Was it a plane full of pigs that plowed into the north tower of the World Trade Center?
Was it a faction of those radical pig farmers who bombed the U.S. embassies in Africa?
Now, granted, I don’t have much use for pork products. But, come on! This is soooooooooooooooooooooo far over the top that I couldn’t believe about it when I read it.
(What’s even more amazing is that he said this in Iowa, which is, IIRC, the largest hog-producing state in the country.)
Geez…I better call my brother. He’s a manager of a hog farm just outside Ida Grove. If the government is about to arrest all those nasty hard-working hog-farmers, I’d better give him a heads up.
That is, if I can get hold of him…he works about 80 hours a week…
And people wonder why I hate the Kennedy’s. He’s so full of shit his eyes are turning brown.
well, zev one thing you did miss was that tho’ the article made quite a few ‘direct quotes’ the one that offended you was the lead in paraphrasing. The direct quote I saw was an ‘enemy within’, which is, to a degree hyperbole, but I"m not seeing a direct quote from him saying ‘hog farmers are worse than Osama’.
If he did say it, shame on him.
if, however, he said something along the lines of ‘while attention is focused on the threats of terrorists, we forget the enemy within’, that’s quite different.
The story is a little confusing, but it reads like he made the comments at the speech Friday at Clear Lake. It doesn’t sound like the reporter was at the meeting so they interviewed people who were at the speech:
My personal favorite quote is “You have to be a complete wandering idiot to make that statement.” Not an idiot, mind you, but a wandering idiot. Beautiful.
But now I’m confused. RFK, Jr. says pork producers are worse than Osama, but Rep. Barr said the campaign finance bill as bad as the Sept. 11 attacks. Who do I trust on this important matter?
I originally read the story in the New York Post at lunch today. Walter Olson’s story in the post puts it as a direct quote. It could certainly be wrong.
Well, it’s pretty long odds that Osama bin Laden or one of his minions will actually kill me. On the other hand, considering the amount of bacon and pork chops I’ve consumed over my life time, my arteries have the internal circumference of elbow macaroni. So I’m going with the hog farmers.
." Among the provisions is one that would give local governments and residents say in where livestock confinements are located.
Kennedy, who has gained notoriety for efforts to clean up the nation’s waterways, said Tuesday that corporations such as ConAgra Foods, Smithfield Foods and Premium Standard Farms are the “enemy within.”"
I know the Osama comparison sounds a bit overboard but do any of you live in hog country? I do. NC has been fighting the likes of Cargil and Smithfield packers for years. Hog farming has become a major, major problem in our waterways and has produced terrible consequences for alot of people. The hog farms of today are huge. Huge farms means huge waste lagoons. Many of these lagoons are spilling into our waterways everytime it rains for a couple days. The once livelyhood of “down east” NC is now a memory for most. The Pamilco, the Neuse, the Cape Fear and Albermarle fisheries are in near ruins. Summer storm season annually accounts for the overflow of waste lagoons into the rivers and worse yet, thousands of dead hogs rotting in the fishery, all due to hog farms in the flood plain. I know hog farmers. I know commercial fishermen. The difference is corporate greed. The big hog operations like Cargil have plenty of money to lobby with. The fishermen pray for a good soft crab season 'cause that’s about all that is left.
The Post article says the Des Moines Register quoted Kennedy as saying “large-scale hog producers are a greater threat to the United States and U.S. democracy than Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network.” but the Register doesn’t actually print that as a direct quote.
It might be possible, but I’d like to see another source. Also, I’m a bit skeptical of any newspaper that uses pop-up ad scams for revenue.
The large hog operations are despoiling a fair bit of the Colorado plains as well. They’re certainly not welcome there by the locals that have ranched the country for years but there they are with considerable financial clout, polluting the waterways and stinking up the countryside for miles around. I’ve got nothing against pork but these guys aren’t doing anybody a damn bit of good.
They quietly bought a tract within my in-law’s ranch from an out of state owner and were going to come in and put one of these stink farms right in the middle of a beautiful spread and he had to pay them twice the going rate to keep them out.
Was what they did illegal? No. Was it unethical? Hell yes.
Kennedy’s comments seem a bit over the top but the huge corporations that farm hogs, pack beef, etc. are all exerting a lot of muscle that’s pretty detrimental to the lifestyle of our traditional mom & pop operations.
I live in Iowa and, to be blunt, one of the reasons that I have remained a vegetarian is a hard look at pork producers here. It’s a huge environmental issue in the Midwest. Hog lots are really the worst polluters in Iowa – hogs produce an amazing amount of offal and th ways to get rid of it usually involve polluting the ground water (and that’s if they don’t screw up).
It seems that Mr. Kennedy was misquoted, and I certainly agree that corporate hog lots need to be reigned in, so I’m afraid I don’t see the reason for a slam.
Fluiddruid, We feel your pain. NC is a close second to Iowa in hog production. Mom and pop operations are a thing of the past here too but the biggest and dumbest thing is the fact that this is hurricane alley. We count on a few good storms every year and a really big one every couple years. The NC coastal plain is a unique eco system like nowhere else in the world. The Albermarle / Pamlico sound is one of the largest inland estuaries in the world and wetlands here are only rivaled by the everglades. All of these facts were overlooked when the corporate hog farmers came calling. What few restrictions we had in place were, and still are being overlooked by the fat cats in Raleigh who only care about the water for one week a year when the wife and kids come down on vacation. If you are still wondering if corporate hog producers rival the destruction of Osama, take a gander at here;
Ya know Willy we’d just about put the ‘pork farmers do not equal Ossama’ hyperbole to rest.
consensus seems to be “Kennedy probably did not say it in the first place” (tho he quite likely made some reference to teror and destruction, it doesn’t appear that even the places making the claim are claiming that those are his actual words).
consensus also seems to be “there’s problems associated w/large pork farms”.
As a card carrying liberal, I’m glad you’re posting those links, but puh-leeeeze, refrain from the hyperbolic crap that caused a gentle soul like zev to post a rant in the first place.
