Nix v. Hedden

In 1893 It was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States that affirmed the lower court ruling that the tomato should be classified as a vegetable rather than a fruit.

So by law the Tomato is a Vegetable.  Genetic evidence has shown that the tomato is a fruit.  Thankfully, you will not be incarcerated for treating a tomato one way or the other.  Neither, will you be considered a less than understanding person as well.

Just because the law of the land makes the Tomato a vegetable does not actually make it one.


Hmmmm, I wonder what else that applies too...

Our stupid government by the people.

It makes no difference if your Democrat or Republican.  You are going to spend money, inefficiently and decry the other side for doing the same.

Government is too big and slow and needs to be small.  The Federal government is a huge problem and getting bigger every year.  Our elected officials are so corrupted they do not discern between a reduction in the rate of increase and a cut in spending.

Yet, we vote the same jokers in and our liberal media decry when groups like the Tea-Party want to limit government.

Lets take a simple idea to reduce our spending in the US.  Get rid of paper dollars and put coins into play.  This is pretty simple to do and with some great fiscal benefit.   Boom save 5.6 Billion dollars!

Better still, lets get rid of the Penny. Consider that the U.S. spent almost $120 million to produce less than $50 million of circulating currency.  So let's make that coin go away, like our military did overseas and we the people did for the half-penny.

These two things would be quick and easy to do with long term benefits.

Will this happen?  Probably not... Why?  For the same reason we elect idiots.

What do we want from a president?

I keep reading how the right hates Obama.  More often it is equated to racism on the part of Conservatives, which, to me, confusing.  I have never come across a conservative who feel race is of any importance  rather words and deeds.  We tend to dislike Obama's policies, leadership, elitism and ideology.  On a personal level I am uncomfortable with the lavish lifestyle he has adopted.  

Going back through time I find there are quite a few decisions our leaders on both the right and left who I agree and disagree with.  President Obama is the first that I have difficulty pointing to something done that I applaud.

Which makes me wonder what is desired from a leader of the US? What do we want from a president?

Experience comes to mind.  Someone who has worked in the private sector and public in management or leadership.   CFO or CEO plus time as a Governor of a State are excellent on the resume for president.

Someone who stands on principle, and able to articulate that vision. Ignores the polls for decisions is an offshoot of that.

Able to negotiate. Understands where to compromise.

Thick skinned to critics.  Able to clearly state why an action was given,  so you can disagree but not dismantle said reason.

Sincere, trustworthy and ethical.

Which presidents are close to the ideals?  Reagan, Eisenhower, Truman are who comes to the top of my head with John Adams.

Stuff that makes me feel smug.

87 percent of the US supermarket meat (including beef, pork, chicken, and turkey products) tests positive for normal and antibiotic-resistant forms of Enterococcus bacteria. Between 2003 and 2011, antibiotic use on US livestock farms soared from 20 million pounds per year to 30 million pounds - a jaw-dropping 50 percent leap. These facilities now suck in 80 percent of the antibiotics consumed in the United States. The great bulk of these drugs are used not to treat sick animals, but rather to make them grow faster and keep them alive until slaughter under tight, filthy conditions. Link

• In 1998, the USDA implemented microbial testing for salmonella and E. coli 0157h7 so that if a plant repeatedly failed these tests, the USDA could shut down the plant. After being taken to court by the meat and poultry associations, the USDA no longer has that power.
• In 1972, the FDA conducted 50,000 food safety inspections. In 2006, the FDA conducted only 9,164.
• In the 1970s, the top five beef packers controlled about 25% of the market. Today, the top four control more than 80% of the market. 
• In the 1970s, there were thousands of slaughterhouses producing the majority of beef sold. Today there are only 13.
• The average American eats over 200 lbs. of meat a year. Link

Consumer Reports investigation: Talking turkey ➜ goo.gl/fVx6E
What’s bugging your meat? Shit and antibiotics, probably ➜ goo.gl/U5Kzr
The truth about your food with filmmaker R. Kenner ➜ goo.gl/y9mkg
Pharm Foods ➜ goo.gl/B4vEB
The video the meat industry doesn't want you to see ➜ goo.gl/IT2eN
Antibiotics and the Meat We Eat ➜ goo.gl/wduUI
US meat supply massively contaminated with superbugs ➜ goo.gl/g7IP3

Polling the peoples. Is it news?

Obama's Approval Rating on These Three Key Issues Has Tanked

• On the economy, 53 percent disapprove of Obama’s job performance, while only 41 percent approve.
• Obama’s approval rating on “gun policy” is also 41 percent. Meanwhile, 52 percent disapprove.
• And as the immigration debate continues to flare on Capitol Hill, only 40 percent approve of Obama’s handling of the issue. Fifty percent disapprove.

Here is the news.

Electric Light Orchestra - Here Is The News (Official Music Video). Watch more top selected videos about: Electric Light Orchestra

I am not a fan of the 24 hour news networks.  Even less so over the last decade, where the need to share information has gone to the wayside for gaining market share.

In the USA we get Fox, CNN and MSNBC are our "big three" listed in the order of viewership.

Recently we had tragedy at the Boston Marathon.  If you wanted information the online sources provided this instantaneously.  Twitter feeds and social media had video pictures in unprecedented numbers.  Thanks to the HD camera in every phone people were able to identify loved ones and suspects, in some cases a bit to rabidly.

Where did the news agencies fit in?  Coverage for those interested in traditional media, could glom onto the next few days non-stop and not learn to terribly much.  Until the reporters started getting sourced information.

Cable TV is all about ratings.  You need people watching in order to sell advertising space.  Gathering more and more viewers is no longer an option, the market being saturated.  So you need to gain a core group of ratings that will bolster you during non-newsworthy events.  Fox started this by having an ideology when it comes to opinion shows.

The other two followed this example but more left of center, until MSNBC jumped off the cliff

News is evolving with less centralized control of information.  I can find more by checking hashtags as the trend then waiting for the networks, and the newspapers and magazines have dropped to the point of novelty.  NBC's Chuck Todd, commenting on meet the press let us know that Obama hates the uncontrolled media that we have.  No wonder, when you consider the way AP has become an arm of the White House.

Unless the Government seizes control of the Internet in a way that cannot be circumvented, the flow of information will continue.  My hope is that the dissemination  of that information will evolve as we connected types age.

Already, I lament the Trolling and Meme mentality we have seen.  Out from under the oppression of the controlled flow of information, we need to have discussion and debate, not winning for your choir.

Rachel Carson, killer of over sixty million people

Link to story BY DOCTOR ZERO

Who is the worst killer in the long, ugly history of war and extermination? Hitler? Stalin? Pol Pot? Not even close. A single book called Silent Spring killed far more people than all those fiends put together.

Published in 1962, Silent Spring used manipulated data and wildly exaggerated claims (sound familiar?) to push for a worldwide ban on the pesticide known as DDT – which is, to this day, the most effective weapon against malarial mosquitoes. The Environmental Protection Agency held extensive hearings after the uproar produced by this book… and these hearings concluded that DDT should not be banned. A few months after the hearings ended, EPA administrator William Ruckleshaus over-ruled his own agency and banned DDT anyway, in what he later admitted was a “political” decision. Threats to withhold American foreign aid swiftly spread the ban across the world.

The resulting explosion of mosquito-borne malaria in Africa has claimed over sixty million lives. This was not a gradual process – a surge of infection and death happened almost immediately. The use of DDT reduces the spread of mosquito-borne malaria by fifty to eighty percent, so its discontinuation quickly produced an explosion of crippling and fatal illness. The same environmental movement which has been falsifying data, suppressing dissent, and reading tea leaves to support the global-warming fraud has studiously ignored this blood-drenched “hockey stick” for decades.

The motivation behind Silent Spring, the suppression of nuclear power, the global-warming scam, and other outbreaks of environmentalist lunacy is the worship of centralized power and authority. The author, Rachel Carson, didn’t set out to kill sixty million people – she was a fanatical believer in the newly formed religion of radical environmentalism, whose body count comes from callousness, rather than blood thirst. The core belief of the environmental religion is the fundamentaluncleanliness of human beings. All forms of human activity are bad for the environment… most especially including the activity of large private corporations. Deaths in faraway Africa barely registered on the radar screen of the growing Green movement, especially when measured against the exhilarating triumph of getting a sinful pesticide banned, at substantial cost to an evil corporation.

Those who were initiated into the higher mysteries of environmentalism saw the reduction of the human population as a benefit, although they’re generally more circumspect about saying so in public these days. As quoted by Walter Williams, the founder of the Malthusian Club of Rome, Alexander King, wrote in 1990: “My own doubts came when DDT was introduced. In Guayana, within two years, it had almost eliminated malaria. So my chief quarrel with DDT, in hindsight, is that it has greatly added to the population problem.” Another charming quote comes from Dr. Charles Wurster, a leading opponent of DDT, who said of malaria deaths: “People are the cause of all the problems. We have too many of them. We need to get rid of some of them, and this is as good a way as any.”

Like the high priests of global warming, Rachel Carson knew what she was doing. She claimed DDT would actually destroy all life on Earth if its use continued – the “silent spring” of the title is a literal description of the epocalypse she forecast. She misused a quote from Albert Schweitzer about atomic warfare, implying the late doctor agreed with her crusade against pesticide by dedicating her book to him… when, in fact, Schweitzer viewed DDT as a “ray of hope” against disease-carrying insects. Some of the scientists attempting to debunk her hysteria went so far as to eat chunks of DDT to prove it was harmless, but she and her allies simply ignored them, making these skeptics the forerunners of today’s “global warming deniers” – absolutely correct and utterly vilified. William Ruckleshaus disregarded nine thousand pages of testimony when he imposed the DDT ban. Then as now, the science was settled… beneath a mass of politics and ideology.

Another way Silent Spring forecast the global-warming fraud was its insistence that readers ignore the simple evidence of reality around them. One of the founding myths of modern environmentalism was Carson’s assertion that bird eggs developed abnormally thin shells due to DDT exposure, leading the chicks to be crushed before they could hatch. As detailed in this American Spectator piece from 2005, no honest experimental attempt to produce this phenomenon has ever succeeded – even when using concentrations of DDT a hundred times greater than anything that could be encountered in nature. Carson claimed thin egg shells were bringing the robin and bald eagle to the edge of extinction… even as the bald eagle population doubled, and robins filled the trees. Today, those eagles and robins shiver in a blanket of snow caused by global warming.

The DDT ban isn’t the only example of environmental extremism coming with a stack of body bags. Mandatory gas mileage standards cause about 2,000 deaths per year, by compelling automakers to produce lighter, more fragile cars. The biofuel mania has led resources to be shifted away from growing food crops, resulting in higher food prices and starvation. Worst of all, the economic damage inflicted by the environmentalist religion directly correlates to life-threatening reductions in the human standard of living. The recent earthquake in Haiti is only the latest reminder thatpoverty kills, and collectivist politics are the most formidable engine of poverty on Earth.

Environmental extremism is a breathless handmaiden for collectivism. It pours a layer of smooth, creamy science over a relentless hunger for power. Since the boogeymen of the Green movement threaten the very Earth itself with imminent destruction, the environmentalist feels morally justified in suspending democracy and seizing the liberty of others. Of course we can’t put these matters to a vote! The dimwitted hicks in flyover country can’t understand advanced biochemistry or climate science. They might vote the wrong way, and we can’t risk the consequences! The phantom menaces of the Green movement can only be battled by a mighty central State. Talk of representation, property rights, and even free speech is madness when such a threat towers above the fragile ecosphere, wheezing pollutants and coughing out a stream of dead birds and drowned polar bears. You can see why the advocates of Big Government would eagerly race across a field of sustainable, organic grass to sweep environmentalists into their arms, and spin them around in the ozone-screened sunlight.

Green philosophy provides vital nourishment for the intellectual vanity of leftists, who get to pat themselves on the back for saving the world through the control-freak statism they longed to impose anyway. One of the reasons for the slow demise of the climate-change nonsense is that it takes a long time to let so much air out of so many egos. Calling “deniers” stupid and unpatriotic was very fulfilling. Likewise, you’ll find modern college campuses teeming with students – and teachers – who will fiercely insist that DDT thins egg shells and causes cancer. Environmentalism is a primitive religion which thrives by telling its faithful they’re too sophisticated for mere common sense.

The legacy of Silent Spring provides an object lesson in the importance of bringing the global-warming con artists to trial. No one was ever forced to answer for the misery inflicted by that book, or the damage it dealt to serious science. Today Rachel Carson is still celebrated as a hero, the secular saint who transformed superstition and hysteria into a Gospel for the modern god-state. The tactics she deployed against DDT resurfaced a decade later, in the Alar scare. It’s a strategy that offers great reward, and very little risk. We need to increase the risk factor, and frighten the next generation of junk scientists into being more careful with their research. If we don’t, the Church of Global Warming will just reappear in a few years, wearing new vestments and singing new hymms… but still offering the same communion of poverty, tyranny, and death.