At's-a Some Tomato

So while refraining from posting here on the presidential campaign, I have slipped and posted a short sweet and irate comment on a NYT Opinion piece The Power of the Protest Vote. Scroll down to comment #98 to read it.

I've been nurturing my campaign abstinence by watching Lou Dobbs (CNN) with guilty pleasure (diminishing guilt as time goes by). He's currently my favorite curmudgeon. He's been leaning hard on the food and product safety issue and how delinquent authorities under this administration have been. It's nothing short of criminal negligence. I've been grousing on it in these pages for a while, starting with the tainted Chinese imports issue which surfaced en masse last year (my coverage). He's supporting the pressure on congress to enforce the COOL (country of origin labeling) laws already on the books, which would have identified the source of the recent widespread salmonella contaminations much faster.

What a canard! The American tomato business was severely damaged by the incompetent management of this crisis, which it turns out originated in Mexican peppers. I hope American tomato growers get a public apology and an enormous amount of very visible compensation. And that the next administration is more concerned about the safety of Americans than protecting the import-export business sector.