Hey Beavis, That's Racist Kale. Heh Heh Heh.

Of course, I don't think we have anything (4.00 / 1)

to worry about with Rush going anywhere near white cabbage or any other kind of cabbage. For him it'd be more like white flour, white sugar, or perhaps snorting white powder.

"I can understand someone from Iowa promoting corn and soy, but we are not feeding the world, we are feeding animals and soft drink companies." - Jim Goodman

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by: Jill Richardson @ Wed Sep 23, 2009 at 00:31:08 AM UTC

Perhaps some mozarella string cheese. (4.00 / 1)

Nothing with color, though.

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by: count @ Wed Sep 23, 2009 at 16:57:20 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Just goes to show (4.00 / 2)

"There's no fixing STUPID"
I used to listen to Rush, I still do on occasion - mostly one hour of rerun on Sundays if I'm not watching a movie while working online and/or cooking meals for the week.

Rush just lost what little credibility he still had with me. I actually got tired of listening to Rush way back when Clinton was in office. All he ever did was whine about the same things from month to month. It got old after a while.  

Regarding locavores as elitists - explain to me how supporting local business is elitist....

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by: Joanne Rigutto @ Wed Sep 23, 2009 at 00:45:12 AM UTC

Just wait until she goes for a haircut! (4.00 / 1)

(rolling eyes...)

What's Limbaugh doing here these days, anyways?  Shouldn't he be on an underage Caribbean sex tour or something?

Heh -

Of course, I don't think we have anything to worry about with Rush going anywhere near white cabbage or any other kind of cabbage.

Vegetables are a liberal conspiracy.

Coming soon to a Philadelphia near you!

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by: JayinPortland @ Wed Sep 23, 2009 at 01:35:15 AM UTC

Ha ha (4.00 / 2)

 You joke but I have known someone who didn't eat vegetables because he claimed eating was being too 'left' and there was no way he was going to eat something that was communistic. (his word)

Yeah he was dumb. He said this to us while he was eating french fries.  He did remove the lettuce and tomato from his burger though. LOL

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by: elizajade @ Wed Sep 23, 2009 at 02:31:44 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Lol! (4.00 / 1)

I wonder what his thoughts on beets are?

They're actually RED!

:)

Coming soon to a Philadelphia near you!

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by: JayinPortland @ Wed Sep 23, 2009 at 02:39:59 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

why red? (4.00 / 1)

How did someone decide that the Republican party color would be red? Can you imagine how entertaining Repubs would find it if the Dem color was red?

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by: count @ Thu Sep 24, 2009 at 00:00:27 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

THAT is actually EXACTLY why they (4.00 / 1)

made the Republicans red. I think it was done during the Clinton campaign and they realized that as soon as they made the Dems red everyone would yell "communism!" So Dems are blue.

"I can understand someone from Iowa promoting corn and soy, but we are not feeding the world, we are feeding animals and soft drink companies." - Jim Goodman

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by: Jill Richardson @ Thu Sep 24, 2009 at 01:14:18 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

I don't understand (4.00 / 1)

the comments very much as you skirt the issue completely.  For a so called greeny to cause all that waste....gas, pollution, time....needs pointing out whether left, right, racist, whatever.  Sheesh, even the real 'Royals' are walking about these days.  

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by: wickets @ Wed Sep 23, 2009 at 10:23:55 AM UTC

There's an exception... (4.00 / 2)

for some which even I will grant.

The waste sounds ridiculous until you realize that the president and his family aren't you and I, going across town to pick up some carrots.  This is America, 2009.  Haven't you seen the people carrying semi-automatic weapons into Town Hall meetings lately?

And fwiw, it isn't just the Obamas, lest our memories fail us.

Do you remember the first term of the Bush presidency (after September 11), when he was flying all across the country and doing the partisan political speechifying thing seemingly every day for 3 years nonstop?  At least, when he wasn't pretending to "clear brush" (in front of every network's cameras) at The Brush Ranch...

The point is that the same people who squeezed their eyes tighter than snare drums during the Bush presidency have suddenly found their "conservatism" again, when it comes to criticizing anything and everything that has anything to do with Barack Obama and his family.

And it's especially galling coming from a racist dipshit like Limbaugh or one of the elite DC Press Corps.  How do they get around town, btw?  Do they ride the Metro?  

And what kind of footprint do they leave in their lifestyles?

Coming soon to a Philadelphia near you!

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by: JayinPortland @ Wed Sep 23, 2009 at 12:08:18 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

I think it's important to remember (4.00 / 2)

that when you're in the first family, the Secret Service controls many of the details of where you go, when you go, how you get there, what route you take, and whom you get to talk to once you arrive. I can only imagine how irritating that must get after a while.

Yes, it obviously sends a weird message to take an armored car a block to the farmers market, but the Secret Service takes its job VERY seriously. Good luck trying to argue with them, especially with reports that threats are up 400% since Obama was elected.

I read an anecdote (it may have been in Clinton's memoir, My Life) about Clinton attending some convention where the hotel he was staying in and the convention center shared a parking lot. He insisted on walking against all advice, so the Secret Service got into a bunch of armored cars and surrounded him while he walked.

By walking he made them use more cars and more energy. How nuts is that?

I wish I knew half what the flock of them know
Of where all the berries and other things grow,
Cranberries in bogs and raspberries on top
Of the boulder-strewn mountain, and when they will crop.
--"Blueberries" by Robert Frost

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by: wide eyed lib @ Wed Sep 23, 2009 at 16:45:36 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Oh, and... (4.00 / 2)

...even though it's not the point of what Jill wrote here (she's focusing on what Limbaugh said), I hereby challenge Dana Milbank to see which one of us lives a more environmentally responsible lifestyle.

He can click on my name and email me directly, but I'm sure he won't because he knows he'd be embarrassed on that measure.

He's a hypocritical hack, just like all the rest of them.

Coming soon to a Philadelphia near you!

---

by: JayinPortland @ Wed Sep 23, 2009 at 12:15:02 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

There's some unavoidable waste (4.00 / 2)

for the First Family, to be honest. They fly around in a 747. They drink bottled water. But it's security. Sometimes there's a justification for it. In my own case, compact fluorescent lightbulbs cause migraines so I use the less efficient incandescant bulbs. You should save energy where you can, but sometimes you can't.

As far as Michelle goes, the effect of her encouraging an entire nation to visit farmers' markets is far greater than the waste of her driving up the street in a limosuine, etc.

"I can understand someone from Iowa promoting corn and soy, but we are not feeding the world, we are feeding animals and soft drink companies." - Jim Goodman

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by: Jill Richardson @ Wed Sep 23, 2009 at 16:52:57 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

unavoidable waste (4.00 / 1)

How many tons of carrots are wasted because they aren't symmetrical? How many million pounds of pesticides do we use to prevent cosmetic blemishes on fruit, and how many tons of fruit are composted because they aren't cosmetically perfect? How many million gallons of milk are dumped down sewers (causing increased cost for treating the water as well as wasting the milk) because it passed the sell by date because consumers wouldn't buy it because it was near the sell by date? How many, how much...

I dunno, I think Mrs. PBO is doing OK, on balance.

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by: count @ Wed Sep 23, 2009 at 17:06:41 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

I can't speak for the other foods (4.00 / 2)

but a lot of produce that isn't cosmetically good enough for fresh sales goes to processing I think.

Also, lots of produce from stores around my area go to hog farms. Can't speak for other areas, but a lot around my area does. I had been picking up culls and trimmings from the produce stand down the road from my place. I got cut off, because the stand owner knows a hog farmer who started taking the stuff. The hogs were eating lettuce, melons, stone fruits, etc. Harold told me that at least one grocery store was sending all their waste from the produce department to hog farms in the area too.

Regarding locavores as elitists - explain to me how supporting local business is elitist....

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by: Joanne Rigutto @ Wed Sep 23, 2009 at 18:05:35 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

You're right, but (4.00 / 1)

I just heard a speech by Wayne Roberts (from 2006), in which he said that about a third of the fruit and vegetables grown in North America ends up in landfills or compost.

Now, that is waste. That is our food production and distribution system. Dana Milbank should write about that.

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by: count @ Wed Sep 23, 2009 at 19:06:56 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

wow, good call (4.00 / 1)

and not surprising. although i wonder if all of the fruit/veg they considered were harvested & fit for human consumption. Because that statistic would take on an entirely different meaning if it wasn't just grocery store/home/restaurant waste and it also included all of the blighted tomato plants on the east coast that were tossed out this year and the 2000 lbs of watermelons that got a fungus and couldn't be sold, etc.

"I can understand someone from Iowa promoting corn and soy, but we are not feeding the world, we are feeding animals and soft drink companies." - Jim Goodman

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by: Jill Richardson @ Thu Sep 24, 2009 at 01:17:10 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

btw, the 2000 lbs of watermelon (4.00 / 1)

I refer to is on a friend's farm. He's feeding those watermelons to his livestock so it isn't going to waste. But it certainly isn't going for its intended use, which was selling watermelons to restaurants, stores, and at farmers markets.

"I can understand someone from Iowa promoting corn and soy, but we are not feeding the world, we are feeding animals and soft drink companies." - Jim Goodman

---

by: Jill Richardson @ Thu Sep 24, 2009 at 01:18:10 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

profound implications (0.00 / 0)

I think the implications of your comment are profound. For example, with regard to feeding livestock, you fed your animals culls and trimmings from the produce stand because it was available. Now the the stand items are gone, you probably feed your animals culls and trimmings from your own work. You probably also feed them some produce from your own land, because it is available. Why do you do that? Because you yourself are dealing with both the produce and the animals, and the whole thing is one system that just seems to tie together very naturally for you.

That can't happen at a factory chicken farm or feedlot operation where managers have no concept of good husbandry or agricultural practice, and the human element has been stripped out as much as practical. Automatic feeders, for example. How can feeders designed to handle truckloads of standardized industrial feed cope with leftover produce?

I don't know how the processed produce business works. I could imagine, though, that one grower might sell all his crop to a processor, and another grower might sell all her crop for fresh sale. The maker of applesauce puts all inventory into the vat, regardless of cosmetics. Crop from another orchard gets sorted, with pretty fruit going for sale and blemishes going to landfill, just because standardized systems work that way.

Something tinkeling away in a corner of my mind - perhaps, contrary to what a person might intuit, an industrialized food system designed to produce the cheapest possible food actually depends on producing excess of the inputs. With cheap excess imputs, the system can afford to be inefficient. American distribution does not deal efficiently with excess inputs.

Tentative thinking. I don't know if it makes sense.

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by: count @ Wed Sep 23, 2009 at 20:02:02 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Yeah (4.00 / 1)

I use some of the production from the farm for animal feed. Corn stalks get chopped and fed to the horses and goats. Old tomatoes and corn that bugs have gotten into go to the chickens, bad corn goes to the horses and the goats as well as the chickens. Weeds, when I've pulled 'em go to compost, and when I was getting stuff from the produce stand, some went to the animals, the rest to compost.

You're right in that the bulk of the confinement operations don't feed this stuff to the animals. Most of those poultry and swine operations have their feed delivered by their integrators and the feeds are delivered to the animals by automated systems.

In general, it's the ones that are independant growers who use scraps. We used to know a pig farmer in the area. All he fed was slop, what the food waste is called. That's what people used to feed their hogs on a regular basis. That's why pigs are so wide spread among the human population. Pigs turn waste into meat that we can eat, or excess crops into something that will store well or better as is the case with things like sweet corn, extra vegetables, etc. In some cases pigs are fed human waste even, although I haven't heard of anyone doing that in this country. Harold says that pigs are the one animal that you can feed anything to and it won't taint the meat. I don't know if I'd go quite that far though.

Regarding locavores as elitists - explain to me how supporting local business is elitist....

---

by: Joanne Rigutto @ Wed Sep 23, 2009 at 20:43:16 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

One of my mantras is... (4.00 / 2)

"crooked is good".  Foods do not need to be perfect. We eat food for the nutrition, not the looks. The picture perfect tomato is an artifact foisted upon us by the creators of gardening catalogs. The saying comes from Mike Madison (Deborah's brother) in his little book "Blithe Tomato".  It's a collection of essays and vignettes of people and farmers he has known at farmers markets and thru his farming activities. Delightful book that both my wife and I have greatly enjoyed. Also a lot of gentle wisdom in it.

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by: DennisP @ Wed Sep 23, 2009 at 18:16:26 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

So Michelle Obama is just suppose to be (4.00 / 3)

a prisoner in the White House and never go anywhere?

This was a big free commercial for farmers markets, I think that justifies the carbon footprint left behind.

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by: sarge in seattle @ Wed Sep 23, 2009 at 14:09:48 PM UTC

Snarky Milbank (4.00 / 3)

Dana Milbank used to provide snark for the Keith Olbermann's Countdown. But then they realized he was a closet right-winger and canned him. This article shows that he's gone downhill, willfully distorting the purpose of the hullabaloo at the farmers market. He's got a bright future in the Land of O'LimBeck.

-- Andy

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by: Andy Anderson @ Wed Sep 23, 2009 at 15:00:10 PM UTC

I surrender LOL (4.00 / 2)

though it's worth saying that it is nice to see comments about stuff other than rush :)

hoping all readers/commentators here have a fine day

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by: wickets @ Wed Sep 23, 2009 at 19:03:10 PM UTC