jim hightower

and i feel the exact same way on this subject
(get up stand up - for your RIGHTS. get up stand up - don't give up the fight - apologies to bob marley)

We're Mad as Hell and the Dems Aren't Listening
By Jim Hightower, Hightower Lowdown.

What I am hearing from across the country is a surge of angst and discouragement. In conversations, calls, emails, and letters, people in general (and progressives in particular) are expressing profound dismay at the deterioration of America's democracy, not only because of the BushCheney regime, but also, and especially, because of the fecklessness of the Democratic Congress.
"For crying out loud! Why do we even bother to have elections?" Mark wailed in an email.
I am afraid of what this country has become and that at any minute the people in charge may bomb Iran, and I have lost all hope that there will be any checks and balances," Marshaleigh wrote, adding bluntly, "Congress doesn't work."
Jay bemoaned the dismal performance of Congress in this letter to the editor: "Despite the 2006 congressional elections and the overwhelming antiwar sentiment among our citizens...[Democrats] have become enablers of the White House's misbegotten Iraq venture."
Susan wrote, "What little optimism I had is vanishing. I am much more overwhelmed by the Democratic party's lack of gumption than I was by Bush's wickedness. And the small ideas offered by the presidential candidates make me cringe. I need help."
The damage now being done to America's political psyche by the Democrats' fizzle is way out of the ordinary............

i thought jim hightower was writing a satirical piece

he wasn't. this is FOR REAL. this is the listing in google (THREAT. note the word THREAT)

NAIS - National Animal Identification System
The threat of a foreign animal disease outbreak in the US is real. NAIS is a modern, streamlined information system that improves response to disease ...www.usda.gov/nais/ - 40k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this

i'm sorry mr hightower for thinking you were joking (i only WISH you were)

U.S. Government's Plan to Protect You From Terrorist Livestock

By Jim Hightower, Hightower Lowdown. Posted September 19, 2007.

A friend of mine tells a story about the political demise in the 1950s of an entrenched Oklahoma state representative, whom we'll call Elmer Goodenuff.
Rep. Goodenuff, who chaired the ag committee, had been in office so long that he'd grown tight with the capitol crowd, but he had lost touch with the folks back in his rural district. Thus, when some supermarket lobbyists asked him to sponsor a bill requiring that all egg producers be regulated by the state and have to pay an egg-grading fee, he saw no problem with the measure. It was for the public's health, the lobbyists told him. His constituents, however, did have a problem with it. In those days, many small farmers made their spending money by selling eggs fresh out of their chicken yards -- yet here was ol' Elmer hitting them with a bureaucratic rigmarole and a fee that would make their little egg stands more trouble than they were worth. It turns out that the supermarket lobbyists' real agenda had been to get rid of all these bothersome mom-and-pop competitors...........

.............It is, to say the least, intrusive. NAIS would compel all owners of such animals to register their premises and personal information in a federal database, to buy microchip devices and attach them to every single one of their animals (each of which gets its very own 15-digit federal ID number), to log and report each and every "event" in the life of each animal, to pay fees for the privilege of having their location and animals registered, and to sit still for fines of up to $1,000 a day for any noncompliance.
This is Animal Farm meets the Marx Brothers!...........