It's not rocket science, people

I read an article in yesterday's paper about tobacco farmers in Kentucky losing their contracts with big tobacco companies.

Yeah. So?

Shouldn't you have seen this coming, oh say ... 30 years ago?

It's not like it was when Ma and Pa Kettle here emigrated from Poland and based their livelihood on growing and selling tobacco. As you can see, they were sitting pretty and grinning from ear-to-ear. Everyone was smoking and loving it.

And I mean EVERYONE was smoking. Bette Davis had it written into her contract that the characters she played must smoke. No cigarette breaks for her! If you watch an old Humphrey Bogart movie, everyone is smoking. Makes me want a puff, and I've never smoked a day in my life.

However, since 1965, there has been a federal law mandating a warning on all tobacco products. 19freaking65. That was 45 years ago. Broadcast advertising was banned in 1971, 39 years ago. In 1990, smoking was banned on interstate buses and domestic flights. That was 20 years ago. Do you think the tobacco farmers should have seen this coming?

You know what is going to happen now, don't you? They are going to whine and cry that they are losing their farms because the big, bad tobacco companies are no longer buying from them. Then the government will subsidize their own tobacco-habit instead of saying, "Well, stupid, why didn't you plant soybeans, cotton, corn, grain, or any number of other freaking crops that are still thriving?"

This is the paragraph that really got my goat:

"The cutbacks mean farmers who've lost contracts might not be able to pay mortgages, and rural communities could lose jobs and income as farmers have less money to spend."

Welcome to capitalism, dummies. If no one's buying, you need to stop making. Di-ver-si-fy. It is certainly NOT the tobacco industry's fault that you are so short-sighted as to think you can continue to make the same amount of money in a declining market. 

Suck it up and plant something else. Quit whining. I have no sympathy for some hard-headed-I'm-not-gonna-change-what-I've-been-doing-since-my-grandpappy-was-a glimmer-in-his-mommy's-eye mentality. 

And I'd BETTER not hear of our government bailing these morons out.