Priorities: A Snapshot

As much as people complain about the media, it is occasionally worth attending the self-inflicted wounds. To wit, Huffington Post readers:

• “Pro Wrestler Comes Out As Bisexual After Video With Boyfriend Hits The Web”

• “7 Signs Of A Nervous Breakdown”

• “7 Reasons Your Pee Smells Weird”

• “‘Girls’ Is Now Officially Unwatchable”

• “These Will Be The Best Places To Live In America In 2100 A.D.”

So, yeah. Trending. According to HuffPo’s metrics, this is what people are reading and promoting.

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Image note: “Trending” sidebar widget noting popular articles at the Huffington Post, 17 March 2017.

Louisiana: Helping Build Family Values … and Families

Begging your pardon, there are certain things we need to make clear. Let us start with two paragraphs from Judge Edward D. Rubin that bear actual life-altering influence:

The court grants the Petitioners’ Motion for Summary Judgment and denies the Defendants’ Motion for Summary Judgment. It hereby declares that La. Const. Article XII, Section 15 (the Defense of Marriage Act/DOMA) and La. Civil Code Articles 86, 89, and 3520(B) are unconstitutional because they violate the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and Article IV, Section 1, the Full faith and Credit Clause of the United States Constitution. Louisiana’s Revenue Bulletin No. 13-024 (9/13/13) is likewise declared unconstitutional as it violates the petitioners’ rights guaranteed by the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Hence, Tim Barfield in his official capacity as the Secretary of the State of Louisiana Department of Revenue, is hereby ordered to act in accordance with this court’s ruling and allow the petitioners to file their state tax returns as a couple whose marriage is valid and recognized in Louisiana. The court hereby enjoins the state from enforcing the above referenced laws to the extent that these laws prohibit a person from marrying another person of the same sex. Additionally, having ruled that the petitioners’ marriage shall be recognized by the state of Louisiana, it follows that Angela Marie Costanza has satisfied the requirement of stepparent under the provisions of La. Ch. C. article 1243, which allows for intrafamily adoption. The court reaffirms its previous decision in Adoption of (__) which declared Angela Costanza’s adoption of (__) to be in the child’s best interest. The minor child, (__), is declared, for all purposes to be the child of petitioner, Angela Marie Costanza to the same extent as if (__) had been born to Angela Costanza in marriage. As such, the court further orders Devin George in his official capacity of the State’s Registrar of Vital Records, to issue a new birth certificate naming Angela Costanza as (__)’s mother.

The State of Louisiana is hereby ordered to recognize the Petitioners’ marriage validly contracted in California as lawful in this state, pursuant to the Full Faith and Credit guaranteed by Article IV, Section 1 of the United States Constitution.

This is what it looks like when justice comes.

There is, of course, a backstory.

On Faith

Faith:

Two weeks ahead of the Super Bowl, half of American sports fans say they believe God or a supernatural force is at play in the games they watch, according to a new survey.

That percentage includes Americans who pray for God to help their team (26 percent), think their team has been cursed (25 percent) or more generally believe God is involved in determining who wins on the court or in the field (19 percent). Overall, half of Americans fall into one of these groups, according to the survey Public Religion Research Institute released Tuesday.

“As Americans tune in to the Super Bowl this year, fully half of fans — as many as 70 million Americans — believe there may be a twelfth man on the field influencing the outcome,” Public Religion Research Institute CEO Robert Jones said in a statement. “Significant numbers of American sports fans believe in invoking assistance from God on behalf of their favorite team, or believe the divine may be playing out its own purpose in the game.”

Football fans were the most likely to pray for their own teams to win, with 33 percent saying they ask God to intervene in games, compared to 21 percent of fans of other sports. They were also more likely to think their teams were cursed (31 percent compared to 18 percent) and to take part in rituals before or during games (25 percent to compared to 18 percent).

(Kaleem)

It is time to actually stop and think about this, for minute. No, no, don’t pray about it. Think.

Progress, Sure, but Whence Come We?

“Woo-hoo! I can go to the doctor now? I’m serious. I need to go.”

—Jeff Fletcher

Good news isn’t always … happy? … reassuring? It is hard to explain, of course, but amid the vicious politics echoing throughout the Beltway, it is easy to forget minor details such as the notion that there really are human stakes in this fight. As Jason Linkins recently reminded:

[T]he promulgation of an “Obama’s Katrina” metaphor firmly underscores the basic lack of real stakes involved for all of the people having that conversation. Obama is going to live well and without concern for the rest of his life. The vast majority of the lawmakers involved in the ongoing debate over the matter will as well. So will most of the pundits currently batting this meme back and forth. They’ll all be fine. Really, super fine, actually. They’re going to have terrific, largely worry-free lives ….

…. There has to be a great story out there about what life is like for normal human Americans who aren’t affluent political celebrities or who don’t enjoy a luxurious sinecure in Beltway punditry. But the saddest part of all of this is that the Affordable Care Act’s woes have created only a brief interest in the woes of ordinary Americans, and just how terrifying it can be for one’s life to depend on the kindness of insurance providers in the individual market. Right now, if you can proffer a letter attesting to the fact that you’ve lost your health insurance, chances are you can finally get a reporter who had never previously evinced interest in the matter on the phone.

It wasn’t always this way. A July 2009 study conducted by Families USA found that between January 2008 and December 2010, in the teeth of the economic downturn, over 44,000 Americans were receiving notice that they’d be losing their health insurance every week. The same people breaking story after story about those losing their coverage now had better things to do back when it really mattered. As with almost any story that we could tell about the rampant, constant, tragic economic insecurity of the average American, it only seems to swell up as a Thing That Matters when such plight can play a role in the Beltway parlor game of who’s winning and who’s losing.

That’s what makes the whole “Obama’s Katrina” construction such a multi-layer insult to normal people. It makes the assumption that Bush actually suffered some real material loss in the hurricane that hit New Orleans. He didn’t. It further assumes that some similar hardship is coming to Obama’s doorstep. This is only true if we define “hardship” as “no hardship at all.” It glibly trivializes the real people who have suffered in both instances—those who suffered some sort of devastation in the Gulf region, or those who have been dealt a hard blow in the insurance market. Finally, it only underscores the wholly transient nature of the media’s concern for the welfare of ordinary people. If their suffering can’t be translated into a telenovela about the electoral troubles of affluent political celebrities, it doesn’t merit coverage.

And there are important stories out there, good and bad, in the PPACA transition. Stephanie McCrummen provided The Washington Post, this weekend, with just such a compelling story. And, to be certain, it is good news out of Kentucky, but at the same time it’s heartbreaking.

For the Love of Beer

Despite learning a horrifying phrase at the end of the first paragraph, which I shan’t repeat here but consider yourself warned, it is, indeed, good to have a reminder that today is National American Beer Day.

Who knew? Well, obviously … er … um … never mind.

Right. Drink up, dreamers. And, yes, I’m pretty sure you’re allowed to call bullshit on the infographic.

And then try some more rousing beer-related trivia and suggestions, including bathing in the stuff, apparently, but I don’t care what anyone says—letting beer go flat so you can wash your hair with it is a sin.

Anyway, yeah. Happy National American Beer Day. Cheers.

Oh, right. The Unfortunately Requisite Disclaimer: Drink safely. Be well.

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P.S. — I would tell you to hug your favorite brewer, but, sorry, Dave, I’m not driving out for that. You know. Don’t drink and drive, and all that. And, well, it’s a football day. You know how it goes ….

Sharing the Wealth … of Suffering

Okay, so the basic rule is that I had to suffer through it, therefore you must suffer through it, too.

I know, it’s not much of a rule, is it?

The point being that by the time you read down that amazing sidebar list of stories from Huffington Post, it will be too late to realize that you really should have looked away.

For the record, my time stamp says June 30, 2013, 2:45 AM PDT.

Rule number one: Never have a folder on your desktop called “Organize This!”

Rule number two: Failing rule one above, clean the folder en masse, instead of file by file, saying, “What’s this one?”

There is no rule three.

At any rate, the Bob Cesca article that sidebar went alongside is worth a read, too. Yeah, I forgot all about that part, because, well … right.

Do Not Read This Post

So, hey, remember that time that dude went and put bleach in his kid’s bottle because someone told him it would help with breathing troubles?

Right. So, you’ve figured out to stop reading?

Because it only goes downhill from here.

Intervention, or, Never Mind, I’m Ranting

“Maybe you’ve got a little buddy there to help you eat a strawberry three times the size of your body, but we all die alone.”

—Huffington Post

No, really. Who writes this shit?

So, the setup is simply that I have a friend who adores turtles. A life passion sort of thing. Naturally, I am compelled, then, to forward her any turtle-related stuff I encounter in the n’ether^*. Such as a HuffPo temptation called, “24 Tiny Turtles Who Need A Reality Check”. And, yes, the pictures run the gamut from cute to fascinating, but perhaps the most striking thing is the open nihilism of the captions for the slide show. No, seriously, it is clearly somebody’s idea of a joke, but come on:

• “Do you think life is a game? It’s time to stop eating that strawberry and get a job.”

• “What could you possibly accomplish with your life? You’re smaller than a banana.”

• “Oh, look at us, we’re three tiny turtles all in a row. Well, NEWSFLASH: life is full of pain.”

• “Not only does this penny show your scale, tiny guy, it’s a reminder that you’ve never earned a penny a day in your life.”

• “Maybe you’ve got a little buddy there to help you eat a strawberry three times the size of your body, but we all die alone.”

These aren’t jokes. They’re fortune cookies pulled straight from the Devil’s ruddy bum.

And, no, the advice to not attempt to write comedy while hung over and jonesing for a rail has never really worked out well for anyone who has ventured forth from such crossroads.

Really, though: Who writes this shit?
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^* That would be “net aether”. No, it’s not some trendy word. I just thought of it. Figured to try it out. I mean, you know. I loathe cutesy words like interwebs, and the intertubes joke gets old after a while.

Yes. Arkansas.

“If we can’t shoot them, we have to at least be firm in our threat to take immediate action against them politically, socially, and civically if they screw up on something this big. Personally, I think a gun is quicker and more merciful, but hey, we can’t. But we have to do something, we have to gain control of our representatives, if we don’t then what the hell are we doing as a party except having fundraiser dinners and meetings just to raise more money for future meetings and fundraisers, and giving money to empower and elect those who would betray us without having the control to keep them in line once we do?”

—Chris Nogy

Chris Nogy is not happy. Indeed, the man formerly most famous for being married to a Benton County, Arkansas, Republican Party official has earned a new feather for his cap. John Celock explains for The Huffington Post:

Chris Nogy, the husband of a Republican Party official in Arkansas, suggested it was a shame that voters couldn’t just threaten to shoot GOP state legislators who voted for the state’s Medicaid expansion ….

…. Nogy did not similarly target Democratic lawmakers “as bullet backstops,” he wrote, because in voting for Medicaid expansion, they were simply doing what their party wanted them to do.

PoliticsUSA.com reports that Chris Nogy is the husband of the Benton County GOP secretary, Leigh Nogy. Benton County is located in the northwest part of Arkansas, bordering Missouri and Oklahoma.

In his essay, Nogy described Medicaid expansion as a “threat domestic” and said that Republicans “need to get a LOT tougher if we are ever to assure that events like those that took place this week don’t happen again.” He noted that his 13-year-daughter was returning a $200 scholarship and plaque from the Arkansas Federation of Republican Women in protest.

The angry essay has already drawn criticism from fellow Republicans. The Benton County Republican Party condemned it, saying that they do not support shooting Republican lawmakers. And Lt. Gov. Mark Darr (R) tweeted, “The party that gets rid of its crazies first will be the long term majority party in Arkansas,” according to The Arkansas Times.

So far, Nogy is not backing down, though it is worth noting that, sadly, extreme strangeness is hardly a rare phenomenon among Arkansas Republicans. Celock notes that last year, “it was revealed that former state Rep. Charlie Fuqua, who was seeking a return to the Legislature, had written that he wanted to give parents the right to have the state government kill ‘rebellious children,’ and he suggested expelling all Muslims from the country.” And we ought not forget Rep. John Hubbard, who last year published a book arguing, among other things, that—

The institution of slavery that the black race has long believed to be an abomination upon its people may actually have been a blessing in disguise. The blacks who could endure those conditions and circumstances would someday be rewarded with citizenship in the greatest nation ever established upon the face of the Earth.

Yes. Arkansas.

Sigh.

What, What, in the What?

What doesn’t kill you only makes you look … er … um … right.

Never mind. Andres Jauregui explains:

A man in China’s southeastern Guangdong province admitted himself to a local hospital after he reportedly got a live eel stuck inside him. According to British tabloid The Sun, the man inserted the 20-inch-long Asian swamp eel into his anus after seeing it done in a porn movie, and he had to endure all-night surgery to have it extracted.

According to a HuffPost translation of a blogger’s post on Chinese message board forum Mop.com, the eel reportedly chewed through the man’s colon, perforating his large intestine, and became stuck in his body cavity. A graphic X-ray image (seen below) shows how far inside the eel was when the man came in for treatment.

Medical team members reportedly said the eel, which was “simply trying to find its way out,” was alive when removed but died shortly thereafter. According to The Sun, the man is still recovering at the hospital and might face animal cruelty charges.

One might be inclined to inquire as to under what circumstances anal insertion of an eel seems like a good idea. Is there no moment in which one simply shrugs and says, “Yes, but it’s an eel!”

I mean ….