Everyone else is doing it, so why can't we?

Don't question the need for it, just sate demand.

China is building a shitload of nuclear reactors, planning on about ten a year in the coming years.

The last country to carry out such a rapid nuclear expansion was the United States in the 1970s, in a binge of reactor construction that ended with the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania in 1979. And China is placing many of its nuclear plants near large cities, potentially exposing tens of millions of people to radiation in the event of an accident.

Good, good, they are in great company. Three Mile Island. That worked out so well. Isolated incident though, don't worry.

Westinghouse is helping out, and I would imagine General Electric is as well. I know they have built reactors for China in the past. They bring good things to life, (they manufacture the guns that fire the depleted uranium rounds) you know?

Do they have Indian reservations in China? If not, I guess they'll have to ship the spent fuel rods here.

Soon, the beach will be closer than ever!

Yet another great development brought to you by humanity:

New computer modeling suggests the Arctic Ocean may be nearly ice-free in the summertime as early as 2014, Al Gore said Monday at the U.N. climate conference. This new projection, following several years of dramatic retreat by polar sea ice, suggests that the ice cap may nearly vanish in the summer much sooner than the year 2030, as was forecast by a U.S. government agency eight months ago.

Soaking up the rays in Philadelphia? Sunning in Cleveland? Bodyboarding in St. Louis? I hope so. Think of the convenience! And we can be greener than grass, with all those people who survive living on an ever-shrinking land mass, making for increasingly shorter distances to the fun sun beach.

D.I.Y. eggs

sucks. I guess it's cool/trendy/popular now to raise chickens for eggs? Predictably, it's not working out so well for the chickens:

Backyard poultry flocks are growing in popularity all over the U.S. as more and more people decide to try their hand at raising chickens in their urban or suburban yards. Hobbyists may be hoping to cultivate their own local sources of fresh eggs, but animal sanctuaries nationwide are witnessing another product of this trend: homeless, mistreated and neglected animals. Farm Sanctuary has always received calls asking us to take in unwanted chickens, especially roosters, but recently the number of requests to place roosters has been on the rise. There are roosters wandering city streets, roosters stranded in the suburbs, roosters left at shelters across the country – all castoffs of the backyard flock trend and most with no prospects of reaching safe homes.

Compared to the factory farming system that produces most U.S. eggs, backyard raising may seem idyllic, but the practice is generally far from humane. Animal welfare abuses often start at birth for the birds involved. In fact, most chicks purchased by backyard raisers are born in the same sort of facilities as those slated for battery cages: large, industrial hatcheries.

Ideal Hatchery, just one facility of the many, touts its annual sales rate of 5 million chicks. Let’s think about that number. Because roosters do not produce eggs, and because most towns that allow chickens exclude roosters, those who patronize these hatcheries are overwhelmingly ordering hens. Half of all chicks born, however, are roosters. This means that, for 5 million chicks sold, another 5 million are either killed at the hatchery – often ground up alive – or used as "packing material." The majority of hatcheries pack male chicks to cushion the females who have actually been ordered, and customers therefore end up with unwanted roosters who are also often illegal for people to have in their communities. Large numbers of these roosters are dumped at municipal shelters, which are unequipped to handle the birds and usually either euthanize them or send them to farms. Others may end up at live markets, which are becoming increasingly crowded with roosters.

Whether male or female, all chicks sold by hatcheries to homes and feed stores are subjected to a harrowing journey. At one day old, they are shipped through the mail. Industry group Bird Shippers of America has their own lobby team working tirelessly to protect the right of its members to ship these fragile, young animals in this way. The group claims to follow self-imposed regulations that protect the birds, but we have seen evidence much to the contrary.

Fennel, one of our most popular roosters, was among many male chicks shipped from Iowa to Pennsylvania with 100 Jersey giant hens, packed around the females to keep them safe and sound. As we so often see, this strategy failed disastrously. The birds were not retrieved from the post office the day they arrived and so were scheduled to be shipped within 48 hours back to the hatchery – a trip they would never have survived. When a postal worker looked inside the box, he found that more than half the birds had already perished. The kind man called his local SPCA, who then called us. The box, clearly marked as containing 50 white jersey giant hens and 50 black jersey giant hens, contained 53 live chicks and 77 dead ones. The 30 extra were roosters. Of the fluffy peeps who were still alive, 25 grew into hens and 28 into roosters – "packing material" surviving the shipping at a higher rate than the actual "product." This is only one of many stories that every shelter that deals with birds could tell. Fennel and the other surviving chicks were lucky to be discovered by someone who cared enough to find refuge for them. Here with us, their amazing personalities can shine through, and they can educate so many people about the suffering behind backyard flocks – a very high price to pay for fresh eggs.

A coalition of sanctuaries, all of us seeing the consequences of the urban chicken trend, got together and wrote up our position on the issue. If your town is considering allowing residents to raise chickens for eggs, or for meat, please discourage this move by sharing our statement with your community and with town officials.

God, are people sick.

"Dark Side of a Natural Gas Boom"

Wow. And the bright side is? It's really something how the fundamental source (human existence aside) of environmental and planetary destruction, petroleum and natural gas extraction, is portrayed in the media.

In the end, I can promise you, very, very few people truly benefit from an economy based on resource superexploitation and environmental subjugation/annihilation. People who were born in the 1920s and 1930s, got rich as fuck off of oil and gas, and have already died or will soon, are the ones who had a good time with this stuff. They were the life of the party. They raged their whole lives. Not a whole lot of downtime for them. The economy kept expanding, and nobody gave a fuck about anything. However, their kids are going to suffer. Their grandchildren are going to SUFFER. In the days to come, it won't matter how rich you are nearly so much as it does now; you will not be able to stop the oceans from rising. Your money will be able to stave off the worst, but only for a time. Once the cash economy crumbles, you will be just like everyone else as far as resources go. You will be more resented than others and likely have less knowledge of how to do anything related to surviving.

Anyway, a bunch of people throughout the country, more than ever, are living with filthy water coming from their taps. In this instance, we can blame people extracting natural gas, "a very reliable, safe, American source of energy," through a process called hydraulic fracturing. Hydraulic fracturing consists of "injecting huge volumes of water at high pressure to break shale rocks and allow natural gas to flow out more easily. The water is mixed with sand, chemicals and gels to lubricate the process and help keep the rocks open."

Well, I don't understand it. Incomprehensibly, the "chemicals and gels" being shot into the ground have apparently created some pollution.

Good use of water, too.

"U.S. Will Settle Indian Lawsuit for $3.4 Billion"

This is sort of old news, but I've been really busy. Lots of backlogged posts coming soon.

If you didn't know, Native Americans/American Indians are children. From a New York Times article on a recent settlement of a really long lawsuit:

The Interior Department now manages about 56 million acres of Indian trust land scattered across the country, with the heaviest concentration in Western states. The government handles leases on the land for mining, livestock grazing, timber harvesting and drilling for oil and gas. It then distributes the revenue raised by those leases to the American Indians. In the 2009 fiscal year, it collected about $298 million for more than 384,000 individual Indian accounts.

Fucking incredible. GIVE THEM THEIR LAND BACK ASSHOLES. At least some of it, fuck. And yes, even the rights to make their own decisions. What's hard? I don't get it.

The lawsuit accuses the federal government of mismanaging that money. As a result, the value of the trusts has been unclear, and the Indians contend that they are owed far more than what they have been paid.

Wow, not the federal government! Not to worry though, Obama's got a good perspective on the whole thing:

President Obama hailed the agreement as an “important step towards a sincere reconciliation” between the federal government and American Indians, many of whom, he said, considered the protracted lawsuit a “stain” on the nation.

That's a long reconciliation. Also, I'm pretty sure, that over the years, Native Americans have had bigger problems than this lawsuit.

Kim Peek died

Kim Peek, the guy on whom Dustin Hoffman's character in Rain Man was modeled, died yesterday. What a fucking incredible mind:

In 1988, the film “Rain Man,” about an autistic savant played by Dustin Hoffman, shed a humane light on the travails of autism while revealing the extraordinary powers of memory that a small number of otherwise mentally disabled people possess, ostensibly as a side effect of their disability.

The film won four Oscars, including best picture, best actor and, for Barry Morrow and Ronald Bass, best original screenplay. But it never would have been made if Mr. Morrow had not had a chance meeting with Kim Peek, who inspired him to write the film.

Mr. Peek was not autistic — not all savants are autistic and not all autistics are savants — but he was born with severe brain abnormalities that impaired his physical coordination and made ordinary reasoning difficult. He could not dress himself or brush his teeth without help. He found metaphoric language incomprehensible and conceptualization baffling.

But with an astonishing skill that allowed him to read facing pages of a book at once — one with each eye — he read as many as 12,000 volumes. Even more remarkable, he could remember what he had read.

Shit like that amazes me to no end. It's so crazy the capabilities human minds have, and how rarely we see them manifested. It's people like Kim Peek who show us that we know almost nothing about intelligence and brain functionality. No one can explain why or how he can do what he did. Incredible.

I'll leave it to people in "the movement" to write some measured, informed, patient and diplomatic response to this article:

December 22, 2009

Basics

Sorry, Vegans: Brussels Sprouts Like to Live, Too

By NATALIE ANGIER

I stopped eating pork about eight years ago, after a scientist happened to mention that the animal whose teeth most closely resemble our own is the pig. Unable to shake the image of a perky little pig flashing me a brilliant George Clooney smile, I decided it was easier to forgo the Christmas ham. A couple of years later, I gave up on all mammalian meat, period. I still eat fish and poultry, however and pour eggnog in my coffee. My dietary decisions are arbitrary and inconsistent, and when friends ask why I’m willing to try the duck but not the lamb, I don’t have a good answer. Food choices are often like that: difficult to articulate yet strongly held. And lately, debates over food choices have flared with particular vehemence.

In his new book, “Eating Animals,” the novelist Jonathan Safran Foer describes his gradual transformation from omnivorous, oblivious slacker who “waffled among any number of diets” to “committed vegetarian.” Last month, Gary Steiner, a philosopher at Bucknell University, argued on the Op-Ed page of The New York Times that people should strive to be “strict ethical vegans” like himself, avoiding all products derived from animals, including wool and silk. Killing animals for human food and finery is nothing less than “outright murder,” he said, Isaac Bashevis Singer’s “eternal Treblinka.”

But before we cede the entire moral penthouse to “committed vegetarians” and “strong ethical vegans,” we might consider that plants no more aspire to being stir-fried in a wok than a hog aspires to being peppercorn-studded in my Christmas clay pot. This is not meant as a trite argument or a chuckled aside. Plants are lively and seek to keep it that way. The more that scientists learn about the complexity of plants — their keen sensitivity to the environment, the speed with which they react to changes in the environment, and the extraordinary number of tricks that plants will rally to fight off attackers and solicit help from afar — the more impressed researchers become, and the less easily we can dismiss plants as so much fiberfill backdrop, passive sunlight collectors on which deer, antelope and vegans can conveniently graze. It’s time for a green revolution, a reseeding of our stubborn animal minds.

When plant biologists speak of their subjects, they use active verbs and vivid images. Plants “forage” for resources like light and soil nutrients and “anticipate” rough spots and opportunities. By analyzing the ratio of red light and far red light falling on their leaves, for example, they can sense the presence of other chlorophyllated competitors nearby and try to grow the other way. Their roots ride the underground “rhizosphere” and engage in cross-cultural and microbial trade.

“Plants are not static or silly,” said Monika Hilker of the Institute of Biology at the Free University of Berlin. “They respond to tactile cues, they recognize different wavelengths of light, they listen to chemical signals, they can even talk” through chemical signals. Touch, sight, hearing, speech. “These are sensory modalities and abilities we normally think of as only being in animals,” Dr. Hilker said.

Plants can’t run away from a threat but they can stand their ground. “They are very good at avoiding getting eaten,” said Linda Walling of the University of California, Riverside. “It’s an unusual situation where insects can overcome those defenses.” At the smallest nip to its leaves, specialized cells on the plant’s surface release chemicals to irritate the predator or sticky goo to entrap it. Genes in the plant’s DNA are activated to wage systemwide chemical warfare, the plant’s version of an immune response. We need terpenes, alkaloids, phenolics — let’s move.

“I’m amazed at how fast some of these things happen,” said Consuelo M. De Moraes of Pennsylvania State University. Dr. De Moraes and her colleagues did labeling experiments to clock a plant’s systemic response time and found that, in less than 20 minutes from the moment the caterpillar had begun feeding on its leaves, the plant had plucked carbon from the air and forged defensive compounds from scratch.

Just because we humans can’t hear them doesn’t mean plants don’t howl. Some of the compounds that plants generate in response to insect mastication — their feedback, you might say — are volatile chemicals that serve as cries for help. Such airborne alarm calls have been shown to attract both large predatory insects like dragon flies, which delight in caterpillar meat, and tiny parasitic insects, which can infect a caterpillar and destroy it from within.

Enemies of the plant’s enemies are not the only ones to tune into the emergency broadcast. “Some of these cues, some of these volatiles that are released when a focal plant is damaged,” said Richard Karban of the University of California, Davis, “cause other plants of the same species, or even of another species, to likewise become more resistant to herbivores.”

Yes, it’s best to nip trouble in the bud.

Dr. Hilker and her colleagues, as well as other research teams, have found that certain plants can sense when insect eggs have been deposited on their leaves and will act immediately to rid themselves of the incubating menace. They may sprout carpets of tumorlike neoplasms to knock the eggs off, or secrete ovicides to kill them, or sound the S O S. Reporting in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Dr. Hilker and her coworkers determined that when a female cabbage butterfly lays her eggs on a brussels sprout plant and attaches her treasures to the leaves with tiny dabs of glue, the vigilant vegetable detects the presence of a simple additive in the glue, benzyl cyanide. Cued by the additive, the plant swiftly alters the chemistry of its leaf surface to beckon female parasitic wasps. Spying the anchored bounty, the female wasps in turn inject their eggs inside, the gestating wasps feed on the gestating butterflies, and the plant’s problem is solved.

Here’s the lurid Edgar Allan Poetry of it: that benzyl cyanide tip-off had been donated to the female butterfly by the male during mating. “It’s an anti-aphrodisiac pheromone, so that the female wouldn’t mate anymore,” Dr. Hilker said. “The male is trying to ensure his paternity, but he ends up endangering his own offspring.”

Plants eavesdrop on one another benignly and malignly. As they described in Science and other journals, Dr. De Moraes and her colleagues have discovered that seedlings of the dodder plant, a parasitic weed related to morning glory, can detect volatile chemicals released by potential host plants like the tomato. The young dodder then grows inexorably toward the host, until it can encircle the victim’s stem and begin sucking the life phloem right out of it. The parasite can even distinguish between the scents of healthier and weaker tomato plants and then head for the hale one.

“Even if you have quite a bit of knowledge about plants,” Dr. De Moraes said, “it’s still surprising to see how sophisticated they can be.”

It’s a small daily tragedy that we animals must kill to stay alive. Plants are the ethical autotrophs here, the ones that wrest their meals from the sun. Don’t expect them to boast: they’re too busy fighting to survive.

All I will say is that if you buy this shit, if you think that pulling spinach from the ground can be equated in any meaningful way with stabbing a goat and the intense fear that strikes him before, that it has anything to do with the profound sadness a cow feels from having her child taken away at birth, kill yourself.

All I want for Christmas...

IS YOU

BRING THIS HOME

Rogue traders, law-abiding traders, whatever. Set up some guillotines on Wall Street.

China executes rogue trader, millions still missing

BEIJING (Reuters) – China on Tuesday executed a former securities trader for embezzlement, the first person in the industry to be put to death, but millions of yuan are still missing, a state newspaper said.

Yang Yanming was sentenced to death in late 2005 and took the secret of the whereabouts of 65 million yuan ($9.52 million) of the misappropriated funds to his grave, the Beijing Evening News said.

The report added that Yang was the first person working in China's securities sector to be executed.

"Preserve your moral integrity and don't set too much store by business results," Yang told the newspaper before the sentence was carried out.

He was the general manager of the Beijing securities trading department of the China Great Wall Trust and Investment Corp., which became Galaxy Securities, from 1997 to 2003.

Conscious that the growing gap between rich and poor could generate resentment, China is battling corruption and stock trading abuses. It has used the death penalty as a deterrent in serious cases.

($1=6.828 Yuan)

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Amagon

This is part of what we did at practice a few weeks back. More to come.

Sinead O'Connor - "War"

This is awesome. 1992. She was super popular at the time and was certainly not one to pass up an opportunity. How powerful, focused and intense.

"The real enemy" or not, certainly a piece of shit. Definitely some people's enemy. And when someone takes such a righteous, irreversible position, I am not going to be pedantic. That is SERIOUS shit. Kind of surprised no one killed her. Religious people are crazy.

I read that her most recent religious affiliation is Rastafari. Guess it makes sense.

"Monkeys Recognize Their Pals in Photos"

They also probably recognize that you are a fucking asshole when you drill holes in their heads, give them cancer or otherwise torture them. I am also sure that they didn't need you to confirm their abilities. They would much rather live somewhere outside of a lab, such as their natural habitat. You pieces of shit. If only karma were real...

FRIDAY, Dec. 4 (HealthDay News) -- Monkeys can recognize photographs of other monkeys they know, proving that they can both detect differences in faces and figure out if they've seen them before, researchers report.

The study also shows that capuchin monkeys can decipher the two-dimensional nature of a photograph, the scientists authors noted.

The findings, reported by researchers at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University in Atlanta, are published the week of Dec. 4 in the online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In the study, the monkeys looked at four photos, including one of a monkey they knew. They also looked at another four monkey photos, including one of a monkey they didn't know.

"This required monkeys to look at similar-looking faces and use their personal knowledge of group mates to solve the task," lead researcher Jennifer Pokorny, said in a university news release. "They readily performed the task and continued to do well when shown new pictures in color and in grayscale, as well as when presented with individuals they had never before seen in pictures, though with whom they were personally familiar."

According to the researchers, previously, there hasn't been evidence that nonhuman primates can look at two-dimensional images and understand they represent things and animals from real life.

Definitely smarter than people. Why? Cause they haven't ruined the world. We did that one.

Good news!!

There are fewer species to go extinct than ever before. It's quite upsetting when an animal becomes endangered, which then of course induces anxiety as to whether or not it will make a recovery, languish in near-annihilation or get wiped out entirely.

As a relentless optimist, I advocate the following position: the more animals we kill, the fewer there are to be killed off. People will get in the way of extinction from time to time, of course, but that should only be a temporary block. Let us embrace extinction, so that we may one day no longer have to worry about the negative emotional consequences that come with its advent.

Take lions, for example:

Just 50 years ago there were close to a half-million lions in Africa -- about 450,000 in all. Today there are between 16,000 and 23,000. And yet, unlike elephants (a far more numerous species), lions have no protection under the international accord governing such matters.

Yes, that's the way! None of that red tape protection nonsense to impede us.

It's not just the exceptionally brave big game hunters working towards this goal, but also those daring enough to fool the animals into eating poison:

Extinction threatens by the year 2020. Then there will be no lions to hunt, or to protect.

Meanwhile another ominous development poses a further threat to wildlife. A pesticide is being used by poachers to kill lions and many other animals. Sprinkled on meat, it kills lions, hyenas, vultures and other creatures in minutes.

Hopefully, we can get this over in ten years as promised and say goodbye to the worry and handwringing that so unfortunately plagues us.

Unrelenting poaching

"Concerted action at the highest level is needed to stop this global crisis of rampant rhino poaching..."

Some things just make me so sick I cant speak... such as the skulls of endangered species.

I wish...

that this was what the world was all about, and nothing less. If only we could all be surprised kitties.

Gay people - fuck off, go to hell, YOU DON'T MATTER

Again. And again. And again. You aren't good enough, you are filthy, you are not one of us, you are not a real person. That's what they say, over and over. And that's what they said in New York today. And the people around you, they say, "Wait." They tell you to be patient. They say they're working on it. They tell you that your time will come. Like you should have to wait for some bigots to be pushed to the margins enough. Fuck. Just fuck.

New York state lawmakers voted on Wednesday against legalizing gay marriage, dashing gay rights activists' hopes it would become the sixth U.S. state to allow same-sex couples to wed.

The New York state Senate voted down the legislation by 38-24. Governor David Paterson, a Democrat who supports gay marriage, had said he would have signed the bill into law if it had passed.

"This is an enormous victory," said Maggie Gallagher, the leader of the National Organization for Marriage, which opposed the law. "What you saw was the will of the people. .... The culture really hasn't shifted on gay marriage."

Iowa, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont have legalized gay marriage, while 40 U.S. states have specific laws that ban gay marriage. Last month, voters in Maine chose to repeal a law that had legalized gay marriage.

Once again, in a familiar refrain, fuck this place.

Fuck every "save marriage" campaigner or whatever you want to call yourself. I hope all of your kids are gay and that each of you dies in a fire. Fuck all of you. You are nothing but hate. Fuck your religion. Fuck your god. Fuck the people who raised you. Fuck the people for whom you vote. Fuck your friends. You are shit.

Atheists, come out and playay

Richard Dawkins implores you to. Funny guy. Hates religion so much.

It's nice that there is someone out there aside from black metal dudes pushing for atheism, against theism. If only there were more people willing to do it.

Seems like a simple idea, but what a profound observation that there is nothing that binds any of us to respect someone else's religion. Especially when it's a bunch of bullshit. And it all is.

Love

If only every bird had a Snoopy.

Killing birds

Not turkeys. I saw this today. I have nothing profound to say about it. It's just so fucking stupid and such a waste. We have no respect. We put ourselves at the head of the ship but have very little idea of how to work it. We will never admit it.

Pigeon extermination program kills blackbirds

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

A plan to get rid of pigeons in a northern New Jersey town ended up killing blackbirds instead.

Fort Lee Health Officer Steven Wielkotz had decided to use the chemical Avitrol to
get rid of more than 100 pigeons that descended on the area around town hall two months ago.

Wielkotz says he was told the seeds were too big for any other bird to eat.

However, the blackbirds ate the seed and about 30 birds died.

Mayor Mark Sokolich says he saw several youngsters picking up the dying birds and trying to help them.

The chemical has been removed and the pigeons remain.

WHO THE FUCK DO WE THINK WE ARE? Oh right. God.

Another One Bites the Dust

"The northern bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus), or giant bluefin tuna, is a species of tuna native to both the western and eastern Atlantic Ocean, as well as the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea. Although not native to the Pacific Ocean, the species is now commercially cultivated off the Japanese coast. Bluefin tuna are caught by sports fishermen using heavy-duty rod and reels and by commercial fishermen using purse seine gear. The northern bluefin is an important commercial species, especially for sushi. This commercial importance has led to severe overfishing.
On October 16th 2009 Monaco formally recommended Endangered Atlantic bluefin tuna for an Appendix I CITES listing and international trade ban. The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) affirmed that Atlantic bluefin tuna stocks are declining dramatically, by 72% in the Eastern Atlantic, and by 82% in the Western Atlantic"

We will once again wipe anther life off this planet FOREVER! all for some fucking sushi! Is this a joke? We know better and we do nothing!!!! FUCK!

Nothing says i am doing my job better then some broken glass!

"This latest incident occurred on Saturday, again in Oakland. Authorities say the BART officer on duty at the station removed an unruly and intoxicated passenger from the train and led him across the platform toward the closest wall. The video shows that the wall was concrete below and glass above, and as the two men hit the wall, the glass shattered, injuring both men.
One version of the video, captured by a passenger, is titled "BART POLICE PUT MANS HEAD THROUGH WINDOW," but police say that phrasing may be misleading. Unclear from the video was whether the officer pushed the suspect's head into the quarter-inch thick glass, breaking it, or whether the suspect broke the glass with an extended arm.
A BART police spokesman conceded that 'it does offer one powerful perspective, but it is only a perspective. We're saying just don't jump to conclusions."
BART police officials have launched an internal investigation to determine whether the officer used excessive force.
If nothing else, this incident and the one on New Year's Day underscore the increasing role of eyewitnessing cameras in police matters।"

Anytime you see a pig doing anything use your phone or ipod or tape player or something to record EVERYTHING they do. Technology has been failing our planet but we can fuck everyone of these power hungry bottom feeders!

Public Enemy - By the Time I Get to Arizona

I never knew they made a video for this song. In fact, it never occurred to me that they could. Somehow (things were surely different in 1991), they produced this video, while on Def Jam/Columbia, while at the height of their popularity, and MTV played it, at least once, given the icon in the corner.

This song is incredible, the record from which it comes is fantastic, and you can download the whole thing, Apocalypse 91...The Enemy Strikes Black here. Public Enemy was really on it at this point. So many excellent songs on the record. "1 Million Bottlebags," fuck:

Then I ask a question

"Yo brother, what the hell is you drinkin?"

He don't know but it flow

Out the bottle in a cup

He call it gettin' fucked up

Like we ain't fucked up already

See the man they call Crazy Eddie

Liquor man with the bottle in his hand

He give the liquor man ten to begin

Wit' no change and he run

To get his brains rearranged

Serve it to the homies and they're able

To do without a table

Beside what's inside ain't on the label

They drink it thinkin' it's good

But they don't sell the shit in the white neighborhood

Exposin' the plan, they get mad at me I understand

They're slaves to the liquor man

Fuck. This video captures so much emotion. So much rage. So much desperation for a recognition of dignity. It's so moving. What a fantastic video. No one would do this anymore. Especially not in their position. People are so fucking scared to offend, to jeopardize their place on the fame ladder. As though it's permanent.

Back then, the governor of Arizona, along with some (lots of?) other people in the state government refused to recognize Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday as a holiday. Flat out.

That's what a real video is. It communicates something very real and elevates the song into something so much more than it was.

Here is an article from the Washington Post about the subject matter of the video, and what had been going on for a few years by that point:

NEW GOVERNOR RESCINDS KING HOLIDAY - ARIZONA'S MECHAM IGNITES PROTESTS BY FULFILLING CAMPAIGN PLEDGE

Washington Post - Wednesday, January 14, 1987

Author: Paul Taylor, Washington Post Staff Writer

Of the 21 new governors being sworn in this month, none is off to a shakier start or shorter honeymoon than Arizona's Evan Mecham (R), a political outsider who won office on his fifth try.

Mecham, 62, has drawn fire for making good this week on a campaign pledge to rescind what he termed an illegal executive order by his predecesssor, Democrat Bruce Babbitt, to establish a state holiday honoring the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

The move, expected since Election Day, has triggered accusations of racism and spurred civil rights demonstrations around the state. A large one is planned here for Jan. 19, the federal observance of King's birthday.

Mecham, in turn, has accused his critics of either misunderstanding or misrepresenting his motives. A soft-spoken man, both admired and disliked here for his deep conservative political convictions, Mecham has said the issue is strictly legal and technical, and on Monday he proposed that it be settled by the electorate in a referendum. He has also argued, however, that King is not a figure comparable in historical importance to Washington or Lincoln, and therefore is unworthy of a holiday.

"He says the issue is technical, but the longer he talks, the more he makes it clear his problems are philosophical," said the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, in the state to address student and church groups. Jackson wound up meeting privately with the governor yesterday aboard the state airplane.

"He said he felt that Babbitt had pandered to the blacks," Jackson said. "The reality is that Dr. King embodied the quest for equal protection for everybody. If the world can recognize him with a Nobel Peace Prize, if the federal government can recognize him with a holiday, then surely Arizona will not be able to turn the clock back."

Last year the state Senate passed a bill to make Arizona one of 40 states that observe the King holiday, but the measure was defeated 30 to 29 in the state House. A spokesman for the Martin Luther King Federal Holiday Commission in Washington said he believed it was the only state legislature to vote down such a bill since King's birthday became a federal holiday last year.

Babbitt then proclaimed the holiday on his own -- a move that state Attorney General Bob Corbin, a Republican, subsequently declared illegal. "I'll see you on the courthouse steps," responded Babbitt, who was preparing to leave office and run for the presidency.

There the matter stood until the fall gubernatorial campaign, when Mecham, in response to a newspaper questionnaire, said he would rescind the order. The issue was never prominent in the campaign -- which Mecham won when two Democrats, one running as an independent, divided 60 percent of the vote.

The day after the election, he reiterated his intention to rescind the order, and has been under fire since. A recall petition is being circulated, but it is not taken seriously here. The Rev. Warren Stewart Sr., pastor of the First Institutional Baptist Church and a leader of a civil rights group trying to restore the holiday, has accused Mecham of having a "racist mentality." Martin Luther King III came to Arizona and said Mecham's actions were motivated by racism. Entertainer Stevie Wonder, who was a leader of the movement to make King's birthday a national holiday, has refused to schedule concerts here.

Some here have speculated that Mecham was motivated by his religious beliefs as a Mormon; until 1978, Mormon Church doctrine gave blacks an inferior status. Jackson said he raised the question with Mecham, and "he assured me that was not the case."

The governor declined to be interviewed, but his spokesman, Ron Bellus, said the issue is due process. "Let's get serious," he said. "Babbitt saw a chance to use the memory of Dr. King for political purpose, and he did an illegal thing . . . . I find that despicable."

Babbitt said in an interview that he considers Mecham's action an "insult, not just to blacks, but all Americans," and plans to participate in protest marches here next week. He denied he was motivated by politics.

The issue, meanwhile, is also back in the legislature, which convened Monday for its 1987 session. Three bills are in the hopper: one would establish the King holiday; the second would establish the holiday and combine the Washington and Lincoln holidays so as not to incur the estimated $2.5 million cost of a new state holiday; and the third would establish the holiday as a Sunday observance, but not make it official unless voters approved it in a referendum next year.

Mecham has not said whether he would veto the first two bills; he supports the third. Holiday backers oppose the Sunday-observance proposal, but doubt they have the votes to block it.

"If you've got the votes, you vote; if you don't, you talk, and right now I am doing a lot of talking," said House Minority Leader Art Hamilton (D), who sponsored the holiday bill that failed last year.

Arizona is a conservative state with a black population of less than 3 percent, and many are unsure whether the symbolic Sunday holiday would survive a referendum. "When I voted for the holiday last year, my mail came in 50-to-1 against me," said Rep. Jim Green, a Republican from Tucson, who is sponsoring the referendum measure.

This Time article provides a quick history of the King holiday, including how piece of shit John McCain opposed it until it wasn't cool to do so anymore and then came out in support of it. Please note that even Reagan was pleading with Arizona governor Evan Mecham to drop his opposition to the King holiday.

Fuck yes, Public Enemy.

Crime - San Francisco's Still Doomed

Way early punk band, ahead of their time. A bunch of nihilistic fuck ups and druggies. They dressed like cops and their first show was a gay-rights benefit. They hated the music scene at all levels and let it show:

...But Crime’s insistence on headlining every show and undisguised disdain for the bands they gigged with earned them more enemies than fans.

“At first it was with the people who were running things,” said Strike, “a close-knit group left over from the hippie days that included club bookers, journalists, record shop owners, deejays, etc. They definitely weren't up for us. When we saw how things were, instead of playing nice with them like most bands, we drew our swords and made the gap as wide as it would go.” Despite the band’s bad reputation among San Francisco’s rock elite, Crime secured regular appearances at the Mabuhay Gardens and even booked a notorious gig at nearby San Quentin Penitentiary, which they played in full police regalia to the puzzled inmates. Aside from rare shows in Seattle and Los Angeles, Crime remained a local phenomenon, stubbornly staying in the face of a scene that considered them rude and primitive even by punk standards.

Fucking awesome, fucking punk. Their shitty website has an article from a zine that gives you about as much history as you'll get on them.

Swami Records put out a collection of demos in 2004 called San Francisco's Still Doomed and it seems to be out of print already, so I'll put it up here to download.

Their singles (never put out an LP) are still unavailable, so this is the best there is for now. There's supposed to be a boxed set coming down the line that collects everything, which would be way cooler.

The first half of this CD is a live in the studio session from 1978 and it rips. It's barely held together chaos, but it works so well. The other half of the CD is kind of ehhh but it's still cool. It has a more traditional rock n roll vibe, which is kind of boring at times.

Overall, the shit just rules. And I am really not someone who is into protopunk or super early obscure punk. Crime was fucking awesome. Undeniably so.

Will Phillips, 10-Year-Old, Won't Pledge Allegiance To A Country That Discriminates Against Gays

A fellow alien traveler. Hello.

The people who make your decisions

That's Lawrence Summers, President Obama's chief economic advisor. He's a powerful guy. He moves the world in ways that are hard to grasp.

He also used to be the president of Harvard, a few years back. Perhaps he still would be, had he been more reserved in expressing opinions on certain matters. That's a pretty good gig. Maybe he would have left eventually to join the Obama administration. Also seems like a good job to have, if you are of that persuasion. He used to work for Clinton, too, so he is obviously of that persuasion. President of Harvard though, man, that is a prestigious post. You would imagine that's the kind of thing you want to really hold onto and only resign when you are about to get fired. Getting fired from your post as the president of Harvard is basically the antithesis of prestige.

Summers though, I guess he's one of those people who just doesn't understand why anyone would have a problem with what he thinks or says. Cause to him, what he thinks is fact and truth. He's just telling it like it is, basically. He sees reality, and fuck the liberal softies who can't take it. Or at least fuck them until your job is on the line.

At an economic conference in January, 2005, Summers gave an address on the underrepresentation of women in various science and math professions. Some of his ideas look at this discrepancy through a biological lens:

''In the special case of science and engineering," he continued, ''there are issues of intrinsic aptitude, and particularly of the variability of aptitude, and that those considerations are reinforced by what are in fact lesser factors involving socialization and continuing discrimination."

He also made it clear he knew he was bucking conventional wisdom, saying he wanted to offer hypotheses ''without seeing this through the kind of judgmental tendency that inevitably is connected with all our common goals of equality."

Intrinsic aptitude. It's more a concern of "intrinsic aptitude" over the "lesser factors" of socialization and discrimination. Overall, women don't have what it takes to be good chemists or engineers or whatever.

Be sure not to miss his appeals to have a real discussion, unbound by the constraints of p.c. fascism and to look through the smokescreens that those namby pamby liberals put up about how everyone is equal. This is Harvard, not fucking Woodstock.

In his comments on the differences between the abilities of men and women, Summers offered a calculation based on research presented at the conference, arguing that if half as many women as men score in the top 5 percent of 12th-grade math and science tests, then far fewer women will rise to the highest level of math and science.

''If my reading of the data is right -- it's something people can argue about . . . then whatever the set of attributes are that are precisely defined to correlate with being an aeronautical engineer at MIT or being a chemist at Berkeley," there will be more men than women with those attributes.

Hey man, women just don't do well in math and science, period. You can see it in high school. What do you expect? Of course they won't be able to cut it as scientists or mathematicians. Their lower scores have nothing to do with socialization as children, they have nothing to do with discrimination at the hands of teachers, they have nothing to do with discouragement from parents, and no possible connection to how tests are written and conducted. They're just not smart like that. They can do other stuff though, probably.

And no, Karl Marx, hiring discrimination is not a factor either:

As for discrimination, he was far more skeptical -- applying economic theory to make his point. "If it was really the case that everybody was discriminating, there would be very substantial opportunities for a limited number of people who were not prepared to discriminate to assemble remarkable departments of high quality people at relatively limited cost simply by the act of their not discriminating, because of what it would mean for the pool that was available. And there are certainly examples of institutions that have focused on increasing their diversity to their substantial benefit, but if there was really a pervasive pattern of discrimination that was leaving an extraordinary number of high-quality potential candidates behind, one suspects that in the highly competitive academic marketplace, there would be more examples of institutions that succeeded substantially by working to fill the gap."

Stop getting down on him, Joe McCarthy of the liberals. Give him a break! Then-president Summers is a friend of all the oppressed, seeing the pervasive discrimination people of all stripes suffer:

But during the same speech, Summers also said, "The data will, I am confident, reveal that Catholics are substantially underrepresented in investment banking ... That white men are very substantially underrepresented in the National Basketball Association; and that Jews are very substantially underrepresented in farming and in agriculture."

Wow.

Unfortunately, the transcript of his speech is no longer accessible, but both Inside Higher Ed and the Boston Globe have articles that reproduce the most salient points of his address.

Shelter - Mantra

Fuck yes. Mantra. This is kind of the best Shelter record. Not the best as in the most pure from the heart (although, at that point, maybe that's really all that Ray Cappo was feeling), but holy shit are the songs good. The whole thing is just so solid. Every song rules and is memorable. The album benefits from being bookended by two amazing songs, with excellence in between.

Musically, it's fairly different from all the Shelter records before. It's a lot poppier, and at points, it's also a bit rappier. Really, Ray has always been somewhat of a rapper. It's just that there are more songs with rap-style vocals on Mantra than on previous records, which is fine by me, cause it works. I am generally not into mixing rapping with hardcore (New York in the 90s), but sometimes it rules. I think it also helps that it's not cheesy wannabe hip-hop over shitty riffs (again, New York in the 90s), but rather an adoption of hip-hop vocal stylings. Ray will not shoot you.

Fact - "Message of the Bhagavat" is an amazing opener. "We've got...We've got...We've got...THE MESSAGE FROM THE BHAGAVAT!" Hell yes you do. That shit always gets me going.

It's also a lot happier sounding than any previous Shelter material. That's ok though. I like both kinds of Shelter. Older Shelter had a decidedly more austere aural aesthetic, but I enjoy that at least as much.

Fact number two - "Metamorphosis" is an amazing closer. THE LYRICS ARE SO GOOD: "Told what is best for me but I've seen their destiny. Our leaders' ignominy reconfirms my concern to rearrange and change my life."

There are no crappy songs on this record. Some are fast, some are mid-tempo, some are catchy as hell ready for radio punk that never was(specifically "Here We Go" and "Empathy" - could have been a hit in another time), but it all rules. No excuses need be made.

Fact number three - Mantra is out of print. That's what happens when, in a time of hardcore bands briefly crossing into the mainstream (Sick of It All, Civ, Bad Religion), you foolishly, vainly jump the ships you built for a piece of shit label that offers you a couple of dollars. The mid 90s were a strange time for hardcore.

Fact number four - it is quite common in used sections, as lots of people mistakenly sleep on it. Or just download it here.

Pearl Jam

Awesome band. Fact. Wish I saw this.

Sarah Palin's book

I'm sure lots of fools who believe in "rugged individualism" and routinely ignore whatever they don't like to create their own realities in their minds will eat it up.

The article seems long, but it's a quick, fun read in that "holy shit" kind of way. Each analysis will leave you wondering what else she wrote that could be on the same level as what you've just read.

Fuckin a man, people are so stupid. What a fucking pathetic culture we have.

FACT CHECK: Palin's book goes rogue on some facts

WASHINGTON – Sarah Palin's new book reprises familiar claims from the 2008 presidential campaign that haven't become any truer over time. Ignoring substantial parts of her record if not the facts, she depicts herself as a frugal traveler on the taxpayer's dime, a reformer without ties to powerful interests and a politician roguishly indifferent to high ambition.

Palin goes adrift, at times, on more contemporary issues, too. She criticizes President Barack Obama for pushing through a bailout package that actually was achieved by his Republican predecessor George W. Bush — a package she seemed to support at the time.

A look at some of her statements in "Going Rogue," obtained by The Associated Press in advance of its release Tuesday:

___

PALIN: Says she made frugality a point when traveling on state business as Alaska governor, asking "only" for reasonably priced rooms and not "often" going for the "high-end, robe-and-slippers" hotels.

THE FACTS: Although travel records indicate she usually opted for less-pricey hotels while governor, Palin and daughter Bristol stayed five days and four nights at the $707.29-per-night Essex House luxury hotel (robes and slippers come standard) overlooking New York City's Central Park for a five-hour women's leadership conference in October 2007. With air fare, the cost to Alaska was well over $3,000. Event organizers said Palin asked if she could bring her daughter. The governor billed her state more than $20,000 for her children's travel, including to events where they had not been invited, and in some cases later amended expense reports to specify that they had been on official business.

___

PALIN: Boasts that she ran her campaign for governor on small donations, mostly from first-time givers, and turned back large checks from big donors if her campaign perceived a conflict of interest.

THE FACTS: Of the roughly $1.3 million she raised for her primary and general election campaigns for governor, more than half came from people and political action committees giving at least $500, according to an AP analysis of her campaign finance reports. The maximum that individual donors could give was $1,000; $2,000 for a PAC.

Of the rest, about $76,000 came from Republican Party committees.

She accepted $1,000 each from a state senator and his wife and $30 from a state representative in the weeks after the two Republican lawmakers' offices were raided by the FBI as part of an investigation into a powerful Alaska oilfield services company. After AP reported those donations during the presidential campaign, she gave a comparative sum to charity.

___

PALIN: Rails against taxpayer-financed bailouts, which she attributes to Obama. She recounts telling daughter Bristol that to succeed in business, "you'll have to be brave enough to fail."

THE FACTS: Palin is blurring the lines between Obama's stimulus plan — a $787 billion package of tax cuts, state aid, social programs and government contracts — and the federal bailout that Republican presidential candidate John McCain voted for and President George W. Bush signed.

Palin's views on bailouts appeared to evolve as McCain's vice presidential running mate. In September 2008, she said "taxpayers cannot be looked to as the bailout, as the solution, to the problems on Wall Street." A week later, she said "ultimately what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy."

During the vice presidential debate in October, Palin praised McCain for being "instrumental in bringing folks together" to pass the $700 billion bailout. After that, she said "it is a time of crisis and government did have to step in."

___

PALIN: Says Ronald Reagan faced an even worse recession than the one that appears to be ending now, and "showed us how to get out of one. If you want real job growth, cut capital gains taxes and slay the death tax once and for all."

THE FACTS: The estate tax, which some call the death tax, was not repealed under Reagan and capital gains taxes are lower now than when Reagan was president.

Economists overwhelmingly say the current recession is far worse. The recession Reagan faced lasted for 16 months; this one is in its 23rd month. The recession of the early 1980s did not have a financial meltdown. Unemployment peaked at 10.8 percent, worse than the October 2009 high of 10.2 percent, but the jobless rate is still expected to climb.

___

PALIN: She says her team overseeing the development of a natural gas pipeline set up an open, competitive bidding process that allowed any company to compete for the right to build a 1,715-mile pipeline to bring natural gas from Alaska to the Lower 48.

THE FACTS: Palin characterized the pipeline deal the same way before an AP investigation found her team crafted terms that favored only a few independent pipeline companies and ultimately benefited a company with ties to her administration, TransCanada Corp. Despite promises and legal guidance not to talk directly with potential bidders during the process, Palin had meetings or phone calls with nearly every major candidate, including TransCanada.

___

PALIN: Criticizes an aide to her predecessor, Gov. Frank Murkowski, for a conflict of interest because the aide represented the state in negotiations over a gas pipeline and then left to work as a handsomely paid lobbyist for ExxonMobil. Palin asserts her administration ended all such arrangements, shoving a wedge in the revolving door between special interests and the state capital.

THE FACTS: Palin ignores her own "revolving door" issue in office; the leader of her own pipeline team was a former lobbyist for a subsidiary of TransCanada, the company that ended up winning the rights to build the pipeline.

___

PALIN: Writes about a city councilman in Wasilla, Alaska, who owned a garbage truck company and tried to push through an ordinance requiring residents of new subdivisions to pay for trash removal instead of taking it to the dump for free — this to illustrate conflicts of interest she stood against as a public servant.

THE FACTS: As Wasilla mayor, Palin pressed for a special zoning exception so she could sell her family's $327,000 house, then did not keep a promise to remove a potential fire hazard on the property.

She asked the city council to loosen rules for snow machine races when she and her husband owned a snow machine store, and cast a tie-breaking vote to exempt taxes on aircraft when her father-in-law owned one. But she stepped away from the table in 1997 when the council considered a grant for the Iron Dog snow machine race in which her husband competes.

___

PALIN: Says Obama has admitted that the climate change policy he seeks will cause people's electricity bills to "skyrocket."

THE FACTS: She correctly quotes a comment attributed to Obama in January 2008, when he told San Francisco Chronicle editors that under his cap-and-trade climate proposal, "electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket" as utilities are forced to retrofit coal burning power plants to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

Obama has argued since then that climate legislation can blunt the cost to consumers. Democratic legislation now before Congress calls for a variety of measures aimed at mitigating consumer costs. Several studies predict average household costs probably would be $100 to $145 a year.

___

PALIN: Welcomes last year's Supreme Court decision deciding punitive damages for victims of the nation's largest oil spill tragedy, the Exxon Valdez disaster, stating it had taken 20 years to achieve victory. As governor, she says, she'd had the state argue in favor of the victims, and she says the court's ruling went "in favor of the people." Finally, she writes, Alaskans could recover some of their losses.

THE FACTS: That response is at odds with her reaction at the time to the ruling, which resolved the long-running case by reducing punitive damages for victims to $500 million from $2.5 billion. Environmentalists and plaintiffs' lawyers decried the ruling as a slap at the victims and Palin herself said she was "extremely disappointed." She said the justices had gutted a jury decision favoring higher damage awards, the Anchorage Daily News reported. "It's tragic that so many Alaska fishermen and their families have had their lives put on hold waiting for this decision," she said, noting many had died "while waiting for justice."

___

PALIN: Describing her resistance to federal stimulus money, Palin describes Alaska as a practical, libertarian haven of independent Americans who don't want "help" from government busybodies.

THE FACTS: Alaska is also one of the states most dependent on federal subsidies, receiving much more assistance from Washington than it pays in federal taxes. A study for the nonpartisan Tax Foundation found that in 2005, the state received $1.84 for every dollar it sent to Washington.

___

PALIN: Says she tried to talk about national security and energy independence in her interview with Vogue magazine but the interviewer wanted her to pivot from hydropower to high fashion.

THE FACTS are somewhat in dispute. Vogue contributing editor Rebecca Johnson said Palin did not go on about hydropower. "She just kept talking about drilling for oil."

___

PALIN: "Was it ambition? I didn't think so. Ambition drives; purpose beckons." Throughout the book, Palin cites altruistic reasons for running for office, and for leaving early as Alaska governor.

THE FACTS: Few politicians own up to wanting high office for the power and prestige of it, and in this respect, Palin fits the conventional mold. But "Going Rogue" has all the characteristics of a pre-campaign manifesto, the requisite autobiography of the future candidate.

___

AP writers Matt Apuzzo, Sharon Theimer, Tom Raum, Rita Beamish, Beth Fouhy, H. Josef Hebert, Justin D. Pritchard, Garance Burke, Dan Joling and Lewis Shaine contributed to this report.

Butterflies in space

Yup. Now baby butterflies will visit the final frontier.

Really.

It's for a fantastic cause though, which will surely allay all reservations once you read it:

Once the payload's in orbit, teachers and K-12 students from throughout the United States will tune in at BioEd Online to watch the "butterflynauts" grow in a microgravity environment.

The time has long since come for this knowledge. HOW DO BUTTERFLIES GROW IN ZERO GRAVITY?

You know those situations on television and movies where people are so rich that they swim in their money, have money fights or buy a new car every time they drive? That's what NASA is.

Restraint

Sometimes, it's really hard to go out and not scream at people, to not grab them and shake them, demanding an answer to "What the fuck is wrong with you?"

I want to know why they don't care. I want to know what hardened their hearts to the extent that stories like this won't move them in any meaningful way.

Telling people that 45 million turkeys will be eaten on Thanksgiving and shit out the next day doesn't mean anything. It's an abstract number. 45 million is too large to comprehend.

Eleven though, eleven is a number that people can comprehend.

And one, yes, people can handle one, especially when that number has a name - Kasey.

It was not yet Thanksgiving, but everyone at our Orland shelter had turkeys on the brain when 11 poults were dropped off at the sanctuary. The exact provenance of these young turkeys is a mystery, but because they arrived here debeaked and detoed, we know that they were likely born on a factory farm, so we are especially thankful that they somehow made their way to our door.

Our first concern was providing healthcare to these tiny birds. Several initially displayed symptoms of respiratory and gastrointestinal infections, which we treated by adding antibiotics to their water. One of the poults, Kasey, arrived with a distended abdomen and appeared lethargic the next morning, so we drove her to the University of California, Davis Veterinary Hospital for emergency care. Despite exhaustive treatment efforts, Kasey passed away the next day as a result of a virus that had destroyed her liver.

Or another named Hayden:

Back at the shelter, the other poults were growing rapidly and exploring their cozy new habitat in our hospital. Their flourishing was checked, however, by an illness we could not identify, which caused walking and balancing trouble for most and left some unable to stand. We monitored them closely during this time, providing the best veterinary care and the most comfort possible. To our grief, a poult named Hayden was severely affected and, though we did everything we could for him, he passed away.

Hayden and Kasey are gone. Just birds, right? Fuck you.

At least they died loved. At least they died with dignity. Their 270 million cousins, sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers and mates who will never be all suffer the indignity and misery of living their lives effectively immobilized, having been mutilated at birth, living in filth and disease, under constant light, indoors, fed fake food to make them fat and kept alive on drugs just long enough to kill them so that you all can get fat and sick, just like them. 270 million every year. Just about every person in America slits a turkey's throat once a year, or rather, pays someone else to do it.

What kind of sick fucks would build something like this? Humans, that's what kind.