Shit That Pissed Me Off – 4/11
While I think the situation in the Ukraine is alarming, I also think that there is very little the US can (or should) do about it. I don’t know if that is because I know where the Ukraine is on a map but it seems clear there might be some relation.
In a very interesting survey, the Washington Post found that the less you knew about the Ukraine, the more likely you were to think we should get involved.
The map in the article shows where respondents placed the Ukraine on a map. It’s pretty troubling when you see that more than one person chose Australia. Or Greenland.
Yes. Some of the dots are in the fucking ocean.
Now, there is a possibility some of these people were dickishly selecting the wrong location just to skew numbers.
Even allowing for that, people are forming opinions about something they know nothing about. I’ll bet if they were educated about the situation, though, they wouldn’t change their minds. People are dumb that way.
Shit that Pissed Me off This Week – 5/24
Florida Teenager Faces Felony Charges for Being a Lesbian
Actually, she isn’t facing felony charges for being a lesbian. She’s facing felony charges for statutory rape because she was having a consensual relationship with a girl who was 14. When she was 17, that was (at least according to the articles I’ve read), legal.
But she turned 18. And her girlfriends’ parents immediately had her arrested.
Update: Apparently it wasn’t legal when she was 17 because if you are under 16, you can’t have consensual sex with anyone in the State of Florida. It would seem they waited until she was 18 so she could be charged as an adult. Classy.
And the county prosecutor is going for it. Because the law is all about protecting the innocent and that fourteen year old was clearly being corrupted by her girlfriend the second she turned 18. There is, apparently, no nuance in statutory rape laws that takes the age of the offender into account. ‘Cuz an eighteen year old may be older than a fourteen year old but she is just as much of a child.
Oh sure, you can hold her hand now. But you’d better let it go before you turn eighteen!
If she had been a boy, I’ll bet this would not have happened.
Hey, you folks who are against same-sex marriage and who still think that you aren’t bigots – don’t you think getting an eighteen year old girl expelled from school and possibly putting her in prison because she’s a lesbian seems just a little bit bigoted?
Update: There is a lot more nuance to this case. I checked my sources before I posted it but bias is always a risk. I’m still annoyed by any situation that could have a child (and yes – an eighteen year old is still a child) sent to jail for fifteen years because of sexual curiousity. If there is one thing that scares the piss out of us in this country, it is human sexuality.
Shit That Pissed me off This Week – 10/5
I don’t care how you feel about it – voter fraud is a red herring in the Voter ID debate. There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud and further, no evidence that voter ID laws will prevent fraud.
Also, we’ll need to draw some blood.
What Voter ID laws will do is make it more difficult for college students to vote without getting a new drivers’ license in the state where they attend college. It will make it harder for seniors who no longer drive to vote. It will make it harder for a lot of people to vote and that pisses me off because voting is one of the most basic rights we all have in this country.
We shouldn’t make it harder to vote. We should make it fucking easy to vote. That way more people will vote.
All that aside, isn’t it a bit suspicious that the party who is most strongly pushing for voter fraud is responsible for voter fraud? I know it’s just one guy but that proves my argument. This sort of thing is not widespread.
What are they really trying to do with these amendments? Because it would seem what they aren’t trying to do is stop voter fraud.
Grail Diary 