Tom the Dancing Bug by Ruben Bolling for August 02, 2013

Sad but oh, so very true. Plus, we forget that the " family " farm went out about the same time as poodle skirts, bobby socks, pony tails, and Ozzie and Harriet. Agra-Corp doesn’t need the government gifts, but the farm worker needs all the help he or she can get.

Belt-tightening = cutting out everyone ELSE’s pork!Patriotic = leavin’ MY pork alone!

How many farmers read this? I’m a farmer, I accept NO subsidies. My husband is an over the road driver so we can make the mortgage payments. We farm what we can sell. The cost of fencing (since it’s no longer AMERICAN steel fence posts and wire) is absurd. Payments to giant Agri Business and Monsanto need to stop. Monsanto is creating massive problems with international trade due to their genetic tinkering. just sayin’

while I’m on my soapbox… People like Robert Redford (who I adore) should stop talking about horse slaughter. How many horses do you own and PERSONALLY take care of, Mr. Redford? Horses are NOT native species. Horses need lots of care to be healthy; hooves, skin, teeth, all require attention. Old horses deserve respect and a dignified death, all animals do. Horse slaughter CAN be a humane solution, better than being shipped out of the country.

Totally unrealistic. HH would never push his own wheelbarrow to pick up his subsidies. He’d hire Lucky or the baby bunny to do it at minimum wage, and get Congress to pay for armed cops to keep an eye on the process.(I guess Lucky’s “gotcha” would either be the minimum wage part, or recovering from the injuries he receives from the cops.)

Horses were introduced to North America by the Spanish conquistadores, there is no evidence of horse’s in the Americas prior to Columbus.

All too true – complain about taxes while you pick up your farm subsidies and conservation reserve program (i.e. don’t plant any crops) money.

Yes, there were native horses as such during the Pleistocene era which died out completely, became extinct along with other prehistoric creatures. Our modern horses were brought to America by the Europeans.

JSYK: People have been eating horse beef for thousands of years. The taboo that some cultures have against it is a mix of a leftover religious prohibition by Pope Gregory III, (the consumption of horse meat was a feature in some pagan rituals), and the fact that horse meat has tended to be a lower class food. There is nothing that makes horse meat inherently unfit for human consumption and people eat three quarters of a million tonnes of it each year.

You may be thinking of the fact that a horse which has been euthanized through a lethal injection is not fit for human consumption. However, this is true of any animal so euthanized. The horses slaughtered for meat are generally killed using a captive bolt gun and bleeding, the same way cattle are.

@kansascorndogger

You are mistaken. There were wild horses in America before humans arrived from elsewhere. I own some fossil horse teeth found in Nevada, estimated to be 5 or 10K years old. Further, there is a great deal of evidence that Native Americans had horses before Columbus landed. Indian ponies are a breed completely unrelated to Spanish horses. The Vikings may have introduced an Icelandic breed.