Aug. 31: Republicans reducing meat inspections (except in youth sports) … Republicans also gutting food-parasite research that would prevent explosive emissions from your gut … Trump expands communism to Venezuela by taking a stake in the oil industry there … Trump re-ignites Iran War just in time to raise gas prices for the Labor Day weekend …
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Typically, one wants one’s government attacking problems at both ends. Just not when the problem is one’s alimentary canal.
Pres. Donald Trump hasn’t tried to rename it the America Canal yet, although the day is still young.
But Trump and his congressional Republican accongplices are waging war on both what goes in your alimentary canal at the top, and what comes out the other end. And the explosiveness therefrom.
Let’s start at the top!
As usual, Trump is trying to get his meat into millions of people. So, on Friday he announced a brilliant idea from that well-known source of the other kind of ideas: Glenn “ReGlember him?” Beck.
Trump said Friday, “Ranchers and Farmers have always been a number one priority for me.” It wasn’t clear how many other number-one priorities he has or whether ranchers and farmers are his number-one number-one priority.
Two days earlier, Beck asked Trump to let cattle farmers kill and process their own cattle (the technical term for hamburgers that are still moving).
To be clear, cattle farmers — or “ranchers” if we’re feeling especially Taylor Sheridan — can already process their cattle. So don’t blame the government. Only the Catholic Church says it’s a sin to process your own meat.
The hitch for Beck is that to sell his meat after he’s processed it, it has to be federally inspected. And no one wants to inspect Beck’s meat.
I said “his” meat because that’s Beck’s pronoun and TFN respects pronouns. Also, Beck is a cattle farmer. So he wants to be able to sell his meat without federal inspections.
The whole Trump-Beck discourse is USDA-Prime comedy, but here, lightly annotated, are the best cuts from these meatheads. Don’t miss America’s commander-in-beef and the cattle farmer/radio host improvising federal policy as they guess which agency has jurisdiction:
Beck: Please, when it comes to beef, please look at the cartel that is the meat processing cartel. I mean, that is — I run a ranch, so I know what it’s like…
…I’m telling you, it is the processing plants. There’s four of them and I think two of them are not even American. It’s bad and they’re, I believe they’re colluding with each other. [Yes.]Trump: …I’m surprised because that’s been going on a long time… [which typically makes things not a surprise].
Beck: … [W]e can’t butcher. With all of the federal regulations it is really hard. … The inspections are insane.
Trump: …if you didn’t have those regulations, could you do it on your ranch? [Faint sound of wheels turning.]
Beck: Yes … Break the back of those processing plants. There’s people that want to build processing plants everywhere. The regulations are killing us, just killing us.
Trump: So you’re saying, with less regulation, you think that the ranchers and farmers would do a very good job of processing the beef?
Beck: Yes. … Free your people. Let our people go. Let your people go.
Trump: …Who’s controlling those regulations, Department of Agriculture [USDA]?
Beck: Yes and FDA [Food and Drug Administration].
Trump: And the FDA.
Beck: Or U.S., or is it USDA? I can’t remember which one [because who wouldn’t forget who’s killing us, just killing us], but it’s—
Trump: USDA.
Beck: It’s the federal regulator. It’s all the inspections. It’s all the inspections.
Trump: Wow. …you just gave me a very good idea.
Wow, indeed, Mr. President. Wow, indeed.
See, this is why you never want to see the sausage get made, especially when it’s sausage getting made about how beef gets made by two idiots who don’t know how to make beef or sausage.
In fairness, Beck has a point. Four meat-processing companies control 85% of America’s meat processing. Not counting capitalism processing human meat through the grinder of birth, school, work, death.
And, yes, two of the meat processors are Brazilian-owned, as if we’re supposed to care about the nationalization status of the monopolistic meat-handling billionaires (or unlicensed drivers) who kill us.
The Justice Department is already looking at this quadropoly. Allegedly.
But thanks to the dwindling of the cattle herd — caused by the climate change Trump is causing by trying to bring down gas prices — no, there’s actually not “people that want to build processing plants everywhere.”
There’s already a surplus of dead-cow processing capacity.
Yes, Big Meat processors are protected by regulatory capture — rules that make it harder for smaller competitors to handle their meat — but even Big Meat is already pulling out their meat. Tyson Foods just announced it’s closing two plants and selling a third.
That’s hundreds of layoffs.
Trump’s Glenn Beck’s idea comes as the entire meat industry is pissed at Trump for bringing in 300,000 metric tons of un-American beef. And Trump’s Glenn Beck’s idea to make it up to cattle farmers is to let them slaughter and pack their dead cows … which requires investments in slaughter-industrial equipment, and not just that hand-held cow-killy thing Anton Chigurh had. These are investments that farmers can’t afford when they’ve already got fewer cows to sell.
Nevertheless, in response to Trump’s half-assed order based on Trump’s Beck’s half-assed idea, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins today is rolling out half-assed initiatives to let half-assed-inspected meat hit our tables. “[W]aiving red tape” is what the secretary who sponsors a free-market Bible study called it.
The National Cattlemen’s Association, the collective body of rugged individualist cowsplayers, said, “Weakening federal meat inspection and food safety standards, as President Trump has suggested, is not the answer.”
Not only does red tape protect us from red tape worms, but federal regulations — and I’ve heard this before — often aren’t a burden. One slaughter-house owner said, “The USDA approving my processing plant was the easiest part of the whole thing.” He said state and local rules are the problem.
But Trump can’t do explosive shit about those.
And on that topic, there are other assholes we’re already dealing with at the other end of our alimentary canal: Ours.
If you’re having lettuce with your steak, you should know it’s been inspected about as well as Beck wants his meat inspected. But this time, Trump’s ahead of the pack.
More than 17,000 people in 20 states this year have come down with cyclosporiasis, which causes explosive diarrhea and is caused by the cyclospora parasite, which was caused by too many voters swallowing the verbal, um, rhetoric, of the 2024 election-cycle parasite.
The cyclosporiasis was traced to lettuce imported by Taylor Farms, which did its best to wipe its fingerprints off our poop. So how could tainted lettuce get into the country?
As ProPublica found out, U.S. inspections of international facilities that provide us with food are at 15-year lows, like Trump’s approval ratings. How come? Remember all those unneeded administrative staff Trump let go?
They included travel coordinators. And boring, useless bureaucrats who processed travel reimbursements and saved our lives. So: Much less travel.
And are we now researching how to stop the cyclospora that makes it through the non-existent inspections?
Politico reports that the USDA (or maybe the FDA?) had three major research projects on cyclospora. Here’s their current statuseses:
Defunded.
Defunded.
Forced to move to Iowa, so literally every single researcher on the project said they’re out, because they’d rather risk explosive diarrhea than risk Iowa.
Why were those two projects defunded? Because Republicans have a majority in Congress and those millionaire tax cuts won’t pay for themselves.
So now the USDA researchers who study foodborne parasites are all leaving the glamorous world of foodborne-parasite research or just retiring (and I don’t mean they’re shy).
The USDA in 2022 just finished a $32 million renovation of the food lab they’re now abandoning. The relocation is to a facility with less modern facilities.
And the lab is storing dangerous bacteria in freezers at -80°, colder than Tucker Carlson’s heart. Those freezers now have to be moved. Somehow.
As Barbara Kowalcyk of George Washington University’s Milken Institute of Public Health told Politico, “Do you want them shipping highly pathogenic strains of bacteria in a truck across the country?”
Hey, don’t give Trump a very good idea. Wow!
OBVIOUSLY Rollins’s new plan for Trump’s Glenn Beck’s idea is expected to involve subsidizing smaller meat processors, to help them compete with the Big Four.
This aid is expected to arrive more than a year after Trump killed this aid after it was authorized under Pres. Joe Biden.
Trump killed millions in Biden grants directly to small cow-killers. Also, under Biden, the USDA (or maybe FDA?) had $1 billion in grants and loans in the meat pipeline to boost independent meat processors.
Trump killed it, but in July announced $60 million in grants to do the same thing, only at a rate of one 60-millionth of one billion. Trump’s grants will go directly to meat processors to help them buy hand-held cow-killy things from Anton Chigurh.
By contrast, Biden’s one (1) billion stoked the whole pipeline, giving money to schools and food banks … for buying meat from small, independent vendors. One goal was to build a more resilient, locally-based food-supply system after COVID showed us the vulnerabilities food monopolies create.
And the Biden billion meant it wasn’t just cow-killers benefiting, but the whole ecosystem (except cows): School kids, hungry poor folks, food banks, and cow-killers.
Of course, we should be moving away from all meat as fast as possible before climate change does that hand-held cow-killy thing to our species.
Commander-in-Thief Steals Oil Before Restoring Democracy
Pres. Donald Trump on Sunday said the U.S. will replenish the Strategic Petroleum Reserve with oil he’s stealing from Venezuela. Trump’s been tapping the reserve to keep gas prices low, which he hasn’t (here’s why).
The reserve hasn’t been this low since 1982, the last year Pres. Ronald Reagan was still sexy.
Trump earlier announced a vague “deal” to take a stake in Venezuela’s biggest oil company which is fucked up morally but also fucked up for other reasons too lengthy and numerous to enumerate here. But here’s one you’ll enjoy: Trump’s impulsive communism is pissing off Big Oil, because they just got a new competitor in the form of Big Government.
Obviously, there’s no reason to think this will move gas prices any time soon. In fact, some questions about the quality of the oil Trump just stole are being raised in the past by someone who knows oil probably better than anyone:
It’s worth noting that it’s been eight months since Trump stole Venezuelan Pres. Nicolás Maduro. The government wasn’t dismantled. The country remained intact.
And yet there still haven’t been elections.
Because what’s the first thing the people would do? Elect a government that would obey Venezuelan law against selling off its oil. And then re-nationalize it all.
Election Watch
ALABAMA Former Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) isn’t the only former senator who’s suddenly got a fighting chance in November.
Former Sen. Doug Jones (D-AL) — who lucked out in 2017 running against a future surprise guest on the Chris Hansen show — might have a slim shot at winning the governor’s race this year, polling suggests.
Jones is running against Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), named after a town that was named after his brain. Tuberville was already outed as living and voting in Florida, which is not Alabama (yet … despite best efforts).
New polling shows only 49% of voters are at least “probably” going to vote for Tuberville. If enough of the rest vote for Jones, they could send Tuberville and his tuber back to Tuberville. Or Florida.
Jones’s campaign site is here.
MICHIGAN Talking Points Memo’s Josh Marshall offers a sedative for anyone panicking that Michigan voters are rejecting Abdul el-Sayed just because he’s a terrorist … in Republican campaign ads. (h/t)
Marshall marshals recent polling to show that even if el-Sayed isn’t a sure thing, there’s every reason to think he’s in the lead already. And his campaign site is here.
Four Quickies
Fifteen people are missing, and one dead, after flash flooding hit Grand Canyon National Park over the weekend to make sure no one thinks climate change is only bringing deadly floods to Nepal.
Remember how the Department of Homeland (sic) Security (DHS) admitted it overhyped its Nevada non-citizen voting numbers like Las Vegas overhypes your odds of winning? Your turn, Pennsylvania! Democracy Docket reports that the secretary of the commonwealth said DHS officials privately admitted they don’t have “high confidence” in their public claim that Pennsylvania has 14,576 non-citizen registered voters. “High” is just one of the kinds of confidence I don’t have. (h/t)
Pres. Donald Trump for the first time in recent memory attacked Iran without violating a ceasefire, because there is no ceasefire. He just … ceased firing. Then the U.S. spotted Iran preparing to deploy mines in the Strait of Hormuz that they can just fire into the water via rocket launcher. The U.S. strikes on Sunday reportedly killed two people who weren’t even attending a girls school. Iran retaliated against America’s weakest point: Other countries. But Jordan says Iran’s rockets were intercepted. Which didn’t protect Iran’s real target…
Oil prices this morning rose three percent as the exchange of fire reminded Wall Street traders that the U.S. still hasn’t won the Iran War.
TCB
FUCKING THE FUCKING NEWS Just wanted to acknowledge recent grumblings about TFN. No need to rise to my defense; the points are valid and, I think, fair-minded.
As TFN grows — I now have 80,000 subscribers! — it’s more important to be transparent about criticism and editorial thinking. Aka my thinking.
I got multiple comments about Thursday’s TFN, in which I wrote that Nepal’s flood victims had not evolved biological adaptations to climate change quickly enough to survive. One Newsfucker suggested it was too soon: “I'm not sure if joking about Nepal first thing is appropriate, today or at all. I'm disappointed.”
Another agreed: “I had a similar thought. I love TFN’s schtick, but it doesn’t work equally well for all stories.”
Another said, “making light of the horrific flash flood devastation in Nepal in order to score points on those who dismissed Al Gore’s warnings is perhaps…a bridge too far. Not in good taste this time!”
It’s true, sometimes The Fucking News is not in good taste! I’m grateful for those who defended me, but I had mixed feelings about it myself.
There’s no way to calibrate taste and schtick and appropriateness perfectly, because the audience is always changing and I screw up. That said, the more folks reading TFN, the more I have to think about how mordant humor will hit everyone.
So the feedback is important. Thank you.
NEWSFUCKING IN THE WILD Didja miss my appearance Thursday on The Left Hook with Wajahat Ali? You can fix that, right here.
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Thank you. E pluribus fuckem.
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Go get ‘em, kids! Remember, whether it’s your own or someone else’s, meat-handling should be consensual!
TFN creator and writer Jonathan Larsen co-created Up w/ Chris Hayes and wrote for Countdown with Keith Olbermann at MSNBC, helped launch CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° and Air America Radio, and has also worked at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Young Turks. He is a member of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation advisory board.
Since my capacity for useless trivia is rarely ever handy except in pub quizzes, I must gleefully point out that the real official name for a hand-held cow-killy thingy like the one from No Country for Old Men is "captive bolt pistol". My life has purpose today. Thank you TFN!
Brain worms for everyone!!!