City Paper was on the scene to interview the protesters.

Single Payer Action promised yesterday to picket Whole Foods stores in New York, Austin, and D.C., and today, picketing they are: Neatly, sweetly, and sweatily, making the lunch scene at 1440 P St. NW the most bucolic  in the history of organic-food-store protests.

Holding up a piece of orange poster board three times as wide as she is that reads "Boycott Whole Foods," Carol Kramer is just waiting for Whole Foods CEO John Mackey to take it all back so that she can resume being a Whole Foods customer.

When asked if she misses the salad bar, Kramer makes a delighted face and then winces.

"I miss being in there," she says, nodding towards the door.

But single payer, or at least a public option, is more important to her than the salad bar, which she will not visit despite having driven all the way from Fredericksburg, Va.

Many of the picketers are former Whole Foods customers. And for a few of them, boycotting Mackey's stores has been a long time coming.

Adrienne Pine, a professor of anthropology at American University, admits that she's known about Mackey's "right-wing libertarianism" for a while now, but that his Wall Street Journal op-ed was "the straw that broke the camel's back," and the reason she switched from Whole Foods to co-ops and farmers' markets.

Pine came to the P St. location today to tell people that Whole Foods employees work under "very bad conditions" and that Mackey is a "notorious union buster" and a "key player in fighting the Employee Free Choice Act."

When pressed to name other bad conditions, Pine gives the same answer as United Food and Commercial Workers Executive Assistant to the President Mark Federici, whose crew is also handing out fliers: Mackey is bad for workers everywhere because he's anti-union and anti-health care.

Single Payer Action's Sam Husseini doesn't say much about unions, but he loves the idea of the U.S. modeling itself after and improving upon Canada's medical system.

"There are some problems [with Canada's system]," Husseini says, but "we're more technologically advanced than Canada and we can do it better."

Husseini can't name any improvements off the top of his head, and declines to comment on how an effective store boycott might affect low-level Whole Foods employees. Instead he refers Washington City Paper to Russell Mokhiber, the founder of Single Payer Action and the author of a viral essay which ends with this call for action: "Don't spend another penny at Whole Foods until John Mackey and his right wing friends are defeated. And single payer is enacted."

Mokhiber, dressed in all black, says that his efforts, among those of other Whole Foods protesters, have inspired "rightwingers" to start shopping at Whole Foods. He's fine with that.

"The CEO can say what he wants," Mokhiber says.

Protesters can boycott, and  "we'll let the organic tortilla chips fall where they may," he adds with a grin, after which he admits that he just came up with that phrase this morning.

But it seems the guilt just isn't strong enough today. One young man, upon reading Russell's tract, exclaims, "Fuck yeah! Keep on with the health care stuff," and then makes a bee-line for the salad bar.

Update: We now have a video of interviews with the protesters.

Photo by Andrew Beaujon.

Today: Lefties will picket the Whole Foods at P Street. Tomorrow: Righties will respond by handing out Whole Food CEO John Mackey's Wall Street Journal editorial. In the near future: At least one person plans to boycott Wal-Mart to punish the mega retailer for pulling its ads from Glenn Beck's show.

To all of the above, a newsflash: Boycotting is a) wrong and b) doesn't work.

Let's start with the stock prices: Mackey's value has only gone up since the boycott threats. Why? Because people love his store so much that their response has been, "I disagree with what he wrote, but I don't want to shop anywhere else." To investors, this makes Whole Foods appear bullet proof. After all, it may have the most liberal clientele of any national chain in the country, and its owner is a card-carrying libertarian. Not enough people are willing to shop at an inferior grocery store just because they disagree with Mackey's politics--especially since Whole Foods is a model of corporate responsibility in every sense of the word.

Second, even if it were possible to stage a revenue-affecting protest at the P Street Whole Foods (and it's not in this day and age--my generation doesn't protest, we twitter), the people to feel the pinch first would be store employees. The same employees that Whole Foods critics have frequently touted as needing union representation (and who would, in all likelihood, probably lose money by unionizing). Assuming single payer fanatics could arrange an effective boycott, is a cashier's job worth their cause?

And Wal-Mart protesters, please, stop. If you keep this up you'll just be proving that you're as dumb as everyone says you are. (And you and I both know you're not dumb, you're actually really good at prioritizing your financial needs.)

Speaking of government-run programs: Cash for Clunkers ends Monday after putting almost half a million new cars on the road at a cost of $3 billion and hemorrhaging participating dealers due to untimely reimbursements. If my math is right, that comes out to around $6,564 in tax dollars per car. The cap was supposed to be $4,000. So what does that mean? It means that approximately $2,500 per car went to other stuff. Call it a transaction fee or call it bumblefucking, it still means one thing: The only entity that can get away with promising to spend one amount of money and then actually spending 55% more than promised is the U.S. Government.

Don't get scammed, y'all!

Not directly, though. The following morning, Craney says, as many as a dozen GOP loyalists will be at the very same P Street Whole Foods, weather permitting, distributing literature defending Mackey's point of view, including copies of the Wall Street Journal op-ed that touched off this whole debate.

"We're trying to show the other side of the health care debate in D.C.," he says, "and how it affects District residents."

LL raised the possibility, given the well-recognized progressive bent of Whole Foods soppers, that Craney et al. might find themselves subject to a barrage of $3 organic tomatoes.

"We'll bring rain coats for the rain," he says, "but not for the tomatoes."

Craney notes that he's been subject to some Whole Foods-related abuse before. He says he regularly drives his Jeep Grand Cherokee, bearing John McCain and Rudy Giuliani bumper stickers, to the Tenleytown location. "I can't tell you how many times I get stuff put on my car that says something...snide." His favorite: "Something about about how either Rudy Giuliani or John McCain would not like how I parked my SUV."

They'll be there from 10 a.m. to noon on Saturday.

From the group's organizing email:

We know that Whole Foods allows non-profit public interest groups to set up tables inside their stores to allow these groups to reach Whole Foods' liberal customer base.

Our demand: That Whole Foods allow single payer advocates to set up shop inside Whole Foods stores around the country and allow them to counter the lies and distortions of their CEO John Mackey on health care.

The "first wave"of D.C. protests will take place tomorrow (Friday, Aug. 21) from noon-1 p.m. at the Whole Foods at 1440 P Street NW. Washington City Paper will be there with cameras, recording the madness.

• Health care. Jesus Christ on toast with Marmite, am I ever sick of hearing about health care. Whole Foods---SHUT UP. Public option opponents---SHUT UP. Fox News---SHUT UP. Meanwhile, in British rationing news, I'm horrified to report that my wife's grandmother recently had to wait over an hour to be seen, mostly because the Edinburgh Council moved the Royal Infirmary from right across the Meadows all the way out to Little France, which is as far from the city center as it sounds. This is outrageous and would never happen in the United States, where there is no socialized medicine and never will be---SHUT UP.
• MEDIA NEWS! Battle of the Hottest rages on Capitol Hill. Jayson Blair is a life coach! City Paper's parent company begins its Week of Reckoning today! CEO tells Atlanta Journal-Constitution decision to buy CP and Chicago Reader was thoroughly vetted: "It wasn’t just me running over a cliff."

• THE WORLD OF SPORTS! Nats lose, lose acting GM, sell many seats for Friday night's game for $1. Morning Roundup will be there with eldest son, who will be limited to one dessert item purchase. Also exciting: Washington National Opera sent me a Nats hat and some Cracker Jack to promote its free simulcast of Barber of Seville at Nationals Park on Sept. 12. I may go to that, too! But I'm totally sneaking in the Cracker Jack on Friday. YOW! Also, Nascar full of Republicans. Aussi: Quel dommage!
• ENTERTAINMENT! 2009's worst album title. Weezer Advances. MTV maybe does, too.

Wake up, Metro. It's morning time! Also: Two of your employees are telling WJLA-TV that they not only knew about the circuit problem that likely caused the June 22 crash five days before it happened, but that they reported the problem to their supervisors. This seemingly contradicts GM John Catoe's statement yesterday, in which he assured the public the circuit's intermittent inability to detect trains on tracks was "not an issue that would have been easily detectable to controllers in our operations control center." Metro had no comment on the unnamed technicians' allegations, citing the ongoing investigation.

In case you missed it: City Desk reported last night that one of the crash victims' families lawyered up with local institution the Cochran Firm, which won the business over another firm based, partially, on its willingness to file suit before the investigation's over. Attorney David Haynes called today to correct my mistake. The family of Veronica DuBose actually has two law firms lined up, one from Florida already familiar to the family, as well as the Cochran Firm, which was brought in as lead counsel by the Florida lawyers. Haynes also notes that his firm is representing five people injured in the crash.

City Paper's fresh online and in the stands. Of note: Carman on Breadline's closing and reopening, Graham on The Year of Magical Thinking, Olszewski on the new Transformers, Leitko on Meow vs. Meow, and West on the theory of everything.

Elsewhere in D.C. Blogolands:

* Borderstan's reporting that actor and Obama up-and-comer Kal Penn, better known as Kumar going to the White Castle, is moving into the neighborhood. But no dice on exactly where.

* Molly, the pure-bred Viszla brazenly stolen from in front of the Whole Foods in Logan Circle, is still lost. Bloggers are on it.

* Congress Heights on the Rise has some news found newsworthy by the Examiner: Congress Heights is NOT Anacostia.

* We Love DC chimes in on the Caps signing winger Mike Knuble away from the Flyers. The Post says he'll be the net presence we lack. We're comin' for you, Pittsburgh. Grrrrr!

Photograph by City Paper Staff Photographer Darrow Montgomery

• Minnesota has finally come to its senses and decided that Al Franken will be its second senator.  It only took the ballot counters and lawyers eight months to figure that out.  The former Saturday Night Live writer will take his seat following the July 4th recess.  Franken will be the 60th Democrat in the Senate, making it possible for the party to break a Republican filibuster but he wants everyone to know that he's not looking to block legislation on a regular basis.

• An FDA advisory panel is trying to make life more painful for patients.  Literally.  They recommended a ban on Vicodin and Percocet because the high levels of acetaminophen can negatively affect the liver.  The panel also wants a decrease in daily dosages of acetaminophen, as well as the dosage per pill and the number of pills per container.  The active pain-relieving ingredient in medicines such as NyQuil, Tylenol, and Excedrin, acetaminophen might kill your liver but the pain might make it worth it.

• Brightest Young Things spotted the first Real World cast members walking through town today.  How?  The two girls were followed by five camera people.  Way to blend in, MTV, way to blend in.

• We Love DC apparently still loves the city, even after reporting on a supposed dognapping outside the P Street Whole Foods on Sunday night.  Molly, a 4 year old Vizla, was tied up outside and when her owner came back, she was gone.  Normally, this would be the cause for posters and neighborhood email lists, but ever since NBC4 picked it up on their website, Molly has become Logan Circle's cause.  I think this is what Arianna Huffington was referring to when she referred to "citizen journalism."

• And just when she thought we forgot about her, Sarah Palin has returned to the news with another audacious claim.  This time, she thinks she can beat President Obama in a foot race.  "I betcha I'd have more endurance," the killa from Wasilla told Runner's World magazine.  The White House is not commenting, but perhaps a pit bull would be a better opponent for the former vice-presidential nominee.  The president is a little bit busy trying to pull troops out of Baghdad and push gay people into the military.