Shit that Pissed me Off – 4/20/18
I will note this story actually happened late last week and a lot has happened since then. But in case you somehow missed it, let me sum up.
Two men entered a Starbucks in Philadelphia last week. They did not immediately order because they were waiting for a colleague. One of them asked to use the bathroom and was told the bathroom was for customers. They were then asked to leave. They refused because they were waiting for a colleague before they ordered. The police were called and they were arrested for trespassing. Which, I guess, they technically were.
But who cares? White people go into Starbucks all the time and nobody calls the cops when they want to use the bathroom before ordering.
The cops weren’t called because these guys were trespassing. They were called because the manager was uncomfortable. And the manager was uncomfortable because they were black.
Starbucks has responded better than most companies. Their CEO has apologized to the two men and on the 29th of April, every Starbucks will close for racial sensitivity training.
And white people are pissed. What are they supposed to do for their coffee?
Maybe you could just make our own fucking coffee for one, you lazy assholes.
Now one day of sensitivity training doesn’t erase the problem. As the article linked above points out, black people aren’t surprised by this story. They deal with this kind of thing every day of their lives.
So let’s hope Starbucks doesn’t check a social justice box and assume everything is OK. Because it isn’t. Read More…
Shit that Pissed Me Off – 4/13/18
Black Teenager Asks for Directions and Almost Gets Shot
Post racist America is alive and well in Rochester Hills, Michigan.
14-year-old Brennan Walker (yes – you read that right – he’s fourteen) missed his bus and he got lost. Sounds pretty scary, right? Not compared to what happened next.
Next, he rang a doorbell to ask directions. The woman who answered the door freaked out and said he was trying to rob them. Because most robbers ring the doorbell.
Her husband grabbed a gun and that’s when Brennan ran. As he was running away, the dude shot at him. Fortunately, he missed or Brennan would be a statistic and his murderers would be claiming they were in fear for their lives to avoid going to jail.
And they probably were.
Because they are racist fucks who freaked out when a black kid came to their door. The guy who shot at Brennan (who was convinced he was a “good guy with a gun”) is facing charges but we all know he’s probably going to get away with it. Because a fourteen year old kid asking for directions was a credible threat.
Maybe if he’d been selling girl scout cookies, they wouldn’t have shot at him. Oh who am I kidding? They would have claimed he’d stolen them.
What’s sad is Brennan’s mom told him this could happen. She warned him that people would be afraid of him because he’s young and black. The warning probably saved his life because he ran away from the murdering racists before they could murder him.
Isn’t it great, though, that the mothers of black young men need to prepare them for situations like this? Because they actually happen?
Shit that Pissed me off – 4/6/18
Anti Vaxxer asks Why Vaccines Aren’t the Bible
I think we all know that I find the anti vaccination movement one of the worst things in the world today. It’s hard that I can rank anything above our President but as of yet, he has done less real harm. He still has three more years, though (fuuuuuuck).
This particular anti vax kook has an argument that really puts her on the fringe of the movement since she has managed to combine being a naturopathic nut with being a complete right-wing Christian crazy person. It’s a neat trick!
She argues that vaccines can’t be good because god didn’t mention them in the Bible. Which, I must admit, is true.
What’s odd here is that right-wing Christians would freak out if I asked them why god didn’t mention cars in the Bible. Or airplanes.
And verily did Jesus say “I could spread my word more effectively if all my followers could help me buy a private luxury airplane.”
Because it’s stupid. Whether or not god wrote the Bible, smart people can agree he didn’t bring up stuff like vaccines and cars because it wouldn’t make any sense to the people who were reading it when it was written.
If god had written “Thou shalt yield to the driver on the right when stopping at a four way stop sign,” the hebrews would have said “what the fuck are you talking about god?”
And god would have said “It’ll make sense in a few thousand years.”
And they would have said “can we focus on getting out of this desert right now and then figure out what you mean by four-way stop sign?”
A similar conversation would have happened had Jesus said “How blessed are the unvaccinated for they shall have a lower risk of autism.”
But hopefully it would have involved a fact checker to tell Jesus that the study he was citing had been discredited. Read More…
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.
Shit that Pissed me Off – 3/23/18
Arthur Jones, Nazi, Wins Republican Primary in Illinois
Jones is a holocaust denier, white supremacist and unapologetic asshole. He’s such a fascist doucebag, his own party has been campaigning against him. They had to because he was unopposed.
He’s running in a heavily Democratic district represented by an anti-abortion Democrat who narrowly won a primary against a far more liberal opponent. He isn’t going to win.
But how the hell did he end up on the ballot? I mean, how is it that nobody noticed this fuck stick needed to have some opposition that was, at least, not quite so publicly racist?
Like this image! You probably won’t even notice it’s racist until I point out how racist it is!
I realize there are congressional districts that are not typically in play but here’s the horror scenario: say the current Democratic nominee turns out to be a sexual predator. You know, like our President.
Since he’s a Democrat, this would mean he could face a considerably tougher campaign and if the decides to stay in the race, suddenly his Republican opponent – a fucking Nazi – could pull an upset. Now, I’m assuming the Republicans would try to field an independent candidate or figure out some other way to keep this yahoo from being elected (that is currently what they are looking to do in the general election).
Still, he’s on the ballot in the R column. Which gives some measure of credibility to his point of view.
And the issues of the Republicans failing to keep this guy off of their ticket aside, twenty thousand people voted for him. He should have gotten one vote. He claims he’d get a vote from his wife but I’m guessing he probably doesn’t think she should have the right to vote.
Maybe a lot of those people didn’t know he was a Nazi. They just voted for the dude with the R next to his name.
So what’s worse, that some of those twenty thousand actually knew what kind of person they were voting for, or some of them would vote for any Republican and don’t even care if he is a Nazi?
Shit that Pissed me Off – 3/16/18
Minnesota Lawmakers Introduce a Bill to Put In God We Trust in Schools
Following in the footsteps of Florida Lawmakers, who are working on a similar bill, State Senator Dan Hall of Burnsville is the chief sponsor of a bill to ensure the phrase “In God We Trust” is posted in every Minnesota school. He argues that it is really about American History which explains why his bill also requires a poster with the phrase “E Pluribus Unum” posted Minnesota schools as well.
Ha ha! No it doesn’t.
Now the odds are this bill doesn’t go very far. At least we can all hope it doesn’t.
What seems so puzzling to me is that lawmakers like Hall think kids are incapable of thinking about god on their own. And even though he insists that the phrase “In God We Trust” is completely neutral since it isn’t “In Jesus We Trust” or “In Mohammed We Trust,” the fact that he’s a Chaplain and former Principal of a Christian school would suggest otherwise.
I am shocked, SHOCKED, to learn there is gambling going on in here!
Christian kids (and sure – any other non Christian kids who believe in a non-Christian god that is totally being represented by the sign) are 100% capable of thinking about god without a great big sign on their school wall. Such a sign represents a big old middle finger to any kids who don’t believe in god.
But seriously – who cares about them? They’re wrong anyway.
Shit that Pissed me Off – 3/9/18
Utah State House Makes The Worst Rap Video Ever
Mostly this is so bad it’s funny but you have to be a little upset at the fact they made this horrible and cluelessly racist video that uses the theme from The Fresh Prince of Bel Air (and titled “The Fresh Prints of Bill Here” – I’m not kidding) to educate children in a way Schoolhouse Rock did much better back in the 70’s at all.
Spoiler: This was not based on a song by Will Smith.
The mostly Republican and all white cast put together for the express purpose of teaching kids how legislation works while simultaneously setting poetry back several thousand years is hypnotically painful. Barely ten seconds in, there is a remarkable effort to make the word “chamber” rhyme with the word “there.”
It fails.
And while I’m sure whoever produced this video will argue that it is about how a Utah State Bill becomes law, it really is exactly the same process covered by a certain bill sitting there on Capitol hill. That video also didn’t feature a bunch of white people unironically trying to dance like black rappers.
The legislators featured in the video can almost be excused for their clueless behavior because it probably wasn’t their idea. But someone thought this up. And shot it. And edited it together. And at no point did it occur to them that what they were doing was going to be a spectacular failure.
Shit that Pissed me Off – 3/2/18
A Bunch of Teenagers are Running for Governor of Kansas
I’m not pissed about teens running for Governor. I think it’s hilarious that someone finally noticed there is no age restriction to be Governor in Kansas and while I’m pretty sure no teenager is equipped to do the job competently, being seventy hasn’t helped our current President any so what the hell?
Given the current law doesn’t even require a candidate to be human, the legislature is working on a fix but it won’t be in place before the fall elections so Kansas might elect someone who isn’t even old enough to be drafted.
Here’s what pisses me off – every single teenager running to be governor of Kansas is a white male. Some are Republicans. Some are Democrats. A few are members of other parties. But they are all a bunch of white males.
In Fact, the crowded field includes only one woman. She’s a Democrat and this is Kansas so she probably won’t win.
Oh shit. I’m back in Kansas.
So the real question we should ask here is: why is it that no seventeen year old girl decided to run? I mean, it is clear the law makes that possible given that a dog could run for governor so long as it could file the proper papers.
It seems that, at least in Kansas, young women are learning early that they should not speak up. They are being shown by the young men around them that politics is not a game for women of any age. That the boys know what they are doing.
Who am I kidding? It isn’t just Kansas.
Although the demographics show that more women will be running for office than ever before this year, this one state proves we have a long way to go.
And no, boys, I don’t want you out of politics. I want more women in politics. Read More…
Shit that Pissed me Off – 2/23/18
There is a New Division for Health and Human Services
This happened in January so excuse my tardiness.
The new division is the “Conscience and Religious Freedom Division” and it has been put in place to help health care providers avoid consequences for failing to treat people with whom they have fundamental religious disagreements. Like – say – gay people.
The division is, ironically, part of the Office for Civil Rights and when the new division was announced, director Roger Severino said, in part:
No one should be forced to choose between helping sick people and living by one’s deepest moral or religious convictions
No, Roger, they shouldn’t be forced to make that decision. So if they want to be a pharmacist but don’t want to fill prescriptions for birth control, they should be encouraged to find a job where being a judgmental prick doesn’t make it hard to do what they were hired to do.
Working here, for example, wouldn’t be any kind of problem.
Medical professionals are supposed to want the job because they want to help people. Not because they want to help some people. And the government certainly shouldn’t be in the business of protecting assholes who don’t want to operate on a gay man because he’s a gay man.
Welcome to the religious freedom crusade. It is the right wing Christianity tantrum that has been started in the wake of legalized same sex marriage. Those who want to push their own moral code on others have been told they don’t get to do that on a grand scale so they figure they would like to make it personal.
Sure, you two gentlemen can get married. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it and to prove it, I’m going to refuse to treat one of you. Or refuse to sell you a wedding cake. Or refuse to give you CPR. And I want to be protected because GOD.
Shit that Pissed me Off – 2/16/18
Utah Anti GLBTQIA+ Lawmaker Resigns over Allegations He Solicited a Prostitute
Jon Standard is a Utah politician who, like a lot of other Utah Politicians, is a Mormon and a Republican. He believes that “traditional” marriage should be between one man and one woman (but that’s only because the Mormon church no longer encourages bigamy) and recently helped pass tougher laws for people who solicit prostitutes.
He was forced to resign last week because he solicited a prostitute. He claims it is because his father has cancer and I feel very bad for his father because this jackass is using someone else’s terminal disease as an excuse.
John Wayne had cancer. Maybe he should have stepped down because of John Wayne’s cancer.
I’m sure that the right is going to say this one Mormon Republican lawmaker in an extremely conservative state who is likely to be replaced by another Mormon Republican lawmaker is being targeted for a hit job by this prostitute who is lying because she’s a prostitute and you can’t trust a prostitute.
I mean, she says he hired her to do a job and she did it so I’m feeling like she’s pretty reliable, you know?
Oh, and he may have used taxpayer funds to pay for the hotel where he hooked up with her. Smaller government!
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