Stop Squirming

Via Down with Tyranny.

By "Heal the Land," They Mean "Eliminate Liberals"

Because that's what their bloodthirsty invisible wizard in the sky has always done to their enemies.

And never doubt for a second that's who we are: their enemies.

There's a very old joke about natives meeting the pilgrims: "When they came ashore, we had the land and they had the bibles.  They said, let us bow our heads.  When we looked up, we had the bibles and they had the land."

The freakazoids are at their most dangerous when they pray. 

They Are Who We Thought They Were

via Down with Tyranny:

If you haven't given money to the ACLU lately, do it now.  They are the only thing standing between us and Rwanda.

Cuz Stuff Has 2 Be Paid 4

Via Kevin Drum

Martha Soukup via Flickr

I still think the "Rally to Restore Sanity" was stupid and dangerous.  At the very moment the repugs were revealing themselves as destructive nihilists, Stewart and Colbert gave them bipartisan cover.

But this sign is dead on. 

 

Civil War Participation Trophies

Leave it to Dok Zoom at Wonkette to come up with an honest description.

Northam has called for the removal of Civil War Participation Trophies, since they honor actual traitors to the USA, and were mostly erected to reinforce the post-Reconstruction myth of the “Lost Cause” — historically, they have more to do with reinforcing white supremacy than anything else.

Solve KY's Budget and Pension Problems the Easy Way: Legalize Pot

The only real obstacle remaining is that Kentucky legislators can't admit that the hippies are right. Again.

Think Progress:

Yet the numbers don’t lie. Legal, recreational, adult-use cannabis is already a multi-billion-dollar industry even with less than 10 percent of the U.S. population currently living in states with an operational marketplace. Legalization states have seen huge tax revenues and significant job growth from pot, begun cashing in large savings from reduced criminal justice system spending, and watched the black markets in their states shrink precipitously.

The early returns from legalization have already caught the attention of other states. By the end of 2018, the share of the American populace living in states where buying and selling pot is legal and closely regulated will have more than doubled.

The pot jackpot train is leaving the station.  Jump on it, Kentucky, before we're left behind. Again.

Monsanto Now Owns Your Garden

The issue here is not whether GMO food is safe to eat.  The issue is for-profit corporations having control of our food supply.

For more than ten thousand years, human beings have grown food by saving seeds from the harvest to plant next year.  As long as we can grow food this way, we can survive.

But now Monsanto and other giant agriculture corporations are destroying subsistence agriculture.  No more growing food unless you pay Monsanto for seeds you have to buy again every year.

And because you commie hippies might object to losing control over your own food supply, Monsanto is making sure you can't say anything about it.

Mother Jones:

With little notice, more than two dozen state legislatures have passed “seed-preemption laws” designed to block counties and cities from adopting their own rules on the use of seeds, including bans on GMOs. Opponents say that there’s nothing more fundamental than a seed, and that now, in many parts of the country, decisions about what can be grown have been taken out of local control and put solely in the hands of the state.

“This bill should be viewed for what it is — a gag order on public debate,” says Kristina Hubbard, director of advocacy and communications at the Organic Seed Alliance, a national advocacy group, and a resident of Montana, which along with Texas passed a seed-preemption bill this year. “This thinly disguised attack on local democracy can be easily traced to out-of-state, corporate interests that want to quash local autonomy.”

Seed-preemption laws are part of a spate of legislative initiatives by industrial agriculture, including ag-gag laws passed in several states that legally prohibit outsiders from photographing farms, and “right-to-farm” laws that make it easier to snuff out complaints about animal welfare. The seed laws, critics say, are a related thrust meant to protect the interests of agro-chemical companies.

SNIP

Organic farmers can lose their crop if it becomes contaminated with genetically modified material. Even conventional farmers who rely on exports to Asia, where GMOs are banned by some countries, face risks from contamination. There are currently no plans to push for a GMO ban anywhere in Texas or Montana, and neither state requires companies to disclose the use of GMOs. (In Montana, at least, Gov. Steve Bullock, a Democrat, added an amendment to the preemption bill when he signed it, preserving the right of local governments to require that farmers notify their neighbors if they’re planting GMO seeds.) Yet critics of the preemption laws fear that they tie the hands of local governments, which will make it harder for communities to respond to problems in the future. 

Still, the fight isn’t just about GMOs, says Judith McGeary, noting that seeds coated with neonicotinoids — a class of pesticides linked to colony collapse disorder in bees — are also at issue. Under the Texas bill, a local government can’t ban neonic seeds in order to protect pollinator insects, and in the current political climate, it’s hard to imagine that such a ban would happen on the state level.

“We have an extremely large state with an incredible diversity of agricultural practices and ecological conditions, and you’ve now hobbled any ability to address a problem that’s found in one local area,” says McGeary. “Until it’s a big enough issue for a state of 23 million to pay attention to through the state legislature, nothing is going to happen,” she says.