Redstate

(must there be a federal response to everything?)

By Mark Kilmer Posted in Democrats — Comments (0) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Late yesterday evening, I caught part of the re-air of the Pet Food hearings held Thursday by Herb Kohl's Senate Agriculture Appropriations subcommittee. Yes, I take this Senate majority – slim though it is – very seriously. As a for instance, I'll note my concern over whether the chairman had swiped Carl Levin's glasses. I haven't checked side-by-sides, but the similarity was frightening, I never knew Kohl could be so dour. (It's Levin's forte, naturally.)

I do not know what they will accomplish, but the hearings were a show for concerned pet owners who are of the mindset that governments are instituted amongst men to damn well do something about all that ails us. Sure, the deadly pet food is a serious matter, but I don't think these hearings were.

The highlight I saw was the full committee's chairman, West Virginia's doddering Dem Bobby Byrd, talking about how pets are part of the family. He has a dog which late wife Irma had named "Trouble"; being the imperious sort, the Senator has given the dog another name, referring to it as "Buddy."

Buddy, who is really named Trouble, was not affected by the deadly pet food, but Senator Byrd was concerned that he might be poisoning both Buddy and Trouble in one fell swoop. Same dog, the poor thing.

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Okay, full disclosure: my wife and I have two cats. The eldest, my wife named Dornan, after the then-California Congressman. The youngest, she named Roscoe, for Mr. Arbuckle. I refer to both cats as "You" or "Leave me alone." My wife was concerned, I wasn't really, and the cats are now eating a funky kind of cat food which does not contain wheat, corn, or by-products. Lazy Git has no problem with the food, but Little Hellion still must get used to it.

Back to Byrd. He talked about Harry Truman's dog. I think he went off an a tangent about famous Roman dogs, but I had stopped paying attention. I was watching the staffer over his left shoulder trying hard not to laugh. A few times, he did laugh out loud, and I'm not sure if he thought Byrd was hilarious or if he were smiling at the story of Cicero's Sheltie.

But Byrd recited poetry:

ALL things bright and beauteous,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wondrous,
The LORD GOD made them all.

I can understand why the gentleman in the top, right corner of my screen was laughing. What's all this? Because God created house pets, we need some sort of response from the federal government? And is the point best made in 19th Century verse?

Here's a quote from famed Nazi hunter Dick Durbin. (He spoke before Byrd's grand oration.)

"What's the connection between E. coli on spinach and contaminated pet food?" Durbin asked. "Unfortunately it's the same broken food safety program."

Dick, one program is a federal device to protect humans from contaminated food. This has nothing to do with dog and cat food. They are not the same food safety program, and it is not Bush's fault! The pet food scare dealt with a Canadian company, Menu Foods, which had made pet food with wheat sold by the PRC. I don't know if it has been determined from where that wheat originated; it could conceivably been sold by Canadian farmers to the ChiComms who sold it to the food company for a profit. From where does the U.S. government derive the power to try to do anything about this?

The Democrats in the United States Senate retain and exercise the right to pander. Good work, folks. Thanks for the farce.