by Ana Grarian

The NY Times ran a story Friday March 12th about the rapidly rising price of seeds
.http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/12/business/12seed.html
“since 2001 corn seed prices have risen 135 percent”   Well DUH!?!

Today more than 90 percent of soybeans and more than 80 percent of the corn grown in this country are genetically engineered.

A majority of those crops contain one or more Monsanto genes.

Let’s see. If you cut back competition, give licensing rights to a company whose product is guaranteed to cross pollinate with neighboring crops,and then allow the company to sue the neighboring farmer as if they illegally used your seed – Don’t you think your setting up an unfair advantage that will cause prices to rise?
In addition Monsanto has bought out many smaller companies and licensed the use of it’s seed traits to others. Monsanto says this licensing encourages competition. HUH? Usually those licenses come with caveats. For instance if the XYZ soda company allows me to use it’s logo for my hot dog stand, it also requires me to sell only their soda. A company I worked at had a soda machine. The employees wanted some healthy drink choices. The beverage company would not even allow their own juice drinks to be dispensed from the same machine as the soda. Licenses often tie the hands of the licensee more than they provide a benefit.
For more on how much Monsanto has inserted itself in our everyday lives, I recommend reading  “A Month Without Monsanto”  a daily blog of an intrepid soul who has ventured out to live an entire month without Monsanto products.
In closing I’ll leave you with an inspiring quote from a Monsanto representative

“Monsanto should not have to vouch for the safety of biotech food, our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring its safety is the FDA’s job.”
- Phil Angell, Director of Corporate Communication for Monsanto

How did a bunch of piss-drunk mouth breathers, psychotic snake shooters and half-assed Holy Rollers who would install an empty-headed slouch like Junior Bush as their governor and follow him with a vain numbskull like Rick Perry ever get such clout? Well, one thing’s for sure – you’ll never get the answer to that question from one of their ‘abridged-for-stupidity’ textbooks.

I feel sorry for our kids – even more than in previous generations they are being batter-dipped and deep-fried in a vat of convoluted hooey by a bunch of uneducated, narrow-minded yahoos who think faith equates to knowledge and facts are as malleable as a pile of fresh horse manure. Third-world country, here we come.

Conversely, down in the fetid armpit of poverty-row Dark Ages America, in the homophobe paradise of Fulton, Mississippi, a lesbian teenager is suing the local school for not allowing her to bring her gal pal as a prom date – in fact, the authorities cancelled the whole damn prom rather than permit such twenty-first century San Francisco-style perfidy to undermine the town’s Taliban morality.

As the lesbian teen in question, 18-year-old Constance McMillen, told CBS’ News, “I explained to him that you can’t pretend like there’s not gay people at our school, and if you tell people they can’t bring [a] same-sex date, that is discrimination to them.”

Wait a minute, putting aside Constance’s prom problem, she’s saying there are openly gay people in Missi-fracking-ssippi? When was the last time you heard anyone living in mushmouth Haley Barbour’s Stinking State of ‘Grace’ (or is that ‘grease’?) admit they were gay, especially a high school kid? Why, shut my mouth and call me Foghorn!

Who knows, maybe the students forced to read that skunky rot passed off as a textbook by the Texas tyrants are smarter than we think and will laugh it off; perhaps times are moving forward faster than the howling hordes of retrograde simpletons can change, no matter what they do. There may be hope yet, even in the last-to-know, slow-flowing mud of Mississippi, always packed with crackers and nuts and, now – will wonders never cease? — some openly gay folks as well.

© 2010 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.

Liz Cheney vs. al Qaeda 7…

“whose values do they share?”

Scribe’s retort..

“American values. And you and your father?”

Anyone else think a party filled with leaders willing to strip people of HUMAN rights, but gives corporation more rights than any human on the planet, is filled with traitors and corporate shills?

-A-non-E-Moose

Last week’s column has solidified into a flood of Politico Breaking News updates slamming my mailbox. Does God read Inspection? Probably not, but I think my own premise of the Dems losing big in November has a lot more gravitas now. Everyone knows about the proverbial rats leaving a sinking ship. Frankly, in this case, I think the comparison is a little backwards. I think Democratic pols know the rats are about to storm the ship and retake control… they’re just getting the hell out of the way. All those prosecutors Bush installed and judges are eager to help the rats as much as possible: willing to find anything they can threaten Dem pols with.

It reminds me of a voice my wife and I heard when we went parking back in the Flintstone days, when we were young and dating. Dead end road; and abandoned Victorian in the distance. The motor was probably still warm, and we weren’t even starting to get hot, when we both heard a voice say…

“Get out! Get out. Get out!!!“

We listened. And I think our politicians are listening too, only these aren’t “ghosts.” They’re the same demons that brought us to where we were when Barack Obama ran for the presidency.

Who’s abandoning ships to the rats? Well, every day I have received two or more “Breaking News” reports, and they look just like this…

“Representative William Delahunt (D-Mass.) will not seek reelection, the Boston Globe is reporting.”

Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) plans to resign his House seat on Monday.

All Democrats. Not a single stinking Republican in the lot. I think they see a huge wave coming. I can’t say I’m unhappy each and everyone is leaving: there are some big losers in the bunch. The problem is I don’t see a lot of great viable replacements, and I do see the Right rallying.

A lot of comments and toons I’ve read from the Left contain a delusion, of sorts. While we see the absolute absurdity and hypocrisy of some Republicans, these sources seem to think the general public sees it too. I think less of the public sees it than we think and what support we have is shallow, fleeting. There’s a reason they are abandoning ship and I think many may see the filth that keeps being written on the wall over and over again: talking points like “ram,” and “jam,” or lies about how many Americans are against reforming health care, and I bet they know the public has trouble distinguishing between talking points that are called news and actual news. And I think the public is too easily lulled into believing lies when these same rats, and their media enablers, use lies in the form of talking points over and over again… no matter how many times they are called on it. I also think they see, when it comes to commanding the ship of State, our commander is too easily influenced by a desire to reach out, compromise and get everyone on board to actually help much election time. For example: the sudden “180 degrees hard to port” waffle back to military tribunals. I sincerely think Barack believes such waffles will win elections: be as popular as the Belgian waffles at the NY World’s Fair. Instead I think it will either make crucial voters want to stay home and throw up, or vote for anyone rather than a Democrat. Despite all the hesitation I’ve offered, I do think the public knows one thing about that issue. They know that if Barack were a true leader worth respect at this point: military tribunals shouldn’t even be up for discussion at this point.

Would you trust a commander who would do that and abandon all who supported him before and the more moral stand? I wouldn’t: especially if he does it over and over again: not even include single payer, going from public option to no public option, agreeing to extend the Patriot Act, allowing the criminal enterprises Blackwater and KBR/Hallibuton to feed off public coffers.. All that having been typed I still plan on voting for him in 2012: I guarantee; the Republicans will put up far, far worse and apparently we will never do anything like run off voting to enable other parties. We are stuck between bad and horrible.

So, yes, I pretty much guarantee I will vote for him, unless some teabagger shoots him first. But I may be one of the few, and the reluctant.

If I’m right about why they are leaving I can hardly blame them. Last time this happened a legitimately elected president was faced with a mob that would say and do anything to bring him down…

Vince Foster was murdered by Hillary.
The mail to Socks the Cat was supposedly being used for nefarious purposes.
A failed land deal was corruption of the highest order.
If you don’t agree to testify to anything they dreamed of throwing at the president you wind up in a cell with women who murdered their children: a good way to find yourself dead.
If your wife isn’t cooperative you might die: medication held back until she cooperates.

Ask Susan McDougal what happened to Jim: Ken Starr deserves the harshest application of Rico possible, as do many Republicans from those days.

Despite all these racketeer activities, this evil cabal of thugs, perverts and sex maniacs in their own right finally had to resort to a lie: “there is no relationship” means he was saying “there never was,” to get what they wanted: impeachment.

Post this November?

I expect worse than 1994.

They’ve grown so much more powerful than they were. Our leaders have gotten worse.

And has anyone else noticed that the absolute nonsense about “ramming,” or “slamming,” or “shoving” health care down anyone’s throat is ignored or treated as if it’s the truth by much of the media?

Yet, despite all this, I really wasn’t prepared for the flood of “I won’t run again(s)” and “I will step down(s)” that slammed my box. Maybe I hadn’t thought through what was about to happen, so I clicked on a few at first and gently mused, “If it gets worse the November will be a slam.” I think Politico and other sources of breaking news were listening. It definitely got worse. The more I clicked, day after day, the more nauseous I felt.

We have time. Barack Obama alone might be able to limit this Tsunami. He won’t. Oh, many will claim he did by moving more to the right and being more accommodating, more compromising. But that’s not “limiting.” That’s enabling.

There are those who claim the Right is growing more marginalized and weaker. I don’t buy that totally, but let’s say it’s true. Doesn’t matter. Not one bit. When one side can rally troops with lies enabled by the media and enabled by a president who would rather compromise and abandon away his base, that is a formula for failure. Politicians have to inspire those who might vote their way to vote their way, not make endless changes and appeals to those who wouldn’t vote their way if all life on planet Earth depended upon it. No, not even if Jesus did come back and ask for them to support Barack. Indeed cries for Jesus to be treated like a terrorist would be plentiful amongst this band of pure, evil, deluded scum who have far more in common with Osama than Jesus.

These days I ponder upon a movie scene from Deep Impact where Jenny Lerner, a reporter, discovers we’re about to have an extinction level event. When the end is near she joins her estranged father on a beach to watch a supersonic megatsunami hundreds of feet high come in; spending her last moments with him. I am also reminded of On the Beach, where the hero leaves the sub he commands to spend the last days with a lady he had fallen for before radiation exterminates all life.

In both movies they saw it coming and either couldn’t, or wouldn’t, stop it. Unfortunately I believe this is a case of “wouldn’t.”

When I think of those scenes from On the Beach and Deep Impact, I’m reminded those who are pushing so hard for a return to 8 years of insanity: many who are fundamentalists of the worst kind; hoping that we are really in the “last days.” They are like those who prayed to the bomb from Beneath the Planet of the Apes. These were the same kind of people who considered God wanted them to do anything to destroy Bill Clinton. They publicly pray that God strike down those who dare to disagree with them. The same kind of people who have defended the murder of Doctor Tiller, and flying into IRS buildings. The same people who long to invade Iran and will probably never be satisfied until we go to war with, torture, or toss in some bottomless, no due process, pit anyone who dares to disagree with them. The same kind of people empowered by the second Bush presidency when, as one of their first acts, the administration spoke to Armageddonists to tell them they would do nothing to prevent the final days from happening. I think of them: and I imagine the political supersonic megatsunami they fantasize about in November.

And I get the shivers all over.

-30-

Inspection is a column that has been written by Ken Carman for over 30 years. Inspection is dedicated to looking at odd angles, under all the rocks and into the unseen cracks and crevasses that constitute the issues and philosophical constructs of our day: places few think, or even dare, to venture.

© Copyright 2010
Ken Carman and Cartenual Productions
All Rights Reserved

The News Pauper begs everyone’s pardon for his slackery. It is merely the fact that he is B.R.O.K.E., as in poor, and has been forced to hustle like a bowery boy to heat his hearth and get a little in his stomach. I have not started to sell off my little sundries for scraps as of yet, but it is imminent. I am not alone…a friend is surviving this crap by living in his car and calling a forty-dollar day scavenging for change on the street lucrative.

The News Pauper knows what is lucrative…stealing an entire country’s wealth by rigging a Florida election and installing a president with the help of a crooked Supreme Court…throw in the approbation of a lapdog media, and before we know it we’re starting a devastating illegal war, and terrorizing all of America and the world with torture and outright murder.

In the eyes of the NP, this is just the start.

The meme in the media is that Obama is simply blaming everything on Bush. There is much more to this than meets the eye. Everything that Obama does carries much more authority because he was actually in fact elected! The righty media have done all they can to question the legitimacy of Obama’s presidency…they attempt to inflict the thousand cuts in any and every way they can. But, as is always the case with these asses, it is really a mass exercise in projection. This is all proof to the NP that they know that their guy was illegitimate, and that their entire platform is a farce.

There is a startling rumble in the ground that is guaranteed to knock the earth off its axis; it is called the collapse of the commercial real estate market. We proles will be taken out by the millions. The power grubbers have set it up to coincide with the midterms this fall. Any piece of news will be framed to blame the current administration. By October there will be such an astounding degree of misery in the streets that it will be a miracle if there are not widespread riots. I think that the increase of off-account militias and violent rhetoric spreaders like Beck and Limbaugh will present a particular problem to legitimate law enforcement because any action they take against these rebels will be distorted into a message that is already positioned…namely, that Obama wants to disarm the populace and enslave them all.

It has always been the opinion of the NP that if one needs to know what the right is planning for our future, all that is necessary for one to do so is to look at what they are accusing the opposition of doing. If this is really the case, they have big plans indeed. One needs only to spend a minute or two with the purveyors of the propaganda to be greeted with the images of concentration camps, slavery, the complete abolition of the social gains of the twentieth century, and the spectre of the basics of humanity being reserved only for the rulers of us all.

There is a huge difference in scapegoating someone and attributing the blame to the responsible party. George Fucking Bush is the guy we need to remember…any and all attempts to rehabilitate the biggest failure in American history should and will be met with the same derision and mockery one would reserve for an admitted pedophile or unrepentant murderer…because that is what he is. When we all face the reality that will befall us for his crass abuse of the presidency, the one that finally loosed the corporate wardogs upon his own people…when we drown in the red ink that he left behind…let us all sing his praises then. Let us teach the slave children of the Corporate States of America to equate his memory with the boogeyman, because that is what he is.

God keep and bless this country…our enemies within sit in Congress and in the offices of the titans of industry. The reality is that the archetype I’m describing only exists in the amalgam of the forces at work here. No individual will ever be found to have caused the mess we now are in, yet the ship is sinking just the same. There is always some slim hope that a miracle could happen…some hero may emerge that captures the hearts and minds of the people and lives long enough to slip a message through that unleashes the imagination of the populace that the corporate whores always seem to want to nip in the bud. If it ever became known that they can’t control us at all and that we are in fact in control of them, then TMZ would not be considered news by an entire generation.

Screw you Glenn Beck. You are the fraud of the new millennia. GFY Rush, your wake is littered with dead ideas and paved with pure unmitigated greed. The policy of disinformation and projection you created and adhered to, the fawning you demanded from your gullible listeners has coagulated the flow of vital truth to the fatal degree. What good are a bunch of zombies to your cause? To the NP, it is exactly like having the lover you desire lobotomized and kept for your pleasure. You and your ilk are the descendants of snakeoil salesmen and tent revival scammers. You motherfuckers are the intellectual Jeffery Dahmers of our time. The NP despises with all his heart the horror you have helped create, and will happily greet you in hell for all your offenses against the innocents of this world.

It’s time to ingest more gruel…the NP’s stomach grumbles.

Contact the author at WBDunne@ltsaloon.org

© 2010 W.B. Dunne. All Rights Reserved.

Herd About It?

by Ana Grarian

I was doing a Google search for a book I wanted to read and this image came up as a result. Who the hell would treat pigs like this? Pigs are wonderful social animals. They like to nuzzle and cuddle with each other. When raised traditionally they have a relationship with their caretakers. This is sick and disgusting! Please don’t eat anymore pork unless it is from a source that you can verify as humane. If you’d like to help in a peaceful, civil disobedience campaign, print this picture and leave it behind at grocery stores. Ooops, Ana Can’t tell you that, it might be against Veggie Libel laws. Write to the commercial companies that supply the stores and tell them you don’t want pork from this kind of facility. Ask your senators, representatives and state officials to ban this kind of abusive industrial ag.

Thank you to Sara Novak for the fine article at the link below,

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/04/grass-fed-pigs-and-human-health-safety.php

and to Seven Trees for a photo that brings home what factory farming really means.

Robert Kenner’s Oscar nominated film Food Inc., delved into how industrial food is hurting our health. At a hearing on labeling standards for cloned meats (did you know there were cloned meats?) he heard an industry representative say, it would not be in the consumer’s interest to have that information because it would be too confusing.

I’m confused. I’m confused that (A) somebody thought I would want to eat cloned meat, and (B) my government went along with them!

There is a term called “veggie libel”. The real term is “agricultural disparagement law” which says that anyone who makes a false statement about a perishable food or farm product must pay damages to those hurt financially by that statement. That sounds fair. I shouldn’t be able to go to a farmer’s market and claim falsely that Farmer Jane’s beets were sprayed with paint thinner. But these laws are being used in radical ways in something called SLAPP suits ( Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation). Here are some examples from The Global Citizen:

Monsanto, sued several small dairies for advertising that their milk is BGH-free.
McDonalds sued two activists for claiming that Big Macs are unhealthy and harmful to the environment.
Big beef suing Oprah over a show about Mad Cow disease.

Most of these cases are dismissed and found for the defendant. The point of the law is to put the fear of being sued, into journalists and activists and citizen groups so that they won’t express legitimate concerns over food sources and products.Food products, through the corporations that concoct them have more power than the consumers. Where have we heard those concerns recently?

What I want to know is,”If your product is so good, why are you afraid to let me know what it is”?

Does it help determine in a half hour phone call whether or not to bail a daughter from jail? Or how many days to let her stay there?  Three nights but not determined by science.

Economists, and geologists in the mine, are scientists in their respective fields. Both are good at telling why there was a fall but not so good at preventing it.

Does science help decide whether and when a son is to accelerate his fathers dying process?
What has the scientific method determined is the best way or even if to tell a brother his daughter is not his?
And can a person apply science’s methods on whether to advise, or not, a grandfather making his will as to which is his blood grandchildren?

Science is crude because it has no jurisdiction in areas of life.  Hell, how many are able to live without knowing what constitutes the scientific method?

Why is there something rather than nothing? Didn’t have that in physics or chemistry.

Consciousness then.  I forget what class covered its formation, structure, and classifications much less its contents.

Can science tell me what in the hell my wife was thinking when she blew up our car’s engine after continuing to drive, and faster at that, with no oil pressure?  Please science, help.

What is the correct scientifically engineered method to nullify religious fanaticism?

Here’s the most practical justification for calling it crude. 
I’ve pursued science and engineering in school and used, of necessity its methods for arriving at truth with practical problems on the job at the coal mine. I’ve found it my last choice to use in troubleshooting. Many other methods are superior by reason of time involved in their application compared to the scientific method. The scientific method is slow and crude in application when there are faster and more precise troubleshooting techniques available.  For example:

 Face boss runs up and tells me to get my tools the miner is down. What would the scientific method have me do? Question. Why doesn’t the miner come on when I press the start button? Educate. Consider the electrical schematic. Hypothesize. Wire has burnt in two, switch not closing, faulty hold in coil, bunch of other stuff. Test. Walk 4 crosscuts to the power center and lock and tag out the miner cable. Return to the miner and open up explosion proof panels (15 bolts each) on both sides of the miner to gain access to test points and start metering circuits. 30 minutes of testing fails several times to find a fault and finally a test reveals the stop button is open. The current must flow thru it to hold in the run circuit. Open it and the hold-in coil is de-energized thus cutting power to the pump motor. SUCCESS. Fix the stop button and close up the miner. Check the explosion proof covers with a .004 inch feeler gauge all around and it slides in. Take all the bolts back off and find a piece of dirt in the flamepath. Clean it and install door and recheck. Do the other panel door. Go back to the powerbox, unlock the plug of the miner cable, screw it back to the power receptacle. Pull the breaker on. It goes off with a bang and sparks. Son of a bitch. Do it again and it stays set. I’m the man. Get a paid lunch.

Two hours shot in the ass with the scientific method when one of the non-scientific methods would of got the problem fixed in less than 5 minutes at the most and still get a paid lunch. Science might get you the answer, but it is slow. Crude.  No I’m not gonna’ tell the quick way.  That’s job security and worth a lot in leverage. 

I have to admit that the scientific method will get the job done eventually if the quicker methods fail or do not apply given that the problem is amenable to the constraints of the scientific method in the first place. I made my own conditions at the mine on my understanding of the scientific method but I didn’t like to use it and was always my last choice.

The everyday questions that haunt me in relationship issues with family is where science sings like a pig. Another reason that I call it crude. Science considers and is concerned with things that are placed within its reach by being measurable. But there are more things not capable of being measured than those that are. Lots of stuff in the world that can’t be measured. How long did I fantasize about Jessica Alba’s or her double’s performances in Sin City in 2006? How am I supposed to get that info today? Carbon dating?

In a narrow aspect from Newtonian mechanics, to spooky quantum entanglements and teleportations, the accomplishments of science would be magic of the highest sort if viewed from the perspective of 2000 years ago. But improving life span to 77 years or so is not doing much considering what was done without science in the 3.5 billion years leading up to one of its breakthroughs with Galileo’s outlandish, (in a time of truth determination by the best debater’s view), technique of “contrived” tests. Science has not been necessary to evolutionary development.

And then there are applied sciences.  What does applied science even mean when psychology cannot squeeze itself thru the narrow door of real science without widening it with the sledgehammer of pharmacology? http://www.arachnoid.com/psychology/index.html

How convincing is science when only 32% of the public “Think that humans, other living things have evolved due to natural processes.”  http://people-press.org/report/528/

I’ve had a buttfull of this for now. Fun though.

 Science is crude due to its slow, paced, application in getting to knowledge. It is the best method to determine truth if you can’t use anything else and you can find an area in which it applies. Scientific theories are only “theoretically” 100% correct all the time until they’re proved wrong. Science’s limits are described in the engineers mantra “Cheaper, better, faster. Pick two.” Like the engineers mantra science has its limits and its applications are in a rather narrow field of endeavor in the human experience. The coal miner has no respect for the engineers mantra and is able to provide all three parameters in a solution. He is not bound by the scientific method alone. It is not only possible but preferable to avoid the scientific method. A crude invention.

What is the sensible thing to do in the face of overwhelming odds? As a Christian I was brought up to admire Bible characters such as: the boy David slaying Goliath with a sling shot; Meschach, Shadrach and Abednego going to the fiery furnace rather than deny their God, Christ going willingly to the cross, giving his life to save ours. In school I learned about Patriots who went against all odds to fight for their country. Movies and books portrayed the hero or heroine who stood up bravely against a bully or criminal.
I can remember clearly being shocked and confused in my 1st aid class when we were cautioned not to put our own lives in danger in order to save someone else. Wait a minute! Isn’t that what firemen, policemen and 1st responders do every day? Isn’t that their calling?
In recent years we have heard disdain for those who have martyred themselves for their cause. Now I certainly don’t believe that killing people in a suicide bombing is the right way to advance your cause, but I think I can start to imagine the frustration they must feel, to drive them that far.

I must confess that if I believed I could make a big enough difference in the world,
I would lay my life on the line to do it.

I wasn’t going to post this article. I was afraid my dark frustrations over the apparent hopelessness of fighting for honesty and integrity and ethics in the agri-business world, in this time of over vigilant homeland security types, would be viewed at best as a suicide note and at worst as a threat. Then today I read an article by Jonathan Kime. Mr. Kime described a time when he was a witness to a man burning to death. He was a Tamil man, desperate over the plight of his people being exterminated in Sri Lanka. He wanted people to pay attention and to care. He didn’t know what else to do, so he set himself on fire, on a street in Geneva Switzerland.
Mr. Kime went on to describe the rest of his day and that of a colleague who was also a witness to the event. He talked about how strange it was to go to a business dinner where everyone carried on as usual, because they didn’t know what had happened. Even something as immense as burning to death on a city street, is only a blip of media time, a tiny memory somewhere that doesn’t get re-membered.
So what’s left when the frustration over a cause begins to drag you down to a level that you feel you can’t rise up again? After you’ve done the research, spoken out, blogged, written letters to government officials and letters to the editor. When you’ve attended meetings and rallies, yet it seems to be like moving a mountain with a toothpick.

I guess you take a step back. You realize that there’s always tomorrow to try again
as long as you leave yourself the possibility of a tomorrow.