s a dude and he doesn’t understand why it can’t be all about him.
And he’s probably OK with being called a dick because clearly penises are all he cares about.*
*Not trying to imply he is gay (though he may be) because that’s cool. I’m just saying he thinks about his wang an awful lot and not just because he’s a teenager. He clearly has an over inflated sense of its importance. Probably also it’s size. Bazinga.
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