Portland, OR Can Relax (Because It IS Staying Weird)

Howl with laughter as I did, reading how many ways Oregon tried to keep blacks out of the state. 

 - The Crack Emcee, February 14, 2014

“In Portland, Oregon, a group of African Americans are protesting a Trader Joe’s because they say it will attract too many white people. 

Which is ironic because Portland is the Native American word for too many white people.” 

 - Conan O'Brian, February 14, 2014

 

Trending

Black residents reject Trader Joe’s because it would attract too many white people

Oakland: the city that told Google to get lost

Too Much Cream In The Coffee = Never Drinking Again

Trader Joe's sells good shit - just not much blacks are familiar with:

   Trader Joe's drops black-neighborhood store

The Trader Joe's grocery-store chain has dropped a plan to open a new store in the heart of the city's historically African-American neighborhood after activists said the development would price black residents out of the area.

The Portland African American Leadership Forum sent the city a letter saying it would "remain opposed to any development in N/NE Portland that does not primarily benefit the Black community." It said the grocery-store development would "increase the desirability of the neighborhood," for "non-oppressed populations."

 Then what would they have? Nothing.

 And that would be a funky situation,…

 

"The Biggest Loser" Shouldn't Be About Weight Loss

So I've got more evidence that supplement salesman, Mitt Romney, really cares about us:

"And here it is: Dr. Offit gives a nod to 4 of the 51,000 supplements on the market: omega-3 fatty acids to prevent heart disease; calcium and vitamin D to prevent osteoporosis in postmenopausal women; and folic acid during pregnancy to prevent spinal-cord defects in newborns. As it happens, several months ago — presumably after the book went to press — an influential national task force found the evidence for calcium and vitamin D to be unconvincing. So that reduces the list of sensible supplements to two."

Two. TWO (2). Two - out of the 51,000 preparations Mitt Romney sells (I won't call them "medicines") and, with that ratio of bonafide-to-bogus, we're supposed to accept Romney doesn't know he's been ripping everybody off to finance his cult's ambitions? That he's a "good man"? Or that his B.S. cult somehow inoculated him against charges of deception, rather than being the source of much of it (supplements are an important business for Mormons)?

And how about all these "health" food stores, or the Whole Foods/Trader Joe's contingent? I repeat - two out of 51,000 - that sounds like a class action lawsuit to me, but I'm not a lawyer:

How much money have they taken YOU for? How many lives have they destroyed? 

And for what? Oh yeah:

Because they all wuv you so much.

And it's a good thing we have all these online lawyers, and law professors and whatnot, looking out for our interest, huh? They've done a smashing job to protect us through promoting Romney, right?

Without their "advice", we Republicans wouldn't be where we are today,....

 

Homeopathy & The Health Cults: You're All Wet

Orac responds to James Randi's challenge in the most plainspoken way possible - which isn't easy for a scientist - making us very happy:

I do like the spirit of the protest, in particular how it drives home a very simply message about homeopathy: There's nothing in it. It's water placed in sugar pills. That's it.

Well done, Sir! Also, it should be made clear (since we didn't say it in our previous post) Randi's $1 million offer is "a challenge to homeopathy manufacturers and retail pharmacies that sell homeopathy, in particular large national chains like Walgreens and CVS and large national chains that include pharmacies in their stores, such as Walmart and Target." And let's not leave out such blue state stalwarts as Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, and all those pseudo-NewAge mom-and-pop health food stores. They - and the entire country of "modern" France - should always be included in any homeopathic debunking.

Because everybody cares about your health - and their reputations for honesty - so damned much.

Slaves To Fashion (Leftists LIKE Being Slaves)

"A few weeks back I wrote a post about Trader Joe’s, arguing that the cult following of the brand was not just a lucky accident of capitalism, but rather was the result of a calculated marketing strategy deployed by a company intimately connected to its ideal consumer. I tend to think that this kind cult ideology in marketing is the most effective strategy to use in the current economic climate, and that the brands that figure out how they can use it might be among the last standing once the hard times of the Great Recession are behind us. Like Trader Joe’s, Lululemon Athletica is brand that has achieved outstanding success and the devotion of its customers in a relatively short period of time and with little to no mass advertising campaigns. Also like Trader Joe’s, they have done this by creating and promoting a cult around their brand, only to fit into this particular cult, you must wear — you guessed it — $98 stretch pants."

-- Anna, unwittingly pointing out we've become a nation of idiots - in the "most effective" way - as NewAge cultists satisfying their corporate masters, for ABDPBT Personal Finance.

Fighting Over The Same Organic Vegetables

"The who's-a-Nazi fight, which Nancy Pelosi started last week by claiming that ObamaCare opponents were 'carrying swastikas,' has taken an interesting turn. Pelosi's defense, such as it was, was that she meant to criticize ObamaCare opponents who likened the president's plan to Nazism--which would have been a valid criticism had Pelosi made it clearly and not in a way that insinuated the opponents were Nazis.

NewsBusters.org, a Web site of the conservative Media Research Center, notes that CNN, NBC and MSNBC have all shown 'a poster of President Obama--on whose face a Hitler mustache has been Photo Shopped--bearing the caption "I've Changed."' to illustrate the supposed extremism of ObamaCare critics:

But there's a problem with this media narrative.

For written at the poster's bottom is the web address 'LaRouchePAC.com,' the political action committee website for Communist and perpetual Presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche.

We're not sure that describing LaRouche as a "communist" is fair to communists; our sense is that his ideology is eclectically extreme and nutty, drawing elements from left, right and directions we haven't heard of."

-- James Taranto, on everyone's favorite political cultist (well, mine anyway: he's loo-ny) who's followers can be found in front of most Trader Joe's and Whole Foods outlets - yes, like the Democrats, he knows where his natural constituency can be found - which is why he's rarely mentioned in The Wall Street Journal.

Nailed It: The (Unauthorized) Trader Joe's Song

You Get The Wood - I'll Light The Fire

"If you eat food that is 'chemical free' (whatever that means), 'macrobiotic' (ditto) and designed to 'detoxify', you will live forever, surely? Sadly not. The harsh truth,...will dismay Britain's army of zen exercisers,...we don't want to hear that it has often been decided before we were even born when, and how, we will go into that long dark night.

Probably the best advice if you want to live a long healthy life is to choose your parents carefully. Your genes, as much as your diet or your lifestyle, dictate your health to a perhaps depressing degree.

We used to persecute witches. Perhaps we should start to do so again — not harmless old women with cats this time, but the seedy sellers of snake oil and hype promising us health and happiness in a bottle who proliferate in our society.

Modern witchcraft has its own vocabulary, a set of runic symbols to describe its spells — terms like 'toxin', 'chemical free', 'biofields' and the all pervasive 'natural' which should alert the sensible and skeptical that they are about to be had."

- Michael Hanlon, of The Daily Mail, commenting on the group, Sense About Science, which found the health, organic, "all natural", and scientific claims of most over-the-counter products are completely bogus. The claims weren't even understandable, or believable, to the people that make them. Only the gullible Trader Joes/Whole Foods/Health Food public was sucking them up to "feel good" about their purchases. Giving money to liars - and raising the price of food for the poor - for their own selfishness.

Of course, TMR is in favor of burning witches, snake oil salesmen, and all other manifestations of the NewAge. The only debatable item at TMR is how,...