What? You Haven't Seen Food, Inc?

That's what I wanted to ask the folks over at the-blog-that-shall-not-be-named when they excoriated Senator Coburn for holding up an alleged "food safety" bill. If they'd take the trouble to watch Food, Inc, they might learn a couple of things, like that some of our biggest food safety problems are exacerbated by government involvement (quick example: we have a few too many scares with e coli, right? E Coli grows well in the digestive systems of cows that are
fed corn. We, of course, finish off, or fatten up, our cows on corn. Not that corn's their natural diet or anything [That would be grass, for you non-rural folk]. We fatten them up on corn in large part because corn is cheap. Corn is cheap because the government subsidizes it. The government subsidizes it because of lobbying from certain giant corporations...) and that large corporations have a nasty habit of squeezing out competition by means of government muscle (Just google "monsanto + soybeans." Just google it. That's all I'm sayin'.)

I didn't have time to go into detail, though, and just left them to wallow in what they incorrectly perceived to be the moral high ground. However, what Stanislav, a Russian blogger, posted today reminded me of the whole thing. I haven't looked in detail at the bill, and don't know whether Stanislav is correct in the details, but...well, go ahead and read this:

In America, the House has already passed the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act S.510 bill and only the Senate is left to pass their version and commingle them into a unified monstrosity. The bill is designed to destroy the small farmer in America, the very caste of people who is the most likely opposition to the control of the moneyed elites.

Though the American small farmer is a dieing breed, with hundreds of thousands of families throwing in the towel over the past decade, he is not dieing out fast enough.

[snip]

The paperwork restrictions on farmers, the amount of effort to put in perfectly filled out copies or to face $500,000 fines on the first infraction, will guarantee that only the large agro giants are left standing in rather short order. On top of this the FDA will have full authority to dictate each and every detail of how food should be grown and under what conditions to the American farmer.

This is one of the ways it's done, folks, that is, this is one of the ways large corporations get rid of the small fry. For more details on this sort of thing, you can read Crunchy Cons; Mr. Dreher has a fairly lengthy discussion of this stuff.

Used to be, people in this country had enough sense to laugh when someone said that the most frightening sentence in the English language was, "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help you."

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You haven't seen Food, Inc, have you? You went out and spent your movie money on something with explosions, or to see Bella snog that dimwit vampire, didn't you?

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Mat Rodina Bloggeth On...

I'm tellin' ya, if this guy keeps up this way, it's gonna be hard not to keep quoting him.

Apparently, some folks recently attempted to have an impromptu "gay pride" parade in Moscow. Part of Stanislav's (I'm not sure yet whether the guy's name is "Stanislav" or "Rodina) take on the situation, emphasis mine:

But what were/are these social perverts trying to accomplish in Russia? Why nothing more then getting their <>, Gay rights...does not sound to vulgar on the surface, does it? But let us dig deeper into these <>. What rights do they want? Right to do what they want in the bedroom? They already have it. Right to vote? They have it. Right to live peacefully, pursue wealth, choose (or rather in their case, reject) God? They have it. So what rights?

Why the rights of the 1 to 2% to shove their perversion down the throats of a whole society and to silence the free speech of any who dare to question this chosen minority. That is exactly the <> they have in the West, a post-Christian, God hating society as a whole, which sides with perversion and takes away, daily more and more, the very basic free speech of those who follow God and His views. The rights they seek is to destroy the meaning of marriage to include them. It is to force the school systems (in some Western nations, including parts of the US) to start indoctrinating the children as early as kindergarten, that their perversion is very good and ok. They have gotten the right to shut down churches, or at least silence them, that criticize their perversion and self love. And of course, the absolute <> to silence any talk about the facts that their life choice is the most destructive short of a third world drug addiction.

The American Andy Thayer was quoted as stating, in Moscow: <> In other words, wreck the system that works for 98% of the population for the <> of a perverse, anti-social minority of insignificant proportion, so that that 2% can be privileged above the 98%. This may work for the West, but thank God in Heaven, we are not and will never be the West.

Mr Thayer went on, with his out of this planet ideas that: <>

I've got news for you, Mr. Thayer, good news for us, crappy news for you: the vast, as in well over 80%, of Russians are disgusted by these Western perverts and their Russian counterparts and chapters. Our Church, unlike the West's, is ascendant and as more and more Russians find Christ, the support for homosexuality will only decline from low to all but non-existent. Keep quiet and about your business and no one will bother you. We will pity you and your bunch of lost souls. Get in our faces to shove your perversions down our throats and the reaction will be swift and brutal and not at the least to your liking. We are not the spineless masses in the post Christian West, who may find you the perverts you are, but are to cowardly, living in their police states, to say it.

In the main, I think that Mr. Stanislav has it right--that is, I think he is right about the aims of the pro-homosexual marriage, homosexual super-rights crowd. A simple perusal of the statistics regarding homosexual behavior quickly reveals that, by and large (there are always exceptions), homosexuals don't give two hoots about being "married." With some exceptions, to be sure, the homosexual lifestyle is one of profligate, promiscuous, largely indiscriminate sex. You can google it yourself; it will not take long to find out that I am right. Now, if these folks aren't genuinely interested in anything resembling marriage, why do they keep agitating for it? Largely, I think, because they hope to experience the delight of forcing, under color of law, some sort of approval, or at least silence, out of people they know do not agree that their lifestyle is just and good and wholesome.

A Short Explanation of Mercantilism

Anyone who's read my writing for any length of time knows that I have certain favorite topics; as Sherlock said of Mycroft:

(He) has his rails and he runs on them.

One of my betes noire is "free trade," which, again, is not at all the same as "free markets," though I'm sure many will think that is what I am talking about.

The latest blogger to be added to my blogroll wrote an excellent short explanation of one of the classic alternatives to "free trade," mercantilism. There is much good and interesting material here, but this paragraph is representative and should intrigue you. Emphasis is mine:

A final, excellent example of this is Russia. From 1991 through 1999 there was not a single new automobile assembly plant built in Russia but used cars and cheaply built foreign productions were flooding the country. In 1999, then President Putin, got a 33% tariff passed on all imports. The pundents of Anglo economics were all screaming like one unholy chorus that this spelled the end of the Russian auto market. Instead, what this spelled was the opening of 7 new large automobile plants through out Russia. Russia, through low internal taxes and a pro-business environment, became one of the few profitable markets for the American Chevrolet and GM, even though they were now competing in Russia not only with Russian cars but with BMW, Ford, Mercedes, Hynda, Renault and Toyota. Ford even tripled the size of its main plant, while opening two other smaller plants. Thus Russian workers built the cars Russian workers drove, money stayed in Russia and was spent in Russia, driving the economy forward.

Does this situation sound at all familiar to you? It should (though of course there's more at work than the simple presence or absence of tariffs). Personally, I favor the Fair Tax. However, failing that, I would at least like to see some of our tariffs go up and our punitive income taxes go down. Please read Mr. Rodina's explanation as to why.

Reprinted in Pravda

I saw the link on Drudge, and just had to follow it. Apparently, Pravda reprinted, by permission, a post by a Russian blogger. It is incendiary. I would love, absolutely love, to republish the whole post here, but that is probably bad form. Here's a sample; follow the link to Pravda for the whole thing. Emphasis is mine:

It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.

[snip]

First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their "right" to choke down a McDonalds burger or a BurgerKing burger than for their constitutional rights.

[snip]

Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different "branches and denominations" were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses...

[snip]

The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America's short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.

[snip]

Prime Minister Putin, less then two months ago, warned Obama and UK's Blair, not to follow the path to Marxism, it only leads to disaster. Apparently, even though we suffered 70 years of this Western sponsored horror show, we know nothing, as foolish, drunken Russians, so let our "wise" Anglo-Saxon fools find out the folly of their own pride.

[snip]

The proud American will go down into his slavery with out a fight, beating his chest and proclaiming to the world, how free he really is. The world will only snicker.

I can hardly wait; somebody out there is going to try to make the case that this guy isn't really a Russian and/or doesn't really understand Marxism, or doesn't understand how what President Obama is doing is different. You watch; someone will try it.

But me, my money's on this guy; I bet he knows Marxism when he sees it.