5/20/10

Poop in the Food: A Rallying Cry For Regulation

Listen, people. I know the government has done a lot of bad things. There was the war in Iraq, and all the bombings of civilians in Afghanistan, and I'm not too happy about the way the Obama administration is handling the Gulf oil spill...Let the scientists do it, Mr. President...

But this Rand Paul guy scares me, and it scares me that people agree with him enough that he was able to win the primary in Kentucky. For one thing, he has a man working as his campaign manager who's a truther, which means he thinks the government had something to do with 9/11, and now he's saying private companies have the right to deny service to people because of the color of their skin. What jackass. Sounds of racism to me. But what really gets my goat is his anti-governmentism. All of the steps forward we have taken in this country are under threat, if this guy gets elected. The government, which some people deem wasteful and bloated and filled with too many regulations, will become a shell of itself, with little power to do the things it needs to do, which is to help keep people safe and to serve as a force to balance out the corporate greed that permeates. And this is why it bothers me...

There has been poop in our food.

Let's think about that for a second...

Our food supply has been plagued with numerous E. coli outbreaks. E. coli, more or less, is fecal matter. Fecal matter is poop. People in America have eaten poop. When that happens, it's not the producers of the food who come forward with this information. No, it's the FDA. The FDA discovers the problem and issues a recall... How would this have played out if there was no FDA?

In a court battle, that would have lasted years and bankrupted the plaintiff. The food companies would say the E. coli wasn't from them, they'd say something else caused the defendant's illness, and motions would have been filed out the wazoo. Meanwhile, more people would be getting sick. Who even knows what the long-term effects of E. Coli would be?

Luckily, we do have the FDA, and we do have other federal government agencies looking out for our best interest. They're not perfect, but they do what they can. We need more regulation, not less. That should be apparent to anyone paying attention. More regulation of the food supply, of our water supply, of Wall Street, and of campaign finance. Why don't people see it? I don't know. All I do know is that one thought comes to mind when Rand Paul and others talk about less government, and how we should trust the free market and the private sector: There has been poop in our food, and that is unacceptable.

5/16/10

Koan Four

If I have a thought, and decide I want to stop thinking that thought, then who or what -- or why -- caused me to have that thought in the first place, and how can I have that thought and want to not have that thought at the same time?

Koan Three

Even the most thunderous steps I take is mere background noise in the lives of others.

Koan Two

The tragedy of the red ant is that they suffer without knowing why; the blessing of the red ant is that they suffer without needing to know why.

Koan One

What is the sound of a television shutting?

5/12/10

I feel a disturbance in the force...




Probably because there's evil nearby...


Yup, Sarah Palin, at Rosemont, just a few miles from home. Blech...Come here to support the GOP governor's candidate...Good luck...

I hope her 15 minutes wears out soon. Have you noticed? She's famous like Paris Hilton. No one really likes her...but she's famous for being famous for being a politician....


Oh, and while we're on the topic of Sarah Palin...She's so nice, that she's actually giving a speech to a non-profit dedicated to special needs kids...not nice enough to do it for free, but nice enough to show up for $100,000...

http://theimmoralminority.blogspot.com/2010/05/somebody-actually-had-to-pay-sarah.html#comment-form

Maybe it's because I'm reading The Fellowship of the Rings...But she kind of reminds me of someone...

5/11/10

Did Ronald Reagan get what he wanted?

Thinking about all of this talk about childhood obesity, I can't help but remember all that talk, when I was a kid, about ketchup as a vegetable. This was way back when Ronald Reagan was president. A good man, practically canonized by members of the right now. But what I remember is that he tried to get the USDA to classify ketchup as a vegetable. Yes, ketchup. That runny red stuff that's most made of sugar. This was the New Federalism! The brilliance of the Right Revolution! Kids would actually eat what they were given, food wouldn't be wasted, and children wouldn't have to eat broccoli, and they'd end up chubby...and then obese...and then their kids would be obese...and then our entire health care system would sag under the heft of all that extra diabetes and heart disease...

In this case, the Democrats prevailed and used shame to get the initiative tossed...At least according to Wikipedia....but I wonder...what about those school meals? Were low-income kids ever really given the chance they deserved?

The bottom line is that Reagan cut funding from the USDA school lunch program...probably to fund a bunch of penis replacement weapon systems...That's how I like to refer to the Star Wars system...

More information...

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2517/did-the-reagan-era-usda-really-classify-ketchup-as-a-vegetable