DISQUS

Good article, keep it coming.
And check out (if you haven't already): Ahmed Rashid on DemocracyNow! yesterday 6/10 for an incredibly lucid discussion of Afghanistan:
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/6/10/descent_i...
Yes, it's a very popular war. In fact by time the VT Force Saber returns in a month or so to enjoy the splendors of Kabul in Autumn for the third time, we'll be well on the way to having 70% of the VT Army Guard deployed (the DoD told the Vermont Adj. General recently to expect as many as 1900/2700 of them to be deployed by 2010.)

Postville Aftermath The public posturings of Latham, Braley, Judge et al. concerning the Postville disaster are completely disingenuous. The situation at Agriprocessors has been a catastrophe in the making for a long time. It is simply not credible for anyone in Iowa public office to have been surprised, in 2008, by a situation in Postville which has been brewing for over twenty years -- the number and provenance of the  "illegal immigrants" working at the plant, the abominable labor conditions that prevail.

The practice of facilitating "documentation" has  been, from the beginning, a routine part of Agriprocessors's  acquisition of (grossly underpaid) labor for the slaughterhouse floor. The practice has obviously continued unabated for many years now, clearly with a tacit awareness at all levels of Iowa state government, as the plant grew to its present size to include Mexicans and Guatemalans as well as the Russians and Eastern Europeans who have been brought in since the plant was established in the late-1980's.

Postville is an egregious instance of negligent governmental oversight allowing a corporate employer to prey on undocumented workers who are ultimately pawned in a high-visibility raid by ICE agents as convenience dictates. Agriprocessors lost one day of production on the killing floor. Assurances by DOL officials that detainees will receive (sub-minimum wage) back-pay owed them by the plant before they are deported are laughable.

Stephen Bloom's "Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America" was published and widely reviewed over seven years ago. He was interviewed on this site on 5/13. Go back and read the book.

Well, the companies (see list below) that have diligently spent the last 25-30 years consolidating the corn business & marketing a new product, High Fructose Corn Syrup (a sweetener which depends on GMO's for its manufacture*) did so as part of what I believe, in retrospect, to have been part of a long-term strategic plan looking towards large-scale ethanol production. I do not believe they are about to go anywhere or retool in any fashion before they have realized the the full profit of their investment in corn-based biofuel.
There is nothing particularly "new-fangled" about the facilitation of the sugar market (from which corn has received collateral benefit for many years): sugar protection legislation was first enacted in the 1930's; the price-support system has been amended many times since, canceled in 1974, renewed in 1981 and amended in 1985 and 1990. In early 1995, for example, when the world price for sugar was $.16/lb., the US price was $.225/lb.(opensecrets.org) HFCS producers benefited indirectly during the '70's, more and more directly in during the years which followed. Their current position has been strengthened unimaginably during the last decade -- and our presidential candidates/nominees are all indebted to the industry for campaign support in one way or another.

Archer Daniels Midland (IA), Cargill Inc (MN), Corn Products International, Inc (IL), National Starch LLC,Penford Products Co (Penford Subsidiary) (IA), Roquette America Inc (IA),Tate & Lyle Ingredients Americas Inc (IL) -- member list courtesy the Corn Refiners Assoc. (corn.org)

* GMOs used in HFCS manufacture: alpha-amylase and glucose-isomerase

"McCain

old saying: politics is show business for ugly people.

concerning politicians, intentionality & veracity, oliver sacks has an amusing story about visiting a ward full of patients with kind a language aphasia which rendered them unable to decode words and syntax, but left them attuned with a kind of hypersensitivity to the tonality of speech. rather like dogs and other domesticated animals. they (the patients) were sitting in a dayroom, watching Reagan make one of his earnest, paternal presentations. it was eerily silent for the longest time. and then the entire room erupted in a raucous, derisive laughter, the kind of laughter reserved for a liar or a charlatan who has been found out.

try a thought experiment: listen to candidate x, y or z and tune out the words, listen only to the sound, contour, and dynamics of the speech. what do you hear? would you trust the person behing this sound with your bank account, with your child?

well, drifting off task here, but what the heck:

taylortoone: I don't think we are in disagreement about fundamental weaknesses in HRC's putative candidacy -- experience (peripheral), independence (missing: take look at The Body of War [Spiro&Donahue], especially at the montage of senators at the podium repeating, word for word, every GWB fabrication concerning WMD's, Al-Queda-Iraqi connivance, etc ad nauseam), authenticity (watch, in the NH video, how ferociously she works the room with her eyes, gauging the response of every person in the room), flexibility (?), adaptability (??). What people, me, too, at moments, admire is the fighter -- but so what, ultimately: this isn't a Golden Gloves tournament, right? And 4,000 US lives, 30,000 US casualties later, 750,000+ Iraqi lives and several million Iraqis displaced, HRC still does not get it, as ariehl points out above.

the worst of it is: if these three are the best the country can up with, what does that say about the corruption & depravity of the political system?

(by the way, don't underestimate the RNC oomph that was thrown behind Lazio in 2000 -- he could easily have stepped into D'Amato's shoes, dogshit and all, against a less-feisty opponent.)

'...notice, for example, how often she is referred to as