Another reminder that all politics are local comes from Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who opened a press conference today with a talk that included this quote:
“Before I open for questions, I want to remind everybody that the Center for Disease Control says that you can’t get swwine flu from eating pork. So I hope Iowans will support family farmers down the road and have a pork chop for dinner tonight. I had a pork chop last night.”
The senator repeated the details of last night repast in an apperanace this morning on Fox Business Network, in which he decried the potential for hyperinflation to come once the recession ends because of the big federal budget about to be passed by the Congress. He said even the name swine flu was a misnomer because the disease is a mixture of different strains.
The senator’s comments and meal choices have not not been successful in arresting the decline of U.S. hog prices since the swine flu outbreak hasd been widely noted.
April 29, 2009
That’s scary. It had not crossed my mind that eating pork could make you sick, but if Senator Grassley says it is safe, maybe I should stay away from it as a precaution. Or is this not the Senator Grassley who as head of the finance committee spent the last few years fighting with university endowments instead of thinking about the finance industry?