While commenting elsewhere on Daily Kos earlier, I had a profound realization, about this whole chicken thing which has had this place in a hysterical, irrational frenzy since Tuesday.
While we may laugh and yuk it up here, as usual, the banksters, traders, capitalist robber barons, aided and abetted by their Republican puppets like Sue Lowden in Nevada, are way ahead of us. They have probably reached right into our wallets once again without us feeling a thing, shaking with mirth as we have been these past few days.
This is not about chickens as we know them, physically embodied domesticated fowl, which, whether free-ranged or factory farmed, are used by the human race for the production of eggs and the enrichment of those who would slaughter them for profit.
I had a sense there was something much more nefarious about this whole "twenty-two chickens for a routine blood analysis" concept that has been proposed to the good citizens of Nevada.
No Republican is seriously considering that patients cart around livestock every time they go to the doctor, get a prescription filled or have lifesaving procedures performed by dedicated professionals at the ER (like on TV!)
No, the concept is to turn chickens into a commodity, like pork bellies. So you can trade in chickens without needing to take possession of the corporeal bird(s) ("the physical phowl"). Chickens will be just another intangible word with a dollar value up on the commodities board at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange
I get why the Republicans are pushing this now. They can then layer a few derivative products on top of the actual commodity market.
Pretty soon, billions trillions of dollars will be being traded internationally, based on only two live chickens and a pound and a half of frozen legs & thighs.