Did you see the President’s speech at the annual Prayer Breakfast? Seeing that Jordanian pilot burned alive made him so mad he compared the “ISIL organization” to Christian crusaders of a thousand years ago in Europe, and to Southern slave holders. President Obama still refuses to utter the words “radical Islamic terrorists” but he came mighty close to blasting “radical Christian terrorists.”
Vermont voted to ban “GMO food” unless it is labeled. The person who wrote the bill also considered including “DNA”, and if they had it would have passed by 80%. Well, it passed anyway, and a judge is deciding whether the bill means no one in Vermont can eat unlabeled GMO food, or only that no one in Vermont can sell it. That’s a big difference; in the first case you’d have to drive to New Hampshire 3 times a day to eat, and in the other, only once a week or so to buy groceries.
Personally, I think the Vermont judge should use tobacco as his legal precedent; any Genetically Modified food that has been shown to have caused serious disease such as lung cancer or liver disease or gall stones should be labeled, “This product is harmful to your health!” Otherwise, no label required. You might be interested to know, especially if you live in Vermont, that billions of meals have been eaten with food containing GMOs (and DNA) and not a single person got sick or died as a result, unless maybe they ate way too much food.
You may think because of my life in agriculture that I am being unfair to consumers who want food produced the way it was 50 years ago. As a farm boy, I ate mostly organic food. It was good, nothing wrong with it. But today I prefer watermelons and oranges with no seeds and corn-on-the-cob with no worms. If our food was grown the same today as back then, it would cost twice as much. What would that do to your family budget? Ironically, many of the same people who demand old fashioned food would hate to have a TV from 50 years ago (21-inch, Black & White, $500) or a telephone that required an Operator.
Brian Williams of NBC News got in hot water when he embellished personal stories from Iraq and Hurricane Katrina. He is a newsman making $10 million a year who sees himself as a part time humorist and story teller. His problem is that humorists can embellish stories to add laughs; a newscaster cannot. And as Will Rogers said, “I have always noticed that people will never laugh at anything that is not based on truth.”
Embellishment to add laughs makes you a humorist. Embellishment to add drama makes you a politician.
Men, remember Valentine’s Day is this Saturday. That’s the day after Friday the Thirteenth, so buy her a nice present or you’re liable to have two days of bad luck.
Historic quote by Will Rogers:
“Vermont has got (hills). Black ones, Green ones, White ones, any kind, color, shape or size hill that you want… A Vermont farm don’t lay. It hangs. When your corn grows up big enough to gather you go up on the farm and shake the ears off and they fall in the barn.” WA #235, June 12, 1927