Wonkette
- Zimbabwe’s Friday run-off election shows little signs of being called off. Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has called for the UN to intervene, and a group of three southern African countries is scheduled to meet today to address the crisis. South Africa is, notably, not involved. [New York Times]
- Democrats putting together the National Convention discover there’s no such thing as an organic, union-made fanny pack. [Wall Street Journal]
- Republicans will show the world who’s environmentally conscious! They will take the brave step of calling for more energy conservation. [The Hill]
- And who’s leading the GOP’s bold new charge? John McCain, that’s who. [Washington Post]
- John McCain trails Barack Obama in all the polls, but this is good, because he loves to be the underdog. In other words, he will win by losing. [Los Angeles Times]
- Barack Obama asked his top donors if they had any spare change to give this nice lady who’s looking to scrape together $10 million or so. [Washington Post]
DAILY BRIEFING
What the fuck… organic cotton cloth? I thought the organic thing was for stuff we ate. You know, ignorant distortion of pseudo-science designed to scare people with made up facts and figures (I equate the whole ‘organic’ movement to the criticism or global warming). How does organic fabric for baseball caps get into that mess?
I think a bigger problem than non-union made and non-organic is that the Convention organizers think fanny packs themselves are acceptable. Do overweight clueless tourists from the Midwest even wear them anymore?
Elitist Republican Tard: not to sound more elitist than I often do, but organic cotton is much better for the enviroment and the people who farm it. The chemicals used on conventional cotton are toxic as hell and run off into the ground and water around the farms and cause a host of problems among those who pick and process it. Traces of the toxins also survive the processing, so they end up in your clothes and against your skin. It just is logical, really: if you are pouring toxins into the ground and water (everything from pesticides on crops to weedkiller on lawns), it generally is not going to be very good for anything that breathes, drinks water, or eats. And, yeah, elitist that I am, I have some organic cotton jeans.
Elitist Republican Tard: Organic clothing is about having it be chemical/pesticide free. There is an enormous amount of chemicals used to grow cotton. Those chemicals end up in our soil, our air, and our water. (The things you learn shopping for wedding invitations. Oy!)
Doglessliberal: Are we elitists or nerds for knowing this?
Doglessliberal:
Real elitists eschew cotton altogether; it wastes precious water resources and has that whole slavery connotation. Hemp is the new cotton! Now I must get back to my hacky sack.
There is no comparison between the taste of an organic fanny pack and a crappy mass-produced synthetic imitation. I get mine in this delightful little Lebanese wholefood and accessories store in town. They are delicious with a glass of freshly squeezed Ylang-Ylang oil.
Brutus Harlot: of course!
bitchincamaro: Yes, hemp is better, I agree, and hemp oil also comes from the same plants, and it has a ton of uses. Bamboo clothing is pretty good, too. It feels like silk, and bamboo grows like a mofo, unassisted, as anyone who has tried to dig the stuff out of a back yard knows. Even Round-Up won’t kill it. I think you need an exorcist to get rid of it.
wheelie: I like mine with hummus and sumac powder, myself.
I used to work in the outdoor clothing/travel business (think Patagonia,) and I can assure you that if there were such a thing as an Organic cotton, union-made fanny pack, it would cost $131 (wholesale,) and would only come in one color: Hemp Brown. They would have been better off just buying imported by an American-owned company. Only like 5% of the organic cotton in the world is grown here, and it’s ’spensive as fuck.
To be fair, the Gee-Dub did win by losing.
Walter Sobchak: but again, why are they getting fanny packs??? I mean, damn, why not just issue floral capri pants and polyesther blouses to all volunteers, too?
Brutus Harlot: Doglessliberal: There is nothing wrong with elitism. Don’t be fooled. I’m a card caring libertarian and elitist. And proud of of it.
And I was going to say the same thing to ERT.
Enviro-piety - It’s a beautiful thing.
Hopefully we’ll all be able to get organic flag lapel pins, too.
Doglessliberal: For real, on the bamboo. I’ve got a yard full of it in NYC; my darling wife ACTUALLY planted it. When it rains it bends over and you have to tunnel through it to get out of the yard. Reminds me of my days in Hanoi with Walnuts. Gook times!
Doglessliberal: An exorcist, you say? That sounds like a job for Bobby Jindal!
bitchincamaro: it, kudzu, roaches, and fleas will be the only things left after the nuclear blast ends the world.
Hillary: “Barry, I brought you this here apple pie in hopes that you’ll accept my apology for the ‘Up yours, nigger!’”
Obama: “That’s quite alright and much obliged, ma’am.”
Hillary: “Of course, you have the decency not to mention that I spoke with you.”
Obama: “Of course, ma’am. Good night.”
Hey, I didn’t say it was a good fashion statement, just a patent impossibility. The only people who could afford such an item are Trustifarians with mommy’s Amex, and they’re voting for Nader anyhow. Retards.
bitchincamaro: If hemp is so great, why was I arrested for growing it in my backyard?
Think about it. Where do fighter pilots maneuver to be, to position themselves for the kill? Not out front, that’s for sure.
Using a metaphor about killing in an article about McCain’s campaign against Obama. Go journalism go!
Doglessliberal: That’s coming in like, October, right?
Walter Sobchak: well, Bush has to do something for a final act.
Holy shit, Andrea Robinson looks hot. Damn you, Wall Street Journal dot-cartoonist. The Journal is a Murdoch property, now. Can’t we make her a Page 3 girl?
Doglessliberal: End times!
JamesMichaelCurley: Because the cotton lobby is one powerful mo’fo’.
Serolf Divad: I couldn’t really read that article because of her picture.
Brutus Harlot:
Wow that’s a really dumb MSM metaphor. On the other hand they also forgot that “Speed is life and More is Better” considering that Obama’s flying an F-15 compared to John’s Wright 1908 Flyer.
I stopped this post at “Fanny Pack”…WTF, you’re shitting me, right, do people even have “fannies” anymore?
The spokesman, Mukoni Ratshitanga, said in a telephone interview that South Africa was not a member of the troika and had not been invited.
I lol’d
And then I cried.
Brutus Harlot: Doglessliberal: Still sounds like bullshit to me. How much of that pesticide residue actually gets absorbed by your body? And at that low of a level, how long would it take to actually produce an effect on someone? And don’t give me ‘it seems logical’. There are a lot of things that seemed logical that were completely wrong (flat earth?).
The argument about the cotton-pickin’ workers being exposed to higher-level chemicals has more weight, but that seems to be something that, oh, I don’t know, maybe a [i]union[/i] should take care of. And, as we learned, there are no organic cotton-pickin’ unions.
The amount of net carbon savings gained by buying organic cotton vs. regular cotton are likely thrown away the first time you throw those things in your dryer. Kudos if you air-dry. But I bet synthetic fabric, even though it comes from oil, has lower overall environmental impact per garment than even organic cotton.
Serolf Divad: A quick Google search reveals she has “25 years in the environmental field,” which I assume means she started working…in the womb.
Doglessliberal: W will bomb Iran while Hopey is giving the keynote address at the convention.
On the Zimbabwe thing, I know it’s gauche to refer to an entire continent as a basket-case, but don’t southern Africa’s “growing pains” seem like, I don’t know, terminal? This current election scandal/cluster-fuck, makes “Recount” play like “The Sound Of Music”.
Brutus Harlot:
The funny thing is that he was NOT a fighter pilot. He flew an A-4 Skyhawk, which was a very small short-ranged bomber. It looks like a fighter and can ( even still ) out-maneuver a fighter, but it’s primary purpose was dropping bombs.
Elitist Republican Tard: and we hang dry 95% of our laundry.
Elitist Republican Tard: It’s actually about water consumption. The production of those pesticides combined with modern farming techniques takes a huge amount of water per unit of cotton. Then you add the chemicals needed to soften and bind the strains of cotton used in conventional growing (not needed with organic, it has a longer, softer natural fiber) and you’re talking more water. It’s an environmental issue less because of the fact that the chemicals are bad, and more because there are better, less consumptive ways to do it.
*/ soapbox
Elitist Republican Tard: And you’re right about synthetics only if you consider the fact that there are many companies out there right now that are producing clothing from post-consumer plastic, and some even offer recycling plans for your worn-out synthetics, with discounts on replacements. Unless you participate in those programs, though, synthetics are a marginally worse choice, impact-wise. You have to consider the source. All the companies I worked with that produced organic stuff were committed to financially and otherwise supporting environmental and conservation groups, so some of your dollar on organics is also indirectly going back to those groups, in most cases.
Man, I’m boring.
Somebody should tell the L.A. Times that they can stop kissing John McCain’s ass. He’s not going to be president.
Doglessliberal: Hate to be the one to break this to you. But while you were hang-drying your organic clothes, fanny packs came back in style:
http://www.latimes.com/features/lifestyle/la-ig-cash22-2008jun22,0,3841436.story
Capri pants and polyester too.
spencer:
So it looks like WSJ dot cartoonists crib their illustrations from photos: like this one.
Confirms she’s pretty hot, though.
Darehead:
That Disco Gold fanny pack would really bring some pizzaz to the celebration, don’t you think?
Elitist Republican Tard: I’m not saying organic cotton is the way to go. There may be other options all together, like bamboo. And just because there aren’t unions in a trade doesn’t mean that as a consumer I can’t educate myself and choose to spend my money on products that are safer for the workers. The DNC might as well try, and then they can make the decision like I have to make every time I consider shopping at American Apparel.
Run-off, schmun-off. Mugabe has already made it clear that the only way he’s leaving office is in a series of very small boxes.
Darehead:
I can’t believe someone actually got paid to write that pile of horseshit.
Serolf Divad: You like that one, eh. But it’s foreign and made of anaconda. Sparklin’ snakes at the DNC? Horrors.
Botswana Meat Commission FC: Doglessliberal: Oh, and here’s their advice, which might come in handy:
… to avoid looking like a tourist, let your bag hang loose from your hips and position it to one side, letting the pouch graze the outermost corner of your upper thigh.
Darehead: I am in denial. I keep seeing 1980s “fashions” on teenagers right now and want to scream and beat my head against the wall. Those clothes were revolting the first time around, people! Shoulder pads, long t-shirts worn with belts, and neon plastic accessories are not good choices. Just say no!
Darehead: oh dog help us. But it makes sense that the 80s clothes are roaring back, as McCain is trying to sell us on tickle-down economics and we are seeing vast chasms grow wider between rich and poor. Hey, tax breaks for big corporations really work! Really!
wheelie: I insist on having my fanny packs picked fresh by uncircumcised Chilean immigrants.
It makes my grocery trips to Whole Foods a lot more interesting.
http://www.politicswest.com/14608/convention_hires_director_greening
For those who prefer photos…
Doglessliberal: Trickle down, pants are falling down!
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/06/20/style/20080621_STREET_FEATURE.html#section1
Darehead: they must use double-sided tape. How the hell else do those pants stay up?
Doglessliberal: Grips!
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DE7DC1139F936A35755C0A96E948260
From the 80s!!
Wait… isn’t “fanny pack” a code word for teh gayz?
Godless Liberal *: They shall call it… Mugabe take-out.
Serolf Divad: Yeah, and its maiden name is “holster.”
Darehead: holy cow.
Darehead: wow. Some people should stick to the printed word. The narrator frothing over the black men wearing sagging pants like they’re some exotic species seems like an insufferable douchebag. And yeah, I’m sure the sag is related to the stock market declining. They’re real worried about their 401ks losing value. Oi.
Doglessliberal: Barry will still be around too! As the new Jeebus, he is also immortal. Unless he believes Jeebus was only a prophet…