Facebook Beheadings, Obamacare Controversy, and More Bad News

Image of a cute building in Sparks, Nevada via 

Another month, another another American school shooting. This time, the shooting took place in the ironically-named Sparks, Nevada. After the 12-year-old gunman killed one teacher and injured two students, he shot himself. As usual, the “guns are bad” factions and the “guns are good, you pussies” factions took turns discussing the tragedy on blogs. However, unlike previous school shootings, the conversation surrounding the tragedy died down quickly. People tweeted about the news for about a day before moving onto Katy Perry-related humbuggery. Why was this shooting different? Maybe it was the fact that the kid was only 12, making the conversation around gun control laws more complex considering no laws allowed the child to access the gun. More likely, we're so desensitized to violence that school shootings no longer shock us, which is a predicament way scarier than anything you can see during Halloween.

Screenshot of the useless Healthcare.gov

Healthcare.gov is still giving potential health care buyers the virtual shaft on a regular basis. As a result, everyone is spending time trying to find out who is responsible for this mess. Some Republicans are using the site's bugs as proof that a comprehensive national health program is bound to fail. However, considering the GOP has been trying to sabotage Affordable Care Act from day one, these statements are equivalent to my jerk cousin popping all my tires on my car and then whining about me not being able to drive him to work. Nice try, Republicans.

Image of Cory Booker looking fabulous via 

I interrupt this recap of bad news to let you know New Jersey recently went from trash to flash, becoming the 14th state in the country to allow people who happen to carry around the same genitals in their undercarriage to marry each other. (Sorry about the trash to flash joke. I briefly switched bodies with Jay Leno. I'm back now.) The big superstar of the day—of course, seeing as the news took place in Jersey—was Newark mayor and political powerhouse Cory Booker, who shut down a homophobic protestor with ease and finesse. Basically, this week was another giant nail in the coffin of old-fashioned religious bigots who cannot stand the thought of penises going anywhere near male assholes. (For an example of Christian bigots, see this Christian couple in Kansas.) It's going to be fun to watch progressives start their next battle over marriage: getting rid of marriage entirely.

Image of a button we could really use on Facebook via

And now back to the previously scheduled bad news! For a few days this week, you could log onto Facebook and see grisly videos of beheadings. Unfortunately, Facebook realized they're not SomethingAwful.com.  Since Facebook is a massive corporation that makes billions of dollars because people feel comfortable enough to log onto Facebook at work, the company wisely went back to their original “no beheadings” stance and deleted the videos.

Image of terrible person via

The World Series is happening right now, the NBA season is about to get underway, and we're knee-deep in the NFL season (a.k.a. everyone's knees are exploding). In other words, it's once again time for elitists snobs to “show off” their lack of sports knowledge. You can spot these jerks because they say things like, “That's the one with the balls going into the hole, right?” These assholes don't realize none of us care if they follow sports or not. Some people get enjoyment out of watching others play sports and other people get enjoyment out of 80s pop-punk vinyl box sets. We all have silly distractions from life, whether it's sports, sex, grindhouse movies, or vintage comic books. All of these distractions are dumb. We're all big dummies. Let's all stop being mean and be big dummies together.

@RickPaulas

Previously - This Week's Bad News in a Thousand Words or Less