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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.