Got Bullying?

"got milk?" was recently voted the #1 most influential tagline since 1948. Apparently, the California Milk Processor Board also has #1 Most Uptight Legal Department.

Barbara Holmes, who lives up in Talkeetna, AK, is the daughter of a regular Palousitics reader. Two years ago, Ms. Holmes, an artist, hand lettered ten articles of baby clothing with the words "got breastmilk?" and sold six of them at a crafts fair. She hasn't made any since.

Earlier this month, Holmes got a cease and desist letter from attorneys representing the California Milk Processor Board. The letter stated that Holmes was guilty of "trademark infringement" because "breastmilk" contains the word "milk" and consumers might get confused. She was to surrender all the T-shirts, onesies and equipment used to make them, as well as provide an accounting of any profits, or face a lawsuit.

Huh?

As Holmes stated in a Anchorage Daily News interview:

They say I'm going to confuse milk consumers. How can you get confused between a boob and a bottle of milk from the store? They're two different kind of jugs.

*LOL* Well put.

Obviously Holmes' work was a parody of the famous tagline, one that has been made many times by other people and groups, including PETA. Parodys are considered a "fair use" of copyrighted or trademarked material.

One would think that with the price of a gallon of milk at an all-time high that the California Milk Processor Board might find better ways to spend its PR capital than going after a mom in Alaska.

Ms. Holmes' attorney has a blog here. Some other blog coverage can be found here and here.

North to Alaska

A Palousitics reader writes: "After your late winter snow, we are getting your refugees here in Alaska." Notice the personalized license plate on the truck and the sticker on the back of the camper top.

Sarah Palin for President

Sandpoint native and University of Idaho graduate Sarah Palin, the Republican Governor of Alaska, has been mentioned as a possible VP candidate.

The thought goes that the young (44), snowmobiling, socially conservative, pro-life, former beauty queen would balance out McCain's stuffy, staid, grumpy old RINO image.

It turns out Palin may be too much of a maverick for Maverick.

Palin announced yesterday that Alaska will sue to challenge the recent listing of polar bears as a threatened species. Palin fears the listing will cripple Alaska's oil and gas industry, the bread and butter of the 49th State. She stated:

The listing of a currently healthy species based entirely on highly speculative and uncertain climate and ice modeling and equally uncertain and speculative modeling of possible impacts on a species would be unprecedented.

Predictably, the environmentalist wackos started an immediate ad hominem smear campaign as they do to all global warming heretics:

She's either grossly misinformed or intentionally misleading, and both are unbecoming," said Kassie Siegel of the Center for Biological Diversity. "Alaska deserves better."

Siegel said it was unconscionable for Palin to ignore overwhelming evidence of global warming's threat to sea ice, the polar bear's habitat.

"Even the Bush administration can't deny the reality of global warming," she said. "The governor is aligning herself and the state of Alaska with the most discredited, fringe, extreme viewpoints by denying this."

On a side note, Palin participated last October in the grand opening ceremony for a Wal-Mart Supercenter in her former hometown of Wasilla, where she said:

But we are hard working, very unpretentious, just good, salt of the earth people that live here and are working in this store.

Forget about VP. An elected official gutsy enough to publicly buck the Global Warming Hysteria Express AND support Wal-Mart deserves to be President.