As the dumb-ass, do-nothing group of US Senators coughed up the predictable result of a “major setback” Sunday evening on the lubriciously-imposed “fiscal cliff,” top leaders in both parties on the House and Senate Agriculture committees have tentatively agreed to a one-year extension of the 2008 farm bill, which if left alone could push milks prices to near $8 a gallon starting Tuesday.

Work on the way-laid farm bill, which expired in October, has been ongoing for more than two years, and although the legislation funded a variety of nutrition programs, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (formerly food stamps), as well as payments to farmers and agricultural programs, bitch politics derailed talks.

(Illustration found here).

Another glaring example of GOP bullshit running head-on into reality: Senators passed a farm bill in June estimated to save $23 billion over 10 years, with most of the cuts in crop subsidies and conservation programs. The House Agriculture Committee approved a bill with $35 billion in cuts in July, half of it in food stamps for the poor — the biggest cut in food stamps in a generation.
Republicans wanted much-deeper cuts to food stamps, Democrats said f*ck you.
On Jan. 1, diary support prices could be molded by an outmoded 1949 law, which roughly doubles the price now paid to farmers.

We’ll just have to wait and see, but as the Dems and GOPers broke up Sunday evening for separate caucus meetings, cheap irony was lost: As Republican lawmakers entered their meeting in the basement of the Capitol, strains of the Beatles hit “Come Together” could be heard coming from the room.

Instead of milking it for all it’s worth.