The War on Christmas is escalating to violence!

Fox News has been promoting this strange new sin: the failure to say “Merry Christmas”. Some woman who was raising money for the Salvation Army — an organization for which I have absolutely no sympathy, but that still doesn’t warrant assault — was struck for saying "Happy Holidays".

Kristina Vindiola said she was ringing a bell outside the Walmart to raise money for the charity when a woman took exception to her saying "Happy Holidays," KNXV-TV, Pheonix, reported Tuesday.

"The lady looked at me," said Vindiola. "I thought she was going to put money in the kettle. She came up to me and said, ‘Do you believe in God?’ And she says, ‘You’re supposed to say Merry Christmas,’ and that’s when she hit me."

The Christmas War is taking an interesting turn. The Christians are going to battle it out among themselves over who is the most pious, while the atheists stand by the side deploring the whole silly shenanigans. But then, that’s what Christians have done best, historically.

Brown people must be amazingly limber, I guess

It’s a clear case of suicide. Jesus Huerta died of a gunshot wound to the head. While in a police car. Handcuffed. With his hands cuffed behind his back.

A Durham teen died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, Durham Police Chief Jose Lopez said Wednesday afternoon at a news conference.

Lopez held a 3 p.m. news conference and started by extending condolences to the family of Jesus Huerta, who died in a police cruiser in November. Huerta was 17.

He said the noise heard by the officer was a gunshot, and said it was a gunshot wound to the head.

Lopez said a handgun was found in the car and that Huerta was still handcuffed from behind. He said the wound was self-inflicted.

Mr Huerta’s amazing physical talents will be missed. To not only be able to contort his limbs in a way that I can’t even imagine, but to be able to make large metal objects mysteriously appear in his presence…he must have been the greatest magician who ever existed. A rival to Houdini.

At least we still have Chief Jose Lopez, who has to have the greatest poker face in the world to be able to make that announcement. Don’t ever play cards with him!

Besides, if you did win by some miracle, you might have an incredible accident afterwards.

Charting the landmarks on the road to revolution

One law for them, another for us. A tragic and fatal accident leads to an obscenely rich child, Ethan Couch, going to trial.

ethancouch

Prosecutors said the boy was driving seven of his friends in his Ford F-350 on June 15 when the car collided with a group of people on the side of the road on the outskirts of Fort Worth. They were Breanna Mitchell of Lillian, Tex., whose car had broken down, Brian Jennings, and Hollie and Shelby Boyles, who had come to her assistance, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported. All four were killed, and two passengers in the truck were critically injured.

The boy pleaded guilty last week to manslaughter and assault while intoxicated. He had been speeding, and had Valium and a high level of alcohol in his blood, according to testimony.

Even with the excuse of youth — the boy was 16 — this is an egregious crime exacerbated by the irresponsible use of drugs. Prosecutors recommended a 20 year jail sentence; his wealthy parents hired a psychologist who argued that it was all the parents’ fault, and that he was spoiled rotten.

“He never learned that sometimes you don’t get your way,” Miller said. “He had the cars and he had the money. He had freedoms that no young man would be able to handle.”

He used the term “affluenza,” which describes the ennui and depravity of certain very rich people, and which was popularized by psychologist Oliver James in a 2007 book by the same title.

The end result? For killing 4 people and maiming two others, he got probation.

The boy will be sent to a private home near Newport Beach, Calif. that offers intensive therapy. His parents will pay for the therapy, which can cost $450,000 a year or more.

All hail the Ancien Régime!

How many has Oprah killed?

Read this excellent long form expose of James Arthur Ray, the New Age guru who had been promoted by Oprah and who then ended up scamming swarms of people and killing a few of them in a ridiculous sweat lodge ceremony.

Or watch the video.

Or do both!

Daytime talk shows do a really good job of pandering to gullible people and elevating con artists like Ray as “spiritual leaders”. Oprah has been pushing phonies and frauds for years, poisoning the citizenry with nonsense…and getting obscenely rich in the process.

The United States is unsustainable

Sometimes, it’s the little things that just add up and fill me with rage. Like this report on bank employees.

Almost a third of the country’s half-million bank tellers rely on some form of public assistance to get by, according to a report due out Wednesday.

Researchers say taxpayers are doling out nearly $900 million a year to supplement the wages of bank tellers, which amounts to a public subsidy for multibillion-dollar banks. The workers collect $105 million in food stamps, $250 million through the earned income tax credit and $534 million by way of Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, according to the University of California at Berkeley’s Labor Center.

We are all supplementing banks so that they can screw over their employees at the bottom, and throw more of their cash to the owners at the top. The plutocrats want it both ways: they want a complete absence of regulation so they can continue to plunder profits, and they want poor, desperate people to do their labor for a pittance, with government aid. You might argue that banks have faced all kinds of problems lately, so maybe they’re lean from top to bottom, but we know that’s not true.

Profits at the nation’s banks topped $141.3 billion last year, with the median chief executive pay hovering around $552,000, according to SNL Financial. In contrast, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics pegs the median annual income of a bank teller at $24,100, or $11.59 an hour.

monopoly_banker

This cannot continue, and I’m getting too old to want to live through a revolution.

Why would any parent do this?

You’ve just had a baby boy! You’ve brought him home from the hospital, you’re getting into that routine of late night feedings and too frequent diaper changes, and you think, “Hmmm. What this situation really needs is for someone to take a pair of scissors to this little rascal’s penis.” I don’t get it. But apparently, home circumcisions are a thing, and there are “professionals” (using the term loosely) who are so committed to their hobby of chopping up baby penises that they’ll resign from regular work to commit to the practice.

As part of the BBC investigation, an actor phoned up Dr Siddiqui and asked him to conduct a home circumcision on their baby. He agreed, in direct contravention of his GMC ban. Since then, and after discovering he had been exposed by the BBC,  Dr Siddiqui has resigned from his NHS job. The astonishing consequence of that resignation is that it now allows him to resume conducting circumcisions, which it appears he fully intends to do.

Yes, you did read that correctly. Circumcisions are completely unregulated in the UK, and anyone – you, me or the local barber – can set up a business cutting off baby boy’s foreskins at a hundred quid a pop.  Any doctor under the employ of the NHS, however, is bound to the regulation of the GMC and the Quality and Care Commission. A circumcision conducted in a hospital, with anaesthetic and surgical implements is carefully controlled and subject to monitoring and audit. A circumcision conducted on a kitchen table or in a community centre is completely unregulated. There are more regulations surrounding the piercing of an ear than the surgical amputation of a foreskin.

Weird. You know, if a guy made a habit of going around kissing baby penises, he’d be locked up on the spot, but add some sharp knives and olive oil to the process, and suddenly it becomes an honored and respected traditional folk practice that must be allowed to continue without interference.

All rape problems solved for all time!

A revelation! Women have had a perfect way to protect themselves from rape all along, as defense attorney in a rape case explains.

"All she would have had to do was to close her legs . . . it’s as simple as that," he told the jury. "Why didn’t she do that? . . . The reason she didn’t do that was because the sex was consensual, as easy as that."

Just…close…your legs, and you’re impervious to rape? This crime has been perpetrated throughout civilization for thousands of years, and now for the first time ever, a lawyer has had the stunning insight into all they’ve ever had to do was execute this trivial little maneuver with two appendages. This evidence was irrelevant:

When he tried to kiss and grope her she clearly said no, and was clearly saying no as he bent her against a wall and raped her.

It doesn’t matter if you say no, if you fail to make the Impenetrable Closed Legs Maneuver.

No word yet on whether this brilliant argument got his client off.

The assault always happens twice

Another day, another woman reports abuse from a skeptic leader. Pamela Gay describes the aftermath of being groped in a bar.

And I hate myself for wishing this would all just go away, instead of wishing that there could be justice. But I guess I fear that justice has a price I don’t have the life blood to pay for.

Over and over, I have made the choice, “what happened isn’t worth raising a stink about. Don’t ruin everyone’s [fun/con/career]“. Over and over, I’ve made the choice, “Yeah, that guy (but he was drunk!) slapped my butt in passing, but he is a leader at what he does, so I need to just get over myself and work with him.”

I hate myself for this.

I hate myself because I made the choice that not raising a fuss was more important than my self worth.

Read that again. It’s fucked up. But it’s who I am, … and when I read the hashtag #RipplesOfDoubt a few weeks ago, I realized how often we women make that decision. I’m fucked up, but I’m not alone. Too many of us fill our heads with euphemisms and excuses. It’s so much easier to think, “It’s a drunk guy being a drunk ass.” It hurts so much more to say, “I had someone try and sexually assault me.”

It’s a double strike. First there’s the assault proper, and then there’s the unwarranted guilt and self-recrimination afterwards.

It’s awkward for a man on the outside, too: I want to say, “Fight back.” I want to say, “You don’t have to suffer; you aren’t required to speak out.” But I don’t have the right to tell the victim how to process her situation, so I just have to stand back and support whatever decision she makes.

Slate tells women how to stop getting raped

It’s easy. Women should stop drinking alcohol.

“I’m not saying a woman is responsible for being sexually victimized,” says Christopher Krebs, one of the authors of that study and others on campus sexual assault. “But when your judgment is compromised, your risk is elevated of having sexual violence perpetrated against you.”

Don’t you love the passivity of it all? You will have sexual violence perpetrated against you. By whom? Apparently some invisible malevolent spirit will home in on your inebriated self and commit crimes. There never seems to be a perpetrator present in these scenarios.

Next week, Slate will advise women to wear concealing clothing, eschew makeup, and well, just don’t bother to step outside your home. Because, after all, if the only agent in this story is you, and rapists are just vague hypothetical beings who simply respond to your cues, there’s no point in addressing them and it’s entirely up to you to defend yourself.

By the way, I hear that people who were in car accidents were voluntarily driving or riding in cars, and that people struck by objects falling off their roof were actually known to step outside their homes. Stop that.

Here’s another reply to that gormless Slate article.

Matthew Barnett, sleazebag and rapist

matthewbarnett

Matthew Barnett raped a 14 year old girl — he plied her with alcohol until she could barely stand up, and then had sex with her. He claims it was fully consensual (now where have we heard that before?) But the facts of the case are inarguable.

She was 14.

She was drunk.

He provided much of the alcohol.

One of his buddies videotaped the act.

He dumped the unconscious girl on the porch of her home — where she could have frozen to death.

He freaking confessed to all of the above to the police.

A 13 year old friend was also raped by another boy.

The boy said she had said no repeatedly, and he had sex with her anyway.

Open and shut, right? These boys ought to be in jail, or at the very least in the juvenile court system. This was a horrendous abuse and a ghastly crime.

But — are you ready for the ameliorating factors? — all of the boys involved were popular high school jocks. Matthew Barnett’s grandfather is a state congressman. And the goddamned town full of righteous assholes who populate Maryville, Missouri joined up to recite the sacred mantra of “boys will be boys” and to condemn and harass the victims. The victim’s mother lost her job because her employer didn’t want to go against the popular families; other kids threatened her on facebook and twitter; she was suspended from the cheerleading squad; her brother was booed at sports events; a girl showed up at a dance wearing a t-shirt that said “Matt 1, Daisy 0”.

The case was quietly dropped and never went to court. The victim’s family are still being treated as pariahs. Matthew Barnett is currently enrolled as a student at the University of Central Missouri, single-handedly bringing the average moral status of students there into the sewer of turpitude.

And he gloatingly left this message on twitter:

If her name begins with A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z, she wants the D.

He’s a disgusting human being from a corrupt little town. I’d like to see the case reopened, but he’s got trouble now.

(via Alyson Miers and Ophelia Benson)

A protest is planned for 22 October. Follow #OpMaryville and #Justice4Daisy for more information.

Also, the UCM Facebook page has been flooded with comments pointing out their rapist student.