Quote of the Week:
“I hear people say from time to time, ‘Well, it’s a personal decision of a judge as to whether he should recuse himself.’ Well, if your wife is an admitted and proud contributor to a coup of our country, maybe you should weigh that in your ethical standards.” –Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas
1.
My 68th birthday was last week. Just the fact that I’m in my late 60s and still relatively healthy and sane is a miracle. So author Anne Lamott turns 68 on Sunday (the 10th) and this short piece she penned spoke to me.
I am going to be 68 in six days, if I live that long. I’m optimistic. Mostly.
God, what a world. What a heartbreaking, terrifying freak show. It is completely ruining my birthday plans. I was going to celebrate how age and the grace of myopia have given me the perspective that almost everything sorts itself out in the end. That good will and decency and charity and love always eventually conspire to bring light into the darkest corners. That the crucifixion looked like a big win for the Romans.
But turning 68 means you weren’t born yesterday. Turning 68 means you’ve seen what you’ve seen—Ukraine, Sandy Hook, the permafrost…Marjorie Taylor Greene. By 68, you have seen dear friends literally ravaged by cancer, lost children, unspeakable losses. The midterms are coming up. My mind is slipping. My dog died.
Really, to use the theological terms, it is just too frigging much.
And regrettably, by 68, one is both seriously uninterested in a vigorous debate on the existence of evil, or even worse, a pep talk.
So what does that leave? Glad you asked: the answer is simple. A few very best friends with whom you can share your truth. That’s the main thing. By 68, you know that the whole system of our lives works because we are not all nuts on the same day. You call someone and tell them that you hate everyone and all of life, and they will be glad you called. They felt that way three days and you helped them pull out of it by making them laugh or a cup of tea. You took them for a walk, or to Target.
Also, besides our friends, getting outside and looking up and around changes us: remember, you can trap bees on the bottom of Mason jars with a bit of honey and without a lid, because they don’t look up. They just walk around bitterly bumping into the glass walls. That is SO me. All they have to do is look up and fly away. So we look up. In 68 years, I have never seen a boring sky. I have never felt blasé about the moon, or birdsong, or paper whites.
It is a crazy drunken clown college outside our windows now, almost too much beauty and renewal to take in. The world is warming up.
Well, how does us appreciating spring help the people of Ukraine? If we believe in chaos theory, and the butterfly effect, that the flapping of a Monarch’s wings near my home can lead to a weather change in Tokyo, then maybe noticing beauty—flapping our wings with amazement—changes things in ways we cannot begin to imagine. It means goodness is quantum. Even to help the small world helps. Even prayer, which seems to do nothing. Everything is connected.
But quantum is perhaps a little esoteric in our current condition. (Well, mine: I’m sure you’re just fine.) I think infinitely less esoteric stuff at 68. Probably best to have both feet on the ground, ogle the daffodils, take a sack of canned good over to the food pantry, and pick up trash. This helps our insides enormously.
So Sunday I will celebrate the absolutely astonishing miracle that I, specifically, was even born. As Fredrick Buechner wrote, “The grace of God means something like, “Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn’t have been complete without you.” I will celebrate that I have shelter and friends and warm socks and feet to put them in, and that God or Gus found a way to turn the madness and shame of my addiction into grace, I’ll shake my head with wonder, which I do more and more as I age, at all the beauty that is left and still works after so much has been taken away. So celebrate with me. Step outside and let your mouth drop open. Feed the poor with me, locally or, if you want to buy me something, make a donation to UNICEF. My party will not be the same without you.
– Author Anne Lamott on turning 68
2.
The Christian right has gone off the rails. I should say even more off the rails. According to the New York Times At a Trump rally in Michigan last weekend, a local evangelist offered a prayer that stated, “Father in heaven, we firmly believe that Donald Trump is the current and true president of the United States.” He prayed “in Jesus’ name” that precinct delegates at the upcoming Michigan Republican Party convention would support Trump-endorsed candidates, whose names he listed to the crowd. “In Jesus’ name,” the crowd cheered back.
And much of this is taking place here in Arizona. Here are people on a highway bridge in Yavapai County, AZ. (Prescott), cheering a cross-country demonstration by truckers and other motorists in February against pandemic measures.
At a rally in Florence, AZ in January, Anthony Kern, a candidate for the Arizona State Senate who was photographed on the Capitol steps on Jan. 6, 2021, proclaimed to the crowd from the stage, paraphrasing a biblical passage about power given by God, “I lay the key of David upon you, that means the governmental authority is upon you, men and women.” The Times reported, for instance, that a woman from the crowd named Tami Jackson said she had come to see politics as an inherently spiritual struggle, saying “This is a Jesus movement. I believe God removed Donald for a time, so the church would wake up and have confidence in itself again to take our country back.”
So how does religious zealotry play into the all the new state abortion laws? For one, the Catholic Church states that abortion is always wrong, because life begins at conception and is God given. This means that in the eyes of the Catholic Church abortion is classed as murder and goes against the commandment, Thou Shalt Not Kill (Exodus 20:13). A different perspective comes from Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, scholar in residence at the National Council of Jewish Women, who said “Jewish law permits abortion and, if needed to protect the life of the pregnant person, requires it. We do not hold that life begins at conception; rather, the fetus is regarded as “mere water”—according to the Talmud—for the first 40 days and as part of the pregnant person’s body for the duration of the pregnancy after that. But again, abortion is permitted beyond that time frame in Judaism—mental health is considered as serious as physical health; emotional pain is considered as significant as physical pain. Human dignity is regarded as a valid basis for other decisions in Jewish law, and so, too, here.” She goes on to say, “The anti-abortion movement has succeeded in stigmatizing conversations about religion and abortion access and made it harder for people to talk about their experiences in all of their complexity and nuance—which is to say: Everyone’s abortion experience is different, and over the vast array of stories, there is no one experience to have or one way to feel or be in relationship to pregnancy termination. They [anti-abortion advocates] have made it harder for people to get the pastoral care that they deserve.”
NPR reports that The Oklahoma House gave final legislative approval on Tuesday to a bill that would make performing an abortion a felony, punishable by up to 10 years in prison. Emily Wales, interim president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Great Plains Votes, said "These legislators have continued their relentless attacks on our freedoms. These restrictions are not about improving the safety of the work that we do. They are about shaming and stigmatizing people who need and deserve abortion access." Wales said Planned Parenthood's abortion clinic in Oklahoma has seen an 800% increase in the number of women from Texas after that state passed the most restrictive anti-abortion law in the U.S. in decades. When Greg Abbott signed Texas law S.B.8, he provided an oft-heard reason for why the Lone Star state is effectively banning nearly all abortions: “Our creator endowed us with the right to life.”
Now they will all be going to Colorado, at least those who can afford it. NPR reported that Colorado just enacted a lawthat enshrines the right to have an abortion in the state, the latest left-leaning state that's taken action to protect reproductive rights as the practice faces renewed efforts by conservatives to restrict its access.
With the current Supreme Court it’s likely (The main reason I screamed to vote for Clinton in 2016…Trump placed THREE judges on the court) they will overturn Roe later this year…and eight states who still have un-enforced pre-Roe abortion bans in their laws, which could and most likely would be enforced, are Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Michigan, Mississippi, Oklahoma, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. In March, our ownGov. Doug Ducey (R) signed legislation (S 1164) banning abortion at 15 weeks, except in cases of life endangerment or severe physical health conditions. Abortion reporting requirements must now include information on the medical reason for the abortion and the likely health outcomes of the procedure. The bill is scheduled to go into effect in July.
If you want to keep track state-by-state, the Guttmacher Institute has a web page dedicated to it.
3.
The Wall Street Journal recently published an article on how to read a food label, a healthy skeptic’s guide to the buzzwords. I read labels most of the time but what does These Oats Help Save the Planet really mean?
The author of the article, Elizabeth Dunn, writes that When it comes to virtuous eating, “regenerative” is the buzzword du jour. Broadly speaking, “regenerative agriculture” describes a holistic approach to farming focused on continuously improving the health of the soil, increasing biodiversity and drawing greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere and into the ground.
She goes on to say But if “organic” is at risk of losing its soul, “regenerative” is even more susceptible to use and abuse by anyone who wants to telegraph climate-friendly values with little in the way of follow-through. Unlike organic, the latter term has no legally binding definition, and bold claims about how much carbon regenerative practices could sequester—whether, for instance, a grass-fed cow could ever erase its own carbon footprint—are still a matter of intense scientific debate.
Dave Chapman, executive director of the Real Organic Project, a nonprofit that produces an add-on certification for farmers who go above and beyond the USDA organic label, says “What regenerative means is entirely dependent on who is speaking. The challenges the organic movement faces in terms of corporate takeover is exactly what’s happening in the regenerative movement, only with regenerative, it’s happening more quickly.”
Confused yet? The article provides a handy and concise glossary of food-label terminology, for what it’s worth:
Natural: This means a product is free of artificial or synthetic dyes, coloring, flavorings and preservatives. Items labeled “natural” can still contain GMOs, as well as ingredients grown using agricultural chemicals or synthetic fertilizers.
Free-range: Use of this term only requires that animals have access to the outdoors—no stipulation as to whether they do, in fact, spend any time there.
Cage-free: This designation, typically applied to eggs, means just what it says: The animals cannot be kept in cages. But they can still be heavily crowded into a single barn.
Pasture-raised: This descriptor implies that animals spend their lives roaming outdoors and eating grasses, but there is no federal standard for it, and no regular inspections.
And here are some seals that indicate regenerative, organic and other farming practices and what they actually signify:
USDA Organic: This federally overseen certification requires crops to be non-GMO and produced without most synthetic pesticides and fertilizers. Grain and hay must be 100% organic, livestock raised without antibiotics or added hormones and with the ability to engage in “natural behaviors,” like grazing on pasture.
Real Organic: An add-on to USDA Organic developed by and for producers that farm “to not only the letter, but also the spirit, of certified organic standards.” Additional standards mostly concern growing plants in fertile soil—not hydroponically—and raising animals humanely, on pasture.
Demeter: For foods grown biodynamically. This includes everything required under the USDA Organic rules, plus more stringent rules for biodiversity and holistic practices, such as relying on livestock, cover crops and crop rotation for soil fertility.
Regenerative Organic Certified: The most stringent regenerative certification. Farms must be USDA Organic and either carry a recognized certification for social fairness and animal welfare or undergo a thorough audit covering those areas. Additional requirements regard building soil health and sequestering carbon.
Land to Market: This regenerative verification program looks at outcomes rather than practices. Farms and ranches undergo annual inspections and testing to demonstrate measurable improvements in such aspects as soil fertility, water infiltration and biodiversity.
Certified Grassfed by AGW or AGA: The term “grass fed” is regulated by the USDA but not strictly enforced. These seals confirm that products come from animals fed a diet of 100% grass and forage, raised on pasture and never treated with hormones or routine antibiotics.
4.
An interesting article on the conservative mayor of Carmel, Indiana, openly saying The U.S. needs looser immigration laws to attract more migrants and higher wages for low-income service workers. “Those are the two biggest challenges” for the American economy.
For example, to retain staff and draw applicants to its facility in Noblesville, the Hamilton County seat, SMC, the Indiana-based division of a Japanese industrial pneumatic components giant, has been raising wages and improving benefits for its 1,600 employees. On top of free health care, tuition reimbursement, and a subsidized cafeteria where $2.50 will buy you breakfast, the company rolled out a new leave policy on April 1 that removed any cap on vacation time or personal days. Kind of goes against the Republican Way, dontcha think? It’s almost Socialism!!
A friend of mine, Jeffery Anthony, has a pretty interesting take on how finances and the economy should be functioning in this country. He wrote about the Bloomberg article Open borders, higher wages at the bottom, increased demand, increasing economic well being for all. Amazing to see a 'staunch Republican' say we should return to Keynesian economic policies and abandon Ronald Reagan GOP trickle down economics.
This stuff is straight forward. You want a stronger economy that supports the average American? You invite immigrants, you increase wages, you strengthen labor laws, and you increase taxes on personal income above a certain threshold to encourage shifting corporate wealth down the labor ladder. In addition to that, you tax the shit out of apps like Grubhub, and Amazon, and Uber, so that they become uneconomical and this will spur local investment in new services to replace these parasitic companies that will create solid wages and keep the wealth local. This will increase money for schools, for social services, and lift the quality of life for everyone. What are we waiting for?!
People seem to forget that immigrants spend the money they earn which creates more demand for local products which creates more jobs, and investment, which also creates more local tax revenue, which creates more funding for local services.
There is always some friction in the process and of course when you invite hard working people to your community that creates more competition for the established folks, many of which would rather coast than work hard, so they create strawman arguments about immigrants being lazy when in reality they are the lazy ones suppressing economic output and vitality in their community and country.
5.
If you’re on Facebook it’s worth ‘liking’ the Sons of Liberty page. Posted yesterday: During the month of April, this page roasts the fuck out of a recent phenomenon called Confederate Heritage Month. During the entire month, we highlight Southern folk who fought for the Union. To remind neo-Confederates and Lost Cause assclowns what their heritage is, this page is executing a daily series throughout this entire month, commemorating anniversary events and honoring Southerners who remained loyal to the United States. If you're just coming across this post, make sure to follow the page as we'll be upsetting neo-Confederates and Lost Cause bigots all month long.
6.
And by the way, Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), and Jerry Moran (R-Kansas) voted from the Republican cloakroom rather than the Senate floor, with a hearty thumbs down for Ketanji Brown Jackson. Of course they did.
And now…