Last Friday night, which turned out to be the last show he did, Phucker Carlson teased his viewers that on Monday night he’d be dealing with the topic “Bugs: it’s what’s for dinner!” Had I been doing what I never did before, and been watching his show, I would have been sitting here thinking “What the fuck?”
Cheese and crackers, this was one of your best, Tom!
It is becoming more clear to me as time goes by that the almighty dollar is the driving force behind a discouraging number of things political. What I cannot resolve is how the few extremely wealthy people in this world want more and more money. I mean, how much money does one person or family need? It just leaves me drooling in stunned disbelief that they do not seem to care one whit about the world they are creating for their descendants. Maybe that is the key to all their greed and lies - the really do not care. Isn't that what was on the back of Melania's jacket?
Yeah, right? Who can actually conceive of 1000 piles of one million dollars?
But hey, perhaps the 100’s of billions of dollars these guys hoard is actually just a Star Wars Force Shield that prevents another Jay Gould-ish take over of their empire by the “marauding jackyl-like persona” of an Elon “man-boy” Murky; aka nuclear threat deterrent. “You can’t buy me, cuz I got more Franklin Nukes than you”. Money Wars
this is the question I ask myself several times a day. when is ENOUGH enough? it's occurred to me that maybe vast wealth (multiple billionaire wealth) does something nasty to brain chemistry). but I also know that such speculation is bullshit.
and of course, it's the same thing with power.
money and power. both utterly imaginary on one level and still essentially worthless if you don't use them appropriately.
I think Julia Child had it figured out when she said: "Eat EVERYTHING...but just a little bit!"
We are proud omnivores. I embrace food from every imaginable source. I had crispy fried crickets at a Mexican eatery once. They were tasty.
That being said, everything you said about the food industry and our farming system is true. Actually it's worse than you described. Our mono crops are vulnerable. Our soil is eroding. Subsidies have fed the rich big time farmers and done little for the "family farmers" who are attempting sustainable agriculture. Our country still subsidizes the production of corn and soy - dosing the Earth with evil chemicals.
Our government is using our tax dollars to make people sick. So the profit driven healthcare industry can get rich trying to "fix us". It's an insidious circle of money and early painful death. That's not a conspiracy. It's just another inconvenient truth.
Here is a video from 2013 featuring Michael Pollan who tells us why we should shop the outside aisles of a market. https://youtu.be/ATAZrRfebiw
And to your point about meat. One of the biggest agricultural consumers of water is alfalfa - four crops a year - for cow feed.
I don't think we should be telling people to eat meat or not to. But if we all embrace a more diverse diet, reducing meat consumption, we would save lives and save water. To grow vegetables. Of course, one of the biggest consumers of water is almond trees. Ridiculous amounts required to keep those trees alive. It's complicated. But. Don't eat almonds.
Almond orchards were ubiquitous when I lived in Northern California in the 60s and 70s. Apparently sucked the San Joaquin valley dry. Interesting that Tulare Lake has reappeared after this years record precipitation. Probably go see it tout de suite. It won’t be there for long
What topped it off for me was the CBS piece about Arizona & the Saudi's raising all those acres of alfalfa & shipping it to Saudi Arabia for their dairy & beef herds because - wait for this - they arent allowed to raise that water intensive crop in their country! How about that? Seem kosher to you?
Watch Arizona closely. California has the first rights to the Colorado River Water. There is not enough water to sustain growing cities and irrigation desert agriculture. SW aquifer have already been bleed dry. Mead and Powell are at historic low levels. Powell could teach Deadpool in the next drought year, meaning too low to produce electricity. This winter was pure luck. Hard choices are coming for our Southwest.
I get another blog, Land Desk, that keeps me up on what is going on in the West. Its getting really scary - water wise, and I think far too many people just stick their heads in the sand - literally!
Bill, as a retired Public Health Nutritionist,thanks for your comment.
My husband has memories of traveling to visit family in Mexico many summers during his childhood and sampling some sort of bug tacos. I’ve never noshed a bug ..that I know of🤔.
Another memory is when we traveled to Bonaire and locals invited us to a barbecue. Grilled iguana…it really did taste like chicken ! Julia Child had it right..
Sounds like a remake of "Don't Look Up" in the offing. A fear not worth following at this time. Besides it is about cocktail hour and wondering whether today's news will drive me to oblivion or preparation of complicated cusine that nourishes while not involving plastics, high fat content, and a balance of proteins and carbohydrates. Thanks TC for this seugeway from Fox in the present to their next conspiracy.
This was another great one TC. I've been borderline vegan for a few years; lots of fish and chicken here. My doc has ridden me hard as well, so I eat red meat once a week. The cost is pretty outrageous for a decent steak here, to say nothing of a roast beef. Profits over people is the name of the game. Always follow the money 💰.👍
I’m reading this as I fix dinner. I’m grilling (!) a 1 pound “sirloin steak” (!) that was raised on a small farm about 25 miles west of my house. Grass fed (pasture) and raised “under organic conditions” but butchered on site by a local mobile butcher so they can’t sell it as organic. Cut by a local meat shop and packaged.
This will make at least 3 meals for our 3 adult household, augmented with produce from the same farm, our garden (finally!) and the local farmers market.
There you go - that's the way to do it. Tonight I will have an Impossible Burger; they really are the only veggie burger I have ever found that really does "taste like meat" - I have even faked out carnivores with them.
I have two dear friends that are carnivores through and through who have really taken to "impossible" meat. I haven't given that a try yet, but will soon. I do make a great "pulled pork" with jackfruit that turns out nicely. I've had people tell me they can't tell the difference... I can.
Same here Ally. I don’t eat a lot of meat, but only eat meat and eggs that I know where and how they were raised. Pasture raised with no hormones, antibiotics or pesticides. There are several local farms I buy meat from and buy eggs from my neighbors. If I were home more and had time I would have my own chickens for eggs. Someday...
Nice rant on the agribusiness ugliness feeding the GOP pigs. Eating a lot of meat, dairy and eggs is bad for your bio genome, makes you fat and ugly, and qualifies you to run for office as a Republican, one of those imbeciles who wants his fellow Americans to eat shit and die, which is the essence of their insane Plan for America. A better idea would be to establish a national dietary model based on plants supplemented with a little wild-caught fish maybe, but basically consisting of vegetables, whole grains, fruits, nuts, and a generous consumption of beans. Add a supplement of B-12 and all is well. Research shows that such a model is easiest on the consumer health wise and easy on the planet to boot. For Pacha Mama's sake and the well being of We, the People, it's time to put carnivorous corporate agribusiness out of business! As we used to say in Vietnam back in 1968, "What the fuck, over!"
One meaning of the idiom "you're full of beans" is that someone doesn't know what they are talking about. It applies, figuratively, to those that push a meat heavy diet. Ironic, isn't it?
Check out the Nutrition Coalition: https://www.nutritioncoalition.us. Our obesity crisis started when the government came out with recommendations. Everyone is in everyone's pocket. Ketchup characterized as a vegetable in school lunches? FFS!
You are correct TC. Ray-Gun proclaimed ketchup as a member of the vegetable group. I believe pickle relish was in there too. Both loaded with high fructose corn syrup. Nice one Ronnie
Nixon feared the 60’s protests. He ordered the FDA and Sec of Ag to make food as cheap as possible. The sugar beet was given wings, and destabilized sugar cane producing countries. High fructose corn syrup too ( Sen Grassley). Nixon didn’t get the protesters like the 1960’s, but we got chronic obesity and diabetes, and cancer. “The Hacking of the American Mind” is an informative read.
Good old Amalgamated Sugar in Twin Falls. Sugar beet fields everywhere. I used to ride my bike by the plant on my ride to the south hills. Whatever they did to process those beets into granulated sugar smelled really bad.
One of the biggest offenders is high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), a very common sweetener added to loads of foods (maybe most of them, even things like peanut butter). It affects the body differently from real sugar and apparently does not trigger the satiation response, so people feel hungry and keep eating. The rise in obesity in the US (and now around the world) tracks closely to the introduction and spread of HFCS use in processed foods. Our diet is killing us.....
One unintended consequence of this "expansion of our horizons and waistlines" is that the "average" weight for men and women has been inching up (no pun intended, but there it is) so that now people are "average weight" this year who would have been overweight or even borderline obese 40 years ago..... And excess weight (and I am 50 lbs over my desired weight) not only makes clothes fit worse - it also over-stresses the joints and can exacerbate arthritis, as well as lead to other diseases and conditions, a depressing litany of which can be found by consulting Dr. Google.....
The Bride and I are cutting down the meat we eat, and what we do eat is usually chicken or fish, though I do like lean deli-cut roast beef in sandwiches. I got a vertical climber ans will probably die on it..... I admit I do not have a moral problem eating meat - the animals would not exist except to be eaten, but obviously, their being raised and killed for food must be as humane as possible. But eating plants also takes life, just a different form of life. As Euell Gibbons said to Johnny Carson eons ago (I was there when the earth cooled), there is as much life in an onion root tip as there is in a calf, just different life.
Our obesity crisis started when the medical profession, on the basis of no evidence whatsoever, persuaded the FDA that animal fat was bad for us and that it should be removed and replaced with sugar.
I believe that was the Nixon Presidency. Tricky Dick thought making food as cheap as possible would quell social unrest. The answer he got from Ag Sec was to ad sugar to everything. The FDA just gave in. From the book, “The Hacking of the American Mind.
Marjorie Traitor Goon’s “peach tree dish”probably originates in her feeble mind from the fact that in Atlanta there are a kajillion Peachtree Streets and Peachtree Avenues and Peachtree thises and Peachtree thats.
I'm gonna try insects one of these days. They're not all that far removed from their fellow arthropods, shrimp and lobster. It's a shame Phucker C. didn't air his show on eating bugs before he was canned.
There’s no gain in answering every lunatic rant. We need to create our own narrative, define it, defend it, and demonstrate its benefits. Otherwise we’ll be running in circles after every wack a mole they create. I believe a crack is opening in this absurd attack dog strategy they’ve honed. Perhaps they’ve finally jumped the shark and now we have the opportunity to seize the moment and show another way. State & federal legislators don’t get it yet, they’re still too drunk on power to notice the shift. But, sober minds are watching, even Murdock sees it. Time to line up behind Biden and hone our own message. That’s how I see this moment, for what it’s worth.
The simple to say, not so easy to do solution is to buy local as much as you can, support regenerative farmers and ranchers, and vary your menu. It's even possible to grow cattle, hogs and chickens sustainably, it just doesn't fit BigAg's business plan and would cut seriously into Chuck Grassley's campaign funds. After 50 years in the business it's hard not to climb on the soapbox.
For the record, Purdue University's Dept. of Entomology has produced a fairly flashy and, I'm told, highly edible multi-course fundraising dinner entirely based on insect proteins for a long time. I've eaten crickets, ants and mealworms, and, on the whole, prefer them to Impossible Burgers and any other plant based fake meat products I've tried.
Cheese and crackers, this was one of your best, Tom!
It is becoming more clear to me as time goes by that the almighty dollar is the driving force behind a discouraging number of things political. What I cannot resolve is how the few extremely wealthy people in this world want more and more money. I mean, how much money does one person or family need? It just leaves me drooling in stunned disbelief that they do not seem to care one whit about the world they are creating for their descendants. Maybe that is the key to all their greed and lies - the really do not care. Isn't that what was on the back of Melania's jacket?
FWIW, I am also vegetarian.
The money is only a counting system to measure the power.
Yeah, right? Who can actually conceive of 1000 piles of one million dollars?
But hey, perhaps the 100’s of billions of dollars these guys hoard is actually just a Star Wars Force Shield that prevents another Jay Gould-ish take over of their empire by the “marauding jackyl-like persona” of an Elon “man-boy” Murky; aka nuclear threat deterrent. “You can’t buy me, cuz I got more Franklin Nukes than you”. Money Wars
They DON'T care about anyone but themselves. And, yes, Melania's jacket. Exactly.
this is the question I ask myself several times a day. when is ENOUGH enough? it's occurred to me that maybe vast wealth (multiple billionaire wealth) does something nasty to brain chemistry). but I also know that such speculation is bullshit.
and of course, it's the same thing with power.
money and power. both utterly imaginary on one level and still essentially worthless if you don't use them appropriately.
I think Julia Child had it figured out when she said: "Eat EVERYTHING...but just a little bit!"
We are proud omnivores. I embrace food from every imaginable source. I had crispy fried crickets at a Mexican eatery once. They were tasty.
That being said, everything you said about the food industry and our farming system is true. Actually it's worse than you described. Our mono crops are vulnerable. Our soil is eroding. Subsidies have fed the rich big time farmers and done little for the "family farmers" who are attempting sustainable agriculture. Our country still subsidizes the production of corn and soy - dosing the Earth with evil chemicals.
Our government is using our tax dollars to make people sick. So the profit driven healthcare industry can get rich trying to "fix us". It's an insidious circle of money and early painful death. That's not a conspiracy. It's just another inconvenient truth.
Here is a video from 2013 featuring Michael Pollan who tells us why we should shop the outside aisles of a market. https://youtu.be/ATAZrRfebiw
And to your point about meat. One of the biggest agricultural consumers of water is alfalfa - four crops a year - for cow feed.
I don't think we should be telling people to eat meat or not to. But if we all embrace a more diverse diet, reducing meat consumption, we would save lives and save water. To grow vegetables. Of course, one of the biggest consumers of water is almond trees. Ridiculous amounts required to keep those trees alive. It's complicated. But. Don't eat almonds.
Yeah, almonds bad. Unfortunately here in CA they have a nice lobby presence in Sack-a-tomatoes.
Almond orchards were ubiquitous when I lived in Northern California in the 60s and 70s. Apparently sucked the San Joaquin valley dry. Interesting that Tulare Lake has reappeared after this years record precipitation. Probably go see it tout de suite. It won’t be there for long
What topped it off for me was the CBS piece about Arizona & the Saudi's raising all those acres of alfalfa & shipping it to Saudi Arabia for their dairy & beef herds because - wait for this - they arent allowed to raise that water intensive crop in their country! How about that? Seem kosher to you?
Money talks.
Kind of like the international bottled water companies?
Closer to exactly like it!!
They should be banned, what a crock
Watch Arizona closely. California has the first rights to the Colorado River Water. There is not enough water to sustain growing cities and irrigation desert agriculture. SW aquifer have already been bleed dry. Mead and Powell are at historic low levels. Powell could teach Deadpool in the next drought year, meaning too low to produce electricity. This winter was pure luck. Hard choices are coming for our Southwest.
I get another blog, Land Desk, that keeps me up on what is going on in the West. Its getting really scary - water wise, and I think far too many people just stick their heads in the sand - literally!
Yep.
Thanks. Very good point
😤😵
Bill, as a retired Public Health Nutritionist,thanks for your comment.
My husband has memories of traveling to visit family in Mexico many summers during his childhood and sampling some sort of bug tacos. I’ve never noshed a bug ..that I know of🤔.
Another memory is when we traveled to Bonaire and locals invited us to a barbecue. Grilled iguana…it really did taste like chicken ! Julia Child had it right..
Well done Bill. The agribusiness problem in a nutshell. Not an almond shell.
Sounds like a remake of "Don't Look Up" in the offing. A fear not worth following at this time. Besides it is about cocktail hour and wondering whether today's news will drive me to oblivion or preparation of complicated cusine that nourishes while not involving plastics, high fat content, and a balance of proteins and carbohydrates. Thanks TC for this seugeway from Fox in the present to their next conspiracy.
This was another great one TC. I've been borderline vegan for a few years; lots of fish and chicken here. My doc has ridden me hard as well, so I eat red meat once a week. The cost is pretty outrageous for a decent steak here, to say nothing of a roast beef. Profits over people is the name of the game. Always follow the money 💰.👍
Ironic that Cucker Tarlson was stuffing his face with pizza while plugging the ad for bugs for food at Fox Noise…
I’m reading this as I fix dinner. I’m grilling (!) a 1 pound “sirloin steak” (!) that was raised on a small farm about 25 miles west of my house. Grass fed (pasture) and raised “under organic conditions” but butchered on site by a local mobile butcher so they can’t sell it as organic. Cut by a local meat shop and packaged.
This will make at least 3 meals for our 3 adult household, augmented with produce from the same farm, our garden (finally!) and the local farmers market.
There you go - that's the way to do it. Tonight I will have an Impossible Burger; they really are the only veggie burger I have ever found that really does "taste like meat" - I have even faked out carnivores with them.
I have two dear friends that are carnivores through and through who have really taken to "impossible" meat. I haven't given that a try yet, but will soon. I do make a great "pulled pork" with jackfruit that turns out nicely. I've had people tell me they can't tell the difference... I can.
Same here Ally. I don’t eat a lot of meat, but only eat meat and eggs that I know where and how they were raised. Pasture raised with no hormones, antibiotics or pesticides. There are several local farms I buy meat from and buy eggs from my neighbors. If I were home more and had time I would have my own chickens for eggs. Someday...
Nice rant on the agribusiness ugliness feeding the GOP pigs. Eating a lot of meat, dairy and eggs is bad for your bio genome, makes you fat and ugly, and qualifies you to run for office as a Republican, one of those imbeciles who wants his fellow Americans to eat shit and die, which is the essence of their insane Plan for America. A better idea would be to establish a national dietary model based on plants supplemented with a little wild-caught fish maybe, but basically consisting of vegetables, whole grains, fruits, nuts, and a generous consumption of beans. Add a supplement of B-12 and all is well. Research shows that such a model is easiest on the consumer health wise and easy on the planet to boot. For Pacha Mama's sake and the well being of We, the People, it's time to put carnivorous corporate agribusiness out of business! As we used to say in Vietnam back in 1968, "What the fuck, over!"
Beans are a sorely undervalued food.
One meaning of the idiom "you're full of beans" is that someone doesn't know what they are talking about. It applies, figuratively, to those that push a meat heavy diet. Ironic, isn't it?
Check out the Nutrition Coalition: https://www.nutritioncoalition.us. Our obesity crisis started when the government came out with recommendations. Everyone is in everyone's pocket. Ketchup characterized as a vegetable in school lunches? FFS!
I think that one goes back to Ray-Gun.
You are correct TC. Ray-Gun proclaimed ketchup as a member of the vegetable group. I believe pickle relish was in there too. Both loaded with high fructose corn syrup. Nice one Ronnie
Nixon feared the 60’s protests. He ordered the FDA and Sec of Ag to make food as cheap as possible. The sugar beet was given wings, and destabilized sugar cane producing countries. High fructose corn syrup too ( Sen Grassley). Nixon didn’t get the protesters like the 1960’s, but we got chronic obesity and diabetes, and cancer. “The Hacking of the American Mind” is an informative read.
Good old Amalgamated Sugar in Twin Falls. Sugar beet fields everywhere. I used to ride my bike by the plant on my ride to the south hills. Whatever they did to process those beets into granulated sugar smelled really bad.
One of the biggest offenders is high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), a very common sweetener added to loads of foods (maybe most of them, even things like peanut butter). It affects the body differently from real sugar and apparently does not trigger the satiation response, so people feel hungry and keep eating. The rise in obesity in the US (and now around the world) tracks closely to the introduction and spread of HFCS use in processed foods. Our diet is killing us.....
One unintended consequence of this "expansion of our horizons and waistlines" is that the "average" weight for men and women has been inching up (no pun intended, but there it is) so that now people are "average weight" this year who would have been overweight or even borderline obese 40 years ago..... And excess weight (and I am 50 lbs over my desired weight) not only makes clothes fit worse - it also over-stresses the joints and can exacerbate arthritis, as well as lead to other diseases and conditions, a depressing litany of which can be found by consulting Dr. Google.....
The Bride and I are cutting down the meat we eat, and what we do eat is usually chicken or fish, though I do like lean deli-cut roast beef in sandwiches. I got a vertical climber ans will probably die on it..... I admit I do not have a moral problem eating meat - the animals would not exist except to be eaten, but obviously, their being raised and killed for food must be as humane as possible. But eating plants also takes life, just a different form of life. As Euell Gibbons said to Johnny Carson eons ago (I was there when the earth cooled), there is as much life in an onion root tip as there is in a calf, just different life.
Dopamine’s effect I think. Sugar is like a drug.
Our obesity crisis started when the medical profession, on the basis of no evidence whatsoever, persuaded the FDA that animal fat was bad for us and that it should be removed and replaced with sugar.
I believe that was the Nixon Presidency. Tricky Dick thought making food as cheap as possible would quell social unrest. The answer he got from Ag Sec was to ad sugar to everything. The FDA just gave in. From the book, “The Hacking of the American Mind.
Marjorie Traitor Goon’s “peach tree dish”probably originates in her feeble mind from the fact that in Atlanta there are a kajillion Peachtree Streets and Peachtree Avenues and Peachtree thises and Peachtree thats.
Vogelschiess. No comments yet?
I'm gonna try insects one of these days. They're not all that far removed from their fellow arthropods, shrimp and lobster. It's a shame Phucker C. didn't air his show on eating bugs before he was canned.
There’s no gain in answering every lunatic rant. We need to create our own narrative, define it, defend it, and demonstrate its benefits. Otherwise we’ll be running in circles after every wack a mole they create. I believe a crack is opening in this absurd attack dog strategy they’ve honed. Perhaps they’ve finally jumped the shark and now we have the opportunity to seize the moment and show another way. State & federal legislators don’t get it yet, they’re still too drunk on power to notice the shift. But, sober minds are watching, even Murdock sees it. Time to line up behind Biden and hone our own message. That’s how I see this moment, for what it’s worth.
It’s all George Soros’s fault. Really.
I laughed out loud.
Isn’t every single thing, even though Soros was still a teen ager when WW2 was over so his Nazi chops are a little suspect
There is no reason to pay any attention to the Right until they exhibit some common sense. Most if the time they are just blowing smoke.
And that's something they never have and never will do.
The simple to say, not so easy to do solution is to buy local as much as you can, support regenerative farmers and ranchers, and vary your menu. It's even possible to grow cattle, hogs and chickens sustainably, it just doesn't fit BigAg's business plan and would cut seriously into Chuck Grassley's campaign funds. After 50 years in the business it's hard not to climb on the soapbox.
For the record, Purdue University's Dept. of Entomology has produced a fairly flashy and, I'm told, highly edible multi-course fundraising dinner entirely based on insect proteins for a long time. I've eaten crickets, ants and mealworms, and, on the whole, prefer them to Impossible Burgers and any other plant based fake meat products I've tried.
I just don’t like meat; must be a side effect of being “woke.” Maybe others should try it.
Can't afford beef anymore, anyway.
Yep. Even just buying for one.