How to tell that a protest was effective
So here’s a little secret: If you want to know just how impactful a protest has been, just read the criticisms when it ends. Now, we’re not saying that the Dakota Access Pipeline action is over. We suspect several more billions of dollars will be pulled from the banks invested in the pipeline, and who knows what future disruptions may occur. And we also suspect it will be a cold day in hell before another company mindlessly sites its pipeline across disputed treaty lands. But back to my first point.
Google DAPL and all you’ll see today are silly misinformed news stories about the trash the “hypocritical eco-protestors” left behind. Think about it. Thousands of people left their campsites and structures in place with the intent to return to them. Law enforcement threatened huge fines against anyone who dared bring in food and other support to those in the camp. People wanting to return to the camp were blocked and threatened with arrest. Those who stayed at the camp, enduring extreme winter conditions for the cause, were eventually forcefully removed under arrest. And now the minions of the oil industry are acting like these people just walked away and left their trash because they are hypocrites. Well I have an idea: Why doesn’t law enforcement just get the hell out of the way and let all those eco-hypocrites back in to be with their tents and firewood and cars and all that other stuff those writers who have never been anywhere near Standing Rock are referring to as “trash.” Repeating the spin from the racist local sheriff in Morton County, North Dakota, is hardly news reporting? This is the equivalent of pulling over a driver, pulling her out of her car and putting her in jail and then charging her with abandoning her car on the side of the road and then writing stories about how irresponsible women drivers are. It’s a little frightening in what it exposes.
GILDING THE TACO
If you think the gold- and diamond-encrusted doors at Donald Trump’s penthouse in New York are gaudy, boy do we have a rage-inducing creation to introduce to you…
Those looking for a way to piss away $25,000 can head to Grand Velas Los Cabos Resort in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, and feast upon a gilded taco. No, not that kind of gilded taco — you have to get those gilded tacos in Tijuana. No, we’re definitely talking about a taco like the kind you get at Taco Bell, except classy. AF.
This exquisite and completely useless specimen comes with a gold-flake-infused corn tortilla stuffed with Kobe beef, langoustine, caviar and black-truffle brie cheese. The salsa uses chili peppers, ultra-premium tequila and civet coffee, which is basically coffee cherries pooped out by a cat-like creature. Delicious.
But here’s what else you could do with $25,000:
• Purchase a two-bedroom home in many neighborhoods across America
• Pay off or significantly reduce student loans
• Put it in a retirement fund
• Feed a 700-person village in Haiti, like a 9-year-old Minnesota girl did last year
• Travel the world — and do volunteer work everywhere you go
• Remember that possession of that $25,000 alone puts you in the top 10 percent of the world’s income.
