They are making you eat shit. Literally.

If you have the good fortune to be served a delicious Easter feast tonight, try not to think about what the libertarians have done to your meat.

Libertarians want you to eat shit. Literally.

Under the current rules, the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) is responsible for inspecting all chicken and turkey carcasses for things like bruises, bile, and yes, shit, before they’re sent for further processing. The proposed HACCP-Based Inspection Models Project (HIMP) would remove those USDA inspectors from the lines, leaving poultry plant employees, who already stand in a fast-moving, I-Love-Lucy-style line, to flag unsanitary or otherwise flawed birds.

USDA inspectors now are responsible for 35 birds per minute, but if HIMP moves ahead, lines could move more than 200 birds per minute, according to the advocacy group Food and Water Watch. “We only have a bit over a second and a half to inspect the carcass, which is too fast,” said Steven Clarke, a federal inspector for 26 years, on the advocacy site Let Them Eat Chicken.

Clarke describes the shift as “ plain and simply a job cutting measure.

Libertarians want American soldiers to die. The Randroids are allowing China (which, at least nominally, remains Communist) to screw over our military. Hat tip to Corrente for the following...

The US Senate Armed Services Committee said its researchers had uncovered 1,800 cases in which the Pentagon had been sold electronics that may be counterfeit.

"...we have only looked at a portion of the defence supply chain. So those 1,800 cases are just the tip of the iceberg," said Senator Carl Levin.

In around seven in 10 cases, the fake parts originated in China, while investigators traced another 20 per cent of cases to the United Kingdom and Canada, known resale points for Chinese counterfeits.

Experts said the problems are not new, and have dated from a decision in the 1990s by the Clinton administration to cut costs by asking the Pentagon to buy "off-the-shelf" electronics, rather than designing its own systems.

As electronics manufacturing migrated to China, the US has been less and less able to control the quality of its military hardware.

(Side note: Have you ever seen those SD flash cards, allegedly from major manufacturers, on sale for remarkable prices on EBay? Counterfeit. I've even visited Chinese wholesaler sites which openly call the goods "counterfeit.")

Libertarians want to destroy the economy. Mitt Romney openly endorses the economic blueprint set forward by Paul Ryan. Ryan is a noted acolyte of Ayn who treats Atlas Shrugged as if it were gospel. Here's Paul Krugman's take:

But the continuing defense of Paul Ryan is a remarkable phenomenon. He’s still being treated by many pundits as a man deeply concerned about deficits, when the fact is that his policy proposals are all about redistributing income upward, and make no serious effort to curb debt.

Ryan is championed by alleged "centrists" who are hardly centrists at all:

These are people whose whole pose is one of standing between the extremes of both parties, and calling for a bipartisan solution. The problem they face is how to maintain this pose when the reality is that a quite moderate Democratic party — one that is content to leave tax rates on the rich far below those that prevailed for most of the past 70 years, that has embraced a Republican health care plan — faces a radical-reactionary GOP.

Digby suggests that the GOP plans to run Ryan for President in 2016 if Romney loses in 2012. That sounds very possible.

As Dakinkat points out, Ryan's plan relies on the mythical Laffer curve, which was laughed out of court ages ago. (The Laffer curve is the surrealist manifesto which holds that eradicating taxes on the rich even further will magically increase government revenue.)

Ryan’s budget numbers are still based on the idea that taking away taxes from the rich and benefits from the poor increases economic activity and tax receipts. Neither of these assumptions are based on anything more than wishful thinking and an obsession to kill all government services except a vast, powerful military. This explains the right wing behavior, but it does little to explain the behavior of the President who was willing to basically do the same thing.

Ryan's plan would drive up our already frightening national debt -- and of course, any rise will be blamed on the Democrats, which will lead to more libertarian propaganda, which will prescribe more Laffer-istic nonsense, which will lead to more debt.

And in the end...

Libertarians want to drive America out of business. Make no mistake: The destruction of America is the plan; it will not be an unintended consequence. When the country falls apart, a handful of wealthy, well-connected oligarchs will step forward and buy everything at fire sale prices. That's how free market fundamentalists screwed Russia, and that's what the libertarians have planned for the USA.

Libertarianism always ends up by concentrating all wealth and power in the hands of a tiny, ever-shrinking elite. The more honest libertarians admit this. In the end, libertarianism is Stalinism. They arrive at the same destination via a different route.

My God, who would ever have thought we'd reach a point when a radical Randroid like Ryan is considered a centrist? In the America I grew up in, Ryan would have been damned as an extremist.

So what does it take to be considered an extreme right-winger in today's America? Racism. Near as I can tell, no other criterion exists.

Racism is the only position that the libertarian National Review cannot tolerate. Gross and indefensible sexism is considered acceptable discourse. Gross and indefensible economic illiteracy is considered libertarian wisdom. Gross and indefensible corruption is considered smart politics. None of those things will earn you the "extremist" label, because only racists are considered extreme. Libertarian propagandists have been quite successful at redefining the word "extremist."

Try to have a Happy Easter, folks. We're having pot roast. I just hope it doesn't have too much shit in it.