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Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s War On Craft Beer. (Commie-pinko liberal website ThinkProgress)
Tucked into Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) much-discussed budget was a little-noticed provision to overhaul the state’s regulation of the beer industry. In a state long associated with beer, the provision will make it much more difficult for the Wisconsin’s burgeoning craft breweries to operate and expand their business by barring them from selling directly to restaurants and liquor stores, and preventing them from selling their own product onsite.
The new provision treats craft brewers — the 60 of whom make up just 5 percent of the beer market in Wisconsin — like corporate mega-brewers, forcing them to use a wholesale distributor to market their product. Under the provision, it would be illegal, for instance, for a small brewer located near a restaurant to walk next door to deliver a case of beer. They’ll have to hire a middle man to do it instead.
A vow for 2011: No cheap chicken. (Francis Lam @Salon)
I want to get back to that sense of value, of deliberate appreciation and enjoyment. (And, hopefully, it’s not going to happen from privation.) I’m going to learn about chicken. About how it’s produced, how it’s valued by the people who raise it and by the people who cook and serve it. I’m going to talk and share stories. I’m going to learn how chicken turned from something special to something common to something cheap.
What do checkoff programs do? (Food Politics)
…the USDA-sponsored program that collects a “tax” from dairy producers and uses the funds for generic promotion of dairy products. What fills the folks running the checkoff with pride? Among them,
- Focusing on dairy health and wellness by helping to combat childhood obesity by encouraging schools to implement physical activity and good nutrition, including dairy.
- Partnering with Domino’s Pizza to develop pizzas using up 40% more cheese than usual. This worked so well that other pizza chains are doing the same thing.
- Partnering with McDonald’s to launch McCafe specialty coffees that use up to 80 percent milk, and three new burgers with two slices of cheese per sandwich. The result? An additional 6 million pounds of cheese sold.
- Creating reduced lactose milks in order to bring lapsed consumers back to milk. The potential result? An additional 2.5 to 5 billion pounds of milk each year.
- Partnering with General Mills’ Yoplait to develop yogurt chip technology that requires 8 ounces of milk.
Socialism, or something.
Limbaugh attacks school lunches, suggests hungry children should “dumpster dive”.
Here’s an idea: why don’t you dumpster dive for oxycontin and viagra behind Eli Lilly’s HQ, and while you’re at the bottom you can suck a bag of dicks, you sanctimonious, lying sack of rat feces.
I’ve been going to this place for nearly eight years, back when it was Pho Oregon “West” (despite being only a mile from the other Pho Oregon at NE 82nd Ave).
The interior is spartan. You are automatically rationed the standard beverages.
It took a name change, and a format change, plus Extra MSG’s vetting of the assorted grilled meat platter, that got me thinking about anything but pho at this place.
But why would I? I’ve long contended this location on NE Sandy, when it existed as a namesake to the NE 82nd version, had the better bowl of soup of the two doppelgängers. Since the obvious switch of ownership (and name, and staff, who are now dressed in lovely white uniforms) a few years back, I had no reason to really look past the first turn of the first menu page, the page where various permutations of pho are listed in perfunctory uniformity, the same list xeroxed and sampled by every pho joint from Chula Vista to Bellingham.
The salad platter at Pho An Sandy, as it was back when it was Pho Oregon, is unparalleled in Portland. You will always get more than enough <em>ngo gai</em>, aka culantro aka sawtooth herb, no matter how lily white your skin or accent may be.
The broth at Pho An Sandy I believe is one of our city’s most well balanced, though—as with any soup joint with high turnover that is constantly bootstrapping their stockpot—it can vary in the amount of spice, clarity, beefiness, sweetness, etc.
The braised meats (chin, nam) are very consistent.
All in all, a very excellent pho, served quickly and without fuss. What more could you ask for? Well, Pho An Sandy also has a wide and varied menu that expands beyond the perfunctory soup offerings.
Including this “dac biet” mixed grill platter, which features bo la lot (beef wrapped in betel leaves), grilled lemongrass pork (topped with sauteed shallots and chopped peanuts)…
…grilled sugarcane shrimp…
…and nem nuong (pork patty/sausage)
As is Pho An Sandy’s MO, the salad platter that accompanied this impressive phalanx of deliciously grilled meats was generous, overflowing with spearmint, perilla, rau ram, cucumber, and lettuce.
The general idea with Vietnamese meats is to roll your own (using the carefully constructed quenelles of rice noodles served with the meats as a starch foundation), thus you’re given a bowl of warm water and dried rice paper sheets…
…and a bowl of nuoc cham dipping sauce (always add a dollop of the fresh chili garlic sauce on the table—you’ll be thankful).
A delicious strip of nem nuong about in pre-rolled state.
I can roll a fat blunt.
Come to daddy, sugarcane shrimp.
Pho An Sandy on THE WORLD WIDE WEB
Portlandfood.org
Pho An Sandy
6236 Northeast Sandy Boulevard
Portland, OR 97213
(503) 281-2990
This chart illustrates succinctly why our country sucks ass.
“Change in price of items since 1978, relative to overall inflation, as measured by the Consumer Price Index. The price of carbonated drinks, for example, has fallen 34 percent relative to all other prices.” (“The Battle Over Taxing Soda“, NY Times)
Will Immigration Law Doom America’s Lettuce?. (The Atlantic)
Seemingly permanent factories in Salinas are dismantled, packed into trailers, and reconstructed in The Desert in time for the first harvest, relying on veteran farmers to determine when the crop will be ready. Glimmering steel tanks used for washing greens in a chlorinated bath, giant driers that tumble the washed greens, and conveyors that gently move the fragile leaves along and into bags for retail are all portable. And with the crop and the factory go many undocumented workers.
But many of the harvesters who painstakingly kneel to cut each head of lettuce may choose not to work in Arizona this fall in the wake of its new, hostile immigration law, putting the produce industry in a potentially dangerous position.
Cheney: Telling Leahy to ‘f*ck’ himself was ‘sort of the best thing I ever did.’ (ThinkProgress)
MILLER: By the way, my, I also want to thank you, on the list of things I feel I should thank you for, almost kicking Patrick Leahy’s ass. Thank you very much.
CHENEY: Hehehehe.
MILLER: I love that move. One of my favorite stories. Muttering that.
CHENEY: You’d be surprised how many people liked that. That’s sort of the best thing I ever did
Now for old time’s sake…hey Dick Cheney: choke on Satan’s cock, you sniveling, wretched homunculus.
Imported Beef!
Dick Cheney slams President Obama for projecting ‘weakness. (Politico)
I haven’t posted something in this vein in some time, and was able to work in a tangential food reference as well.
Burrito chain’s Food, Inc. sponsorship generates off-screen drama over farm-worker issues. (Grist)
On July 13, Chipotle Mexican Grill announced it was throwing its marketing weight behind Food, Inc., a documentary that takes a highly critical look at the food system.
The fast-food chain would be sponsoring free screenings of the film at 32 theaters nationwide. It would also be distributing material promoting the film at all its restaurants—thus exposing people in search of a tasty burrito to a film quite different from the super-hero blockbusters that get promoted in typical fast-food chains. In addition, there’d be a Chipotle-related “bonus feature” in the film’s upcoming DVD.
The Chipotle/Food, Inc. tie-up caught my eye, because just a month before, a group of food writers and activists signed a letter to Chipotle CEO Steve Ells sharply criticizing the chain for its inaction on farm worker rights. The two signees who topped the list were Food, Inc. director Robert Kenner and co-producer Eric Schlosser, who is also prominently featured in the film. (I signed the letter as well.)
“Alice in Wonderland – The gushing of waters is all Wet. (NRO via Food Dude)
In an interview shortly after the groundbreaking, Alice Waters — the organic-food world’s most active and least humorous spokesperson — commented on the new White House vegetable garden: “The most important thing that Michelle Obama did was to say that food comes from the land. . . . People have not known that. They think it comes from the grocery store.”
Oh, really — is that what people think? To whom, exactly, is Ms. Waters referring? Is she referring to the millions of people living in the grain-belt states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and Missouri — states one cannot drive across without spending hours staring at corn and soybean fields? The millions living along the Pacific Northwest coast and Alaska who are supported by the fishing industry? The fishermen of Gloucester, Mass.? Maybe she is talking about people living in Wisconsin — where dairy farms and cow pastures are as ubiquitous as art galleries in New York. Or perhaps she is referring to the thousands of people like me, who — in the suburbs of an East Coast metropolis — just throw a few Lowe’s-purchased plants in the ground, and hope for some rain to support a small backyard garden. Yes, Ms. Waters, even these “people” know that the grocery store doesn’t spontaneously produce food.
The National Review is dismissive of exponents of post-corporate farming? Color me surprised.
America’s robust agricultural sector has made food cheaper and more plentiful not just for our nation’s citizens, but for the entire world. Environmentalists may dismiss big, industrial farms, but it is these largely American innovations that are helping feed the world, and keeping costs down for coupon clippers like me.
This conclusion is simply emblematic of the National Review’s mindset of Corporatism = Good. No mention of the side effects—intense use of antibiotics and chemicals, the monoculture of commodity agriculture, the circumvention of the natural order—that inevitably result from the mass industrialization of our food chain.
—Julie Gunlock, a former congressional staffer, is now a stay-at-home mom.
How very convenient for her to excoriate Ms. Waters for high-minded condescension and to call her out for casting stones from an ivory tower. I mean, who amongst us doesn’t work from home penning op-eds for a magazine (that is subsidized by ideological largesse) after a career working on Capitol Hill?
I think the point Alice Waters is trying to make, however inartfully it may be portrayed, is that industrialized farming has made everything a commodity, and that is precisely the problem. Food shouldn’t be treated like fungible materials such as petroleum or copper. The mass scale industrialization championed by Ms. Gunlock in practice serves the master of cheap protein. Farm land is usurped by a mostly singular goal to provide calories for livestock in an unnatural setting that requires massive amounts of antibiotics to offset the disease and amelioration that results from taking animals out of existing ecosystems and fattening them in cities that are not unlike an animal husbandry version of “The Matrix”.
The factory farm didn’t exist 50 years ago. Government farm policy in the last half-century has effectively given corporations a massive assist in turning society into a socially engineered petri dish for misbegotten “good” intentions. The result is a strangely bizarre, impersonal and mechanically artificial reality where “efficiency” has trumped common sense.
First lady’s organic garden concerns chemical firms. (The Hill)
But MACA, which represents agribusinesses like Monsanto, Dow AgroSciences and DuPont Crop Protection, is rather less thrilled about the fact that no chemicals will be used to grow the crops. The group is worried that the decision may give consumers the wrong impression about conventionally grown food.
“We live in a very different world than that of our grandparents. Americans are juggling jobs with the needs of children and aging parents,” the letter states. “The time needed to tend a garden is not there for the majority of our citizens, certainly not a garden of sufficient productivity to supply much of a family’s year-round food needs.”
Obamas Bring Their Chicago Chef to the White House. (NY Times)
Sam Kass, a private chef for the Obamas while they were living in Chicago, is now working in the White House.
A spokeswoman for Michelle Obama, Katie McCormick Lelyveld, said Mr. Kass will not be the only cook preparing the family’s meals, but “he knows what they like and he happens to have a particular interest in healthy food and local food.” He will work alongside the White House executive chef, Cristeta Comerford, who was promoted to that job by the Bushes and is being kept on in that role by the Obamas.
Mr. Kass’s appointment signals changes at the White House that should please chefs like Alice Waters, who have lobbied the Obamas to set an example for the rest of the country by emphasizing food that is healthy, local and sustainable. It further suggests that a vegetable garden on the White House grounds, another of Ms. Waters’ dreams, could be on the horizon.
Mr. Kass, one of the new breed of chefs who are concerned about the environment and about poor eating habits in this country, has been quoted as saying people in his profession should take the lead in tackling public health issues. “Not only is there an unconscionable amount of people who remain hungry,” he told “In These Times” magazine last year, said, “there’s even a larger population, mostly poor, who are faced with obesity, diabetes and various other problems from overabundance.”
Surely another harbinger of a failed presidency barely one week old.
As we usher out the current administration, we officially start the next era of bitching and moaning. But it’s worthwhile to revisit the prescience of America’s Finest News Source:
During the 40-minute speech, Bush also promised to bring an end to the severe war drought that plagued the nation under Clinton, assuring citizens that the U.S. will engage in at least one Gulf War-level armed conflict in the next four years.
“You better believe we’re going to mix it up with somebody at some point during my administration,” said Bush, who plans a 250 percent boost in military spending. “Unlike my predecessor, I am fully committed to putting soldiers in battle situations. Otherwise, what is the point of even having a military?”
On the economic side, Bush vowed to bring back economic stagnation by implementing substantial tax cuts, which would lead to a recession, which would necessitate a tax hike, which would lead to a drop in consumer spending, which would lead to layoffs, which would deepen the recession even further.
…
“Finally, the horrific misrule of the Democrats has been brought to a close,” House Majority Leader Dennis Hastert (R-IL) told reporters. “Under Bush, we can all look forward to military aggression, deregulation of dangerous, greedy industries, and the defunding of vital domestic social-service programs upon which millions depend. Mercifully, we can now say goodbye to the awful nightmare that was Clinton’s America.”
“For years, I tirelessly preached the message that Clinton must be stopped,” conservative talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh said. “And yet, in 1996, the American public failed to heed my urgent warnings, re-electing Clinton despite the fact that the nation was prosperous and at peace under his regime. But now, thank God, that’s all done with. Once again, we will enjoy mounting debt, jingoism, nuclear paranoia, mass deficit, and a massive military build-up.”
An overwhelming 49.9 percent of Americans responded enthusiastically to the Bush speech.
“After eight years of relatively sane fiscal policy under the Democrats, we have reached a point where, just a few weeks ago, President Clinton said that the national debt could be paid off by as early as 2012,” Rahway, NJ, machinist and father of three Bud Crandall said. “That’s not the kind of world I want my children to grow up in.”
(Originally published: JANUARY 17, 2001).
Oh yeah, and one more, this time with feeling: Dick Cheney can suck the swollen and diseased hemorrhoid currently festering near the inner cavity of my crusty anus and rinse from a bottle of acidic mouthwash filled with my own caustic urine backwashed from a dozen lepers. See you in hell, you grimacing homunculus.
Pro-Life Group up in Arms over Krispy Kreme’s Abortion Doughnuts. (Miami New Times)
Krispy Kreme, being the genial purveyor of glazed goodness that it is, decided to get in on the Obama inauguration craze and is offering one free doughnut to every costumer on January 20, Inauguration day, and released this seemingly innocuous press release:
“Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Inc. (NYSE: KKD) is honoring American’s sense of pride and freedom of choice on Inauguration Day, by offering a free doughnut of choice to every customer on this historic day, Jan. 20. By doing so, participating Krispy Kreme stores nationwide are making an oath to tasty goodies — just another reminder of how oh-so-sweet ‘free’ can be.”
Well, The American Life League noticed the liberal use of the word choice and decided to blast the chain bakery for producing abortion doughnuts.
“The unfortunate reality of a post-Roe v. Wade America is that ‘choice’ is synonymous with abortion access, and celebration of ‘freedom of choice’ is a tacit endorsement of abortion rights on demand,” the group’s president, Judie Brown said in a statement.
US roquefort tariff angers French. (Guardian)
Less than a week before it leaves office, the Bush administration has sparked anger across the Atlantic by tripling the import duty rate on roquefort cheese to 300%, a move which the US hopes will “shut down trade” in the sheep’s milk product by making it prohibitively expensive.
Cheney: I’m actually ‘lovable. (Politico)
Cheney conceded in an interview with CBS radio that he sometimes expresses himself “rather forcefully toward some of my compatriots, like Pat Leahy from Vermont” but dismissed as a caricature the idea that he is a “Darth Vader-type personality.”
“I think all of that’s been pretty dramatically overdone,” the vice president said. “I’m actually a warm, lovable sort.”
You’ll agree if you’re the sort that finds rectum tumors lovable.
Foodies Make a Pitch to Obama (Diner’s Journal, NYT)
The fact that a Secretary of Agriculture has yet to be named has some chefs, farmers and animal welfare advocates wondering whether food and farming have been shoved to the Obama D team.
To help move the process along, nearly 90 notable figures in the world of sustainable agriculture and food sent a letter to the Obama transition team earlier this week offering their six top picks for what they called “the sustainable choice for the next U.S. Secretary of Agriculture.”
Nation Finally Shitty Enough To Make Social Progress. (The Onion)
Although polls going into the final weeks of October showed Sen. Obama in the lead, it remained unclear whether the failing economy, dilapidated housing market, crumbling national infrastructure, health care crisis, energy crisis, and five-year-long disastrous war in Iraq had made the nation crappy enough to rise above 300 years of racial prejudice and make lasting change.
Amen.
It’s getting ugly out there this political season.
“I am not and have never been a vegetarian,” Brown said. “I am disgusted by the baseless allegation that I am a vegetarian.”
RNC shells out $150K for Palin fashion. (Politico)
“With all of the important issues facing the country right now, it’s remarkable that we’re spending time talking about pantsuits and blouses,” said spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt. “It was always the intent that the clothing go to a charitable purpose after the campaign.”
Just like that Seinfeld episode where the homeless were given puffy shirts.
The RNC: Clothing America’s Needy
I need to say something about Dick Cheney in order to add categorical significance to this post. Done.
Colin Powell Endorses Obama. (Huff Post)
The Fox News headline for this footnote in history will most likely read something like: “Colin Powell Says Obama ‘Will Slap America’s Bitch Up’“.
Also, Dick Cheney had some heart issues today. Hope that turns out OK. We want him alive in case of prosecution.
How is Sarah Palin continually touted by the McCain campaign (and in the press, for that matter) as being an “expert” in energy? I mean, has she even completed a relevant online course from the University of Phoenix? Attended a symposium?
From what I can gather (~20 seconds of the Google search engine), her main qualifications are:
a) Her husband worked as an oil field production supervisor.
b) She wants to open up Alaska and drill it.
That’s like claiming I’m a gynecologist because I want to explore vagina and my brother is the doorman at a strip club.
I truly hope the Vice Presidential debate is cancelled. For the sake of humanity.
Oh yeah, and the current VP can suck my hairy, bedraggled nut sack.
Dear Mr. Bernanke and Mr. Paulson:
My student loans are too big and it is hurting the economy. Can I have a bailout, please? I need $92,000.
Thanks.
Nathan Kottke
St. Paul, Sept.
17, 2008
Dick Cheney would tell your hippie ass to STFU.
“Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.”
Oh yeah, and fuck you, Dick Cheney.
Dozens Detained Ahead of Convention. (NY Times)
On the weekend before the Republican National Convention, law enforcement agencies detained dozens of people and issued a series of search warrants aimed at groups believed to be organizing demonstrations while delegates and Republican officials are in town.
…
The R.N.C. Welcoming Committee, a group that has said it wants to block roads during the convention, issued a statement Friday night that was read aloud outside the meeting place by a woman who identified herself as Sarah Coffey.Ms. Coffey said that the officers, citing fire violations as the reason for their visit, “detained over 50 people in an attempt to pre-empt planned protests.”
The sheriff’s department continued the sweeps on Saturday morning, executing warrants for three houses in Minneapolis and two in St. Paul, detaining more than 50 people and arresting 4.
Speechless.
Seriously, Team Obama, WTF are you guys doing standing there with your hands in your pockets? Slam a stiff drink, take a deep breath, and get out on the dance floor.
Pretend Dick Cheney is about to shoot you in the face.
Cokie: Hawaii Too Foreign For Obama. (TPM)
This is the sort of mind-numbingly banal observation that passes for political analysis these days. Tut-tutting over the timing of Barack Obama’s family vacation, Cokie Roberts yesterday on ABC’s This Week added that Hawaii was not an appropriate destination: too foreign and too exotic. “I know Hawaii is a state, but …” Roberts declared, while insisting Obama vacation in some place like Myrtle Beach, S.C.
Perhaps Cokie thinks the presumptive Democratic nominee should take a page from Cheney and vacation at his estate in Wyoming, where the Vice President shoots endangered fauna in between fellatio from a denture-less Lynne and bites from the live flesh of shaved toy poodles.
Know-Nothing Politics. (Paul Krugman Editorial @NY Times)
And the debate on energy policy has helped me find the words for something I’ve been thinking about for a while. Republicans, once hailed as the “party of ideas,” have become the party of stupid.
Now, I don’t mean that G.O.P. politicians are, on average, any dumber than their Democratic counterparts. And I certainly don’t mean to question the often frightening smarts of Republican political operatives.
What I mean, instead, is that know-nothingism — the insistence that there are simple, brute-force, instant-gratification answers to every problem, and that there’s something effeminate and weak about anyone who suggests otherwise — has become the core of Republican policy and political strategy. The party’s de facto slogan has become: “Real men don’t think things through.”
Krugman does succinctly encapsulate the modern Republican movement. But he forgot one detail: they are also the party of filching, cum-sucking gutter toads like Dick Cheney, whose predilections for the Dirty Sanchez and wilted tossed salads keeps Lynne busy during the weekends.
Too Fit to Be President (Wall Street Journal)
But in a nation in which 66% of the voting-age population is overweight and 32% is obese, could Sen. Obama’s skinniness be a liability? Despite his visits to waffle houses, ice-cream parlors and greasy-spoon diners around the country, his slim physique just might have some Americans wondering whether he is truly like them.
The candidate has been criticized by opponents for appearing elitist or out of touch with average Americans. A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll conducted in July shows Sen. Obama still lags behind Republican John McCain among white men and suburban women who say they can’t relate to his background or perceived values.
“He’s too new … and he needs to put some meat on his bones,” says Diana Koenig, 42, a housewife in Corpus Christi, Texas, who says she voted for Sen. Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary.
“I won’t vote for any beanpole guy,” another Clinton supporter wrote last week on a Yahoo politics message board.
The inanity, it burns. It burns brighter and hotter than Dick Cheney’s micturated golden shower, which has singed Lynne’s cheek on many occasions.
A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR: Every politically categorized post for the remainder of the current administration will bear some passing reference to Dick Cheney and the fucking of billy goats or the sucking of a warted, flaccid cock or some variation therein, if only to enumerate the amount of entries in the category “Fuck You Dick Cheney”. The software architects at WordPress I am sure will be proud that their efforts to gift the end user such taxonomic prowess have become so transformative.
Injured vets tell pull Dick Cheney invitation over security demands. (NY Daily News)
When Cheney spoke to the group in 2004, his handlers imposed the same stringent security lockdown, upsetting members, officials said.
Many of the vets are elderly and left pieces of themselves on foreign battlefields since World War II, and others were crippled by recent service in Iraq and Afghanistan. For health reasons, many can’t be stuck in a room for hours.
“It was a huge imposition on our delegates,” added David Autry, another Disabled American Veterans official.
Autry said vets would’ve had to get up “at Oh-dark-30 and try to get breakfast and showered and get their prosthetics on.”
Once inside, they “could not leave the meeting room, and the bathrooms are outside,” he said.
City and State Brace for Drop in Wall Street Pay. (NY Times)
A review of the latest statements from the largest financial companies based in the city shows that they intend to hand out about $18 billion less in pay and benefits in 2008 than in 2007. The cutting of payrolls is well under way, but the full effect will not be felt until the year’s end, when bonuses for employees based in New York could shrink by $10 billion or more, according to city officials and compensation experts.
…
“One of the things that highly compensated people do is they spend money,” Mr. Bleiwas said. “So when Wall Street suffers, the pain ripples through the rest of the economy.”The impending decrease in the personal income of so many New York-area residents, Mr. Bleiwas said, “is a significant reduction which will affect not only state and city coffers but also have a direct impact on other sectors.” He said the jobs on Wall Street pay so well that on average, each one spawns two jobs in other fields in the city and a third in the surrounding region.
California becomes first state to ban trans fats. (IHT)
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California signed a bill banning trans fats in restaurant food, making California the first U.S. state to ban the use of the cooking oils linked to artery-clogging cholesterol.
The new law, modeled after a ban implemented in New York City, prohibits the use of partially hydrogenated oils, which contain trans fats, by the state’s 87,000 restaurants beginning in 2010 and in all baked goods sold in the state starting in 2011.
Now if they could only also ban Jingle All the Way.
AP: Food industry bitten by its lobbying success (AP/Yahoo! News)
One of the worst outbreaks of foodborne illness in the U.S. is teaching the food industry the truth of the adage, “Be careful what you wish for because you might get it.”
The industry pressured the Bush administration years ago to limit the paperwork companies would have to keep to help U.S. health investigators quickly trace produce that sickens consumers, according to interviews and government reports reviewed by The Associated Press.
The White House also killed a plan to require the industry to maintain electronic tracking records that could be reviewed easily during a crisis to search for an outbreak’s source. Companies complained the proposals were too burdensome and costly, and warned they could disrupt the availability of consumers’ favorite foods.
The apparent but unintended consequences of the lobbying success: a paper record-keeping system that has slowed investigators, with estimated business losses of $250 million. So far, nearly 1,300 people in 43 states, the District of Columbia and Canada have been sickened by salmonella since April.
Menu from recent G8 summit in Japan where world leaders discussed what to do about the recent world food crisis.
A gay guy in California has now been married for a week and is presumably very happy. My kid still hates me and my wife is still telling me to take out the trash AND mow the lawn.
McCain could have a conflict brewing. (LA Times)
Hensley & Co., one of the nation’s major beer wholesalers, has brought the family of Cindy McCain wealth, prestige and influence in Phoenix, but it could also create conflicts for her husband, Sen. John McCain, if he is elected president in November.
Hensley, founded by Cindy McCain’s late father, holds federal and state licenses to distribute beer and lobbies regulatory agencies on alcohol issues that involve public health and safety.
The company has opposed such groups as Mothers Against Drunk Driving in fighting proposed federal rules requiring alcohol content information on every package of beer, wine and liquor
Its executives, including John McCain’s son Andrew, have written at least 10 letters in recent years to the Treasury Department, have contributed tens of thousands of dollars to a beer industry political action committee, and hold a seat on the board of the politically powerful National Beer Wholesalers Assn.
Hate Groups’ Newest Target. (Washington Post)
“I haven’t seen this much anger in a long, long time,” said Billy Roper, a 36-year-old who runs a group called White Revolution in Russellville, Ark. “Nothing has awakened normally complacent white Americans more than the prospect of America having an overtly nonwhite president.”
…
“What you try not to think about is that maybe if Obama wins, it will create a very demoralizing effect,” Doggett said. “Maybe people see him in office, and it’s like: ‘That’s it. It’s just too late. Look at what’s happened now. We’ve endured all these defeats, and we’ve still got a multicultural society.’ And then there’s just no future for our viewpoint.”
Via TPM, notice the similarities between Cookie McCain’s cookie recipe and Hershey’s.
Man, which campaign operative had the great idea to have McCain speak an hour before Obama’s nomination clinching speech? That guy should be forced to carry Cookie McCain’s Gucci handbags the rest of the general election.
It was like watching a tree stump speak in front of a drunken Young Americans for Freedom convention. Contrasted side-by-side with Obama’s overall tone, the difference couldn’t be more stark. Like otoro and a fucking fried baloney sandwich.
Tomorrow is primary election day here in Oregon. Well, if you’re like most people, you’ve already voted as you received your ballot in the mail weeks ago. Me? I like to wait out the entire campaign cycle before dropping my ballot at a drop box location—which for me this year is the Capitol Hill Library. (This library incidentally currently has a “Graphic Novel” section featuring three compendiums of Peter Bagge’s Hate, as well as an Arcade Fire album, and noise canceling earphones joined to the computers that cause my daughter to yell “I want a new one!” at the top or her lungs because she’s unable to modulate her own pitch).
One of my reasons behind waiting until the last minute, other than sheer laziness1, is so I can be sufficiently assaulted by the full ad cycles from each candidate. Take, for instance, the Democratic primary for the opportunity to take on Gordon Smith (R-Pendleton) for the right to represent Oregon in the U.S. Senate.
To this point I had been on the fence. The two candidates are Jeff Merkley, who is currently the speaker of the Oregon House, and firebrand lawyer Steve Novick. Both seem like perfectly fine candidates. Merkley seems the more conventional candidate, with a fine resume of legislative service at the state level, while Novick has made a name for himself as an environmental lawyer who took on big pollution.
Gordon Smith, the two-term incumbent that one of these Democratic upstarts hopes to unseat, is your standard-issue, right-wing rubber stamper. However, his well-coiffed affability and perceived centrist demeanor gives him a bit of crossover appeal and has allowed him to serve two terms in the U.S. Senate representing what is ostensibly seen as a Democratic state. Part of his appeal, as you can clearly see below…
…is due in large part to his hair. Look at that lid. You’d be hard pressed to find another elder statesman in either chamber of the U.S. Congress with such marvelous hair (this includes the three recent Democratic House special election winners). One can easily get lost in his wavy browns. It is mesmerizing, and literally exudes gravitas. Smith is like the Samson of American politics; if you were to shave his head, he would literally cease to be a politician.
With this in mind, Merkley would appear as the safer bet, and conventional wisdom would decree that he matches up in the general with Gordon Smith. If you compare the photos of Merkley and Novick on their websites you’ll see Merkley’s smile featured prominently, a blissful grin that says “life is good, I’m a good person, I am generally satisfied with my life and my place in the world.” Novick’s smirk, on the other hand, says “I know you’re fucking your secretary.”
And, if you don’t already know, Novick is also a 4’9″ impish troll. And he has no left hand. Instead, he has a steel hook.
However, Novick is so resourceful that he makes all of this work to his advantage. You can’t help but like the guy and his non-conformist gumption. He has a mean streak, and he’s shown he’s not afraid to “stick it to the man”, whomever he or she may be or whatever power vacuum is being currently usurped.
But in recent weeks, up until tonight, the one thing that has swung the pendulum to Novick’s side has been television advertising. Not Novick’s, but Merkley’s2.
Exhibit A: one Merkley ad, which ran quite frequently, took Novick to task for trashing fellow Democrats. The irony was lost on Merkley, apparently, but this is politics. However, the quotes attributed to Novick were ripped from his off-the-cuff blog posts, and were taken largely out of context. This kinda pissed me off. I mean, if somebody took direct quotes from this blog, such as Rush Limbaugh “…is a fat, disgusting drug addict. He is a hypocrite, an unfortunate scion of pent up rage, unrequited hatred, and inordinate hubris…He is a wheezing, decrepit, decaying piece of rotting maggot filth…” or that Sandra Lee “…must either a) be fucking some exec at the Food Network or b) have a photo of the same exec in bed with a dead hooker or a live boy…” or simply, “Fuck you, Dick Cheney”, and attributed them directly to me, they’d be a) somewhat disingenuous, and b) entirely accurate.
Fair enough, but then tonight I saw another ad with Merkley and his daughter. Pimping your daughter out is one thing, however, I really don’t care about that (she’s only 11 or something and for all I know her dad is threatening to delete her MySpace profile), but the real crime was the ad used the font Comic Sans MS.
And for that reason, the official Guilty Carnivore Endorsement for Democrat for U.S. Senate goes to Mr. Steve Novick. Sir, now that you will ride my ringing endorsement to a primary victory, may I suggest your first course of action once the general campaign commences is to do something, anything, to demonize Gordon Smith’s hair. Perhaps a whisper campaign, that when it was a young buzzcut it was educated in a madrassa, or that it hangs out in the airport restroom.
1A bonus for not mailing your ballot early during a hotly contested presidential primary, I’ve discovered for the first time ever, is that each candidate will call you often. Just yesterday, the a campaign called me to ask if they could count on my vote for Hillary Clinton, who apparently is still in the race.
With all the calls, you start to feel good about yourself, like you’re a hot commodity, with many courters. Then it gets kinda weird and feels more like stalking, which in itself is not unwelcome, either.
2It should be noted that Gordon Smith himself is on the air, as well, but with two potential opposing candidates running neck-in-neck, the gist of his commercials has been “One of these guys is a total dick.”
======POST-ELECTION UPDATE======
…and Steve Novick…lost. But, in the sage words of one Bret Michaels, every rose has its thorn: the Republican candidate for the open U.S. congressional seat in my district will be the abortionist who threw cocaine-fueled sex parties on his yacht (allegedly). Happy day!
Cheney’s Office: (Do Not) Save The Whales. (TPMMuckraker)
The latest contribution to good government from Vice President Dick Cheney: preventing the implementation of rules to protect the endangered right whale.
This comes from a letter House sleuth Henry Waxman (D-CA) sent to the White House today, requesting that the administration quit delaying the rules, which would restrict the speed of ships near American ports. Faster moving ships hit the whales, causing injury or death, scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration say.
EU set to scrap biofuels target amid fears of food crisis. (Guardian UK)
The silence is deafening on this side of the pond.
Does this affect you? Do you care?
Here in the U.S., the cost of food has been rising exponentially as we’ve foolishly hitched our wagons (literally) to ethanol. Crops that were once staples in the food cycle, such as corn, are being used to produce fuel in a zero-sum game, and the results are riots in Mexico over the price of tortillas.
A common trope repeated by armchair chaos theorists is that when a butterfly bats its wings, a hurricane can result halfway across the world. However, this appears to be happening at a macro scale in our own country, as rising prices affect everything from eggs to beer.
- Surging costs of groceries hit home
- Grand Rapids-area bakeries hit by rising flour prices
- Rising flour prices send pizzerias scrambling
- Beer Prices Rising Amid Crop Shortage
Working-class Americans are increasingly bearing the brunt of these increased costs (“Middle class Long Islanders turning to food pantries”) as rising wholesale prices are feeding an alarming, worldwide inflationary spike.
We are experiencing a perfect storm, as energy and fuel prices climb, the world’s shaky financial markets continue to deteriorate as a result of greed and malfeasance, and a maturing world population has pushed grain demand to levels unseen. A growing, foreign middle class are patterning their lifestyles much in the way we Americans have been living for decades. This burgeoning affluence has pushed demand for fuel and energy to an all-time high, and millions of middle-class Chinese with a newfound taste for meat are helping to feed a vicious cycle which usurps grain stores at exponential rate (to serve as livestock feed) and burns the massive amounts of fuel necessary to sustain this consumption.
Food riots are breaking out all across the world, which leads to food protectionism as foreign countries limit exports to mitigate domestic upheaval. History indicates (“Rice Riots of 1918”) rising food prices, particularly grain, can be a bellwether from which to gauge growing societal entropy. Just last month, the price of rice in Asia surged 30% in a single day.
The lack of deference to this subject paid by the American mainstream media is disgusting, but hardly surprising. The questions are too myriad to attempt to cogently address, and our current clueless cadre of politicians are hopelessly inept, more concerned with American flag lapel pins and justifying 100 years of troop presence in an area of the world that will soon be ground zero for the entropic decay associated with the eventual end of cheap energy.
With that in mind, Tommy@Macerating Shallots has tagged me for a six word memoir meme. 66.67% of my memoir I will directly rip off from William Butler Yeats:
“The centre cannot hold: we’re fucked“.
Commentary: Shame on them and shame on us. (McClatchy)
I suppose this benign neglect of so important and damaging an event is combat fatigue on the part of the public. No doubt the White House is happy to see Iraq shoved to a back burner, just as all three presidential candidates are relieved to talk about something else, anything else, but their half-baked ideas about the war.
Shame on them, and shame on us, for such callous indifference to the service, sacrifice and suffering of the families of the dead, wounded and injured troops who’ve given so much for so little in return.
Vice President Cheney again stuck both feet in his mouth by saying and then repeating that we should remember that our military is composed entirely of volunteers; that our troops all volunteered for this duty, this burden, this sacrifice.
What’s your point, Mr. Vice President? That because they volunteered to serve our country in uniform it’s okay to squander their lives in a war of choice, your choice and your president’s, and that it somehow matters less than if they’d been dragooned into service by press gangs or a draft like the one you dodged with five deferments during the Vietnam War because, you said, you had “better things to do”?
JPMorgan Acts to Buy Ailing Bear Stearns at Huge Discount. (NY Times)
Bear Stearns, facing collapse because of the mortgage crisis, agreed Sunday evening to be bought by JPMorgan Chase for a bargain-basement price of less than $250 million, the two companies announced.
$250 million? The entire company is worth the same as Alex Rodridguez?
Holy shit. We’re fucked.
UPDATE: More here.
Perhaps moreso than any other major investment securities firm, Bear promoted a culture of circled wagons, an us-against-the world camaraderie. As part of that effort, the investment bank paid a significant portion of its employees’ compensation in stock. On its Web site, Bear says that its employees own about one-third of the firm. That translates into about a $5.23 billion loss on paper for Bear’s employees over the last year, as the firm’s stock plunged 79.4 percent.
Bear also states on its Web site that non-management directors are required to hold at least 500 shares of common stock or equivalents (which include vested options and restricted stock), while executive officers must own at least 5,000 shares.
A future voter.
Lawmaker: USDA shouldn’t cover food safety. (MSNBC)
A lawmaker called Tuesday for the U.S. Department of Agriculture to be stripped of its responsibility for food safety in the wake of the nation’s largest-ever meat recall.
The agency’s twin mandates of promoting the nation’s agriculture and monitoring it for safety have become blurred, Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro said.
“Food safety ought to be of a high enough priority in this nation that we have a single agency that deals with it and not an agency that is responsible for promoting a product, selling a product and then as an afterthought dealing with how our food supply is safe,” said DeLauro, a Connecticut Democrat who chairs the House subcommittee responsible for the USDA’s funding.
Hard to say if a new bureaucratic arm of the federal government is the answer, but it’s clear the present system is broken. The market has decided: we don’t care if you die.
Smells like shit. Hillary’s campaign is an utter train wreck.
“But you know in the end, don’t vote your fears. I’m stealing this line from my buddy (Massachusetts Gov.) Deval Patrick who stole a whole bunch of lines from me when he ran for the governorship, but it’s the right one, don’t vote your fears, vote your aspirations. Vote what you believe.”
—Barack Obama, December 21, 2007
Does anybody at ABC read their own blog?
Cadbury thinks out of the box with ‘eco-egg’. (Guardian UK)
Cadbury Schweppes, which makes half of Britain’s Easter eggs, is trialling an unboxed “eco-egg” as part of its efforts to reduce 30% of its carbon emissions by 2020.
The foil-wrapped, hollowed out eggs are being sold under the Mini Eggs, Dairy Milk and Dairy Milk Caramel labels from moulded plastic casing preventing the eggs from rolling around on the shelf.
Cadbury said it was confident there was significant demand for such an offering despite the fact that many eggs are bought as gifts.
The global warming canard is so pervasive it now threatens how we enjoy Easter. I promise that for every Cadbury eco-terrorist chocolate confection sold, I will personally operate my lawn mower for 30 seconds.
We must alternately eat PEEPS® in order to save America, properly acknowledge the resurrection of Jesus, and heal the wounds of humanity.
Luckily, before then there’s St. Patrick’s Day and we can get totally trashed.
I may not approve of her Bill-n-Chelsea pimpin’ strategy or the asshat consultants she surrounds herself with, but I could get behind this policy.
I watched Obama speak tonight in Wisconsin. That is, until the disgustingly craven 24-hour news network1 I was tuned into switched over to McCain speak in front of some old guy in a $4k suit.
The contrast couldn’t be more stark. Like the difference between well-marbled Waygu and cube steak.
1Amy Holmes and John King are really some of the worst people on network news. At least the cretins on Fox News don’t try to pretend.
Talking.
Damn, he’s good.
UPDATE: On another note, Huckabee’s wife owns a bedazzler.
Food Politics, Half-Baked. (NY Times)
A call-to-arms to…put down your arms.
One need look no further than the battle over genetically modified crops starting in the 1990s to understand how this language undermines the qualified benefits of biotech innovation. Without a hint of doubt, pro-biotech forces insisted that genetically modified crops would end hunger and eliminate the need for pesticides. Genetic modification was supposedly a harmless panacea that would save the planet. Industry not only promoted this fiction, but it scoffed at the prospects of product labeling, insisting that it was the product, not the process, that mattered.
This arrogant attitude spurred the anti-biotech forces to promote their own distortions. “Frankenfoods” became the term of choice for genetically modified crops. Chemical companies engaged in “biopiracy”; they were killers of monarch butterflies, engineers of future “superweeds,” and according to Jeremy Rifkin, the prominent biotech opponent, monopolizers of an insidious technology that posed “as serious a threat to the existence of life on the planet as the bomb itself.”
CONGRESSIONAL FOOD FIGHT? (MSNBC)
The presidential race is not the only place where change is an issue.
Members of Congress returning to the Capitol this week are being confronted by transformational happenings that have shaken the building to its foundations: Democrats have hired a new company to run cafeteria services. Naturally, this has caused an outbreak of partisan skirmishing.“I like real food,” proclaimed Republican leader John Boehner when asked about the new menu by a producer for another cable news outfit. “Food that I can pronounce the name of.”
Boehner is now forced to wrap his lips around such phrases as “broccoli rabe and shaved persimmon,” “balsamic glazed butternut squash,” and “calico pinto beans”…all on this afternoon’s menu, along with the downright patriotic “American Regional Yankee Pot Roast,” which, even Boehner would have to admit, kind of rolls right off the tongue. On Fridays, there is a real sushi bar tended by a bona fide Japanese sushi chef. Gone are such grade-school cafeteria specialties as Salisbury steak and fried chicken, slathered in gravy and served with a side of chips. Debate rages among regulars about the merits of the new offerings. One consensus downside: the prices have gone upscale right along with the fare.
Stewart: Is this cynical by the Republican party? They use the evangelical bloc to kinda put them over the top… its almost like… do you watch the Simpsons?
Frum: I’m afraid to say, yes.
Stewart: Ned Flanders. Yeah thats great, you like having him around because he’ll do all the leg work, but when it comes down to it you want President Homer.
Frum: I don’t think we want President Homer.
Stewart: We have President Homer.
With Thursday’s vote bearing down on us, the well-coiffed gentleman from North Carolina must be relieved to learn that John Edwards has earned the Democratic Iowa Caucus endorsement from yours truly.
His recent firebrand-ed populism and well-established no hairdresser-left-behind policy has won me over.
As far as New Hampshire is concerned, I might jump ship to Mike Gravel. Politics is a fickle mistress.
On the Republican side, the editorial team here at Guilty Carnivore is firmly ensconced in the candidacy of one Mike Huckabee. His core belief that man and dinosaur together roamed the earth six thousand years ago clearly captures the imagination of idealism (and wisely secures the “Cha-Ka” vote).
As a side note, what the fuck is a “caucus”? And why do I feel ashamed whenever the term is uttered?
Huckabee, Back in Iowa, Brings Christmas Message. (NY Times)
“Who is your favorite author?” Aleya Deatsch, 7, of West Des Moines asked Mr. Huckabee in one of those posing-like-a-shopping-mall-Santa moments.
Mr. Huckabee paused, then said his favorite author was Dr. Seuss.
In an interview afterward with the news media, Aleya said she was somewhat surprised. She thought the candidate would be reading at a higher level.
“My favorite author is C. S. Lewis,” she said.
No dice.
Any campaign that devotes a great deal of time and energy promoting the choice of a Celine Dion-Air France jingle as its campaign theme song has irrevocably entered an irony-free zone.
You can have Celine, or you can have a sense of humor, but no way can you claim to have both. Matter and anti-matter.
Where the Votes Are, So Are All Those Calories. (NY Times)
Running for president is like entering a competitive eating contest and a beauty pageant all at once. Candidates are expected to eat local specialties often and with gusto, yet still look attractive and fit.
So it is no wonder that many of this year’s candidates have what might be called food issues — the same kinds that plague the rest of us, especially at this time of year, but exacerbated by the brutal demands of campaign life.
The Democratic contenders include Gov. Bill Richardson, a veteran of the Atkins and liquid diets who wears a double chin despite daily workouts. Senator Barack Obama, who was chubby as a child, refers to himself as skinny in speeches and barely touches fatty foods — except at events like the Iowa State Fair, where he ate caramel corn, pork and a corn dog for the cameras. At one campaign event, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton said she prayed to God to help her lose weight.
On the Republican side, there is Mike Huckabee, a self-described “recovering food addict” who lost 110 pounds a few years ago. Rudolph W. Giuliani and Fred D. Thompson are on diets imposed by their wives. Mitt Romney is so vigilant about nutrition that he eats the same thing every day: his wife’s granola for breakfast, a chicken or turkey sandwich for lunch, and pasta, fish or chicken for dinner.
And John McCain probably spoke for all the candidates when he arrived at a New Hampshire college for a speech on Sunday night and surveyed the snack foods set out backstage. “I’d love some spaghetti,” he said wistfully, as if a warm, comforting meal could somehow be conjured out of the air.
Later Tuesday, Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Ct.) , who is running for president, stated, “Today’s revelations by Mr. McClellan are very disturbing and raise several important questions that need to be answered. If in fact the President of the United of States knowingly instructed his chief spokesman to mislead the American people, there can be no more fundamental betrayal of the public trust.
“During his confirmation process, Attorney General Mukasey said he would act independently. Accordingly, today, I call on the Attorney General to live up to his word and launch an immediate investigation to determine the facts of this case, the extent of any cover up and determine what the President knew and when he knew it.”
WASHINGTON, July 18 – President Bush said today that he would fire anyone in his administration who has broken the law in the unmasking of a C.I.A. officer two years ago.
Matthew Cooper, a reporter for Time, talked about his grand jury testimony Sunday on “Meet the Press.”
Asked about his close adviser Karl Rove, who is at the center of an investigation into the disclosure of the officer’s identity, Mr. Bush said: “If someone committed a crime, they will no longer work in my administration. I don’t know all the facts; I want to know all the facts.”The remarks appeared to shift the standard for dismissal that has been expressed repeatedly over many months by Mr. Bush’s spokesmen – from promises to fire anyone who played a role in the disclosure, to Mr. Bush’s statement today that criminal conduct would have to be involved.
Just sayin’.
“You people are really nuts,” she told a reporter during a phone interview. “There’s kids dying in the war, the price of oil right now — there’s better things in this world to be thinking about than who served Hillary Clinton at Maid-Rite and who got a tip and who didn’t get a tip.”
I can’t believe I’m watching the Daily Show and I’m not entirely disgusted by Lynne Cheney. I somewhat liked her. She’s being magnanimous and her husband has been gifted, if ever so slightly, an actual sense of humanity.
Jon Stewart has proved himself to be again the most artful and gracious televised interrogator of recent time.
Greenspan: Market Turmoil Is Not My Fault (NY Post)
September 14, 2007 — Alan Greenspan says don’t blame him for the latest market turmoil.
The former Federal Reserve chairman said critics who have argued recently that he helped bring on the crisis in the market for risky home loans by cutting interest rates for three straight years “are mistaken.
“It was our job to unfreeze the American banking system if we wanted the economy to function,” Greenspan told CBS’ “60 Minutes” during an interview to be broadcast on Sunday.
“This required that we keep rates modestly low.”
Greenspan said he didn’t recognize until very late in 2005 that the dubious lending practices – which gave homebuyers loans with low adjustable rates that could jump to precipitous levels – were serious enough to damage the economy.
“While I was aware a lot of these practices were going on, I had no notion of how significant they had become until very late,” he said.
Compare with this from 2/23/04: Greenspan says ARMs might be better deal (USA Today)
Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said Monday that Americans’ preference for long-term, fixed-rate mortgages means many are paying more than necessary for their homes and suggested consumers would benefit if lenders offered more alternatives.
In a standing-room-only speech to the Credit Union National Association meeting here, Greenspan also said U.S. household finances appeared generally sound, despite rising debt levels and bankruptcy filings. Low interest rates and surging home prices have given consumers flexibility to manage debt, he said.
“Overall, the household sector seems to be in good shape,” Greenspan said.
What a fucking hack.
An organic milk ripoff. (CNNMoney.com)
Some consumers pay $5 or $6 a gallon for organic milk, up to twice as much as the conventional kind. They’re not always getting their money’s worth.
A company that supplies milk to Wal-Mart, Costco, Target and Safeway was charged last week with selling milk labeled organic that failed to meet the national organic standards.
Big bucks spent in fight over pennies. (Houston Chron)
Now, the fate of the penny is up in the air once again. With the price of zinc soaring amid a worldwide commodities boom, it costs the government almost 2 cents to make each 1-cent coin — a pretty penny considering roughly 8 billion new ones are placed into circulation annually.
That’s not exactly chump change. But we are chumps.
Leahy Explains Cheney’s F-Bomb Incident, Says Hayes’ ‘Puff Piece’ Got It Wrong. (ThinkProgress)
The man would lie about what he had for breakfast today. (Miniature daschund hearts, if you need to know).
I have to apologize for the lack of anything on this blog. All 1.5 regular readers of this site I’m sure have supplanted the cerebral illuminance formerly gleamed from this blog with the mental acuity honed from the Highlights magazine swiped from a local pediatrician waiting room (that Goofus is one big retard, huh? And Gallant? Oh, what a prig!)
Life has caught up with me, and hospitals, family, and work take up most of my time these days. But I promise there will be blog posts, soon.
In the meantime, what’s happening out there in meat land? I heard some restaurant opened up and they’re serving food and some people like it while others thought everything was too salty. And there’s a movie or two out right now and a TV show (or three) and somebody wrote a column in the NY Times and somebody has some nice pictures they took with a digital camera and I understand that eating locally is sustainalicious, and lotsa, lotsa, lotsa other stuff. Also, I heard nobody likes George Bush. And I heard Dick Cheney was president for a day, which is taxonomically sufficient in order to file this post under my favorite category.
I can’t believe George Bush was elected once. The guy is really fucking retarded.
I mean, I’ve had bosses who I’ve hated, had bad taste in food, women, cars, music, and clothes, and who couldn’t navigate their way out of a Target parking lot, but still were much more advanced in terms of logistical and emotional maturity than George Bush. And most of them got fired. I’ve spent time at parties talking to coked-out, emotionally stunted self-fellatio enthusiasts who have exhibited greater capabilities for empathy.
So the fact he was elected once is amazing, though the actual “elected” part is up for debate. But twice? Half of the people in this country are really fucking stupid. And, even now, I’m so amazed to find that 29% of the population still swallows this flaccid dick’s cum. Man, you guys are fucking stupid. You should fuck off and stuff.
Court Rebuffs F.C.C. on Fines for Indecency. (NY Times)
If President Bush and Vice President Cheney can blurt out vulgar language, then the government cannot punish broadcast television stations for broadcasting the same words in similarly fleeting contexts.
That, in essence, was the decision on Monday, when a federal appeals panel struck down the government policy that allows stations and networks to be fined if they broadcast shows containing obscene language.
…
Adopting an argument made by lawyers for NBC, the judges then cited examples in which Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney had used the same language that would be penalized under the policy. Mr. Bush was caught on videotape last July using a common vulgarity that the commission finds objectionable in a conversation with Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain. Three years ago, Mr. Cheney was widely reported to have muttered an angry obscene version of “get lost” to Senator Patrick Leahy on the floor of the United States Senate.
“We find that the F.C.C.’s new policy regarding ‘fleeting expletives’ fails to provide a reasoned analysis justifying its departure from the agency’s established practice,” said the panel.
Forget worries about $4 gas … now it’s $4 milk. (MSNBC)
Hutjens and others said higher gasoline prices have increased the costs of moving milk from farm to market, and corn — the primary feed for dairy cattle — is being gobbled up by producers of the fuel-additive ethanol. The USDA projects that 3.2 billion bushels of this year’s corn crop will be used to make ethanol, a 52 percent increase over 2006.
Ethanol has increased the average American’s grocery bill $47 since July, and Iowa State University study concluded.
“There is no free lunch,” Hutjens said. “That corn then has to come away from that dedicated resource.”
Chris Galen, a spokesman for the National Milk Producers Federation, pointed to another factor: Global demand for milk, he said, has grown in the past few years, primarily in the new Asian economic powers.
“China of course is a big story,” he said. “They’re consuming more (milk protein); they’re using more dairy ingredients in animal feed.”
In years past, that demand might have been met by Australia and New Zealand, he said. But drought in Australia and the limits of New Zealand’s dairy industry have pushed China and its neighbors to buy American.
Hutjens said the biggest dairy price spikes are likely to come later this summer in the areas farthest from the Midwest corn and grain fields that feed most of the country’s dairy cattle.
America’s blind addiction to driving and systematic malfeasance at every level (local, state, and federal) has delivered us to this fate. There exists no solution that is palatable enough for the entitled masses to accept.
U.S. government fights to keep meatpackers from testing all slaughtered cattle for mad cow. (IHT)
The Bush administration said Tuesday it will fight to keep meatpackers from testing all their animals for mad cow disease.
The Agriculture Department tests fewer than 1 percent of slaughtered cows for the disease, which can be fatal to humans who eat tainted beef. A beef producer in the western state of Kansas, Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, wants to test all of its cows.
Larger meat companies feared that move because, if Creekstone should test its meat and advertised it as safe, they might have to perform the expensive tests on their larger herds as well.
The Agriculture Department regulates the test and argued that widespread testing could lead to a false positive that would harm the meat industry.
Dick Cheney sees your doublespeak, and raises you one jaw-droppingly mendacious lie.
KING: When do we leave?…You expect it in your administration?
D. CHENEY: I do.
KING: To be removed. It’s not going to be — it’s not going to be a 10-year event?
D. CHENEY: No. I think we may well have some kind of presence there over a period of time. But I think the level of activity that we see today, from a military standpoint, I think will clearly decline. I think they’re in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency.
Demand and Costs Rise for Best Cuts. (NY Times)
Beef, it’s what’s for dinner…if you are DINK (Dual Income No Kids).
Over the past two months or so the cost of producing beef and the demand for it have risen so much that prices are soaring and the supply of top quality beef has dropped. Customers at steakhouses and markets will see the effects in coming weeks if they haven’t already.
“Beef is going through the roof,” said Richard Romanoff, the president of Nebraskaland, a wholesaler in the Hunts Point Market in the Bronx. “And there’s not enough prime and top choice to satisfy the demand.”
Externalities are having a uncompromising effect:
Many of the factors pushing up prices are also affecting quality.
The demand for ethanol and a harsh winter have caused the price of corn to rise about 60 percent over the past few months. Farmers are planting more corn now, but Mr. Leibtag would not predict a price drop soon.
The price of feed and the higher cost of fuel for transport have led producers to bring their cattle to slaughter when they are younger and lighter so they can save money and get a faster return on their investment. “The cattle should be on feed 120 to 140 days, but the cattlemen have been cutting it to 60 to 90 days,” said Kevin Brown, the head buyer for Buckhead Beef Northeast. “The meat does not have the same chance to become as marbled because the animals are smaller, so the quality is down.”
The quality of beef has also been hurt by the stress of a hard winter.
Fucking ethanol. Again. Stupid Americans and their white whale — the dream to drive endlessly. You’re messing with the ability for me to get my meat on.
Joe Lieberman, Democratic primary debate with Ned Lamont, July 7, 2006:
The situation in Iraq is a lot better, different than it was a year ago. . . .So I am confident that the situation is improving enough on the ground that by the end of this year, we will begin to draw down significant numbers of American troops, and by the end of the next year more than half of the troops who are there now will be home.
asshat (ās-hāt)
n. pl. asshats (ās-hāts)
1. A sniveling, mendacious fuck who is primarily infatuated with the sound and smell of his own flatulence.
2. Joe Lieberman.
tr.v. ass-hat·ted, ass-hat·ting
To act in way that proves oneself to be an asshat; “The primary activity on MySpace can best be described as asshatting.”
In the Rose Garden, It Was All Al-Qaeda. (Dana Milbank, Washington Post)
“They are a threat to your children, David,” he advised NBC’s David Gregory.
“It’s a danger to your children, Jim,” Bush informed the New York Times’ Jim Rutenberg.
This last warning was perplexing, because Rutenberg has no children, only a brown chow chow named Little Bear. It was unclear whether Bush was referring to a specific and credible threat to Little Bear or merely indicating there was increased “chatter in the system” about chow chows in general.
Rutenberg, informed of the pet threat, asked Bush a follow-up question about bin Laden. “Mr. President, why is he still at large?”
“Why is he at large?” Bush shot back. “Because we haven’t got him yet, Jim.”
Duke Cunningham: Serial embezzler, unctuous slimeball, and dry aged meat abuser.
One of these parties started at the Capital Grille with Cunningham ordering his usual filet mignon — very well done — with iceberg lettuce salad and White Oak. Wilkes used the dinner to update Cunningham on the appropriations he wanted. Cunningham then took the whole group back to the boat where they drank more wine, sitting on white leather sofas while Cunningham told more war stories. Cunningham then took his clothes off and invited all to join him in the polluted hot tub that was hidden from the neighbors by a white tarp. There were no takers.
Ah, bullshit. You know the cheesy funk music started playing, terry cloth robes were discarded, and thickly forested, seventies-style pubic nether regions were put on full display.
FDA Says Quarantined Hogs Are Safe to Eat. (Washington Post)
Fine, you eat them, then. Serve melamine ribs at the FDA Memorial Day BBQ as a show of strength.
The FDA has become a joke. See, government regulation doesn’t work? Right?
By the same logic — just to prove that marriage is a failed institution — I married my wife only to cheat on her with a rented stud whose number I got from the back pages of Well Hung Weekly.
Bill O’Reilly lifts boycott of France.
In March 2003, Bill O’Reilly called on all Americans to boycott the use of French Products because of France’s disagreement with the United States decision to invade Iraq (those French really blew THAT one).
Through the years O’Reilly has claimed his boycott of France has cost the country “billions of dollars” (O’Reilly himself quoted that figure in the non-existent “Paris Business Review”).
Now, because the country recently elected a pro-American government, O’Reilly has decided France has suffered enough and has magnamimously lifted his boycott.
In my own act of magnamimous reciprocation, I too will lift my ban on falafel that has been inserted into a vagina.
Added Gore, “And what’s the big deal with the cheesesteak sandwiches? They taste like shit. I wouldn’t feed them to the dogs they’re probably made out of.”
Dick Cheney will be visiting Provo this week and giving the commencement address at BYU.
A bunch of students have, in protest, organized an alternative graduation ceremony and have raised over $20k to fund it.
Nobody likes Dick Cheney. He’s a fucking prick.
You Are What You Grow. (NYTimes).
Michael Pollan on eating healthy in America.
As a rule, processed foods are more “energy dense” than fresh foods: they contain less water and fiber but more added fat and sugar, which makes them both less filling and more fattening. These particular calories also happen to be the least healthful ones in the marketplace, which is why we call the foods that contain them “junk.” Drewnowski concluded that the rules of the food game in America are organized in such a way that if you are eating on a budget, the most rational economic strategy is to eat badly — and get fat.
This perverse state of affairs is not, as you might think, the inevitable result of the free market. Compared with a bunch of carrots, a package of Twinkies, to take one iconic processed foodlike substance as an example, is a highly complicated, high-tech piece of manufacture, involving no fewer than 39 ingredients, many themselves elaborately manufactured, as well as the packaging and a hefty marketing budget. So how can the supermarket possibly sell a pair of these synthetic cream-filled pseudocakes for less than a bunch of roots?
FDA aware of dangers to food. (Washington Post via MSNBC)
The Food and Drug Administration has known for years about contamination problems at a Georgia peanut butter plant and on California spinach farms that led to disease outbreaks that killed three people, sickened hundreds, and forced one of the biggest product recalls in U.S. history, documents and interviews show.
Overwhelmed by huge growth in the number of food processors and imports, however, the agency took only limited steps to address the problems and relied on producers to police themselves, according to agency documents.
Smells like shit.
Imported food rarely inspected. (AP via Yahoo! News)
Just 1.3 percent of imported fish, vegetables, fruit and other foods are inspected — yet those government inspections regularly reveal food unfit for human consumption.
Frozen catfish from China, beans from Belgium, jalapenos from Peru, blackberries from Guatemala, baked goods from Canada, India and the Philippines — the list of tainted food detained at the border by the Food and Drug Administration stretches on.
Add to that the contaminated Chinese wheat gluten that poisoned cats and dogs nationwide and led to a massive pet food recall, and you’ve got a real international pickle. Does the United States have the wherewithal to ensure the food it imports is safe?
Food safety experts say no.
That is all.
I had the misfortune of catching a few seconds of this morning’s presser on the way in to work. The above photo captures the essence of this man. He is a petulant, snot-nosed brat with the mentality of a 10 year-old.
Ralph Wiggum at least has a good heart and would never send people off to die to placate his inordinate hubris.
Until recently, most Americans have been appallingly ignorant of how their food is produced. That is changing. And Mr. Puck’s gift for showmanship will help advance Americans’ knowledge that they can eat well and do right all at the same time.
Good. Good for Puck. But I doubt it will have any significant effect on a society that bleats endlessly about American Idol controversies in lieu of paying actual attention to anything that imprints specificity upon their daily lives.
Mayor tells Muni to investigate eliminating fares.
Margaret Cliver, a 50-year-old Mission District resident who commutes by bus, fears the same problems on Muni.
“Gavin Newsom must have taken a leave of his senses to even consider this. Muni is already overloaded with stinky crazies, loud-mouth-behaved louts and other zoological forms of low life. The day it becomes entirely free, it will become a dumpster on wheels, and I, along with the rest of those who currently attempt to use the system, will give up on it entirely,” Cliver said.
“Other zoological forms of low life” = instant classic. Gives this lady a blog.
Priests to purify site after Bush visit.
Mayan priests will purify a sacred archaeological site to eliminate “bad spirits” after President Bush visits next week, an official with close ties to the group said Thursday.
Noted without comment.
FDA Rules Override Warnings About Drug. Cattle Antibiotic Moves Forward Despite Fears of Human Risk.
The government is on track to approve a new antibiotic to treat a pneumonia-like disease in cattle, despite warnings from health groups and a majority of the agency’s own expert advisers that the decision will be dangerous for people.
The drug, called cefquinome, belongs to a class of highly potent antibiotics that are among medicine’s last defenses against several serious human infections. No drug from that class has been approved in the United States for use in animals.
The American Medical Association and about a dozen other health groups warned the Food and Drug Administration that giving cefquinome to animals would probably speed the emergence of microbes resistant to that important class of antibiotics, as has happened with other drugs. Those super-microbes could then spread to people.
Laura Bush speaking tonight on Larry King Live:
“Many parts of Iraq are stable now. But, uh, of course, what we see on television is the one bombing a day that discourages everyone.”
Laura, I know what you mean. Most of the time, my house is very quiet. But of course, the COPS television crew just would have to show up each night after I’ve been sniffing glue and I’m beating my wife.
I blame the media.
Blow for beer as biofuels clean out barley.
The rapid expansion of biofuel production may be welcome news for environmentalists but for the world’s beer drinkers it could be a different story.
Strong demand for biofuel feedstocks such as corn, soyabeans and rapeseed is encouraging farmers to plant these crops instead of grains like barley, driving up prices.
Biodiesel is a sham. Junk science. Kunstler is right. Fuck biodiesel. Its false promises are enablers. We need to get away from using our cars and fooling ourselves that this easy-motoring society is our birthright.
IT’S TAKING AWAY OUR BEER GODDAMNIT.
Dear God. The canned guffaw track really does makes something so horrifically bad seem even more so. Kinda like putting Miracle Whip on Jello Pudding Pop.
If there was any affirmation of the truism behind why the Right has Ted Nugent and the Left has Bob Dylan, this is it.
Quotes of the Morning: Homer J for the Rebuttal (again).
Homer Simpson channels our Leader. Via the talented and snarkilicious TBogg.
When Bad Things Come From ‘Good’ Food.
Lately, though, produce has caused a disturbing number of disease outbreaks; just since September, bacteria-tainted tomatoes, spinach and lettuce have made hundreds of people sick, and killed three. There have been 20 serious outbreaks in the past decade or so, and many have come from crops grown in California, not from imports. Fruit juices, alfalfa sprouts and almonds have also been involved — all of them supposedly health foods, like salad, the things we feel most virtuous about eating.
The known outbreaks are just the tip of the iceberg, health officials say; far more illness is never reported. Most people don’t call the health department about a few days of gut trouble. The government estimates that over all, food-borne microbes — not just the ones on produce — make 76 million people a year sick, put 325,000 in the hospital and kill 5,000.
America: an advanced, first world country, purported leader of the free world, where eating your vegetables CAN KILL YOU.
Heckuva job, FreeMarkie!
“There may be some self-regulation from the industry, the growers themselves,” he said. “They have to do something themselves, or else they’re going to lose their market.”
Yes. The market will decide! California energy, Enrononomics and freedom for everyone! George Will says the minimum wage should be zero, and, you know? He’s right!
Where “Check Please” is Your Call.
At a new breed of “Robin Hood” restaurants, diners pay what they can afford — and what they think the meal is worth
…
These pay-as-you-can cafes have missions that are unapologetically altruistic—call it serving up fare Robin Hood style. “Our philosophy is that everyone, regardless of economic status, deserves the chance to eat healthy, organic food while being treated with dignity,” explains Brad Birky, who opened SAME with his wife, Libby, in October. Customers who have no money are encouraged to exchange an hour of service — sweep, wash the dishes, weed the organic garden — for a meal. Likewise, guests who have money are encouraged to leave a little extra to offset the meals of those who have less to give.
Sounds very utopian, eh? But all it takes is a few assholes to ruin everything. And if there’s one thing you can count on, it’s that people will be assholes.
If my food sucks, can I ask that you give me money?
Evangelical broadcaster Pat Robertson said Tuesday that God has told him that a terrorist attack on the United States would cause a “mass killing” late in 2007.
“I’m not necessarily saying it’s going to be nuclear,” he said during his news-and-talk television show “The 700 Club” on the Christian Broadcasting Network.
“The Lord didn’t say nuclear. But I do believe it will be something like that.”
Robertson said God told him about the impending tragedy during a recent prayer retreat.
…
“I have a relatively good track record,” he said. “Sometimes I miss.”
Well, wouldn’t that be God misleads you? And couldn’t he provide some more details about this “mass killing” so CNN and Fox News can at least mobilize a cadre of blow-dried sycophants to fawn over the horror?
What a dick. Maybe if God wasn’t such a monumental prick to you, Pat Robertson, you’d have more amusement parks with Immaculate Conception theme rides where Jesus-shaped roller coasters emerge from the miraculously fecund vagina of the Virgin Mary.
If MSG is so bad for you, why doesn’t everyone in Asia have a headache?
Good question. Not since the false demonization of the tomato as a poisonous cousin of the deadly nightshade has another ingredient usurped such mythical and misbegotten ill repute.
What does chiefly animate Japanese soups and broths is an amino acid called glutamate. In the best ramen shops it’s made naturally from boiling dried kombu seaweed; it can also come from dried shrimp or bonito flakes, or from fermented soy. More cheaply and easily, you get it from a tin, where it is stabilised with ordinary salt and is thus monosodium glutamate.
This last fact is of little interest to the Japanese – like most Asians, they have no fear of MSG. And there lies one of the world’s great food scare conundrums. If MSG is bad for you – as Jeffrey Steingarten, the great American Vogue food writer once put it – why doesn’t everyone in China have a headache?
I liken this to the Reefer Madness scare of the 20th century. MSG has been demonized from the bully pulpit, scandalized by a generation of shucksters perpetuating false truths and slanderous lies. Armchair chemists and erstwhile nutritionists, burnishing speciously gained junk science, falsely projected their own hypochondriac ill-conceptions upon a gullible population so quick to scapegoat any perceived threat to their imagined, self-absorbed pollyanna-ish reality. Stop the madness, I say. Back off that ledge, come back from the brink of insanity, embrace the M to S to the G. MSG!
It is your obligation, no, your mission, dear reader, to walk into any Asian restaurant who proudly proclaims “No MSG!” and tell them to cease with the lies. Demand that they exhibit the moral conviction to make a stand, to end the illusion. There’s no impropriety; alas, no reason for shame. We need not adorn this scarlet letter. Wear it proud, and wear it loud.
Everything has MSG. MSG is everywhere. MSG is taste. MSG is living. MSG is life. Long live MSG.
Via Megnut, the White House’s Menu for the 2006 Holiday Receptions.
Looks delicious, albeit there’s a secret menu that’s not being publicized via press release.
White House Secret Menu
Faith-Based Sous Vide Guinea Hen with Preserved Olives
Trust us that it’s cooked to 165 degrees and will not give you botulism.
Voter Suppression Sea Bass with Vanilla
Brown people must wait in long buffet lines for hours to get this dish, if at all. And they’ll have to show ID.
Tax Cut Chateaubriand with Social Security Reduction
18 ounces of prime, marbled beef for those earning more than $1 million. Everyone else gets Steak-Ums and an audit.
FEMA-style Creole Trout Marguery
Who could have anticipated a break in the hollandaise sauce?
Failed Policy Spinach “Soufflee” Crisp
It did not rise, but at least we stayed the course by keeping it in the oven for 2 hours.
Texas-style Death Row Chili
Don’t bother asking for clemency, this dish is electrifying.
Medal of Freedom Fries
Only available to those who have completely and miserably failed.
Death Tax by Chocolate
A dessert so immense and worthy that you’ll pass it on to your deadbeat children.
NYC health board votes to ban trans fats.
The Board of Health voted Tuesday to make New York the nation’s first city to ban artery-clogging artificial trans fats at restaurants — from the corner pizzeria to high-end bakeries.
…
Fast-food restaurants and other major chains were particularly interested in the board’s decision on Tuesday, because for these companies, a trans-fat ban wouldn’t just involve substituting one ingredient for another. In addition to overhauling recipes, they have to disrupt nationwide supply operations and try to convince customers that the new french fries and doughnuts will taste just as good as the originals.
Already, McDonald’s Corp. has been quietly experimenting with more than a dozen healthier oil blends but has not committed to a full switch. At an investor conference last month, CEO Jim Skinner said the company is making “very good progress,” at developing an alternative, and vowed to be ready for a New York City ban.
Hopefully, McDonald’s atavistically reverts to frying in lard. Nothing like an apple pie fried in beef tallow. Mmmmm…beef tallow.
Guacamole makers sued for using too little avocado.
Tons of fake outrage about this one, as if this was a monumental surprise. How could they be so nefarious?
This has been going on since I was cognizant, i.e the very first time I read an ingredients list and the nutritional content of “guacamole” dip circa 1987. I was 13 at the time. And, presumably, “guacamole” dip had been crappy before then.
Save me the outrage. Sno-cap lard has fat? Sitcoms have a laugh track? Log Cabin Republicans are self loathing?
The Dude over at PortlandFoodandDrink.com likes to pile on Michael Hebberoy, he of ripe/Gotham/clarklewis infamy, and who can blame him? It’s low hanging fruit. I take Schadenfreudian pleasure in reading his posts regarding boy wonder (here, here and here). Partly because I’m a dick, but also because it’s still fairly entertaining. To draw a parallel: tonight I watched the puffy shirt episode of Seinfeld for the sixth time.
Anyhow, a fellow blogger took umbrage with one post in comments.
…the amount of negative attention that you focus on Michael Hebberoy is a little sad. Don’t you have someone else to focus on, or is the food scene in Portland really that small and pathetic that the antics of one ex-restaurateur are blog fodder for months? Maybe you got personally burned by Hebberoy and that’s where the vendetta comes from, but the name-calling and childish “nyah-nyah”-ing really detract from the credibility of what is otherwise a decent blog.
Later, she expounds, “I guess I don’t know enough about the Portland food scene to be ragging on you guys for harping on one man. Could the swath of destruction he left really be *that* bad??? I met the guy and really found him to be a food-revolutionary.”
To my discredit, I’ve never eaten at ripe, Gotham, or clarklewis. The latter I might still venture to in the near future, if it’s still around and I’m not feeling too self-conscious. I’ve heard good things about the food at all the aforementioned places. But “food-revolutionary”? Having a few dozen people over to your house for a dinner party is not revolutionary. If you are asking them to pay, it’s a business, you know, like a restaurant. If you think people should be grateful for the opportunity to pay good money to eat at your house, you’re an egomaniac.
“Killing” the restaurant is not revolutionary — it’s delusional. Like as if I claimed I’m subverting and reinventing journalism with my piddly keystrokes on this lame blog. It takes plenty of cocaine and stiff cocktails, while locked in a bathroom for extended periods with your closest admirers, for anyone to foment that sort of delusional hubris.
The conscious omission of capitalization is not revolutionary unless you’re E. E. Cummings. And having a “writer-in-residence”? That’s not revolutionary — merely whimsical. And to me makes as much sense as a Nascar pit crew employing a poet laureate, or a street magician needing an accountant.
Revolutionary? Fire. The cultivation of crops. Pasteurization. Food revolutions are epochal. 80,000 B.C. 8,000 B.C. 1862 A.D. Even taking into account the entropic evolution towards singularity, we still aren’t due for another food revolution for a few more years. Give me a ring in the year 2050 when organic, nano-robotic spores successfully spawn a chateaubriand in a laboratory vat.
Helping to cook and organize a meal for Kylie Minogue’s cousin and Norman Mailer’s butler doesn’t make you a revolutionary — it makes you a caterer. And I’m sorry, but catering is not revolutionary. It’s a profession, and, when done well, a craft.
Chow explores the epistemological underpinnings of America’s aversion to horse meat.
Passon emphasizes a key point: Since Americans have never had to eat horse, unlike the historically impoverished peasantry of Europe, the meat’s never become normalized. “If we train Americans, they would eat it,” he says. Asked if he would serve horsemeat to New Yorkers if they’d order it, Passon is enthusiastic: “Oh, definitely.” Horse is typically compared to beef—although it is lighter and less fatty—and Passon, who loves its taste, likens its texture to that of skirt steak. “It’s very sweet and it’s very bloody,” he adds. Traveling in Italy recently, he purchased a horse salami, or salami di cavallo. (Horsemeat was traditionally used for sausage in Italy’s north.) “I compared it to the pork one, and it was ten times better,” he says. “I gave it to my partner, and he’s like, this is the best sausage I’ve ever had.
So true. After the Kentucky Derby winner broke its leg last spring, it was the top story in the American media for weeks (incidentally, soldiers killed in the battlefield were lucky to be mentioned — so much for supporting the troops). While I’m not too keen on chowing down on Seabiscuit anytime soon, I can’t really fault the rest of the world (including our Canuck neighbors) for finding deliciousness in the saddle. Chez Pim recently posted about her experience with horse fat fries, and the subsequent revulsion.
As gourmands (and dilettantes) are forever pushing the envelope in terms of the market for high-end ingredients, imagine what thoroughbred horse meat would fetch? Fuck Kobe beef, get me a Secretariat filet, stat!
New Rule: There’s just something about a crew cut that says, “You can trust me.” This is Montana’s new senator, John Tester. I don’t know much about him. And I don’t need to. His hair says it all. “I’m friendly, I’m dependable, I’m literally level-headed.” If hair could smile, it would look like this. And most importantly, it’s hair that says, “You will never ever, ever, ever find me snorting meth with a gay hooker.”
— Bill Maher
Way to go, asshats. GOP resorts to SPAM.
More here, and here. I don’t care if you’re a Green or a Libertarian. Everyone hates a fucking spammer.
Rush Limbaugh is a fat, disgusting drug addict. He is a hypocrite, an unfortunate scion of pent up rage, unrequited hatred, and inordinate hubris. He is an unscrupulous parasite, one for whom habitual and conscious lying is as natural as breathing or shitting. His soul exists as an empty, vacuous and barren desert. His idea of recreation is to visit an island notorious for barely-teen prostitutes and underage sex slaves, armed to the teeth with erectile dysfunction medication. His heart, if it at all exists, will undoubtedly one day burst from the collective pressures of the following: a miscalculated, sick and uncontrollable anger; a lifestyle of revolting excess; a diet of illicitly gained and powerful prescription drugs; an overwhelming karmic correction. He is a wheezing, decrepit, decaying piece of rotting maggot filth.
That is all.
The Sierra Club has always impressed me with their responsible stewardship on behalf of our planet. Their stated goal is to advocate for the environment, to effect a sea change amongst the vox populi, to exemplify that caring about clean air, clean water and pristine nature leaves a legacy for our children and our children’s children. Their grassroots efforts in terms of education, awareness and enlightenment are commendable; they truly want a better world, and are willing to do what it takes to see their vision take hold. They aren’t simply content to make these tenets appear more mainstream, the Sierra Club’s aim is to make these concepts THE mainstream.
In the November/December issue of Sierra Magazine, the erudite and always insightful Bob Schildgen gifts us with his newest gem, “10 Ways to Eat Well”, a compendium of ten steps each individual can take in order to purposely reclaim your core center from the cultural turpitude that inevitably seeps through to your psyche as a result of this rush hour, drive-through, 24-hour-cable-news society.
Schildgen jumps right into the new “Ten Commandments” of eating green with #1, “Eschew meat-centered meals”…
Okay. Fuck the Sierra Club. You’re a hack, Schildgenfucker. Cold, dead hands, bitches.
McCain jokes about suicide if Democrats win Senate.
Time to get the car running in the garage, St. Dickhead.
Would Gandalf stay the course?
Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) explains the Iraq war by citing Lord of the Rings: “As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the Eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else,” Santorum told a newspaper editorial board. “It’s being drawn to Iraq and it’s not being drawn to the U.S. You know what? I want to keep it on Iraq. I don’t want the Eye to come back here to the United States.”
Christ almighty. I think his whole goal is to be the fucking American Apparel of food.
Bring your cocaine. I don’t think this asshole will share.
At underground dinners with communal tables, he said, food lovers have been “blown away by how cool it is” to talk with strangers they otherwise never would have met.
“In our daily lives, we don’t talk to each other anymore. It’s almost to the point of becoming dangerous to society, this level of isolation we’re doing to ourselves. It’s time to fight back.”
Despite those goals, even Vagabond isn’t open to everyone. No walk-ins are allowed. Advance reservations and e-mail contacts are required, meant “to keep it kind of pure, to keep it to the people who get it,” Claycamp said. “With every restaurant, there are some people that get it and some people who are there as tourists. I think both Michael and I are pretty resoundingly not interested (in the latter).”
REBEKAH DENN just won the award for “Most Ironic Subsequent Graf(s)” of the year award. Good job — if it wasn’t intentional I would then have to say it was an even more beautiful example of reporting.
Foie Inanity Reaches New York (Megnut).
Michael Ruhlman is back at Megnut with a guest post on how the War Against Carnivores™ threatens to spill onto a new front — this time New Jersey, and by extension, the entire New York culinary scene.
Not only would this put out of business or force the relocation of Ariane Daguin’s D’Artagnan–which would be a blow to the entire tri-state area and beyond and the countless restaurants that rely on D’Artagnan for foie-based products–but it would be a dangerous encroachment on the rights of New Yorkers and New York City chefs to eat what they want and cook what they want.
Ruhlman succinctly encapsulates how this issue is an extrapolation of our knee-jerk legislative tendencies…
The foie issue embodies the hypocrisy and corruption of so much of how our government operates. That our public officials continue to spend their time and our dollars on this is ludicrous. If they cared about their state and their country, they would address the catastrophe of how we’re raising agri-hogs. That’s truly inhumane. We’re trashing our land and water, growing crappy food, contaminated chicken, feed lot beef and creating lakes of sewage polluted with e coli that gets on our spinach and kills our kids.
Amen, brother. In other news, via Food Dude we learn that New York, like Chicago, is toying with a prohibitive trans-fat policy of its own.
Why don’t they ban something that would be legitimately beneficial for American culture, something, like, say, Screech force-feeding a young nubie, or Nancy Grace?
Guest blogger @Chez pim explores bagged spinach FUD.
By fingering any spinach as suspicious, even bunched fresh spinach, the F.D.A. isn’t educating anyone, or solving the problem. They’re just spreading fear on a national scale.
I was thinking along the same lines the other day, especially considering you CAN’T FUCKING FIND SPINACH ANYWHERE NOW. Why would it have to do with spinach? It grows from the ground – IS E.COLI FESTERING IN AMERICA’S SOIL OHMYGOD WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE THE TERRORISTS HAVE WON AAAAAAAHHHHHHH?!?!
I’d like to take my chances. I like spinach. I almost always cook it, too.
The recently relaunched food magazine Chow (from the good folks at cNET) has an interview with London Times restaurant critic A. A. Gill, and (like
Jim Kunstler), he proves himself to be my kind of irritable crank.
When A. A. Gill trashed Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s New York restaurant 66 in Vanity Fair, the London Times food critic, famous in Britain, got famous in the United States as well. “How clever are shrimp–and–foie gras dumplings with grapefruit dipping sauce?” he wrote. “What if we called them fishy liver-filled condoms? They were properly vile, with a savor that lingered like a lovelorn drunk and tasted as if your mouth had been used as the swab bin in an animal hospital.”
Brilliant. As his take on that safely homogenized vacuity we call Starbucks.
Everything I don’t want is absolutely embedded in everything about Starbucks. I think the whole deal is cynical and unpleasant. It’s positioning itself as being the comestible equivalent of Friends. It’s slightly green, people friendly, grown up, sensitive. It’s a franchise that’s built in stock exchanges and not in kitchens. Starbucks is everything that I despise and dislike about chains. The product is vile; the marketing is terrible. There has been far more energy put into the matter and the means of actually selling you something and making something to sell you. The service is slow, unforgettable; the whole place is nasty, the layout looks ugly, and everything about it is against all the things I like about hospitality and about eating out.
And on “organic” starfucking…
What I mind about organics is that it’s become a label used to make as much money as possible out of the process. The whole process has been hijacked and laced with guilt. You have people who can and will eat organic, but it’s not because they’re leading healthier or better lives—it’s a style statement about the people they are.
He has many interesting views that I don’t necessarily agree with, but I’m happy to have discovered another droll dickhead who makes me laugh.
Ranchers Decry Grass-Fed Beef Rule Plan.
From the gang that brought you “No Child Left Behind” and the “Clean Skies Initiative”…
Meat-eaters usually assume a grass-fed steak came from cattle contentedly grazing for most of their lives on lush pastures, not crowded into feedlots. If the government has its way, the grass-fed label could be used to sell beef that didn’t roam the range and ate more than just grass.
The Agriculture Department has proposed a standard for grass-fed meat that doesn’t say animals need pasture and that broadly defines grass to include things like leftovers from harvested crops.
Critics say the proposal is so loose that it would let more conventional ranchers slap a grass-fed label on their beef, too.
That’s exactly what’s intended — allowing erstwhile cow factories to slap that grass-fed label on a hunk of flesh and participate in Wal-mart’s “organic” gourmet revolution.
That proof is in the pudding, according to one Thom Fox.
Grass-fed beef is a leaner meat; fat tends to form around the muscle. With conventional corn-fed beef, the fat streaks the muscle in marble-like patterns.
“When you eat steak that is corn-finished, there’s a mouthfeel that you get specifically from the fat; it hangs there in the palate for quite awhile,” said Thom Fox, the chef at Acme Chophouse in San Francisco and a member of the Chefs Collaborative.
“Grass-fed beef tends to have a much quicker finish. The taste lasts for a few minutes and cleans itself off very fast,” Fox said.
If I can go forever without being subjected to the brutal strength of Thom Fox’s creepy distinction-making powers again, even that wouldn’t be long enough.
This has nothing to do with food. In fact, this is the first post that portends that this blog will no longer be about just food alone.
We are currently mired in the worst war…ever. The worst foreign policy blunder our country has ever stumbled upon. This piece of meat is burned, beyond repair, charred beyond palatable.
I was never for the war in Iraq, and I never really suffered the fools who thought there was any tenable argument for this war. I grew up in the region, but I don’t even pretend that I could have foreseen what a complete clusterfuck this piece of shit would have become. If you have even half a sense of where your asshole is in relation to your eyeball, you would have known this was a bad idea.
Anybody on the fence should just jump the fuck over. It is clear who is responsible. No more pussyfooting, no equivocal arguments.
Throw the bums out, all of them. Starting with Mr. Enabler himself, Joe Lieberman. Fuck that dick.