Well, we're back a little sooner than anticipated. We've actually been back a few days now, but I've been staying off of the internet and avoiding any news for my own sanity. Mostly by binge-watching the entire first season of Orange is the New Black which is my new favorite show, holy shit is that show good.
Anyway, here's a few snapshots of the Great Smokey Mountains National Park. Since it is technically "illegal" to climb on an elk's back and ride him a round, there are no photos of us doing that.
Young Black Bear, Great Smokey Mountains National Park
Laurel Falls, Great Smokey Mountains National Park
Grazing Elk. Great Smokey Mountains National Park
Moss-covered rocks, Great Smokey Mountains National Park
Meadow, Great Smokey Mountains National Park
Sunday, September 29, 2013
Friday, September 20, 2013
Going on Vacation
The Missus and I will be spending the next week at the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, so no posting until at least next Monday. I will probably be on the Twitter, though. https://twitter.com/akaProfessorCha
At least tweeting cool vacation pics. Last time we went, there were baby bears, but no promises.
At least tweeting cool vacation pics. Last time we went, there were baby bears, but no promises.
Wednesday, September 18, 2013
Saying things out loud
Sometimes terrible people say things out loud that they're supposed to only think quietly inside their own horrible heads. Like when shriveled undead hate-beast Phyllis Schlafly said that of course we need restrictions on voting because they help Republicans win.
Well, it happened a couple more times recently.
First this guy:
This fat bag of douche came on the Thom Hartmann show to explain why the minimum wage should not be raised. Instead of reciting the company line of how the current minimum wage is plenty and folks earning it are living super comfortable lives buying steak and lobsters with their food stamps. this guy goes off script and says yeah, we know you can't survive on minimum wage and we're okay with that. We don't really want you to survive.
MOORE: But, why should every job pay enough to live on? The whole idea of a diverse economy is that there are many, many, many jobs on which you can make a living, and there are many jobs which are not intended -- they're at the bottom of the scale -- they're not jobs you're supposed to be able to live on.
HARTMANN: Every job should make enough to live on, because every human being is worth living
MOORE: No. When you're unskilled, you should not expect to be able to make a living off of your ordinary day's labor.
Stunning. Really, just shocking. I mean, we all pretty much figured that's what they were thinking, but to think you could say that out loud. . . wow!
Then there's the government of the state of Michigan, which is defending its anti-gay-marriage and anti-gay-adoption laws in court. This is what they are stating in their defense filing:
One of the paramount purposes of marriage in Michigan
and at least 37 other states that define marriage as a union between a man and a woman
is, and has always been, to regulate sexual relationships
Yeah, because, you know, small government! Freedommmmmmm!!!
they are seriously arguing that it is the role of the state government to regulate the sex lives of its citizens. Wow!
to regulate sexual relationships between men and women so that the unique procreative
capacity of such relationships benefits rather than harms society.
[source]
How keeping gay people from marrying is going to make sexual relationships benefit society and keep them from harming it goes unsaid. Like a lot of things probably should have.
Tuesday, September 17, 2013
Just How Screwed We All Are in 2 Headlines
Fewer Chicken Inspectors and More Chickens?
| Thu Sep. 12, 2013 3:00 AM PDT
I'm not sure how much good he was doing anyway.
USDA Seeks to Expand Pilot Program Which Leaves Meat Contaminated With Fecal Matter
Tuesday, 17 September 2013 09:55
By Candice Bernd, Truthout | Report
Like all of our regulatory agencies, theUSDA has been so completely captured by the industries it is supposed to oversee that one wonders what the point of its existence even is anymore.
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has plans to expand a privatized meat inspection model that has been in place for 14 years at five hog plants in the United States and which has been found to fail time and time again at preventing contamination of meat - with fecal matter.
And what is this completely failed pilot program?
The program. . . has been in place since the late 1990s and its expansion would replace almost half the USDA Food Safety Service inspectors in industrial meat plants with inspectors employed by those very same companies.
So they get to inspect themselves. Who could possibly see anything going wrong with that program?
Okay, I mean besides "everybody."
The USDA is so beholden to the big agri-business companies, it's even starting to talk like them:
"The USDA all along has been saying that these pilots will prove that removing government inspectors and turning over [their] the responsibilities to the company employees will enhance food safety
The USDA has insisted that the novel inspection regime would improve the safety of the chicken and turkey cranked out by industrial-scale slaughterhouses,
Those are exactly the kinds of claims churned out by right-wing pro-industry "thinktanks" like the Competitive Enterprise Institute or Americans for Prosperity, or the Assface Institute. De-regulation will make food safer. Clear-cutting is good for forests. Fracking is good for the environment. Up is down, black is white, Sarah Palin is qualified to hold public office. Why do we even have a USDA if they're just going to go around parroting this libertarian fantasy bullshit? I mean, they gotta know this is bullshit, right?
. . .[A] recent article in The Washington Post, reports that three out of the five pilot HIMP [the self-inspection model] plants were among the 10 worst health and safety violators in the country, according to a spring report by the USDA inspector general.
[T]he Agriculture Department has given a green light to Australia, Canada and New Zealand to use this experimental, privatized model of food inspection in meat plants whose products are for export to the United States, even though the foreign plants operating under processes considered equivalent to the HIMP program have experienced an epidemic of contamination-related problems within the past two years, including a Canadian plant which had to recall more than 8.8 million pounds of beef product fouled with E. coli.So obviously this is a bad idea. And just as obviously, it's going to happen anyway.
I really need to look into veganism.
Monday, September 16, 2013
Ready for Hillary?
I keep seeing these das pop up all over the interwebs, asking me if I'm ready for Hillary in 2016.
Am I ready for Hillary? No. No, I'm not and I'll tell you why.
I'm not ready for another DLC "centrist."
I'm not ready for someone who voted for the invasion of Iraq because she "trusted" George W. Bush. I'm just some guy, I have no inside info and I'm not especially bright and I knew that Bush and his crew were lying about everything.
I'm not ready for another friend of Larry Summers.
I'm not ready for a president whose resume' includes being the designated hawk of the previous administration. (http://www.thenation.com/blog/172635/good-riddance-warmonger-hillary-clinton#)
I'm not ready for someone whose answer to the health-care crisis was "managed competition." I'm not ready for yet another president for whom single-payer is not on the table.
I'm not ready for someone who was a part of the administration that gave us NAFTA, GATT and the WTO. Granted, it was her husband, ol' what's his name Clinton that was in charge, but has she ever expressed any disagreement with the "free trade" conventional wisdom?
I am definitely ready for a female prez. I would love to see a President Elizabeth Warren, for instance. Why not a president Barbara Lee? Or Barbara Boxer? Or Barbara Erenreich? Or really anyone named Barbara, I guess? Anyway, I just want to make sure that no one misunderstands me and thinks that my objections to Hillary for president have anything to do with her gender. I would welcome a female president. Just not her.
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