My Grandpa, 27 year veteran of the Army, was also a staunch Democrat mostly because of Roosevelt and his emergency actions to stop the Depression from destroying America. As bad as it was, it could have gone worse. I know a lot of our (ahem)”conservative” readers, those who drew the assignment of trolling the weblog today, are screaming at their monitors right now just from that. Now, don’t y’all worry none, boys, you’ll get more to holler about presently.
He was in the Civilian Conservation Corps, the ones who at public expense did the necessary work to keep the Heartland from turning into a desert, and cleaned up other little “mistakes” visited on the ecosystem by Mechanized American Mercantilism. That’s my nouveau mot du jour.
Grandpa was assigned on a dairy farm. With a bunch of others, one of whom was from some city and had apparently never become acquainted with farm life. And who complained about caring for, cleaning and milking the cows. Since cattle lay belly down to sleep at night, often in their own feces, you can’t just lead Bossy to the barn, slap a bucket under her and starting pulling teats. Hell to the No Sir.
You have to wash those teats first, especially in a setup with a milking machine.
Ol’ boy was understandably not very happy with that. Wished the cows gone in fact. Grandpa asked him “what would you do for milk then?” and he said “Why, I’d just go to the store and buy it.” Enter NOAA and the National Weather Service. Both of them proposed to be cut by the “conservatives”.
No, seriously. It’s been echoed up and down the Right Wing Talking points by now so I’m not sure which one exactly said it first. Bachmann perhaps Who represents a Dairy district by the way.
But they’re searching for things that cumulatively wouldn’t cut a tenth of the deficit, because they’re not going to dare breathe the Subsidies to The Rich in the form of the Police and Military State.
A “Sacred Cow” as it were. Which is a misnomer as is “scapegoat” as used in the vernacular “they made him the scapegoat”.
Let’s roll with those a few moments
For instance, the Wealthy “scapegoat” food stamps and public housing and point to privately subsidized enterprises like Soup Kitchens and the Salvation Army. Cut a check to the mission every other month, so they think, Wham Bam Thank You Ma’am nobody goes hungry.
Ummmm… not so… Aside from the Privatize Everything mentality causing most of the problems in the economy today, the very little spent on soup kitchens and missions doesn’t even go to a red hot two percent of the people who need help just to Not Freakin’ Starve In The Streets.
Then there’s the National Weather Service. The Lunatic Fringe want to cut it because, “people would just get their weather from weather.com or Weatherbug”….
Uhhhh…. not only didn’t your cheeseburger and fries not magically appear at your McFatFood restaurant, there were many middlemen such as, oh, let’s see, the Earth used to grow the potatoes and the grains and other grasses the cattle ate, and so forth…
Weatherbug and weather.com and your Corporate Media weather forecasts all came from THE NATIONAL OCEANIC and ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION and distributed, free of charge actually, by the NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE, The satellites used to monitor the weather, the weather stations across the globe, the people who told you about global warming… (and you stupid bastards really hate that part, don’t you?) all of them including NASA, originally set in place so that your Giant Shipping Industries and the Military who “acquire” your supply contracts from, shall we say “unwilling” business partners like say, every country in the world who are forced into selling the goods and services of their nations at a price YOU dictate… could have accurate weather and other information necessary for your Corporate Dictatorship to function.
Just another way for Wall Street to get their money for free at public expense.
