Groove on the Rubble

This from Matt Taibbi’s Road Rage article entitled “Be Careful What You Wish For…” appearing in the December 14th issue. It’s a part of his response to the media’s latching onto Nancy Pelosi’s backing of John Murtha, the ethincally questionable losing candidate for House Majority Leader.

With Iraq in flames and half the Republican Congress in manacles, the press has been forced to ditch that particular story lately, but with Nancy Pelosi in power, that cartoon is set for another run. Count on it: For the next two years, no matter how much the Republicans fuck up, the story is going to be the shrill bitch from San Francisco tripping over her own tits.

You’ve gotta appreciate that alliterative turning of a phrase.

December’s Rolling Stone is packed full of interesting reading, including a disturbing article about the dirty underbelly of the pork processing business.

Here’s a cutlet from the article’s beginning that puts the scale of the business into perspective:

Smithfield Foods, the largest and most profitable pork processor in the world, killed 27 million hogs last year…The logistical challenge of processing that many pigs each year is roughly equivalent to butchering and boxing the entire human populations of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Antonio, San Diego, Dallas, San Jose, Detroit, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, San Francisco, Columbus, Austin, Memphis, Baltimore, Fort Worth, Charlotte, El Paso, Milwaukee, Seattle, Boston, Denver, Louisville, Washington, D.C., Nashville, Las Vegas, Portland, Oklahoma City and Tucson.

The 500,000 pigs at a single Smithfield subsidiary in Utah generate more fecal matter each year than the 1.5 million inhabitants of Manhattan. The best estimates put Smithfield’s total waste discharge at 26 million tons a year. That would fill four Yankee Stadiums.

(I’ll spare you my “shitty season” joke.)

Well surely they have sophisticated waste processing facilities to handle millions of tons of pig shit, right? Oh-ho-ho don’t the residents of nearby towns wish they did.

Read on to smell the stench of reality, but don’t do it during meal time–or anywhere near to meal time.

Tally one in the “reasons to be a vegetarian” column. I’m sure the facts are equally staggering for beef.  I wonder what dirty secrets tofu is hiding.