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:

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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.

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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.

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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."

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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."

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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.

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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."

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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.

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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.

Factory farming is irredeemably filthy

Jonathan Safran Foer, right on. He articulates this so succinctly and directly. What a good job of showing people that there is only one way out of this one. Will they listen? No. But a few will. This is the type of shit that is so true that it cannot be denied, just blocked. You really have to put your blinders on to keep pushing on in that brutal American way.

All the pigs we need

Way smarter than the other kind. Chance are they don't want to be eaten, much less caged, beaten, hung by their back feet or stabbed.

They’ve [animal behavior researchers] found that pigs are among the quickest of animals to learn a new routine, and pigs can do a circus’s worth of tricks: jump hoops, bow and stand, spin and make wordlike sounds on command, roll out rugs, herd sheep, close and open cages, play videogames with joysticks, and more. For better or worse, pigs are also slow to forget. “They can learn something on the first try, but then it’s difficult for them to unlearn it,” said Suzanne Held of the University of Bristol. “They may get scared once and then have trouble getting over it.”

I want to hang out with pigs and play bow and stand with them.

I know it's a dream that won't come true until people are wiped off the planet, but I really wish they would just recognize the inherent worth that other animals have in living their lives and leave them alone.

Support for health care reform bill

Pretty sparse. Americans are so reluctant to pay for anything worthwhile. They just want to blow their money on shit, or at least have the "freedom" to do so.

This is such a contentious issue, and all it is is trying to get people insured, nothing resembling socialized medicine. What are people so mad about? I just don't get it. They're all riled up on some conservative fantasy trope shit about "Big Brother in their pockets" or whatever. Make sure to catch a close-up of that picture up top. Pretty brilliant. A lot of cogent points in those signs.

WHAT KIND OF FUCKING IDIOT REJECTS ACCESS TO HEALTH CARE?

I fucking hate this country, pt. 3

Just realized that this ("I fucking hate this country, pt. -) will be a long-running series.

I found some behind the scenes crap about how political marketing garbage (I will allow that they were at one point people) were paid to deploy their greatest efforts, using whatever imagery they found most effective, to ensure that gay people remain discriminated against, reviled and living in fear (when people are not afforded the full benefits of citizenship, you can be sure that they will treated as less than equal).

Gay marriage opponents pulled off another victory at the ballot box this week by using a tried-and-tested argument: Approve it and children will be taught homosexuality in school.

I don't know what that means, "taught homosexuality." Like, that it exists? Cause it does.

Here's my favorite part:

In Maine and California, voters were besieged with ad images of what would supposedly happen if same-sex marriage were legal: students going on a field trip to a lesbian wedding, elementary school kids reading books featuring gay couples, kindergartners learning about homosexuality from their teachers — all without any say from parents.

Oh, so that's what it means. I don't see the problem. Of course I don't.

Those advertisements came from these people:

After signing up to lead the campaign, political consultants Frank Schubert and Jeff Flint noticed that polls were showing voters tended to not have much of a problem with gay relationships.

With the help of focus groups, surveys and ammunition unwittingly supplied by their opponents, the two soon found a new way to frame the issue, by focusing on education.

People in marketing very low on the humanity ladder as it is, with them making it their jobs to convince people to buy useless things and poison themselves. But these people, "political consultants", I cannot describe the depth of my hatred for them. It burns inside of me.

They've made it their business (and yes, business is good) to fill people's minds with shit, so that they cannot, or at least they feel that they cannot, make decisions of their own. They thrive on breeding misery, with no apparent compunction.

One on hand you have these salespeople of hatred and ignorance, and on the other, you have a sea of people too fucking stupid to think about anything. Many of them will believe anything that is repeated often enough to them. They are small-minded people, with few thoughtful tendencies. They are deeply reactionary and want nothing more than to maintain what they believe has always been, which generally is based on "God". And they are the majority of Americans. Good luck getting anything progressive by them.

Whitest of the white

Damn. I feel bad for some of them. I shouldn't, but I do.

On refusing to act

Here we see poor countries pressuring, trying to convince and finally begging the rich ones to cut their carbon emissions in serious numbers. As anyone would expect, the rich countries told them to suck it. The poor ones want rich industrial countries to reduce their carbon output by forty percent in the next ten years. Most of the latter are planning to cut by up to fifteen percent by then. America, of course, lags behind even such a basic measure, debating a seven percent cut. Fuck.

What's the excuse? Why won't they just do it? Money.

"I think to get to minus 40 [percent reduction in carbon emissions] is too heavy a lift," Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, told Reuters. Such a shift would require "going back to the drawing board" and would economically "come at a huge cost," he said.

Yes, the U.N. is also telling them to fuck off. Looks like the end of the road for all those poor client/host countries, huh? At least they can point the finger when the floods come and come. What satisfaction.

Once again, people have demonstrated that they will commit any act of violence and destruction in the name of money. Essentially, the rich countries tell the rest of the world that the western lifestyles they live are more important than anything, even some too-late attempt to "save" the planet. People up at the top know that they and their businesses are trashing every reach of the world, but they won't do anything meaningful about it, just sell you a canvas bag.

As for the climate change deniers, go for it. Give it your all. I can guarantee it won't make a fuck of a difference what you felt or said when your children live in a state of constant hunger and struggle, their houses long having been swallowed by the oceans.

Things get stupider

and people reveal themselves to be a little more ignominious as time passes. A lot of people seem to have this idea of constant, irrepressible human progress towards some semblance of equality, harmony and understanding. Fuck that.

The fact of the matter is that give us the chance, and we will demonstrate our hatred and intolerance in waves. You can check yesterday's elections for that. Voters in Maine came out to repeal a gay marriage law the state legislature passed. Just like thirty states before them, gay marriage went up for a vote, and it was denied. And I still don't know why. I mean, I know why people vote against it. They cite some religious drivel, some nonsense about sanctity and honor or whatever, but I really just don't know why they care if gay people get married or not. It has nothing to ostensibly do with them. They are just hateful and seem to relish in denying other people joy.

I have this idea that people in America, other places too, I am sure, but I only know America, know that their lives are empty, shitty and lived in service to higher powers - their employers, politicians and the rich, which are often indistinguishable from one another. They may not be aware of it in a fully conscious sense, and they may not give it much thought, but they have a sense of it at some level. It compels them to act in such awful, vengeful ways. They love taking things out on other people. They will direct their misery at just about anyone, acting out in a wide variety of situations - driving, internet forums, picking on individuals they perceive as weak and oppressing groups they feel are susceptible to being dominated. We are a profoundly miserable people who often behave much like electricity. We will strike out at whatever is closest to us, requiring the least amount of effort. I feel that this is a large part of why men beat and cow their families - they are closest to them. They're always there, as is these men's rage, the rage that comes from so many other places and is channeled in such unproductive ways.

When it comes to enacting legislation and things of that nature, white people in this country love to enshrine their special status. They will and have put laws on the books to discriminate against, well, anyone, really. I guess just about everyone has faced discrimination in this country, save for the white man born here to a wealthy family. And by fucking god do white people like to keep it that way. They will go against themselves so often, just to try to ingratiate themselves in some way with these untouchables who rule them.

Wave a flag or a cross at them and poor white people will come out in droves for just about anything you want, as long as it's hateful and glorifies their idea of white, religious, individualistic America. Cut taxes for the rich? You bet. Fight against socialized medicine? Here we are, boss. Slash funding for education? Sure thing. Whatever you want.

Dear Earth Lords, you have long since convinced us that black people, Mexicans and transoceanic, non-white immigrants are our enemies. They want our jobs and our virtuous white women. We will defend all of those with vigor, devoting special energy to maintaining the homogeneity of our neighborhoods. We will unite along racial lines, much to the detriment of our economic well-being. We eagerly embark on this journey with you. It is of no practical value to us, but we promise to never examine this fact.

As for the white middle classes, they are scared as fuck of losing their tenuous economic perches. The poor white people, they never had shit to begin with and don't expect to ever gain much, so all they really need is their whiteness, maleness, Americanness, femininity and whatever else. But these middle-class people, they will bite whether you wave a flag or a dollar. Taxes, taxes taxes. Economy, economy, economy. Jobs, jobs, jobs. And they hate black people, but mostly because they are beneath them, as well as a criminal threat. They are not primarily their competition. They hate immigrants, but like it when they trim the shrubs in the front yard.

And everyone hates gay people. White people, black people, religious people of all stripes, rich people, poor people. Maybe portions of the middle classes sympathize with them the most, for trying to maintain that delicate balance. Middle class people know what it's like to have to pretend, to put on a show for everyone.

In New Jersey, Chris Christie trotted out this platform of "fixing the economy," whatever the fuck that means. I suppose it's calculated to be a statement open to maximum interpretation, where people take it to apply to them. It got him elected, along with his messages of repression - specifically anti-choice and anti-gay. The images of his fat, happy, white family put the cream in the twinkie. He's a religious conservative and loves George Bush. He favors such brilliant measures as further reducing state funding for education at all levels, always a guarantor of a bright future.

Christie won. More people chose him than anyone else. People in New Jersey, counter to its liberal image, tend to be rather conservative. Sure, Obama trashed McCain last year, but also, look who he was up against - an old man and an idiot hick. A lot of young people came out, a lot of black people came out, and a lot of white people felt like they had to "do the right thing."

This time around, there was no celebrity candidate. Nothing fresh was at hand. "Hope" was reserved for lower taxes, and the only aspirations for "change" were for that mystical nebulousness, the economy. It was back to that same American political drudgery - which white guy? That's the shit that turns a lot of people off. They don't want those choices. They don't see anyone who represents them or whom they want to represent them, so they abstain. Maybe they don't think much changes for them, regardless of who is in office. So other people go to the polls and choose for them.

Thanks to the fundamental shortsighted nature of Americans, it was Chris Christie this time. Idiot people ate up his promises of more money in their pockets and clung desperately to his denigration of Jon Corzine's economic abilities. Surely, it must be Jon Corzine's fault! After all, he WAS the one in office when all this meltdown business took place. No need to look even a few years back, to the policies of yore. No, this is all on Corzine. New Jersey operates in an economic vacuum, and everything is in the governor's hands. All he had to do was fix it, but he wouldn't. Or something. At least, that seems to be the gist of much support for Christie. I am no Corzine supporter and do not care to entrench myself in the uselessness of American party politics. It's just that, come on, Chris Christie? This guy is a fat piece of shit who just can't hate enough.

I guess that a lot of people who voted for Christie are in need of something to believe in. They don't know shit about economics and think it's as simple as one person fixing what's broken. Even worse, they believe, or at least pretend to believe that when someone makes campaign promises to do so, it will happen, as though he deals in magic. How could New Jersey have a thriving capitalist economy when the national economy is fucked, not to mention the global situation? Duh. These voters also either embrace his social conservatism or find it generally agreeable. They just don't care about people who aren't them. Money is their god, and at this time, they have chosen Chris Christie as their...what, bishop or something like that?

Here is November 4th, the day that Americans revealed themselves to be a little more hateful and vindictive than they were yesterday.

"There is an inner logic,

and we're taught to stay far from it.
It is simple and elegant,
but it's cruel and antithetic,
and there's no effort to reveal it."

Sara is down

Definitely been listening to her Write Back Soon CD.

October 30th at Town Hall in New York.

New budget proposal for NASA

Seriously. What is their purpose? That agency is the ultimate example of the human pursuit of knowledge at all costs and for its own ends.

A $19 billion dollar budget, and going back to the moon.

"why eating ground beef is still a gamble"

What? Jelly beans, cookies and mustard make a fine stew...


From a New York Times article on E. coli, one of those things we all like to think will be someone else's problem. Fact is, as long as you are eating meat, and especially cows, you don't have a whole lot of control over whether or not you get it.

Meat companies and grocers have been barred from selling ground beef tainted by the virulent strain of E. coli known as O157:H7 since 1994, after an outbreak at Jack in the Box restaurants left four children dead. Yet tens of thousands of people are still sickened annually by this pathogen, federal health officials estimate, with hamburger being the biggest culprit. Ground beef has been blamed for 16 outbreaks in the last three years alone, including the one that left Ms. Smith paralyzed from the waist down. This summer, contamination led to the recall of beef from nearly 3,000 grocers in 41 states...

Ground beef is usually not simply a chunk of meat run through a grinder. Instead, records and interviews show, a single portion of hamburger meat is often an amalgam of various grades of meat from different parts of cows and even from different slaughterhouses. These cuts of meat are particularly vulnerable to E. coli contamination, food experts and officials say. Despite this, there is no federal requirement for grinders to test their ingredients for the pathogen.

The frozen hamburgers that the Smiths ate, which were made by the food giant Cargill, were labeled “American Chef’s Selection Angus Beef Patties.” Yet confidential grinding logs and other Cargill records show that the hamburgers were made from a mix of slaughterhouse trimmings and a mash-like product derived from scraps that were ground together at a plant in Wisconsin. The ingredients came from slaughterhouses in Nebraska, Texas and Uruguay, and from a South Dakota company that processes fatty trimmings and treats them with ammonia to kill bacteria...

Many big slaughterhouses will sell only to grinders who agree not to test their shipments for E. coli, according to officials at two large grinding companies...

As with other slaughterhouses, the potential for contamination is present every step of the way, according to workers and federal inspectors. The cattle often arrive with smears of feedlot feces that harbor the E. coli pathogen, and the hide must be removed carefully to keep it off the meat. This is especially critical for trimmings sliced from the outer surface of the carcass.

Federal inspectors based at the plant are supposed to monitor the hide removal, but much can go wrong. Workers slicing away the hide can inadvertently spread feces to the meat, and large clamps that hold the hide during processing sometimes slip and smear the meat with feces, the workers and inspectors say...

Cargill’s final source was a supplier that turns fatty trimmings into what it calls “fine lean textured beef.” The company, Beef Products Inc., said it bought meat that averages between 50 percent and 70 percent fat, including “any small pieces of fat derived from the normal breakdown of the beef carcass.” It warms the trimmings, removes the fat in a centrifuge and treats the remaining product with ammonia to kill E. coli.

With seven million pounds produced each week, the company’s product is widely used in hamburger meat sold by grocers and fast-food restaurants and served in the federal school lunch program...

Ground beef sold by most grocers is made from a blend of ingredients, industry officials said. Agriculture Department regulations also allow hamburger meat labeled ground chuck or sirloin to contain trimmings from those parts of the cow...

As it fed ingredients into its grinders, Cargill watched for some unwanted elements. Using metal detectors, workers snagged stray nails and metal hooks that could damage the grinders, then warned suppliers to make sure it did not happen again...

Nails. Seriously, I don't even know why there would be nails in any kind of meat. What the fuck? How would that ever happen?

Here's a solution - stop eating cows. It's simple to understand: E. coli comes from a cow's digestive tract (as well as other less commonly eaten animals, like sheep, deer, goats and elk). If you don't eat the cow, you probably won't get it. I guess it's worth the risk though. Tastes good, yeah?

Aside from all that, how can you call this shit (meat is gross enough, I am specifically referring to the particle burger you probably don't realize exists) food? Sure, people eat it, but not everything you hear is music. A lot of it's just noise.

Again, and finally, treated with ammonia. And then you eat it. Just wow.

Lock and Key - Pull up the Floorboards

This was the record I listened to today that I was into more than expected. This shit is GOOD. And I don't feel like they ever really got recognition. Definitely not a known band. This is the kind of record where I think, "Man, this band should be fairly popular. What happened?"

Lock and Key, they were from Massachusetts. I did a show for them once. They seemed like alright guys. They played well, they were tight. I think I bought the CD just to support them cause they were on tour. Over the years, I've really come to appreciate it.

Sure, it sounds like Hot Water Music. But I don't like Hot Water Music all that much. So then it's similar, but not a copy. Influenced? Absolutely. Ripping off? No, Lock and Key were doing more than that. It's definitely heavier, at times poppier, yet also with tinges of bleakness; there is a certain dark sentiment to this.

You can tell that a lot went into these songs. There's real feeling at hand when I listen to this record, in both the vocals and music. Not just some simple bang it out in five minutes kind of stuff.

One of the best records Deep Elm ever put out, along with some Appleseed Cast and Latterman records. Download it here.

Snapcase - Progression through Unlearning

I listened to this record yesterday, and boy was it a good time. A lot of times, you listen to things you like, and you think, "This is good. This is real good." But with Progression through Unlearning, I said, "Fuck, this is so awesome, why has it been so long since I've listened to it?"

Heavy as hell, and at least as intelligent. Very creative, like nothing else going on at the time, or since. I believe that Refused took a lot from this band, and this record in particular. There are many similarities between it and The Shape of Punk to Come.

A lot of people will tell you that Lookinglasself is where it's at. Others will say Designs for Automotion. Really though, Progression through Unlearning is the shit.

Click to download, if you so desire.

Fucked

Fucked fucked fucked. We are. Yes, in the doomed sense, but also in the senses of priorities and way of thinking.

NASA's much-hyped mission to hurl a spacecraft into the moon turned out some worthwhile data after all, scientists said.

New images show a mile-high plume of lunar debris from the Cabeus crater shortly after the space agency's Centaur rocket struck Oct. 9.

"We were blown away by the data returned," Anthony Colaprete, the mission's chief scientist, said in a report Friday from the Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif., which managed the launch. "The team is working hard on the analysis, and the data appear to be of very high quality."

In media coverage before the impact, many observers said they were disappointed at the lack of spectacle.

But scientists said the mission was carried out for "a scientific purpose, not to put on a fireworks display for the public," said space consultant Alan Stern, a former NASA associate administrator for science.

By creating the debris cloud, scientists were able to use the $79-million Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite to sample and study the dust. The LCROSS itself crashed into the same crater four minutes after the Centaur's impact, right on schedule, while its companion spacecraft, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, was flying in lunar orbit 50 miles above the site to gather still more data...

Finding significant amounts of water on the moon would be a major discovery, making eventual colonization easier than it would be if settlers had to transport water from Earth.

Ah yes, fucking wonderful. Crash $79 million into the moon, deliberately. Makes a lot of sense, when you think about it. Everything around here is about taken care of, so why not?

Colonization, golly gee. Can't wait for that one. We've done so well by this planet, the universe has surely earned more of us.

David Lee Roth/Van Halen

Yup. Remembered this today. Hell yes.

Check the vocal track from Running with the Devil.

Can't be real, huh? It is.

They look like Zeppelin at their lowest, which is actually Aerosmith, and Kiss.

Sick bass line, bro.

Fire

Fred Phelps' (of god hates fags fame) people are coming to where I go to school. I don't really know why. Well I know what they are doing, but I don't really get it. I guess god hates Jews too.

I'm not offended by the fact that they are coming to the school I attend. That's irrelevant. It's just that I've been reminded of these people and what they believe and do after a long period of not giving them much thought.

Fuck these people, fuck every one of them. Fuck their religion, fuck their church (Westboro Baptist, from Kansas, just like Operation Rescue), fuck their families, fuck their Walmart lives.

They protested Matthew Shepard's funeral. Because he was gay. He had it coming, they are glad he is dead, and he is in their hell, they say. They protested his funeral, in front of his family. Yup.

Fuck people's liberal attitudes towards them. Sure, people are pissed, but they're going to hold a counter-protest. Oooh. Not that. That's what they want. They want attention. They live on it. They want people to yell at them and tell them they are wrong and how they are not welcome wherever they may be; it only emboldens them. These people thrive on the attention, however negative it may seem. They are sick.

Their sickness is not the type that can be adequately addressed through speech, the written word, or visual mediums. No, these people will only understand violence. That is their language. It is the unofficial language of America, for sure, and they have wholeheartedly embraced it.

As such, the people from the Westboro Baptist Church need to be addressed in the language they understand. Violence, self-defense, keeping the streets safe, keeping them clean, however you choose to construe it.

Are these people "the problem"? No. They are but a grotesque manifestation of the horrors of humanity and the belief system of this society. At the same time, they are a legitimate danger that needs to be addressed, and it will not happen through marches, holding signs, or yelling at them.

People like this need to be afraid to leave their homes. They operate with no fear. Hate groups in this country virtually need never fear retribution, and of course the fact that many politicians support them, whether explicitly or implicitly, and a good number of pigs populate their ranks goes a long way to see to this. They hide behind constitutional rights and the fact that no one legitimately fights them. People have fucking COUNTER-PROTESTS. Seriously? That's what's up? Damn.

"We have the right to say what we want," they say. Sure. But then the people to whom you are saying it have a right to defend themselves against you and your dirty work enforcers when you threaten them, whether the threat be implied or overt. If what you are saying has a history of concomitant violence (lynching black people, killing doctors, beating queer people), then you need to be kept in check and people have every fucking right to do this, through whatever means necessary. People need to realize that. No one needs to lay down and let these people run all over the rights that we all have to be safe. That is a much higher priority than free speech.

Protest and counter-protest are not the same. Their protest = profound bigotry, threatening language, inciting hate, giving strength to the people who go out and perform the actions that their words describe. Counter-protest = telling them that they are wrong. We need more than this. When they have what they are saying and doing coming back to them in kind, then we will see how strongly they still feel the need to say what they want.

White supremacy/master race

This is how we do it. Two related, yet different ways we show all those leftovers of the world how much better, smarter, and just all around sicker we are. If these two don't convince you, then the crowd in the first video will. Fact.

Right on, white people.

Pigs for Christ, against women

Fucking brilliant quote from this former pig who runs an anti-choice organization in Las Vegas:

Three months later, Operation Rescue, the umbrella anti-abortion group, arrived in Las Vegas, where Mr. Gallagher was a police officer. He refused to arrest protesters, and when his sergeant suspended him, he joined the “rescuers.”

“I learned something that changed my life,” Mr. Gallagher said. “It wasn’t civil disobedience; it was biblical obedience.”

Thanks pig. Your trenchant insight has shown the issue so clearly. Biblical obedience. What other choice do you have, really. It has to be the truth, because it does. Get it? Sure, the bible came around a few thousand years ago, and yeah, the current human species had been around for about five hundred thousand years at that point, but that's irrelevant. The Lord God Jesus (The LGJ) was really busy for all that time, and was having a hard time finding a lady until Mary came along. You think he would have made her earlier, but again, he was busy. He's The LGJ.

The quote is from a broader story on the more in your face types of woman hating anti-choice people and all their very creative signs and stickers.

Operation Rescue - "I had to borrow money just to send you this letter..."

I hope it's true. Troy Newman, the group's president, claims Operation Rescue is fucking broke:

"We're now so broke (as the saying goes), we can't even pay attention," Newman wrote.

Newman told The Associated Press in an interview after the mailing that the group has only four paid employees left, compared to nine a year ago. The group typically has an annual budget of $600,000, but donations this year have been down 30 percent to 40 percent. Newman, who earns $60,000 annually, said he hasn't been paid in two months.

"You see, this summer has been brutal for Operation Rescue," Newman wrote. "Not only did George Tiller's death throw everybody in the pro-life movement for a loop (and especially us), but the economic crisis our nation is suffering has brought our financial support to nearly a halt."

I'm sure, that in addition to the economic recession, Troy Newman sees a moral one, demonstrated by his group's financial difficulties.

Whether the organization is penniless or not, I'm not sure how much real difference it makes. I'm not very up on the coat hanger or nothing scene, so I don't know how many serious anti-choice groups are out there these days. I know Operation Rescue was THE one for a while, and I figured they still were. Randall Terry is still doing some bullshit, I'm sure.

Whatever the case, it makes me feel good to see people like this crawl. Fuck every one of them. Fuck every person who has ever donated to them.

I have these visions where Troy Newman, Randall Terry, Cheryl Sullenger (Operation Rescue "Senior Policy Advisor" and would-be clinic bomber) and whatever other malicious parasites live atop the heap of woman-hating zeal become so poor and crazy from their tunnel-vision lifestyles that they are homeless. Their homelessness is of the variety where they are street people; they have to live off of the fat of society. One night, drunkenly dumpster diving (they have long since strayed from the flock), they find some decent scraps of meat, still warm. You gotta take what you can get when you are in this position. As they walk off, joyously feasting upon their finds, they realize they've been eating fetuses.

I would like to credit Bad Religion with Operation Rescue's organizational destitution.

Lol @ "Elderly Pro-life Activist Attacked, Injured in Flagstaff"

Fuck Johnny Wallace. Didn't get shot, but I'm glad he caught a beatdown, and DELIGHTED that it was from two women. Fucking awesome.

As usual, he's not "pro-life", he's anti choice. Here is a motherfucker standing around trying just as hard as can be to also be a Christ Warrior and prohibit women from controlling their bodies, their futures and their lives. Progress through intimidation, right Johnny? Ok, so that's offensive enough. He deserves a kicking just for that.

BUT, here's the best part. As Operation Rescue tells it, Johnny simply "held two non-graphic, text-only signs protesting abortion..." One of them was some standard shit about dead babies, while the other read “Abortion kills more black Americans in four days than the Klan killed in 150 years." HOLY SHIT. Again, WOW. Johnny would have caught a lot more than a beatdown in a lot of places. He's lucky he was in Flagstaff. Incredible, thinking it's reasonable to compare the Klan and abortion. It's not really a comparison though; what he's saying is the black women are worse than the Klan. Black women kill more black people than the Klan.

On one hand, we have a terrorist organization (actual terrorists, as in maintaining power and accomplishing goals through extreme violence and, you know, terror) fighting to keep hatred alive and black people scared, impoverished and "in their places." They have maintained a reign of terror since shortly after the Civil War. They are alive and well today. Lynchings, beatings, shootings, burnings (of people), arson, bombings, stabbings, and whatever other kinds of physical violence of which one can conceive. If you can think of it, they've done it. And they still will do it. Black people in this situation are, unfortunately, subjects. When you are being beaten by a gang of men based on your skin, you have lost virtually all power to act effectively.

Abortion - a woman deciding she does not want to have a child at this time. No terror, no hatred, no one being dragged to death by horse. Black women are actors here. They are exercising agency. They are making decisions over their lives.

Holy shit. After writing that out, clearly, they are very similar, if not indiscernible from one another. I just realized how very wrong I am. I used to think abortions should be mandatory for all pregnant women everywhere, back last minute when I was pro abortion, but Jimmy's sign showed me that no one should ever have an abortion anywhere ever cause God.

New Write Back Soon shirt

Hey, we decided we're gonna get some awesome new shirts. You see it, you can read it, you know it rules and that it's fucking true. The thing is, we couldn't improve them any further, so just go here and buy them. It saves everyone time and trouble, no middleman junk. For real though, they'll be legit Write Back Soon shirts, even though it doesn't have our name on it. It says Jesus and Lord and whatever else, which is the same thing, so it's fine. Just hit them up.

Lol @ anti-choice guy getting gunned down

This happened a few weeks ago; I meant to write on it, but it's been slipping my mind. All this stuff with Attack Attack! has been taking up a lot of time.

Anyway, finally. Someone took out one of those self-appointed warriors for Christ. Fuck this guy. I'm glad he's dead. This piece of shit, a member of Operation Rescue, had spent years sitting outside a high school, a car dealership (?), Planned Parenthood offices, abortion clinics and who knows where else, holding up the usual signs of "the murdered unborn" or whatever they want to call fetuses, endeavoring to put his hands on women's bodies, to force them into having children they don't want, denying them the rights to control their lives.

See that guy up top? That's Harlan Drake. He did it. He shot Captain Christ, aka Jim Pouillon.

He wasn't killed in a personal dispute, he wasn't killed by accident. He was shot and killed deliberately because of the nature of his activities and his refusal to relent. A long time ago, he decided to dedicate his life to hating and controlling women.

The county's chief assistant prosecutor, Sara Edwards, said there didn't appear to be a "triggering event" but Pouillon's presence outside the school seemed to aggravate Drake. It was "the fact that he was outside the high school with his signs in front of children going to school," she said.

Yup.

Operation Rescue president Troy Newman said Pouillon was a member of the anti-abortion group, adding that he wept Friday when he received word that his friend had been killed. "He was just a kind, gentle man who loved life and endeavored to save other people's lives," Newman said.

Boo hoo hoo. What a tragic loss. Such a wonderful Christ warrior. He sure loved to control women's bodies. Troy Newman, what a judge of character.

Again, fuck this guy. He wasn't just someone who didn't like abortion. Operation Rescue, these are the people who kill doctors, these are the people who foster the sentiments that convince people to kill doctors, these are the people who love the dirty work that the doctor killers do for them. They thrive on the orgasmic power of intimidation.

Mr. Pouillon was at the real hardcore of this crap. A real die hard. And he died hard.

The Rev. Rodger DeVore, pastor of the Church of the Nazarene, said Pouillon never seemed to tire and even protested outside the church.

"He did not attend a church because he felt pastors were not strong enough in their defense of the aborted child," DeVore said. "I told him, 'Jim, everyone has to fight in their own armor. You have your approach and we have our approach.' We agreed to disagree."

Jim Pouillon won't be intimidating anyone ever again. May there be a bullet for everyone like him.

Work till death! Have fun! Make money! Hurrah!

While I have many years till it is acceptable for me to retire to the couch and watch TV twelve hours a day, I already know that I will never do that. No, instead I will work forever. It is the new freedom. Retiring is constricting and circumscribes your abilities to make money, which is your American right number one, thanks to God. Love you.

Anyway, what the hell do I want to stop working for? I would have nothing to do. I was always bored as a kid, and I'll be even more bored when I'm old, because I will have concentrated so hard on working, I will have never made time for myself, to build my life. Here are some inspirational stories of others, in whose footsteps I can only hope to follow:

Jack Borden would like you to consider working well past retirement age. As a 101-year-old attorney, he has the credibility to encourage it.

Borden, who has been practicing law for the better part of 70 years, still spends about 40 hours a week at his office in Weatherford, Texas, handling estate planning, probate and real estate matters.

Retire? Not while he's able to help folks.

"As long as you are capable, you ought to use what God gave you. He left me here for a reason, and with enough of a mind to do what it is I'm supposed to be doing," said Borden, who also has been a district attorney and Weatherford's mayor.

He arrives at the practice he shares with his nephew at 6:30 a.m. He goes home for lunch at 10:45 a.m., rests in bed for 45 minutes -- doctor's orders after pneumonia a few years back -- returns to work by 12:45 p.m. and stays until at least 4.

That's beautiful. Working right into the coffin. That's America, right there.

Jack- I'm sorry - Mr. Borden, is really onto something right there; God put you here to work. God has a purpose for you, and even for me, and that purpose is not enjoyment. It's about money, it's about service, it's about self-denial.

In Anderson, South Carolina, customers at a Chick-fil-A restaurant might see 88-year-old Frank Childers fixing a door. His wife, Gertrude Childers, 88, might be carrying a tray to a table or refreshing someone's beverage.

When Frank Childers retired from his insurance sales job in 1985, he looked forward to free time and fishing.

"I stayed retired for five years. I got tired of sitting around," he said.

Frank Childers, who had some mechanical experience before working in insurance, took some jobs to stay busy. In 1998, Jon Holmes, the owner-operator of three Anderson Chick-fil-As, asked him to lead his maintenance staff, and Childers has been working there since.

Gertrude Childers, a former mill worker, also was hired in 1998 to be a dining room hostess at one of the restaurants. She works 20 hours a week; her husband works about 30.

They each said they enjoy the work and the people they've met. They don't have to work for the money, they said, but the pay doesn't hurt.

"It's nice to have your own money, because when I want to go shopping, I don't have to ask nobody," Gertrude Childers said, laughing.

These people are at the forefront of the working forever movement. Look, indeed, marvel, at how they've maintained their dignity well past the age when Big Brother tells us it's time to get out of the way for the spring chickens to come in and roost, to take dust baths, to burrow new indentations in the earth so that they may keep warm. No, not me.

Fucking pigs...

fucking cows? This shit is local.

Former Moorestown police officer Robert Melia Jr. was charged last year with sexually assaulting three girls.

During the investigation, police say they found a video in the man's home that showed him sexually molesting cows in 2006.

Wow. Kid toucher, cow toucher. Videotaping it...

Anyway, it turns out that bestiality is not a crime in New Jersey. YES.

The Danger of Livestock Waste?

"The Danger of Livestock" is more appropriate. Can't have livestock without livestock waste. And of course, you can't have livestock without people. The animals perceived as the economic/food units "livestock" wouldn't exist in nearly such numbers, certainly not in such thick concentrations, and in some (many?) cases, wouldn't exist at all, as people have bred and altered them into new versions of their ancestors.

So here we are, a few decades down the line from having invented the atrocity of industrial agriculture, and like everything else that we've "improved," it has come back to bite us in the ass in a whole lot of ways. In this instance, it's the massive contamination of drinking water in rural areas around these farms.

Agricultural runoff is the single largest source of water pollution in the nation’s rivers and streams, according to the E.P.A. An estimated 19.5 million Americans fall ill each year from waterborne parasites, viruses or bacteria, including those stemming from human and animal waste, according to a study published last year in the scientific journal Reviews of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology.

As usual, it's nobody's fault and just kind of happened. Nothing like a complete lack of foresight matched with an obstinate reluctance to admit wrongdoing on anyone's part. As though this is how it is, how it's got to be, and we have to figure out ways to deal with it. Like it's some immutable force of nature. Well, here's a video report of what dealing with it means.

Aside from the unconscionable abuse, torture and degradation that goes on in these prison hell rape factories, the people running them also don't give a fuck about people who aren't them. They don't care about the people who live around them. If they did, they would not keep "waste lagoons," they would not dump the chemical filled shit back onto the ground and they would own up to the environmental devastation they force upon the communities around them in the name of profit. If they cared about the people who bought the dairy products they sell, well, they wouldn't sell them.

They do whatever they want because the farm lobby is so strong. The farm lobby is so strong because people have appallingly low standards for what they eat as food. One more thing we could do something about but won't. "Isn't that a shame..."

Don't worry though, these farmers do soil tests and "follow strict regulations." It's working out really well. I'm just making a big noise about nothing.

Told ya they're comin for yer freedom!!!!!!!!!

First healthcare, now you can't even get naked on planes and hit people anymore.

You want my freedom? Well take a look at THIS!

That's right. THE FUCKING GLORY OF AMERICA GOD EAGLE FLAG WORDS.

All those liberal fat cat radical communist integrationist dogs down over in Washington can suck on that one! HOW'S A LITTLE FLAG FOR YA, PINKOS? DON'T LIKE THAT ONE DO YA? IT'S LIKE A GARLIC CROSS IN A VAMPIRE'S ASSHOLE.

Don't say I didn't tell ya when they ban prayer in church!!!

Fucking kill me

Jay-z needs to make a second version of "D.O.A." which would involve him killing America. Fuck this place, holy shit. It is so full up of thoughtless idiots who will believe anything they hear on the radio, see on TV or "read" on the internet on whatever stupid fucking message boards or blogs they frequent. They are hateful, bigoted, racist, anti-intellectual and are fraught with anxiety that big guvmint is always around the corner coming to get them and take away all their "rights." What these jackasses systematically fail to see, much to the delight of those who use them for political gain, is that THEY ARE ON THE SAME SIDE AS THE PEOPLE RUNNING THE COUNTRY. They all want the same fucking things - God, money, black people in jail, women in the back. Just fools in the game of division.

Anyway, here's what's going on. A bunch of assholes are running around the country stirring up this week's blind, pointless jingoistic hatred in the name of the "Tea Party Express." Remember that old woman at a McCain campaign rally last year who said she couldn't trust Obama because he's an Arab? I bet she's around. Here are some choice quotes:

• Under a setting sun on the steps of the state capitol in Little Rock, Arkansas, Johns says: "Our men and women took an oath when they put on the uniform to defend and protect this country from enemies both foreign and domestic. I think we've got some domestic enemies in the White House."
• "The men and women in our military didn't fight and die for this country for a communist in the White House," she says, and the crowd erupts in a chant of "U-S-A, U-S-A!"
• Williams is the showman of the bunch. His signature line when he gets the mic goes like this: "You can have our country when you pry it from our ... cold ... dead ... fingers!" Again the crowd erupts.
• As the tour moves on, Nazi imagery becomes more prominent -- and sometimes confused. One sign at the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas, has Obama's portrait sandwiched between pictures of Adolf Hitler and communist philosopher Karl Marx. In Canton,Ohio, Obama and Hitler adorn a sign reading "Hitler made great speeches, too."
• No one on the tea party express seems concerned with the vocal fringe of the crowds that come with offensive signs -- besides Nazi imagery, a poster of Obama as an African witch doctor has become popular -- or the numerous conspiracy theories that float around most tea parties.
• In Battle Creek, Michigan, a woman in her 60s says, "I really don't want to be a guinea pig for the experiment they have with the population control." In Canton, Ohio, a woman argues with an Obama supporter: "He's going after our kids to try to indoctrinate them into a national defense army."

This is the kind of shit that makes me wish I were dead. That's it.

New tour

Yeah, so the tour with Corporate Avenger fell through. Fuck. It's cool. We got something better coming down the line, in November. Behold:

ATTACK ATTACK! Yeah, that's right. We don't know what they sound like, but it does not matter. LOOK AT THEM. They are fucking awesome and we knew immediately that we can barely lick their assholes, let alone write songs as good as theirs. The guy with the black v-neck shirt who does not have a blowover 'fro, pretty sure his collarbone tattoo says "Only God Can Judge Me."

THIS IS GOING TO RULE HARD.

Giving up

I just don't understand. How can you be vegan for years, be into it, do it of your own accord, and then a while down the line, say "Eh, what are you gonna do?" The only thing that changed is you. They're still there. How the fuck do you go back to wanting eggs when you know this shit?

...the company also noted that "instantaneous euthanasia" — a reference to killing of male chicks by the grinder — is a standard practice supported by the animal veterinary and scientific community.

How can you justify putting your money back there? How can you stomach yourself stomaching that?

I guess moving back towards normalcy makes you feel better. Why ostracize yourself for something so meaningless, you know? Being vegan is just so hard. On behalf of everything that ever lived, thank you, holy shit thank you, for your years of selfless sacrifice. I know it was a hard-fought battle every waking moment. The daily attrition is just too much.

A perfect illustration of the fundamental problem with humanity

I was reading this story, and I really don't even know why, about the newest Taser. The story itself really doesn't fucking matter; what's important is what one of the pieces of shit who runs the company said with regards to how people use the products this company makes. And it's not really a reflection on him that concerns me. Sure, fuck the dude, he's garbage, he's helping pigs and troops to fuck up people (750,000 in fifteen years) all over the world, but that doesn't really matter here. That's fucking petty in terms of what his words say about the human species. I feel his remarks cut to the core of what is wrong with us: we simply won't stop.

What I keep wondering is: Who would inflict that kind of pain? And under what circumstances? We all know that our tools change our behavior. Give us cars, and we’ll go new places; give us iPhones, and we’ll check our e-mail way more often. So when we hear stories about grandmothers and kids and handcuffed prisoners and even runaway sheep getting tased, I asked Smith, what does that say about the stun gun’s impact?

He and his colleagues gently ducked the question, saying it was up to individual police forces and military units to teach their troops how and when to use the electroshock weapons. “All we can do is build in as many features as we can think of,” said Brian Beckwith, vice president of product development.

And that's it, right the fuck there: "All we can do is build as many features as we can think of." No concern for what comes after. Not a bit. That's something that's been demonstrated time and again throughout human history, particularly in relatively modern times - guns, gasoline engines, chainsaws, pesticides, nuclear energy, nuclear weapons, on and on, ad nauseam. These things have positive uses? I don't care if that's true, cause the reality is that that doesn't happen and every one of these things runs away from us and we stand around like it's some big fucking mystery how it got that way. Again and again, every fucking time.

People are truly, on a biological level, complete idiots. We've got these big brains that let us build whatever we come up with, rarely questioning if we even should. That's where the idiocy lies - doing without thinking of the consequences. That happens large (oil extraction), that happens small (heroin use). We are so, so stupid. We will not learn. Individuals may, but the species will not.

People love to think of themselves as this brilliant, exceptional and mighty species. All those animals that are so "low," they don't incorporate slow, all-encompassing death and destruction into their daily lives.

Draw a deep breath, look around and take in the incredible wreckage we've laid to the planet with our creativity and intelligence.

"Modern man, pathetic example of earth's organic heritage."