Thursday, June 27, 2013

SCOTUS with the MOTUS

It’s only Thursday, and it has been a crazy week, legally. First, the Supreme Court made it race-based harassment at work legal. In Vance v. Ball State University, a woman who sued the university because she was physically and mentally abused by an authoritative figure in the job had her case thrown out because the assailant wasn’t a supervisor. In University of Texas Southwestern Medical Centre v. Nassar, retaliation has been made legal when you report discrimination at work.

Then, in Shelby v. Holder, The keystone of the Voting Rights Act was repealed. Now states and counties with a history of disenfranchising certain groups of the population can go ahead and do it again without supervision. Plaintiffs can’t sue against the laws until AFTER an election, when it’s too late. The argument was that the United States has changed in the last 50 years, so we don’t need a law. This ignores that the United States has changed BECAUSE of the law. States and counties that were suspect but had a clean record for 10 years could petition to get off the radar of the Justice Department. The Supreme Court essentially said, “Well, this bus works great now that it has wheels, so let’s take off the wheels. It’ll be fine. Also, f*** the bus driver, and if he complains, let’s fire him.” It’s a bad week to be brown in the US.


On Wednesday, though, the Supreme Court deemed DOMA unconstitutional, and they shot down the Prop 8 case to the circuit court, essentially killing it. Justice Kennedy penned the opinion for US v. Windsor, stating in Section 2 of the Held Opinion that, “DOMA is a deprivation of the equal liberty of persons that is protected by the Fifth Amendment”. Justice Roberts dissented (p. 31), essentially claiming that the law was passed by Congress, and the Supreme court does not have jurisdiction to overturn something that Congress passed. Ignoring the fact that they JUST did that with the Voting Rights Act and the workplace anti-discrimination act the previous day, overturning something that Congress passes is WHY THE SUPREME COURT EXISTS! It’s called “checks and balances” for a reason. Anyone with a 5th-grade reading level who has actually read the Constitution would know and understand this. I know, because when I was 10, I READ THE F***ING CONSTITUTION. I still had to go to Sunday school, because though my claims of my religious rights being violated fell on deaf ears, but I still read it. Scalia deleted his 4-page “EEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWWWW!!” in his 20+ page opinion and brought up a bunch of things about tradition and also respecting the laws of the land (P. 35). He also claimed that the majority justices, with their decision, have deemed opponents of same-sex marriage “hostes humani generis”, or enemies of humanity. No joke. He said that . Page 55. I actually do agree with Scalia on the latin phrase. Anyone who wishes to revoke or keep rights that he/she enjoys away from any group of people is an enemy of the human race. Regardless, DOMA and Prop 8 are essentially down. It is a good day to be gay in the US.

Unfortunately, it is NOT a good day to be gay AND brown. Texas and Virginia and Georgia are already starting to implement restrictive voting laws that were previously shot down, and the ink hasn’t even dried on the SCOTUS opinions. Also, There are still 34 (36?) states that explicitly discriminate against gays with respect to marriage and adoption. There is still a lot of work to do, and it won’t be easy, but it will be worth it when the new Bull Connors of the world are foiled. So it’s great to celebrate the victorious battles, and good to reflect on battles lost, but the road ahead isn’t paved, so stay on point. Stop reading this stupid blog and start a revolution.

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Welcome to the Terror, Deen!

NEWS FLASH: An old, white southern woman once used the “n-word”! :-O Now the world has shifted on its axis!


Seriously, why is this a big deal? If you have been living under a rock, Paula Deen the celebrity “chef” who touted herself as the friendly grandma with a southern charmed show wants to slowly murder you by deep frying your arteries, got into a LOT of heat when it came out that she used the word “nigger” about 20 years ago or so. There is also an allegation that she harassed a female employee and imagined a plantation style wedding, complete with well-dressed black “servants”. This all came out in a deposition regarding a lawsuit brought against her.


She has gone on a whirlwind apology tour, recording Youtube apologies and doing the talk show circuit. This morning, she was on the Today show, teary-eyed, and again apologising for using such a terrible word. She even went as far as to say that anyone who HASN’T done something wrong like that should cast a stone at her and strike her dead.

She lost her Food Network contract, a number of endorsements, and her deal with Walmart. Now you KNOW that when Walmart, the main perpetrator of disseminating n-words, drops you, you’ve hit rock bottom. She pissed off a LOT of people. People are going insane, calling for her head. I almost feel sorry for her, but you do some messed up thing, and eventually it catches up to you, and sometimes the effects outweigh the cause. C'est la vie.


I’m mad, but I’m not THAT mad. Hell, I use the n-word every here and there. Usually, I don’t use it casually; only when I am singing along to Wu-Tang or passing by a Walmart. It’s all about context. What I’m mad about is that she thought it would be a good idea to have a PLANTATION THEMED WEDDING, complete with F***ING SLAVES!!!! What the hell? Given her history (her ancestors owned 35 slaves) and where she was born and brought up, HOW could she think this wasn’t offensive? The whole point of learning your past is to grow from it, not relish in the worst parts! SHe doesn’t deserve a show just for being a moron!

Still, the plantation thing is still not the most offensive thing she has done. Calling herself a chef when all she makes is culinary abortions is the absolute worst. She should be put away for slow genocide.

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

NSA Please...

By now, everyone knows about the NSA pulling phone records of American citizens for (what they say is) the purpose of fighting terrorism. The organisation explicitly went to Verizon and requested not some, but ALL of the metadata of phone calls made, to include the time, duration, location, destination, etc. I surmise that they couldn’t ask AT&T or T-Mobile, since their calls drop too much to be of any use (INSERT "BAZING" HERE).

People are going crazy. The administration is feverishly trying to explain why the programme is legal, and how they safeguarding for intruding on people’s privacy rights. I have not tuned in, but I imagine everyone at Fox News is having trouble delivering stories due to the multiple orgasms they are having that their wet dreams have come true. Sean Hannity is probably dead in a pool of his own love juice.

You know what? I’m mad as well. I am incensed, actually. Here’s why:
  1. Some of the same people who defended the Patriot Act, which pretty much paved the way for this PRISM programme, are the ones who are railing about this discovery.

  2. The whistleblower, Edward Snowden, is being demonised as a traitor who should be publicly hung. It is a little bit extreme. I highly doubt that revealing that the government is keeping tabs on everyone is going to cause harm by any of our political enemies. It’s an almost guarantee that Kim Jong Un is following this and saying, “Psh! Amateurs.”

  3. Snowden is also being idolised as some sort of privacy rights hero. That, too, is silly, because sure, he broke the law, but stop comparing him to freedom fighters of the past! He leaked info and ran away to another country! If he were so brave and staunch in his belief that this was an unjust programme, stand up and take the punishment that would ensue. How pathetic would Martin Luther King’s missives be if they were entitled “Letter from a Hong Kong Chalet”?

  4. Most everyone, including me, is doing more to be non-private that the government wouldn’t need to work that hard to spy on us. I’ve seen people post the most unimportant parts of their days (“Brushing mah teef!”) to some rather grave stuff. I’ve seen people put up stuff that was most definitely treasonous in nature, but now they’re all up in arms about the government examining them? Cry me a river.

  5. MOST ANNOYING: The US government has been tapping brown people’s phones since McCarthy, maybe even earlier. They spied on MLK, on Malcom X, and just recently they’ve been bugging mosques and perusing Muslim-run non-profits, all in the name of “national security”. Now all of a sudden, it comes out that the NSA got a little more diverse with their intrusions in our privacy and spread the Big Brother love to everybody, and NOW it’s a big deal? Give me a break!

No matter how democratic, every government is all about maintaining control and order. You can’t escape it unless you travel to an uninhabited island and start your own country, in which case YOU would eventually be the benevolent (or malevolent) overlord. Given the nature of humans, I just assume that every single government, no matter how “free” it is, is looking at what its citizens are doing. I learned this when I first attained a security clearance. They knew more about my past than I did. I’m all about privacy, but we’re fools if we think that we are immune to monitoring. We just need to make it interesting for our acronymed voyeurs. Sleep naked with a rainbow-coloured clown wig and matching merkin.

Tuesday, June 4, 2013

The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Cassandra [Something]

I went to the bar to get a drink or three,
You drunk and hot girl.
Bartender was master of Mixology,
You drunk and hot girl.
I wanted a wallbanger or negroni,
But then I noticed the red eyes of that creep,
His glare was literally giving off heat,
To drunk and hot girls.


...I spent a weekend in Ithaca, and wanted to get some good drinks from one of the best bartenders in town. He make drinks from the tears of baby angels, and they make you want to cry unicorn jizz and glitter. Unfortunately, I noticed a woman at the end of the bar, looking very not happy with the long-haired creepy dude staring at her and mumbling something that definitely did not enamour her with him. He kind of looked like a shaven extra from Duck Dynasty or something. She actually left and went to another part of the bar to avoid Creepy Dude. Twice. The second time, she sat right next to me.


I just wanted to sip on my negroni,
You drunk and hot girl.
You pulled up a stool and sat right next to me,
You drunk and hot girl.
You complimented me on my choice of apparel,
I asked if Creepy Dude was giving you hell,
No more negroni. It is time to repel
This drunk and hot girl.


...She struck up a conversation with me, and i immediately asked if Creepy Dude was causing her undue drama. He had those eyes that screamed, “In my spare time, I masturbate to repeats of ‘Ducktales’ while in a bathtub of a mixture of lemur blood and my own tears.” I wound up talking to her the entire night whilst keeping an eye on Creepy Dude to make sure he didn’t make any sudden weird movements. Before I knew it, it was closing time, and we had to go home.


It’s closing time and now it is time to leave,
You drunk and hot girl.
You said that you must get your phone down the street,
You drunk and hot girl.
The street you left it is the street I live on.
I thought it was best that you not walk alone.
‘Cause Creepy Dude was still glaring at your thong,
You drunk and hot girl.


I didn’t finish my awesome drink, because it was closing time. I asked Drunk and Hot Girl how she was getting home, and she said she was walking, but she had to get her phone from her friend’s house up the street, the same street on which I was staying! That’s perfect. We could walk together, and that would make me feel better about her walking off in the night, drunk as hell...I realised that in order to numb the annoyance of Creepy Dude, she just kept loading up on wine...She had at least 1.5 bottles within an hour.


I want to get you to your friends up the street,
You drunk and hot girl.
You swear that they’re west, but I know that they’re east,
You drunk and hot girl.
That Creepy Dude just crossed our path one more time
Your sense of direction is blurred by the wine.
I just want to make sure that you get home fine,
You drunk and hot girl.


I asked her how she was getting home, and she said she was walking but had to get her phone from her friend’s house, as she forgot it there. The house was on the same street as mine! We walked for a few blocks, and when I suggested we get on Borealis Street (two blocks east), she insisted that it was to the west, and that’s when I realised she was too drunk to know where the hell she was. As we cross an intersection, who, of all people is walking and glaring at us in the opposite direction? F***ing Creepy Dude...Seriously, I wish I was making this up.


We she traveled eight blocks but we only went two,
You drunk and hot girl.
You asked those people people who don’t even know you,
You drunk and hot girl.
At last, I got you onto the correct road,
I’ll get my car, then we can get your damn phone,
And finally I will get your silly a** home,
You drunk and hot girl.


After “following” her walking directions for a while, she saw some people and said, “Hey! Do you remember which number Greg’s house is?” They fittingly answered, “...Hi...we don’t know who Greg is...” Awesome. Now at this point, I could easily just pick her up and carry her to the right street, but then I’D be the a**hole...After circling the same four damn blocks, I finally guided her to Borealis Street, at which point I said that i would go grab my car keys and we could drive to Greg’s house and she can get a ride home. SInce the house in which I was staying was off-street and behind another house down a slightly dark walkway, I told her to just stay on the street, and I’d run and get them. When I came out, she was gone...probably the smartest thing she did that night. I drove up a block to find her stumbling aimlessly in the street.


I doubt you’ll remember a thing that happened,
You drunk and hot girl.
You wandered the dark streets inebriated.
You drunk and hot girl.
That Creepy Dude’s advances were deflected.
I tried to save you when you fell in that hedge.
At least I know that you made it to your bed,
You drunk and hot girl.


It turned out that she had no idea what address Greg’s house was, nor did she remember what the front porch looked like. She was so drunk, I doubt she remembered her name, even 2 ½ hours after we’d left the bar and wandered the streets looking for the house. I suggested we just get her home, and she can email/Facebook Greg about the phone in the morning. She then halfway guided me to her flat, which was 15 minutes driving on a highway. “You were seriously going to walk this at night?” I asked. “I was goinnnn-Zzzzzzzzzz...”, she replied. Thank goodness I asked her address for GPSing purposes. Depending on her for street directions seemed unwise. I got her home and made sure she got in the door and locked it behind her.


I am pretty sure that were she alone, or had I given up on walking her, Either her run-in with Creepy Dude outside the bar would have been a lot more unfortunate than just a glare, or she would have tripped on the bridge we crossed, and her body would be found the next morning. There is nothing good that can come of an extremely drunk person walking around in the dark aimlessly on and off the streets, as though cars don’t exist.


I promptly went home, tired as hell, ready to flop. My friend asked me sleepily, “How was your night?” I just said I’d tell her tomorrow. In my head, though I couldn’t stop thinking:


I’ve gone through too much bulls*** just to mess with these drunk and hot girls.


...Seriously, am I on a hidden camera show or something and no one is telling me?

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