Just when you thought racism couldn't get any more racismer

Kinda makes me wanna sing a verse of "My Country, 'Tis of Thee." But not in the happy way:

Who would have thought that breakfast cereal would trigger the latest racial battle line? In this case, a Cheerios ad much like every other homespun Cheerios ad — with a heart healthy message and loving family – ran into trouble from some commenters because of the kind of family it featured. Mom is white, dad is black and their cute little daughter is a mix of the both of them.

That’s it.

Cheerios had to disable comments on YouTube – I’m not going to repeat them but you can imagine the general witless racism with stereotypes about minorities and warnings of race-mixing as the end of civilization. Late Friday night, after a day of widespread news coverage, the ad had more than 8,400 thumbs-up votes on YouTube, versus about 900 thumbs-down.

If your conception of the American state or your core convictions can be shaken by a commercial for bland cereal, you've got bigger problems to worry about.

And you're also an asshole.

Good News in Gay Rights

France legalized gay marriage.

Rhode Island is about to pass gay marriage.

Delaware is getting close as well.

We live in interesting hopeful times.

SCOTUS marriage cases began today

I think the odds are good for Team Love in the marriage equality cases, but let's be clear about the stakes:

No matter what the Court does, DOMA's expiration date is coming up fast, and we can expect not only federal rights but full faith and credit being extended to marriages entered into in any state.

What we can't bank on is that gay Americans in every state will have the right to marry without sneaking across the border to somewhere more accepting. Without the Court extending constitutional protection to the right to marry, there may, for the rest of our lives, be states that refuse to treat gay and lesbian citizens equally.

You can look at national polls supporting marriage equality and say that gays and lesbians are now powerful enough to get what they want through the democratic process, but that's a very bird's-eye view of the landscape. Take a look at individual states, and you'll understand that in many of them, gay citizens are still viewed as second-class. Unless the Court acts to protect those Americans, this inequality could remain for generations to come.

Potato Chips and Lunch Meat, Up in the Front Seat

Not to get too deep into my undergraduate experiences, but this is exactly correct.

“Our potencies here are off the scale,” confirms longtime grower Todd Ellison, co-founder of Colorado Marijuana Marketing, a one-stop shop for weed-related entrepreneurs in search of marketing help. “I have a guy who taught me to grow, who has been growing since the ’60s. And this stuff blows him away.” And Ellison agrees. “I am almost 40. I’ve got three kids. You don’t want something that is going to lay you out and make you stupid all day.”

...

When my brother, Andrew Marris, got into the weed-analysis business, he expected that growers would be poring over readouts detailing the concentrations of the various psychoactive components, trying to create perfect, complex masterpieces. Instead, though, he found that many of his customers were obsessively focused on just one statistic: the percentage of THC.

This THC obsession has created a bimodal weed supply. There’s the carefully bred marijuana, with excellent flavor and aroma and pleasing suite of effects—which are ridiculously, hallucinatory, time-stutteringly strong for a casual user. Then there’s ditch weed or Mexican brick weed. Sure, you can smoke it around the campfire until the stars go out, but it smells bad and tastes bad, and nobody is going to bother testing it or perfecting it. What’s missing is lower-potency, high-quality dope.

Part of the issue is that, with the illegality of marijuana, procuring it has (until very recently in a very few places) been a criminal act that people don't like going through with any regularity. High-potency pot means that users can smoke less of it, less often, thus reducing the frequency of return visits. For sellers in places where the criminal aspect is about to disappear, steps that lead to more return visits will be welcome. Weaker strains that users can smoke more of will provide a big boost in that regard.

Today's less potent stuff looks worse, tastes worse and feels worse than the high-octane stuff, but the high-octane stuff is just too strong. Figuring out how to bridge that gap will be the key to a viable long-term market structure.

The Things That Keep State Rep. John Kavanagh Awake at Night

"Weird people," indeed:

A new bill introduced this week by Republican state representative John Kavanagh would make it a Class 1 misdemeanor to use a public restroom that does not correspond to the gender on one’s birth certificate. If a person is reported to be using the bathroom without the proper paperwork and matching genitals, it would be defined as “disorderly conduct” and the person could be fined $2,500 and spend six months in jail.

The new bill comes on the heels of anti-discriminatory legislation passed in Phoenix last month which extended basic protections to transgender people in housing, the workplace, and in places of public accommodation.

It’s the last bit regarding “public accommodation” that inspired Kavanagh to introduce his own bill. He told 12 News Phoenix: “The city of Phoenix has crafted a bill that allows people to define their sex by what they think in their head. If you’re a male, you don’t go into a female shower or locker room, or vice versa.”

He added that the Phoenix ordinance could also protect “weird” people who use the wrong bathroom on purpose: “It also raises the specter of people who want to go into those opposite sex facilities not because they’re transgender, but because they are weird.”

When I was in middle school, one of my classmates was a transsexual student who was biologically female but identified as male. Would anyone care to guess what happened the day he tried to use the "correct" girls' restroom when a substitute teacher who didn't realize the situation was on duty?

This is about shaming the trans community. Nothing more.

On backstabbers

Following Del. Sam "Zell" Arora's inexplicable will he/won't he over voting for gay marriage in Maryland (the bill didn't pass the House this year, and is on hold until next January), I had a few chores to do.

First, I had to rip the "Sam Arora for Delegate" sticker off my bumper.

Second, I had to post a public apology on AmericaBlog.com for having donated to his campaign.

Third, I had to check the list of donors to his campaign against the dozens of names I'd given him from my fundraising database, to make sure that my donors weren't going to hold it against me forever that I'd given their info to a cheap, cowardly liar.


Finally, I had to start looking for a candidate to run against him in three years, when he's up for re-election (sadly, we don't have a recall provision here in MD).

Treachery doesn't just hurt feelings: it takes up a lot of time, too.

"Hey, at least only CERTAIN people can legally murder abortion providers!"

Sometimes I make fun of state legislators for stupid stuff, like this and this. But this is simply evil:

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF SOUTH DAKOTA:
    Section 1. That § 22-16-34 be amended to read as follows:
    22-16-34. Homicide is justifiable if committed by any person while resisting any attempt to murder such person, or to harm the unborn child of such person in a manner and to a degree likely to result in the death of the unborn child, or to commit any felony upon him or her, or upon or in any dwelling house in which such person is.
    Section 2. That § 22-16-35 be amended to read as follows:
    22-16-35. Homicide is justifiable if committed by any person in the lawful defense of such person, or of his or her husband, wife, parent, child, master, mistress, or servant, or the unborn child of any such enumerated person, if there is reasonable ground to apprehend a design to commit a felony, or to do some great personal injury, and imminent danger of such design being accomplished.

This amendment is about one thing: allowing the family members of pregnant women to kill abortion providers.

Look at the law as it stands now, without the underlined sections. That language still allows people to protect others from assault and battery, as well as any other felony or personal injury. By definition, an unwanted medical procedure constitutes battery, so if someone attempts to force a woman to unwillingly abort a pregnancy, deadly force can already be used. What this amendment does is change the rules so that the risk of "some great personal injury" to the fetus, independent of the woman's consent, can justify using deadly force.

So assume a husband finds out that his wife is seeking an abortion. He watches her walk into a clinic the only clinic in the state, then sees the only doctor willing to perform abortions get out of his car in the parking lot. Since it's South Dakota, the husband has his loaded rifle in the car with him, which is perfectly legal. Guess what he can legally do under the proposed amendment?

This is a terrible law, and the state representative proposing it should have to answer some tough questions about how he can possibly think this is a good idea (assuming, of course, he isn't a cavalier endorser of murdering abortion providers, which he might well be). Cue the surprise, then:

Jensen did not return calls to his home or his office requesting comment on the bill...

UPDATE: Jensen has commented at last, saying that the restriction to "lawful defense" means that an attempt to use murder to prevent an abortion would be excluded from the law's protection. I'm not sure he's correct, though, if he is, what exactly does he intend his amendment to accomplish? A threat to an unborn child that can be stopped via deadly force is almost certainly going to also pose a threat to the pregnant woman carrying it, and, as I noted above, such threats are already covered by the justifiable homicide statute. So what does he think he's changing here? He offered this example to Greg Sargent:

"Say an ex-boyfriend who happens to be father of a baby doesn't want to pay child support for the next 18 years, and he beats on his ex-girfriend's abdomen in trying to abort her baby. If she did kill him, it would be justified. She is resisting an effort to murder her unborn child."

Is Jensen arguing that "beat[ing] on his ex-girlfriend's abdomen in trying to abort her baby" doesn't fall under the category of "felony" or "great personal injury"? His story doesn't add up.