…for being on welfare. That would make it sooo much easier for people to spot me on the street and hurl insults. Really, I can’t get enough of it from grocery store clerks who give me the *look* when I pull out my card….I need to have it from everyone I meet so they, too, can feel self-righteous about not being poor.
Here’s a news flash: nobody likes being poor. Nobody.
Your life is not your own.
You’ve lost your autonomy.
I lost my fucking house and the $10,000 I put into it.
Grist also has this up on the companies who don’t want the public to know what’s in their food.
Again, I go back to the often used Bush-era phrase: “If you have nothing to hide…” Why would one object to the GMO labeling unless they know that the public is going to stop buying that trash food in droves when they realize it’s GMO? Or perhaps they’re afraid that people will finally be able to link their health issues with GMO food–gut inflammation, allergies, skin rashes, lung issues, heart issues, etc.?
…to take food out of the mouths of the poor…
…so he won’t have to tax the 1% nor, heaven forbid, cut defense spending…
*note that the Senate has also opted to cut food stamps–just not to the same degree, so, yeah, they’re just as bad. You don’t cut a food program in the middle of a Depression…er, I mean Recession (like I’ve said before—it’s sooo much easier when you don’t acknowledge there’s a problem, then you don’t have to be held accountable for not getting off your butt to do something about it.)
“cruel” and “cold-blooded”, for sure.
…school lunches should not be subsidized, according to this: http://crooksandliars.com/karoli/no-low-too-low-todd-akin
It never ceases to amaze me how arrogant people are who live off the public dole, and then hold themselves up to be pillars of society while kicking people when they’re down…
Here in FW, the second largest city in the state, 70% of the children in school require lunch assistance. Seventy freaking per cent!!
All throughout the summer, the public schools (not charter schools, mind you) provided lunches at the public libraries…they always had a full room of hungry kids.
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And, as a side note, it irritates me that I cannot buy a very nutritious carrot-apple-beet juiced drink at the juice bar in the organic store, but I can buy nutrient-lacking, sugar loaded, gut destroying soda from that same store…makes perfect sense to me. /snark
organic consumers has a link to a documentary Bitter Seeds on the suicides in India. Even the short trailer is emotionally gripping…keep the kleenex handy.
Here’s a video put out by Millions Against Monsanto…I don’t think they’re going to be awarding a Grammy for it, but it goes for a good cause.
Alliance for Natural Health has this report up on the Farm Bill. (hat tip to organic consumers).
From the article:
The aforementioned Farm Bill riders would outlaw any EPA review of a genetically engineered crop under the Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act. This terrible legislation would ensure that no agency other than the USDA (which is decidedly pro-GMOs) will be allowed to provide analysis of the impacts of GMO crops. Further, the riders also establish extremely short deadlines for approval of GMOs. If the crops are not reviewed and approved within the extremely short timeline, they would default to immediate approval and commercialization.
So…if this is true, then there’s an underhanded reason why Obama is urging the passage of the Farm Bill–given that he appointed Vilsack as Secretary of Ag, who is a Monsanto toadie…yeah, well, it’s real hard not to think Obama is doing their bidding...
(Note that Methinks They Lie also brings up the Shirley Sherrod fiasco…yeah, that was a great move. Not.)
common dreams has a drought map up. As I posted before, the Ag secretary was saying that there was a bumper planting of corn this year, so the corn crop isn’t going to be that affected…which means there is speculation and falsely jacking up food prices.
They reported this morning that a meteorologist from Purdue was saying that a drought this bad is a “once-in-a-lifetime” happening and that folks who are living now will “never” see something like this again….um, yeah…
…and there’s this thing called the 1988 drought that I remember quite well because I was pregnant and worried about the food shortages they were predicting. I’ve also been watching the rivers ever since then, and my memory may be faulty, but I don’t recall them reaching their former levels with the exception of a couple of years. This has concerned me ever since.
This is the only article I could find that notes the extended drought –it puts it between 1988 and 1992.
Helen Clark at commondreams has this up on Dow being a sponsor of the Olympics. I think the time is long past of the Olympics being held in high regard…
Here’s a pretty good page on Agent Orange’s effects.
…and yet the lessons still haven’t been learned…
…and the unsuspecting folks who were unaware they were being poisoned… Be sure to click on the link at the top of the page. Unfortunately, I don’t have time to click on all the links on the page. The one at the top is absolutely stunning.
Along these lines–
I looked up a couple of pages on the chlorinated hydrocarbons–insecticides– here and here.
Michigan’s state website has this: http://www.michigan.gov/dnr/0,4570,7-153-10370_12150_12220-27249–,00.html
It’s just mindboggling that so much is known about the dangers of these chemicals, but still they are used.
We’ve apparently been noticed by Washington–the Ag Undersecretary is here seeing the amount of crop damage due to the drought. Link here: http://www.wane.com/dpp/news/indiana/usda-undersecretary-to-visit-allen-county-farm
I was listening to the rightwing radio station this morning (It took me so long to find a nooz station that actually has a live reporter because it was with the same station that broadcasts Limbaugh, Hannity, and whatshisname. Unfortunately, it also means that the nooz is slanted towards the rightwing mindset…so, yeah…) and they had the Undersecretary on. The guy was talking in farm terms that the public is not familiar with–anyone with any public speaking training knows that you have to keep the terms to common everyday terms so everyone will understand it. Even the rightwing morning host said he didn’t understand what was just said—and the undersecretary didn’t try to clarify–I can’t figure out if he doesn’t have a clue (not likely) or if it was deliberate.
He did say that they have planted more corn this year than previous years, so the crop was not going to be that devastated. The morning host said something like “You mean that even though we’re looking at a lot of crop loss here, that there isn’t going to be that much of an impact?” To which the ag secretary said “no.” Then the host asked about the prices. The ag secretary said that prices were going up. Um-hmmm…I smell a rat. If the corn crop hasn’t been impacted in a severe way, then why the hell are the prices going up?
Can you say “speculation”? I knew that you could.
As a side note, I found this with Michael Pollan on the cows being fed corn/grain instead of letting them feed on grass. (Warning: parts are very graphic).
It’s very simply explained that they have systems that allow them to digest grass, not corn. And the really disturbing aspect is how they used to allow them to mature to 4 to 5 years, but now have it down to 14 months, going to 11 months. Mo money Mo money Mo money.
Another disturbing aspect is when the calf is separated from its mother–the mother bellows for days and days he says.
From the page:
There are] 35,000, 50,000, 100,000 animals in the space of a couple of hundred acres. And in the middle of the city is rising the single landmark, which is the feedmill. It’s several stories high. It’s silvery. It’s sort of this cathedral in the midst of this, and everything rotates around it. …
But they really are medieval cities in many respects, I realized, because they are cities in the days before modern sanitation. They’re from the time when cities really were stinky. When they were teeming and filthy and pestilential and liable to be ridden with plague, because you had people coming from many, many different places, bringing many, many different microbes into a concentrated area where they could spread them around.
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The problem with this is that the antibiotics are affecting the people eating them: resistance, and encouragement of candida and other nasty bugs in the gut, cause such grief. And of course, doctors are not taking this into account any more than they’re taking diet into account when a patient presents with a problem.
So…even though we don’t have 14th century disease right now, with the destruction of a person’s immune system through their gut, it’s setting up a bad set of circumstances that have that potential. We already have super bugs that are not treatable by even the most strongest antibiotics.
And I can’t even begin to understand the mindset that says that cows don’t care if they’re sick from not having their proper food, or being crammed in together standing in their manure, or the mother cow losing her calf before its time (the fact that she bellows is your first clue) …
It is curious how Michael Pollan says it’s dangerous to say that an animal is impacted by the way humans treat it–I’ve heard old farmers call cows “bossy” because of their personality…so how is it dangerous to state observations that confirm the animals are more than machines?
Pollan states he bought a cow and raised it to market, but was not allowed to go into the kill floor. A red flag.
Animals give us life and deserve to be treated with respect. Stuffing them with corn that ferments in their insides, packing them in lots too small to move around freely with piles of manure, injecting them with drugs to counteract all of that doesn’t ring of respect.
At the end of the article, Pollan is asked about irradiation. Says it’s probably fine. Yeah, radiating food would be just what is needed after all of the above…Good Grief.
Eagle 
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