Snooki and Climate Change

I wish she really would come out and have a real discussion about climate change.  At least then something on that show would make sense.

Lessons hopefully learned from Irene...

Image via WikipediaWhether you call her a hurricane or tropical storm, Irene was one mean bitch.
Finally got power back today after 83+ hours.  In a strange way I wish we never got it back.  So many have missed the valuable lessons she offered:

• Living with less
• The need to break the addiction to our cell phones, computers, lights, microwaves....
• Nature has a perfect "show" ready for our viewing every minute of the day
• We can never control nature
• We better stop messing up Mother Earth, because when she gets pissed...

Too many are missing the lessons, using those mini-van video systems as a sort of new drive-in theater for their little ones who were lost with their TV sets, game systems, or whining about how long they have been without power (or without ice cream).

We better be prepared for the next round.  Survival skills (as simple as cooking over an open fire or knowing how to tie a strong knot) are must skills to learn.  The next Irene is just around the corner.

We should all look to other nations and figure out how to survive without a grocery store around the corner, without cell phones to talk with friends, to live with no electricity,  Our time may be here soon.

Replacing a killer with a killer

EPA: California Pesticide Regulators Knowingly Allowed Harmful Pesticide Use Near Latino Schools

California pesticide regulators discriminated against Latino schoolchildren when they annually approved a powerful pesticide used near their schools, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Thursday. The preliminary finding is part of a settlement stemming from a civil rights complaint filed in 1999. The complaint alleged that annual approval of methyl bromide use by the California Department of Pesticide Regulation had a disproportionately adverse impact on the health of Latino children because their schools were often close to agricultural fields.

Sounds great doesn't it? justice done, right?

Methyl bromide is being replaced with another fumigant, methyl iodide, which was approved by California regulators in December. Scientists and environmental and farmworker groups say it also has adverse effects on children and families, because it's highly toxic and can cause cancer.

Different name - same deadly results.

Hurricane Irene

Hurricane Irene 2011 Path: Where Is The Storm Going?

Federal officials have warned Irene could cause flooding, power outages or worse all along the East Coast as far north as Maine, even if it stays offshore. The projected path has gradually shifted to the east and Irene could make landfall anywhere from South Carolina to Massachusetts over the weekend.

Flooding?   Okay I can live with that.  Feel comfortable with that - I can deal with water in the basement - if that is the worst.
But wind?  What about the trees?  Even more troubling - what about my tomato plants.  sure they are staked but can those stakes fly away in 100 mile winds?
May have to sit in the garden holding those plants down this Sunday.  Can I borrow anyone's rain gear?

Time changes all...

Amazing Ad Watch: "DDT Is Good For Me-e-e"

Oh for the fabulously optimistic fifties, when nuclear power was going to make electricity "too cheap to meter", our houses were going to be made of plastic and we could look forward to Better living through Chemistry. Oh, and DDT was so wonderful that you could buy wallpaper impregnated with it for your kid's bedroom. With Donald Duck and Pluto on it! What could possibly go wrong? Besides, we know better now than to expose our kids to huge amounts of synthetic bug-killers. Who would put DDT in wallpaper or Triclosan in toothpaste today?

or promote GMO foods...or eat fast food....
Many things haven't changed that much - just different "sins."

What's in that burger?

Are Huge Meat Recalls Scaring You Vegetarian?

It’s unclear why such vast meat recalls are becoming so much a part of the news. Is it a global food market or is the USDA getting a handle on the contamination faster than they used to? Salmonella and e coli are deadly to start off with but the addition of antibiotic resistant varieties are making them even scarier.

It’s like playing Russian roulette--with meat coming from all over the world, it’s difficult to tell the origin of the animal, how it was treated, and the conditions of the farm. You never know when you’re going to get a bad batch, not cook it quite enough, and find yourself sick. And who wants charred meat anyway? If it’s the flavor you’re after, then cooking the animal to death doesn’t do anyone justice, quite frankly.

While recalls can happen in any food product, they are commonly associated with eggs, meat and poultry.

So if the recalls have not scared you into a plant-based diet the question is - ARE YOU CRAZY?

Ever heard of Peak Oil, Michele?

Bachmann says she will get us $2 per gallon gas if we elect her.

The price of gas, Micky, is not the issue.  It is the supply that is the problem.  it is our reliance on petroleum.  We don't need $2 per gallon gas.  We need conservation...we need alternatives...we don't need you.

What about the family farmer?

U.S. places $40 million chicken order

The United States is stepping in to help bail out another American industry -- chicken farmers and meat processors. The nation's chicken industry is having a difficult year. Chicken producers are struggling with higher costs of running their business at the same time that consumers are buying less meat. This has created a glut of chicken products in the market. Total chicken production in the first half of 2011 rose 4% compared to the same period a year ago, while demand for chicken has cooled, according to the National Chicken Council. Consequently, retail prices for chicken product have dipped. The Department of Agriculture, keenly aware of these issues, announced Monday that it will make a special purchase of up to $40 million of chicken products, which the government will then donate to federal food assistance programs such as soup kitchens and its national Feeding America programs.

Why save an industry selling hormone-laden products that are raised and slaughtered in ways you would not want to know.  So save these corporations and feed their products to the poor.

Why not put $40M into small-scale farms, sustainably-raised products, and "plant based" products.

Oh that's right.  Those guys don't have a strong lobbying arm.

Taking his cue from Doc Luntz

Rick Perry: Global Warming is a Hoax Concoted by Data-Manipulating Scientists

Texas Governor Rick Perry is indeed, as many news outlet have noted, "coming out swinging" in the presidential primaries. He's already called for a moratorium on all regulations, blasted the chairman of the Federal Reserve as "treasonous", and, now, he's stating outright that he believes global warming is a hoax stirred up by scientists who "manipulated data". That's right, folks. It is officially now acceptable for a mainstream presidential candidate -- and a potential frontrunner by many counts -- to deny a scientific body of evidence unequivocally agreed upon by the nation's, and the world's, science institutions. It is now acceptable to put bizarre conspiracy theories ahead of science itself.

Scary that this guy could be the GOP nominee for Prez.  Even scarier is the thought that sheeple could elect this guy!

The doctor explains it all

Go and watch the video of GOP Spinmaster Teaches Stephen Colbert How to Sugarcoat Oil Drilling & Global Warming

"the party should describe its policies as "conservationist" instead of "environmentalist", because "most people" think environmentalists are "extremists" who indulge in "some pretty bizarre behavior... that turns off many voters". Notice all those "key words"? It's the genesis of an effective strategy to marginalize environmentalists as fringe radicals and weird hippies. And in the video above, Luntz shows, step by step, exactly the ways in which politicians communicated those talking points. And it worked. Look around -- anyone that continues to believe that there is no consensus amongst scientists that human activity is warming the planet was duped, and continues to be duped, at least in part by this man.

And he brags about his success!  Insanity!

Soros knows

Why is George Soros selling gold and buying farmland?

“A fund controlled by George Soros, the billionaire hedge-fund manager, owns 23.4 percent of South American farmland venture Adecoagro SA.” Jim Rogers is also quoted in the same story, saying, “I have frequently told people that one of the best investments in the world will be farmland.” That’s because demand for food is accelerating even as radical climate changes, a loss of fossil water supplies, and the failure of genetically engineered crops is actually reducing food yields around the globe. Ceres Partners, which invests in farmland, has produced astonishing 16 percent annual returns since its launch in 2008. And this is during a depressed economy when most other industries are showing losses. Why growing and storing your own food can be a goldmine All this means we can count on three things happening in the years ahead:

Prediction #1) Food supplies will become more scarce.

Prediction #2) Food prices will double over the next 2-3 years, and then probably double again in another 2-3 years.

Prediction #3) When food prices are 400% of today’s levels, backyard farming or gardening pays off big in terms of real dollar savings. In other words, as food prices skyrocket, it becomes increasingly more financially viable to grow your own food (or store it now while prices are low).

You can’t grow gold. You can’t print your own currency (unless you’re the Fed). But you CAN grow something more valuable than gold and money: Food!

A chicken that could lay eggs was worth more than an ounce of gold! You can’t eat gold, folks. And you can’t eat silver. Everybody has to eat to stay alive, and that means everybody needs a constant stream of food just to keep breathing. That’s why investing in food makes so much sense. And by “investing in food,” I mean any or all of the following:

• Investing in storable food that you can save on the shelf and keep for future use or barter.

• Investing in your own gardening skills so that you have the know-how to produce food when needed.

• Investing in non-hybrid garden seeds so that you have the genetic blueprints to grow food that can propagate itself generation after generation.

Get those garden trowels out folks. It is time.

Veganism or Plant Strong

Forks over Knives  looks at plant based diets and their very positive effects over health.  One of the folks pictured in the clip is Rip Esselstyn  and his Engine 2 Diet.  Saw this book all over Whole Foods the other day.  A very strong link between the two.
"Plant Strong" is another word for veganism.  If the name has to change to get more people to switch to plant=based diets - great.
With this movie and diet - if people will only adopt plant-based diets for health reasons rather than environmental reasons - Fine.  As long as the switch is made.

Excess tomatoes?

Came across this recipe idea.  Tomorrow night's supper? I have a few heirlooms that are perfect!
Fresh Tomato Biscuits

My sister visited Asheville recently and brought with her a hankering for fresh tomato biscuits. She got the recipe from a 96 yr old friend in Burlington, NC. Using fresh ripe tomatoes from her neighbor’s garden and good old-fashioned mayo, she whipped up phenomenal fresh tomato biscuits. Delish. When I got back to the office, I googled the recipe, and low and behold, it’s from an old Southern Living issue. How appropriate.

FRESH TOMATO BISCUITS

 Author’s Note: While I get the canned biscuits (fast and easy), if you have the time and ingredients, try to make these flaky biscuits from scratch, and use top ingredients from your local farmer’s markets and food coops.

1/4 cup mayonnaise

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon coarsely ground pepper

1/4 cup shredded fresh basil

1 (16.3-ounce) can refrigerated flaky biscuits

2 medium-size tomatoes, thinly sliced

Preparation Combine first 4 ingredients. Set aside. Press each biscuit into a 4-inch circle. Place biscuit circles on a lightly greased baking sheet. Bake at 400° for 6 minutes. Remove from oven and spread each biscuit evenly with about 2 teaspoons mayonnaise mixture. Top evenly with tomato slices. Bake at 400° for 6 more minutes or until mayonnaise mixture is bubbly. Serve immediately!

2012 race heats up

Rick Perry to delight climate sceptics by running for president

The climate sceptics can finally get excited about the 2012 election: Rick Perry, their candidate of choice, is about to officially throw his hat in the ring. Perry calls global warming "all one contrived phony mess that is falling apart under its own weight." Unlike many of the other GOP presidential candidates, he hasn't expressed concern about climate change in the past, so he won't have to do any back-pedaling. Notorious climate denier Marc Morano is a big fan: "Based on climate views alone, anyone who is holding their nose voting for Mitt Romney because there's no other viable candidate will now rejoice to have an option with Rick Perry."

Can he slow down princess Bachman after Iowa?
After posting about Gore - now more than ever I hope he runs in 2012. I just want to see Al and Ricky go at it - once.

Perry served as Al Gore's Texas campaign chair in the 1988 presidential race, just before switching his party allegiance from Democrat to Republican, but conservatives don't have to worry that Perry holds any residual affection for the former veep. "I've heard Al Gore talk about man-made global warming so much that I'm starting to think that his mouth is the leading source of all that supposedly deadly carbon dioxide," Perry said in 2007.

Ricky would lose that debate.

Why not in 2012?

Al Gore for President

Let me be the first to proWhy wait?pose a national movement to draft Al Gore for president in 2016, carry the banner of the New Frontier heritage of the Democratic Party, and mobilize to elect true Democrats to the House and Senate in 2012. On the playing field of national politics, Gore is the conscience of the Democratic Party, the soul of what true Democrats stand for, and the fighting spirit that Democrats everywhere hunger for. Many of us worked our hearts out with the fierce urgency of progressive patriots and the soaring hope that the next New Frontier would have begun in January 2009. It did not. So be it.

Why wait?

Do as she says...

Image via Wikipedianot as she does!
Bachmann asked the ‘job-killing’ EPA for money to stimulate local economy

Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann calls the Environmental Protection Agency the "job-killing organization of America" and has threatened to have the agency's "doors locked and lights turned off." But before her strong anti-EPA rhetoric aimed at firing up the Tea Party during election season, Bachmann solicited the help of the agency to bring "long-term benefits to the environment and the economy."

The Huffington Post is reporting that Bachmann asked for direct assistance from the government 16 times -- many through the stimulus package, a program that she said made President Obama a "gangster." On numerous occasions, she urged the EPA to fund projects in her community to realize economic benefits

All together now - can we say Hypocrite?

Ponds and Gardens

My pond, regretfully, does not have a waterfall - too cheap to run an electrical line to the pond. But I absolutely agree with this video.
My pond clearly attracts beneficial insects, frogs and toads - the birdhouses in my garden are also perfect in attracting great insect-eating birds.  I also use the water throughout spring - a perfect fertilizer. And of course the silt and spent plants from the pond are perfect additions to my compost pile.

How to compost

Which Composting Method is Best for You? Infographic Helps You Decide

Great graphic in this article. check it out.

Everyone should be composting.

Hurrah Bernie

I say Bernie for President in 2012.  He has been right on so many issues. Now he is so correct on tar sands pipelines.

Corn on the cob next summer?

Only if it is organic...

Monsanto to Sell Biotech Sweet Corn for U.S. Consumers

Monsanto Co. (MON), the world’s biggest vegetable seed maker, said it will begin selling genetically modified sweet corn in the U.S. this year, the first product it has developed for the consumer market.


The sweet corn seeds are engineered to kill insects living above and below ground and to tolerate applications of the company’s Roundup herbicide, Consuelo Madere, Monsanto vice president for vegetables, told reporters at company headquarters in St. Louis today. They will be introduced to growers serving the U.S. fresh corn market starting in the autumn, she said.
Monsanto previously sold only engineered crops that are processed into sugars and oils, used as animal feed or made into fibers. The new seeds will initially target the 250,000-acre market for fresh corn in the eastern U.S., Madere said. Monsanto is in discussions with companies that would can or freeze the corn, she said.

Who in their right mind thinks this is a good idea?  Sure the stockholders love it but the consumers?  Sure won't have intestinal parasites if you eat the corn, but then again what will you get after eating this?

The tick versus us

Image via WikipediaEhrlichia: New Tick Infection May Be Linked to Environmental Change

If the rising risks of Lyme disease, Anaplasmosis or Babesiosis weren't reasons enough to take extra precautions while outdoors this summer -- and to do a thorough tick check before going back inside -- researchers have now identified yet another unpleasant tick-transmitted disease.


A still unnamed, tick-borne bacterium appears to have transmitted ehrlichiosis to at least 25 people in Wisconsin and Minnesota, with more cases likely unaccounted for due to the flu-like symptoms common among other diseases that pass through ticks, according to a new paper published on Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine.


Richard Ostfeld of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, N.Y., explained that when we degrade or fragment habitats, or homogenize them through agriculture or livestock production, we tend to create ideal conditions for the culprits responsible for many diseases. These are usually the smaller and hardier species, such as the mice and deer that provide the means for ticks to contract and spread Lyme disease as well as the American robins that play a similar role alongside mosquitoes in the life cycle of the West Nile virus.


"The first types of species we lose are the predators and other larger-bodied creatures, because they usually require more space to maintain viable populations," Ostfeld, an expert in the link between biodiversity and infectious disease, told The Huffington Post. "The littler, more generalized species are the ones that persist in disturbed ecosystems."


Meanwhile, in the case of tick-borne infections, deforestation allows for the growth of tall grasses that appeal to the insects. Such landscape changes are often linked to rising human development, which means more humans living in closer proximity to more ticks. The likely end result: more disease.

We have tried to battle nature. Now...

"By entering an environment that has its own logic and hierarchy, humans behave as a virus," said Dr. Pappas. "Let us call, then, such emerging zoonotic infections a part of the environment's immune response against the human intruder."

Our actions in opposition to nature are the diseases.  Nature just trying to fight back.  Love that last idea.

SWAT teams versus cows

Rawesome Raid: Federal Agents Arrest Owner, Dump Food

Rawesome foods, a private market in Venice California, has been raided a second time by federal agents. Initial reports from NaturalNews.com reveal that the owner, James Stewart, has been arrested and is being held on $123,000 bail.


Evan Kleiman, KCRW's "Good Food" producer, confirms that Stewart has been booked for conspiracy to commit a crime, and that he is not allowed to post a bond to bail himself out of jail.


Sharon Ann Palmer and Eugenie Victoria Bloch of Healthy Family Farms, LCC, were also arrested along with Stewart, reports South Pasadena Patch. The farm and its owner, Palmer, are charged with producing milk without a license or permit since 2007. Healthy Family Farms is a regular vendor at community farmers markets, notes South Pasadena Patch.


The thirteen count complaint against the group stems from a yearlong sting operation, according to KTLA. KTLA notes that undercover investigators would make purchases of raw milk, cheese, yogurt, and kefir at Rawesome, even though the market allegedly did not have the proper permits to be selling unpasteurized dairy products.

A year long sting operation to battle raw milk?  No other major crimes or crime bosses to investigate or arrest?

Priorities?

During the raid, Stefani Perales (@lovingthenow) tweeted, "Raid is still going on :( They are dumping good Raw Food to waste!"