My headline says it all.
The USDA sent out an internal newsletter suggesting employees go vegetarian on Mondays as part of the Monday Campaign. A group of Republicans congress critters went apeshit about the suggestion, claiming it was anti-agriculture. And the USDA promptly folded.
Michael Klag, Dean of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health responded with an intelligent letter that pointed out that meatless Monday is in keeping with the USDA guidelines of good health, that the environmental impact of eating meat is huge and that there is more to agriculture than meat production.
Here’s what the USDA newsletter said:
“How will going meatless one day of the week help the environment? The production of meat, especially beef (and dairy as well), has a large environmental impact. According to the U.N., animal agriculture is a major source of greenhouse gases and climate change. It also wastes resources. It takes 7,000 kg of grain to make 1,000 kg of beef. In addition, beef production requires a lot of water, fertilizer, fossil fuels, and pesticides. In addition there are many health concerns related to the excessive consumption of meat.”
Being vegetarian or vegan isn’t for everyone. But simply reducing the amount of meat you eat can have positive impact on your health. How a group of individual as puerile as Republicans have ever managed to get elected astonishes me:
Sen. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican, for one, had this to say: “I will eat more meat on Monday to compensate for stupid USDA recommendation [about] a meatless Monday,”
What a colossal jackass.
#1 by brewski on August 1, 2012 - 8:40 am
Glenden,
Can you please provide me a list of those midwestern Democrats who are working to end beef subsidies? Or that midwestern Democrat in the White House?
What colossal jackasses.
#2 by Glenden Brown on August 1, 2012 - 9:14 am
Make you a deal brewski – you demonstrate how failing to support a change in policy and Chuck Grassley’s “I’ll just eat more meat” are comparable responses and we can have a discussion. Grassley’s response would be unacceptable from your child. Don’t try to make the fake equivalency argument.
#3 by Larry Bergan on August 1, 2012 - 9:16 pm
Mike Huckabee has been in the news making an ass out of himself defending a right wing Chicken outfit, but since he’s around maybe he can tell us how he lost hundreds of pounds.
Was is more vegetables or perhaps Oxycontin.
When ever Republicans go apeshit it always means they’re full of shit. They simply don’t know how to get angry at a logical argument.
When will we learn this?
#4 by brewski on August 2, 2012 - 11:07 am
Glenden,
Correct. They are not equivalent.
The policies which have been in place for the last 40 years, put in place while the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress for 40 years straight, and pretty much supported by both parties, at least regionally, have been one of the biggest blunders in American history. These policies, which are supported from the junior Senator from Illinois, have been an environmental, health and economic disaster for the US. Grassley’s comment is merely stupid, not equivalent to 40 years of destruction.
#5 by Glenden Brown on August 2, 2012 - 12:34 pm
So let me ask you a couple questions – how are we supposed to have anything approaching a serious policy discussion when Republican senators act like petulant three year olds? How can we have a serious discussion about agriculture policy when the USDA suggesting its employees do meatless mondays was attacked as ‘anti-agriculture’, by Republicans? I forget the exact name of the organization but the beef producers association flipped their lids as well refusing to even acknowledge that too much beef is bad for you (which demonstrates they learned the lessons of tobacco producers).
There’s a broader point here, as well. We’ve had policy drift because we can’t have intelligent public discussions about policy. Suggest reforming a program and Republicans will propose something using the word reform which will in fact kill the program and hurt everyone it is designed to help. Or, as in this case, suggest we need to change our agriculture and food policies and Republicans will flip out and accuse everyone of being anti-American socialists who want to force us to subsist on bean sprouts while destroying farmers.
You want there to be blame to go around but you’re still playing the false equivalency game.
#6 by brewski on August 2, 2012 - 3:21 pm
The answer to your question is the same answer to the question of how can we have a serious policy discussion on anything if lefties just turn on their audio-loop response of “you’re all racists” like some mantra.
There is a broader point here, we can’t have a policy discussion about anything as long as you see the world in this false white-hat black-hat prism. You keep talking about programs which are supposed to help people, but in fact moist programs don’t help people other than the permanent class of bureaucrats who administer them. It has been documented over and over again by the GAO and other unbiased sources that there are thousands of programs which are ineffective, redundant and wasteful, but they live on forever due to the inertia of government and the heckling from the left that cutting, reducing, reforming or consolidating these programs is racist and hurting poor people. There goes your intelligent policy discussions.
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d11318sp.pdf
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/02/us-government-waste-idUSTRE7210CE20110302
#7 by Richard Warnick on August 2, 2012 - 3:55 pm
Right-wing Republicans have embraced a nihilistic philosophy that says government can’t accomplish anything good. That’s a dysfunctional belief for any elected official, but whenever they get their hands on the levers of power, they try to prove it through malfeasance or obstructionism.
Only Republicans could double the National Debt and then turn around and complain bitterly about deficit spending. Senator Orrin Hatch explained it this way: “it was standard practice not to pay for things” when Republicans ran the government.
#8 by brewski on August 2, 2012 - 7:10 pm
Lefties have embraced the childish and naive philosophy that government can solve all social ills. So regardless of the forces at work, there is a government program which can solve it. Regardless of the evidence that government has caused a great many of these ills, the uneducated still cling the the religion that all we need is more government and everything can be fixed.
#9 by cav on August 2, 2012 - 11:21 pm
All you socialist hippie lefties Shutup-shutup-shutup. That $400M went to the accounts of the Job Creators and it’s every bit a tragedy as Jesus Christ’s Crucifixion on the Cross if those Job Creators have to pay even one cent tax on that money to Obama.
Paraphrasing.
#10 by cav on August 2, 2012 - 11:23 pm
Oops, Wrote something the moderation screener thought too toothsome to not bite into. Help me somebody! That would be the ‘real’ comment #10. TIA.
#11 by Larry Bergan on August 3, 2012 - 8:32 pm
cav:
God is the one, and true Job Creator and he’s doing the best he can considering the plight of the mega-churches.
Be patient and vote for Romney.