Shit that Pissed me off 10/7
Trump Gets in Trouble for Something He Didn’t Do
No, I’m not talking about paying his taxes. Although he also didn’t do that. Though apparently having enough money to hire a really talented team of tax accountants and lawyers makes him “smart” rather than “rich.”
In this case, though, he is getting some heat for having said that soldiers with PTSD aren’t strong. Basically, he told soldiers who suffer from mental illness as a result of combat stress that they are complete wimps.
Here’s the problem though – that’s not what he said. And in context, what he said was clearly not meant to disrespect soldiers with PTSD. You need to twist his meaning to a dizzying degree to come away thinking he was even accidentally implying that having PTSD made you weak.
Trump says any number of horrible and outrageous things. It seems to me that those of us who justifiably think he is a buffoon and he should never hold elected office of any kind could stick to the string of stuff he actually said rather than manufacturing controversy where none exists.
Can’t we just hate Trump for who he is? I mean, that ought to be enough. Read More…
Shit that Pissed me off – 9/23
Tulsa Police Officer Shoots an Unarmed Black Man with Car Trouble
I mean holy shit. The guy has car trouble and he is clearly standing with his hands up talking to the cops. He goes back to his car for some reason (arms still up) and they shoot him.
He’s dead.
Now, the good news is that this is being treated like a criminal investigation because the officers murdered someone. The bad news is the inevitable backlash that will come as people say things like “well, he shouldn’t have been walking back towards the car” or “I wasn’t there so even though there is video, there is no way for me to really understand happened” or, of course “I’m going to withhold judgement until we have all the facts.”
We do have all the facts. He was unarmed. He had car trouble. He was black.
And now he’s dead.
Gene Wilder is also dead. But that is where the similarities end.
Oh yeah, and people have dredged up his criminal record that does not include any capital offenses as a means to justify the fact he was sentenced to death without benefit of a judge or jury.
How many more times does this need to happen until people stop trotting out the same bullshit arguments instead of acknowledging that there is a systemic problem?
This is not about that police officer friend or relative of yours who is a great person. They probably are. This is about a clear problem with the training of police officers when it comes to escalation and a problem with how our justice system is set up to excuse this kind of behavior when it occurs.
It isn’t that police officers are sometimes exonerated. It is that they are almost never charged and even when they are charged, they are almost never convicted of doing anything wrong.
Shit that Pissed me Off – 7/29
The Debate Rages Over Slaves who Built the White House
If you missed Michelle Obama’s speech at the DNC, she basically dropped the mic. At which point, she picked it up and dropped it again.
She killed it so hard, not even many Republicans had bad things to say. So they attacked the one thing that, you would think, no smart person would attack.
Obama pointed out that she lives in a house built by slaves. Because, you know, the labor that built the white house was at least partially slave labor. I mean Abigail Adams wrote about it. Fact checking what Obama said, it would seem that perhaps she could have said “partially built by slaves” to be more accurate.
Not that it should matter. She is a black woman in America and when she points out that her home was at least partially built by slaves, it shouldn’t fucking matter what percentage was built by slaves.
The response should be “good point, Michelle. As a white person, there is no way I could relate to how that feels.”
Instead, we are hearing that it wasn’t entirely built by slaves (so how many would be an OK number) and Bill O’Reilly told us the slaves were “well fed” (thanks for the good meal but I’d appreciate it if you didn’t sell my son).
O’Reilly definitely knows a lot about being well fed.
The fact this is a conversation should embarrass all of us. The white house was at least partially built by slaves and when a black woman living in that house points it out, you should think about what that means instead of being a nit-picky racist asshole.
Because seriously, lecturing a black woman on slavery is pretty fucking racist, don’t you think?
What’s Next?
I loved “The West Wing” and in that I was not alone. I think many of us – conservative and liberal alike – would prefer to vote for Jed Bartlet. We want that idealized version of a President to be a real person. He wasn’t a perfect person but he was thoughtful and compassionate and oh so damned smart.
When he had made up his mind on something, he’d simply ask “what’s next?” It was a good question because you are never done. There is always a next step.
I would identify myself as a Socialist so of course I was a supporter of Bernie Sanders. He was speaking my language and even if he didn’t get the nomination, I wanted the Democratic Party to know that I’m kind of tired of their rush towards the middle. I know a lot of other people who were excited about Bernie and who, for whatever reasons, hated Hillary.
They still hate Hillary. And now some of them seem to want to hate Bernie too. They feel betrayed because he is endorsing her and will be campaigning for her.
I’m not going to lecture anyone about voting third party. If you honestly think Jill Stein would make a good President (I don’t), vote for her. If you supported Bernie and are switching to Trump or Johnson, I don’t totally get it because he’s a Socialist and they are not. But it isn’t my vote. It’s yours. Use it however you feel is most appropriate.
Grail Diary 