I am utterly ashamed with America right now. On Monday, June 30th, 2014 the United States Supreme Court ruled on the Burwell versus Hobby Lobby case. The result was a 5-4 in favor of Hobby Lobby et al. The general gist of the situation is kind of like this.

• The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) mandates that employers provide health coverage for their employees.
• Part of that coverage includes contraceptives which more conservative business owners consider similar enough to abortion as to cross a line dictated by their religions.
• In ruling for Hobby Lobby et al, the Supreme Court has allowed these corporations to opt out of having to pay for contraceptives.

The ruling was made with reference to the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which was signed into law by Bill Clinton back in the early 1990’s. That act prevents the government from interfering in the exercise of religion.

Monday’s decision was seen as a victory by not only the corporations with at least 50% of the controlling interest being held by one family with clear religious beliefs, but also by folks who don’t like Obamacare.

Both of those sets of people are assholes.

I don’t care about the Affordable Care Act. I don’t care about free exercise of religious beliefs. I care about women having access to birth control and other things which are entirely within their scope of what’s known to some people as “their own decision.”

Some people have made the argument that if you can’t afford birth control you shouldn’t have sex. Those people are even bigger assholes than the previous two groups. At least for people concerned with religious beliefs and people concerned with sticking it to the Commander in Chief, being a part of either group isn’t inclusive of being a dick. If you can honestly say something as cold as, “If she can’t afford it then maybe she shouldn’t spread her legs,” then guess what? You are an exemplary example of a ruthless jerk!

Anyway, while I do support all of the stuff that women are concerned about there’s a much simpler reason for my ignominy and it stems from an even more base thing that Americans seem to have a problem comprehending: logic.

These same corporations, during their hiring process, cannot discriminate against potential employees who don’t share their religious values. THEREFORE, the very same law that prevents such treatment also prevents the corporation from forcing those values upon said employees since that would be the exact same discrimination.

That’s the end of the fucking discussion. That trumps the exercise of religious freedom – which, by the way, is a thoroughly disingenuous rallying cry for anything that anyone does in its name. Want to have a discussion about abortion? That’s fine, it’s a perfectly acceptable topic. But don’t operate a for-profit business in the United States if the issue means that much to you because you’re hiring from a diverse crowd who, guaranteed, will not share your views.

There’s talk of liberal idiots saying to burn down Hobby Lobby stores and whatnot, as well. If you’re a person of sound mind and you see talk of such things, please take appropriate action and report it. This is a tremendously important issue but it certainly doesn’t warrant violence or vandalism.

Hey jerks, before I get into things, let me just make it known that I’m aware my choice of title for this rant is kind of counterproductive. It also grabs attention.

Okay: my special lady showed me this article that a friend of hers posted on Facebook the other day. If you don’t want to read it, it’s an article about public breastfeeding. It contained this sentence:

Anytime the issue of public breastfeeding is discussed, there is always a man who makes the statement that if a woman is allowed to “whip out her breast” in public, he should be allowed to do the same thing with his dick.

It then showed some screenshots of dudes saying pretty much that, and listed some pretty good reasons why penises do not equal breasts. I commend the article for taking on such a ridiculous comparison and they did a fine job explaining why that conflation is absurd. Despite my desire to do so, I could not do a better job. I did, however, wish to have a go at the opposition to public breastfeeding in general, since I have a particularly useful point of view on it.

Aside from my idiotic brethren who spout fallacious arguments like the one I quoted above, there are still innumerable people who are a little less malicious in their wording but nonetheless walking around with asinine views on the matter. One of the most common “less aggressive” things that people tend to say is, “Why don’t women just cover up?” They are referring to nursing shawls, pieces of fabric mothers drape over themselves and the baby which allow breastfeeding to occur in a more covert manner. There are many women who prefer to do so and that is perfectly fine but nursing shawls, and the request – sometimes, the demand – to cover up centers around what I consider to be an even bigger fallacy than the penis::breast claptrap.

What you’ll hear in almost all instances – be it a woman at a restaurant breastfeeding, a woman on the subway, a woman on a park bench – is that the breastfeeding is either offending someone or making them uncomfortable. “I’m sorry, miss, but your nursing is causing these other people discomfort.” I’ve got two pretty simple words for the people who see a woman nursing and think it’s gross or uncomfortable:

Grow up.

You see, I used to feel the same way as recently as five years ago. I hated kids, I hated parents, I hated everything having to do with children. As an extension of those things I so loathed, breastfeeding was just another unacceptable injustice I had to endure from “breeders.” Aside from that, I was also of the opinion that it was gross. If I saw it, my internal monologue said, “Yuck, that is disgusting.”

Well guess what happened? That’s right, per my advice above, I stopped acting like a stupid child and put on my grown up pants. I’ll have you know that some things haven’t changed: I still don’t think babies are cute, I’m still annoyed when my friends with kids post pictures of those kids constantly on Facebook, and I still get annoyed by screaming children when I’m in public. The big difference is that now I just deal with it. I stopped sexualizing everything around me and moved on, like an adult.

That’s another part of the problem that society seems to have. There’s nothing actually gross or offensive about a baby nursing. If I, a person who does not find babies to be cute, sees no problem with the act then that should probably be a pretty big sign. However, large swaths of people view breasts sexually and that is the only context they can see them in. From that point of view, I guess I can see how they would then jump to such a non-sexual activity being kind of off-putting. You guessed it, though: that’s immature.

So mothers, nurse your babies in public. Here’s a nice list of the laws and such surrounding the matter.

I was going to write a really long diatribe about how the United “States” are done for.

I was going to do that because of the combination of asinine Supreme Court rulings, the death of Net Neutrality, and the government thinking things like drone strikes or spying on its citizens are okay. In my mind, it would have been a magnificent piece that detailed the various failings of the country and some thoughts on when it all started to go wrong. I’d even planned to end with some humor: joking about how things were going to change when I became Supreme Dictator of Earth.

I became really depressed, however, as I was writing. This happened because things aren’t going to change. The U.S. is just going to keep getting worse. Liberals and conservatives are going to disagree and divide themselves further, the same people on the effective payrolls of the same big businesses are going to keep getting elected and passing lousy laws that harm the people, and whichever President is in charge is going to keep making grandiose speeches about how Americans are a strong people who innovate and succeed.

The republic has failed. The United “States” are no longer a thing: corporations are king, and the regular people who continually get screwed over by them let it happen.

I was going to say something about how you should always vote the incumbent out of office, and how I envisioned that leading to politicians actually doing the right thing but that’s delusional.

This isn’t a country of innovators and people who succeed, nor one that promises every person a fair shot. This is a country of unethical thieves with the means to keep themselves in power.

America sucks, end of story.

(AP) – The state legislature of Arizona today passed a controversial bill which will potentially allow business owners to deny service to handicapped customers, under the assertion of it being in line with their misanthropic beliefs.

The bill passed the state House of Representatives handily, 51-9, and garnered huge support from Arizona businesses. It now is one step away from being law, needing only to be signed by Governor Jan Brewer, a Republican and misanthrope who has owned a small business in the past. When asked what she would do, Brewer told the Associated Press, “If a business owner doesn’t like someone then they should be able to refuse them service. This isn’t discrimination, this is protecting the freedoms of people who don’t like other people.”

The measure is drawing criticism from various groups, including the Muscular Dystrophy Association and United Cerebral Palsy. A spokesman for Stephen J. Bennett, CEO of United Cerebral Palsy, issued the following statement: “This bill allows private individuals and businesses to use misanthropy to discriminate. It sends the message that Arizona is intolerant and presents the possibility of needless litigation.”

Tom Winshaw, the owner of a gastropub in Kingman, is one of several local businesses boycotting the bill. “It’s insane. There are so many other problems we could be focusing on, like the homos or all of these damned immigrants!” Winshaw later disclosed that he is also against the bill because his wife is blind.

In a televised interview with a Fountain Hills news station, Arizona state Representative John Kavanagh, a Republican, said that the bill would protect various types of employees and owners from the, “increasing number of activist judges who seek to empower those who discriminate against misanthropes for their beliefs.” The Rep. went on to state that Arizona is only looking to protect liberty with the bill.

In Kearny, a small town outside of Globe, the owner of a McDonald’s franchise welcomed the measure. Roberta Gillson has been the operator of several McDonald’s stores in the area for at least 20 years and expressed her hope that Gov. Brewer would sign the bill into law. “I can’t tell you how many complaints I get from customers who aren’t disabled but want to park close to my restaurants. It’s a real financial burden maintaining those spots along with keeping my wheelchair access ramps up to date. This is going to be a huge boon for me because I can just refuse service to the disabled now, and I’ve been forced to tolerate them impinging upon my liberty for too long.”

Rep. Chad Campbell, a Democrat from Arizona, said, “This is truly a very sad day for Arizona. I can only hope that the Governor does not sign. Let there be no doubt: this bill claims to protect freedom but what’s to stop someone from simply claiming a person is disabled to deny them service? This is very dubious, and if we were having this conversation in regard to African-Americans there would be tremendous outrage.”

In a statement, Marcus Ableton, the president of the Center for Arizona Truth and Freedom – a conservative group opposed to disabled rights – said, “This bill has a very simple premise: that Americans should be free to live and work according to their beliefs.”

I apologize for my “srs bsns” post here. (“Srs bsns,” for those of you not in the know, means, “serious business,” in a tongue-in-cheek way.)

Sign This Petition For Net Neutrality

On January 14th a federal appeals court struck down the FCC’s rules for ISPs prohibiting them from restricting or otherwise managing web content. Not sure whether you want to sign the petition for Net Neutrality? Check this graphic out.

Since ISPs are not classified as “common carriers” regarding the services they provide, the FCC is now no longer able to keep them from managing their network traffic. Immediately following the ruling, the big companies released statements claiming that they would not do anything. Please double-check the graphic above if you believe that statement. They are corporations and, as such, that plan makes 100% sense from a business standpoint. It’s a good structure to get more money out of people and they would, honestly, be complete fools to willingly avoid switching to it. So disregard their fake assuaging – it’s going to happen at some point… unless we do something.

So sign the damned petition already!

(Credit for the chart graphic.)

Check this crap out

So Nigerian lawmakers passed a bill that invoked a jail sentence and some other dumb punishments for gay people – even for just having a gay organization. Today, Goodluck Jonathan signed it into law.

I commented on this development on Facebook but, unfortunately, Facebook is not a good forum for calling out this kind of stupidity:

1. The majority of Facebook users are dumb. This is evidenced by their lack of attention to spelling or grammar, sharing of hoax articles, and presence of teenagers.
2. There are religious folks on my friends list and while I truly don’t care if I offend them for believing in Space Grandpa, I also don’t want to hear them bitch and moan about how I’m rude or whatever.
3. I mainly try to keep things only semi-serious where Facebook is concerned.

A head spokesman for GEJ said the following:

“More than 90 percent of Nigerians are opposed to same-sex marriage. So, the law is in line with our cultural and religious beliefs as a people.”

On Facebook, I said, “Your cultural and religious beliefs are bad, and you should feel bad,” in the style of Dr. Zoidberg.

Here, I say then that means that more than 90 percent of Nigerians are useless human beings. I’m glad knowing that I am smarter than them. Is there any way we can take all of the Fundies from America and ship them over to Nigeria? It sounds like they’d have a fun time. Of course, they’d have to contend with Boko Haram but since they are war-loving assholes it shouldn’t be that big of a deal for them to adapt.

This wouldn’t be Insult.org without commentary on the stupidity of Americans and this week it hit a hilarious low. Additionally, I would not be me if I didn’t jump all over the opportunity to call someone a racist and/or a homophobe.

So you probably already know about the Duck Dynasty guy.

I’ll forgo my typical tirade about the lunacy behind this man’s motivations. I know, rare! Instead, I have something different to offer up mainly because there seems to be a huge portion of the populace that doesn’t understand the concept behind freedom of speech.

This man has a right to say what he wants. The government did not retaliate against him, his company did. His freedom of speech has not been impinged. Most employers have conditions in the contract of employment you sign. It appears his did. What he said apparently violated a condition. It is legally acceptable to suspend or terminate him based on that.

It is perfectly legal and ethical to have an employment condition against hateful speech. It is absolutely not legal or ethical to have one against a person of a protected class. Expressing an opinion of a protected class (in this case, a religion) is not inclusive of the class.

The most offensive thing here is this man is part of a reality television show, which should not be a qualification for being interviewed by GQ.

His “beliefs” are stupid, yes, and anyone defending him is a racist and/or a homophobe. But there are two forces at work: the amount of inappropriate/outrageous required to maintain the attention of the trogs who watch this drivel and the amount of inappropriate/outrageous required to be noticed by the intelligent people who don’t watch this drivel. The network certainly knew what they were getting into with this show – an argument can probably be made they picked these morons specifically because of their asinine beliefs – and this Robertson fellow crossed the line by bringing his nonsense to the GQ interview. The street of blame in this city of idiocy is not one way.

But to those who think this is a freedom of speech issue, your opinion is bad and you should feel bad.

End of discussion.

I would be remiss were I to avoid commenting on this budget thing going on at the Capital. So here I am, Bitch-Mode™ enabled and my rant in the chamber of the Insult firearm.

Republicans. What a bunch of children. Obviously, they’re running contrary to what I’m about to say but I’ll say it anyway: You don’t get to use the federal budget as a means to attack policy, regardless of your feelings about that policy. So those Republican cretins can sit there and spout off how they were elected to defund/dismantle the Affordable Care Act all they want but they are no better than Bill Cosby’s daughter in the bit from “Himself” when he forbids the cookie and catches her trying to retrieve it.

Her: “I was getting the cookie for you!”
Him: “Well I don’t want it.”
Her: “Oh, can I have it?”

This budget dance is blatantly disingenuous.

Democrats. I know I harp on Republicans a lot – I mean, they are easy targets – but don’t think you’re safe from the scorn. You imbeciles are just as disconnected from reality as everyone else in power. The average health care exchange cost varies from state-to-state but just to demonstrate I’ll use a low-ball: $84.00 per month for a single 25 year-old guy in Michigan, may have been elsewhere, making $25,000 per year. That’s the base plan and it’s a little bit less than the penalty. I know that roughly $1,000 a year doesn’t sound like much. I know that $84 a month also doesn’t. This is how I know they are in fantasy land, though: ask anyone making $25,000 per year – regardless of their age/marital status/number of children – if $84 every month is affordable.

It isn’t. I’m not even going to explain because if you don’t get it based on the base plan example then you won’t understand. This is the problem with the ACA.

Don’t read me wrong on this one: I get that Republican members of Congress have constituents who are genuinely concerned about this cost, and they feel they are doing the will of those people who voted for them (and I get the sense that a lot of Democrats don’t seem to be on that page). The alternative, however, is no insurance. While a lot of people seem to think they don’t need it, those people are being stupid.

So for the Republicans: You have to let this play out so we can work out the problems and make it better. Health care is essential so there’s no keeping the current system as is. End of discussion.

And for the Democrats: The ACA doesn’t go far enough so the costs are still too high. You need to be paying extensive attention so that it can be updated quickly.

With all of that said, here’s what needs to happen:

1. Immediate halt of payment to Congress from the “mandatory fund” until a budget is passed.
2. Immediate halt of benefits to Congress until a budget is passed.

That would motivate those numbskulls.

I’m sure you thought you were safe from my ranting because I’m a liberal. Well, you believe in a fairy tale: so you get picked on as well. With that, I have four words for you.

Shut the fuck up.

America does not belong in Syria. We should never have made the threat in the first place. Your opinion on the matter is of no consequence and I’m, frankly, tired of U.S. politicians kowtowing to your whims on the basis of you being America’s ally in that region. You’re not going to suddenly stop being our allies and if you do, good luck.

“Oh, Calliander is an anti-Semite.” Nope. I’m treating you as ‘fairly’ as I would treat any other religious organization, which is to say not fairly at all. I’m not an anti-Semite, and I’m not even going to qualify that with examples of Jewish friends or whatever like an anti-Semite would do. As I say to people who think I target Christians/Muslims/whoever unfairly: I care not what your flavor of faith is – only that you have it.

So Centaur sent a Tweet to Robert Zimmerman, who is apparently making decent use of his 15 minutes of fame (don’t worry, no hashtags were used since they are for mongrel idiots) courtesy of his brother having killed Trayvon Martin. I couldn’t agree more with the content of the message but since Tweets are so short I wanted to go over what it’s all about, especially since a few folks have re-Tweeted it. Centaur and I share the same mind on this issue, even if we diverge at gun bans – my views on a gun ban would probably be grouped into the “conservative” column.

Apparently, this media mastermind posted a picture of Martin giving the middle finger (obtained from the kid’s Facebook or something) next to a picture of the kid who killed a 13 month-old baby in Georgia, who was also giving the middle finger. The pictures were accompanied by, “A picture speaks a thousand words. Any questions?” Well, actually, I have a lot of questions but I skimmed through this guy’s Twitter profile and he seems a little confrontational to anyone not friendly to his stance, so I get the sense that asking a followup to the middle finger pics would not answer anything for me. In summation: while taking a picture of yourself giving the middle finger and posting it online is juvenile, it certainly isn’t enough evidence for someone to derive a full profile of your personality or to intimate that it proves your guilt in a crime. If Zimmerman had posted a picture of Trayvon Martin at a Nickelback concert, on the other hand, that is proof-positive of guilt.

Anyway, that’s not the issue here. Zimmerman followed his picture up with another Tweet concerning the events in Georgia:

Lib media shld ask if what these2 black teens did 2 a woman&baby is the reason ppl think blacks mightB risky.

I’ll do my best to try to decode this from Douchebag: “The liberal media should ask if what these two black teens did to a woman and her baby is the reason people think blacks might be risky.” Let’s look over the fact that typing like that is an offense as serious as being a Nickelback fan, and focus on the actual message here. Robert Zimmerman is telling us that because the person/people who committed a heinous act are black that The New York Times should run a front page headline about whether blacks might be perceived as risky by the general populace. I’m assuming that, “ppl,” or, “people,” in his Tweet is meant to convey society as a whole. I almost checked the ‘Comedy’ checkbox for Category of this rant as a result of that. I mean, the implication is absolutely preposterous to the minds of pretty much every thinking person since you can change out “black” for “asian” or “white” or anything else, leaving you with an equally hilarious misstatement. There’s really only one instance where that statement isn’t absurd, but we’ll get to that in a few paragraphs.

As one could expect, Zimmerman was called out for saying that. He even got to appear on that fuckwad Piers Morgan’s show. I didn’t see that clip but I’m going to assume Morgan pretty much spent the entire time talking over him. Now, he had a choice at this point: he could have owned up to what he said and apologized, or he could have backpedaled and tried to “explain” what he meant. What did he do?

I realize those were controversial and offensive and I did publicly apologize for them. I’m a human being. I’m being upfront about what I did. I made a mistake. We’ve been led to believe that it’s a junior-high-school-aged person because of the pictures. The analogy is these are two people who chose to represent themselves in this way. One was accused of killing a baby, and whatever’s in his social media makes the rounds immediately. However, the other person who almost killed my brother had he disarmed him — my brother had every indication to believe he would have killed him — his social media is off limits.

Nice combo, Rob! “I made a mistake. Now let me tell you what I really meant…” (Obviously, he didn’t say all of that in a row, I just combined them all into one block for ease of reading.) Hats off to your attempt at bringing the conversation back to the middle finger pictures. For the record, Zimmerman’s point about Martin’s social media being off limits is actually valid, even though nobody believes his brother seriously thought his life was in danger. That’s what makes this situation so masterful. Anyway, Centaur’s Tweet read:

Your remarks were not a mistake: Why apologize? Never issue an apology for something you feel strongly about.

Why do we feel like his remarks were not a mistake? Let’s go back a few paragraphs: There’s really only one instance where that statement isn’t absurd, but we’ll get to that in a few paragraphs. At no point in my life have I ever made the “mistake” of saying something even remotely like what Zimmerman said. None of my friends have done it. Not even when drunk (and anyway, drunken words are sober thoughts). What Robert is saying is that his brother was justified in being suspicious of Martin, even though it’s established that the kid was not doing anything wrong. As I stated in my original discourse on this matter, I suspected George Zimmerman – while maybe not a racist – certainly profiled Trayvon Martin as a result of his skin color. I still don’t know if I think George is a racist but it’s pretty clear that his brother is. Racists think and say things like what Robert Zimmerman said, and then when they get called out on it by the rest of society they try to pass it off as, “Oh, I was just so heated about this issue and I said things I shouldn’t have.” Obviously, he was trying to defend his brother – which would rile anyone up – but he could have done that in any number of other ways without making a parallel between Trayvon Martin – a young man who was doing nothing wrong, just in the wrong place at the wrong time and unfortunate events resulted – and De’Marquise Elkins – a young man who shot and killed a 13 month-old child.

Conservatives like to come to someone’s defense any time someone perceived as liberal calls someone a racist, because they feel it’s overused or misapplied. I can understand that sentiment – shit, I think people get labeled anti-Semitic too easily when they are just being general assholes – but you can’t look at this situation with an objective eye and conclude that Robert Zimmerman’s mistake was his choice of words: His mistake was putting them out there for the public to see.