Tag: mother jones

Mother Jones(!) warns us of the ecological evils of… marijuana production.

So I got ‘turned on,’ as the kids say*, to this article by Mother Jones on the ecological menace found in marijuana production – what?  No, seriously, that’s what the article is about.  Here, take a look:

To meet demand, researchers say, the acreage dedicated to marijuana grows in the Emerald Triangle [an area in California known for illegal pot growing] has doubled in the past five years. Like the Gold Rush of the mid-1800s, this “green rush,” as it is known locally, has brought great wealth at a great cost to the environment. Whether grown in bunkers lit with pollution-spewing diesel generators, or doused with restricted pesticides and sown on muddy, deforested slopes that choke off salmon streams during the rainy season, this “pollution pot” isn’t exactly high quality, or even a quality high. “The cannabis industry right now is in sort of the same position that the meatpacking industry was in before The Junglewas written by Upton Sinclair,” says Stephen DeAngelo, the founder of Oakland’s Harborside Health Center, a large medical marijuana dispensary. “It simply isn’t regulated, and the upshot is that nobody really knows what’s in their cannabis.”

Continue reading Mother Jones(!) warns us of the ecological evils of… marijuana production.

Potheads versus Greenies!

…No, really. Apparently growing the marijuana isn’t carbon neutral, or whatever the heck the theological term is. Fair warning: the link may be to Power Line, but it leads right from there to Mother Jones. Which is apparently on the other side of the War on Some Drugs, now.  Just goes to show: never trust anybody over thirty.

Man.

Moe Lane

PS: The commenters over at Mother Jones are having none of this, by the way.  It’s making for strangely compelling reading.

Why did Mother Jones make their interns (now ‘fellows’) sign up for food stamps?

As alleged here?

One former MJ intern who spoke to me on the condition of anonymity told me they “slept on an air mattress for six months while I worked there because I couldn’t afford a real one.” Another former intern said, “During our first meeting with HR at Mother Jones, we were advised to sign up for food stamps.”

…Simple.  Because Mother Jones could; and because everybody knows that professional progressive corporations like Mother Jones don’t really believe in all that half-baked don’t-call-it-socialism* nonsense that they peddle.  That junk’s for the rubes. The entire point of starting up one of these Lefty media corporations is to be at the top and draw a sweet salary from yelling about the Man. Continue reading Why did Mother Jones make their interns (now ‘fellows’) sign up for food stamps?

Kentucky Democrat alleges Progress Kentucky behind Mitch McConnell wiretap.

I’m not going to be cute about this:

  • Progress Kentucky is a racist organization.  We know this because they went after Mitch McConnell’s wife for being, apparently, a spy for the Chinese.
  • Progress Kentucky is a crazy organization.  We know this because they thought that Ashley Judd was a viable candidate for Kentucky Senate (nobody else did, honestly).
  • And, allegedly, Progress Kentucky is a stupid organization.  We suspect this because Kentucky Democrats are confessing that the organization apparently bragged about taping Mitch McConnell and staff during a strategy session:

Jacob Conway, who is on the executive committee of the Jefferson County Democratic Party, says that day, Shawn Reilly and Curtis Morrison, who founded and volunteered for Progress Kentucky, respectively, bragged to him about how they recorded the meeting.

[snip]

“They were in the hallway after the, I guess after the celebration and hoopla ended, apparently these people broke for lunch and had a strategy meeting, which is, in every campaign I’ve been affiliated with, makes perfect sense,” says Conway. “One of them held the elevator, the other one did the recording and they left. That was what they told to me from them directly.”

Continue reading Kentucky Democrat alleges Progress Kentucky behind Mitch McConnell wiretap.

Update on Le Affaire Mitch McConnell.

Let us unpack this CYA from Mother Jones on the tape that they released today:

Update 4/Mother Jones Statement: We are still waiting for Sen. Mitch McConnell to comment on the substance of the article. Before posting, we contacted his Senate office and his campaign office—in particular, his campaign manager, Jesse Benton—and no one responded. As the story makes clear, we were recently provided with the tape by a source who wishes to remain anonymous. We published the article on the tape due to its obvious newsworthiness. We were not involved in the making of the tape, but it is our understanding that the tape was not the product of any kind of bugging operation. We cannot comment beyond that, except to say that under the circumstances, our publication of the article is both legal and protected by the First Amendment.

Background: MJ got its hands on an audio tape that had Mitch McConnell and his staff discussing how to make Ashley Judd regret that she had ever decided to run for office.  They then published it, despite the fact that a) Ashley Judd effectively did publicly regret that she had ever decided to run for office and b) the information in the tape would hardly be a surprise to anybody familiar with political campaigns.  But then there was a new wrinkle: Mitch McConnell called the FBI.  Potential wiretap law violations, you understand. Continue reading Update on Le Affaire Mitch McConnell.

Mother Jones, Mitch McConnell, & Ashley Judd.

A few things that I’m taking away from this (forwarded) Mother Jones “expose” of Mitch McConnell’s Ashley Judd oppo research:

  • The whole thing reminds me of the Washington Post‘s ongoing (and rather pathetic) attempts to recreate that one, perfect fix that the WaPo had in 2006 when they destroyed George Allen’s Senate career.  Yes, David Corn, last year you folks got your hands on a video that harmed a Republican campaign.  Congratulations.  Have a cookie.  But it’s never as good the second time, huh?
  • And in this particular case… yeah.  Um. Shorn of its finger waggling, the article indicates that Mitch McConnell was looking forward to running against somebody who: has really strange opinions on coal, parenting, and American society; a history of mental depression and frankly mildly erratic behavior; and had made somewhat demeaning cracks about the state that she wanted to run in.  Here’s a news flash: so were the rest of us in the VRWC. In other words?  There’s nothing new here. Continue reading Mother Jones, Mitch McConnell, & Ashley Judd.

#rsrh Mother Jones caught tampering with their ‘untampered’ video? Tsk, tsk, tsk.

Seriously: if you’re going to put up a video that purports to be the entire raw footage of a Romney fundraiser, that’s fine. If it’s too big, that’s also fine.

But for Heaven’s sakes: don’t show us two videos where the first one ends with “We poll all these people to see where you stand in the polls but 45 percent of the people vote for the Republicans and 48 or 49…” and the second one starts with “…about twice as much as China, not 10 times as much like is reported” and expect people not to notice that there is obviously a piece missing in there somewhere.

This is the big leagues. People with triple-digit IQs will be looking at your material now.

Moe Lane

Not to be mean to Kevin Drum…

…actually, that’s a bit of a fib; being mean to Kevin Drum (and any other Mother Jones flunky) is a bit of a social and civic responsibility these days.  Anyway, he was just found whining “You know, if I’d wanted Dick Cheney as president I would have just voted for him” in response to the White House’s desire to expand the ability of law enforcement to read email headers without a court order.  Folks can determine where they sit on that particular issue, but I’d like to remind Kevin, as from one old school blogger to another: it’s funny that you should say that, Sparky.   Continue reading Not to be mean to Kevin Drum…