Walt’s first star

***RIP Virginia Davis***

Peanut Butter Jelly Time

Which is why it is so striking to talk to Delos M. Cosgrove, the heart surgeon who is the clinic’s chief executive, about the initiative. Cosgrove says that if it were up to him, if there weren’t legal issues, he would not only stop hiring smokers. He would also stop hiring obese people. When he mentioned this to me during a recent phone conversation, I told him that I thought many people might consider it unfair. He was unapologetic.

“Why is it unfair?” he asked. “Has anyone ever shown the law of conservation of matter doesn’t apply?” People’s weight is a reflection of how much they eat and how active they are. The country has grown fat because it’s consuming more calories and burning fewer. Our national weight problem brings huge costs, both medical and economic. Yet our anti-obesity efforts have none of the urgency of our antismoking efforts. “We should declare obesity a disease and say we’re going to help you get over it,” Cosgrove said.

You can disagree with the doctor — you can even be offended — and still come to see that there is a larger point behind his tough-love approach. The debate over health care reform has so far revolved around how insurers, drug companies, doctors, nurses and government technocrats might be persuaded to change their behavior. And for the sake of the economy and the federal budget, they do need to change their behavior. But there has been far less discussion about how the rest of us might also change our behavior. It’s as if we have little responsibility for our own health. We instead outsource it to something called the health care system.

Kitty’s been saying this for 10 years.

Wake up FATTYAmerica!

Cry for the gods, cry for the people

It’s true for America too…

make with them a covenant of peace

Ezekiel 34:25-end

I will make with them a covenant of peace and banish wild animals from the land, so that they may live in the wild and sleep in the woods securely.

I will make them and the region around my hill a blessing; and I will send down the showers in their season; they shall be showers of blessing.

The trees of the field shall yield their fruit, and the earth shall yield its increase.

They shall be secure on their soil; and they shall know that I am the Lord, when I break the bars of their yoke, and save them from the hands of those who enslaved them.

They shall no more be plunder for the nations, nor shall the animals of the land devour them; they shall live in safety, and no one shall make them afraid.

I will provide for them splendid vegetation, so that they shall no more be consumed with hunger in the land, and no longer suffer the insults of the nations.

Aporkalypse Now

Fred Einaudi

  akubizone…  candy-injection:  swisserswatter:  rabbyte: kazukij: deadgirls: astrangerscandy: defixiones 
McClatchy points out that 6 0f the 8 genetic segments in the current swine flu come from a 1990′s outbreak on a large North Carolina pig farm: 

The new H1N1 influenza virus that continues to spread through the U.S. has ancestry in a swine flu outbreak that first struck a North Carolina hog farm more than 10 years ago, according to scientists studying the strain’s genetic makeup….

Two of the segments, [Raul Rabadan, a Columbia University scientist] said, appear to come from Eurasia and are somewhat mysterious in origin. The other six can be traced to the North American pig outbreak, which turned out to include a combination of avian, swine and human flu…

“Pigs are amazing mixing bowls for creating new viruses,” said Bob Martin, senior officer at the Pew Environmental Group. Martin was executive director of the study.

“It’s a matter of when, not if,” Martin said of the creation of new viruses on factory hog farms. “The structure of the system is the problem.”

The industrial pig farming industry, of course, as well as scientists on the payroll, all swear that industrial pig farming is safe, and that the viruses would happen no matter how the pigs are raised. This is untrue (see this, this and this).

If the factory meat industry is not forced to clean up its act or shut down, then some new, lethal cocktail of viruses will eventually be unleashed from one of these farms which does create a lethal pandemic for humans.

Just as the financial collapse resulted from ignoring the repeated warnings of those who described what was really going on, we will eventually be brought to our knees by a virus incubated at a factory meat facility unless we change the way we raise meat.

Afterword: The FDA approved cloned meat in January of 2008, and no one really knows whether or not cloned meat is already on the market (it probably is).

Cloned meat production, along with genetically modified foods which can disrupt entire insect populations and cause other problems, are additional examples of the fact that the food industry will create more and more dangerous frankenfoods – and disease-creating facilities – unless the public stands up and demands safe food production and real food.
From George Washington’s blog

 daniela uhlig via cgunit via akubizone

industrial hog farms are disease incubators

For example, Scientific American wrote an article yesterday asking:

Is so-called swine flu really just another environmental problem associated with factory farming?

After all, such large operations keep the animals in close confinement, dope them with antibiotics to keep them alive in the crowded conditions and create vast pools and piles of waste—all good ways to promote the spread of any disease.

Other health threats, such as antibiotic-resistant strains of staphylococcus aureus, have emerged from pig farms as well.

Nevertheless, this H1N1 strain has not yet been found in the pigs near La Gloria, nor is it clear how it would have jumped from the factory farm to little Edgar.

But what is clear thanks to the hard work of virologists is that this particular strain of flu got its genetic start on U.S. hog farms back in the 1990s. That’s according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. How the virus jumped from pigs to humans may have nothing to do with factory farms, but confined animal feeding operations helped to breed the disease.

from Washington’s Blog

they think we fell off a turf truck

The U.S. livestock industry—a large and vital part of agriculture in this country—has been undergoing a drastic change over the past several decades. Huge CAFOs (confined animal feeding operations) have become the predominant method of raising livestock, and the crowded conditions in these facilities have increased water and air pollution and other types of harm to public health and rural communities.

CAFOs are not the inevitable result of market forces. Instead, these unhealthy operations are largely the result of misguided public policy that can and should be changed.

when the hired man sees the wolf coming, he leaves the sheep and runs away

 ¹¹ ”I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives his life for the sheep. ¹² The hired man is not the shepherd who owns the sheep. So when the hired man sees the wolf coming, he leaves the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. ¹³ The man runs away because he is a hired man. He does not care about the sheep.

 ¹⁴ ”I am the good shepherd. I know my sheep, and my sheep know me. ¹⁵ They know me just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I give my life for the sheep.

 ¹⁶ ”I have other sheep that do not belong to this sheep pen. I must bring them in too. They also will listen to my voice. Then there will be one flock and one shepherd.

 ¹⁷ ”The reason my Father loves me is that I give up my life. But I will take it back again. ¹⁸ No one takes it from me. I give it up myself. I have the authority to give it up. And I have the authority to take it back again. I received this command from my Father.”

signs of character

 via pootee

via the dailies

Hog Wild

from George Washington’s Blog by George Washington

A theory about the swine flu which is gaining rapid support is that the flu was spread by flies swarming around the hog manure ponds at the giant Granjas Carrol hog farm in Vera Cruz, Mexico. Granjas Carrol raises 950,000 hogs per year at the facility. These industrial-scale hog farms – where pigs are jammed together so tightly that they can barely turn around.

There are so many of them that they produce many tons of manure, which is just dumped into giant manure ponds.

This is the Wall Street of hog farming. On both Wall Street and at giant meat production farms, the hogs feed at the public trough. With the hog farms, like Wall Street:

• A couple of giant companies dominated the landscape

• Regulators allowed the companies to run amok

• The profits were privatized, and the losses socialized. In the case of the hog farms, the profits from the mega-farms were pocketed by the companies, while the costs of the swine flu epidemic will be borne by the taxpayers

As one blog commentator wrote:

Agribusiness needs to be held accountable. They are following the same rules as bankers; keep the profits and dump losses (in the form of mad cow or now swine flu) on the public. Factor in a few million dead and maybe locally produced food from small farms is not so expensive after all.