PETA's banned video advises: Once you go broccoli, you never go back.

Is that a carrot in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?

NBC won't let PETA even try to ask that question, banning the animal-rights group's proposed Super Bowl ad campaign.

FOX News warns readers that the ads are too explicit, but go ahead and eat your vegetables any way you want.

Who needs a Super Bowl? Get out your salad bowl and watch the PETA ad undressed.

Bulked-up right-hander grabs a bat to square off against crafty lefty

It's hard not to get pumped up about Wednesday's hearing on Capitol Hill about the baseball steroids scandal. Go ahead and hoot when California congressman Henry Waxman mispronounces the names of players, but the bespectacled little lefty will likely stand in strong against Roger Clemens's high hard ones.

Last week Clemens toured the grandstand — congressional offices — to glad-hand. Such brazen lobbying hasn't been seen since the last AIPAC national conference and schmoozefest.

Baseball's Mr. (Suspiciously) Big is still making his rounds, rubbing the bellies of various Congress members. Waxman, however, is not the kind to roll over to be petted into submission.

He injected himself into the steroids scandal three years ago, summoning pecs' bad boys in March 2005 for a round of what turned out to be Mark McGwire's most musclebound moment.

Tune in Wednesday when Clemens trudges up the Hill to throw out his first bitch, but while you're at it, see what else Waxman is up to. Go to the California congressman's site, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and you'll see that he's not shirking his other duties.

Remember the Iraq War?

Last Friday, Waxman subpoenaed documents on the colossal Baghdad embassy project. In case you've forgotten, this is what Waxman's panel uncovered last October:

Telegenic Waxman isn't, and that's too bad, because he's been the most consistent gadfly since the start of the Bush-Cheney regime's reign of error.

He's likely to get more press out of this steroids probe than from the more serious issues he's probed. So use this as an excuse to probe what else Waxman is probing.

The convergence of America's pastimes — religious crackpotism, fast food, and immigration — on America's former pastime

Just wait until the World Series, which opens tonight in Boston, shifts to Denver on Saturday. That's when Jesus and Muhammad — and Sayyid Qutb, the spiritual godfather of Al Qaeda — will join the millions of other viewers.

Colorado's a great setting for what used to be America's pastime. Our country's real manias about fast food, religion, and immigration have strong roots there.

South of Denver lies Colorado Springs, headquarters of Focus on the Family's James Dobson, the godfather of America's religious right-wingers. (See my 1997 story "King James's Version.")

North of Denver is Greeley, the slaughterhouse capital for the fast-food industry. Colorado Rockies owner Charlie Monfort owes his good fortune to his daddy's massive abattoirs in Greeley. The family's cattle feedlots are also the stamping grounds for immigrants brought in to deal with the muck and death. (For inhumane treatment of animals, see this. For inhumane treatment of immigrants who perform this inhumane treatment of animals, see this.)

And in a weird confluence of human and animal slaughter philosophies, Greeley is the town where Sayyid Qutb lived in 1949, where he learned to hate Americans' "immoral" behavior before he returned to the Middle East and became the most influential 20th century thinker for radical schnooks like Osama bin Laden. (See Mike Peters's 2002 Greeley Tribune story "Roots of Terrorism Reach to 1949 Greeley" and Daniel Brogan's 2003 story "Al Qaeda’s Greeley Roots" in the Denver magazine 5280.)

Not that all the strange confluences in Colorado are bad. Northern Colorado is also the home of the amazing Temple Grandin, an ingenious autistic person made famous by Oliver Sacks. Grandin, more attuned to animals than people, revolutionized cattle feedlots by at least making the treatment of cattle more humane before they're slaughtered. Her life story is fascinating — especially the "Squeeze Machine" she invented for herself.

You can't make this shit up — except for Charlie Monfort and his family's cattle feedlots. As Eric Schlosser wrote in Fast Food Nation:

The money from Greeley's feedlots wafted down to Denver, enabling Charlie Monfort and his family to buy the Rockies and feed campaign contributions to right-wing religious wackos like Rick Santorum and Tom Tancredo.

As for the Rockies' players themselves, Denver Westword's Michael Roberts pleads, "Please, Don't Play the Jesus Card, Rockies."

Today's timid New York Times article reminds the nation that the Rockies are a Christian team by intelligent design: Monfort is born-again, and General Manager Dan O'Dowd is not only a dedicated Christian but purposely recruits other Christians to be his players.

Bob Nightengale (a former colleague of mine years ago at the Arizona Republic) broke that story nationally in a piece last summer for USA Today. The Times's Ben Shpigel begins his story today with a denial by a Jewish Rockie that the team's Christianity is forced down his throat. Shpigel, in a typical Times skin-back, then notes:

Yeah, right.

In any case, I hope the Rockies slaughter the Red Sox — religious nuts like Qutb and Dobson notwithstanding.

Karl Rove's not really changing jobs. Instead of mowing down doves from the White House with his BlackBerry, he'll be killing doves in the Texas countryside with his $2,073 Beretta Silver Pigeon II Over-and-Under 20-gauge shotgun.

The gun (shown above) was a gift, according to Rove's 2005 financial disclosure report, from a small group of people including lobbyist Katharine Armstrong, owner of the property on which Dick Cheney blasted one of his own cronies in early 2006.

The gun-totin' Rove got his start in national politics by devising "Generation of Peace" bumper stickers for Richard Nixon in the 1972 campaign — in the middle of the Vietnam debacle. He still believes in peace, sort of. Now that he's out of the White House, you won't see him pack up his shotgun and head to Iraq.

No, he's going to Texas, where the animals are unarmed.

To get the full flavor of Rove's blood lust, go back to his February 17, 2005, speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference. The speech was covered, but the transcript is no longer freely available. I did, however, save a copy of it. Introduced by National Rifle Association chief Wayne LaPierre, Rove told the crowd:

God, the guy just loves the Constitution, doesn't he?

Rove's forced exit from the White House — don't think for a minute that it was anything but that — is so mordantly funny that it even evoked a sense of humor from the hardliners at PETA.

As the Washington Post's Mary Ann Akers reports this morning, PETA president Ingrid Newkirk fired off a letter to Rove after learning that he planned to go dove hunting over the Labor Day weekend. Akers tells the rest of the story:

And plenty of beer and bourbon.

Lynndie England's life has degenerated into little more than a double-wide soap opera. But before you wash your hands of her, feast on this link between her and last week's holier-than-thou National Day of Prayer—and to the Bush campaign chest and predatory lending. Connect the dots and you'll see there's a chicken in every plot:

• Before enlisting in the Army, the Abu Ghraib poster girl worked in a chicken-processing plant an hour's drive from her Fort Ashby, West Virginia, trailer, according to USA Today.

• The most popular such plant for Fort Ashby residents—it's exactly 59 minutes away, according to MapQuest—is the huge Pilgrim's Pride chicken-processing complex in Moorefield, West Virginia.

• In July 2004, PETA released a video— secretly shot inside the Pilgrim's Pride plant in Moorefield—that showed murder most fowl:

Workers were caught on video stomping on chickens, kicking them, and violently slamming them against floors and walls. Workers also ripped the animals’ beaks off, twisted their heads off, spat tobacco into their eyes and mouths, spray-painted their faces, and squeezed their bodies so hard that the birds expelled feces—all while the chickens were still alive.

This stomach-turning stuff—and its link to England's home state—was noted at the time by several bloggers, including those on Digestible News.

Say, that "stomping" sounds familiar. I wrote about that technique last summer in "You Flinched!"—an item about testimony from an Abu Ghraib soldier.

Also last summer, Princeton ethicist Peter Singer made the connection between the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and the torture of chickens at Moorefield. In a Los Angeles Times op-ed piece he co-wrote (and that was re-posted by Dangerous Citizen), Singer noted:

The sickening images echo the snapshots and videotapes that found their way out of another inhumane facility: Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

In both Baghdad and Moorefield, W.Va., a simple cruel dynamic was at work. When humans have unchecked power over those they see as inferior, they may abuse it. Slaughterhouse workers do not expect to be chastised for hurting animals. And the American soldiers at Abu Ghraib clearly did not expect punishment, or they would not have posed for photographs. In both instances, laws or treaties that should have protected against the abuses were unknown or ignored. That is not surprising: Where much abuse is allowed, the protections that do exist are unlikely to be taken seriously.

The Department of Justice has considered in detail when prisoners in the war on terror may be exempt from the humane protections of the Geneva Convention. The government has long since made that leap with animals. Chickens, for example, are exempt from the U.S. Humane Methods of Slaughter Act.

Singer didn't mention Lynndie England, but I'll bet she didn't treat chickens any better than she treated Iraqis.

• Pilgrim's Pride is the second largest chicken producer in the country. Here's how Reuters (through Yahoo's page on the company) puts it:

During fiscal year ended October 2, 2004 (fiscal 2004), the company sold 5.3 billion pounds of dressed chicken and 310.2 million pounds of dressed turkey and generated net sales of $5.4 billion.

Its profit margins were gross:

For the 26 weeks ended 4/2/05, revenues rose 13% to $2.74 billion. Net income totaled $104.9 million, up from $43.2 million. Revenues reflect an increase in chicken sales. Net income also reflects an increase in gross profit margins.

• Operating out of the Pilgrim's Pride home office in Pittsburg, Texas, the company's owner, Lonnie "Bo" Pilgrim (see photo), is one of the country's major individual donors to George W. Bush and the Republican Party. He was a "Minor League Pioneer" for Bush in 2000 and a "Major League Pioneer" for Bush in 2004, according to Texans for Public Justice.

Recall the company's history: In 2002, TPJ reminds us, Pilgrim's Pride recalled 27 million pounds of meat after one of its plants was thought to be the source of "a listeria outbreak that killed eight people, caused three miscarriages, and hospitalized dozens of victims." Heavily fined by environmental regulators for illegally discharging massive amounts of chicken shit and other filth, Pilgrim's Pride was at the same time "the 10th largest recipient of federal agricultural subsidies from 1995 through 2002," adds TPJ.

• Bo Pilgrim wears his fundamentalist Christianity on his sleeve and on his butcher's apron. As Marv Knox of the Baptist Standard quoted him as saying in 2002:

There's no doubt that God wanted me to exemplify being a Christian businessman. I have that feeling, and I am forever conscious of that. I'll go out and make lots of talks around the country. There's where I give Jesus credit for everything I am.

Start of digression: Knox tried to get Pilgrim to solve an age-old puzzle. Here's the exchange:

Knox: With all your history in chickens, do you know why the chicken crossed the road?

Pilgrim: I wish I could give you the answer. I guess everybody has a different answer, but I never really coined an answer for why the chicken crossed the road.

End of digression.

• Last year, Bo Pilgrim, who controls more than 60 percent of his huge, publicly traded company, put Keith W. Hughes on its board of directors.

Hughes was the CEO of Associates First Capital, a subprime lender accused of predatory lending.

Associates First was so notorious that in 2000, the giant company's last year of independent existence, the United Methodist Church's pension fund, the Priests of Sacred Heart, the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers, and the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word brought a shareholders resolution to try to get the company to investigate itself for predatory lending and clean up its act. The resolution failed.

The government's case against Associates First was settled only after Citigroup swallowed Hughes's company and coughed up $215 million to the Federal Trade Commission to pay off 2 million former customers. At the time of the 2002 settlement, it was the largest in FTC history.

• Last Thursday (May 5), George W. Bush hosted the annual National Day of Prayer ceremony in the East Room of the White House. The first speaker was Shirley Dobson, wife of right-wing radio evangelist James Dobson. Shirley Dobson is also chairman of the National Day of Prayer—yes, she calls herself "chairman" and "Mrs. Shirley Dobson."

After the choir stopped singing, Shirley Dobson stepped to the microphone in the White House, fawned over the Bushes for a little bit and officially launched the National Day of Prayer. (You can watch her performance, and Bush's speech, on the White House site.)

Millions of Americans, she said, "will seek the grace of God" today. She added:

For example, Pilgrim's Pride, one of America's largest producers of chicken products, is holding prayer observances in 56 of its facilities in 17 countries.

It was the only company she mentioned. (She did say that 150,000 people were supposed to gather at Daytona Beach Speedway to try to crash the pearly gates. Yee-haw!)

With the saccharine tone and sing-song cadence of a beauty pageant contestant's spiel, she praised Pilgrim's Pride but scolded the rest of us.

That scolding stuff is a familiar rap by the right-wing Christians—it's all explained by Shirley Dobson on her "Prayerfully Yours" page of the National Day of Prayer website:

As sinners saved by grace we must realize not only that we don't deserve God's favor, but that we do deserve His wrath! The miracle of God's grace is that He extends mercy to us in spite of our wickedness and rebellion against Him. Put another way, "mercy" is not getting what we deserve, and "grace" is getting what we don't deserve.

We need not look very far to see that our country stands in desperate need of God's healing touch. We have killed over 40 million babies since 1973, and saturated ourselves and our children with pornography and filth. We have numbed ourselves with drugs and alcohol, and taught our kids that premarital sex is a good thing if it is simply done right. We have pursued materialism and false security, while ignoring the Architect of our souls.

As a nation, we have rebelled against the Creator. Our culture is steeped in immorality and self-sufficiency and is growing increasingly hostile toward religious expression.

Self-sufficiency? Have we fallen that far?

I know some chickens that could use "God's healing touch." But anyway, back to the White House. To her audience in the East Room, Mrs. Shirley Dobson toned it down a little bit, saying that her dictionary defines "grace" as something that's "undeserved," and adding:

Almighty God continues to bless America despite the fact that we corporately and individually have turned our backs on Him in many ways.

But our Creator is patient with us, granting His favor and forbearance even though we don't deserve it.

Speak for yourself, Mrs. America.

The president, of course, is a key part of any Christian puppet show. When Bush took the microphone, he smiled at the Dobsons and said:

I want to thank Shirley Dobson, the chairman of the National Day of Prayer. Thank you for organizing this event and thank you for your wonderful comments.

Why did the chicken cross the road? To escape from these religious nuts. The rest of us humans could also use a wing and a prayer.

The news from Iraq is grimmer than you know. Finally starting to crank up real-life coverage of the Bush Error, the New York Times revealed this morning the existence of a secret (to the public) "bleak assessment" sent to Washington last week by the CIA's station chief in Baghdad, followed by briefings in D.C. that reinforced the bad news.

But other reinforcements are on the way to chaotic Iraq. The Pentagon, hoping to promote warm and fuzzy feelings here and abroad, is shipping more than 28,000 stuffed animals to soldiers there and elsewhere overseas as part of Operation Grateful. Arizona schoolgirl Alison Goulder already has the approval of General Richard "Quag" Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for her roundup of thousands of dolls from the play areas of American homes. (See yesterday's Morning Report in the Bush Beat.) She also has the full support of Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. (See photo below).

Operation Grateful was set up by Greenberg Traurig, the powerful D.C. firm of lawyers and lobbyists that was the HQ of Bush fundraiser/pal Jack Abramoff until earlier this year, when scandal hit.

Not a word of protest has been heard from the stuffed animals heading to Iraq—unlike human soldiers such as Donald Qualls who are being kept on active duty despite their protests and lawsuits.

Awaiting the unprecedented number of soldiers and stuffed animals in Iraq is a country that is increasingly out of control. This morning Times story by Douglas Jehl, pinned to unnamed "officials," says of the classified CIA cable and the briefings that followed:

Together, the appraisals, which follow several other such warnings from officials in Washington and in the field, were much more pessimistic than the public picture being offered by the Bush administration before the elections scheduled for Iraq next month, the officials said.

Unfortunately, Jehl only paraphrases the cable, leading one (me, that is) to speculate that the Bush regime is purposely leaking the bad news this way to let the public down gradually, before more actual documents of the Iraq misadventure find their way—oh God, no!—into the public's hands.

In any case, Jehl writes:

The officials described the station chief's cable in particular as an unvarnished assessment of the difficulties ahead in Iraq. They said it warned that the security situation was likely to get worse, including more violence and sectarian clashes, unless there were marked improvements soon on the part of the Iraqi government, in terms of its ability to assert authority and to build the economy.

Time to set Mr. Peabody's Wayback Machine to February 27, 2003, days before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, for Mr. Wolfowitz's testimony before the House Budget Committee. The Deputy Secretary of Defense said:

If I might digress for a moment, Mr. Chairman, from my prepared testimony, because there has been a good deal of comment—some of it quite outlandish—about what our postwar requirements might be in Iraq. That great Yankee catcher and occasional philosopher, Yogi Berra, once observed that it is dangerous to make predictions,especially about the future.

(If I might digress for a moment: I'm amused that anyone in the Bush regime, which often exhibits the signs of 'roid rage, would make a baseball reference.)

Wolfowitz continued:

That piece of wise advice certainly applies to predictions about wars and their aftermath, and I am reluctant to try to predict anything about what the cost of a possible conflict in Iraq would be—what the possible cost of reconstructing and stabilizing that country afterwards might be.

But some of the higher-end predictions that we have been hearing recently, such as the notion that it will take several hundred thousand U.S. troops to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq, are wildly off the mark.

Uh-huh. Keep talking.

First, it is hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in a post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself and to secure the surrender of Saddam’s security forces and his army—hard to imagine.

Geez, you don't even have to drag Wolfowitz by his hair from a Humvee to a prison cell or strip him and wedge him into a pyramid of naked people or punish him while he prays or have him simulate masturbation or threaten him with rape or throw him into a wall or smear shit on his back or scare him with a growling dog or put a dog collar on him or ride him around like a donkey or hook up wires to his nuts while making him stand on a box or make fun of his schmeckel while you grin for the camera. The guy just keeps talking:

Moreover, the Iraqis themselves can provide a good deal of whatever manpower is necessary. We are training free Iraqi forces to perform functions of that kind, including command of Iraqi units, once those units have been purged of their Baathist leadership.

Wolfowitz should have paid less attention to Yogi Berra and more attention to Monty Python—or Bernie Kerik, for that matter. (See this Bush Beat item for both.) But for Wolfowitz, it's again with the Yogi Berra:

The fourth and most fundamental point is that we go back to Yogi Berra. We simply cannot predict. We have no idea whether weapons of mass terror will be used. We have no idea what kind of ethnic strife might appear in the future, although as I have noted, it has not been the history of Iraq’s past. We do not know what kind of damage Saddam Hussein will wreak on Iraq’s oil fields or its other infrastructure.

On the other side, we can’t be sure that the Iraqi people will welcome us as liberators, although based on what Iraqi-Americans told me in Detroit a week ago, many of them, most of them with families in Iraq, I am reasonably certain that they will greet us as liberators, and that will help us to keep requirements down.

In short, we don’t know what the requirements will be. But we can say with reasonable confidence that the notion of hundreds of thousands of American troops is way off the mark.