Organic gouging

I have read in various places from people who should know that there is no nutritional difference between “organic” and regular food. I do not doubt this, but we eat mostly organic food. It costs more, but we believe it is an ethical choice. I realize that most people cannot justify the extra expense. There is no way we could have afforded Whole Foods when our kids were young.

However, I would not care how food was labeled if we had transparency – if we could know that animals are treated ethically, soil preserved. We would be far better off to let our chickens roam free and put Monsanto in a cage. And if advertising ever told us anything that was true, we might make better choices.

But that’s the way we live. So even though it’s a bit annoying, we pay more for the “organic” label. Part of the high cost of organic food is the “ideology cost” – that is, Whole Foods jacks up its prices knowing that people will pay more if they believe they are participating in an ethical movement.

Whole Foods gouges the eyes out of its patrons. Every single item in that store ends with two digits: $.99. Pricing is merely a matter of picking the numbers that precede .99, and that often seems to be a random process. But they also treat their people well – their employees and suppliers. That matters too.

Here are our justifications for organic food:

An American kid's food cornucopia
1. Organic food practices are easier on the land. Most food that we eat is petroleum-dependent, and the soil is merely the medium by which we convert oil to food. Organic food uses natural fertilizers and no pesticides, so that nutrients are constantly recycled to preserve long-term soil viability. I wonder what would happen to the Midwest if we ran out of oil. Would it be a desert?

2. Most organic food tastes better. Organic strawberries are smaller, but sweeter and juicier than their non-organic counterparts. Organic deli meat does not have that oily texture that we find in Subway sandwiches. (God only knows what they inject in that stuff to make it appear edible. Two things about it are certain: They add color, to make it look wholesome, and artificial flavors, to make it taste real.)

Some non-organic food is as wholesome as its organic counterpart. I notice no difference in organic potatoes, peppers, beans, chips, beer. Some is worse – organic bananas are hit-and-miss. Organic peanut butter … well, if I can’t spread it with a knife, I don’t eat it. I’m a Skippy man.

Can it be far behind?
3. Animals raised for organic food have better lives. People laugh at the idea of “free range” chickens, but I like the idea that a chicken gets to enjoy chickenhood, eating bugs and pecking at manure, before she dies. Cows like eating grass – it makes them happy. Pigs like rooting. And none of them anticipate death. They are the last to know what is coming. But for their brief stay on the planet, why not treat them ethically?

I realize that this is America, and there is probably a lot of hype behind claims of “free range” and “grass fed.” For instance, if they merely put a door and fifty square feet of lawn on a barn housing several thousand chickens, they can say that the eggs are “cage-free.” And probably much of it is just plain lying, either outright, or using words and phrases, like “lightly sweetened” or “natural” that have no legal meaning. Most likely much of what is labeled organic is just re-branded. This is America, after all, and advertising is nothing more than professional lying.

Free-range potheads
It’s a compromise. We know that Whole Foods is gouging us, and that some growers are probably lying their asses off. But there’s another movement that makes even more sense – to buy locally. Our local farmers’ market is talking now about five days a week. We can buy local fruit and vegetables, beef, chicken and pork, wine and beer (OK – hops are from far away places), all without that 1,500 miles of transportation regular food takes to get to our table.

As always, it is buyer beware. But the closer to home our food sources, the more accountability there is.

The Sarah

Image from Vanity Fair article
I finally got around to reading Michael Joseph Gross’s Vanity Fair piece, Sarah Palin: The Sound and the Fury, this morning. Imagine this poor schmuck, given the assignment of digging into Sarah’s life, and finding a stone wall so heavily patrolled that the only person willing to speak openly and on the record is an already-rich “matriarch of one of Wasilla’s oldest families”, Colleen Cottle.

[Palin] “had no attention span—with Sarah it was always ‘What’s the flavor of the day?’ ”; [she] was unable to take part meaningfully in conversations about budgets because she “does not understand math or accounting—she only knows buzzwords, like ‘balanced budget’ ”; and who clocked out after four hours on most days, delegating her duties to an aide—“but he’ll never talk to you, because he has a state job and doesn’t want to lose it.”

Even Cottle says she and her husband Rodney will “pay a price” for her words.

Gross claims at the beginning that he started out agnostic about The Sarah, but became hardened in his opinions about her as he dug deeper. I’ll take him at his word, but doubt his intelligent and skeptical nature if that is true. Signs are all over the place for the average outsider observer, much less the trained journalist.

The article leave us with no more information that we could have gleaned by ourselves just observing the abundant clues around her. How hard is it to figure that she doesn’t write her own speeches, Facebook entries, or even Tweets, or that she has no conception of politics, domestic or international affairs? Of course she doesn’t read and cannot think properly. Duh! She is merely a reflection of the wishes of those who project their starry-eyed hopes on her.

I’d take it even a step deeper – she has no deep and abiding faith, but rather carries with her that shrill version of Christianity that judges and proscribes without enlightening. She’s likely never thought deeply about faith or read the bible, new or old testament. She is of this life, this moment, never thinking much beyond.

Mark Moe, a teacher of thirty years, wrote about her personality type in a piece in the Denver Post last December:

It recently dawned on me that one of the most predominant types — especially among female students — has as its avatar a political celebrity who has made a raucous re-entry onto the national stage. Therefore, I’m calling it The Sarah.

The Sarah has three basic characteristics: a lack of self-evaluative skills; a tendency to parrot whatever she thinks her immediate audience wants or needs to hear to gain validation, and the mistaken belief that popularity implies importance.

Gross’s piece hit the recycle bin shortly after I finished. Nothing new there, no reason to want to know more. It’s all right in front of us. She is as she appears, shallow, phony, and mean as Michael Vick’s pit bull. She will never be president – even the slickest professional manager in the business would not be able to both manage her mercurial personality and keep her little dim bulb under a bushel basket for a full campaign.

The disconcerting thought is that so many people think she has the qualifications to sit at the helm. What the hell is wrong with us?

Give this woman a pole …

For a good time, call Christine ...
The following observation by Christopher Hitchens gives us a good lens through which to observe our culture:

Nothing optional–from homosexuality to adultery–is ever made punishable unless those who do the prohibiting (and exact the fierce punishments) have a repressed desire to participate” — “God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything,” p. 40

Anti-masturbation candidate Christine O’Donnell won her primary, which is of no concern to me. Then I saw the clip from Bill Maher’s old show talking about the subject. The woman was in misery, so anxious to knock one off that it would be a quick one-two from bar (or church basement) to bed with her. It is an odd Victorian era notion that we must fight our primal urges. Christianity denies what is natural for the sake of the supernatural. Not a good bet.

Repressed urges come out in some form – repressed sexuality often comes out in urges to ban sexuality in others, as Hitchens notes. Homosexuality is present in mild to heavy doses in many of us, and those who repress it are often dangerous, self-loathing prisoners of their own consciences.

More fun is in store. This country’s right wing never ceases to amuse. The best times are when they take control of the political system. Since there is very little real power in that system, we really can’t be hurt by it. So sit back, grab some popcorn, relax, and enjoy the show. Oh, yeah, and if you are alone and feeling randy, while you’re watching, have a diddle. This O’Donnell gal has a Palin-kind of hotness about her. Her sexuality is seeping through her pores, bypassing her inhibitions. All that’s missing is the pole.
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From the Borowitz Report:

WILMINGTON (The Borowitz Report) – Galvanized by Republican senatorial nominee Christine O’Donnell’s anti-masturbation stance, masturbators from across the state converged on Wilmington today in what some are calling the largest pro-wanking protest in American history.

Carrying signs reading, “O’Donnell: Hands Off Our Masturbation,” the angry masturbators clogged downtown Wilmington, stopping traffic for blocks.

Harley Farger, a leading Delaware masturbator and planner of the Million Masturbators March, said it was difficult to organize masturbators “because they’re used to acting alone.”

Mr. Farger, the executive director of the pro-monkey-spanking group MasturNation, said that the “wank and file” of his organization believe that masturbation is an inalienable right guaranteed by the Constitution.

“Our country was founded by rugged individualists,” he said. “And you know what individualists like to do.”

He said that Ms. O’Donnell’s anti-whacking position was “ill-timed,” adding, “In this economy, masturbation is one of the few simple pleasures people still can afford.”

Tracy Klugian, a homemaker and masturbator from Dover, Delaware, said she is “puzzled” by what she sees as the contradictory nature of candidate O’Donnell’s position: “If you’re against masturbation, why would you want to serve in Congress?”

A spokesman for the Wilmington Police Department, Crandall Darlington, said that the Million Masturbators March could cost the city tens of thousands of dollars, “especially when you include the cost of cleaning up afterwards.”

Team of cronies

There was quite a bit of talk when Barack Obama took office about Doris Kearn’s book, Team of Rivals. It’s about Abraham Lincoln and the fact that he brought is avowed enemies into his cabinet when he was elected president.

Lincoln was a strong man who did not suffer cognitive dissonance or from group think, two terms that had not been invented at that time. He wanted to hear it all, knowing that the truth can pop up anywhere, and might best be fleshed out by heated exchange among rivals.

John F. Kennedy had a different strategy after the Bay of Pigs. He deliberately left meetings where he thought his mere presence was influencing the discussion.

But with Obama, it’s quite different. That was a nice little touch when he took office, to make it look like he was bringing ideological rivals on board. He wasn’t. He was bringing in people that shared his philosophy, which looks suspiciously like that of his predecessor.

The joke’s on us!

Off we go a-rapturin’

Radio host Thom Hartmann
My exposure to talk radio of any variety these days is limited to about fifteen minutes a day – that period of time that it takes to shower. I take the laptop with me, turn on Thom Hartmann. For those who have never experienced non-right wing talk radio, lefty hosts are more willing to entertain opposing points of view. Hartmann especially takes trouble to bring on people with whom he disagrees. I like the concept, but sadly Thom is hyper, unable to make a short statement. His sentences are like a herd of cats climbing a tree, each going a different direction at once. Listening to him can be painful.

Yesterday he had on Bryan Fischer, a Christian theologian and Director of Issue Analysis for the American Family Association. Bryan believes that (A) Islam is a curse upon humanity, but doesn’t say that they must be wiped out (B). He merely intimates. Islam is, after all, a violent religion, while Christianity is a religion of peace.

Such lunacy is ripe ground for exposure of hypocrisy, and Hartmann was quick to remind him of Deuteronomy and Jeremiah. Fischer did duck and cover, an odd twist to religious fanaticism wherein the faithful abandon the Old Testament as necessary, and claim only ownership of the new. He dared Hartmann to come up with one passage in the New Testament that encouraged violence, and when he mentioned Jesus saying “I come not to bring peace, but to bring a sword,” Fisher said that he was merely speaking in metaphor. Hartmann then asked him if possibly tracts of the Koran are metaphor too, but no, said Fischer, those passages are stone cold.

Fisher then went on to count 109 places in the Koran where violence is wished upon the infidels. Christianity is validated! (Like George Carlin, I wonder why this Christian God is always short of cash, but that’s another issue.)

And then I was done shaving, and off went the radio show. And this morning I remembered something else in the New Testament … Revelations. I don’t hear much about that book these days – that’s the one where 75% of the earth’s population are killed and a triumphant Christ returns on a white horse with a sword. All but 144,000 Jews are murdered. People either convert or suffer the consequences of this peaceful religion.

The final massacre of infidels, shorter version
Peaceful people don’t know what to make of that crazy book. Christian lunatics use it as a means personal validation. Thomas Jefferson omitted it from his bible, calling it “the ravings of a maniac.” I’ve never done any drugs beyond pot, and that only a couple of times, and I’ve never been to a Barry Manilow concert, so I cannot commiserate with the author of that horrible tract. It’s just plain nutty.

But so much for peaceful Christians and the dehumanizing rhetoric about Muslims. Deep inside each of these bible-validating cretins is a wish that 75% of us, and all but a bushel basket of Jews, die a horrible death.

A non-fossil-fuel-based energy source

I got one of those stupid right wing emails that go around from an acquaintance in Billings – a hyper-religious right winger who imagines that he is Atlas carrying the world on his shoulders. This one viewed the history of the world through the lens of the history of beer, and of course concluded that “liberals” (the rest of the world, as he sees it), are stupid, lazy, and feed off “conservatives” (the smart minority of humans). I sat on it for a week, and then came up with a nuanced response, thoughtful and self-reflective, and sure to yield a positive response from his critically informed brain:

The last “conservative” was Barry Goldwater, deceased. Here’s a true story, as told by his daughter:

It seems every time some goofball or low IQ jackass says (s)he’s a conservative, Barry does a half-turn in his grave. It was bad enough with the Sarah and Pat Robertson and Dobson, but with the rise of the Teabaggers, his spinning got so bad that he ended up drilling his way over to the neighbors. They went and got him and re-buried him, but as a precaution put him on a spit so that he wouldn’t leave the yard again. Then they had a bright idea – they hooked him up to a generator. Now every time some dimwit right winger says something stupid, it generates electricity for their house.

You just lit up their yard lights.

Calmer minds prevail …


A while back, in a fit of angst, I said that a certain commenter who goes by the name “W******”, aka Rod Kailey, would not be allowed to post here.

That was a wrong. My bad. I was angry at him. He is welcome here, as are Max and Eric and even Crisp and Budge, Fleischman and everyone … it’s a party, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Banning is the a sign of both intellectual insecurity and a controlling nature. I shall never forget W.C. Fleischman’s words to me before he banned me:

i command you to silence yourself …

Kinda says it all, ya think??

I hereby decree that all formerly banned bloggers and commenters are now free to leave their cells, congregate with others, speak their minds. Merely print the pass at the right here, and then if you continue to find yourself unable to post at LITW or 4&20 or any other tooly Democratic blog (it is a Democrat thing, this banning), merely link them to this post so that they can see that your rights have been restored. Have them contact me. I will COMMAND that they let you back in. They are decent, law-abiding folks. They’ll let you back in.
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Blogging is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. (Karl Mark)

All is projection

“…the operation of expelling feelings or wishes the individual finds wholly unacceptable—too shameful, too obscene, too dangerous—by attributing them to another.” (Peter Gay, Definition of projection)

Everything that I see around me in this crazy country is projection. We differ from Islamic cultures culturally, but also in our ability to kill from great distances. Because we can drop bombs from aircraft and fire missiles at people, and now even use unmanned drones to accomplish these purposes, our killing, while indiscriminate, is also safe. For us.

The indignity that people express at the events of 9/11 is projection. We do the equivalent of 9/11 twice before breakfast, again after lunch, and then go home to our kids and have sex with our wives, girlfriends and mistresses, and then go out and do it again the following day because, you know, they are evil.

There is no difference between us and them. We are intolerant of their religion, they of ours. They kill us indiscriminately, we them. We’re just better at that game. We have among our ordinary Joe’s a few scholars, humanitarians, scientists, theologians, and sociopaths. So do they.

Our leaders (most of whose names we would not recognize) became leaders because they understand human nature better than the rest of us. They know that we all suffer from greed, lust, avarice, pride and anger, and so play to those vices as they play their global games for control of land and resources. We are taught to dress it up as patriotism, just vengeance, courage and honor. It is none of those things. It is indiscriminate killing. We are indiscriminate killers.

But those Muslims, why, they are even worse than us! So we are justified killing a million of them as the price for 2,819 of us. That 355:1 ratio speaks of another vice: Vanity.

Boulder fire

The picture to the left is not a stock “forest fire” picture from somewhere, but one that was actually taken this week of a fire up in the hills near here.

We’ve had family and friends call from both coasts and Montana wondering if we are affected by the blaze. We are not – we are safely tucked away in town. We came down here to buy a house, and just did, but that house is down in Morrison, 45 minutes away. But the new house is … in the woods, the urban interface of course. Someday soon we might be running for our lives.

Picture is E looking W - fire is in the area behind the hills upper right -maybe two miles away
The fire started when a guy in a camper backed into a propane tank. [So goes the rumor.] It spread quickly, and because of shifting winds and other logistics, last night at 10 P.M. it was “zero percent contained.” Last I heard it was 7,0006422 acres and growing, and that 3,500 people had been evacuated. A hundred [167 as of 9/10] structures have burned, 167 as of 9/10 with 80% surveyed and eight people are missing. [All are accounted for.] (People often refuse to evacuate.)

Anyway, the People’s Republic is not directly threatened. [Though we are safe in SW Boulder, other parts of town are indeed threatened.] It is, I am told, the most destructive fire in Boulder Colorado history.