Supreme Court Puts Lipstick On Our Pigs, Military Suicides On Rise

"Newt Gingrich's ex-wife went on nightline and said that he wanted to have an open marriage. This is the second wife, talking about him when he was fooling around with what became the third wife. Newt wanted apparently to have his wife and his marriage and also women on the side giving him oral sex. This way he could be nice and relaxed when he went to work and accused blacks of feeling entitled." – Bill Maher

"I have not seen anything this surreal since they cancelled 'Twin Peaks.' What else can you say about a Republican debate when the rich guy, who’s avoiding taxes – which they like, gets booed and the fat creep into threesomes gets a standing ovation?" – Bill Maher, on Romney and Gingrich in the CNN debate

"Newt was mad. He said 'I am not a philanderer; I am a blow job creator.'" – Bill Maher

"Newt said this is despicable to ask these questions. Why are we dwelling on the past? We should be concentrating on the future and putting America's children back to work." – Bill Maher

The Supreme Court unanimously rejected California's new slaughterhouse rule, in favor of places that see no problem with grinding up a horse or pig that cannot walk. The California law "requires the immediate euthanasia of “downer” animals and bars their slaughter or sale." Pig Magazine (no, I'm not making this up!) estimates that from 100,000 to one million pigs suffer from pig fatigue, where they cannot get up and walk around. They are still used for food and footballs after a federal inspector inspects them to make sure they are not diseased... Makes you stop and think before buying those baby back ribs...

The Supreme Court said that existing federal law should take care care of the problem, while the state of California said that the federal inspectors were lazy, if they bothered to show up at all. The other courts sided with California, as Adam Liptak relates in the NY Times: "The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, ruled that there was no conflict between the California law and the federal one because the state had merely disqualified certain kinds of animals from being used for food. “States aren’t limited to excluding animals from slaughter on a species-wide basis,” Chief Judge Alex Kozinski wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel of the court. “States are free to decide which animals may be turned into meat.”


Justice Kagan briskly rejected that analysis. “We think not,” she wrote.

The meat industry is filled with dodgy practices that would make you think twice before eating that Taco Bell burrito. At one point they would take all of the leftover parts that didn't make the cut, and grind them down into a slurry that they either fed to the cows, or sold it to places like McDonald's and Taco Bell. Its a disgusting practice that makes me think of soylent green for us humans, and might be where the idea came from, poor cows made to eat that sludge, which was banned by Britain as an import...

Something like this is what I think about when the word disgusting is bandied about, as Newt Gingrich lit into John King at the opening of the South Carolina debate. Newt's treatment of his ex-wives is so horrible that it will come up a lot in the future, as independent minded folks try to decide whom to support on the Republican side. The long primary season has often been likened to the walk as the animals are led into the slaughterhouse, their frightened eyes staring blindly into the television cameras as they try to think of an answer to that mean question that Newt has asked... The best drinking game is to have a drink or another beer every time Newt says something mean or condescending: then you'd be as drunk and rowdy as the crowd at Newt's South Carolina victory party. Say what you want about the South, they can turn anything into a party... Judging by last night's debate, Mit and Newt are trying to hard to knock each other down, that they've forgotten all of the finesse. It's certainly not scoring any points among the younger generations, who think its disgusting and ugly watching their grandparents squabble in public, yet still seeming so out of touch with any real issues facing our nation.

With all the rhetoric about creating jobs, go out to your local business district or shopping mall. How many businesses have closed down? If they were a mom and pop kind of store, there's no way that it will ever come back, and the family who owned it has exhausted all of their own money, and probably owes the bank thousands of dollars. The banks now make it harder to get a loan, so there won't be many other small businesses to rise up and take their place. Soon, we all will have to shop at our local Wal-Mart... The only thing that the government can do is hire government workers, adding more to an inefficient bureaucracy where most don't even do the jobs they were hired for. Don't forget the employees hired by Dick Cheney's office, whose job it was to burrow into the sector where they were placed, and purposely do a bad job, acting as a conservative monkey-wrench that results in anger over how crappy the government works... And I haven't even touched on laziness and the GS ratings... It doesn't matter, unless we start over from scratch and rebuild a more streamlined bureaucracy, it won't matter if a Democrat or Republican is elected president, as the surrounding government structure still pisses people off by their excesses, their laziness, and sense of entitlement; there will always be a certain percentage of the population offended by this. This anger can be pretty powerful, it inspired revolutions in the Middle East, propelled the tea party here in the US.

Probably the most dangerous use of our bureaucracy has been trying to stop the suicide rate of our active duty military. The rate has increased each year, with last year being the highest toll, and has left Army Generals bewildered and stymied. Alcohol abuse and domestic violence has risen, also. If you are a retired military personnel, well, they don't keep as good records on you, who knows how crazy you've become...

Another statistic just released says that about 20% of our population is mentally disturbed, about the same percentage that is considered to be extreme right wing conservatives... That's two out of ten people who probably are taking neuroleptic prescription drugs. The number one abused prescription drug among military and non-military alike, goes to oxycontin. It has inspired my new bumper sticker that acknowledges this problem:

Oxycontin - Its Not Just For Right Wing Talk Show Hosts Anymore

One of my father's favorite sayings, I don't know why he said it to us kids a lot while we were growing up, was: "sometimes I think that the whole world has gone mad, except for me and thee, and lately I have begun wondering about thee..."