Shit that Pissed me Off – 1/4/19

I’ve taken a rather long break from Shit that Pissed me off for several reasons. So if you are a regular reader, I’m sorry you had to be pissed off without my help for the last month.

For the next three weeks, I’ll be on vacation. Hopefully, I will get one or two posts up over that time but if I don’t, it’s probably because I’m lazy.

Government Shutdown

We have a partial Government Shutdown going on right now. If you’d like to understand the impact on actual people, here’s an article written by a friend of mine who is a National Park Ranger.

Let’s explore what this is all about.

The border wall. Turns out that was easier to explain than I thought.

President Trump (goddamn it) wants five billion for his border wall that he has said Mexico is paying for through an unratified trade agreement that won’t actually pay for the wall. He already says the wall hasn’t been started/is already partially built/is basically finished. He just needs five billion dollars. Come on!

House Democrats have, so far, told him he can fuck right off. Senate Republicans have been wishy washy because they probably think his wall idea is fucking stupid (it is) but they are in the same party so they have to kind of support him even if they don’t.

End result, lying, narcissistic, delusional, racist, sexual predator doesn’t have money for his wall yet. So he’s shutting down the government and blaming the Democrats after he said he wouldn’t.

Hey look! The source of 98.2% of the fake news in America!

Essentially, Donald Trump is putting people out of work in order to get a border wall built so brown people can’t “steal” the jobs that Trump isn’t letting people do.

And I know that’s a weird analogy because most government employees aren’t picking lettuce in California.

He keeps talking about how much we need the border wall but the evidence is far from clear.

In the end, the party of smaller government is shutting down the government because they want more money for something that probably isn’t worth it. And they are pointing their fingers across the aisle rather than at the white house because they are still afraid to stand up to the bully who is theoretically the head of their party.

Much as I want to see this shutdown end, my hope is House Democrats avoid caving on the issue. I don’t need my tax dollars wasted on a bullshit wall that won’t do what Trump pretends it will.

Misleading Headline Suggests Police Killed an Innocent Man for No Reason when in Fact, he was Anything But Innocent

The headline says “Bodybuilder who was Tased by Cops after Allegedly Stabbing Woman Dies.”

You read this and it sounds like the cops were using too much force. And hell, maybe they were.

But if you read further, you find that this guy repeatedly stabbed a woman so violently that she will need facial reconstruction and may lose an eye.

I have a hard time feeling bad that the police tased him (they didn’t shoot him – they tased him) and he died.

I’m not saying “good – someone is dead.” I’m saying there is inherent unconscious bias in the way the headline was written. It minimizes what the guy did. Suggests that he is a victim when, in fact, he was a violent offender who nearly killed someone himself.

It’s a small thing. Maybe it doesn’t really matter. Except when you look at the way this attack on a woman was basically erased and the death of the perpetrator becomes the lede.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Shamed on the Internet for Dancing in College

Ocasio-Cortez is the youngest woman ever elected to Congress. She’s also pretty damn good and slamming the door on anyone who cares to criticize her. She basically makes every one of them look like idiots.

Apparently, they don’t like it very much. So one of the many trolls who seems obsessed with bringing her down found a college video that included Ocasio-Cortez participating in a video where she and other Boston College students recreated the dance scene from The Breakfast Club, they decided to post it and say she was acting like a “clueless nitwit.”

I could be crazy but having watched the video, I think Donald Trump would have looked like a lot more of a clueless nitwit doing the same thing.

I present exhibit A

It would also have been weird because he was in college something like twenty years before The Breakfast Club was in theaters.

I should also point out that in spite of the fact that everyone in the video was wearing Boston College clothing, the poster said the video was made while Ocasio-Cortez was in High School. Maybe it was just a subtle dig at Boston College. Sick burn, right?

So what is the point? Who cares, right?

Nobody, really. It didn’t hurt the freshman Representative at all.

But consider the deeper issues at play. Ocasio-Cortez is one of the largest contingent of women in congress ever. 38% of Democratic Representatives are women. It should be 50% but the improvement is huge. Not only are they women but a lot of them are women of color. In fact only 38% of Democratic Representatives are white men (compared to 90% of Republican Representatives).

So what these people are attacking are young women who are, likely, the future of the Democratic Party. And they are attacking them for being human. Seeing her dance when she was in college shouldn’t matter. Lots of women danced in college. Lots of guys danced in college.

Yet women get shamed for it.

That’s the issue at play here. Not the fact this attack on a woman in power is amateurish and stupid and still manages to get the simple facts wrong.g

The issue is women are targets just because they are women. Ocasio-Cortez may do great things and I hope she does. But she’s always going to have to deal with attacks her male colleagues won’t.

And honestly, if her male colleagues have integrity, they need to spend a little time pointing that out and doing something to stop it.

Meme that Pissed me Off

This meme is actually in response to the original post that is basically horrible. So while I appreciate the response, I want to go back to the original post for some discussion.

So what I see here is the idea that the original poster finds Muslim women and drag queens abhorrent. The very idea that their country (America) could turn into a place where a Muslim woman and a drag queen* could sit right next to each other on a bus is abhorrent to them.

Even worse, such a thing taking place is everything that is wrong with liberals!

Accepting both people of different faiths and sexuality/gender identity does indeed seem to be a thing we liberals like to do.

And I know there aren’t many conservatives who read this blog but just in case I found one of you – doesn’t it bother you a little bit that this future isn’t something conservatives want?

When did conservatism become the home of “fuck Muslims and GLBTQIA+ people?” Do you feel good about this?

If you do, hey, my apologies. You are a racist homophobe and you are good with it. Maybe it’s because of your racist, homophobic religious beliefs or maybe it’s just because you’re awful.

But I don’t honestly think most of you give a shit who rides on buses next to one another so long as they vote Republican. And the fact the loudest people on your side espouse this hatred is exactly why they never will.

Maybe you’re good with that. I certainly am.

But I just feel like this is one area where we could all find some common ground.

I’m probably wrong. But I’m way too optimistic for my own good.

*I should note that I’m not sure if the individual on the right is a drag queen. They look more like a drag queen than a transgender woman but I could be way off base on that assumption.