Shit that Pissed me Off – 7/13/18
Minneapolis Police Detain Two Black Kids Because Someone Reported the Kids had a Gun (They Didn’t)
So I’m just going to start local because I’m from St. Paul.
For those of you who aren’t from Minnesota, St. Paul is the Twin City right next to Minneapolis that you never hear about because Prince wasn’t from here.
Anyway, these kids were hanging out at Minnehaha Falls park and apparently dealing with some harassment from a white teenager who was calling them names. Racist names. Also, he was telling them he had a knife. No word on what happened to the racist white kid, by the way.
The police showed up, guns drawn, because there was a report that the kids had a gun. They didn’t.
If Bruce Willis had been in Minnehaha Park with a gun, they would have just asked for his autograph.
Did I mention the kids were between nine and twelve years old?
At least two of them were handcuffed, one of them without his shirt. He was begging for his shirt because he was being bitten by mosquitoes.
The cops didn’t give the kid his shirt because fuck that child for having been the target of a racist attack! Or something.
So you can’t even be a black kid hanging around in a park these days. But you can totally be a white racist.
The incident is “under investigation.” I’m sure the police officers feared for their life (I mean those kids might have had a gun) and the fact they traumatized some pre-teens will result in a firm reminder that you shouldn’t handcuff a fucking nine year old when they’ve done nothing wrong.
Shit that Pissed me Off – 6/29/18
Walgreens Pharmacist Denies a Woman Miscarriage Medication
Walgreens allows their pharmacists to refuse service should they have a moral objection to the prescription being administered. I guess that’s OK because you wouldn’t want anyone…
…Hang on….
It isn’t OK. In this case you had a woman who wanted to have a baby and was about to miscarry and the pharmacist basically shamed her by publicly refusing to fill the prescription.
This pharmacist has a job to do. And the bullshit idea that his deeply held religious beliefs should prevent him from doing his job is completely backwards. He still should do his job.
We all have to do shit we don’t want to do all the time. A lot of us don’t like our jobs but we still do them. I don’t like driving when other drivers are on the road because all other drivers are awful. I do it anyway. So pharmacist guy should just do his fucking job and hope god forgives him for doing the job he decided he wanted to do.
I’m sure there is a biblical passage that supports such an act. And there is also one that condemns it. They might be the same passage.
Because if this exists, you can use the Bible to justify damn near anything.
This case is even worse, by the way. He could have gotten another pharmacist to fill her prescription (per company policy). But he didn’t. Because his opportunity to shame her for what he viewed as an immoral choice (even though it wasn’t but it shouldn’t matter if it was) was more important.
And I know that we live in a world where bakers can refuse to make cakes for gay couples because it is OK to be a homophobic bigot as long as you can claim the bible is on your side. And that world means pharmacists can shame women for miscarrying without anything more than some online blowback.
But that doesn’t mean I have to like it. This shit is not OK.
Shit that Pissed me off – 3/18
Reporter Arrested at Trump Rally For…Doing his Job
This is the kind of thing that happens when your front-runner is a racist asshole*. Thing start to get out of hand.
Am I happy that counter protests turned violent at a Trump rally this week? No. I don’t know if anyone knows who threw the first punch but the point is that nonviolent protest should, ideally, remain nonviolent.
As soon as things get violent, it doesn’t matter who started it. People get hurt.
Note also some of the things that Trump supporters have shouted at this Reporter, who is Indian. Things like “Go Back to Iraq!”
It is possible that the statement was misinterpreted and he was being courted by a travel agent.
Trump is the kind of polarizing figure who tells people it is OK to judge people because their skin is the wrong color. He tells people it is OK to punch someone because they don’t like what Trump has to say.
And look – I know the Republican party is freaking out over the possibility of Trump being their flag bearer but they need to realize that they created this monster. The rhetoric of their party that includes people talking about “legitimate rape” and “religious freedom” is a rhetoric of intolerance that completely undermines any rhetoric about smaller government.
This guy is dangerous. And so are his followers.
Shit that Pissed me off – 6/26
Writers note: What with landmark Supreme Court rulings in favor of Obamacare and same-sex marriage this week, I contemplated taking a week off. I mean, why be pissed when two things I strongly support are taking their victory lap?
Sadly, there are still things that piss me off. Please accept, though, that I am writing this week’s column with a satisfied smile on my face.
What the Fuck is Wrong with Clarence Thomas?
While Antonin Scalia can be counted on for red faced dissenting opinions in which he bemoans the fact that social liberals exist, much less occasionally win, Thomas’ dissent in the same-sex marriage case is positively draconian.
In it, he suggests that slaves in America and the Japanese Americans who were interred during WWII did not lose their dignity. He reasons (wrongly) that nobody can take away your dignity.
It seems odd that anyone would need to tell a black man how the system of slavery in the south was specifically designed to strip people of their dignity. It is certainly odd that I, a white guy, seem to be more aware of this fact than him. Calling a person “property” doesn’t feel particularly dignified.
While Scalia is bemoaning the death of our democracy, Thomas seems to be questioning the definition of our humanity. He wants to believe that we all have a limitless capacity for handling bullshit and the Government has no responsibility to make it stop.
If anyone here felt they lost their dignity, it was their own fucking fault!
Government can and has taken away human dignity. Today, it handed a little bit of dignity back.
What really bugs me about Scalia and Thomas is their dissent doesn’t feel like it is about law. They are personally pissed that they lost and because they are justices on the Supreme Court, they get to write a long dissertation on just how pissed off they are.
Guess what guys? So do I. And a nearly unmeasurable fraction of the people who read yours also read mine!
SUCK ON THAT!!!!
Shit that Pissed me Off – 6/27
Another Meme That Pissed Me Off
This one is about Global Warming:
Problem is, there was more sea ice in 2013 compared to 2012, true. But it was still far less than usual and it was, in fact, the sixth lowest amount of polar ice on record.
So look, if you, as someone with no scientific education whatsoever, are going to smugly post a meme about science, I would suggest you research the science first. The Google search to find out the truth of this meme took me two minutes.
You also need to learn a bit about trends.
You see, one data point is just that. One data point. If you see a graph that shows sea ice is gradually getting smaller and then see a data point that shows in one year the ice coverage went up slightly, THAT IS NOT A TREND!!!!!
Holy shit why isn’t that obvious? One data point is not a trend. Ever. There has never been a time in the history of data collection when one data point was a trend.
If you honestly want to argue with scientific consensus, use science. Don’t use a data point. Because that just makes you look stupid.
Shit that Pissed me off – 4/4
Idiot Climbs a Rock, Injures Himself and Sues the City for Creating Unsafe Conditions
This moron is probably going to win, too.
He saw a rock sculpture and thought it looked like a lot of fun to climb around on it. I don’t blame him. I would have thought the same thing. I would need a taser and some bungee cords to stop my kids from climbing on something like that.
Here’s a picture of one of my kids on a rock at Yosemite National Park. There are a lot of rocks at Yosemite National Park and he’s climbed on damn near every one of them.
There were no signs telling him he couldn’t so he jumped on the thing, landed awkwardly and tore his Achilles tendon. Ouch!
Now he’s suing the city. Because he did a reckless thing and hurt himself. Also because he probably has crappy health insurance.
Look dude, if you are going to jump on a rock because it looks like fun, you need to recognize the risks. If you don’t want to get hurt, don’t jump on the fucking rock.
The only unsafe condition the city created was they one they created when they allowed you to leave your house every morning.
Shit that Pissed Me Off This Week – 6/14
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is Off the Rails
Kennedy has long been an Anti-Vaccine crusader and I dislike the anti-vaxx movement with only slightly less zeal than the creationist movement.
I have two children on the autism spectrum. They were both vaccinated and I know two things:
1) Vaccinating my kids did not make them autistic
2) Even if it did (and it didn’t), I would rather have autistic children than children with Smallpox or Polio
You think this guy was happy he wasn’t vaccinated?
Kennedy and others like him have been pushing misinformation and, as this article proves, they are willing to name names. They people they name, however, never actually said what they are claimed to have said. Nor do the studies they cite actually say what they claim those studies say.
So all he is doing is engaging in character of assassination.
I get that big pharma is theoretically evil but here’s the thing – vaccines are not. Yes, pharmaceutical companies make money off vaccines. I guess that’s a price I’m willing to pay to ensure that my kids don’t get the measles.
Claiming vaccines cause autism is to make the claim that you understand a shitload more about autism than all the folks out there researching the condition.
And in the meantime, making people afraid of vaccines is contributing to the rise of diseases we thought had been eradicated. That’s what I call a lose-lose.
Shit that Pissed me Off this Week – 3/29
Woman Complains about Sexist Behavior at a Convention and she gets Harassed and Fired
I just don’t get it, really. A couple of guys were making sexist jokes while sitting in the audience for a panel about women coders and an audience member thought they were in the wrong. Yeah. I agree.
She asked the conference organizers to tell them to stop. They were asked to stop and they did.
Then all hell breaks loose because one of the guys loses his job.
Look, I don’t think the guy should have lost his job for that but I wonder if it was really just for that? Isn’t it possible he was shitty at his job already? Even he was “just” fired for sexual harassment (oh the humanity), the logical response should not be for other people on the internet to attack the woman’s place of work and get her fired.
Hey guys! Let’s use our computers to teach this uppity bitch that she shouldn’t complain when we call her an uppity bitch!
That’s the sort thing dicks do.
Unfortunately, there are an awful lot of dicks on the internet.
Update: Clarifications in the comments below. And in this article. She did send a tweet to the conference organizers, not a public one (at least according to what I read). I question any firings happening and the harrassment is completely unacceptable.
Mea culpa on this one, though. I usually research the articles better before I comment on them. I didn’t look into this one deeply enough. If I had, I would still have commented on it but been more clear about all of the details.
The results of this situation – both firings – look to be classic overreactions by both companies and that still pisses me off.
Shit that Pissed me Off This Week – 11/16
This is not all of the members of the Wisconsin Legislature, mind you. Just nine of them. One of them says the Affordable care act is “unconstitutional” (even though the Supreme Court said it wasn’t) and that is his justification for supporting a law that would get a federal employee arrested for trying to do his job.
You can’t make something unconstitutional by saying so. That isn’t the way the system works. If it did, I’d say the Citizens’ United ruling was unconstitutional and Super Pac’s would be instantly dissolved.
As a lawmaker, you don’t get to pick which laws you follow. That’s not the job you got hired to do.
You can try to change laws. You can try to make laws better. You can’t decide that the supreme court got it wrong (even if you believe they did) and then start enacting laws based on what you think they should have ruled.
Aw fuck it! We can just assume that whoever wrote the dissent got it right, can’t we?
Either you believe in our system of government and you work within the rules or you shouldn’t have run for office.
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