Because nothing says "I am a reasonable human being" like bringing back the age-old tradition of lynching, people are using empty chairs as a way to protest against Barack Obama.

Just to reiterate: Lynching chairs that are meant to symbolize a black man.

What the f—k.

From Gawker:

Katherine Haenschen, the concerned citizen who brought this controversial metaphor to the public's attention, says she reached out to the homeowner, Bud Johnson, to complain, but he was less than forthcoming about addressing her grievances.

"I don't really give a damn whether it disturbs you or not," Johnson reportedly told Haenschen. "You can take [your concerns] and go straight to hell and take Obama with you. I don't give a shit. If you don't like it, don't come down my street."

Well, at least he's passionate. And unfortunately, he's not alone. A second story was recently posted, indicating a similar chair lynching — this one with a sign attached to it that read "Nobama."

Sigh.

Tucson City Councilman Steve Kozachik reacts to the recent announcement from TGP manager Tom Taylor that the park was going all-male and ceasing anabolic steroid shots into female dogs with a call for support for the safety of the dogs. Perhaps recent coverage on the issue by Weekly World Central's Tim Vanderpool has helped the park and area officials realize something has to give.

Steve K's statement:

On Monday, September 17th, Tom Taylor, General Manager of Tucson Greyhound Park announced his intention to slowly turn the track into an all-male dog racing venue. He further committed to ceasing the administration of anabolic steroids into the female dogs. While those are important first steps in transforming the track from how it has historically operated, it also raises concerns.

What is paramount is the safety of the dogs. A very specific plan must be identified by Mr. Taylor by which the females are segregated as they are taken off from steroids. These are animals that have been given male hormones over time with the expressed intent of suppressing estrus. As soon as that is stopped, they will come into heat. The potential for aggressive behavior and injury in the kennels if the dogs are not separated by sex prior to cessation of the injections is real and predictable.

Track management and ownership must identify a clear path to either segregating the animals prior to taking them off from the hormones, or identifying an acceptable adoption alternative that will get the dogs into loving homes. We all recall the disappearance of 140 greyhounds from the track back in 2005-2006. The current visibility of the track and its issues with respect to steroids, licensing and the track racing conditions is a safeguard against a repeat of that occurrence.

I have confirmed, and Mr. Taylor has been advised that Greyhound Protection League has offered to work with TGP kennel operators to organize moving the female and/or retired male greyhounds to adoption groups. Greyhound Protection League successfully implemented such a rescue plan in Guam back in 2006. That program involved nearly 200 animals. The League has also offered to share in the expenses of transporting the dogs to adoption groups. To that end, they have already begun contacting over 40 Western States adoption groups and other interested parties.

Mr. Taylor and track ownership have maintained that the safety and health of the animals is their primary concern. They now have an opportunity to act affirmatively, either through segregation and cessation of injections under the close care of veterinarians, by accepting the offer of Greyhound Protection League and immediately beginning the process of adopting out the dogs in a very public and transparent manner, or some combination of the two.

The community is watching with great interest in how TGP responds.

If you didn't read the Arizona Daily Star yesterday (and who would blame you?), you might have missed this exchange of words between CD2 candidates Ron Barber and Martha McSally — in particular, this bit from Barber:

“The Democratic side of the House is a rainbow of colors and ethnicities and religious beliefs,” he said. “Quite frankly, on the other side, it’s essentially a bunch of white guys.”

The irony there is that his opponent, McSally, is a woman.

Of course, this quote gave area conservatives (such as conservative talk-show host Jon Justice) a case of the howling fantods.

But honestly, Barber isn't incorrect. Let's look at the figures, using the Congressional Research Service's "Membership of the 112th Congress: A Profile,"published August 1, as a guide:

As a whole, Congress has 456 Caucasian members; 43 African-Americans; 12 Asian-Americans; 31 Hispanics/Latinos; and one Native American (with a few multi-ethnic members being counted multiple ethnic groups). Of those ethnic minorities, 75 are Democrats, while 13 are Republicans.

As far as gender representation is concerned, 93 women serve in the U.S. Congress. Of those women, 74 are Democrats, 29 are Republicans.

Of the 287 Republicans in Congress, there are 29 women, and 13 ethnic minorities. And of the 241 Democrats, there are 74 women and 75 are ethnic minorities.

So, while both parties tend to lean toward white males of the Baby Boomer generation, it's safe to say that Ron Barber isn't wrong when he says that the Republican party in Congress is "essentially a bunch of white guys."

It's a dumb way to put it, yeah — but he's still not wrong.

• Metropolitan Tucson Convention & Visitors Bureau

Check out this excellent photo from the Metropolitan Tucson Convention & Visitors Bureau's Facebook page. This is of final flight of Space Shuttle Endeavour, piggy-backing atop a 747 on its way to Edwards Air Force Base, taken today as it cruised overhead.

Awesome.

UPDATE: Tucson Weekly reader Scott MacDonald kindly shared the below photo with us, and it's pretty damn great as well. Thanks, Scott!

• Scott MacDonald

Americans for Safe Access, a medical marijuana advocacy group, is calling for rallies in 15 cities and eight states on Thursday to protest Department of Justice attacks on the MMJ industry, ASA said Wednesday.

Protesters will gather at Obama's Tucson office, 4639 E. 1st Street, at 5 p.m. today to presumably wave signs, shout and generally chastise the Choomer in Chief for shutting down some very respectable and successful businesses in MMJ states in recent years. Rallies are also planned for Phoenix, Denver, Seattle, San Diego, Oakland and Washington, D.C.

"Over the past three years, the DOJ has conducted more than 200 SWAT-style federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) raids on legitimate medical marijuana businesses in at least 6 states - at twice the rate under the Bush Administration - and indicted more than 70 related to medical marijuana," the ASA said in a news release.

So bring a sign to wave and tell the prez what you think. Mr. Smith plans to attend. See you there.

This week our heroes discuss Michael Avon Oeming's The Victories, which Eric describes as "a cookie full of shards of glass".

The question is, are you? The five-day event put on next week by the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona is probably the only time my finely honed cheapskate skills will ever be openly celebrated, so I'm all over it like a spice packet over Ramen noodles.

And, not to be rude, but if you're one of the people who still believes people on food stamps - now called SNAP benefits - are living it up, here's your chance to prove yourself wrong. $20 bucks a week. Just you and your stomach. Are you ready to rumble?

I'm registered. You can do the same over here. My initial meal plan leans heavily on rice noodles, cheap boxes of macaroni, potatoes and, yes, I will be making sushi mid-week (nori is cheap as hell and nutritious - hallelujah!). I might even toss in a 22-ounce can of cheap beer to cap off the week. It's been a while since I had a Steel Reserve anyway.

Working for the City of Tucson or Pima County does not absolve one of the law, seven current or former government employees have found out this week.

Five corrections officers from the Pima County Jail were arrested by Tucson police Wednesday — and booked into their own jail, mind you — on various aggravated assault charges after they allegedly viciously beating and kicking three adults and a juvenile outside the Buffet Bar on 9th Street.

The incident happened about 2 a.m. Wednesday, and according to police began when a man trying to unlock his bike in front of the Buffet was jumped by five men. After getting a friend from inside the bar to come help him retrieve the bike the same five men attacked those two until bar employees came out to break up the fight.

A few minutes later, though, the suspects returned and started kicking one of the victims while on the ground, police said. A resident from the area and his 17-year-old son left their house and went to the scene to try and break it up but instead both were attacked by one of the alleged assailants, police said.

None of the suspects were at the scene when police arrived, but later Wednesday police managed to arrest John Hyatt, 30; Steven Haglund, 26; Anthony Bonfiglio, 25; Matthew Garcia, 24; and Angel Castaneda, 23.

UPDATE: Haglund and Castaneda were fired Thursday by the Pima County Sheriff's Department, while 10 others — the other three arrestees and five more corrections officers who were apparently at the bar during the incident — have been put on administrative leave.

Earlier this week it was the City of Tucson's employees (or former employees, rather) who came afoul of the law.

Two recently fired city transportation workers were indicted Monday on felony counts of fraud, theft and criminal enterprise stemming from their alleged misuse of city equipment to do private jobs. Kurt Hough, a former administrator for the streets division, and Bobby Palomarez, a former streets supervisor, are scheduled to be arraigned next week in Pima County Superior Court.

Hough and Palomarez were among five transportation employees who resigned or were fired earlier this month after a nearly year-long investigation by the city found numerous times when the employees did unauthorized work, including building a retaining wall for an electrician's facility and paving the roads leading into a cemetery.

• NASA/Robert Markowitz

Keep your eyes peeled for the Space Shuttle Endeavour: It will be passing over Tucson on its way to retirement in sunny California. ABC News reports:

The space shuttle Endeavour is on a 2,700 mile cross-country trip — so you had to wonder if it couldn’t make one small detour. Especially at the request of former astronaut Mark Kelly, who commanded Endeavour’s last mission before it was retired?

Kelly’s wife, former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, was struggling to recover from an attempted assassination in Tucson early last year, and his mission to the International Space Station conflicted with her recovery, so his decision to command it was bittersweet, but he had been training for so long, and had faith in the medical team treating his wife.

Endeavour is flying a victory lap across the South, taking off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, dropping from 14,000 feet to 1,500 to circle historic locations in space shuttle history. The orbiter, on top of its 747 carrier plane, circled over Houston and the Johnson Space Center today. Endeavour will overnight in Houston, then head to El Paso, where it will refuel, then arrive in Los Angeles late in the week. It is to go on permanent display at the California Science Center.

Mark Kelly’s request for Endeavour to make a detour and fly over Tucson, so Giffords could see it one last time, wouldn’t take it that far out of the way, especially when the idea was for it to be seen anyhow.

I made yet another trip to Casa Video and rented a copy of American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein. This is a name I had heard before, but had little knowledge about the controversy surrounding it. This documentary filled those holes.

Finkelstein is seen as either the biggest asshole or the bravest intellectual to ever speak against violence. Here’s a little background history, all of which I learned from the documentary:
Both his parents are Holocaust survivors and fought in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. After having seen the atrocities people are capable of committing against each other, Finkelstein’s mother became an extreme advocate against violence. She passed along these beliefs to Finkelstein and his two siblings.

During parts of the documentary, filmmakers followed Finkelstein as he promoted his book, The Holocaust Industry, around Europe. This is where it starts to get uncomfortable. During a press conference in Berlin, Germany—the setting makes this even more uncomfortable—he called the Holocaust an “extortion racket.” He goes on to say that Jews are using the Holocaust to victimize themselves and justify their violence against the Palestinians. Yes, he went there. And this is why Finkelstein is known as a “self-hating Jew.”

Oddly enough, the more I watched the documentary, the more I began to see him as an advocate against violence, not a self-hating Jew. Finkelstein is trying to defend what his mother taught him as a child: violence is never justified. He may have taken her message to an extreme. A lot of people think he should not use the Holocaust in his anti-violence crusade. However, he does have a point. Does every nation that is oppressed by another have the right to turn around and oppress their neighbor? I don't think so and Finkelstein doesn't think so. But his point of view has certainly put a neon-colored target on his forehead. Those who oppose him want his head, bad.

Aside from the controversy, this was an amazing documentary. It captured what Finkelstein is like backstage, before speaking in front of thousands of people, most of whom probably want to kill him and piss on the remains. Whether you’re into debates or not or whether you agree or disagree with him, it doesn’t hurt to rent a copy of this and get a little more knowledge on who he is and why the hell he’s causing such a ruckus.