Shit that Pissed me Off – 3/30/18

Rick Santorum Suggests Students Should Learn CPR to Deal with School Shooters

It continues to baffle me that Santorum is considered the kind of person who should be taken seriously. A day after students took it upon themselves to stage a massive demonstration against guns in schools, he appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union” and suggested that the kids should stop asking other people to solve their problems.

Instead of asking politicians to do their fucking job, he said maybe these kids should take classes on how to deal with an active shooter or maybe learn CPR.

That makes sense, right? The kids are already in school and they don’t need to learn stuff like math and science.

He backed off his initial statement by saying he didn’t mean CPR. I’m not sure what he meant instead. Santorum has always struck me as particularly dumb and that means he might not have understood what he was saying when he said “CPR.”

I mean he clearly didn’t understand what he was saying when he chastised kids for asking politicians to do their jobs. Because the best thing an adult should do is tell kids that they should stop asking adults to keep them safe because the adults aren’t going to do it.

Even if, when he said it, he was accidentally telling the truth.

Utah Passes “Free Range Parenting” Law

Reading over the law, I pretty much agree with the basic idea here. In brief, it says that parents can let their kids walk to the playground without supervision if they trust their kids to be safe.  The law is meant to combat situations where parents are charged for child neglect because they think a 10-year-old can make it to a playground three blocks away.

Speaking as a parent who has let my kids walk to a playground almost five blocks away, I’m on record as thinking this is not child abuse.  Kids should be given some freedom to explore and learn on their own.

So why am I pissed by this law?

Because I think it leaves a lot of gray area that could open the door for stuff that is abuse. For one, there is no age limit. I know that sounds like it shouldn’t be a big deal because some four year olds are pretty mature but while I’m not sure it counts as child abuse, I think a four year old should probably not be headed to a playground on their own.

Everyone loves this bill. It was passed unanimously with (obviously) broad bipartisan support.

And we can assume that it won’t be applied unfairly.

Except you know it probably will. For instance, it is pretty likely that parents of kids in poorer areas (which are also more “ethnically diverse”) will be assumed to be abusive more often than parents of kids in – say – the suburbs.

So this bill sounds great. Except it will likely end up with a whole bunch more brown people being prosecuted because it carefully leaves the door open for exactly that to happen.

Some Jackass Decides to Photoshop Emma Gonzalez Tearing Up the Constitution

These days we assume all of this bullshit is caused by Russian bots and maybe it is. If so, we have to stop being gullible idiots.

Emma Gonzalez is a student from Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida. You might remember 17 people were murdered there last month. She has since become a vocal gun control advocate and was pictured on Teen Vogue tearing up a shooting target.

Which makes sense given her stance on guns.

So someone – maybe Russian – changed the target to a constitution and conservatives of a certain stripe are sharing it on the internet. And other conservatives of a dumber stripe are taking it seriously.

Also they lightened her skin and gave her dark circles around her eyes! Because racism.

It would take about five seconds to find the original image and then you wouldn’t make an ass out of yourself by saying she actually tore up the Constitution.

Or maybe the whole idea is that her anti-gun stance is basically the same as tearing up the constitution.  Which is horrible because that document is really old and if you did that, you would be destroying an important piece of history.

That’s the point, of course.

Meme That Pissed Me Off

In a world where a sexual predator is President, some stupid Disney Meme shouldn’t bother me. But this, my friends, is some serious bullshit.

I love Mulan and Monsters, Inc but this simply doesn’t make sense.

First off, there is no universe where The Incredibles doesn’t beat Monsters, Inc so that means Monsters, Inc doesn’t make it out of the second round. But that isn’t even the worst part of this bracket. Nor is it where Beauty and the Beast gets beaten by The Nightmare Before Christmas. Or when Hercules beat Aladdin.

It’s where Cars 3 beats Coco.

Fuck that. Cars 3 couldn’t even beat Cars 3.

Census Will Not Include LGBTQIA+ Questions

There was a proposal to include questions about sexual orientation and gender identity in the next Census but it appears the current administration has determined such data is not actually important. Or, they have determined that their constituents wouldn’t like to know how many LGBTQIA+ people they interact with on a daily basis.

In fact, they probably wouldn’t like that I’m using the word “they” to refer to a group of people because the idea of using non-gendered pronouns really annoys them.

Now I can think of all sorts of reasons gathering this data would be important and some of them have nothing to do with reducing discrimination and humanizing a marginalized group of people.  But really, that’s the most important reason.

If you are a politician, you should give a shit about everyone. And if you are going to count everyone, you should learn to understand what everyone means.

You shouldn’t avoid learning where some people are because their existence makes you uncomfortable.

Holocaust Survivor Murdered in France

An 85 year-old-woman who managed to escape a mass roundup of Paris Jews in World War II was stabbed in her home in what is being reported as a hate crime. In other words, some white supremacist/Nazi assholes killed her because she was Jewish.

And maybe because she was a holocaust survivor and they were upset they didn’t manage to kill her off the first time.

Shit like this still happens and it is the problem with saying that we are living in a post racial society. It implies that racism is gone and we don’t have to deal with it any more.

It isn’t. And we do. Because 85 year old holocaust survivors aren’t safe from racist assholes.

Apparently, The Right Doesn’t Know What a Nazi Salute Looks Like

Oh hey – speaking of Nazis!

As mentioned earlier, there was a big anti-gun rally this last weekend. One of the leaders of the movement was photoshopped tearing a copy of the constitution. Another wasn’t photoshopped at all. And yet…

This is a picture of student activist David Hogg.

As you can see, he is holding his hand up in the air. A right wing conspiracy theory that was (until the tweet was deleted) supported by Roseanne Barr says that he is giving a Nazi salute.  Content warning: what follows is a picture of a Nazi salute:

Now I understand if you hold your right arm in the air, it is universally understood to be a Nazi salute. I mean, nobody does one armed pull ups with their right arm any more because they might be mistaken for a Nazi.

That’s pretty amazing since there are folks arguing that holding tiki torches and chanting “blood and soil” does not indicate someone is a Nazi.

So as you can see, David Hogg is holding his fist up in the air and – holy shit! That’s his right arm! I mean, his hand isn’t flat as it is in every fucking picture of a Nazi salute I could find online that wasn’t this one picture of David Hogg but that is clearly his right arm!

He’s a Nazi!

I mean no he’s not. It’s just his right arm raised in the air. Do you know why he raised his right arm in the air?

Probably because he’s right handed.

Or is this guy also a Nazi?

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