Sunday, January 30, 2011

Dear Mr. President,

An article in Friday’s New York Times Business Section really caught my attention but then I got distracted by the revolutions in Yemen and Egypt, pretty exciting stuff, pretty Hopeful, even if it does wreck U.S. foreign policy and commercial interests. Oh, and the expose by al Jazeera of the U.S. sellout of the Palestinians. I mean, George Mitchell, your envoy, tells Saeb Erekat to forget the 2003 ‘Road Map’ agreement and the freeze on Israeli settlements, that you don’t recognize any of that anymore? Whoa! Mr. President, what’s going on here? That’s some serious backstabbing. After that, you think anybody, and I mean anybody, friend or foe, will trust us? Anyhow, back to what bothered me the other day. Tom Vilsack, your boy at Agriculture, on Thursday OK’d unrestricted cultivation of GMO alfalfa. Now that really sets me on edge. Alfalfa, what they feed to cows, is now okay to be genetically modified to resist Roundup. So does that genetically modified gene get passed along to the cow and eventually to us? Seems like you’re playing Russian roulette with all chambers loaded, Mr. President. Seems like another sellout of principle, a cave-in to special interests and big business, a green light for Monsanto to let ‘er rip – corn, soybeans, wheat, whatever. What’s good for Monsanto is good for America! Frankly, this scares the hell out of me, messing around with genes and Mother Nature. Nothing good ever comes from it. We always end up paying the piper somehow, you know, the law of unintended consequences and all that. What is there about being president that changes people so radically so quickly? Is it the power? Unlimited and unrestricted? That you can play God, choose who lives and who dies? You do it every day – send more troops to Afghanistan, authorize drone strikes, okay torture, jail this one, not that one. But alfalfa! You’re really playing God with alfalfa and I want to go on record right now with a strong objection to this. Mr. President, I really really oppose this. Of course, I opposed your tax cuts for millionaires, your war in Afghanistan, your drone strikes, your renditions, your torture, your failure to release Bradley Manning from solitary confinement, and what good did it do? Not a peep out of the White House, not even an email reply thanking me for sharing my concerns, blah blah blah, so I don’t expect this objection will have any more impact than the others. I got to say, Mr. President, you’ve been a real disappointment.