Category Archives: WTF?!

Imagine for a moment . . .

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. . . that CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) published a photo of Donald Trump with a scattering of bullets next to his head.  How about a Black Lives Matter tweet with photos of police and bullets?  Heads would explode.  Pundits would rant.  Investigations would be launched.  Conservatives would be outraged.

But this?  It’s apparently acceptable for a leading conservative cause to use this image:

Image: copy of tweet from NRA with showing photos of a black woman in a red-checked suit jacket and a white woman in a green turtle-neck and black suit jacket with four bullets arrayed next to the photos. Text reads: "sounding off on one of the most ridiculous anti-gun schemes introduced in some time.

Why isn’t this terrorism?  If terrorism is “the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims,” this certainly qualifies.  Violent intimidation in pursuit of political aims.  The only silver lining is that they are losing and this shows their desperation.

Domestic terrorism.

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We need to call it what it is:  terrorism, home grown and largely ignored.  Armed assholes occupying a federal building.  Terrorism.

Among those joining Bundy in the occupation are Ryan Payne, U.S. Army veteran, and Blaine Cooper. Payne has claimed to have helped organize militia snipers to target federal agents in a standoff last year in Nevada. He told one news organization the federal agents would have been killed had they made the wrong move.

He has been a steady presence in Burns in recent weeks, questioning people who were critical of the militia’s presence. He typically had a holstered sidearm as he moved around the community.

Source: Militia takes over Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters | OregonLive.com

Racial prejudice is driving opposition to paying college athletes. – The Washington Post

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The article makes very interesting points about the racial disparities in our views of paying college athletes.  But to a sorta kinda labor lawyer, the most striking sentence is this:

In survey after survey, strong national majorities oppose paying college athletes. In March 2015, for example, an HBO Real Sports/Marist Poll found that 65 percent of Americans do not think college athletes in top men’s football and basketball programs should be paid.

Image: Three football players, two in light blue uniforms, one in an orange uniform. The one in orange is African-American. He is carrying the football and jumping to avoid a tackle by one of the players in blue, who is also African-American. Another player in blue, race unknown, watches from the right. I have an idea:  let’s take a poll about whether we want other people who entertain us to be paid.  I’ll bet that if actors weren’t paid, Tim and I would not have had to spend $39.98 to see Star Wars: The Force Awakens.   While we’re asking whether we should pay college athletes, let’s also take a vote on whether college coaches should be paid.  How about other college employees?  Just think how cheap college would be if professors worked for free!

This poll should be dismissed as silly, but apparently asking consumers of entertainment whether the entertainers should be paid is not only a thing but a thing that is taken seriously by the potential payors.

 

Texas Governor Orders Founding Fathers/Constitution Display Removed from State Capitol (but the Nativity Can Stay)

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The governor of Texas removed an approved display involving the Statue of Liberty because . . . Texas has a budget surplus that it would like to redistribute to ACLU lawyers?

Source: Texas Governor Orders Atheist Display Removed from State Capitol (but the Nativity Can Stay)

BTW the headline originally read, “Texas Governor Orders Atheist Display Removed  . . .” but there’s nothing anti-God there, just pro-America and pro-Constitution.  Honestly, the full-support-for-civil-liberties-lawyers theory is the only one that really fits.

Pants

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Item 1:  Advances in Medical Modesty.  During yesterday’s installment of the Further Adventures of Amy’s Scoliosis, I was offered not only the traditional hospital gown, but these attractive . . . disposable basketball shorts?   Designed to be one-size-fits-all, they were really more like capris on me, but I did appreciate the coverage.

Image: a pair of hospital-blue enormously baggy and shapeless shorts made of some sort of reinforced paper product.

Item 2:  I have identified the Worst Pants Ever, possibly the Worst Clothing Item Ever:  Goat Suede Track Pants.  You might think this comes from a Seinfeldian parody of the J. Peterman Catalog, but it is actually on offer from the good folks at Orvis for the entirely reasonable price of $395.

Image: What more do I need to say than "goat suede track pants." They are rust brown, made of goat skin, and shapelessly elasticized.

I’ll just stick with my LL Bean mom jeans, thanks.

Centura Health Online Patient Portal Fail

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After a recent round of back xrays, I signed up for access to Centura’s online patient portal.  Xrays, these days, are just datafiles.  The last time I got a set to take from one doctor to another, I picked it up on a CD.  As I jumped through the online hoops to set up my Centura account, I thought “cool! that thing where you fill out a release and physically pick up your records is a thing of the past!”

Instead, I clicked on “Medical Records” and got this:

Online medical records portal failure

It reads,

Medical Records:  If you’ve been a patient in one of our hospitals, you may download a copy of the medical records release form, complete it and fax it to the entity where you were admitted to request your medical record.

Why not just have the xrays copied by monks onto stone tablets and delivered by the pony express!*

************

*Yes, lots of anachronism there, but NONE SO MUCH AS THE REQUEST TO FAX THEM THE FORM.

And the Pulitzer for Completely Missing the Point goes to

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Judith Miller

https://twitter.com/JMfreespeech/status/665314281219629057http://

So when one bad thing happens in one place, we should forget other things in other places that require our attention?  This is not the product of a mature or intelligent mind.

Starbucks’s Red Cup Heresy or Not The Onion, Part the One Thousand

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My friend Carrie linked to a response to the right-wing freak-out over the fact that Starbucks — on November 8 — is serving coffee in red cups.

Response?  To WHAT?  My first thought, of course, was that it was The Onion, but that bastion of journalistic acumen just can’t keep up.  Turns out, yes, the right wing is freaking out in early November that … honestly, I don’t know what.  Since I don’t spend much time on right-wing freak-out sites, I Googled “starbucks red cup” and got this:

Image: snip from Google news that reads "In the news: Why Some Christians Are Upset at Starbucks' New Holiday Cups. TIME‎ - 7 hours ago. The new cup, which is shades of red with the Starbucks logo, showed ... Starbucks REMOVED CHRISTMAS from their cups because they hate ... Christian evangelists claim Starbucks fanned 'war on Christmas' with minimalist holiday red coffee cups. New York Daily News‎ - 18 hours ago. Some Christians Are Extremely Unhappy About Starbucks' New Holiday Cups. Huffington Post‎ - 7 hours ago. More news for starbucks red cup."

Seriously?  SERIOUSLY?  It’s a “war on Christmas” when we are merely festive, instead of universally Christian?  When a random company celebrates with a color traditionally ASSOCIATED with Christmas, while not — six weeks before the date arbitrarily selected by early Christians to celebrate the birth of their savior — adding verbiage that highlights one holiday among the many that its customers celebrate?  Or did I miss the Rosh Hashanah cups and the Eid al Fitr cups and the Diwali cups and the Chinese New Year cups and the Flying Spaghetti Monster cups?

I’m not Christian, but it seems to me that Pastor Emily Heath gets it right:

Maybe this is the year that we can shift our priorities away from what doesn’t matter to what matters more than we know. Maybe this year we can set our sights a little higher than changing red cups, and instead try to change the world. And maybe this year we can stop yelling at others to “Keep Christ in Christmas” and instead focus on being Christlike ourselves.

So, here’s a suggestion of how to start: buy someone a coffee. In one of those red cups. Seriously, you will not go to hell for going to Starbucks this Christmas. But if you look closely enough, you just might find Jesus in the guy behind you in line. Because Christ is already at Starbucks, just as Christ is everywhere.

I don’t need his name on a paper cup to tell me that.

Hey!  It’s November 8!  Where’s my Montana Day cup?  Starbucks must hate the mountain west!  Outrage!

No, THIS is ironic.

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For all you Alanis Morissette fans who were left sort of confused about what is or is not ironic, THIS is ironic.

Image: Sign showing photo of red fox with this text: "Wildlife: For many years, a troop of foxes made their den on this prairie. Coyotes have been seen here occasionally, along with rabbits, field mice, and a myriad of insects. Look closely among the grasses! Look up, too, as many birds visit and nest here."

This is a new sign posted on the greenway that runs along the street across from our house, intended, I guess, to make us feel like we’re in the middle of the prairie rather than in a glorified median strip.  Yes, foxes “made” their home there, but the past tense is appropriate because THE CITY PLOWED THEIR DENS UNDER TO CREATE THE NEW, IMPROVED “PARK.”   Here is a photo of the foxes who MADE their home across the street from us before the city undertook to formalize the area as an official piece of prairie.  If you look closely in the first photo, you can see that the mother fox is nursing her kits.

Image: red fox standing on a small rise, wooden fence in the background.

Image: mother fox and kit playing on the grass with a house in the background.

I miss seeing the foxes trotting along our street, or sneaking through our fence when I open the back door.  In addition, since the Ironic Plowing Under, the rabbit population of the neighborhood has exploded, causing our retrievers to think they really are retrievers as they light off across the lawn in pursuit of a retreating bunny.

So this is a thing in southern Virginia

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Image: Virginia license plate with coiled snake and the words "Don't Tread on Me."

Which makes me laugh my behind off because back in the day – and maybe still today – the thing we were supposed to fear from gun registration is that when the commies took over, they’d know where all the gun-toting patriots were.  Now the bozos have all self-identified and registered their sorry behinds with the DMV, making it especially easy for the commies.

AAaaahahahahahahhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa…snort!