What part of this equation does the FDA not understand? At a time when food born illnesses are on the rise, food safety inspections have declined drastically thanks to deep budget cuts at the FDA.

Our food supply is tainted, all right—contaminated by corporate interests who got our government to gut the FDA with abattoir-like alacrity. Eric Schlosser spells it out in a damning op-ed in today’s NY Times:

 

The North Pole is melting…the reindeer are molting…and Santa’s getting really steamed:

“Every year, I put a big lump of coal in the climate change naysayers’ stockings, but these guys are just not getting the message. Texas Governor Rick Perry actually sent me a thank you note!”

Santa’s dreaming of a greener, more carbon-neutral Christmas. Sure, the holiday shopping season’s heating up, but so is the planet. Do we have to buy into the annual madness? All that shipping and shopping, all that wrapping and excess packaging; it squanders fossil fuels and generates an extra one million tons of trash per week between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day. Nearly half the waste that goes into North American landfills is paper and packaging.

The War on Drugs has a lot in common with the War on Terror: it's ill-conceived, badly executed, and totally counterproductive.

And both wars have had some disastrous agricultural consequences, at home and abroad.

Under the Taliban, poppy crops were illegal. This year's poppy crop in Afghanistan is 59% higher than last year's; it's estimated that this will enable Afghanistan to meet 130% of the world's demand for heroin.

According to Anne Brodsky, author of With All Our Strength: The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, when we toppled the Taliban, the seeds for a bumper crop of poppies were sown:

I'm no expert in the fine art of framing, but this AP story  about regional obesity rates in the U.S. suggests that voting Democratic may, in fact, be an effective weight loss strategy.

Consider this--the five fattest states are decidedly red: Mississippi, Alabama, West Virginia, Louisiana and Kentucky. Four of the thinnest are true blue: Hawaii, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Vermont. The fifth, Colorado, is pretty much purple. The more obese states also have a far higher poverty rate than the national norm.

The numbers suggest that you're more likely to be lean if you lean liberal. Eat your artery-clogged heart out, Karl Rove; this could be a bonanza for progressives at the polls.

Jackie Mason went on Keith Olbermann the other night and dismissed the flap over Mel Gibson's DUI as "a big hullabaloo about nothing."  If the furor doesn't die down, according to Mason, it will be "because people love to see a big star suffer. When you become too successful, it brings out the jealousy and all the envy and the bitterness...all of a sudden, he's the victim."

O'Reilly sounded a similar note while discussing the incident with Geraldo. After acknowledging that Gibson's behavior was inexcusable, he went on to say:

"But there comes a point where the media and individual Americans start to enjoy the suffering of rich and powerful people...they wallow in it. They can't get enough of it. They've got blood all over their mouth, these vampires, OK? They're in the media, these people. This is what they live for."

Brian Keeler brought the netroots revolution to the Hudson River Valley yesterday. We haven't had any battles for democracy around here in, like, two hundred and thirty years, so it's great to see how the technology's improved. From bayonets to the Internets!

Another big difference: our enemy's not the British, but the Brutish. The Greedy, the Corrupt, the Bigoted, the Benighted, the Befuddled. They've hijacked our country and turned it into a craven corporatocracy. They've destroyed our nation's reputation for fairness and decency. They've dragged us so far down into the muck that while Superman's still fighting for truth and justice, he's crossed defending "the American Way" off his to-do list.

But we don't need a superhero to save our democracy when we've got a guy like Brian Keeler campaigning for NY State Senate. NYBri, as Kossacks know him, is brimming with brains, energy and idealism. He rallied a roomful of Dutchess County dems and fellow Kossacks at Rhinebeck's Desperado café yesterday.

If the phrase "grass-fed" means anything to you at all, chances are you're a conscientious carnivore who refuses to buy meat or poultry from factory farms, or CAFOS (Confined Animal Feeding Operations.) These massive feedlots are notorious for their abysmal treatment of both animals and workers, and are a significant source of environmental degradation, too.

So enlightened consumers are passing up CAFO-produced products in favor of pasture-raised meat and poultry. Plenty of people are willing to pay more for grass-fed meats and poultry from farmers who provide humane conditions for their animals and workers.

That's why the small local farmers and butchers who provide pasture-raised livestock have been seeking certification standards for their meats and poultry to distinguish them from conventionally raised, i.e. feedlot-confined, livestock.

This just in from CNN: while victims of Katrina were drowning or dying of dehydration, Michael Brown's press secretary was worrying about his wardrobe. She e-mailed Brownie the following message, after the FEMA director's photo-op with Bush on September 2nd:

"Please roll up the sleeves of your shirt...even the President rolled his sleeves to just below the elbow. In this crisis and on TV you just need to look more hard-working."