Some Prop 8 backers’ attempt to suppress disclosure of donors to public failed.
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As you probably heard, Iraq has banned the Green Party financial backer Blackwater from its country. Now Hillary Clinton has officially given the company the boot.
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Fashionably red. If you’re in or around San Francisco and you need something to wear you can rent something from the socialist boutique. All about the illusion of ownership and the ownership of an illusion…
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You may remember that Obama’s people came into office to discover that there really aren’t any files on the Gitmo detainees. The records are scattered over various agencies, largely because there was no intention of actually bringing cases to court. Daily Kos has a story and a couple of videos which tell the story of the politics of torture. One of the main prosecutors has quit.
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A kid my son’s age suffering from salmonella poisoning told his mother “it hurts so bad I want to die.” This Kos post has the list of products which have been recalled. Fortunately for my family the only items on that list which have made it into my home for the last 10 years are Cliff bars. If something like that happened to my kid and I found out that it was caused by a deliberate act I might want to hurt somebody.
It sounds like the first hint of this peanut butter scandal was when some peanuts were held up at the Canadian border. Canada wouldn’t take them. The FDA inspected them and wouldn’t allow them into America either. That was in September 2008. The peanuts contained what the FDA called “filthy, putrid or decomposed substance, or is otherwise unfit for food.” In other words, metal fragments.
Of course, that wasn’t the FIRST hint. Oh no. The Georgia plant at the heart of the outbreak was inspected in 2001 and 2006. Hardhat Democrat chronicles the FDA’s recent findings at the Blakely, Ga plant, which are quite frankly disgusting. I find it hard to believe that the plant was in a condition that should have passed an inspection a mere 3 years ago.
The 12 instances in which the plant found salmonella in their products but sold the products anyway occurred in 2007 and 2008 – after the 2006 inspection. Apparently, they were shopping around for labs that would give them clean test results despite their plant’s appalling conditions.
With all of these details coming to light, the Obama administration launched a criminal investigation. Furthermore, press secretary Robert Gibbs has noted that the new FDA commissioner will be announced in the next few days and that the Obama administration WILL do something to address food safety problems. (The same article notes that Dubya had NO PERMANENT FDA COMMISSIONER for over HALF his Presidency… and that the FDA is perennially underfunded, which makes it hard for them to do their job.)
It’s why I laugh when people tell me they prefer bottled water because it’s safe. Your tap water is regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency, which is much better funded and run than the very weak and hapless FDA.
Someone has to go to jail for this.
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January 31, 2009 at 6:14 pm
Anonymous
Obama can save his soul and ours by simply dropping the cases against Gitmo prisoners and letting them go.
January 31, 2009 at 6:47 pm
ED Denson
I noticed a large package of peanut butter cookies on the table as I entered KMUD this morning. Didn’t try my luck.
I think the real message of this peanut mess is that the size of the recall indicates that we have concentrated too much of the processing market in one plant. Same thing has happened with beef recalls where millions of pounds have to be tossed because one person makes a mistake in the processing plant. We’d be better off if the processing was widely distributed – besides that way no terrorist could easily attack our food supply, right?
January 31, 2009 at 6:52 pm
Eric Kirk
I didn’t see any of the organic brands on the list Ed.
January 31, 2009 at 8:33 pm
Ben
Eric… I was the Rose Exterminator in Oakland in the mid 60s. I could spend hours telling you horror stories. Health inspection is a political business in this country and the bigger the city, the more corrupt and impenetrable. At the time I was working, 40 years ago, the allowable rat excrement in a cup of flour was 1 poop. I kid you not. After all, it was going to be baked anyway, right? (Whoops, I’m sounding like Ed.) Do I eat Rice-a-Roni? Nope. Van Kamps pork and beans? No way. Giant Snacks pepperoni stix? Are you kidding me? Red’s Tamales? Hey, the guy was Mayor if Oakland when I worked there and there was zero oversight on the plant. The plant was a converted residence and the walls were full of roaches. You would be shocked to know what level of offal and insect parts is allowable in the processed food you eat. I want to know where the food I eat comes from. So it’s expensive, so what. I buy local meat and fish. Buy organic, always. Considering the pests and chemicals I worked with (and which I sprayed around the home of Oakland’s wealthiest families.) it’s a miracle I’m still alive. I’m doing everything I can to stay that way.
January 31, 2009 at 9:29 pm
Eric Kirk
Well, organics have had problems too. The bacteria in lettuce a couple of years ago. And Odwalla. But those were mistakes, not callous business decisions.
February 1, 2009 at 8:50 am
Moviedad
Blackwater is a donor to the Green Party? Have you heard that Hitler belonged to the Greens in 1930′s Germany?
Think about how cynical this is. Blackwater is such a despicable group, that the very mention of its association with any other group is enough to tarnish that other group’s reputation.
Keep a close eye on these terms in the “propaganda-stream:” Blackwater, Carlyle Group, Bush, Blair, Dubai, Dubai, Dubai, manufactured land/islands.
The criminals associated with: “The New American Century” have been buying up land in Dubai, they have looted the US treasury and have financed Blackwater with billions in stolen money. So I think this is their plan:
Create a power base in Dubai, perfectly situated in the Straits of Hormuz.
Activate their private military (Blackwater)
Act as an independent government, financing terrorist acts against the US to manipulate public sentiment and effect the foreign policy of the US. (which worked so well with 911.)
Gain control of the worlds last remaining Oil fields.
This is not a paranoid rant. I have been paying attention to: “All things Dubai” ever since I heard GW joke about it being a good place from which to: “..control the region.”
Last year, late summer, there was a tiny article about the “Carlyle Group” moving its headquarters to Dubai. a few months earlier it was reported that the US, was financing Blackwater’s development of Aircraft and mechanized Calvary.
It’s the perfect plan.
And if that is not enough? Every world leader who participated with the Bush Cartel, in its crimes, has joined the Carlyle Group. Tony Blair being the most visible.
So we have this immensely powerful group of world leaders, unlimited finances, looted from the people of the US. buying up land, that does not yet exist, in the one place where one or two sunken tankers could stop the oil supply from that region.
I would love to see more about the “Carlyle Group” or the “Bandenberg (?)” group that Alex Jones is always going on about. Most stories I have read about these groups, are very banal, these are just: “Business Men.”
Isn’t that what organized crime always says? “We are just business men.”
February 1, 2009 at 9:50 am
Eric Kirk
Moviedad – if you follow my link, you’ll get an explanation. It wasn’t a large amount of money, but it was money and the Greens in Pennsylvania knowingly accepted it. It was a classic example of the Greens so focused on the promotion of their own narrow agenda, they gave at least the impression that they couldn’t care less about coalitions with other groups which actually have a stake in elections outcomes.
But mostly I mentioned it here to bait someone who’s been haunting my blog. My lower self in action. Sorry.
February 1, 2009 at 11:47 am
Moviedad
The Hitler reference to the Green Party, came from some Right-Wing-Nut a few years ago, maybe it was O’Reilly. Sorry I don’t have a link.
I appreciate it anytime Blackwater comes up. These guy’s are really dangerous. and if you look at who they work for, it’s not America.
I had no doubt that it was true. Politics makes for strange bedfellows.