Tweet
(Agencia Prensa Rural via flickr.com)
(We’re up against the clock on this one, and I’m the same in RL. I may not be able to answer comments or questions much, if at all; anyone may self-designate as host. In addition, my server is crashing about every ten minutes. S,o sorry in advance.)
From farmandranchfreedom.org:
‘Monsanto and Agribusiness companies have managed to insert two dangerous provisions into the Continuing Resolution (“CR”) that is about to be voted on by the U.S. Senate.
The first provision is the “Monsanto rider” we asked you to take action on last year. Although it was stripped out of the previous versions of the CR, now it’s back!
Though cloaked in “farmer-friendly” language, this “farmer assurance provision” is simply a biotech industry ploy to continue to plant genetically modified (GMO) crops . The provision undermines USDA’s oversight of GMO crops and interferes with the U.S. judicial review process. It is also completely unnecessary and offers “assurance” only to biotech companies like Monsanto, not farmers.
The second provision would prevent the USDA from taking action to address anti-competitive abuses by Agribusiness. Fraudulent, deceptive and anti-competitive practices by large corporations are rampant in the livestock and poultry industries. USDA needs to do more, not less, to stop the abuse – but the rider in the CR would tie the agency’s hands and strip farmers of the few protections that exist now.’
Their site has suggested language. The House version passed two weeks ago had no such amendment. It turned out that the ‘anonymous’ Senator who offered the amendment was Barbara Milkulski. (Thanks, Barbara.) I will say that the phrase ‘even when a court of law has found they were approved illegally‘ baffles me a given the history of all this, but that phrase is ubiquitous in coverage of this current flap.
Apparently Jon Tester and friends have offered an amendment to strip the offending amendment.
From carolinafarmstewards.org:
Action Alert – Support Tester Amendment 74
Call the Senate Today—Support the Tester Amendment to Stop Biotech Rider
Dear friends of local organic food and farming: Congress wants to remove key regulations on genetically-engineered seeds. Don’t let them get away with it! Buried in the latest stop-gap budget resolution from the US Senate is language that would strip federal courts of authority to stop plantings of illegal transgenic crops. This ‘biotech rider’ also compels USDA to allow continued planting of illegal seeds. This dangerous precedent is an automatic backdoor approval for GE crops, even when federal courts rule them a threat to organic farms or biodiversity.
Thanks to our pressure, Senator Tester (D-MT) has introduced an amendment (#74) to strike the biotech rider from the Continuing Resolution!
Their site also suggests language.
If you contact your state’s Senators, you might consider commenting on Tester’s other press release:
Tester, Baucus, Hoeven introduce bipartisan plan to approve Keystone XL pipeline:
(Washington) – Montana’s U.S. Senators Jon Tester and Max Baucus teamed up with the North Dakota delegation to introduce bipartisan legislation today to approve the long-delayed Keystone XL pipeline. The bill is building on momentum following a fourth favorable State Department environmental review indicating “no significant impact to the environment.”
“Built to the highest safety standards and with strong protections for private property rights, the Keystone XL Pipeline will boost our economy, create good Montana jobs, and increase our energy security,” Tester said. “This bill lets the President know that the Senate will keep pressing to build the pipeline, and that it should be approved without further delay.”
“This is about one simple thing: jobs,” Baucus said. “At a time when job creation must be our number one priority, approving the Keystone Pipeline is the perfect opportunity to put Montanans and folks across the country to work right now. American workers cannot afford to wait any longer for Keystone jobs, and there is absolutely no excuse for further delay.”
Meanwhile, Harry Reid said yesterday on the Senate floor that they’re working hard to find common ground (heh), over which amendments will be debated…or not, and that since the appropriations bill is not subject to filibuster, debate will be limited to 50 hours. He’d hoped to get a vote last night. If they voted, I can’t find it this morning. But please, if transgenic foods are an issue for you, do what you do with your social networking to get folks to write or all their Senators NOW.
Three of my many posts on Monsanto and their ilk, explaining some of the inherent dangers are here (Obomba fast-tracking of GMOs), here (French rat study) , and here (the bio-wrecking of Africa by Bono, Obomba and the G-8).
You okay? You alright? Hell, no! (h/t nonquixote)
69 Comments
Great post, great song, thank you, Wendy.
Hell no, I’m not alright. I’m ordering vegetable seeds carefully today; having a harvest of vegetables is taking second row to harvesting viable seeds.
Fuck Monsanto
Should this biotech rider be passed, no-one’s garden will be safe. Monsanto has patents on its GM’s and it is not off the charts to imagine drone surveillance that will monitor their pollen drift – pollen is pollen, the plants don’t know, and presto-changeo, we local home veggie growers get hauled into court by the cattlecarload. Not to mention, when was the last time you actually saw a monarch butterfly? Around these parts they used to come through both for lilacs in the spring and when the chamisa blooms in fall – their migration patterns go leapfrogging all over the country. Take out any of the midsections and no more butterflies.
I haven’t seen any in at least four years – and I know it isn’t because my chamisa and lilacs are roundupready!
The farmers in my area are bullied by corps. They plant what Monsanto says or else.
I’ve even seen large acres of plantings, green and growing go brown and dry overnight. Was it weather related? NOPE! Sabotage? YES!
Recommended and tweeted.
Gosh Wendy,
You’re such downer. The presididn’t can’t possibly control what the powerful corps are doing and he’s only appointing Monsanto plants (the human kind) in the FDA and everywhere else because stupid hippies don’t understand that we need Bill Gates and friends to keep humanity alive, and that thousands and thousands of tons of weedkiller is GREAT for the planet. It’s not his fault. You just want to look at the bad stuff. Here, let me take your mind off of all this depressing information, Breitbart! Malkin! and also too … Republican Douchebags! Teabaggers! Whiny, didn’t-get-my-poniers! Firebagger Malcontents! Yuk, yuk, yuk, They’re so funny! snarkity, snark-snark.
Feel better yet?
Fuck em is right, openhope! They can’t own the food supply, nor the water supply…they are killing the planet with their transgenic monoculture ‘cures’ for hunger. Two seasons is all their crap ‘larger yileds’ last, then…look out soil micronutrients, over-spray adaptability to pests lasts. Corn root borers, for instance. Even the Iowa ag extension agents are flipping out, watching the corn blow down in the wind and exposing unmentionable blowback results. Not to mention Bt corn makes little pesticide factories in human intestines, predisposing us to other sensitivities. Goddam, they think they are Gods?
Well, Bill Gates and Bono tell them so… ‘Green revolution’, my ass.
I saw ONE, count it: ONE monarch last year. I loped (well, that may be an exaggeration) to get my camera, reckoning I’d post that photo as ‘Canary in the coal mine’. I guess partially it’s because Roundup Ready crops already (pun intended) require more and more herbicides, and the overspray is killing the adjacent unplanted areas, not to mention leaching into the waterways and the already depleted aquifers.
The sprays and pollens may be a secondary effect of colony collapse disorder as well, as the Alberta Tarsands are a contributing factor to the diminished populations of many bird species, including my favorite laughin’ comedians, the evening grosbeaks.
Monocultures run the risk of failing totally, and leaving us…nothing but the seeds different folks are banking.
Thanks, juliania. Tipping points on some crops have already passed, but more will be so dangerous as to be unthinkable. Good on European nations for resisting…for now.
Monkey-wrenching, ahoy! Wish I could have some of the fun, PeasantParty. We’d give it a Twhoop!, yes? So nice to hear from you, you Seriously Inconvenient Woman, you. ;~)
The phone answerer at Corporate Senator Bennet’s DeeCee office tried to pretend she knew WTH I was talking about, lol. Just left a message with Udall; he’ll wait a bit to see how the wind
s blowing. Come to think of it, I haven’t had the time of connectivity to see which amendments will be debated, and when the vote is scheduled.
I got a bit heated about this *and* Tester’s ‘approve the XL pipeline’ bill. I know they’re just helping their Corporate Prez, but….
Why…than you, hotdog, mi amigo… In fact, I *do* feel better already. I’d completely forgotten that our President is soooo beset by nasty Republican smears and that DFH’s like myself need to join ‘Organizing for Action‘ so he can save us and his legacy! Democrats are The Good Guys.
(Hope you and your family are doing well, dear hotdog),
wd (stands for: wendydowner)
Juliania, if it works for you, please host. I need some sleep, and to put out some small fires in RL (whatever that one is, lol.) Online access is not dependable, either)
I shall do my best, wendydavis – not to fill your loping shoes, but just to keep them from gathering spiders. And first up, I would like to encourage folk to have a read of CTuttle’s post,
http://my.firedoglake.com/ctuttle/2013/03/18/hilos-anti-gmo-march-in-march/
It’s sad to read the inroads made in such a fragile contained ecosystem as the Big Island.
I know, I know. I’ve been very inconvient lately.
You ALWAYS get the big
TWOOPH!
Give me a second and I’ll run over to the Thomas web site and see what I can find on it and the timing.
I’ll need more information as to bill number or sponsor. Without reading through all the bills that refer to Farm and Agriculture, and I shore don’t got time for that, we need more specifics.
This link may not pull up, but it has a list of all the bills submitted that pertain to those issues:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/thomas
Here’s a side aspect to the ones we’ve been discussing. At nakedcapitalism.com there is a link to a Toronto Star article about an analysis of the fungus which causes Dutch Elm disease – with the laudable goal of stopping the decline of these magnificent trees. Who would not want to do that?
Ah, but then coinkidentally, here is another fungal problem (we were discussing Wendy’s shoes, but I digress.)
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA1303/S00324/ge-fungus-leak-breaks-regulations.htm
The GE fungus in question was, say those involved in its production, only modified to have ‘markers’ – whatever that means. But, it did apparently ‘leak’ out into the general surrounding area. Which might make modifications of any fungus something to think twice or maybe a hundred times about doing.
Funny things, fungi.
I’m sort of creaky on these matters, PeasantParty – went to c-span and got lost in a maze of archival videos that didn’t seem to have anything on them (help! wot do I know?) so I tried the old google and got one that claimed to be five minutes ago – probably ten now, from Freedomworks (okay, I know nada about that neither) but herein a number, with a quote:
“FreedomWorks president Matt Kibbe said of of HR 933 (pdf),
‘This CR will continue to institutionalize the nation’s out-of-control deficits, allowing for over $1.1 trillion in spending through the end of fiscal year 2013. Also, the addition of a number of appropriations bills to the CR, including for the departments of Defense, Commerce, Justice, Homeland Security, and Agriculture, prevents each of those appropriations from being debated and amended individually as ought to be the case, essentially turning this bill into an omnibus spending bill.’”
It would seem other amendments are further complicating the passage – claim was it was the dratted Dems doing the uploading.
Woops, I meant to bold ‘prevents each of these appropriations from being debated (I assume in the House since this one is HR.)
Off on further peregrinations – with what hast thou charged me, wd?
Puff, puff – should have gone to the Hill.com in the first place:-
“…On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) attempted to move toward final passage by allowing two amendments: one by Sens. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) and Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) and one by Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.)
The Blunt-Pryor amendment would close a funding gap for the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) and ensure that food inspectors are not furloughed due to the sequestration cuts that went into effect on March 1.
The Toomey amendment would increase the Pentagon’s operating budget by $60 billion by decreasing funds for biofuels and maintenance.
Reid’s attempt was blocked by Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) who wants a vote on his amendment to reverse cuts to air traffic control towers.
If Reid cannot get permission to speed up votes, the Senate will consider the CR on Thursday…”
[Apologies if I am telling people things they already know. And I was wrong at 16 - HR just means it originated in the House.]
The Hill says the House is poised to pass this speedily once it is out of the Senate – at least I got the timing on it (bolded above).
How does wendydavis do this – it’s like herding cats!
[That didn't sound so good - I meant, getting any facts about legislation from the internet grocery store - not, definitely not, casting any aspersions on our other good and excellent factsgetters and firedogs!]
I wish all the Beltway bipartisans would outsource themselves to the north polar zone of Pluto and take their bipartisan plans with them.
Thank you for the action alert and information, wendydavis.
Rec’d.
The House version that passed a couple weeks ago is/was HR 933; dunno that this one has been designated numerically yet, but I can’t find it. This page *seems* to indicate that Reid called for cloture on Mikiulski’s Monsanto-runs-the-table amendment; the cloture vote passed 63-35, but no final vote is indicated, as per your #17.
The Senate version seems to be all about amendment page numbers, but that’s all I can tell so far. Couldn’t zero in on on govtrack, either. But yes, apparently the Dems were the ones who loaded it up. Early today, (yesterday?) the piece I’d read said that it had been considered do important that ‘they’ (leadership?) had been considering trying to pass it with no
pork giveawaysamendments. This agriculture section is supposed to sound ‘farmer friendly’.You’re doing great, juliania, and I thank you. But it’s not going as quickly or smoothly as Reid had hoped, so at least we can burn up the phone lines (or email inboxes).
I’ll go back now that I have the great investigative work from Juliana. I can trace the HR to the Senate version via the Library of Congress Thomas site.
Hey, juliania and wd (whose RL I hope is getting squared away), I’m late in commenting because like some others at FDL I’ve been dealing with the tenth anniversary today of you-know-what (my small contribution to which is here). But kudos to wd for digging up what must at first sight been an obscure element of a CR. (Granted, lacking a Senator or Representative — just a “Delegate” who is mostly concerned about her image — I have never had occasion to pore through the work products of such people, so I don’t know how hard it is.)
Certainly any measure that negates duly-determined illegal conduct by administrative fiat is mind-bogglingly egregious. Good work to expose it.
From the Thomas site:
.
So, that means it is sitting in the Senate awaiting action before it goes back to the House. I would suggest you call the members of the Senate Appropriations Comm and let it fly on them to remove that literature from the bill.
I have been doing the same regarding the anniversary. We gotta keep on talking about it.
I hope this link works. It is the committee site for the Senate.
http://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/committees/d_three_sections_with_teasers/committees_home.htm
You did a great job!
It is confusing, hard to track, and especially when they word things like they do and then sneak unrelated items under another type of bill.
Whoah, thanks, PeasantParty! The article at The Hill ends with the following quote:
“I think his amendment is pretty good. But once you allow one, then you have to allow more,” Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) said. “We are moving along. I think we’ll prevail.”
Shelby said he believed the House will pass the Senate CR.
“I think they know the rules. They know what to do. I think we will fund the government,” he said. “I hope we’re close to done.”
If they steamroller all the amendments, this important one to remove the GMO poison could get lost in the shuffle. Does Monsanto really own us? From the TPP stuff they are ‘overseeing’ it sure does look like it.
Yes, they own us. Sorry to give you that news.
We have to stop working for them and start working for ourselves.
If anyone could use some inspiration, here is Malala Yousafzai going back to school today.
Thank you juliana and PeasantParty for all the good help.
Found a couple extra bits to add:
Tester’s ‘Permit the Rest of the XL pipeline’ SB 582 only had 15 co-sponsors, so govtrack says it has little chance of approval; here are the other culprits, no surprises, I reckon. That Baucus is a pip, no? No wonder Obomba loves him.
15 cosponsors (8D, 7R) (show)
Barrasso, John [R-WY]
Baucus, Max [D-MT]
Begich, Mark [D-AK]
Cornyn, John [R-TX]
Donnelly, Joe [D-IN]
Heitkamp, Heidi [D-ND]
Landrieu, Mary [D-LA]
Manchin, Joe [D-WV]
Murkowski, Lisa [R-AK]
Portman, Robert “Rob” [R-OH]
Pryor, Mark [D-AR]
Risch, James [R-ID]
Roberts, Pat [R-KS]
Tester, Jon [D-MT]
Vitter, David [R-LA]
And re: Bono and the other Rock Star ‘philanthropists’ (Gates, ‘teh Big Dog’, etc.:
Harry Browne, who wrote The Frontman: Bono (In the Name of Power),has a companion piece update to my post I linked to in the OP about ‘Bono, Obomba and Gates Screw Africa with GMOs’ or whatever the title was. This concerns the rousing speech Bono gave at Ted, and it’s called ‘Factivism and Other Fairy Tales from Bono’. Challenging the ‘good news’ Bono brought, he says toward the end:
“In fact, how about this for an ugly statistical comparison for Bono et al: in 1981, 10.5% of the world’s extremely poor lived in sub-Saharan Africa; in 2008, that number was 30%. If you were going to look for evidence that one or another approach to eradicating poverty was “working”, would you look to Bono’s Africa, or would you look to East Asia and the Pacific, where the number of extremely poor fell by almost three-quarters between 1981 and 2008? Or to Latin America and the Caribbean, where the number fell, incredibly, by more than 40% just between 2002 and 2008? Might that, just possibly, have something to do with countries resisting the Washington/Bono Consensus, rather than going along with it?
In sub-Saharan Africa, where Bono’s agenda has been concentrated, the absolute numbers below every poverty threshold have skyrocked since 1981, with the number of extremely poor rising from 205 million to 386 million in 2008; at the below-two-dollar-a-day threshold the sub-Saharan numbers have almost doubled in the same period, to 562.3 million. This is in the context of a large population rise, of course: the percentages of the population in these poverty categories have risen and fallen in the sub-Saharan region – much of the 1990s and early 2000s seems to have been particularly catastrophic there – and those percentages are more or less to back where they started in 1981. So much for “momentum”.
Sorry this is a Fail Blog; no social networking activity to speak of; phooey…and sorry. Guess we just give it to Monsanto.
This was circulated last week through our nine county regional green and environmental council which is a fairly non-partisan group of people, who despite some right leanings are very progressive on the environment, locally.
http://action.fooddemocracynow.org/sign/stop_the_monsanto_protection_act_today_senate/?akid=768.389335.uP82CU&rd=1&t=9
I linked to the same local group (not the group Food D Now) with the Keystone rider.
Thanks for the diary. I had not heard of the keystone. I forward things like this to a half dozen key actual progressive blogs too.
nonquixoting at the best that I can be… peace and resolve.
Your best is extremely good, nonquixote. Come to think of it, fooddemocracy may be the first link I’d seen to this. It’s odd how quickly it all blew up. I’d just read a piece at the guardian about a former Greenpeace activist who’d been sincerely activist against GMOs (or so he claimed), but had recanted recently, especially over golden rice (with the vitamin A carotene spliced in).
It caused a bit of a flap, and I’d figured that the timing had to be about something: perhaps the TPP negotiations, or the EU/India ones. Anyhoo, I spent part of a day going to the normal sites to collect more info for a new post on all of it, and not a word about this was on any of the sites.
Meaning, of course, that I’d missed all this until yesterday. Clearly it’s a David v. Goliath struggle, but…struggle we must.
Thank you, dear; keep on keeping on, and stay strong and healthy while you do it.
“Sorry this is a Fail Blog … give it to Monsanto.”
Nonsense, and I’m glad to see you’re in a better mood this morning @ 32.
Dunno what mood has to do with it, EF Beall. It was Shared once, it was perhaps too late, and it didn’t even get left-paged. Some time back I’d made a case to Jane Hamsher that FDL might have a GMO tab and/or action page, but then…she must get pitches all the time about individual’s Special Subjects to pursue. But for me, food sovereignty is huge, so…
With the enormity of the angles that the corporate machine keeps churning out, self-interest “issues,” and chipping away at the public interest, it definitely divides the “sense,” of a unified response to the overall scheme of a working and effective response to it. Part of their plan.
Well, I think ‘divide and conquer’ will come back and bite ‘em in the end, as whilst indeed no one of us can keep track of everything that is important in a consistent and meaningful manner – I can remember when about the only protesters on the ecological front I was aware of were GreenPeace back in the day of Tahiti nuclear protests and the Rainbow Warrior, and now the mind boggles in the attempt to track the clusters of dedicated folk. They are out there, even if not always manning the websites in an understanding of the high stakes involved in transparency.
I like to think these are the ‘good’ militants, the savvy and aware low profile fact gatherers just waiting, waiting to consolidate when the time comes. Fact bearers might not always be aware of them, but they are many and growing all the time. All with good hearts bent on peace and saving the environment.
The bad guys are not going to win this; it is too important.
I am in agreement, for sure. The officially de-certified public employee unions in WI are still there, conferring with each other and definitely doing what they can do, without spotlighting themselves.
The fact that WI Act 10 is being thus far held as unconstitutional under unequal treatment (of police and firefighter unions compared to the rest) will force the repugnant to eventually need to de-certify them to make things equal, which will bring a welcome shitstorm.
Unlikely allies to environmental activism, fairly well-off property owners, wishing to maintain their, “value,” have seen through some of the garbage being proposed with water and resource extraction and food saftey issues. Just need to keep emphasizing, “hell no, I’m not alright!”
Well, apparently there will be 3 roll call votes this morning, including ‘Mikulski-Shelby substitute amendment #26′, but I can’t find any info on what that is, even on Mikulski’s Senate website. So my guess is that they did in fact vote on her Monsanto Rules amendment yesterday (the one whose vote tally I gave above).
But whew; Bloomberg news says that a hundred billion for emergency war is still included. You see, the military cuts will just be shifted to other categories, just as it’s been through modern times.
And yes, our heads indeed swivel, and we stretch ourselves thin. But another part of the design has been that the Librul Left turns on its own over the importance of social wedge issues.
That trend, coupled with the ‘the Democratic Party is the place social activism goes to die‘, too.
Your considerations of what’s hidden, what’s told (in the News) is why social networking and the web is so key to nonviolent revolutionary change in general, and why the plutocracy wants to first control it (as now), control it further (CISPA), then ultimately be able to shut it down ‘as needed’.
Anyway, thank you all. I need to get on my horse and ride to try to sort out stuff in RL. And mah pony’s got a pebble in his left front hoof!
Bingo; trumpet: ‘We’re not alright!’
Forgot to mention:
Fallone for WI Supreme Court, April 2. Early voting has started.
I clicked the Facebook “like” button (which I actually have never done before here; when I put FDL stuff on Facebook, I link to it in the status updates). Anyway, it did show up in my “likes” but the counter above didn’t change even when I refreshed the page. So I dunno what that means.
I do know that my son, who is a foodie, has been lamenting the fact that Monsanto now owns one of the leading bee research firms. This apparently is old news and perhaps you’ve already written about it in your previous Monsanto diaries. It reminds me of when Scientology bankrupted the Cult Awareness Network with frivolous lawsuits and then bought its name and started answering the phones. Nothing is as it seems.
How the Hell can I get this front paged?
Wendy,
You and all your viewers MUST READ THIS!
http://www.salon.com/2013/03/20/j_p_morgan_is_not_a_farmer/
Not only is this Rider being presented in Congress, but my spouse just pointed out to me that back in 2009, Mosnanto patented seeds that are resistant to aluminum contamination.
Putting on my tinfoil hat for a moment, among those of us concerned about Chem Trails (I know, I know, they don’t exist, except for those of us who remember what the skies used to look like,) there are several indie researchers here in Northern California who have been documenting the content and chem makeup of rain water, creeks and streams for over thirty years. And in the last decade, some bodies of water, and some soils contain a 14,000 percent increase in aluminum. Then we wonder why there is so much damn Sudden Oak Death, that is decimating our trees and bushes. This plague has spread from the oak species to pine, and now even to fruit trees! To hear that Mosnanto has patented life forms that are resistant to aluminum makes a lot of sense.
OMG, a kindred spirit. I’ve been planning to write a diary about chemtrails forever and one of these days when I have a minute, I will do it. The skies over Chico, CA (northern Sacramento Valley, for anyone not familiar) have been so ridiculous the past few days that I went out and took pictures. I suspect you are referring to the researchers who were just on Coast to Coast (I know, I know) from Shasta and Modoc counties.
I suspected that Monsanto was up in this mix but didn’t know about the aluminum-resistant life forms. We live in a dystopian sci-fi novel. Except it’s real.
Oh, you lovely and committed darlin’s: I really will try to be back soon. It’s just that ‘life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans’…
I got yiurs and raise u one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3Dl__4QGjY
and to elisemattu @ 44
It’s a small world, hfc and em: although it was many moons ago, I went to High School up the Feather River in Quincy, and had an aunt with a ranch near Red Bluff. This is off topic, but how has global warming treated the Valley? It was certainly hot as hell in the summer already.
And aluminum in the soil sounds scary enough (I had no idea), since it’s a fairly reactive element.
I don’t know if this has been covered in the comments already, but Tester’s amendment was stripped under pressure from Harry Reid to get the CR passed.
And it was just on the radio that the CR did pass.
By the way, wd @ 34, I guess I misunderstood your phrase “Fail Blog.” Sorry.
Still hot as hell in the summer. It’s hard to answer the global warming question (not that I have been here long enough to really know) without talking about chemtrails/geoengineering, because I sincerely believe it has a profound impact on the weather here and everywhere. Unfortunately, chemtrails are still classified as the imaginations of crazy people like me and elisemattu, who ought not to believe our lying eyes. So there’s not a lot of consensus about exactly what they’re trying to do. But the guy who was interviewed the other day (I will do a diary with links soon) said that researchers believe as much as 20 percent less sunlight hits the earth due to geoengineering. If that’s even remotely true, we are in serious doo-doo.
More OT, but if we bump wendy’s diary back to the rec list, it’s all good, right?
I went to an event the other night with several activists from Quincy, one of whom is a high school coach there now. Long story/whole ‘nother diary. The Feather River canyon is so beautiful; we take that route when we visit family in Reno.
Sigh. When I realized in my teens that I could never grow up to be Aretha, life hardly seemed worth living.
Can’t wait to read DD’s piece; just a scan says he’s right on the money (so to speak). The Commodity Futures Modernization Act cemented the potential of corruption; and they still haven’t finalized the derivatives rules. I’ll add that even Brooksley Born was convinced that Gary Gensler had come to Jesus, and meant to do it right. ‘Right’ seems to be up for sale or rent now, though.
The US has hit official Banana Republic status with the passage of this CR, which had cuts in addition to the past cuts…which the still standing sequester will cause more cuts.
When will the criminal plutocrats come after the little guy’s savings accounts here?
The only good thing I spied was that WIC got more fully funded, but they just moved the money from other safety net funds. Ya almost gotta bow down to their hubris.
Not covered, but no surprise, given the dearth of supporters. Just thought I’d bring the list so folks could know who was…who.
Never mind on your misinterpretation, though; happens online all the time. Haste, mood, too few or poor choices of words and all.
Yes, it passed the Senate. Now back to the FULL house for final voting.
Yeah, it’s a card game. Some cards have giant dollar signs on them.
I have to say that I am angry that a long timer puts up an “Action Alert” post, and it didn’t
MAKE
THE
FRONT
PAGE!
I have to agree, PP. I may be giving myself the kiss of death here, but the diary I wrote yesterday, which I considered a relatively minor part of the FDL-wide movement to observe the anniversary of the Iraq debacle, did make the front page (as did the one I wrote two days earlier, although it was more important IMO), and I don’t like the feeling that this may have been at the expense of something current and vital like this post here.
Diaries that don’t make the front page are still out there on the net (and tend to score well on internet searches), which is probably adequate for pieces dealing with nostalgic themes, but certainly not for urgent posts requiring immediate response.
Well. Gee. Erm. I’d like to say that DD’s piece is mind-blowing, PeasantParty. The particulars look worse than I seen at a scan, and I can’t wait to see the hearing particulars; this needs a post of its own unless the front page has covered it. If they would, at least some of the Obomba supporters *might* see a bit more truth about the Democrats:
“In the House, the effort is led by Jim Himes, a former Goldman Sachs vice president who represents the Connecticut bedroom communities of Wall Street traders. Himes, who has aggressively defended the bills, was also just named the national finance chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the campaign arm for House Democrats. So this effort to bestow gifts on Wall Street comes from the very congressman who has to raise money for his colleagues in the midterm elections, presumably from the same bankers he’s aiding. And of course, his role as finance chair makes him extremely important to his fellow members, who then trust him as he drops legislation to gut derivatives rules.”
(Not that there haven’t been Titanic-sized boatloads of hints, clues, facts and more truths…to show what that party has become. Corporate Plutocrats with prettier smiles and words. ‘We’ll kill you a tad more slowly, see?’
This is the kind of stuff that makes me believe that at this point it’s doesn’t seem cut-throat capitalism will ever be reigned in again, and the mess will have to be deconstructed and built again on some sort of socialistic lines (I like WelshT’s ideas on socialism, but more on that soon, she sayed hopefully).
Try not to worry about it not getting front-paged; we don’t always understand what goes on here. But in the end, we just put our heads down and write what our consciences (and sometimes humor, satiric takes) makes us write, eh? By the way, David *did* diss my hearthrob Jamie Dimon, so I’ll have to make him pay for that one day… ;o)
You’re aces, PP: TWOOPH!
Nah, yours being front-paged wouldn’t have precluded this one being so, I reckon. And I was a few days late in the end, and more calls may not have helped in the end. Iraq retrospectives were certainly In the News this week.
PP, if you come back, I’d like to give you my email address, then delete it when you’ve grabbed it and let me know. I have a couple ideas I’d like to run past you. If ya don’t come back (wouldn’t blame you as much as I’ve been absent, I’ll catch up with you on a future post.
And EF Beall: I should have added that your posts were worthy in themselves.
Got It! Yes, we do what we can and since I can’t use grammar well enough to write up a good post, I just swarm around everyone else’s dropping my turds of wisdom. :-D
Deleted. ;~)
Grammar? Is that a thing? Lol!
Just got back from an emergency/wild goose chase in so-called RL and thought I’d check this thread one more time before hitting the sack. (It’s already seriously past my bedtime and I hope to make the Canadian embassy thing tomorrow, though I’m too old to “flash dance”). I do appreciate your thought, especially coming from someone who works as hard as you do.
Guess that was supposed to be by way of a compliment, eh? LoL!
Yes it was, and I don’t get your LoL.
But maybe that’s because I’m in a sour mood this morning, especially since I won’t make the Canadian embassy after all. (Too many problems in RL)
Aaaaaannnd…Jill Richardson says:
‘FDA Ready to Approve Frankenfish Despite Fishy Science’
She explains why it is that transgenic animals are approved (or not) by the FDA, that being a major safety flaw in itself.
“The next question one might ask is how the federal government goes about deciding whether or not a GE animal should be allowed in our food supply. Under a 1980s decision, written by anti-regulation ideologues in the Reagan and Bush I era before any GE foods – plants or animals – were ready for commercialization, the government decided that no new laws were needed to regulate GE plants or animals. This decision is called “the Coordinated Framework for the Regulation of Biotechnology,” or the Coordinated Framework for short.”
See, if you splice in genes from an eel and another salmon species, these folks can be market sized in a third of the time…since they produce growth hormones all year long instead of three months.
‘To market to market
To buy a fat fish
Call it a seelmon
Or whatever ya wish’
Sorry about your RL; I’d been trying to take a break to get some of those sorted out here, too. Too many second shoes dropping lately for my mental health. But hell, if I hafta explain your own joke to you, it’s not all that funny. Pace.
A matter of record on this, and this was all I could find on the not-so-wonderful google:
“Voting 73-26, the Senate sent the bill to the House where it is expected to be quickly passed Thursday ahead of a two-week Easter break by Congress and before the closure of federal agencies on March 28, when the current funding bill expires. Twenty-five Republicans voted against the $984 billion funding bill together with a lone Democrat, Sen. Jon Tester of Montana.”
They get two weeks???
Bravo, lone Democrat.
LOL, I’d thought I remembered it was closer to twelvoe days, but then…they got their extra month or two if the evil Daylight Savings extension passed. Turns out that analyses show repeatedly that it’s an energy-usage wash, not savings, of course. But: more time on the links to schmooze, wheel and deal.
I got confused where I left these amendment tidings, here or in emails, but I did discover that at least two amendments did make it into the Senate version: Moran’s restored the military education funds, and Coburn’s ‘don’t fund the Nat’l Science Foundation’s political science studies unless they’re in aid of making money or keeping the Homeland (salute) secure’.
I’d meant to link to a page above that indicated that the Monsanto Rider did make it in, but it was a strange page, and the links didn’t bear out what they’d promised incipiently (isn’t that John Irving’s definition of irony, come to think of it?), so…I dunno, but since it had failed once before, Monsanto et.al. would likely have been greasing palms galore since then, no?
Testor may have just been pissed that his Keystone Pipeline NoW! didn’t make it in, lol.
Thank you for that, juliania, and again, for hosting while I was unable.
Have you heard what Tribal Leaders say regarding Daylight Savings Time: “Only the white man would believe that by cutting off the bottom of the blanket and sewing it to the top, they make themselves a longer blanket!”