Free Republic

Madison, WI — The International Dairy-Deli-Bakery Association™ (IDDBA) has announced the speaker lineup for Dairy-Deli-Bake 2012. The event will be held June 10-12 in New Orleans, LA at the New Orleans Morial Convention Center. This year’s speakers include: Sarah Palin, Paula Deen, Terry Bradshaw, John Pinette, Jeremy Gutsche, Adrian Slywotzky, Jim Carroll, Jane Buckingham, Harold Lloyd, Steve Beekhuizen, Jack Li, and Carol Christison. The Heart of a Rogue Trailblazer In 2006, Sarah Palin became the youngest person and the first female to be elected as governor of Alaska. A short two years later, she was tapped to be the vice-presidential...

Consumer rights' advocates filed a lawsuit against McDonald's fast food chain in Russia. The lawsuit was filed at Moscow's Tverskoy Court. The plaintiffs intend to oblige the company to indicate the complete list of ingredients on packaging, rather than the content of protein, fat and carbohydrates. Representatives of the Consumer Rights Protection Society claim that concealing the content of products the company violates the status of the retail outlet of finished products, not to mention the fact that it misleads consumers. According to experts, the range of milkshakes, which the chain sells, can not be referred to as "milk" under...

President Obama, I oppose your appointment of Michael Taylor, a former VP and Lobbyist for Monsanto, the widely criticized Genetically Modified (GM) food multinational, as Senior Advisor to the Commissioner at the FDA. Taylor is the same person who was Food Safety Czar at the FDA when Genetically Modified Organisms were allowed into the US food supply without undergoing a single test to determine their safety or risks. This is a travesty. Taylor was in charge of policy for Monsanto's now-discredited GM Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH) which is directly linked to cancer and opposed by many medical and hospital organizations.

The chart above displays annual refined sugar prices (cents per pound) using data from the USDA (Tables 2 and 5) between 1982 and 2011 for: a) the U.S. wholesale refined sugar price at Midwest markets, and b) the world refined sugar price. Due to import quota restrictions that strictly limit the amount of imported sugar coming into the U.S. at the world price, the domestic producers are protected from more efficient foreign sugar growers who can produce cane sugar in Central America, Africa and the Caribbean at half the cost of beet sugar in Minnesota and Michigan. Of course,...

Well, here’s the totalitarian state, right before my eyes! Today in the mail came a largish envelop for me from The “National Agricultural Statistics Service”, postage and fees paid by USDA Permit No. G-38. A prominant blocked off area on the envelop front stated in large bold letters, “YOUR RESPONSE IS REQUIRED BY LAW.” Also on the envelop and several places inside I find Obama-style logos for the USDA, and one with “AGRICULTURE COUNTS” around the outside, and at the base of the rolling landscape “NASS,” which stands for National Agricultural Statistics Service. That’s right: now we have a National...

[ed note: Found! In a dumpster behind Hamburg Inn, the first draft of University of Iowa professor Stephen G. Bloom's anthropology dissertation for Atlantic magazine explaining the bizarre cultural mores of the primative Aborigines who pay his salary.] IOWA CITY -- On January 3, Iowans will trudge through snow, sleet, sludge, mud, ice, corn, beans, pig feces, flaming lakes of ethanol, gale-force blizzards -- whatever it takes -- to join their neighbors that evening in 1,784 living rooms, barns, community halls, recreation barns, silos, wigwams, and public-school Corn God sacrifice altars in a kind of Norman Rockwell-meets-HR Geiger old timey...

..........."Romney and Santorum (like Gingrich and Obama) both go 4-for-4 on the ethanol lobby's scorecard. Paul goes 2-for-4 because he would cut oil subsidies and allow 15-percent ethanol blends to be sold, but opposes the mandate and other subsidies. Rick Perry went 0-for-4."

A graphic interpretation of recent changes to the US dietary guidelines shows that the average American adheres to the national food guide MyPlate just seven days out of the year. Using its National Eating Trends statistics, which have been tracking the eating and drinking habits of US consumers for 30 years, market research company the NPD Group found that only two percent of Americans’ diets -- equal to about seven days a year -- come close to the US Department of Agriculture’s new dietary guidelines launched this summer....

It has been a bit since I have written a blog, mainly because I only write them when I moved by the heart to do so. I have also been staying off twitter out of disgust for watching so called conservatives judge not by past deeds but only by words that a candidate is spinning today-sorry I donÂ’t tolerate fools easily. Sorry, I am more into judging by actions, the character of a man does not change they just learn to hide it better (& no that was not a veiled swipe at Newtie & Mittens it was a...

We just recently purchased 6 Buff Orpington hens that are getting ready to turn 8 months old and were already laying. Yesterday I noticed one of the girls has a black diarrhea. Not sure if it's a "stress" or if it's food or illness causing it. We currently give them layer crumble and have recently given them stale bread ( OMG They're like my labs with food , when it comes to stale bread lol ) and some cabbage leaves. Just was wondering if anyone has had experience with black diarrhea in your hens and could offer some tips.

Paterno was the highest paid employee at Penn Sate at just over $1 million per year not including endorsements, side deals etc. It took reporters years to get Penn. State to release any salary information on Paterno. Penn State is not a public school, but a "land grant" public supported agricultural school. PSU received about 9% of its annual budget from the State of Penn. The state gave PSU 780,000 acres of land in 1863. PSU Football supposedly made a profit of $50 million in 2010. (top 5 or 6 in the country)

Publishers for US First Lady Michelle Obama’s upcoming cookbook have released an early preview of the book’s cover art and revealed more details about its spring release. American Grown: How the White House Kitchen Garden Inspires Families, Schools, and Communities, published by Crown Publishers, is Obama’s first cookbook and will be issued in both print and digital editions. The print edition will include photos of the White House garden and Obama throughout the seasons, and include more details about how the First Lady was inspired by her daughters Sasha and Malia to change her family’s eating habits and plant an...

Would you buy your organic yoghurt from one of these hunky Somerset farmers?

For centuries, almost all carrots were yellow, white or purple. But in the 17th century, most of those crunchy vegetables turned orange. Why? It may have to do with Dutch politics. Next Nature explains: In the 17th century, Dutch growers cultivated orange carrots as a tribute to William of Orange – who led the the struggle for Dutch independence – and the color stuck. A thousand years of yellow, white and purple carrot history was wiped out in a generation.Although some scholars doubt if orange carrots even existed prior to the 16th century....

When the FDA answered FTCLDF (Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund) in the interstate shipment of raw milk suit, they stated four fully repugnant things. That you have no right to, nor does your child have a right to any particular food, you have no right to bodily or physical health, that you have no right to contract, and that they are “rationally” fulfilling their public health mission. It appears that they forgot to include that you have no right to privacy or free association along with no right of contract. With the recent actions against Rawesome, sting operations against...

I have lived in many countries over the years, and have always had a vegetable garden. Not just for cost, as many of the countries I have lived in have had what we considered dirt cheap food, but for the quality. Nothing compares to the taste of veggies fresh from the garden. Recently, some friends told me about the bad drought in Texas. Their gardens are blackened and burnt, with food only coming in, grudgingly, thanks to heavy watering every other day. It immediately took me back to two of the hardest places I have ever tried to raise food....

It is possible to create jobs, have healthier diets and improve the local economy by re-birthing local agriculture on small plots of land. Each pound of lettuce or eggs or beef shipped from California, Latin America or Mexico raises our dependency on foreign oil. And buying food from far away costs us jobs locally. Some communities have figured out a new path forward that fixes all that. North Carolina’s Rutherford County has one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation. Yet some 6,000 families own between 5 and 20 acres of land, and chefs in nearby Charlotte are in...

I was listening to a story on NPR this morning. The story that caught my ear was about a small farm in Alabama that was going out of business. The reason given; they couldn't get any illegal aliens to work cheap due to Alabama's new immigration law. The gist of the story was we need more non-Whites to help the economy. Well last time I checked Alabama has plenty of non-Whites who were born there and more than half of them under the age of 25 are unemployed. Or better yet, back when I was a young man in Kentucky...

From "comment" in The New Yorker by Lawrence Wright: "Perry is the first graduate of Texas A & M to govern Texas. When he was a freshman, in 1968, the student body looked much like him: white, male, determinedly rural.... At A & M, Perry ran the winning campaign of his friend John Sharp for student-body president. In response, Sharp got his friend elected one of the campus’s five “yell leaders”—male cheerleaders. Perry considered being a yeller the higher office. A typical yell is: “Squads left! Squads right! / Farmers, farmers, we’re all right! / Load, ready, aim, fire, boom!”...

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - An animal rights group is taking responsibility for hanging a sign on the Iowa State Fair butter cow, saying it represents "humankind's tyranny over defenseless animals."

The proliferation of superweeds --weeds that have mutated to develop resistance to popular herbicides like Monsanto's Roundup formula --continues to rise. But the individual plants' overall size and strength is also increasing. According to a series of new studies published in the journal Weed Science, farmers are having more trouble than ever dealing with out-of-control superweeds in their fields, some of which grow up to three inches a day in size, and are so strong and thick that they are destroying farm equipment.The studies reveal that there are currently at least 21 different weed species known to be resistant to...

Bats, as scary as they are to some, are one of the more useful mammals in creation. The diets of those species common in Pennsylvania consist of mosquitoes and other insect pests including the ones that damage crops. A colony of 100 brown bats can consume of a quarter-million insects in a single night. Science magazine has estimated the pest control service provided by bats can save farmers about $74 per acre. Well, the unattractive wind turbines built at the hectoring of the nature worshipers who've managed to convince most that they are the arbiters of all dogma scientific are...

I've just been informed that my second Toro gas powered push lawn mower isn't worth fixing. I know very little about engines and such, so I'm taking the mechanic's word for it. The engine has thrown a rod (I can hear it) and the transmission's shot (that's why I took it to be repaired). Now I have to plead a little a lot guilty. I did not take proper care of the thing. I should have changed the oil, etc., etc. However, before I invest in another lawn mower (which I PROMISE I will take good care of) I thought...

...A letter signed by 40 House members explained the basis for their opposition: “When an agency acts to change the rights of an individual, we believe that the agency must go through the formal rulemaking process. We respectfully request you abandon any further action on this guidance document.” The Property Rights Alliance has long opposed these expansions of EPA power, arguing to the House Transportation and Infrastructure committee in 2010 that the changes “Will not ensure the cleanliness of these waters, but merely serve as another bureaucratic barrier for citizens who wish to use land for development.” Organizations such as...

Democrats on New Mexico’s legislative tobacco committee came out with a plan this past Wednesday to burden the New Mexico taxpayer and put constituents out of work. The Democrats want to raise taxes on cigars and smokeless tobacco from the current 25 percent of wholesale cost to 57 percent. However, Republican Gov. Susana Martinez is thankfully bringing sanity to this circus as she made it clear that she will oppose this tax increase proposal. The “promise” of new revenue - $7 million - would lead to an array of adverse economic and health consequences for New Mexico. Lifestyle taxes, such...

The Who’s Who of Munich Cultural Life (1937) proclaimed “all of Germany has become his garden” for Alwin Seifert, the organic-first gardener was fashionably green and fascist. In How Green Were the Nazis? Thomas Zeller adds, “Seifert, however, was constantly trying to extend his influence. The chaotic style of governance in Nazi Germany matched his strategy of molding alliances, especially since he enjoyed the tacit protection of his two most powerful patrons, Hess and Todt.” As I’ve noted, there’s a wide difference between peaceful made-for-television environmentalists and reality, or power-hungry greens. “With Hess, he shared an interest in Steiner’s methods...

Oak Park, Michigan resident Julie Bass faces a possible 90-day jail sentence for planting an “unsuitable” vegetable garden in the front yard of her home. “We came up with the idea as both a way to cut back on our food bill and to teach our kids some useful skills,” Bass said. “Now, every kid in the neighborhood is over here playing ‘farmer.’ They’re also a lot more eager to eat their vegetables after growing them themselves.” Oak Park City Planner Kevin Rulkowski has ruled that the garden violates city code. “Ms. Bass’s household budget, nutritional and educational objectives are...

William Carr of Westborough Most football coaches don't know how to build a submarine. Most student-athletes don't get a letter jacket from their alma mater on their 80th birthday. And most legally blind people aren't working toward a master's degree at the age of 82. Then again, most people aren't Bill Carr. "I've been doing things all my life they said couldn't be done," said the Westborough resident. He's proud of his achievements, but says he's "nothing special." Just a guy who still works out on the stationary bike and rowing machine a few days a week at the...

There are some things in nature and in the wider world that are disturbing. Humankind has definitely produced plenty of ideas and goods that have creeped out many. However, one element that is not usually thought of in this context is arboreal life. So now we're going to pick out some of the highlights (or if you prefer, the lowlights) from the world's creepiest trees. Not for the faint of heart or aboraphobes:

After a decade of experimenting with mandates, tax credits and tariffs, a national consensus has been reached that ethanol is just not worth it. Late to arrive at this conclusion are farmers, their Congressional representatives, and presidential candidates eager to win over primary voters—a coalition that has made it nearly impossible to begin unwinding the various policies designed to prop-up ethanol. The driving force behind U.S. ethanol consumption is the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), otherwise known as the ethanol mandate, which was established with the enactment of the Energy Policy Act of 2005.The RFS mandated that a minimum of 4...

...Coburn and Thune on the floor: THUNE: “One of our colleagues from South Carolina has introduced an amendment to this bill which would end that, and I assume -- I don't know this for a fact -- that my colleague from Oklahoma would support that amendment. Which would do away with the Renewable Fuel Standard. Certainly.” COBURN: “You obviously didn't hear what I was saying as you were conversing. I said I support ethanol. I wouldn't support that. And I said that. And I’ve been very up front with you in the past. You know what my position is on...

...The government’s mandate of ethanol usage distorts energy markets and raises prices for consumers. In order to fully repeal the government’s unfair, anti-free market support of ethanol, all three policies must be eliminated—the mandate, the tax credit, and the tariff. Only the combination of the Coburn and DeMint amendments completely kills the government’s support of the ethanol regime. The DeMint amendment which abolishes the death tax insures that repealing the ethanol tax credit is done in a way that prevents additional money from flowing to the appropriations committees. ATR has always opposed all forms of government support of ethanol. Our...

What began nearly 20 years ago as denial of the many bad things that would happen in the Greater Yellowstone area if gray wolves were brought in from Canada, continues to this day. It was predicted that the wolves would kill off their prey base and that is happening. Information was presented to Ed Bangs, USFWS head of wolf reintroduction that wolves carry more than 30 different infectious diseases, some harmful and/or deadly to humans, and that was ignored. Disease is now becoming a common occurrence across the Northern Rockies where wolves are prolific. The same deaf, dumb and blind...

Anyone looking forward to corn on the cob slathered with butter this summer may find that it has become an expensive part of their diet. Or it not be available at all.

What started out as a hobby for their son and turned into a family side-business grossing $4600 (with a net profit of $200 after expenses) last year has landed John Dollarhite of Missouri in a heap of trouble. For the “crime” of selling more than $500 worth of rabbits in a single year, Dollarhite has been hit with a $90,643 fine and been warned that the penalty could go as high as $3.9 million. US Department of Agriculture spokesman Robert Crook explained that “if you sell more than $500 worth of rabbits in any given year you have to have...

Ethanol is Not About Energy Independence Have you figured out that the federal ethanol program is not about becoming energy independent, but about putting Midwest corn farmers on the government dole? If not, keep reading. If so, are you ready to help end it? That's in here, too. If you think ethanol lowers fuel prices, then I guess you don't know that each gallon of ethanol is subsidized 47.5 cents per gallon by our tax dollars. In fact, Brazil exports ethanol, but we put a 54 cents per gallon import tax on Brazilian ethanol and then limit its import to...

I want to plant a grape arbor. What is the best grape tu plant?

The Amish Mafia We’re lucky that the federal government has recently cracked down on the selling of contraband in the US. The Washington Times reports that a year-long sting operation conducted by federal agents has resulted in the bust of an illegal operation in Pennsylvania. The Amish-run Rainbow Acres Farm was selling non-pasteurized milk to consumers who knew the milk was non-pasteurized. The consumers of the illegal milk prefer the taste and say that pasteurization kills good as well as bad bacteria. There have been no complaints or charges filed against the dairy farm previously. According to Tamara N. Ward,...

Rep. Keith Ellison, the Muslim Congressman from Minnesota who shed tears in protest over the congressional hearings on the growing radicalization of Muslims in the U.S., wrote the foreword to a book entitled Green Deen: What Islam Teaches about Protecting the Planet. In Arabic, “deen” means religious creed. The author of Green Deen is Ibrahim Abdul Matin. He wrote his book to demonstrate that there is a close relationship between Islam and modern environmentalism. It turns out Ellison would have been a good witness to how Muslims are being radicalized as foot solders not only for global Jihad but for...

Carnivores, brace yourself for even steeper food price hikes this year than originally forecast. The unholy trinity of rising feed prices, spiking oil costs — it takes money to transport food from farm to table — and increased global demand has pushed the U.S. Department of Agriculture to ratchet up some of its 2011 food price forecasts, with beef and pork prices getting the most costly upward revisions. Here’s how you might want to rethink your food intake/grocery shopping to deal with the expected price increases: Stick with chicken. At the start of the year, the USDA said it expected...

What struck me most about this contract is that we are going to teach the Moroccans "critical thinking skills."

Click in to listen. Feel free to post, email, etc. Gulag Night Reports the Breaking News on the Soros Front, Monday & Thursday, 10pm ET We’ve been breaking the news for years and we’ve got critically important subject matter to discuss this week, in the soft war against freedom and sovereignty — and our return fire of knowledge and First Amendment action.  No blackboard, but we do have a chat room during the programs. (Or… you’re not one of those people who say it’s about the “entertainment,” are you?) Join us at 10pm each night.  Here’s our agenda and links.Monday...

My first time posting a vanity request but it's pretty pertinent to the contined land grab going on in our country by our government. I have a timely issue of dealing with the New York State DEC and my property. I think I am getting shafted and need some advice. Hate to bring it here but I always appreciate helpful FR folks. It's a long story but the DEC is saying I need a permit for wetland crossing on my property. They say I am in violation of the Freshwater Wetlands Act. Problem is, I've seen their map and my...

She should be. She is the Chair of the Agriculture Committee in the Senate, the most liberal Senator of all 100, and she votes with environmentalists 100% of the time. Which of these things don't go together? The National Farm Bureau is very opposed to the ever-increasing power of the EPA, and they are more pro-active about it than ever before. But then, the strangulation of farming interests and industry by the EPA created that friction. Yet Stabenow probably believes she has covered all of her bases in her cover amendment to the small business bill. She delays the EPA...

Brazil, the world's ethanol superpower, has had to import unprecedented volumes of the biofuel from December of 2010 through March of 2011. Due to a culmination of factors – an insufficient 2010 harvest, weak expectations for the 2011 growing season and booming domestic demand – Brazil imported an estimated 80 to 200 million liters (21.1 to 52.9 million gallons) of ethanol during the first quarter of 2011. According to some sources, this is only the second time that Brazil's has resorted to importing the biofuel, with the first being in 2009 when Brazil's harvest was devastated by heavy rains. So,...

"..this blog focused upon the Obama regime's nefarious plans to enslave the 3rd world to debt, as this blog traced Stanley Ann Dunham Obama Soetoro's sadistic plans as a once sociologist who became a banker for the globalist Ford Foundation, under Tim Geithner's old man's direction in Indochina..........to create a syndicate which started out of European finance to lend money to the poverty stricken, which was termed MICROFINANCE."

I bought a hummingbird feeder. I wonder if anyone knows what I ought to put in the feeder.

Washington D.C. (IMpossible News) - Have you been so fortunate as to have played any of the land developing games found at Facebook.com? There are several like Farmville, Frontierville, Cityville and so forth. The object is to settle in, set up shop or manage the land and resources in a way that increases your points and levels of experience. My wife, the real estate tycoon has been at it longer than myself, the hobby farmer. I think these games have tremendous merit when it comes to teaching the basics of freedom and free enterprise. You basically make your own choices...

Yes, You Can Survive The Coming Economic Nightmare – One Family In California Grows 6,000 Pounds Of Produce On Just 1/10th Of An Acre If you work hard and get prepared, you can survive the economic nightmare that is coming. All over the United States and around the world there are millions of people that are learning how to become more self-sufficient. For example, there is one family that is actually producing 6000 pounds of produce on just 1/10th of an acre right in the middle of Pasadena, California. In fact, they grow so much food that they are able...

California is the unfortunate testbed for almost every new lunatic idea promulgated by the radical left—which is to say, every idea they offer—the complete explanation for why the state is such a train wreck. One of the worst examples is California’s oppressive environmental statutes. In combination with these, Agenda 21 has spread like cancer throughout California. Today I received some explicit examples of how this is playing out in Ventura County. The county Board of Supervisors is attempting to impose, almost word-for-word, the Wildland Project’s despotic edicts that will turn wide swaths of rural private property into complete wastelands. A...