WE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN AT WAR WITH MAD COW

Remember when I pointed out that Veneman had switched her official stance from the Harvard Risk Study spin of "No Mad Cows" to "Oh sure, there'll be more mad cows"? Remember how I said she was softening us up for the next "discovery"? Well now she's putting that to use as planned, while defending the practice of releasing the inconclusive positive without divulging specifics about the animal or its location. "I would anticipate, I think we've said all along, that we'll not only have these inconclusives, but we may find a few more cases of BSE in this country," Veneman said. Wow - is it psychosis or what? To Ann Veneman, "all along" is the period from May 14 to now. Amazing.

Meanwhile, they've announced that the second animal in less than a week preliminarily tested positive for Mad Cow. I still won't conjecture on this, because these are more sensitive tests, and besides, this wasn't released on a Friday (though it was after the stock market closed today, of course). We'll have to see whether the USDA has anything interesting to say at their press briefing tomorrow afternoon. Stay tuned.