Oyster Roundup – Rats, Scented Candles, Pebble Mine and more…
~Thick and fast they came at last, and more, and more, and more…
A half-dozen slurpable stories for your consumption. All titles are links. Eat up!
Westboro Baptist Church to Picket Jobs Funeral
Yes, apparently the most hateful, vicious, mean-spirited group of “religious” wingnuts, who made famous the “God Hates Fags” slogan, will be picketing the funeral of Steve Jobs. Why? Because he “served self, not God” and “encouraged his neighbors to sin.” How do we know they will be doing this? (Wait for it) Because they tweeted it from an iPhone. Yes, really.
No worries about Westboro appreciating this delicious irony. According to them, Jobs is in Hell, but God “created the iPhone for that purpose.” So, yes… logically that would make Jobs the instrument of God’s will, or arguably God himself. Let the banging of the heads commence.
No Dirty Gold Needs Your Vote!
Earthworks’ No Dirty Gold Campaign has been nominated for a BENNY Award from the Business Ethics Network for their work cleaning up gold jewelry retailers and pushing to transform gold mining! Dozens of jewelers, including Tiffany, Costco, Fred Meyer and Target have pledged not to buy gold from certain particularly toxic mines, including the proposed Pebble Mine in Western Alaska. Mudflatters have turned out before urging retailers to abstain from Pebble gold, and thanking those who recognized that Alaska’s real gold isn’t metal. When jewelers like Tiffany realize that some gold shouldn’t be mined, it’s really saying something. You can go say thank you to Earthworks for this incredible campaign by clicking the link in the headline. You’ll be taken to the page where No Dirty Gold is about half way down. You can skip the next question and still have your results count.
If you are known by your enemies, here’s another reason to cast that vote. No Dirty Gold is one of the specific campaigns targeted by the Koch Brothers funded “Competetive Enterprise Institute” (Resourceful Earth), global warming deniers who promote the most extreme toxic development projects, including Pebble Mine. We wrote about them HERE. Go get ’em!
The movement known as Occupy Wall Street is spreading. Young people, seniors, labor unions and other groups are turning out to rail against corporate influence and the abuses of big banks on our democracy. For years now baby boomers have been lamenting, “If this were the sixties, we’d be taking to the streets!” and now we are.
The indomitable Robert Greenwald of Brave New Films has created a great inspirational video, and the link above will take you to a current schedule of events happening in cities around the country. Already, there are thousands of protesters in New York City and hundreds more in Los Angeles, Boston, Washington DC, Seattle, Miami and elsewhere. Anchorage even got into the act yesterday with protesters turning out in Town Square Park.
Share the video and link widely!
The Pirate Ship Lives Another Day. The Rats? Not so much…
For those of you curious about the fate of the illegal pirate fishing vessel that was taken by the Coast Guard, it won’t be blown to smithereens as many had hoped. An exterminator in Unalaska has been hired to get rid of the malevolent rodents ASAP. The ship will be located three miles off the coast, presumably farther than rats can swim.
He’ll try rat traps first, the sticky and snapping kind. If that doesn’t work, he’ll try poison. To make sure they’re gone, he’ll lay out scented candles. Rats love to gnaw on those.
If all goes well, it may take up to a week to kill them all, said Sara Francis, a Coast Guard spokeswoman.
Results of Pebble Mine Vote Expected in Mid-October
Although the deadline for mailing ballots on the Save Our Salmon initiative in the Lake & Peninsula District was Tuesday, the results of the vote are not expected until the canvassing board meets on October 17. The initiative is aimed at giving local residents control over stopping the controversial Pebble Mine project from happening. The mine proposed by the Pebble Limited Partnership, and supported by Alaska Governor Sean Parnell would jeopardize lucrative commercial, subsistence and sport fisheries, hunting, the ecosystem of Bristol Bay, and a way of life enjoyed by Native and other rural Alaskans for generations.
The Save Our Salmon initiative appears to be widely supported by residents, but an intense propaganda campaign from supporters of the mine which spread false information regarding the scope of the initiative may have had an effect. The total number of registered voters in the district is only 1,192. Last year, turnout in the municipal election was 384.
Stay tuned.
You’re going to teach the women, especially the young women of this country, to doll themselves up … All you are doing is teaching girls to be proud whores!
http://gawker.com/5838706/westboro-baptist-to-protest-fashion-week-thank-god
Pete there isn’t enough lipstick, mascara, blush, wigs, weaves, waxes, body work, lotions nor surgeons either that could doll up those mastodons.
I wonder if they will even be able to get within 2 miles of his funeral. I can easily see a massive crowd outside of mourners and acquaintances who just want to be there to show the family they support them. Throw in employees too low on the totem pole (the execs will attend) to be inside, and the Westboro crowd will be lucky they are in the same county.
I’ve had this thought for a while…Sarah may feel her true calling is as a televangelist. It’s a permanent gig, gets her tv time, avoids having to actually run for anything. The credentials needed aren’t all that demanding, and in some cases she could probably just buy those. She could openly ask for donations (tax-free) with very little accountability on how the money is spent, employ all her kids and even Todd-in some capacity. She could write an endless stream of ghost-written books, tapes, movies. All for donations.
And it’s something that could be done pretty quickly, I imagine. Credentialing would take her safely past the 2012 election, and setup after that would be quick. Imagine Sarah on late-night tv stations talking endlessly about her “Servant’s Heart”.
Didn’t want to post this on the Open Thread with the Steve Jobs comments but this made me see red.
In order to save money on prosecutions, the City Council of Topeka, Kansas is considering decriminalizing domestic violence. Because of budget cuts, the Shawnee County DA is no longer prosecuting misdemeanors, including domestic violence, and the city doesn’t want to take over the responsibility – and the cost – so they are debating whether to just make beating the snot out of a family member A-okay.
I wonder if they will spend the money to prosecute the felonies when some of these cases escalate to homicide.
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2011/10/06/338461/topeka-kansas-city-council-considers-decriminalizing-domestic-violence-to-save-money/#comment_link
Several years ago,guv Braindead in Iowa pushed a bill through the legislature making it illegal for persons convicted of spousal abuse to own or possess handguns. Then there came a spate of law enforcement officers charged with and convicted of ……yup you guessed it….spousal abuse. All of a sudden it became more imperative that the head of the household should keep his weapon to keep his job than to protect the abused victims. And the land of my birth has slowly been sinking ever since.
This is because you don’t own a Mac. Macs are blue state technology. PCs are red state. Look it up. It’s a fact. Snopes agrees.
http://www.iowaIsSinking.org
any news on the Liberty speach are people cancelling?
Herman Cain says if you are broke and unemployed,blame yourself and not the big banks or Wall Street. One more and one less for my Christmas card sending/receiving list.
Thanks for posting the link to vote for No Dirty Gold (I typed No Dirty God, which would presumably apply to WBC, but corrected my typo immediately).
Rats to the rats!
I’m sitting here wondering (and hoping) that the Occupy Wall Street demonstration doesn’t go awry. I’m really impressed at the level of understanding and articulating the problems the demonstrators talk about. I can’t help but compare them to the early Tea Partiers, hateful, angry and some carrying guns.
These folks seem to be a broader segment of society: all ages, not just mainly older folks; no swaggerin around with guns on hips; not just whites; they spell their signs correctly and there doesn’t seem to be a lot of hate and anger out there. And whereas the TP folks were directing their animosity mostly toward Obama, these people have it right – they are protesting the greed on Wall Street.
Maybe the guy on TV was right: Occupy Wall Street is the left-wing’s answer to the Tea Partiers!
The Westboro Church is the nuttiest group of mean-spirited and hateful people to ever assemble.
I think Jobs would laugh if he knew they were planning a protest. He obviously enjoyed a sense of the ironic.
Knowing some seriously crazy Assembly of God parishioners I can say one thing that unites them is the sense of shame they experienced at some time in their lives and the overwhelming need to remind the rest of us that they are still profoundly angry and miserable.
I worked with a person who would be happy as a clam in the Westboro Church but she had the geographic misfortune to live elsewhere. Despite pleas from coworkers she continually regaled us with the more sordid and sad parts of her childhood. It was sad at first, but after a while it felt like she actually enjoyed retelling the most outrageous and horrible incidents she endured. It was like a flogging sitting next to her. I came to realize it was a form of “testimony.” Unfortunately, she never seemed at peace. Part of the cult mentality is the need to minimize and demonize all experience outside the cult. I frankly think all churches are cults and tribes. It makes people like my ex-coworker to feel they fit in somewhere. The desperation for any type of refuge makes them an easy mark for organized religion.
Your ex-coworker was practicing her misery. It was a form of comfort for her to retell and retell and retell her horrible past. There must be some psychological term for it. Carol Tavris in her book “Anger, the misunderstood emotion” details that behavior in people who get angry and never get over being angry; they are practicing being angry. I’ve asked people who do that “what good does getting angry (or retelling your misery) do?” Never an answer and unfortunately, it never stopped them. So I’d vote with my feet.
Thanks Carol, Obviously this situation made a big impression on me. I will read that book. I have encountered this behavior in two workplaces with several people. It is absolutely frustrating to be at the mercy of such anger!
“Occupy America – groups are turning out to rail against corporate influence and the abuses of big banks on our democracy” – I’m all for the Occupy America campaign but it’s probably a bit misdirected at the moment. Yes, big banks have abused our democracy but only because Big Politics has allowed them to! If we are going to march against the banks then we should also be marching against the government (and that includes both parties in DC) – they only serve their own interests and don’t give a hoot for the American people! When the massive size of the bloated government agencies in DC has been reduced by two-thirds then we will get back to what America once was – a government by the people for the people, and not the other way round!
Westboro Baptist Church to Picket Jobs Funeral TThey should not call them a church—-but CULT
I’m going to nominate the exterminator for The Nobel Peace Prize. That is going to be one gaggy crime scene.
Might be an early Halloween T-Party cruise,with only VIP fiends invited to celebrate the Quitter’s announcement to run unopposed for more hard cash from wingnuts. Oops!
I don’t know… valuable protein source… I hear corn fed rat tastes like dark meat chicken….but I eat just about anything… snails, snakes, rabbits, menudo, chitlens.. … can’t handle balotes, tho’… no matter HOW many San Miguels or White Castle whisky…
Do you eat kimchi?
YUP !!!! Delicous !!!! add a Kirin Beer and I’m in heaven !!
Blarf!
Hah! When I was a little kid in the Philippines (Clark Field, 1958), I learned about balutes and wanted to try one. I finally convinced our gardener to bring me one and show me how to eat it. Which he did. I don’t remember it being particularly disgusting, though I’d never had any experience of eating duck embryos before. That was my first cross-cultural experience, and looking back, I’m proud of that seven-year-old kid!
your stomach is stronger than mine !!
We were stationed in Morocco 60-64, small navy supply base for 3 air force tracking stations ) where I learned to eat green chicken ( from the spices) and sheep eyes with the coucous… Living overseas was a GREAT experience! chuckle, we had a french landlord who lived over our house in town, and my brother and I would go visit them weekend mornings… and have wine mid morning with them,,, took my mom about 3 months to figure out why we were sleepy and taking naps before noon ! we’d have dinner with them about once a week, where we learned to baby pigeon pie and snails! Don’t know if I could still eat the pigeon pie, but I still love the snails,,,, to my wife’s disgust ! ( I order a double serving just because 🙂 )
Back during the war-torn peaceful 90’s,while on a top secret mission for which I was ordered to volunteer,I was forced to choose between eating mutton or doing without life-sustaining nouridhment for two or three whole hours. I did not know that mutton swam in its own grease while being roasted. Next time,I will choose to starve for two or three hours as I still have sheep grease coating my esophagus, My doctor said a trip to the local paint contractor and a couple hours with a sand-blaster and no more sheep grease. I-who have had a Mother-in-Law and should theoretically not be afraid of anything ever,humbly declined.
Mike, if you’d ever like to come out to visit, I’ll take you up to Hopi for one of the ceremonials, wherein we will be offered…mutton. I love mutton, especially stewed up with hominy and green chiles as “nuquivi”. Refusing it is considered the height of bad manners.
Benlomand – I thought that most of growing up as a military brat sucked, but do admit that the exposure to different cultures was wonderful. Sounds like you and your bro were on the right track from an early age. (I like snails too!)
I posted this late before, but I love it so much that I have to be selfish and repost. Not to mention, I want this mental image seared into Mike and BenLomond’s heads:
So Ailes admits that he hired Sarah simply as a high-priced political poll dancer!
I know the other is the open thread, but I feel it’s really dedicated to Steve. He deserves a dedicated thread.
Once again, sent from my mac
Does this mean Ben and I are on the endangered species list? Should we keep a low profile,too stillyet?
It’s hard to have a high profile in Iowa, elevation 2. BenLomond just has to hide in the trees.
BD ! 🙂 Torture is outlawed under Obama’s adminstration— the vision of Scarah wrapped around a poll is worse than waterboarding !! Fortunately, Reality provides us with a MUCH better picture – She Who Shall Not Be Named has been skewered by polls over the past several months, and as such has been a dancer of diminishing returns for Alies……
Am I glad you are out there,BL2. For a minute there,I thought BD found out my sons names are Mike and Ben and was gonna turn them over to Faux Noise for interrogation. Oh my now I’ve gone and named them for the whole world. What will I ever do. Wah,wah,wah.
when they get married have THEM take their spouses surnames !!! THAT will throw the Conservatives off the trail…. they’d never think anyone would do that !
When we first started doing our taxes as Ms. and Mr. Dozen, I prepared them so I put my SSN under “preparer” and Mr. Doz’s under “spouse.” Even though my name appeared first on the form with my SSN, if was a complete, uh, untidiness. The IRS was not set up for a man being a “spouse.” They had it messed up for years. Every year they said I needed to change it. Every year, I pointed out that I, the “Ms.” in the equation, did, in fact, prepare the taxes, so it would be a like for me to put myself under “spouse.” They finally gave up. I don’t think they wanted the “equality” battle, and they finally fixed their system so that women, could indeed, do the family taxes.
They’re not named Lo and Mond? That’s the rumor! But now you’ve exposed them to the lamestream media. You are a bad parent. Bad, bad, bad. You need a reality show to do it right.
Wish I could afford to attend Steve Jobs’ funeral to counter protest. I would bring one of the signs from work that says ” We accept cash, check, Visa, Mastercard, American Express and Discover.” Maybe even one of the “Everything Must Go” signs. 😀
I’m sure Steve Jobs’ funeral will be protected by a zillion Apple employees, motorcycle clubs, hired security, and so on.
And, WBC, just a note, here: Steve Jobs’ creativity and desire to get technology out of the way and have it serve us, and his desire to make the best product possible actually represent the best of God’s qualities. His expression of human excellence, not perfectionism, his ability to think different live on. Hopefully, we can all incorporate a little more of this in our own lives.
Thanks, Steve, for your world wide positive impact.
Sent from my Mac
in many other instances when WBC has appeared, religious communities have responded strongly and positively. One of the best responses was the group of Christian bikers who not only formed a physical barrier, but and revved up their Harleys every time the WBC attempted any auditory interruption.
Fantastic!
Occupy Anchorage Saturday at 3:00 p.m., Town Square Park.