Ray Stevens - Come to the USA

[Mark M]

Good ol' Ray Stevens.... where's he been hiding?

This is funny... and sad.

[Seymouro]

Entertaining material as usual from Ray Stevens.

Many points salient.

Some much lesser.

But please do not be blinded here my best friend because the ROOT of ALL evil, as the Bible would state, is pride and greed. The term "Capitalism" was not coined when the book was written, and admittedly I am but
an apprentice student on the subject of the Bible (working OT though...). But I am sure if we ventured even just to a pedestrian degree, we would find many examples.

BP is just the latest example of corporations proving to be the scourge of the Earth.

And as much as I love my country (and will always), it has provided exponential examples of reasons why we are primarily misunderstood, the as a by-product, even HATED by nations overseas.

The worst case scenario that set us, as a nation back occurred just after 9-11. That was when the egotistical G.W. Bush told the U.N. (BEFORE they even convened to vote yay or nay in support of us invading Iraq); that in layman's terms he couldn't give a rat's ass whether the U.N. supported us or not. We were going in anyway!

Couldn't he have at least waited for the outcome of the vote?

THAT is leadership?

Arrggghhh.

[Seymouro]

And furthermore Bruce...

I just watched a documentary film titled "Food, Inc.".

Smithfield (one of the four largest producers of meat products in the U.S.A.) by-and -large formed a colony of displaced workers that came from Mexico after major agricultural "cronys" that were employed by those same HUGE companies were brought on during the Clinton administration (around 1993) as REGULATORS in charge of the FDA and the USDA (holy CONFLICT of INTEREST BATMAN!). See, it is not always the stereotype Republican administrations that commit these grievous acts. I am, and remain independent. I think that anyone that is a member of either the Dems or Reps is an absolute IDIOT!

In a nutshell, these "crony" players subsidized corn production in the U.S. to such a huge degree that it caused all the corn producers in Mexico to go under. Nobody in Mexico wished to do business with producers in their own country any longer. as a result, the entire industry collapsed. So, realizing that there were thousands of people in Mexico out of work, and facing the losses of even most of their black minority workers (remember the economy was robust in the Clinton years) to other positions outside the agricultural sphere, Smithfield (some would say by good fortune...I'd say with insider's knowledge) realized that it would be a brilliant "business decision" to go outside of the box.

So they recruited and literally bussed Mexican workers to South Carolina. Smithfield (owner of the WORLD's LARGEST slaughterhouse in Tar Heel, N.C.), relocated these people into trailer parks that resembled the communities that were set up in New Orleans in the wake of Katrina. They put these people in the neighboring state because they did not want to face the stigma locally of being known as the "no green card" company.


Fast forward 10 years later to 2003, and on-going through 2008 (when the documentary was produced). Smithfield, knowing that these were still illegal immigrants, made a series of (again) business decisions, to start retiring the older workers. How did they facilitate that?

They had people that were acquainted with those folks call the local and state authorities in that part of South Carolina. They were summarily arrested, and subsequently deported.

NOBODY ever went after Smithfield for employing these people illegally for 10 to 15 years.

As always, they beat up the POOR LITTLE GUY.

Well, as we should know by now...often that "little guy" is an immigrant, and is often held as persona non-grata. But increasingly, it is YOU or ME.

Who's next?

BTW, I am not referring to a Who album from the early 70's...