Politeness

Digby:

What conservatives call politeness is really deference to authority. What liberals call politeness is sensitivity to the least powerful among us.

DEA Releases Kentucky Hemp Seeds

UPDATE, May 17: Comer caves, agrees to file permit in hopes of getting seeds quickly.

UPDATE, May 15: Nope, the DEA has not gone soft and Comer does not have the juice. He's suing the Justice Department like any other frustrated repug.

Either Jaime Comer has more juice than anybody realized, or the DEA is getting soft.

Janet Patton at the Herald:

After a day of back-and-forth wrangling with Washington, the Kentucky Department of Agriculture will get its hemp seeds.

Agriculture Commissioner James Comer said late Tuesday that the federal Drug Enforcement Administration has agreed to issue an import permit to the Agriculture Department and by the end of the week release 250 pounds of Italian hemp seeds being held by the U.S. Customs Service in Louisville.

SNIP

The department and seven universities across the state are planning to plant hemp for research projects this year. To do that, the seed needs to be in the ground by June 1.

This would be the first time in decades that hemp, which was once a top Kentucky crop, is cultivated in the state.

Hemp is back in Kentucky.  The battle now moves to the rule-writing committees, to ensure small farmers are not cut out of the industrial hemp windfall.

Meanwhile, as more states move to legalize marijuana, will legal industrial hemp encourage or hinder that effort in Kentucky?  Right now, a lot of people are making a lot of money growing marijuana illegally here.  Nobody's making money growing industrial hemp - yet.

$1.18 Trillion in Stolen Tax Dollars Found

Now we just have to take it back.

Firedoglake:

- A new report found tax breaks to major corporations equal to amount of discretionary budget for the current fiscal year (and larger than the budget deficit.)

Because True Courage Deserves Respect, and Asshole Exhibitionism Deserves Ridicule

Of course Michael Sam is getting better treatment than Tim Tebow received. Defensive end Sam probably throws a better pass.

jesusfuckingchocolatecoveredchristonapogostick, there is literally nothing about which freakazoid conservatards will not whine.

Maybe it's time to give them something to whine about.

I mean, something more than this video. Unlike Tebow the Pharisee, Sam doesn't lie about having a sex life.

And no, Sam was not treated well by the NFL at all. Hey, SEC teams: are you going to stand there and take this insult to your conference?

QOTD

PZ Myers on conservative bullies complaining about being bullied:

It seems to me that the real problem here is that wingnuts don’t want to be held accountable for their ugly views — they want to be racist and sexist, but how dare you call them racist and sexist, and worst of all, how unfair to actually penalize them in the court of public opinion for being bigoted scumbags.

But it’s actually quite fair. You’re free to accuse me of being a feminist, an egalitarian, an anti-racist, and I won’t deny it — I’ll actually take pride in it.

No Coincidence

Because the Traitors in Defense of Slavery have always been vicious, backward motherfuckers and they always will be.

David Atkins at Hullabaloo:

Here's a map of states with the most solar and wind renewable energy:



Here's the Slave state map from 1854:

Not Enough, But A Good Start

Nothing short of confiscatory taxes on the rich will halt and reverse income inequality, but if you're not ready to back a real solution, Robert Reich has some acceptable half-measures for you.

Robert Reich at the Nation:

Some inequality of income and wealth is inevitable, if not necessary. If an economy is to function well, people need incentives to work hard and innovate. The pertinent question is not whether income and wealth inequality is good or bad. It is at what point do these inequalities become so great as to pose a serious threat to our economy, our ideal of equal opportunity and our democracy.

We are near or have already reached that tipping point. It is incumbent on us to dedicate ourselves to reversing this diabolical trend. It will not happen automatically, because the dysfunctions of our economy and politics are not self-correcting when it comes to inequality. In order to reform the system, we need a political movement for shared prosperity. Herewith, a short summary of what has happened, why it has happened, how it threatens the foundations of our society, and what we must do to reverse it.

T-Shirt Wisdom

ummagumma.co:

The Clever Concept

Divine Irony:

How Public Prayers are Morally Reprehensible

For more than a year, Rich Lane of Shelbyville, Kentucky, has been imploring the Shelbyville City Council to stop opening meetings with christian prayers.

He has cited the First Amendment, the divisiveness of sectarian prayers, the insults to non-xians and non-believers, even the biblical injunctions against public prayer.

In response, he has received nothing but disdain, contempt and insults from the council members.

As a fellow atheist, I agree with Lane's points and support his effort unequivocally.  But for me, the strongest argument he made was his latest, on May 1.

In that statement, he referred to a deeply insulting and anti-American remark from council member Bob Andriot, who told Lane - during a public council meeting - that because Andriot is a christian, and everybody he knows is a christian, then he was going to continue to promote christianity in his capacity as an elected official no matter what.

This was, by the way, before the U.S. Supreme Court legitimized Talibantastic sentiments like Andriot's and basically told every non-Christian in the country to fuck off and die in a fire.

On May 1, Lane exposed the essential hate behind Andriot's statement:

"Imagine if Shelbyville were struggling with racial tensions, and I was standing up here arguing for racial equality instead of religious equality.  Just think about the public outcry that would ensue if someone on this council were to make the exact same comments that were made to me during my last appearance, substituting the word 'White' for 'Christian.'

"In fact, there's no need to imagine - I'll do it for you.  I want you to hear the exact same words that were said to me in a different context to help you understand just how intolerant the council is actually being.  Again, this is word for word what was said to me, substituting five occurrences of the word 'christian' with the word 'White.'

'With all due respect to you, Rich I totally disagree with you.  Me being White, I feel very strongly about what we do here, and I'll continue to do i8t until the Supreme Court says we can't.

'I feel like this community is a White community. And that b ei9ng the case, then I think that's where I feel like our support ought to go.  And so therefor I'll always support the White doctrines.

'And I feel at this point Whites are still a majority, and that being the case, people know where I stand on i8ssues.  They know I'm White, and what I believe.'

Lane continued:

"Spoken in the context of racial inequality, it's immediately obvious how intolerant and prejudiced those statements really are.  Yet when those same words are masked behind the cloak of religious convictions, they're not only tolerated; they're often encouraged and even celebrated!

"I think it's morally reprehensible and completely inappropriate for this council to behave in this manner."

The only thing that separates a democracy under the rule of law from a theocracy under the rule of freakazoids is the separation of church and state embodied in the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution.

Bob Andriot and people who share his hateful behavior should move to Saudi Arabia, where their dream theocracy rules all.

Stop Sharing

Divine Irony:

QOTD

The Rude Pundit on conservative bullies whining about being bullied:

Let's get this right, okay? When someone tells you that the things you believe are wrong, it's not bullying. When someone says that facts clearly demonstrate that your opinion is false, it's not bullying. According to conservatives, teachers are bullying students if they point out that Reagan wasn't a demi-god who never did anything bad.

What's actually happening is that for decades, for centuries, the white, straight, conservative Christians have gotten to dictate the terms of the argument. They were used to being the home team. Now, with changes in demographics and changes in beliefs, they're increasingly playing an away game. Everyone loves it when the hometown crowd chants for you. Of course, you don't like it when you're the visitors and they boo.

For a bunch of people who were and, to a great extent, still are bullies, you really are just wimps who are begging for a swirlie.

Yes, the Really Rich Really Are Lazy Parasites

Paul Krugman:

Apologists for soaring inequality almost always try to disguise the gigantic incomes of the truly rich by hiding them in a crowd of the merely affluent. Instead of talking about the 1 percent or the 0.1 percent, they talk about the rising incomes of college graduates, or maybe the top 5 percent. The goal of this misdirection is to soften the picture, to make it seem as if we’re talking about ordinary white-collar professionals who get ahead through education and hard work.

But many Americans are well-educated and work hard. For example, schoolteachers. Yet they don’t get the big bucks. Last year, those 25 hedge fund managers made more than twice as much as all the kindergarten teachers in America combined. And, no, it wasn’t always thus: The vast gulf that now exists between the upper-middle-class and the truly rich didn’t emerge until the Reagan years.

Second, ignore the rhetoric about “job creators” and all that. Conservatives want you to believe that the big rewards in modern America go to innovators and entrepreneurs, people who build businesses and push technology forward. But that’s not what those hedge fund managers do for a living; they’re in the business of financial speculation, which John Maynard Keynes characterized as “anticipating what average opinion expects the average opinion to be.” Or since they make much of their income from fees, they’re actually in the business of convincing other people that they can anticipate average opinion about average opinion.

Release the A-10 Attack Copters and Battle Tanks!

Apparently these morons think the feds will respond to government employees getting killed with assault rifles by shooting back with BB guns.  Remember this stuff?

Digby:

This is disturbing

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management is warning its workers in Utah to be on alert after two men threatened an agency wrangler on Interstate 15 about 90 miles south of Salt Lake City. The BLM says the incident occurred on I-15 near Nephi about 11 a.m. Tuesday when two men wearing hoods pulled up alongside a marked BLM truck and held up a sign that read, "You need to die."

KUTV-TV reports one of the suspects held what appeared to be a handgun. The BLM worker slowed down and let the dark blue Dodge truck with an extended cab pass before exiting the interstate at Mills. He says he couldn't get a license plate number because it was covered in duct tape. Authorities are looking for the truck.

Holding random federal workers personally responsible for the issues surrounding the Bundy Ranch protest is beyond radical. It's right in line with Timothy McVeigh's vision of revolution.

This is not normal politics. In fact, threatening random federal workers with death is not politics at all.

And it's not just a few penis-less maniacs:

On the outs with mainstream pundits over "the Negro", Cliven Bundy and his band of armed extremists are still hoping to spark a violent confrontation with the Feds that will go nationwide.

Bring it on, motherfuckers:

Apparently the FBI is starting to investigate the Bundy outlaws as part of "formal investigation into alleged death threats, intimidation and possible weapons violations.

I think a few canisters of pepper spray will take care of the militia cowards; beating up defenseless women and children is more their speed.


 

"These girls embody the best hope for the future of our world"

Preach it, Ms. First Lady. Because it's not like it doesn't happen here.



Full transcript here.

Like Wild Salmon? Thank Billy Frank.

Not that it kept the despoiling motherfuckers from fighting any dirtier, but I remember when the leadership of Native American activists brought instant gravity, passion and attention to overlooked local issues.

Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money:

Billy Frank, Jr., the Nisqually fishing rights advocate, has died at the age of 83. Frank was a key figure in pressing Native American fishing claims in Washington during the 1960s and 1970s. This was a time with plummeting salmon runs thanks to industrialization, stream bed and water degradation, and massive overfishing. Of course, the region’s native peoples had absolutely no responsibility for any of this. But as has often happened in American history, hunting laws punished the poor and people of color for subsistence hunting off a population in decline because of white overharvesting. By the 1970s, increased white liberal support for Native American rights led to a lot of real gains, including fishing rights in the Northwest. Frank was a central figure in this history and deserves to be remembered.

QOTD

David Atkins at Hullabaloo:

The world is certainly still a dangerous place, and military jobs are important. But so are the jobs that educate our children, repair our roads, serve the disadvantaged, reduce greenhouse emissions, and otherwise benefit the common good. Poverty, rampant inequality and climate change are all clearer and more present dangers than any non-nuclear military threat from China or Russia. Anyone who claims otherwise is an ignoramus or a con artist. Why is it OK for a Republican to vigorously defend every Keynesian taxpayer-funded military job, while trying to slash the jobs of teachers and railway workers so billionaires like Donald Sterling can pay less in taxes?

Impeachment Now: Obama Deserves It

And it's the only way Democrats can take back Congress in November.

Steve M:

The benghazi inquisition might be a bigger deal than a lot of non-Fox viewers think because it's starting to get buy-in from the so-called liberal media. Yes, non-Republican journalists still think there's no crime involved and therefore no cover-up that should be actionable ... but, really, the White House committed a political error, didn't he? So, really, he had it coming, right? Therefore, if the GOP is going to paralyze the country with a phony constitutional crisis for the rest of this year --or the next two and a half years, or onward into infinity if Hillary Clinton is elected president but Congress is still Republican-controlled -- then it's as much Obama's fault as the Republicans', isn't it? Wasn't Obama asking for it?

SNIP

Yes, but this line of thought easily morphs into the sort of "just world" thinking that partly absolves Republicans of responsibility for the fraud they're committing. It's as if these reporters are watching a kid get bullied in the junior high cafeteria and telling themselves that, after all, he does all those weird things, so of course he gets picked on. They lose perspective on what should be the unacceptability of what's being done.

SNIP 

A nasty cafeteria beatdown is now inevitable, and reporters and pundits are making themselves comfortable with the idea that it's going to happen, because acknowledging that sociopaths control half our government is too much to ask of them.

Don't despair; Steve Benen reminds us of how repug bullshit attacks on a Democratic president backfired.

Go on, repugs: impeach the kenyanmuslinterristni**er.  Do it now.

A Prayer for Religious Freedom

Divine Irony:

Let us stand now, unbowed and unfettered by arcane doctrines born of fearful minds in darkened times. Let us embrace the Luciferian impulse to eat of the Tree of Knowledge and dissipate our blissful and comforting delusions of old. Let us demand that individuals be judged for their concrete actions, not their fealty to arbitrary social norms and illusory categorizations. Let us reason our solutions with agnosticism in all things, holding fast only to that which is demonstrably true. Let us stand firm against any and all arbitrary authority that threatens the personal sovereignty of One or All. That which will not bend must break, and that which can be destroyed by truth should never be spared its demise. It is Done. Hail Satan.

After Supreme Court prayer decision, Satanist offers his own prayer 

I fear that most people miss the point of this amazing protest against state sponsored superstition.

Stanford Dumps Rotting Corpse of Coal

Hear that?  It's the divestment train "This Is How We Killed Apartheid" running over the remains of Big Coal and heading straight for Big Oil and Big Gas.

Think Progress:

Stanford University announced Tuesday it would divest from the coal industry, making it the first major university to do so.

The university’s internal guidelines allow the Board of Trustees to consider whether the “policies or practices” of companies they invest in “create substantial social injury.” Following a five-month review process, an advisory panel that included students, faculty, staff and alumni recommended that stocks from companies “whose principal business is coal” be sold off and excluded from any future investments. On Tuesday, the Board voted to follow through on that conclusion.

Lisa Lapin, Stanford’s associate vice president for communications, told the New York Times that the decision covers about 100 companies around the globe, some of whom are currently in Stanford’s investment portfolio and some of whom are not. Those that are account for only a small portion of the $18.7 endowment, “but a small percentage is still a substantial amount of money,” Lapin added.

If you don't remember the '80s, millions of college students on hundreds of campuses nationwide demanded their schools dump their stocks in companies that invested in apartheid South Africa. Long story short: the schools caved, the companies deserted South Africa, and Nelson Mandela walked out of prison. It took less than 10 years.

I give Big Coal five.