Shoot First -- Now Ask Questions

OK.  I'm not a lawyer.  I'm not a cop.  A gun owner, a parent, a district attorney, or a neighborhood watch guy.  I'm just a fictional bus driver. (Unless you're currently on the ShortBus, in which case, I'm just kidding.  Same time tomorrow.)

So while I'm certainly not an expert on law enforcement, I do watch the news.  And the worry du jour for the last couple years has been:  The right number of teams for the College Football Playoff.  Well, and also police shootings.

The Internet and the news and social media and the talk shows -- they've all been flooded with stories of the big bad policeman shooting down the unarmed in cold blood... or incompetence, or just stupidity.  And it's a problem.  I won't deny that.  It needs to be addressed.  But I do think that sometimes people get swept up in a frenzy and forget to see the forest for the trees.  Dateline:  Cleveland.

Crewsing for a Bruising

Well, it's been two days, and I still want to hang myself from a shower rod.

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a huge sports fan.  What my favorite sport or what my favorite team is depends on what time of year you ask me.

But I can say without hesitation that for the last decade-plus, my biggest sports obsession has been my hometown Columbus Crew SC.

Internment is awesome

I usually like to inject some humor into these posts, but this one has me just straight pissed.  So short and sweet:

Sad Mets Fan

OK, the Royals won.  Great.  Good for them.

I'm a Mets fan, but I actually mean that sincerely.  If they hadn't just made me hate them with the white hot intensity of 1,000 kidney stones, I'd really love them.  They just play the right way.  I don't know if I've ever watched a team that the word "relentless" was a better fit for.  Props to them.

But I do need to vent off a little of my feelings about my Mets. 

Sharia Law Arrives. Apparently. I guess.

OK, so here I was today.  Enjoying my birthday, driving the ShortBus around town to the various nuthouses, drunk tanks and churches, picking up my usual customers and going through generous quantities of Windex on the windows that they lick during their ride.  (OK, that's a fabrication.  I actually don't enjoy birthdays.)

And I'm wrapping up my day, and I check my Facebook feed.  And I see something that just riles me up.  It's a link shared by a friend of mine (who I won't name, as I don't want to embarrass him) to a right-wing propaganda page (who I won't name out of principle).  It's a photo of about a dozen people (women, presumably) dressed in the full head-to-toe burkas that are the trademark of the way Islam treats women.  It's a photo designed to spark immediate outrage in the minds of most Americans who, rightly so, believe that women should be treated equally under the law. 

The caption on this photo reads:  "Sharia Law has no place on American soil.  Please like and share if like millions of Americans you have had enough!!"

Caitlyn, Schmaitlyn

OK... so via someone's facebook feed last week, I was made aware of this:

(Edit:  Apparently, the source for the picture is gone.  It's a picture of Kaitlyn Jenner with a caption asking people to "like" if they agree that the media should be talking about things that matter and not this national freak show.)

Hmm.

I have two seemingly completely different takes on this one.

Faux News Strikes Again

Oye.

I don't really mean for all my posts to be about religion.  It's just that all the things that piss me off lately seem to be going that route.  And Fox News (a regular ShortBus customer) provided me with another headscratcher this week.

This YouTube clip comes from a channel I subscribe to called Secular Talk.  The guy providing the commentary is Kyle Kulinski.  I won't go on forever, because he sums up most of what I felt when I saw this.

But the gist of it is, Madison, Wisconsin has become the first place in the country to pass legislation that specifically lists athiests as a group that can't by systematically discriminated against.  Yay!  About time, as far as I'm concerned.  In a country that provides freedom of religion, I think freedom FROM religion should be in that mix as well.

Well, needless to say, the brainless twits at the Republic of Fox don't see it that way.

Keep Thy Commandments To Thyself

Yes!  Finally!  A victory for common sense instead of whining.

http://www.nbc4i.com/story/28535731/marion-high-school-wont-put-ten-commandments-back-up

Marion, Ohio has been all abuzz an in an uproar over the idea that it might not be appropriate for a publicly funded school to post the Ten Commandments in their hallways -- you know, seeing that this is a country that has separation of church and state, and it's a religious document, and whatnot.

Hundreds of hysterical good Christians -- or as I like to call them, my ShortBus customer base -- lost their minds

Thou Shalt Not Bitch

OK... this is a little old by now, but I went on a pretty big rant on Facebook over it, and it's what gave me the idea of starting this blog to begin with.  I have no idea how long I'll have this, or how often I'll post to it.  But just in case Facebook and Twitter crowds don't want to read my ramblings, I figured I'd find another place to put my stuff. 

So welcome to KC's ShortBus.  The free transportational service I offer to those I'm bored with, tired of and pissed at.

My first offering:  a story about the Ten Commandments being taken down from a public school wall.