NC Senator Would Not Wash His Hands Of The Matter

When Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) offered his opinion that food workers at public accommodations like restaurants should be allowed to opt out of the legal requirement that they must wash their hands, I thought he was joking, perhaps satirizing the anti-vaxxers. I should have known better.

As Jen Hayden at Kos points out, quoting the CDC:

The spread of germs from the hands of food workers to food is an important cause of foodborne illness outbreaks in restaurants. It accounts for 89% of outbreaks in which food was contaminated by food workers. Proper handwashing can reduce germs on workers’ hands and the spread of germs from hands to food and from food to other people. [Bolds mine. - SB]

In other words, a food worker's handwashing is all that stands between you and food poisoning.

But in these days of utter Republican insanity, the whole GOP seems as dependent on magic as the wizards at Unseen University, with results no better than many of those wizards achieve. Basic precautions known to health workers for at least two or three centuries are both necessary and sufficient to prevent devastating outbreaks of some kinds of disease. People who believe they have some sort of personal individual right to ignore the laws establishing those precautions in public accommodations like restaurants are themselves a danger to society. People who are both stupid and hostile make me sick: their liberties must end with their endangerment of the community's health.

US DoE To Allow Radioactive Waste From A-Bomb Making To Be Recycled Into Your... Spoons?

From Consortium News (one among many sources):

...

In something of a stealth maneuver during the 2012 holiday season, the U.S. Department of Energy set about to give every American a little more radiation exposure, and for some a lot, by allowing manufacturers to use radioactive metals in their consumer products – such as zippers, spoons, jewelry, belt buckles, toys, pots, pans, furnishings, bicycles, jungle gyms, medical implants, or any other metal or partly-metal product.

...

New slogan: Put some extra rads in your morning cereal! This has to be the stupidest thing I've heard proposed implemented in a long time. Who knows; maybe it's safe to expose literally everyone including kids to very low levels of radiation continuously and indefinitely... but why take that chance? The crazy, it burns...

Personhood And Paul Ryan

You all know about the various "personhood" laws passed or advanced in Virginia, Oklahoma, Colorado, Nevada and Missouri. You also know about states which have abortion-related requirements intended to be so burdensome as to discourage women from having one: for example, in Texas, there's a forced transvaginal ultrasound ("hey, he said 'vagina'!") and a requirement of "informed consent" (informed of a series of blatant falsehoods, of course) for a woman seeking an abortion.

Of course there's a proposed national "personhood" law. Just as a reminder, Roe v. Wade was ruled on a constitutional basis; the Supreme Court proclaimed the right of a woman to control her own body regarding matters as serious as childbirth as a constitutional right... it's not merely a federal law that can be arbitrarily changed by a GOP-dominated Congress. (Of course, later Supreme Courts have chipped away at the right, but they have not overturned it.)

So... who in Congress is behind the national "personhood" movement, favoring a federal "personhood" law or amendment? Watch Rachel Maddow; she'll tell you. Here's a hint: he not only opposes all abortion, even to save a woman's life... he also opposes all forms of contraception.

Who could that be? what kind of low‑life scum could hate women that much?

Products From China That Will Kill You... Or Make You A Cannibal

ellroon of Rants from the Rookery continues her list of dangerous products imported from China, a list that seems always to grow longer, never shorter. At some point, you have to doubt the intent of the Chinese government... and the American government... to rectify the situation. Considering the clearly inadequate inspection of imported Chinese products, I suppose we have to live with poisonous pet food, honey containing heavy metals, pills that contain human remains, ... the list goes on and on; read it yourself. You may not be quite so quick to buy things labeled "Made in China" when you see the pattern.