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Thursday, April 05, 2012

What's for Dinner?


Calhoun’s Ca(n)nons for April 5, 2012


            Mmmmmm. Yummy ground up odd bits of boneless meat scrapings from cow carcasses thoroughly mashed up and treated with ammonium hydroxide.  Mmmm.
            What do you mean, Eeeeuuuu!  We’ve been eating the stuff for years.  It’s been added to hamburger meat and we’ve been chowing it down with gusto.  Until some wisenheimers, some goody-two-shoed Food Police types decided that people might like to know just what went into that all beef patty started calling it “pink slime” and hideous pictures of this gloopy stuff started show up on TV. 
            After which, Obese Nation America, which had been scarfing up this stuff  by the daily ton, recoiled with the horror reserved only for a pencil-thin Food Nazi Vegan who’s been handed a dead cat on a dinner  plate.  The beef industry panicked and invited politicians in for a photo op at the beef-scraping factory to prove how safe and good and yummy this all was.  And beef officials declared that if we just called this goo “finely textured lean beef” everything would be fine.
            But the greasy die had been cast.  Consumers ran their tongues out and went “Ack-Ack-Ackkk!”  Fast food restaurants took out big ads declaring that they always never used the stuff.  And the companies that ran “finely textured lean beef” factories in at least four states quietly closed their plants and laid off about 1,400 finely textured employees.
            And, best of all for the beef industry, Pink Slimegate quickly slid off the radar before people could start asking the kind of question they needed to ask, which is:  Should I even be eating this hamburger in the first place, with or without the slime?
            Because that question would lead directly to others, like: What went into the cow while it was jammed into a huge feed lot and stuffed with . . . what?  At one time we fed cows other ground up finely textured cows.  And sheep, until mad-cow disease supposedly stopped that practice.  But we are still stuffing our feed-lot cows with pesticide-loaded grain and antibiotics to ward off diseases which are exacerbated by jamming a grazing animal into crowded pens and stuffing it with corn and other fattening stuff that turns its naturally lean, grass-fed muscle into bad Omega-6 laced fat.  After which we hack it up and eat it.
            And then get all pissy when we find out that finely ground pink slime bits of more cows have been added back in?
            The same food freak-out is taking place with the troubling “high fructose corn syrup,” the ubiquitous sweetener that’s been dumped into nearly every food product you can possibly think of, including ones that shouldn’t have anything to do with the word “syrup.”  And now nutritionists and scientists are investigating the possibility that high fructose corn syrup is somehow processed differently by the liver than plain sugar, and that difference is helping to fuel the obesity epidemic that’s killing us.
            But do food manufacturers declare that they will get this awful stuff out of our food supply?  Naw.  Instead, they’re busy renaming it, like they think that calling it “Smiley-Face Sweet Field Sugar” will solve the problem.  To date, their efforts have been met with the angry buzz saws of proprietary food-name lawyers from the “real” cane/beet sugar industry.  Sorry, you Fructose Syrupies,but  the word “sugar” has already been taken.  Move along.    
            Well, what’s in a word, really?  Nothing when you live in Fake Nation.  In that world, words are just useful tools to fleece the marks.  Toss in our uniquely American desire to remain deluded, our extraordinary tolerance for being lied to and the rest just comes easy.  From Madison Avenue to K-Street to the sacred halls of Congress, it’s all one big game of rebranding -- PhonySpeak  in  pursuit of the big bucks, the votes, the power. 
            And woe betide the smartass who comes along to point out the obvious.  Take poor Elizabeth Warren.  This hideous, terrifying scold wanted credit card contracts to be written in clear, plain language, the charges and fees all spelled out in simple, easy to understand language.  My God, can you imagine?  She also wanted citizens to be given some modest consumer protections in the marketplace, on Wall Street, in the automobile showroom.  It was beyond horrible and the Republican corporate shills in Congress reacted accordingly to make sure she was sidelined, and they’ve been busy undoing even the modest protections that she managed to put in place over their half-dead bodies.
            Or take Sarah Palin and her Big Lie of “death panels.”  There were no “death panels.”  What had been proposed was that under the developing health reform plans, Medicare would pay for seniors to meet with their own doctor and/or geriatric end-of-life experts, so they could get accurate information in order to make their own choices for their own end-of-life care.  No panels, no hooded judges sentencing people to death.  Just patients consulting with their doctors in order to make sure their decisions on their own care would be put in place when the need arose. That’s all. 
            Yet, thanks to Palin’s lie and fake name, that service was removed and now seniors are left on their own, which too often results in terrible suffering that runs contrary to what the patient wanted for themselves and their families.  Real suffering in a real world, thanks to Palin’s dishonest wordsmithing.   
            Well, why not?  It’s just words. Here in Fleeced Nation, a lie is as good as the truth.  Especially if it makes you rich and famous and sends the bill for any damages to the sucker public.
            So, America, eat up!  Here’s your wonderful and delicious ammonia-treated finely textured lean beef pink slime high fructose corn syrup hamburger.  Not only is it tasty and delicious, it’s good for you.  That’s right.  It’s very, very good for you. Trust me.  Would I lie to you?  Of course not.    
            Open wide. Yum.      

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

We are what we eat. Soylent Green, anyone?

Yer pal,
Donna

Churadogs said...

Mmmm, Soylent Green AND Pink Slime. Quel colorful!

Alon Perlman said...

You gotta tell'm, "If it's Green, it's gotta be good for you"

(Still not getting the videos on my browser.
And the code doesn't describe the target. If others are experiencing this too , can you list the video source in the text?)
video object

Churadogs said...

Alon, not sure what you're referring to here. What video object?

Alon Perlman said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Alon Perlman said...

Thanks Chura, The second link I embedded "object" was taken from the source code of your site but that is irrelevent.
In the source code, I didn't find a target to the link you posted which is one indirect way to see what was posted by you.
I see a big gray box only.
on a previous time someone pointed out that their browser does show the video.
If you can post the address of the video, in the text area in future postings or otherwise refer to it (MNS broadcast re etc) or Youtube I'd appreciate it.
This would be good Esp. if others only see the "Gray box".
I'm reluctant to alter my browser, given that it has good capture of all other video locations i've tried.

Churadogs said...

Alon, is the grey box at the head of the story? Like at the top? Is it always there? or just once in a while?

Churadogs said...

Ahah, now, for some weirdness. There's a video ghost in the machine on the blog and when I start a new post, I have to hit delete a bunch of times to get rid of this video that's attempting to load, a ghostly partial video before continuing. Here's where it gets weird. I clear it, post the entry, no grey square. When I go to the blog from, say, Firefox, there is no square. Working on the blog and returning to it, again and again -- no square. But when I go to the blog from, say, Explorer, there's the square. It's like there's two blogs existing in two different Universes. I think I've corrected this Universe's version, (Square's gone) and the other one was o.k. last time I looked So, Doooo deee doooo doooo.

Churadogs said...

Oops, nope. didn't work. Square was gone on "preview" now it's back. Hmm. And the square is missing on other posts. Only shows up once in a while on Explorer and never on Firefox. Hmmmm.

Bev. De Witt-Moylan said...

"Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead" (fatsickandnearlydead.com) is an unfortunate title for a Netflix instant download video that's concurrently entertaining and instructive about the benefits of foregoing fast food, detoxing the system, and eliminating lots of lifestyle-related cravings, symptoms, and the medications that go with them. Worth your time.

Anonymous said...

Hey Ann:

"So, America, eat up! Here’s your wonderful and delicious ammonia-treated finely textured lean beef pink slime high fructose corn syrup hamburger. Not only is it tasty and delicious, it’s good for you. That’s right. It’s very, very good for you. Trust me. Would I lie to you? Of course not."

You are definitely not lying on this issue. If it was not delicious, people would not eat it, and the USDA would not allow it to be sold. Ever check out what you feed your dogs? When the seniors in Los Osos pay their sewer/property taxes this Monday the nutritional value of dog food will become very important. How you doing with the high price of groceries and gasoline due to the stupidity of our socialist Obama administration? And you trust government for everything!

Anonymous said...

Haven't you heard, Ann and her doggies are vegans.

Churadogs said...

Anon 4:40. Haven't you heard? The US is EXPORTING oil. We're awash in the stuff. And Commie Socialist Muslim Obama had nothing to do with that. You might look to Wall St. commodity brokers, and the consumer who suddenly thought it might be smart to buy a thrifier car and drive less. Good old market forces at work. And your comment about my trusting the government for everything proves to me that you didn't read (or comprehend) what I said. Typical.

Bev: Yup, our diet is killing us, that's for sure. Interesting, 60 Minutes recently did a report on new scientific studies indicting sugar not only for our obesity epidemic but for damaging the body in general -- inflamatory damage to heart and arteries and other organs. Hopefully, that story will get better coverage.

Alon Perlman said...

Don't let Coffee and Chocolate take the rap though. Lot’s of good antioxidants.
Moderation (I don’t practice it, just preach it)
and what mama said:
Eat your veggies.

The healthiest meals are those eaten at friends houses, prepared from fresh or at least from scratch, (helps if they are health conscious as Bev of course). The secret ingredient is Love…
Hmmmmm. Can’t get that in any restaurant.

Churadogs said...

And the most puzzling thing of all is this: Good, healthful food is incredibly easy to get in America, yet we seem content to eat chemically-laden, processed high-fat, high-sugar garbage, like we don't feel we're worth good, healthful food. And we feed that garbage to our kids. And when Michelle Obama suggests we need to eat better, exercise more, folks have a cow and accuse her of being some kind of Socialist Commie Food Nazi who's trying to corrupt and brainwash the country's children.

The result of all this, of course, is a sick nation, while we all stand around scratching our heads and wonder why our medical costs are so high? Amazing.