Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Gableman changes his mind about that Rindfleisch appeal #JohnDoe #JohnDoeII #JohnDoe2

“A Wisconsin Supreme Court justice on Tuesday withdrew his unusual request asking for his colleagues on the state’s highest court to review its decision not to hear an appeal of a felony conviction from a former aide to Gov. Scott Walker.” – source Interesting. I feel loathe to speculate about this turn of events because more »

Supreme Court of Alabama Delays Same-Sex Marriages 25 Days

To no one’s surprise, the Supreme Court of Alabama is doing everything it can to avoid having to comply with the the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling mandating same-sex marriage nationwide. They’ve issued an order telling county judges not to issue any licenses to gay couples for 25 days, for a very disingenuous reason.

Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore said the state supreme court today issued an order that effectively keeps probate judges from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples for 25 days.

Moore said in his view the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Friday ending the gay marriage ban is now stalled in Alabama.

Parties have 25 days in which to contest the U.S. Supreme Court ruling before it becomes a mandate.

“In that 25-day period that (U.S. Supreme Court) order is not in effect,” Moore said. “The (Alabama Supreme Court order speaks for itself.”

Yes, technically the parties to a case (which Alabama is not) have 25 days to ask the Supreme Court for a rehearing. It never actually happens, of course. They just ruled, they aren’t going to change their mind in the next three weeks. And it’s extremely unlikely that either party will even ask for it. That’s why every virtually every other state is complying with the ruling now. But the theocratic bigots in Alabama will do anything they can even to delay justice for another few weeks.

They may also be buying some time to decide whether to get really defiant and issue an order telling judges and clerks not to comply with the decision at all, which would provoke a game of legal chicken that will end as badly for Alabama as it did the last time they tried it in the 50s and 60s. Hey guys, you know how the world thinks of George Wallace today as an arch-villain who opposed civil rights? You look like that too.

Monday, June 29, 2015

Justice Scalia’s Dissent

And now on the dissent of Justice Scalia, who joined in Chief Justice Roberts’ primary dissent but writes separately to, in his words, “call attention to this Court’s threat to American democracy.” Scalia, like virtually every other judicial and legal conservative, makes arguments against judicial review itself while pretending to make arguments only against the result of a particular case.

After saying, quite disingenuously I’m sure, that he really doesn’t care whether gay people are allowed to get married or not, he then proclaims that the only thing he cares about is the process by which that comes about. Should the people decide themselves through the referendum or legislative process or should “unelected judges” — like him — decide? After voting to strike down innumerable laws himself in dozens of cases for the past nearly 30 years, he suddenly has decided that the notion of judges overturning the will of the people is a terrible threat to democracy and the country:

Today’s decree says that my Ruler, and the Ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast, is a
majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court. The opinion in these cases is the furthest extension in fact—
and the furthest extension one can even imagine—of the Court’s claimed power to create “liberties” that the Constitution and its Amendments neglect to mention. This practice of constitutional revision by an unelected committee of nine, always accompanied (as it is today) by extravagant praise of liberty, robs the People of the most important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of Independence and won in the Revolution of 1776: the
freedom to govern themselves.

He is doing here what conservatives always do, just a bit more subtly. When he speaks of “liberties that the constitution and its amendments neglect to mention,” he is making the same old argument that if a right is not explicitly mentioned in the text of the Constitution, the government has full authority to regulate or prohibit it. But this completely ignores the notion of unenumerated rights and does exactly what the founders themselves warned against doing.

One of the great arguments that took place among the founders was over the need for a Bill of Rights. Some argued that it was not enough merely to limit government through such provisions as the checks and balances and separation of powers inherent in the governmental structure that the constitution provided. It should be set out in no uncertain terms, they said, not just what the government may do – the authority granted to the government – but also what the government may not do. Others countered that by specifying only certain rights, it would leave the impression that anything not specified would be fair game for the government to regulate or prohibit. James Madison, during the deliberations on the framing of the Bill of Rights, proposed the 9th amendment specifically to allay such fears. He introduced the proposed 9th amendment by saying:

“It has been objected also against a bill of rights, that, by enumerating particular exceptions to the grant of power, it would disparage those rights which were not placed in that enumeration; and it might follow by implication, that those rights which were not singled out, were intended to be assigned into the hands of the General Government, and were consequently insecure. This is one of the most plausible arguments I have ever heard urged against the admission of a bill of rights into this system; but, I conceive, that it may be guarded against. I have attempted it, as gentlemen may see by turning to the last clause of the fourth resolution [the Ninth Amendment].

This amendment passed both the House and the Senate with virtually no opposition, and little change in wording, and the final version of the 9th amendment reads, “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” But conservatives today, every time the court recognizes and protects a right not explicitly listed in the text of the Constitution, take the one position that Madison makes clear you cannot take, that the listing of specific rights means that no other rights exist that must be protected.

But as with the charge of “judicial activism” and “legislating from the bench,” they only do this when it suits their purposes. The Supreme Court has protected all manner of unenumerated rights that Scalia happily supports, like the right to send one’s children to private schools (Pierce v Society of Sisters) or the right to travel between states (Saenz v. Roe). Would Scalia rail against “unelected judges” who are now his “ruler” because they protected those rights? Of course not.

What is remarkably consistent is that when conservatives react most vociferously with this absurd argument is when it involves the right of people to control their own sex lives. They raged, and continue to rage, against the court’s ruling in Griswold v Connecticut, which protected the right to use birth control. And of course, against Roe v Wade. But Scalia himself also made this same argument in Lawrence v Texas, in which he said that “unelected judges” had no authority to not allow the states to throw gay people in jail.

Much like conservative politicians suddenly discover the crucial nature of “fiscal responsibility” the moment a Democrat is elected president, conservative judges and legal scholars, after gleefully cheering on “unelected judges” as they overturn laws they disapprove of, suddenly discover that judicial minimalism is the very cornerstone of a democratic society whenever a case involves someone’s right to control their own bodies and their own sex lives. Something tells me this is not merely coincidental.

But here is the weirdest passage from his dissent:

“Really? Who ever thought that intimacy and spirituality (whatever that means) were freedoms? And if intimacy is, one would think Freedom of Intimacy is abridged rather than expanded by marriage. Ask the nearest hippie. Expression, sure enough, is a freedom, but anyone in a long-lasting marriage will attest that that happy state constricts, rather than expands, what one can prudently say.”

“Ask the nearest hippie.” He actually wrote that in a Supreme Court opinion. And this whole passage is just bizarre. Is he trying to talk gay people out of getting married? Of what possible relevance is this to the legal issues at hand? It’s just more evidence that at this point Scalia is just the cranky old fart of the court, yelling at everyone to get off his lawn.

E.W. Jackson STILL Thinks Charleston Shooting Aimed at Christians

E.W. Jackson, failed candidate for lt. governor of Virginia, went on Gordon Klingenschmitt’s shitty little “tv” show and showed that he still thinks Dylann Roof murdered nine people because it’s part of a war on Christians. And, of course, demons!

While acknowledging that the shooter “was motivated by race,” Jackson was careful to point out that the fact that the attack took place in a church means that “this is clearly another attack on Christians and Christianity.”

“There’s increasing hostility against Christians because of the biblical positions that we’re taking in this sort of post-Christian world that we’re starting to live in and we’re starting to experience in our country,” Jackson said.

Yes, of course. Like when that guy shot up the movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, it was part of the war on movie theaters. And when people shoot up schools, it’s a war on bad cafeteria food.

Klingenschmitt then added that the shooter, Dylann Roof, was “demon possessed,” which prompted Jackson to declare that the shooting “was a demonic spiritual act.”

“We, as Christians, understand that there is more behind this than just a human being going in an attacking other human beings because of their race,” Jackson said. “The fact that he did it in a church, we know is a satanic or demonic act.”

Isn’t that convenient? If you can blame it on demons, you don’t have to worry about actually changing anything that might help prevent it from happening again. Perfect!

Sunday, June 28, 2015

Gloomy Glenn is Back. We’re All Going to Die.

Gloomy Glenn Beck has returned and that means we’re all going to die. The Dark One has come to harvest our souls and Obama the Terrible is going to begin to close his iron fist around the Christians, round them up and kill them. And don’t worry, he’s totally not exaggerating.

Glenn Beck opened his television program last night by declaring that “it’s time to go now” because everything he has been warning about for the last decare is now all coming to fruition.

Beck said that he sat all of his children down on Sunday night and told them that “now is the time, kids, this is the time that I have been preparing you for almost your whole life now, since September 11th. This is the time.”…

Beck continued with his misinformation campaign by then repeating his likewise untrue claim that the University of California has banned phrases such as “America is a melting pot,” before inevitably warning that all of this can only end in death.

“When you get down to banning ideas, the next step is banning books,” Beck warned. “First step. They soften the ground, biblical views can get you fired, expressing the idea of merit is bad. What’s next? I will tell you: book burnings, and re-education, and death. That’s not something I’m predicting, that’s not something I’m projecting, that’s not something I’m cheering for, I’m not using hyperbole, I’m looking solely at history.”

Jesus, imagine having that guy as a dad? His bedtime stories would give you nightmares. “Okay kids, the black helicopters will soon be here and the jackbooted thugs will soon be breaking down our door and dragging us away to the reeducation camps. Sleep tight. Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

Whaddaya Know, I’m a ‘Pawn’ of Satan

Matt Barber has declared that all “secular progressives” are “pawns” of Satan, quoting the familiar “we struggle not against flesh and blood” verse that they trot out every time they disagree with someone. They “struggle” with us, therefore we must be of the devil.

“We also need to be praying for those who are persecutors, for Islamists, for secular progressives because, as Ephesians 6:12 says, ‘Our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realm,'” Barber said. “These people don’t even realize that they’re being used as pawns in the spiritual war.”

“Even though they can deny God,” he continued, “Satan loves that they can deny the existence of God, or they’ll even deny his existence. They don’t realize that they’re vulnerable to being used … They don’t even realize that healing is available, that salvation is available, that eternal life is available through Christ and through Christ alone because they are blinded and their hearts are hardened.”

I find this highly offensive. I am not a pawn of Satan. I’m at least a rook or a bishop.

Fox and Friends Still Pretending Charleston Wasn’t About Race

The three headed idiot known as the Fox and Friends morning show are still defending their ridiculous claim last week that the Charleston shootings were about being anti-Christian rather than anti-black. Even after the killer’s manifesto that explicitly laid out his racist motivations, they still want to pretend otherwise.

The best part of the exchange:

Elizabeth Hasselbeck: I’ve said a million times, too, that it’s disappointing and it’s irresponsible to call racism when it’s not racism because it basically underscores the hate when it actually does happen.

Brian Kilmeade: It blunts it, sure.

Elizabeth Hasselbeck: It absolutely does.

Steve Doocy: Look, if we were a racist nation, Barack Obama would not have been elected president of the United States twice. It’s a math thing. If we were a racist nation, he would not be president.

Leaving aside the fact that Hasselbeck clearly has no idea what the word ‘underscores’ means (it means the opposite of what she intends here), that claim from Doocy is hilariously inane. But it’s entirely consistent with how conservatives like to think about racism. In their view, the only people who are racist are the KKK. Only horrible people are racist, not you and I. Or as Ta-Nehisi Coates put it on Twitter a couple days ago:

This is exactly how conservatives prefer to think about racism. Only monsters are racist and since they aren’t monsters, and none of their friends are monsters, then neither they nor their friends can be racist either. But that isn’t what racism is or how it operates in the real world. It totally misunderstands what implicit racism is and the way our brains compartmentalize things. Someone might be a racist, either overtly or not, and still be a perfectly fine person in a myriad of other ways.

Coates has been hammering away about this for the last several days, pointing out that, in fact, most of us (him included) would have probably participated in slavery ourselves had we lived in that time and place. We all like to think that if we went back in history, knowing what we know now, that we would have been the hero, always on the right side of what we know now to be utterly immoral. But that is highly unlikely to be true for most people. Most people go along to get along and accept the cultural assumptions they are raised with. That’s why change is so slow and painful and why opposition to it is so strong.

It’s also exactly why the symbolism of the Confederate flag matters.

The presidential clown car: Trump trumps Walker, Bernie’s coming to WI, Jill Stein is in, and More

TRUMP ON TOP A FOX poll puts Jeb at #1 and Trump at #2 in New Hampshire. Scott Walker is not in the top. This Politico article says that the numbers are too good to be true and quotes pollsters who say “Everybody should calm down“. Whatever the case, I’m still going to take pleasure more »

Saturday, June 27, 2015

Chief Justice Roberts’ Dissent

The marriage case was a rare one in which every single justice in the minority wrote their own dissent, then joined in the other dissents as well. It seems they really wanted to get their views on the record. I want to take a look at some of those dissents and the sometimes laughable arguments they present, starting with the primary dissent from Chief Justice Roberts.

Roberts frames his entire dissent in the language of judicial discretion, acknowledging that there are strong arguments for allowing same-sex couples to marry but saying that these are arguments for legislators to decide on, not judges. His dissent begins:

Petitioners make strong arguments rooted in social policy and considerations of fairness. They contend that same-sex couples should be allowed to affirm their love and commitment through marriage, just like opposite-sex couples. That position has undeniable appeal; over the past six years, voters and legislators in eleven States and the District of Columbia have revised their laws to allow marriage between two people of the same sex.

But this Court is not a legislature. Whether same-sex marriage is a good idea should be of no concern to us. Under the Constitution, judges have power to say what the law is, not what it should be.

If your irony meter just exploded, it may be because the language he uses here is virtually identical to the language Justice Scalia used just one day earlier in his dissent in the Obamacare case, arguing that Roberts was ignoring such judicial discretion to legislate from the bench rather than to merely interpret the Constitution. Of course, this language is notoriously slippery and hypocritical. Everyone is in favor of judicial discretion and an opponent of judicial activism when they support the policy in question, and everyone demands the exact opposite when they disagree with the policy in question.

Although the policy arguments for extending marriage to same-sex couples may be compelling, the legal arguments for requiring such an extension are not. The fundamental right to marry does not include a right to make
a State change its definition of marriage. And a State’s decision to maintain the meaning of marriage that has
persisted in every culture throughout human history can hardly be called irrational. In short, our Constitution does not enact any one theory of marriage. The people of a State are free to expand marriage to include same-sex
couples, or to retain the historic definition.

This is where his argument goes off the rails. Every single claim in that paragraph was also used against the ruling in Loving v Virginia, which I guarantee you CJ Roberts would not dispute was an absolutely correct ruling (even Scalia thinks it was rightly decided, though he has to engage in massive hypocrisy to reach that conclusion, as Roberts does here). If the “fundamental right to marry does not include a right to make a State change its definition of marriage,” then Loving has to be wrong because it did, in fact, make the states change their definitions of marriage. If the “people of a State are free to expand marriage to include same-sex
couples, or to retain the historic definition,” then Loving has to be wrong because it refused to allow the people of a state to retain their historic definition of marriage as solely between those of the same race.

Today, however, the Court takes the extraordinary step of ordering every State to license and recognize same-sex marriage. Many people will rejoice at this decision, and I begrudge none their celebration. But for those who believe in a government of laws, not of men, the majority’s approach is deeply disheartening. Supporters of same-sex marriage have achieved considerable success persuading their fellow citizens—through the democratic process—to adopt their view. That ends today. Five lawyers have closed the debate and enacted their own vision of marriage as a matter of constitutional law. Stealing this issue from the people will for many cast a cloud over same-sex marriage, making a dramatic social change that much more difficult to accept.

Again, let’s look at the comparison to Loving. Prior to that ruling, the federal courts had repeatedly refused to overturn state laws banning interracial marriage. And in the 25 years or so leading up to it, a couple dozen states had repealed their bans through the democratic process. Only 16 states still had such bans in 1967. But did the court striking down the remaining bans “make a dramatic social change that much more difficult to accept”? No. In fact, it spurred even faster change in public opinion. This ruling will do exactly the same. The notion that court rulings lead to entrenchment because people feel their democratic rights have been violated simply is not supported by history. Court rulings both react to and spur on changes in public opinion, as they did not only in Loving but in Brown v Board of Education and many more important advances in social justice and equality.

Friday, June 26, 2015

2/3 of Americans Think America is God’s Special Snowflake

A new report from the Public Religion Research Institute contains the disturbing news that about two-thirds of Americans think that the United States has been specially favored by God. Even more disturbing, 69% think you can’t be “truly American” if you don’t believe in God.

A PRRI survey released Tuesday (June 23) finds that 2 out of 3 Americans (66 percent) say God has granted America an exceptional role in human history. Not surprisingly, since the question presupposes a God, only 39 percent of people who don’t identify with any particular religion (the so-called “nones”) agree with that statement.

Still, “American exceptionalism is a deep and abiding belief that’s fundamental to the American DNA,” said Daniel Cox, PRRI research director.

So Americans, by a huge margin, are proudly ignorant and narcissistic (how else could we describe the idea that God favors them specifically but narcissism?). This can’t possibly be a surprise to anyone raised in this country.

This dovetails with a very narrow vision of who is “truly American.” High on the list of very or somewhat important characteristics are people who:

Speak English: 89 percent say this is very or somewhat important.

Believe in God: 69 percent.

Were born in the U.S.: 58 percent.

Are Christian: 53 percent.

The survey found “profound generational differences” on the image of what constitutes a true American, said Cox.

Most seniors (66 percent) said to be “truly American” it was important to be Christian — perhaps recalling a culture that is slipping away, he said. But only 35 percent of millennials agreed.

And people think that when we talk about atheists being treated as second class citizens, that’s just a rhetorical flourish. It isn’t. A huge majority of our fellow citizens don’t think we’re “truly American” if we don’t believe in God, for crying out loud.

Fischer Compares Confederate Flag to Rainbow Flag

You can always rely on Bryan Fischer. Even when we are being pummeled by a tsunami of inane arguments about the Confederate flag on public buildings, you can count on Fischer to come along and distinguish himself by making an argument so breathtakingly idiotic that you can only stare in near-admiration of the effort.

“If we are going to remove symbols of oppression from our culture,” Fischer said, “if we come to the point where we say any flag that represents bigotry, any flag that represents hatred, any flag that represents slavery or oppression needs to be removed, then I want to suggest to you that the next flag to go ought to be the rainbow flag of the Gay Reich.”

“The rainbow flag represents the gay lobby, it represents Big Gay, it represents what I’m calling for the first time today, I’m introducing a new term: the Gay Reich,” he continued. “They’ve got a flag just like the Nazis had their flag.”

“That flag is a symbol of slavery and oppression and bigotry and prejudice and bias,” Fischer said. “So if we’re going to go after symbols of oppression, we ought to make the rainbow flag the next target for removal in our culture.”

Wow, a new term! The gay reich! That’s so much better than the “gaystapo” or “homofascists.” You’re so clever, Bryan Fischer! A symbol of slavery and oppression? Seriously, even for Bryan Fischer that’s a WTF statement. Of course, there are no rainbow flags being flown over state houses, so I don’t know why he thinks it comparable even if his argument were true.

Beck: University of California Is Going to Put a Bullet in Your Head

Another day, another melodramatic Glenn Beck freakout. And as usual, the object of his freakout is a rule that doesn’t actually exist. Falsely claiming that the University of California had banned phrases like “America is the land of opportunity,” Beck works himself up into a lather about this ends with them shooting people in the head.

On his radio program this morning, Glenn Beck voiced his outrage over reports that the University of California had supposedly banned phrases such as “America is the land of opportunity” and “America is a melting pot” on the grounds that they are “microaggressions” that could potentially offend others.

In reality, the university had simply held “seminars to make people aware of how their words or actions may be interpreted when used in certain contexts.” Nobody was required to attend these seminars and “no one at the University of California is prohibited from making [these sorts of] statements.”

So, totally false, like nearly everything Glenn Beck says. Cue the hyperbole:

Calling the University of California “a re-education camp,” Beck warned that the university had officially banned certain thoughts and so it is only a matter of time before it bans any books which contain those thoughts. From there, it was just a short step to attacking the people who hold those views and beating them in the streets. And if that doesn’t get them to shut up, Beck said, “you just kill a few of them and everybody else shuts up.”

“You ban not just words but thought; next thing, you’re going to be banning books,” Beck warned. “And the step after that is a bullet to the head.”

So let’s add up the score. The premise of the argument is false and the conclusion is absurd and hyperbolic. Other than that, totally cool.

Thursday, June 25, 2015

Gableman hopes to reel Rindfleisch (and Scott Walker’s secrets) back to Wisconsin

Dear Readers: We have some John Doe II news to talk about. I’m not absolutely positive what’s up – but I have some strong suspicions, which I will go into. Whatever’s going down, the timing of this could not be more threatening to Scott Walker’s impending presidential campaign. First you need to know that the more »

Jon Stewart and Donald Trump

Whenever Jon Stewart takes on Donald Trump, you know the results will be hilarious. On Tuesday’s show, he did it again and you really have to watch it.

One Million Moms (Okay, a Few Thousand Moms) Now Boycotting Tylenol

The group One Million Moms, which is really just a few thousand moms with the American Family Association’s money behind them, is now targeting Tylenol with a boycott because — gasp! — they made a commercial with a gay couple in it.

The Tylenol brand typically brings to mind the medication that fights pain. But now Tylenol is also making itself known for fighting against natural marriage.

A new TV commercial features a same-sex prom couple as well as a homosexual couple with a baby. A voiceover in the Tylenol ad declares, “Family isn’t defined by who you love, but how.”

Monica Cole, director of the American Family Association’s OneMillionMoms.com, says Tylenol is choosing to take part in promoting the same-sex agenda.

“Tylenol is just contributing to the collapse of the family,” she says. “Tylenol is attempting to redefine marriage and recreate the total makeup of family by definition.”

Dear Monica Cole —

If your family is so weak that it can be made to collapse by viewing a Tylenol commercial, maybe it deserves to go the way of the dinosaur.

Sincerely,

Someone who needs Tylenol to deal with headaches he gets from facepalming every time you open your stupid mouth

Huckabee: Ya’ll Need Jesus to Stop Being Racist

Okay folks, you can stop talking about racial inequality now. Mike Huckabee has it all figured out. You don’t need to work on public policy to reduce institutional racism or promote equality. You don’t have to work together to overcome society’s racial biases. Ya’ll just need to get right with Jesus.

Now that South Carolina leaders had called to take down the flag, Huckabee said that he agreed with the decision.

“I keep hearing people saying we need more conversations about race,” the former Arkansas governor opined. “Actually we don’t need more conversations. What we need is conversions because the reconciliations that changes people is not a racial reconciliation, it’s a spiritual reconciliation when people are reconciled to God.”

“When I love God and I know that God created other people regardless of their color as much as he made me, I don’t have a problem with racism,” Huckabee insisted.

The candidate concluded: “It’s solved!”

So there you go. Solved! Done! Let’s all just sing some hymns and call it a day. But wait, a couple thoughts are bubbling up. Like the fact that racism was most pervasive in this country when Christianity was the virtually exclusive religion for Americans. And that slaveholders actually converted their slaves to Christianity because they thought it would make them more docile. And the fact that the Bible was used to justify slavery, and for good reason — there are all kinds of verses endorsing slavery and not a single one opposing it. And that the people who are most racist in this country are almost unanimously Christian.

I guess Huckabee’s idea isn’t such a good one after all. I guess this will take actually effort to overcome, effort that Huckabee certainly has no intention of exerting.

Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Why can cops tote guns into WI schools now? The NRA called for that after Sandy Hook

As of today, Scott Walker signed bills* that remove the 48 hour waiting period on handgun purchases in WI and to allow retired and off-duty cops to roam while armed on school property. A friend on facebook said today, “I am very curious why anyone needs to carry a gun into our schools? Also how more »

Oh, Chuck Norris. You Crack Me Up.

It’s been a while since I’ve bashed ol’ Chuck Norris, but his new column about how to prevent more church shootings is nothing short of hilarious. His answer is “more people should carry guns,” because of course it is. But then he blames Obama for…more people carrying guns!

When will Obama and other progressives learn that increasing government gun control and legislation won’t keep them out of the hands of bad guys? They will further disarm honest, good Americans who need that protection against murderous thugs like the parasite who walked into the Emmanuel AME Church.

Imagine once again, if just one of those Christians who held a Bible in their hand at that AME church also packed a pistol via a legal concealed weapons permit. Souls could have been saved.

If Obama really wants to reduce firearm power, he should consider stepping out of office, because his presidency has increased gun sales more than any other. As the management of gun maker Smith & Wesson just explained Friday, “We experienced strong consumer demand for our firearm products following a new administration taking office in Washington, D.C., in 2009.”

Gee Chuck, why do you think that is? Here’s a thought: Maybe it’s because of you and your fellow wingnut conspiracy mongers are continually screaming “HE’S GOING TO TAKE YOUR GUNS AWAY” at the top of your lungs. Maybe it’s because you’ve all spent the last six years declaring him to be a Muslim Marxist terrorist sympathizer out to destroy America and round up all the Christians and put them into FEMA concentration camps. Gee, maybe that’s why people suddenly started buying guns in much higher numbers. And if you really think more guns is the answer, why hasn’t all that increased gun ownership prevented these things from happening?

Anti-Gay Bigotry Set to (Really Shitty) Music

Janet Porter’s new anti-gay documentary Light Wins ends with a song that is horrible in that “earnest but idiotic” way that most Christian music is. And you’re in luck — Right Wing Watch published a clip of it for your listening pain.

Shocking Study: Men Overcompensate for Perceived Lack of Masculinity

A new study has changed everything we thought we knew about male behavior and masculinity. The study showed that when men feel their masculinity threatened or diminished in one area, they feel the need to compensate for that by exaggerating other traits that they believe make them masculine, like the number of women they’ve had sex with.

It was really kind of an ingenious study. They took a bunch of men and told them that they were participating in a study about the effects of physical exertion on decision making. They had them squeeze a handheld device as hard as they could, then gave them fake data on how strong their grip was. Half the men were told they had a strong, manly grip; the others were told that they had a weak grip — you know, like a woman. Then they had them fill out a survey online about various things.

When this part of the test was over, participants were asked to fill out online questionnaires asking various questions about their height, the number of previous romantic partners they had, whether they had specific personality traits, and whether they used products that could be interpreted as “male” or “female”; they laced these questions with other “distracter questions” so that the students would not get an idea of what was actually being asked.

What they found was interesting, but not surprising. Those who were told they had a weaker grip exaggerated their height by an average of three-quarters of an inch. “Height is something you think would be fixed, but how tall you say you are is malleable, at least for men.” Cheryan said in a recent press release.

Researchers also found that those who scored lower in the first part of the study also exaggerated the number of their romantic relationships, claimed to be more aggressive and athletic, and did not present any interest in stereotypically “feminine” products. “We know that being seen as masculine is very important for a lot of men,” Cheryan said. “We discovered that the things that men were using to assert their masculinity were the very things that are used as signals of identity.”

On the contrary, men who received average scores on their exertion tests did not feel the need to exaggerate the questionnaire. Researchers believe this difference can be attributed to a man’s need to be identified by strictly masculine characteristics. If these characteristics then fall into question, men will assert them in other ways, no matter how minute.

For the final part of the experiment, researchers gave participants a fictional score for the questionnaire, telling them that 72 out of 100 was average, while 100 represented “completely masculine.” They then gave participants random scores between 26 and 73. After, researchers asked the participants about the products they used on a daily basis, and once again, those who were scored lower did not mention using products gendered “feminine.”

This is so surprising. I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve never seen a man exaggerate his sexual prowess or strike a macho posture to assert their dominance. I mean, who ever heard of such a thing? I’m not buying this until I see it confirmed in real life.

Reminder: Humanism at Work 2015 in Boston, July 25

We had already decided that the theme for this year’s Humanism at Work conference, being held in Boston on July 25, was going to be #blacklivesmatter: listen, learn, think, discuss, act. But in the wake of the horrifying murders in Charleston last week, that focus now seems more important than ever. If you can make it, I encourage you to do so to hear from some of the most thoughtful African-American humanist scholars.

The keynote address will be by FTB’s own Sikivu Hutchinson. Her talk is entitled Colorblind Lies & Meritocracy Myths: Moving Secular Social Justice. Also speaking will by the dynamic Monica Miller, Assistant Professor of Religion & Africana Studies and Director of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Lehigh University (if you haven’t heard her speak, you’re really missing out); Shane Sloan, a fresh new voice on social justice issues and racial inequality; and Christian Hayden, an educator and mentor who will be part of the first class of volunteers for the Humanist Service Corps going to Ghana this year to work in the witch camps.

The focus of the conversation will be what we can do as humanists to overcome the terrible legacy of racism in America. As with all of the other issues that Foundation Beyond Belief deals with, it is no longer enough for us to sit around and talk about our humanism — we must put those ideals into practice in a real, tangible way. Humanism is not some lofty set of ideals to be place on a shelf, they must be used to improve the human condition and alleviate bigotry and intolerance or they are sterile and useless.

You’ll also hear from Foundation Beyond Belief staff, including Rebecca Vitsmun, who will unveil a lot of the details on the organization’s new Humanist Disaster Recovery programs, and Conor Robinson, who is leading the Humanist Service Corps to Ghana to help improve conditions for those who are forced to live there because of the appalling practice of witch hunts common in that part of Northern Africa.

You can register for the event here. The $125 cost includes dinner and the Heart of Humanism awards dinner.

Lapin: Secularists Want to Obliterate Christianity

Every right wing Christian’s favorite Jewish wingnut, Rabbi Daniel Lapin, went to Ralph Reed’s Road to Majority conference and threw some red meat to the credulous audience, telling them that the “state religion of secularism” is out to “obliterate Christianity.”

“The only form of sex that the official state religion of secular fundamentalism despises is the sex described as ideal in God’s book, the Bible,” Lapin said. “All other forms of sex [are] highly desirable and indeed brave and courageous to practice, but what you and your spouse do, that’s retrogressive and negative.”

“It’s exactly what the Muslim hoards did when they invaded Spain in the eighth century,” he continued. “They obliterated every sign of Christianity and that’s what the state religion of secular fundamentalism does as it conquers our society, works at obliterating the only hope this country has, which is a fervent, revived Christianity.”

That any human being could, with a straight face, use a phrase like “state religion of secularism” about this country is simply beyond belief. Atheists in public office are virtually unheard of. Virtually every legislative body begins each day with prayer. Public declarations of Christian piety by elected officials is practically mandatory. State religion of secularism, my ass.

Tuesday, June 23, 2015

TX Firefighter Praises Charleston Shooter, Gets ‘Fired’

A volunteer firefighter from Mabank, Texas has been removed from that position after he posted a comment on a South Carolina newspaper’s Facebook page saying that Dylann Roof, the white supremacist who murdered nine black people at a church in Charleston, “needs to be praised” for what he did.

Social media is far-reaching, and what gets posted there can often return to haunt those who say things that are considered objectionable. An East Texas firefighter is now experiencing this after being fired for his alleged post on Facebook.

Mabank volunteer firefighter Kurtis Cook reportedly posted on a South Carolina newspaper’s Facebook page that the confessed Charleston church shooter, Dylann Roof, “needs to be praised for the good deed he has done.”…

His post was shared across social media, calling for people to call the Mabank Fire Department asking to have the volunteer removed from the department. Mabank Fire Department leaders said, on social media, that they were investigating the allegations on Friday morning.

After a brief investigation, the fire department announced that he had been relieved of his duties and forbidden from entering the department’s buildings for any reason. But don’t worry, we live in a post-racial world now that we’ve elected a black president.

But We’ll Never Know Why Dylann Roof Murdered Those People…

While the Republicans continue to feign bafflement at why Dylann Roof murdered nine people at a black church in Charleston, South Carolina, it seems Roof left behind a manifesto (as is so often the case — see Elliott Rodgers, Anders Brevik and many others) proving that it was an act of white supremacist terrorism. Some highlights:

“Say you were to witness a dog being beat by a man. You are almost surely going to feel very sorry for that dog. But then say you were to witness a dog biting a man. You will most likely not feel the same pity you felt for the dog for the man. Why? Because dogs are lower than men. This same analogy applies to black and White relations.”…

“Segregation was not a bad thing. It was a defensive measure. Segregation did not exist to hold back negroes. It existed to protect us from them. And I mean that in multiple ways. Not only did it protect us from having to interact with them, and from being physically harmed by them, but it protected us from being brought down to their level. Integration has done nothing but bring Whites down to level of brute animals. The best example of this is obviously our school system.”…

“Anyone who thinks that White and black people look as different as we do on the outside, but are somehow magically the same on the inside, is delusional. How could our faces, skin, hair, and body structure all be different, but our brains be exactly the same? This is the nonsense we are led to believe. Negroes have lower Iqs, lower impulse control, and higher testosterone levels in generals. These three things alone are a recipe for violent behavior.”

Yeah, those blacks are so terribly violent…says the guy who just murdered nine black people.

“I have no choice. I am not in the position to, alone, go into the ghetto and fight. I chose Charleston because it is most historic city in my state, and at one time had the highest ratio of blacks to Whites in the country. We have no skinheads, no real KKK, no one doing anything but talking on the internet. Well someone has to have the bravery to take it to the real world, and I guess that has to be me.”

But “we’ll never understand what motivates anyone to enter one of our places of worship and take the life of another,” right Gov. Nikki Haley? It must be because he just hates religious freedom, right Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee? It’s because he was on drugs, right Rick Perry? I’m sure it’s all Obama’s fault. As the Republicans try to blame it on everything but racism, the killer has made it crystal clear that it was exactly that.

Monday, June 22, 2015

Erickson Blames Charleston Shootings on…Trans People? WTF?

When Erick Erickson was fired by CNN and signed on as a contributor to Fox News, he somehow managed to make an already vile lineup of contributors even worse. His latest outrage is an absolutely warped attempt to blame the racist murders of nine black people in a Charleston church on trans people. Seriously.

Yet again we have a twenty-something white male loner or semi-loner who got a gun and decided to kill people. In most cases we have found that the mass shooter was mentally disturbed. In this case, it looks more and more than Dylann Roof was just a servant of an evil that says some of those created in the image of God are better than others or that some people are not created in the image of God at all.

As a nation, when these things happen, we never have the conversation about real evil. We also never have the conversation about mental health. For that matter, we don’t have honest conversations about why some kid in Minnesota or Alabama would want to go join ISIS and kill their fellow citizens or why some kid would want to join neo-nazis or a gang.

Instead, we descend into partisan conversations where everything is political and neither side can concede or acknowledge the other’s points. Everyone and everything gets blamed while ignoring the actual person who killed.

I realize now why that is. I realize why we will never have the conversation we should have.

A society that looks at a 65 year old male Olympian and, with a straight face, declares him a her and “a new normal” cannot have a conversation about mental health or evil because that society no longer distinguishes normal from crazy and evil from good. Our American society has a mental illness — overwhelming narcissism and delusion — and so cannot recognize what crazy or evil looks like.

You want to recognize it, you sick, bigoted fuck? Look in the mirror.

Sunday, June 21, 2015

Walker lie number 1,000,001: Act 10 improved Wisconsin’s ACT score

When your governor is this level of smarmy slimeball, it actually gets boring to say, “He lied”. Even when he’s not outright lying he’s applying a dizzying amount of spin. I need something that works like an automatically updating site injury sign at the blog. Today’s update would read, “Scott Walker has proudly gone 1,630 more »

Saturday, June 20, 2015

Pretending It’s Not About Race

In the wake of the horrifying killing of nine black people at an African Methodist Episcopal church in Charleston, South Carolina by a rather obvious racist, the Republican presidential candidates go to great lengths to pretend that it’s about anything other than race. Like Lindsey Graham:

He continued: “I can’t explain this. I don’t know what would make a young man at 21 get so sick and twisted to kill nine people in a church, this is beyond my understanding.”

“Do you think it’s a hate crime or do you think it’s more mentally disturbed?” one of the co-hosts asked Graham.

“Probably both,” he replied. “There are real people out there that are organized to kill people in religion and based on race. This guy is just whacked out.”

“But it’s 2015, there are people out there looking for Christians to kill them,” Graham added. “This is a mean time we live in.”

Really? You think he shot them because they’re Christian? Is there some trend toward killing of Christians rather than by Christians in this country?

And Rick Santorum, who immediately tied it to this fake “religious liberty” nonsense:

Speaking to AM970 radio host Joe Piscopo, Santorum said that it was hard for him to believe that “things like this can happen in America.”

“It’s obviously a crime of hate,” he noted. “We don’t know the rationale, but what other rationale could there be. You’re sort of lost that someone would walk into a Bible study at a church and indiscriminately kill people.”

“This is one of those situation where you have to take a step a back and say — you talk about the importance of prayer at this time, and we’re now seeing assaults on religious liberty we’ve never seen before,” the candidate noted. “So, it’s a time for deeper reflection even beyond this horrible situation.”

Okay, first of all…speaking to Joe Piscopo? Who the hell would talk to Joe Piscopo for any reason whatsoever? And nice job, Rick, you managed to make the totally absurd connection to your favorite pet issue. Because it must really be about those poor, persecuted Christians and not about the legitimately oppressed and attacked black victims. Oh, I’m sorry, I just “played the race card.” How long before Obama gets blamed? Oh, I’m sure it’s already happening in the right wing fever swamps.

Friday, June 19, 2015

Walker is literally just phoning it in now

Walker took a break from his “trade mission” to tell legislators he doesn’t care what road projects get cut. Just figure it out.  And hurry up.  He’s got a presidential campaign to run.  (paraphrased)   Walker told reporters on a conference call from a trade trip to Canada Wednesday morning that he hoped lawmakers would more »

Thursday, June 18, 2015

Neo-Nazis: Stop Calling Us a Hate Group!

A neo-Nazi group based in Detroit has been distributing flyers in neighborhoods in Jacksonville, Florida is outraged that people are referring to them as a hate group. I mean, they only want to outlaw homosexuality and race-mixing and non-white immigration. What’s hateful about that?

“Suggesting the National Socialist Movement is an organization of ‘hate’ that presents a threat to any ethnic group is insane,” the National Socialist Movement said in a statement published by a local CBS affiliate. “This public awareness campaign is part of a continuing effort to turn this tide, and stop white people from becoming America’s next minority.”

In the city’s San Jose area, people are finding plastic bags in their yards and near a Jewish temple and community center. The packages contain advertisements for the National Socialist Movement (NSM), an organization out of Detroit, Michigan that the Southern Poverty Law Center identifies as a hate group…

Some of the policy ideas the NSM lists on its flyer sound downright tyrannical. For example, the group says it’s against the legal practices of “homosexuality, …race mixing, and non-white immigration.”…

“All non-White immigration must be prevented,” the NSM says in its official platform. “We demand that all non-Whites currently residing in America be required to leave the nation forthwith and return to their land of origin: peacefully or by force.”

So stop calling them a hate group, you miscegenated liberal hippies! You’re hurting their little fee fees.

Beck Finds a Way to Link Rachel Dolezal to Nazis and Commies

Glenn Beck has become the Cal Ripken of the right wing. Day in, day out you can always rely on him being there, churning out bullshit and finding a way to link everything in the entire world to Adolf Hitler or Josef Stalin. Yes, even the Rachel Dolezal controversy:

“I can’t take this anymore,” Beck said. “We are living in ‘Alice In Wonderland.’ We are America through the looking glass where the Mad Hatter is leading us and we’re just accepting it … You wonder how did communist countries or fascistic countries become crazy enough just to round people up and kill them? The answer is: slowly, by dribs and drabs, through slow, deliberate lies, through lies that denied reality. And once you become so deadened from reality, once people can say anything to you that used to be ‘shut up,’ and you just stand there as a group and accept it, that’s when bigger lies can be thrown onto the fire and before you know if, you’re living in ‘Alice In Wonderland.'”

“We have got to raise our hands right now and say, ‘I’m not part of this,'” he continued. “I want my name to be on a record; honestly, if it means in the end that we’re the first to be targeted, to be rounded up, good! I want my name on record, I do not stand with this nonsense!”

Pssst, President Obama…Glenn Beck just gave you permission to round him up and put him in a camp to kill him. I suggest you not pass up this amazing opportunity.

Quickie round-up of Wisconsin news 06/17/2015

Wow.  Madison City Council did an override on Soglin to allow homelessness to be a protected class STORY HERE ———————————————– With slap at ‘nut jobs,’ state union leader Marty Beil to retire source: WI State Journal I once saw him yell “punk” at Scott Suder outside of the Governor’s Beer and Brats event.  Suder deserved more »

Wednesday, June 17, 2015

To Tackle Food Waste, Big Grocery Chain Will Sell Produce Rejects

It’s easy to blame someone else for food waste. If this is really a $2.6 trillion issue, as the United Nations estimates, then who’s in charge of fixing it?

Turns out, we the eaters play a big role here.

When we shop with our eyeballs in the produce aisle, our expectations for perfection contribute to the problem.

We’ve come to expect a dazzling array of eye candy with beautiful displays of cosmetically perfect fruits and vegetables.

But, of course, nature serves up much more variation.

And now, a big grocery chain in the West called Raley’s is taking a swing at the food waste problem by trying to get customers to embrace the differences.

Raley’s announced Tuesday it will begin selling less-than-perfect fruits and vegetables in July.

But let’s go back to where it all begins: the farm. As part of a collaboration with PBS NewsHour, we hit the fields of Salinas Valley, Calif., for a reality check.

In a cauliflower field, we found lots of slightly yellow heads of cauliflower.

“You see how it just has that yellow tinge to it?” Art Barrientos of Ocean Mist Farms points out. “This is not marketable.”

There’s nothing wrong with these heads of cauliflower. The yellow tint comes from sun exposure. It’s crunchy and every bit as nutritious as white cauliflower.

“But this just doesn’t meet our standards,” Barrientos says as we give it a taste.

The marketplace demands white, blemish-free, perfectly sized heads. So, these heads are plowed under.

The yellow tint on this cauliflower comes from sun exposure. It's crunchy and every bit as nutritious as white cauliflower.
The yellow tint on this cauliflower comes from sun exposure. It’s crunchy and every bit as nutritious as white cauliflower. (Allison Aubrey/NPR)

The story is similar with misshapen crowns of broccoli and peaches that aren’t perfectly shaped or colored. Harold McLarty of HMC Farms in Kingsburg, Calif., says 35 percent of his crop never makes it to market. Much of his surplus goes to cattle feed.

The Natural Resources Defense Council estimates that depending on the crop, anywhere from 1 to 30 percent of food grown by farmers doesn’t get to the grocery store.

And, as we’ve reported, food is wasted at every step in the supply chain — during transportation and processing and once it gets to our refrigerators.

And think of everything that goes into growing crop: the water, the fertilizer, the fuel to run the tractor.

“Eighty percent of our water, 10 percent of our energy, 40 percent of our land is used to grow our food,” says Peter Lehner of the NRDC. And, according to this NRDC report, up to 40 percent of the food produced never gets eaten. “It’s crazy.”

Food waste is among the biggest contributors to landfills in the U.S. Lehner says this creates another problem: “When [food] rots, it emits methane, which is a very potent greenhouse gas.” Food waste is responsible for a significant portion of methane emissions.

Cauliflower on the conveyor belt at Ocean Mist Farms in Salinas Valley, Calif.
Cauliflower on the conveyor belt at Ocean Mist Farms in Salinas Valley, Calif. (Allison Aubrey/NPR)

There are new efforts underway to reduce food waste. The Environmental Protection Agency has a Food Recovery Challenge that diverts about 375,000 tons of food waste.

And some producers, including Ocean Mist and HMC Farms, donate some of the less-than-perfect produce to California food banks.

Over the past decade, the California Association of Food Banks says it has doubled the amount of produce it distributes, thanks in part to these kinds of donations.

“This year, we hope to grow the California Farm to Family program by over 70 million pounds,” says Paul Ash, executive director of the San Francisco Marin Food Banks. He hopes to expand the program to other parts of the country.

The marketplace demands white, blemish-free, perfectly sized heads of cauliflower. So that's almost all of what workers pick.
The marketplace demands white, blemish-free, perfectly sized heads of cauliflower. So that’s almost all of what workers pick. (Allison Aubrey/NPR)

Part of that growth has been fueled by a novel way of collecting surplus produce. For cauliflower and broccoli growers, who pack their products in the field as they’re being harvested, there’s now a co-packing system. As the workers slice and harvest the crop, they pack the premium heads in boxes headed to grocery stores. They separate out the less-than-perfect seconds and pack them in crates destined for the food banks.

It’s a simple process, but it’s tough to recruit more farmers to join in. Only three out of 25 broccoli and cauliflower growers in California participate.

Why? “It’s a lot easier and cheaper just to basically throw [unmarketable produce] away,” says McLarty of HMC Farms. He says he’d like to donate more of his peaches to the food banks, but “there’s got to be an economic incentive.”

California offers tax credits to farmers who donate produce, but the food banks are lobbying for bigger deductions. And there are only six other states besides California that give tax breaks to growers for donating food.

As food banks work to expand their programs, some entrepreneurs say there are so many seconds to go around, they see a whole new business model: selling imperfect produce at discounted prices.

Imperfect Produce is a new venture that's sourcing funny-looking produce and partnering with the chain Raley's to sell it at discounted prices.
Imperfect Produce is a new venture that’s sourcing funny-looking produce and partnering with the chain Raley’s to sell it at discounted prices. (Courtesy of
Imperfect Produce)

As we’ve reported, a French supermarket chain launched a campaign last year to sell what they dubbed “the grotesque apple, and the ridiculous potato.” The concept has so far worked well in France.

Here in the U.S., entrepreneurs behind a venture called Imperfect Produce are betting they can turn Americans on to less-than-perfect produce, too.

In this promotional fundraising video, the startup’s co-founder Ben Simon explains how it works: “You get a box of seasonal ugly produce delivered to your door every week, and because this produce looks a little funky on the outside you get it for 30 to 50 percent less.” They plan to start delivery in the San Francisco area sometime this summer.

And it seems at least one major grocery chain may give it a go. Imperfect has just inked a deal with high-end chain Raley’s, which has more than 100 stores in California and Nevada. The chain says it will launch a pilot program, “Real Good” produce, in 10 Northern California stores in mid-July.

Raley’s Megan Burritt says she’s working on in-store education. When customers are picking up a funky-looking double cherry or an apple that may look like a reject, she wants them to see it in a new way. Perhaps she’ll market them as the underdogs of the produce aisle. “Who doesn’t love an underdog story!” Burritt says.

Copyright 2015 NPR.

Landfill Of Lettuce: What Happens To Salad Past Its Prime?

Listen to the Story on Morning Edition:

Here’s a scenario lots of us can relate to: tossing a bag of lettuce because it sat too long in the back of the fridge.

It doesn’t take a long time for greens to turn to slime.

Bag by bag, this waste adds up. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that the typical American family throws out about $1,600 worth of food each year. And what we consumers toss out is just the last step in a long chain of waste.

Food is lost on farms, during processing and trucking. Supermarkets toss out unsold food.

We were curious about this downstream waste — the part of the food supply chain that’s largely hidden from consumers.

And we wondered how the fast-growing, packaged produce and salads category — which is expected to approach $7 billion in sales by 2018 — might contribute to waste.

In the Salinas Valley of California — known as America’s salad bowl — we visited the municipal dump. The fertile strip of land surrounding the town of Salinas produces an estimated 70 percent of U.S. salad greens.

At the dump, we caught up with Operations Manager Cesar Zuniga as a dump truck pulled in. It was filled to the brim with salads and other waste from nearby farms.

“This one looks like a mixed load,” Zuniga says. As it tipped its load, out tumbled a 15-foot heap of greens.

And a lot of it looked crisp and ready to eat.

The Salinas Valley is known as America's salad bowl. The Natural Resources Defense Council estimates that farmers here and elsewhere around the country may over-plant by about 10 percent.
The Salinas Valley is known as America’s salad bowl. The Natural Resources Defense Council estimates that farmers here and elsewhere around the country may over-plant by about 10 percent. (Faces of Fracking/Flickr )

“Some loads … look very fresh,” Zuniga says. “We question, wow, why is this being tossed?”

Zuniga says the load that arrived on this day is pretty typical. “This is what we see through the spring and fall months: We see a lot of food waste from the salad processing plants,” he says.

As we step closer to the dumped load, Zuniga picks up a bag of salad and looks at the sell-by date stamped on the package.

“What ended up here was good for [another] two weeks or so,” Zuniga says.

So, why were these salad greens dumped?

We called Taylor Farms, the brand name on the bags we saw at the dump. It’s one of the big salad processors in the area.

In an email, Mark Campion, president of Taylor Farms Retail, told us that the “primary reason” that salad gets disposed of is that it gets too close to its “code date” — what consumers think of as the sell-by date.

“If we overrun a particular product … it might not have enough code date for the customer to receive it,” Campion said.

The bags we saw at the dump still had almost two weeks before reaching the sell-by date. But that was probably not long enough to ship them and get them onto store shelves, because grocery chains need plenty of time to sell the products while they’re still fresh.

“Most [grocery store] customers require 10-11 days of useable code date upon arrival at their distribution center,” explains Campion.

Campion says Taylor Farms gives surplus product to its employees and donates some to food banks, too. “The last option is sending product to disposal,” Campion wrote. “It’s rare that product gets disposed of, but it does happen.”

There are no official estimates of waste from salad processors. And as the U.S. Department of Agriculture has noted, it’s difficult to estimate food loss at the farm level not just for salad greens but for foods across the supply chain.

The Natural Resources Defense Council has surveyed California farmers about waste. “It’s a a difficult topic,” says JoAnne Berkenkamp, a senior advocate for the environmental group’s Food & Agriculture Program. “Farmers don’t want to talk about something they’ve grown and weren’t able to sell.”

It’s a sensitive topic — especially in drought-stricken California — where farmers use a large quantity of the state’s precious water. But Berkenkamp says the survey research shows that some farmers grow more than they can sell.

“Most large growers have strong incentive to over-plant,” explains Berkenkamp, because they “don’t want to run out of product or come up short on a contract.”

The NRDC estimates growers may over-plant by about 10 percent. This may not sound like much, “but it can really add up to thousands of pounds of surplus product,” Berkenkamp says.

And here’s another issue: When bags of lettuce and other produce end up in landfills, it contributes to climate change.

As the food decomposes, “it will release methane — a very powerful greenhouse gas,” explains Berkenkamp. And food waste in landfills is responsible for a significant portion of methane emissions.

Some of the methane gas from landfills is being captured and converted to energy. But a lot of it goes into the atmosphere.

So, what steps can shoppers take to address this issue?

They can compost the greens they don’t eat instead of tossing them. If more produce were composted, it could help reduce methane emissions, according to NRDC.

And, here’s a novel idea: Maybe more of us should rethink our shopping habits — and only buy what we know we can eat.

Back at the Salinas Valley dump, there’s a separate pile for compost. But because of all the plastic in the lettuce waste from the salad processors, it can’t be composted.

So, where will it end up? A landfill.

Tune in Tuesday night (June 16) to the PBS NewsHour and check The Salt on Wednesday for more on food waste in the Salinas Valley. Here’s a sneak peak of the upcoming story.

Copyright 2015 NPR.

MRA’s Totally Understand Why Iowa Man Gunned Down Woman

You’ve probably heard by now about Alexander Kozak, a mall security guard in Iowa who was fired for sexually harassing multiple women and came back to murder the most recent woman to complain about his behavior. The indispensable David Futrelle lurks the MRA forums to find them gushing with sympathy for Kozak, who is obviously the real victim in the story. A few examples:

Like rape, does the term sexual harassment pretty much no longer have any real meaning? IE it’s safe to assume there’s no chance this guy actually touched her or said anything overtly lewd?

As somebody who’s been job hunting for some time now picturing being fired, in this job market, over some twit finding you “creepy”… Sad to say I’m finding it hard to blame him.

Not sad, fucking terrifying. And I damn sure hope the cops are keeping an eye on you now because you’re exactly the kind of person that thinks gunning down women is perfectly fine.

Given the lack of details regarding the allegations, it is safe to assume he did not touch or proposition these women. Simply put, he was guilty of having no game and/or being creepy. …

As far as I’m concerned, his being guilty of not giving these bitches the tingles is what caused him to get fired, and in turn, murder this chick.

I know, right? The woman who was murdered isn’t the victim here, the guy who killed her is.

[A]fter examining the above facts here is the most likely conclusion:

He wasn’t being rude to anyone on his job. He wasn’t trying to be a pick-up artist on the job and shitting where he eats. His ‘prior-complaints leading up to his firing’ are almost certainly trumped-up charges. His crime? Being a beta male raised without a father and a domineering mother.

Is there a more moronic phrase in the English language than “beta male”?

this poor man, who receives such injustice is immediately filled with burning rage; all of the issues of his childhood neglect well-up inside of him, and he stops thinking rationally.

“What the fuck is this. How am I supposed to keep my wife now? How can we have children if I have no income? What am I supposed to do now? I DID NOTHING WRONG!! THAT FUCKING BITCH! THAT STUPID WHORE! I KNOW WHO DID THIS. SHE THINKS I’M A SEXUAL HARASSER?”

Alex believes his life is over. He knows he won’t find another job; it took him nearly a year to find this one. He won’t find another girl; he’s already balding and his current wife is so beautiful to him it is impossible to imagine life without her. He already knows he’ll never find a girl as good as her to be his wife; he’ll never get to be the father he never had.

He goes home, crying. He finds his gun and loads it. And he rushes back to the mall with blood in his eyes.

I know — that poor man! That poor man who hates women so much that he murders them after sexually harassing them. Remember, these are the same people who defended Elliot Rodger when he decided to kill a bunch of women because they were outrageously not having sex with him. These people are 50 kinds of fucked up and dangerous.

Tuesday, June 16, 2015

NC Lt. Gov. Supports Law Allowing Government Discrimination

There seems to be a difference of opinion between the governor of North Carolina and his lt. governor, both of whom are Republicans. Gov. Pat McCrory vetoed the bill, which the legislature then overrode, but Lt. Gov. Dan Forest is publicly supporting the law with absurd, contradictory arguments.

Dan Forest, the Republican lieutenant governor of North Carolina, joined Craig James on the Family Research Council’s “Washington Watch” program yesterday to discuss a new law in his state that allows public officials to temporarily stop performing marriages if they want to avoid marrying a same-sex or even an interracial couple. Forest supported the bill, which the legislature passed over the veto of Republican Gov. Pat McCrory.

Forest said that far from being unconstitutional, the new law is actually “upholding the Constitution” because the legislature is the one that assigns duties to magistrates. He added that the law “doesn’t discriminate against anybody, instead it does just the opposite” by supposedly protecting the religious freedom of state magistrates.

As usual, conservatives refuse to apply their arguments consistently. By his reasoning, the Supreme Court ruling to overturn bans on interracial marriages also must be wrong. And the idea that the law does not discriminate because it allows government officials to discriminate is simply laughable.

“You’re not telling them they can’t have a ceremony,” Forest said, “it’s just protecting the religious beliefs of those who don’t want to do it.”

“So, really what this is from the other side, from the left, this is saying that ‘we are not tolerant of you, we’re not tolerant of your beliefs, you do not fit into our great diverse rainbow of diversity here. We will accept everybody but Christians.’” Forest added. “And so that’s really what’s going on here, is it’s very focused on Christians only and so that’s why we’re seeing these issues.”

No, it isn’t “very focused on Christians.” Christians just happen to be the ones demanding the right to discriminate here, just like they did with blacks when the Civil Rights Act was passed.

Perry’s Substanceless Criticism of Obama on ISIS

Rick Perry went on Dana Loesch’s radio show and attempted to criticize President Obama’s actions to fight against ISIS in Iraq, but those criticisms were totally free of substance. They were just generic, vague rhetorical attacks without any specificity or any hint of how he might do things differently.

Loesch asked Perry to respond to the president’s comment that the U.S. doesn’t “yet have a complete strategy” for training Iraqi defense forces to fight ISIS “because it requires commitments on the part of the Iraqis as well about how recruitment takes place, how the training takes place, so the details of that are not yet worked out.”

Perry said that he was “stunned” and claimed that the president, who is leading a coalition that has been hammering ISIS with airstrikes, has shown a “lack of engagement to stop ISIS.” This shows, he said, that the president of six years “has a hard time connecting the dots from time to time, of understanding,” due to his “lack of executive experience” and “a philosophical void when it comes to understanding what it takes to keep America safe.”

“I think that’s the reason ISIS has gone forward, I think that’s the reason Putin is standing there basically laughing at us as we have one lack of impact after another in the global world that we’re living in,” he said.

He went on to say that he would solve the problem with the use of his magical eyeglasses, prayer and….I forget the third one. Oops.

Sunday, June 14, 2015

Coulter Wants Women’s Suffrage Repealed

The circus side show known as Ann Coulter has a new book to promote, so she’s doing her usual schtick of saying the most outrageous things she can think of. In a radio interview, she reiterated her previously stated belief that women should not be allowed to vote. Seriously.

McInnes, also brought up women voters, prompting Coulter to share her position that “women should not have the right to vote.” She continued that while women should not vote, “We can still write books! We can run for office.”

“You just can’t vote,” McInnes reiterated.

This is not the first time Coulter voiced her support for female disenfranchisement. In 2007, Coulter said that “If we took away women’s right to vote, we’d never have to worry about another Democrat [sic] president.” Coulter described this as a “pipe dream” and a “personal fantasy” of hers that women, especially the single women who “are voting so stupidly,” will finally be silenced.

I can almost picture, though I don’t want to, Vox Day and Jesse Lee Peterson furiously fondling themselves at this. “See, we have a woman who agrees with us, so we can’t possibly be sexist for saying women shouldn’t be allowed to vote.” Wrong. You damn sure are sexist.

Savage Flips Out Over Gay General, Compares Him to ISIS

The Pentagon held a celebration of gay pride month, which is June, and a Brig. General introduced his husband to the audience. Cue the howls of outrage from the anti-gay bigots, who are absolutely terrified of the idea that gay people can actually serve their country. I especially love this reaction from Michael Savage.

During his remarks at the Pentagon’s celebration of LGBT Pride Month on Tuesday, Brig. Gen. Randy S. Taylor, who has served in the Army for 27 years, introduced his husband to attendees. Predictably, Taylor’s remarks and other speeches by LGBT service members did not go over well with the far-right, including talk show host Michael Savage, who on Tuesday blasted the Pride event and even managed to draw a connection to ISIS.

“So this is the world we’re living in,” Savage sighed. “This is what Obama has done to America, this is what he has done to the military. A man, a general now, introduces his husband at an event like this. Do you have any idea why ISIS is insane as they are? Do you have any idea that you are looking at two sides of a coin here? You see a ninth-century view of the world from a point of view of ISIS, and you see a view of the world that is so warped and so accepted in America as the norm, that most people’s heads are spinning around the world not understanding how a super power became a ‘stupid power’ in one generation.”

Yeah, it’s just like ISIS! What, no Hitler comparison? Oh Savage, you’re disappointing me. Such a ridiculous comparison: “I don’t like ISIS’ view of the world and I don’t like gay people’s view of the world, which are entirely opposite one another, so therefore they are two sides of the same coin and just the same.” Damn, thinking is hard, isn’t it Michael?

Organic Farmers Call Foul On Whole Foods’ Produce Rating System

Conventionally grown tomatoes can earn a "Best" rating from Whole Foods under the company's new program. Some organic farmers are chagrined, arguing that it devalues the organic label on their products.
Conventionally grown tomatoes can earn a “Best” rating from Whole Foods under the company’s new program. Some organic farmers are chagrined, arguing that it devalues the organic label on their products. (Dan Charles/NPR )

Listen to the Story on Morning Edition:

Nobody really likes to be graded. Especially when you don’t get an A.

Some organic farmers are protesting a new grading system for produce and flowers that’s coming into force at Whole Foods. They say it devalues the organic label and could become an “existential threat.”

The rating system is called “Responsibly Grown.” And the company developed it as a way to give customers more information about how their food is grown, says Matt Rogers, a global produce coordinator for Whole Foods.

“We’re really proud of the food we sell, and we know a lot about it, in general, and we want to share that with customers,” he says.

The labels on produce at Whole Foods always told shoppers what country or state supplied those vegetables, as well as whether it was grown organically.

The new rating system takes into account much more.

Whole Foods is asking its suppliers to pay a fee to get into the program, then answer a long questionnaire. There are questions about how they protect the soil and wildlife on their farms, whether they limit their use of pesticides, how they conserve energy and irrigation water and how they treat their workers.

Based on those answers, a farm’s produce gets a grade: Unrated, Good, Better or Best. Those grades show up right beside each bin of produce on brightly colored stickers with the words: “Responsibly Grown.”

Rogers says that more than 50 percent of the farms that have gone through this process so far have been rated “Good.” “We have few examples of ‘Best’ ratings at this point,” he says.

But here’s what is making organic farmers angry. At a Whole Foods store in Washington, D.C., I found nonorganic onions and tomatoes, presumably grown with standard fertilizers and pesticides, that were labeled “Best.” A few feet away, I found organic onions and tomatoes that were graded merely “Good” or just “Unrated.”

For Vernon Peterson, who grows and packs organic fruit in Kingsburg, Calif., this is dumbfounding.

“Organic is responsibly grown, for goodness sake,” he says. “Organic should be the foundation of anything that Whole Foods might do.”

Whole Foods says its new rating system is a way to talk to farmers and customers about issues that the organic rules don't encompass, like water, energy, labor and waste.
Whole Foods says its new rating system is a way to talk to farmers and customers about issues that the organic rules don’t encompass, like water, energy, labor and waste. (Dan Charles/NPR )

Peterson says that organic certification is harder to get and means more than the new ratings from Whole Foods. Following the organic rules is expensive, and there are third-party auditors making sure that you follow those rules, he adds. There are no such outside auditors in the Whole Foods system.

But what really irks Peterson is that these colorful new “Responsibly Grown” labels overshadow the organic label. He thinks they devalue it.

Tom Willey, another long-time organic grower in California, has been urging his fellow farmers to take a stand against the ratings. It feels risky to criticize a big customer like Whole Foods, he says, but they have to speak up, “because we think that this program is kind of the tip of an iceberg that represents an existential threat to the value of certified organic,” to which many organic farmers have dedicated three or four decades of their working lives.

Peterson and Willey say they are trying to persuade Whole Foods to revise the scoring system to give more weight to organic certification, and also to reduce the financial burdens it imposes on small farmers. According to Peterson, the fees, paperwork and product tracking equipment required by the Whole Foods program cost farmers thousands of dollars.

Mark Kastel, an organic advocate and founder of the Cornucopia Institute, says there’s a clear profit-driven motive behind this new label. “They’re trying to create an entire new vernacular for their customers to recognize a value-added product,” he says.

And it’s especially helpful to create that aura of specialness around conventional produce, because conventional veggies are easier and cheaper to grow. This label lets them compete better with organic. “Why would you pay more for a certified organic product, when you can get the ‘Best’ for a couple of dollars a pound cheaper?” he says.

Rogers, for his part, insists that Whole Foods is not backing away from its support for organic farming. He says the new ratings are simply a way to talk to farmers and customers about things that the organic rules just don’t touch, “such as water conservation, energy use in agriculture, farm worker welfare, waste management.”

There are farmers who are doing a great job with that, he says, and they aren’t all organic. “There are conventional growers that we work with who are incredible stewards of the land, who do a tremendous job with their workforce, who deserve to be recognized,” Rogers says.

In fact, organic farmers like Willey and Peterson agree that there are many aspects of responsible farming that the organic standards don’t cover. Their dispute with Whole Foods is over whether the new ratings actually measure all those things very well, and also whether they could ever outweigh what organic certification represents.

Copyright 2015 NPR.