1984, redux.....
I just checked......“1984” is in the bar again……the year, that is. After all, it is 22 years old…..and boy is it depressed. It needs a drink…..”1984” was supposed to be literary hyperbole……not mundane reality.
Case in point: Tuesday, Big Daddy Bush was in Kansas for a Q&A with the typical pre-screened audience at the University. One of the questioners: “I am with the Kansas Beef Production Board and I just want to thank you for all you have done to reopen our markets with Japan…..” Was that a question?
Here is what Big Daddy did for beef producers in Kansas. They stripped the meat inspection budget. They refused to federally outlaw feeding of cow protein back to cows in feedlots…..the major source of BSE (mad cow) infection. When BSE inevitably showed up in our meat supply, Japan closed its borders until each and every steer is inspected for BSE.
One of our suppliers, Creekstone Farms (in Kansas, ironically) is just up the street from a branch of Kansas State University. These silly cowboys put together a program to test each of their steers for BSE using the ag students from the university branch. Corporate-educational partnership; funds for the ag lab, good stuff! Creekstone also range feeds their beef, and does not use anti-biotics, etc which our Pacific Rim buddies like, too. So, Creekstone Beef would be eligible to ship to Japan, and charge lots. Great!!
Not so fast.......Big Daddy had the Department of Agriculture sue Creekstone to cease and desist testing each animal. Why? Because they wanted a united front in their hardball negotiations with Japan, and Creekstone was blowing the deal. The incremental cost to industry for testing each steer? Three cents a pound…..
This sounds cheap, compared to the $11 we pay for each pound of filet, but…….The US produces 27 billion pounds of beef….which means that testing would cost the industry some $800 million dollars a year. We export ten percent of our production, so testing each exported steer would cost around $80 million. Even though they could mark up the beef, the nation would save the health care costs of caring for sick people, and exports would rise therefore paying down the trade deficit. Nope. $80 million is $80 million Ummmm. Anyone want to bet who the Cattlemen’s Beef Association backed in the election? Or how much they donated? A couple of paltry million. These scumbags sell out cheap.
In short, ma'am: Big Daddy did NOTHING to help open the Japanese market to Kansas beef. He fucked it up at every turn by being a corrupt, incompetent, short sighted, penny-wise-pound foolish douche bag. He cost Creekstone alone the lousy $2 million you slipped into the black bag....and the rest of you idiots the profits of ten percent times a huge markup times four years times all the beef you can grow. Christ........
More “1984”…….Big Daddy George (Bush, that is…..not Orwell) can listen in on you at any time with or without probable cause, and copy all your emails. He can send his boys by and B&E your crib to sweep your hard drive when you are out. If you are deemed politically unreliable, he can and will send the boys by in pairs (one FBI, one Homeland Security) to your clients to “investigate” you. In the course of the investigation, the clients will be told that the investigation is classified, and telling anyone about it is a felony. And by the way, the subject of the classified investigation (you) is being investigated as a potential threat to the security of the United States, as are all his contacts....business and personal. This is really good for business, because people really like being threatened with felonies by the FBI just because they hired you to do a job.
Oh, and your children will lose their security clearances and be fired from their jobs. And the only way you will hear about any of this is because one of your clients is Canadian and doesn’t give a shit about Homeland Security or the FBI. Did I mention that you are a war hero (Vietnam), and that the proof of your political unreliability is that you take pictures for CodePink? And one of Rumsfeld.
Big Daddy also wants to know all about your internet searches. They want to see your “Search Prairie”. That sounds pretty damn American to me, to quote Iris Dement…….Search Prairie. I picture the covered wagons, the buffalo, the purple mountains majesty, the fruited plains....wait, that is Brokeback Mountain…..
Uh oh. Here comes the cavalry. Oh, crap! It is F-Troop, come to save us from the Injuns. And the blue uniforms are all drunk, falling off their horses. Is that the reason there is no outcry at all these illegal, impeachable offenses…..that these guys are such fuckups?
Let me save F-Troop the trouble of checking my own Google Search Prairie this week (we don’t use Yahoo: too many drunken guys in blue, giving up the keys to the fort without a whimper).
A is for Al Gore and Andy Wylegala; B is for Barbara Boxer, beef production, bergamot; C is for Current TV, Carmel Pine Cone, currency exchange, Creekstone; D is for ‘dead hummingbirds bad omen’, David Lauriski and Davitt McAteer, Diane Feinstein and Dovre Club………
Obviously politically unreliable…..I hope SOMEONE protests when they take me away………
“All the other stuff, the love, the democracy, is sort of by-play. The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer.” D.H. Lawrence.
Case in point: Tuesday, Big Daddy Bush was in Kansas for a Q&A with the typical pre-screened audience at the University. One of the questioners: “I am with the Kansas Beef Production Board and I just want to thank you for all you have done to reopen our markets with Japan…..” Was that a question?
Here is what Big Daddy did for beef producers in Kansas. They stripped the meat inspection budget. They refused to federally outlaw feeding of cow protein back to cows in feedlots…..the major source of BSE (mad cow) infection. When BSE inevitably showed up in our meat supply, Japan closed its borders until each and every steer is inspected for BSE.
One of our suppliers, Creekstone Farms (in Kansas, ironically) is just up the street from a branch of Kansas State University. These silly cowboys put together a program to test each of their steers for BSE using the ag students from the university branch. Corporate-educational partnership; funds for the ag lab, good stuff! Creekstone also range feeds their beef, and does not use anti-biotics, etc which our Pacific Rim buddies like, too. So, Creekstone Beef would be eligible to ship to Japan, and charge lots. Great!!
Not so fast.......Big Daddy had the Department of Agriculture sue Creekstone to cease and desist testing each animal. Why? Because they wanted a united front in their hardball negotiations with Japan, and Creekstone was blowing the deal. The incremental cost to industry for testing each steer? Three cents a pound…..
This sounds cheap, compared to the $11 we pay for each pound of filet, but…….The US produces 27 billion pounds of beef….which means that testing would cost the industry some $800 million dollars a year. We export ten percent of our production, so testing each exported steer would cost around $80 million. Even though they could mark up the beef, the nation would save the health care costs of caring for sick people, and exports would rise therefore paying down the trade deficit. Nope. $80 million is $80 million Ummmm. Anyone want to bet who the Cattlemen’s Beef Association backed in the election? Or how much they donated? A couple of paltry million. These scumbags sell out cheap.
In short, ma'am: Big Daddy did NOTHING to help open the Japanese market to Kansas beef. He fucked it up at every turn by being a corrupt, incompetent, short sighted, penny-wise-pound foolish douche bag. He cost Creekstone alone the lousy $2 million you slipped into the black bag....and the rest of you idiots the profits of ten percent times a huge markup times four years times all the beef you can grow. Christ........
More “1984”…….Big Daddy George (Bush, that is…..not Orwell) can listen in on you at any time with or without probable cause, and copy all your emails. He can send his boys by and B&E your crib to sweep your hard drive when you are out. If you are deemed politically unreliable, he can and will send the boys by in pairs (one FBI, one Homeland Security) to your clients to “investigate” you. In the course of the investigation, the clients will be told that the investigation is classified, and telling anyone about it is a felony. And by the way, the subject of the classified investigation (you) is being investigated as a potential threat to the security of the United States, as are all his contacts....business and personal. This is really good for business, because people really like being threatened with felonies by the FBI just because they hired you to do a job.
Oh, and your children will lose their security clearances and be fired from their jobs. And the only way you will hear about any of this is because one of your clients is Canadian and doesn’t give a shit about Homeland Security or the FBI. Did I mention that you are a war hero (Vietnam), and that the proof of your political unreliability is that you take pictures for CodePink? And one of Rumsfeld.
Big Daddy also wants to know all about your internet searches. They want to see your “Search Prairie”. That sounds pretty damn American to me, to quote Iris Dement…….Search Prairie. I picture the covered wagons, the buffalo, the purple mountains majesty, the fruited plains....wait, that is Brokeback Mountain…..
Uh oh. Here comes the cavalry. Oh, crap! It is F-Troop, come to save us from the Injuns. And the blue uniforms are all drunk, falling off their horses. Is that the reason there is no outcry at all these illegal, impeachable offenses…..that these guys are such fuckups?
Let me save F-Troop the trouble of checking my own Google Search Prairie this week (we don’t use Yahoo: too many drunken guys in blue, giving up the keys to the fort without a whimper).
A is for Al Gore and Andy Wylegala; B is for Barbara Boxer, beef production, bergamot; C is for Current TV, Carmel Pine Cone, currency exchange, Creekstone; D is for ‘dead hummingbirds bad omen’, David Lauriski and Davitt McAteer, Diane Feinstein and Dovre Club………
Obviously politically unreliable…..I hope SOMEONE protests when they take me away………
“All the other stuff, the love, the democracy, is sort of by-play. The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer.” D.H. Lawrence.
posted by Txacoli at 12:09 PM
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