In an op-ed for Rolling Stone, Tom Morello, popular guitarist for the band ‘Rage Against the Machine’, blasts Romney’s vice presidential pick, Paul Ryan (Rage being one of Ryan’s favorite bands) as an “extreme fringe right wing nut job” among other things, emphasis mine:
“Don't mistake me, I clearly see that Ryan has a whole lotta "rage" in him: A rage against women, a rage against immigrants, a rage against workers, a rage against gays, a rage against the poor, a rage against the environment. Basically the only thing he's not raging against is the privileged elite he's groveling in front of for campaign contributions.
You see, the super rich must rationalize having more than they could ever spend while millions of children in the U.S. go to bed hungry every night. So, when they look themselves in the mirror, they convince themselves that "Those people are undeserving. They're . . . lesser." Some of these guys on the extreme right are more cynical than Paul Ryan, but he seems to really believe in this stuff. This unbridled rage against those who have the least is a cornerstone of the Romney-Ryan ticket.”
And like it or not, it’s on the market, deceptively called “lean, finely textured beef” aka "boneless lean beef trimmings.”
Except it’s really the remains of the animal after all the meat normally cut has been removed. Or something like that.
Pink slime is the pejorative term for "lean finely textured beef," a product designed to recover useful bits from carcass trimmings. These are warmed, centrifuged to remove the fat, treated with ammonium hydroxide gas to kill pathogens, and compressed into blocks that are frozen for later use.
School food advocate Bettina Siegel collected 230,000 signatures on a letter to the USDA to ban LFTB. She wrote, "It is simply wrong to feed our children connective tissues and beef scraps that were, in the past, destined for use in pet food and rendering, and were not considered fit for human consumption." The USDA buys loads of LFTB for school hamburger because it is cheap. Districts that choose higher-quality meat will have to pay more for meat. Can they afford to?
Reports over weekend showed that Beef Products' top executives and workers have given $820,750 to congressional and presidential candidates over the past decade, with all but $28,400 going to Republicans. Branstad, a Republican, received $150,000 over the past two years from people tied to Beef Products, his spokesman Tim Albrecht said Monday.
Nope. If you thought it would be food safety, you were wrong. Instead, Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad called for a Congressional investigation into who started the “smear campaign” against the pink slime. Seriously.
“Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad called Monday for a congressional investigation into how what he called ‘a smear campaign’ against the meat product commonly called ‘pink slime’ got started,” the New York Daily News writes. "‘We have a smear campaign going on against a product that is healthy and safe,’ Branstad said at his weekly news conference. ‘If they get by with this, what other food products are they going to attack next?’ … ‘It's clear this is a safe product. It's a lean product, it helps reduce obesity and there is a spurious attack being levied against it by some groups. You can suspect who they might be. They are people who do not like meat. … He also called on students at agricultural colleges in Iowa to use their social media skills ‘to counter what Hollywood and the media elites and the people who are spreading this misinformation are doing. It's their future that's being threatened by this.’”
So now, Republicans are waging a campaign against parents of schoolchildren, along with other well-meaning Americans, because they don’t think pink slime sounds entirely appetizing. And they’re apparently doing so in order to stop our protests against the pink slime.
Newt Gingrich just can’t stop using that old canard, the Southern dog whistle, that code for the term “welfare queens” (which don’t even exist in reality). Here’s Newt when asked what he would say to the NAACP if given the opportunity:
“More people are on food stamps today because of Obama's policies than ever in history. I would like to be the best paycheck president in American history. ... And so I'm prepared if the NAACP invites me, I'll go to their convention and talk about why the African-American community should demand paychecks and not be satisfied with food stamps.”
Really, Newt, really?
Give me a freaking break. Calling President Obama the “food stamp president” and insinuating that black people are all on food stamps, i.e., too lazy to get jobs thus live off food stamps, for Christ’s sake, is old, racist, and not based in truth. [Gingrich’s association with truth is always tenuous, but this is to the point of utterly ridiculous.]
Yes, enrollment in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program has increased during the Obama administration, but as experts continually point out, and which Gingrich continually ignores, this is because of the near depression caused by the policies of Bush and company, a deep, deep recession which continues today, necessitating assistance to many more people than would be the case during better times.
Watch Fox News amplify Gingrich’s message:
So did President George W. Bush preside over the highest number of food stamp recipients in history? Thus far, yes. 11 Alive in Atlanta [emphasis mine] fact-checked Gingrich:
The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food and Nutrition service tracks month-to-month figures dating back to January 2001. The numbers show that the total of food stamp recipients rose to 14.2 million during President Obama's administration.
The highest in history so far is President George W. Bush. The number of food stamp recipients grew to nearly 14.7 million while he was in office. But, that's eight years in office, compared to President Obama who has not finished his first term.
It's possible that when the figures for January 2012 are available they will show that the gain under Obama has matched or exceeded the gain under Bush. But not if the short-term trend continues. The number getting food stamps declined by 43,528 in October. And the economy has improved since then.
One out of seven Americans is currently getting food stamps, according to the Department of Agriculture.
The figures also show the rise in food stamps began before Obama took office, and accelerated as the nation plunged into the worst economic recession since the Great Depression.
The economic downturn began in December 2007. In the 12 months before Obama was sworn in, 4.4 million were added to the rolls, triple the 1.4 million added in 2007.
So, who gets food stamps?
The most recent Department of Agriculture report on the general characteristics of the SNAP (food stamp) program's beneficiaries says that in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 2010:
-- 47% of beneficiaries were children under age 18.
-- 8% were age 60 or older.
-- 41% lived in a household with earnings from a job - the so-called "working poor."
-- The average household received a monthly benefit of $287.
-- 36% were white (non-Hispanic), 22% were African American (non-Hispanic) and 10% were Hispanic.
Oh, and by the way, Newt and Fox liars, the state with the highest number of Americans eligible for and receiving food stamps is Nevada. [Nevada, where if I had to venture a guess, I’d say that there might be maybe fifteen whole black people living in the entire state of Nevada.]
Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-IN), a prominent supporter of the food stamp program:
“People now see that it’s necessary to have a strong food stamp program.”
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