ET Williams

The Doctor of Common Sense

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Meat and Cheese Cut from School Menus to Fight Global Warming

 

Right. Global warming, my ass.

Oakland schools partnered with the environmental group Friends of the Earth (FOE) to fight global warming by making student lunches climate-friendly.

FOE gave kids a lunch menu designed to eliminate foods it says are “unsustainable for our planet.” The new menu features far less meat and more plant-based food. Any meat or cheese the school did use came from “pastured, organic dairy cows.” The student’s lunch menu went from beef hot dogs and pepperoni pizza to vegan stir fry tofu and vegan tostadas. The new FOE-approved menu served meat and cheese-less frequently and reduced the portion sizes.

“This is a landmark moment for school food,” Jennifer LeBarre, head of nutrition services for Oakland Unified School District, said in a FOE press statement. “We were so excited to see how the data showed that we could reduce our carbon and water footprint by serving healthy, delicious food –– like the vegetarian tostadas with fresh made in-house salsa, that kids absolutely love –– all while saving money.”

The district and FOE claimed the lunch program was healthier than before, but only on the basis that food from plants is typically healthier than meat. The study justifies its health claims by stating average poultry consumption fell. FOE did not undertake an actual study into whether or not the lunches improved student health.

FOE says total carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the school lunch program declined by 14 percent. The total change is equivalent to taking roughly 127 cars off the road for a year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) official calculator. The activists also claim lunch program costs fell 1 percent.

FOE says it partnered with the school to provide a “roadmap for change” to encourage other schools to fight global warming via student lunches. The green group hopes Oakland’s example will encourage numerous other school districts to switch to a similar menu.

If every school district in the U.S. followed Oakland, the reduced CO2 emissions would be equal to removing 150,000 cars from the roads, according to FOE.

“While our study focused on school food, it’s clear that meat and cheese reduction is a powerful climate mitigation strategy for all restaurants and institutions that want to reduce their environmental impact,” Kari Hamerschlag, FOE’s deputy director of food and technology, said in a press statement. “We hope this report inspires more public institutions to serve less and better meat and more plant-based foods as a cost effective way to achieve both environmental and public health goals.”

Both the school district and the green group claim the meals are healthier as well, but research into similar programs has a poor track record of making such determinations.

Virginia Tech researchers tracked financially vulnerable kids who got free school meals from kindergarten to eighth grade and found those feasting on government meals were more likely to become overweight. Children with the highest chance of being overweight or obese consumed one-third to one-half of their daily meals at school, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture study.

 

California Schools Cut Meat, Cheese From Lunches To Fight Global Warming

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Student Suspended For Filming Teacher Saying Trump’s Election Was ‘An Act of Terrorism’

OCC student suspended after filming teacher saying Trump’s election was ‘an act of terrorism’

Suspended for resisting brainwashing.

COSTA MESA – An Orange Coast College student who secretly videotaped his instructor making anti-Trump statements was suspended from school and told to write a letter of apology as well as a three-page essay about the incident.

The college suspended Caleb O’Neil for the current semester and the summer term, saying he violated a Coast Community College District policy prohibiting recording someone on district property without that person’s consent.

“It is my hope that this experience will lead you to truly think through your actions and the consequences of those actions when making decisions in the future,” Victoria Lugo, interim dean of students, wrote in a Feb. 9 letter to O’Neil, whose video clips of instructor Olga Perez Stable Cox in December went viral.

William Becker, an attorney representing O’Neil, said the sanctions are excessive and the student’s legal rights have been violated. O’Neil, 19, plans to appeal and can continue to attend classes during that process, Becker said.

“This is an attack by leftists in academia to protect the expressive rights of their radical instructors at the expense of the expressive rights of conservative students on campus,” said Becker, president of Freedom X, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving religious and conservative freedom of expression.

O’Neil, who campaigned for Trump, couldn’t be reached for comment on Tuesday.

Orange Coast College President Dennis Harkins had previously said his administration would investigate whether Cox’s comments were appropriate and within the context of what she teaches. Whether that has concluded is unclear. College spokesman Doug Bennett said this week that the school could not comment on personnel manners, and he declined to discuss investigations involving students, citing their privacy.

Three other students, all leaders with the school’s College Republicans, which posted the video clips, received letters saying there was insufficient evidence to proceed against them, said Joshua Recalde-Martinez, one of the three.

“I’m disgusted that they imposed such excessive sanctions against (O’Neil), especially when the student was just trying to document a case where he personally felt targeted by a faculty member and his student rights were violated,” said Recalde-Martinez, who founded the OCC College Republicans and served as its president until recent weeks.

To be allowed back in school, the letter says, O’Neil’s essay is to be three pages and double-spaced and must discuss why he videotaped the professor. Also, the essay is to cover his “thoughts and analysis” on why he decided to share the videos, what he thought would happen to Cox and “the impact of the video going ‘viral’ and the ensuing damage to Orange Coast College students, faculty and staff.”

O’Neil videotaped Cox as she called the election of Donald Trump “an act of terrorism” and declared that those “leading the assault are among us.”

O’Neil took the video to leaders from the school’s College Republicans, who, joined by attorney Shawn Steel, complained to the campus administration. A week later, saying they were frustrated that the administration had not acted on their concerns of a teacher using her classroom as a bully pulpit, the campus Republicans posted video clips online, where they quickly became national news.

The attention led Cox, 66, an instructor at the school for 42 years, to temporarily leave her home following an onslaught of angry, sometimes threatening mail.

In an interview with the Register last month, Cox said her comments to students – made in all of her three human sexuality classes – were meant to comfort those who were upset about the election of Trump and offer resources should students feel discriminated against.

As a gay Latina, Cox said she was frightened by Trump’s election.

Rob Schneiderman, president of the union that represents the district’s faculty, said he is satisfied that “there were some consequences and someone is being held responsible.”

Although, he added, “in this type of situation, nobody wins.”

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/college-744067-neil-cox.html

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Traitor Flynn Resigns

Traitor needs to be investigated damit!

White House: Trump asked Flynn to resign over eroding trust

President Trump asked Michael Flynn to resign as national security adviser because of eroding trust, the White House said Tuesday.

In a briefing dominated by questions about Flynn, White House press secretary Sean Spicer repeatedly said that the former national security adviser had done nothing wrong in talking to counterparts around the world, including from Russia.

He said Trump had fired Flynn not because of those conversations, but because Trump felt that his trust in Flynn had “eroded.”

“There is not a legal issue but a trust issue,” Spicer said.

In his own resignation letter on Monday, Flynn apologized for giving an inaccurate assessment of his conversation with Russia’s ambassador to the United States to Vice President-elect Mike Pence.

Flynn’s conversation with Pence led the vice president to go on television and say that Flynn had not discussed the issue of sanctions on Russia with the ambassador.

But top officials with the FBI and other intelligence agencies had information that Flynn had discussed sanctions with Russia. They brought that information to the White House.

The news that Flynn had misled Pence about his conversations appeared to doom Pence in the White House.But Democrats and some Republicans say a much broader investigation is now necessary to look into Flynn’s contacts with Russia, which has been accused of interfering the U.S. presidential election to hurt Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Democrats are also raising questions about why the White House did not immediately remove Flynn from office after first learning he had misled Pence and had discussed sanctions with Russia.

Spicer at times appeared to be battling against those calls on Tuesday as he repeatedly said Flynn had not done anything wrong in holding his conversations with officials from Russia and other countries before Trump’s inauguration.

Spicer said former acting attorney general Sally Yates had warned White House Counsel Don McGahn about the possible discrepancies in Flynn’s story in January and that McGahn briefed the president and his aides about the situation.

On Friday, Trump told reporters that he was unaware of The Washington Post’s story asserting that Flynn had in fact discussed those sanctions with the ambassador.

“What he was asked specifically was if he was aware of The Washington Post story. he hadnt’ seen that at the time. Of course he was aware of the situation,” Spicer said when asked about that point a few minutes later.

Earlier Tuesday, Trump senior counselor Kellyanne Conway implied Flynn’s decision to resign was his.

“Mike Flynn had decided it was best to resign,” she said in an interview with NBC’s “Today” show. “He knew he had become a lighting rod and he made that decision.”

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/319475-trump-asked-flynn-to-resign

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Goat Humping Pedophiles Ban Valentine’s Day, “Smooching is Terrorism”

Valentine’s Day gets chilly reception in parts of Asia

 

This goat is safe from GFPs on Valentine’s Day

A Pakistani court has banned public celebrations of Valentine’s Day in the capital Islamabad while Indonesian students plan to spurn the event, as the festival of love gets a chilly reception in parts of Asia.

Lonely hearts looking for romance in Australia, Malaysia and Singapore were warned to beware of the growth in online love scams, while grumpy protesters in Japan rallied in recent days for an end to public smooching.

Monday’s decision by the Islamabad high court was the latest attempt by authorities in the conservative Muslim country to outlaw a celebration seen by many as a vulgar and indecent Western import.

The annual occasion is increasingly popular among young Pakistanis, many of whom seize the chance to honour romance by giving cards, chocolates and gifts to their sweethearts.

The court issued the order after a petitioner declared love was being used as a “cover” to spread “immorality, nudity and indecency… which is against our rich traditions and values”.

The ruling, seen by AFP and greeted with approval by Islamist parties, also called for the electronic and print media to stop promoting Valentine’s Day.

Meanwhile in Muslim-majority Indonesia, a group of school students in the city of Surabaya denounced the romantic day as a Western celebration that encourages casual sex and staged a protest.

“Say no to Valentine!” chanted the students, who were aged between 13 and 15 and included many girls wearing headscarves.

“This protest was organised as we have seen on television that Valentine’s Day tends to be associated with free sex,” said Pandu Satria, organiser of the demonstration. “That makes us afraid.”

Several cities across the country also banned people from celebrating.

In Malaysia, where Islam is also the dominant religion, a group called The National Muslim Youth Association urged females to avoid using emoticons and an excessive amount of fragrance in a pre-Valentine’s Day message.

– ‘Smooching is terrorism!’ –

Days earlier in Japan, a group of marxist protesters known as “Kakuhido”, or the Revolutionary Alliance of Men that Women find Unattractive, also called for an end to public displays of love, claiming it hurts their feelings.

“Our aim is to crush this love capitalism,” the group’s public relations chief Takayuki Akimoto told AFP.

“People like us who don’t seek value in love are being oppressed by society,” he added. “It’s a conspiracy by people who think unattractive guys are inferior, or losers — like cuddling in public, it makes us feel bad. It’s unforgivable.”

Authorities in Malaysia, Australia and Singapore also warned of a growth in online scams cheating lonely people out of their savings.

Romance scams cost Australians more money than any other form of cheating, with those aged over 45 more likely to be stung, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said.

“Romance scammers are getting increasingly manipulative so if you are going online this Valentine’s Day to look for love, it’s absolutely vital that you’re able to recognise the warning signs,” ACCC deputy chair Delia Rickard said in a statement.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/afp/article-4219854/Pakistan-high-court-bans-Valentines-Day.html

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Californians Flee From Broken Lake Oroville Dam

California crews rush to fix dam before new storms hit

Stormwaters receded on Monday behind the nation’s tallest dam, in Northern California, as engineers raced to drain the rain-swollen reservoir and shore up a crumbling overflow channel before new storms sweep the region later this week.

Authorities said they had averted the immediate danger of a catastrophic failure – one capable of unleashing a wall of water three stories tall on towns below.

But evacuation orders for some 188,000 residents remained in effect indefinitely, Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said at a midday news conference. The risk to those living in the Feather River valley below the Lake Oroville Dam, 65 miles (105 km) north of Sacramento, was still being reviewed, he said.

“We need to have time to make sure that before we allow people back into those areas it is safe to do so,” Honea said.

Residents below the dam were abruptly ordered from their homes on Sunday when an emergency spillway that acts as an automatic overflow channel appeared on the brink of collapse from severe erosion during what is on track to be Northern California’s wettest winter on record after years of drought.

Alfred Ybarra had gone down to the Feather River with his children on Sunday to watch the swollen waters.

“Within minutes the water was up to the tires on my car,” Ybarra said. “I told my kids, ‘You have to pray. It’s the only thing that you can do.”

Asked whether he thought officials had overreacted, Ybarra responded, “Absolutely not.”

The main spillway, a separate channel, is also damaged because part of its concrete lining fell apart last week. Both spillways are to the side of the dam itself, which has not been compromised, engineers said.

The situation grew less dire later on Sunday as water levels dropped, leaving the weakened unpaved emergency spillway largely intact. By Monday, the level of the lake fell enough so that water was no longer pouring over the hill.

Erosion caused by the hole in the side of the main spillway appeared to have abated by Monday, and it was back to more or less normal operations, officials said.

The aim is to lower the reservoir’s overall water level by 50 feet – and prevent further spillover down the emergency hillside channel – before more rain arrives in the coming days and snow-melt runoff begins in the spring, acting state water resources director Bill Croyle told reporters on Monday. He said he hoped to achieve that goal within two weeks.

Another storm was forecast to arrive as early as Wednesday or Thursday, though officials said they expected much of that precipitation to fall as snow rather than rain.

REPAIRS AND DRAINAGE

On Monday afternoon crews began dropping large bags filled with rocks into a gap at the top of the emergency spillway in a bid to rebuild the eroded hillside.

Meanwhile, water could be seen gushing from the main concrete spillway as dam operators for the California Department of Water Resources continued controlled releases through the paved chute into channels that route the water away from populated areas.

The dam’s hydropower release valves also have been shut down to prevent damage from sediment and debris carried by heavy rains.

The earth-filled dam lies just upstream and east of Oroville, a town of about 16,000 people. At 770 feet (230 meters) high, the structure, built between 1962 and 1968, is the tallest U.S. dam, exceeding the Hoover Dam by more than 40 feet (12 meters).

Butte County and environmental groups have fought against a re-licensing of the dam for more than a decade, legal documents show.

Conservation groups Friends of the River and the Sierra Club argued in 2005 that the dam’s emergency spillway should be better fortified and risked severe erosion when water levels rose.

The Federal Emergency Regulatory Commission, which licenses the dam, denied this, stating in a 2006 memo that “in the rare event of a discharge, the emergency spillway would perform as designed.”

Butte County, meanwhile, argued that it had been left to police the dam without help from the state to offset costs.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-california-dam-idUSKBN15S04W

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Christian Gets Big Payoff After Religious Discrimination

Big payday after state fires pastor for Christian beliefs

Stood up for the Lord and his freedoms

The state of Georgia has agreed to pay $225,000 to settle a complaint that it illegally discriminated against a lay pastor who was fired by the state’s Department of Public Health, apparently because of the content of his sermons.

The announcement comes from First Liberty Institute, which represented Eric Walsh, M.D.

“I am grateful this trial has finally ended,” Walsh, an experienced health department administrator, said in a statement released through his lawyers. “It’s been a long, difficult journey, but it’s worth it to have my name cleared and to ensure that all Georgia government employees know they have religious liberty.”

Jeremy Dys, senior counsel for First Liberty, said: “This is a clear and resounding victory for religious freedom. We always knew the law was on our side, so we are pleased the state of Georgia agreed to settle this case and clear Dr. Walsh’s good name.”

Walsh sued after the state Department of Public Health dismissed him from his position when it discovered he was a lay pastor and had delivered sermons to his church during his off-duty time.

He had accepted, in 2014, the job as district health director with the DPH.

First Liberty said that a week later, a DPH official asked him to submit copies of sermons he had previously preached as a lay minister with the Seventh-day Adventist Church, and the next day he was fired.

“No one should be fired for simply expressing his religious beliefs,” Dys said.

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WND reported late in 2016 that the state was attempting several maneuvers to defeat the religious discrimination claim.

At the time, it was legally demanding his sermons and related notes, among other documents, and Walsh was refusing to provide them.

It was shortly after Walsh’s hiring that Lee Rudd, the state agency’s human resources director, assigned staff members to listen to the YouTube recordings of Walsh’s sermons.

It took only 48 hours for the state to fire him after hearing his message.

At that point, lawyers with First Liberty Institute joined forces with the Atlanta legal team of Parks, Chesin & Walbert to file a federal lawsuit against the state agency.

The state delivered a “Request for Production of Documents” that demanded once again, among a flood of other paperwork, copies of his sermon notes and transcripts, which Dys called an overreach.

Walsh in a statement released by his lawyers: “No government has the right to require a pastor to turn over his sermons. I cannot and will not give up my sermons unless I am forced to do so.”

State officials previously have declined to comment on the case.

The original state investigation of Walsh’s sermons apparently was sparked by one complaint from an official with a county Democratic Party who is a “gay activist.”

State officials also joked about informing Walsh of his firing.

The telephone call was between Dr. Patrick O’Neal, an agency official, and Kate Pfirman, an agency financial officer. The call was captured on an answering machine, which also caught their conversation after they thought they had hung up.

Pfirman said: “And I’m gonna be very – I’m gonna try to come off as very cold, because I don’t want to say very much. If I try to make it warm – I’ve thought that through, it’s gonna just not – there’s no warm way to say it anyway.”

Then there was laughter from both parties.

O’Neal then said to inform Walsh, “You’re out,” and there was another round of laughter.

“It’s very funny,” Pfirman said.
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2017/02/big-pay-day-after-state-fires-pastor-for-christian-beliefs/#EVL53riCwuQAKBpx.99