Careful Reading Those Labels

So after a nine hour drive through storm-induced traffic, we stopped for dinner at this Applebee's in Marietta, Georgia.

We were seated quite quickly.  We mulled over the order.  Chicken or steak?  Steak or shrimp?  Or should we get a burger.  Or a salad.  Or a burger.  Or a steak.  But eventually, we settled on a steak for me, and a turkey bacon club for my companion.  Something simple that would come out quickly.

Our server came and took our order. And then we sipped our Sweet Tea and waited for dinner to arrive.  And waited.

And waited.

 A long while later, my dinner companion asked the waitress about our order, and she promised to check it out.

About 15 minutes later, we asked again.  She apologized, and went back to the kitchen.  Five minutes went by.  Ten.

She finally came back to report that the kitchen was out of turkey, a required ingredient of the Turkey Club Sandwich that was half of our order.  "Would you like to order something else?"   My companion stared at her blankly.  It had taken 15 minutes to choose the damned sandwich.  And now she had to pick something else out of the air? 

It took our server a moment to realize that we didn't have a menu.  "Oh," she stammered, "Shall I get you a menu?"

"No," my dinner companion said, "just get me a burger.  You have burgers, right?  Do you still have hamburger back there?"  Hunger can make you cranky.  Very cranky.

Our waitress- sorry, server - ran our order back to the kitchen, and immediately returned to let us know it would be right out.  We inquired about the status of the other half of our order; would an ice-cold steak show up with a hot burger?  We were assured that both entrees would be hot.

The manager did come by to apologize, and explained that the kitchen staff really hadn't told our server that they were unable to complete the order.  It didn't sound like he went all Gordon Ramsay over anyone back there, but at least he tried to deflect blame from the server. Save that tip!

Actually, he'd have chewed US out:
"Applebees?  Are you fucking kidding me?
What did you fucking expect?"

It puts a whole new spin on the motto they proudly display out front, which we hadn't really paid attention to going in, but when I read it coming out the door, the irony was apparent:

The actual sign out front.

To be fair, that did feel about how long it took for dinner to arrive.  Order today, and you'll get it tomorrow.

Jeremy Irony

Jeremy Irons claims gay marriage laws could lead to a father marrying his son

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9972011/Jeremy-Irons-claims-gay-marriage-laws-could-lead-to-a-father-marrying-his-son.html

Just like current laws could lead to a father marrying his daughter.

Ahh, Jeremy, you're a pretty good actor, but a fairly stupid man.

posted from Bloggeroid

Loos Change

http://m.nbcnews.com/travel/some-delta-onboard-loos-getting-little-smaller-1C9184100

So airlines want to make the facilities smaller for patrons who are generally getting larger. Just another indifferent slap in the face to the increasingly obese population.

OK, we know how to turn this around; let's mandate that airlines must divulge the size of their necessaries. We'll create a classification system based on the volume of the accommodations, so you can choose your flights accordingly.

Frankly, we should have done this when they started trying to cram more passengers on each plane. A for adequate, B for barely fit, and C for cattle-car. Force a little truth in advertising on the industry.

posted from Bloggeroid

They Don't Give A Damn About Bad Sequestration

It's funny how everyone seems to have forgotten how sequestration came into our lives. And by "everyone," of course, I mean members of the Republican party.

It started with a bill to lift the nation's debt ceiling. Now, the debt ceiling was lifted a couple of dozen times during the administration of George W. Bush without incident. But once we elected a black man into office, it suddenly becomes a huge issue. Suddenly, the president who has actually spent the least amount of any president in recent history is "spending way too much" and our debt is "out of control." This, despite the fact that the prior administration spent way more and increased the national debt by far greater orders of magnitude than the current officeholder.

House Republicans threatened to vote against raising the debt limit; effectively arguing that the United States would not pay for the spending of the previous (Republican) administration, which predictably caused a drop in our national credit rating. Which House Republicans predictably blamed on the current (Democratic) administration. At the same time, the House failed to produce a budget that included a balance of spending cuts and revenue increases - an approach preferred by the the majority of U.S. voters.

So two major problems faced the nation; we were on the verge of defaulting on paying debt we had already incurred, and we were about to start the fiscal year without a budget.

A solution was offered; approve the debt ceiling, and as part of that approval, Congress would mandate a deadline with consequences: the Sequestration.

The consequences for the Democrats; spending would be cut from programs they supported, and no new revenues would be added. The consequences for Republicans; the spnding cuts would be across the board, equally, from every sector of the budget, including defense, long the sacred cow of the GOP.

Turns out that House Republicans don't give a shit about the consequences for the entire nation; economic collapse that will undermine what recovery we've made since the original collapse that occurred at the end of the Bush administration.

I'm reminded of The Mummy movies; the living mummy was cursed; he would be mummified alive, and remain conscious forever in his dessicated body. HOWEVER, it included a catch; if anyone ever freed the mummy for any reason (even unwittingly), he would gain the power of a god with the ability to destroy the entire planet. Which just goes to show that not only was Pharoah a vengeful tyrant, he was also a dumbass.

Which, when you think about it, is not unlike what we're getting; a penultimate punishment for Congress which does little harm to the members of Congress, but is now a threat to the livelihood of almost everyone in the nation.

What dumbass thought THAT was a good idea?

Why hasn't 50 State been fired yet?

For the umpteenth time, 50 State Security has erroneously decided that it must stop photography in and around Miami MetroRail stations, even though the county has very clearly written policy that permits it.  Worse, the idiots in uniform assaulted photographer and civil rights activist Carlos Miller, according the Miami New Times.

Make no mistake; in the United States, photography is permitted in public places, and that specifically includes train stations.  There are no laws that restrict one's right to take photos in or around train stations.  Not one law.  The county has confirmed this on numerous occasions. You can even access the law online, and it's very clear that photography is permitted.

Worse, 50 State Security knows this.  They should have gotten the message in the wake of the incident where they illegally seized private property.

It is long past time for Miami Metrorail to fire these cretins and replace them with a reputable company that adheres to the actual law.  The citizens of Miami-Dade county deserve better than the clowns employed by 50 State Security.

Seen on The Internet

I think it's a part of a program to help tourists find what they're looking for.

In, and Out

I voted today.

What did you think I was talking about?  Dirty bugger!

Anywho, I stopped in to vote today, on our actual Election Day.  Call me feckless, if you will.  But I figured with all the early voting over the last week, that it would be a breeze with all the voting stations in place, with a full complement of volunteers staffing a full complement of voting booths.

And as usual, I was right.

No line at the door.

I walked in, signed in, was handed my ballot, sent right to a booth, the pen worked, I went over to feed my 4 pages of ballot into the scanner, and got my "I Voted" sticker.

It took maybe ten minutes all told.  Of course, I already knew how I was voting on all the amendments, so that made it pretty simple.  If I'd had to figure out what each of the twelve amendments actually said from the ballot, I might still be there.

This means that I've earned the right to bitch about the government for at least another year.

Doesn't that give you a warm feeling?

But Does It Do Windows?

Today's screen capture off of CNN:

Admit it, doesn't it make you picture something like this?

A Groaner

CNN Gets It Wrong

CNN was fact-checking the third presidential debate, a process I heartily endorse.

But only if you do it logically and honestly.  And on that score, CNN falls a bit short.

Take this one:

What CNN is refuting isn't what Obama actually said; helpfully, they've included the correct quote.  But whoever 'fact-checked' this one lacks basic reading comprehensions skills.

THE QUOTE:

"... you initially opposed a timetable in Afghanistan, now you're for it..."

What Romney actually did - again, from this same CNN article:

What Romney has disagreed with was the announcement of the withdrawal deadline...

What is a timetable?  A schedule of activity.  You can't have a timetable without deadlines, they are the point of a timetable.

So in fact, according to CNN's own fact checking, Obama's claim is clearly true.

The only way you can come to a different conclusion is if you completely mis-characterize Obama's statements.  Which, of course, is what happened here:

Obama accused Romney of initially being against a withdrawal of forces from Afghanistan in 2014.

Again, this is a different statement than the quote they presented:

"... you initially opposed a timetable in Afghanistan, now you're for it..."

The rest of their fact checking in this article... um.... checks out.

From the Unfortunate Juxtaposition Department

I think these RSS feeds are random, but I'm not entirely sure.

Like this example, from today's  syndicated Daily Pulp feed on my Yahoo homepage:



Coincidence? 

Jack Welch's Jelly Brain

On Friday, Welch seemed to be claiming that Obama or someone in his administration had manipulated the results of the recent jobs report on his twitter feed:


Obama is from Chicago, and had just lost his first debate with Mitt Romney - or so I'm told.  I don't bother with such pointless charades.

Well, as you can imagine, this created a minor uproar, with media outlets, politicians, and even business associates questioning the merit of such an accusation.  First, the report was actually published before the debate.  Second, all the raw data is available, so it's not something that can really be manipulated.  Experts basically concluded that Welch was talking out of his ass.

So on Sunday, Welch sent out a new tweet:


Well, maybe he didn't comment on the White House, but he certainly commented on the jobs report, and only moments before his claims that he hadn't made any comments about the White House.



That link he posted leads to a story on AEIdeas, the public policy blog of the American Enterprise Institute.  The article is titled "Economist: Unemployment drop ‘implausible … a statistical quirk’." 

Welch's claims are disingenuous, at best.

To accept Welch's comments, we have to find a plausible explanation for the first post; who are "these Chicago guys" that he's referring to, if it's not Obama, a former resident of Chicago?

Could he be referring to the band Chicago?  Did this jazz/rock fusion group fudge the numbers?

I know;

It's the Moon Furies.  Their website even says that they are "Chicago Guys."

Wait, he said they lost a debate.  So maybe it's...

...the Chicago Blackhawks!  Perhaps by "debate," he really meant "game.

But they weren't mentioned in the "interesting view" of the jobs report.

No, there's only one explanation of Welch's comment that makes any sense; he was, in fact, referring to President Obama, who has often been lambasted by conservatives for doing things "The Chicago Way," a reference to the violence and corruption of the government in the gangster era as depicted in The Untouchables.  Obama is from Chicago, and had just lost a debate, and certainly benefits from a positive jobs report.  This is the only context that fits.

Jack Welch is lying to us.  And he's doing a pathetically poor job of it.  It's almost as pathetic as believing he could get away with claiming that the POTUS influenced the numbers without offering one shred of supporting evidence.

If Jack Welch really believes that he can  simply wave away his comment by stating it wasn't about the White House,
he must be keeping his brains in this jar >

Liar/Liar

"I really mean what I'm saying now."     "I was completely wrong about that."

Mitt "Etch-a-Sketch Memory" Romney is now saying that he was "completely wrong" when he said that if he becomes president of the United States, his "job is not to worry about" 47% of the population of the country.  In case you've forgotten the details of the comments he made earlier this year at a fundraiser, let's refresh your memory:

"There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. There are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent on government, who believe that, that they are victims, who believe that government has the responsibility to care for them. Who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them."

"...my job is not to worry about those people—I'll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives. What I have to do is convince the 5 to 10 percent in the center..."

Of course, he initially defended his statements.

"This is a message I'm carrying day and day out and will carry over the coming months," Romney said on Fox News. "This is a decision about the course of America, where we're going to head. We've seen the president's policies play out over the last four years."

And he tried to explain that he just didn't make his point clearly enough:

"At a fundraiser you have people say, 'Governor how are you going to win this?' And so I respond 'Well, the president has his group, I have my group. I want to keep my team strong and motivated and I want to get those people in the middle.' That's something which fund-raising people who are parting with their monies are very interested in."

His campaign suggested that the comments were taken out of context.  That is, until Mother Jones posted the entire video.

So now Romney is saying that he was "completely wrong":

“Well, clearly in a campaign, with hundreds if not thousands of speeches and question-and-answer sessions, now and then you’re going to say something that doesn’t come out right. In this case, I said something that’s just completely wrong.”

When he thought he was basically "off the record,"  he told a group of his supporters that he he was only concerned with people like themselves, and the handful of people on the fence.  In the glaring spotlight of public scrutiny, he says that he was wrong to say that, of course he's going to try to be the best president for everyone.

We have no reason to believe that he wasn't being honest then to that audience of his supporters. We have no reason to believe him now when he claims that he didn't really mean it.

Either he was lying then, to gain support from those supporters, or he's lying now, hoping that he doesn't lose more support.

But make no mistake, either way, he's not being honest with us.

Putting Mitt in Perspective: PBS

For fiscal year 2012, PBS received $442 million dollars from the federal government.  That's an "m" in there. $442 million for the entire year.

That constitutes .012% of the entire Federal budget.  That's POINT zero one two percent, or less than 1/8 of 1%.


"But it's $400 million dollars" you say.  OK. Let's put that in perspective.

We're spending $300 million dollars PER DAY on the war in Afghanistan.  Obama is trying to remove our troops from Afghanistan in a safe and responsible manner.  Mitt says we shouldn't pull our troops out of Afghanistan just because it's expensive.

It seems to me that Mitt is saying we have to take Sesame Street away from inner city kids because we need to kill people on the other side of the planet.

Lyin' Ryan Sticks to the Broken Script.

What do you do when you have no legitimate issues to put forth with your campaign?  You lie.

And what do you do when your lies have been thoroughly debunked?  If you're Paul Ryan, you repeat the lie.  At least, that's what he was doing in Tampa yesterday.

“Here’s the dirty little secret about Medicare they don’t want you to know,” he said. “The  biggest threat to Medicare is Obamacare.”
--Tampa Bay Times, September 16, 2012

Of course, the truth about the Affordable Care Act is that it extends Medicare funding by eight years. 

It’s worth noting that there’s one area these cuts don’t touch: Medicare benefits. The  Affordable Care Act rolls back payment rates for hospitals and insurers. It does not,  however, change the basket of benefits that patients have access to.
-- The Washington Post, August 14, 2012

That's not entirely accurate: it also adds new benefits to to seniors currently enrolled in the program.  That's right; thanks to the Affordable Care Act, Medicare costs less, provides more benefits, and the funding lasts longer. Which is exactly the opposite of what Paul Ryan is claiming.

You see, back in 2003, the Medicare Modernization Act was passed, which underwrote the costs of many prescription drugs for seniors, and paid to put a number of seniors into private insurance plans, the theory being that by enrolling seniors in various private health plans, competition and market forces would lower the costs of care.  But costs for seniors in the private health plans rose, costing taxpayers an average of 117% compared to standard Medicare costs. 

The Affordable Care Act eliminates these over-payments to bring them in line with the rest of Medicare coverage costs by re-negotiating reimbursement rates to the insurance companies.  It also negotiated savings from health care providers, further lowering costs.  So there aren't any cuts in coverage, only cuts in costs; what you and I would actually call "savings" instead of "cuts."

The real "dirty secret" that the Romney campaign doesn't want you to know is that Paul Ryan  proposed to make exactly the same cuts in expenses.

...deciding who is cutting Medicare by $700 billion just requires looking at who is cutting Medicare by $700 billion. And at the moment, that’s both Obama and the Republican  budget.
-- The Washington Post, August 14, 2012

Well, not the only dirty secret.  They also don't want you to realize this:

What Romney/Ryan are saying is that they then take the money saved from their cuts to Medicare and put it toward deficit reduction while Obama takes that money and spends it on health care for poor people... But Romney/Ryan also add a trillion dollars to the defense budget. And they have trillions of dollars in tax cuts they haven’t explained how they’re going to pay for. So those decisions make future cuts to Medicare more likely.
-- The Washington Post, August 14, 2012

But this might be the most important thing Ryan has said so far:

"We're not going to spend the next four years blaming everything on everybody else. We're going to take responsibility," Ryan said.
--Tampa Bay Times, September 16, 2012

I have a great idea for you, Paul; why wait for the election?  Why don't you take responsibility for what Republicans have done to this country now?  Admit to three years of obstructing our economic recovery, own up to the damage done by the Bush administration and its record expansion of the national debt, accept that our current financial straits are the direct result of all the deregulation that the GOP has fostered over the last thirty years.

Why wait to take responsibility?  If you're truly proud of what Republicans have accomplished, start bragging - truthfully - about what you and your party have really been doing.

Race and the Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich

Perhaps you've heard about the comments elementary school principal Verenice Gutierrez made during an interview with the Portland Tribune:

“What about Somali or Hispanic students, who might not eat sandwiches?” says Gutierrez, principal at Harvey Scott K-8 School, a diverse school of 500 students in Northeast Portland’s Cully neighborhood.  “Another way would be to say: ‘Americans eat peanut butter and jelly, do you have anything like that?’ Let them tell you. Maybe they eat torta. Or pita.”

While I can't find a quote where she flat-out states that a PB&J is racist, the article frames it as "example of a subtle form of racism in language..."

Quoting the article again:

"...the premise is that if educators can understand their own “white privilege,” then they can change their teaching practices to boost minority students’ performance."

The implication we're getting is that by including peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on school menus, schools are subtly pushing a diet that reinforces some kind of white privilege. Or at least, as some news sources are interpreting it; "Peanut Butter And Jelly Sandwiches are Racist."

Perhaps it's because most people use WHITE bread.

Sound ridiculous?  It does sound unlikely.  But to simply claim that it's ridiculous isn't the same as debunking the statement.

Let's look at the history of the sandwich, to see if it really is tied to some kind of privilege.

And of course, we have to start with peanuts.

The Origin of Peanut Butter: Part 1
 
Peanuts are native to the Americas; the Aztecs ground them into a paste for use in many dishes.  This mealy paste probably wasn't very spreadable, but it was certainly made of peanuts. 

The Aztecs were not considered white, as far as I've been able to determine.  Neither were they Latino, although some people often confuse all denizens of Central and South America as being Latin or Hispanic, instead of Native American.


I haven't been able to determine if Aztecs reserved peanuts in any form for the noble class.

The Origin of Peanut Butter: Part 2

And it's still edible.

In 1884, Marcellus Gilmore Edson of Montreal, Quebec, Canada, was issued a U.S. Patent for a process of milling roasted peanuts between heated surfaces until they entered "a fluid or semi-fluid state."  The resultant product was described as having "a consistency like that of butter, lard, or ointment."

Peanut butter as we know it in the USA is usually credited to Dr. John Kellogg.  Yes, the man who put corn flakes on our table also put peanut butter on our tables.  In the 1890s, he developed it as an alternative protein source to meat. In St. Louis, Dr. Ambrose Straub prescribed it to patients who had no teeth.  It was introduced to the world at large in 1904, when C.H. Sumner promoted it at his booth at the St. Louis Universal Exposition as a health food.  Heinz (yes, the ketchup company) advertised its health benefits in magazines.

G.W. Carver, Man of Science

 But it took a black man to put peanut butter into large-scale production.  George Washington Carver was trying to help black farmers improve their land; their primary crop of cotton removed minerals from the ground which rendered it fallow.  By rotating crops of peanuts through their fields, the soil would be renewed for productive yields.  The farmers were reluctant to change their habits, so Carver worked out 105 practical uses for peanuts, including peanut butter.

Once he demonstrated the usefulness of the legume, farmers were willing to take a chance on a crop that had not been in demand before then.

The Origin of the PB&J Sandwich

Prior to Dr. Carver's work, peanut butter was indeed considered a delicacy.  The creation of the peanut butter and jelly sandwich is credited to Julia Davis Chandler in 1901.  Variations were served almost exclusively at fashionable tea rooms.

But two things contributed to the downfall of the sandwich as a rare treat: the drop in the price of peanuts thanks to increased production (see above) and the invention of - wait for it - sliced bread.

"Sliced bread meant that children could make sandwiches for themselves without slicing the bread with a potentially dangerous knife.  As a consequence of low cost, high nutrition, and ease of assembling, peanut butter sandwiches become one of the top children's meals during the Depression."
-- Peanuts: the Illustrious History of the Goober Pea

Conclusion

Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches have become ubiquitous in school cafeterias not because they reinforce any level of white privilege; they are wide spread because they are cheap to make, and packed full of nutrients.  Further, the popularity of peanut butter and other peanut products have supported generations of black farmers, who were convinced to plant the crop by a black man, George Washington Carver.

While we can find no evidence that Ms. Gutierrez actually considers that PB&J sandwiches advance some kind of racist agenda - intended or otherwise - we can safely conclude that such claims have no substance.

Well SOMEBODY Has to Keep Track

And luckily, it's not me.

I don't have to list out all of the lies that Mitt Romney has told so far in this campaign because The Slacktivist has already done it for me:

I suppose the other approach for Romney defenders who cannot bear to face the fact of those 533 facts will be to angrily pore over all of Benen’s lists, reading each one with a lawyerly eye.

Have at it. Please. Cherry-pick. Spin. Split hairs. Hand-wave away whichever lies you wish as mere misdemeanors and not full-fledged felonies against honesty.

But how many of those charges do you think you can get dismissed? 10 percent? 20 percent? Maybe, if you’re that sort of person and you work really hard at it — if you’re willing to get even more pedantic and semantic and technical than even you are usually comfortable with — maybe you could half convince yourself that 50 percent of those lies somehow shouldn’t really count against Romney.

That still leaves more than 260 lies.

And here are the links to the 30 columns outlining all 533 lies, as outlined by Stephen Benen:

 I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, XIII, XIV, XV, XVI, XVII, XVIII, XIX, XX, XXI, XXII, XXIII, XXIV, XXV, XXVI, XXVII, XXVIII, XXIX, XXX.

Mitt Romney; Candidate of Empty Words

It's no wonder the Republican Party has to argue with an empty chair; pressed for details, Mitt Romney's saying a lot of nothing.

He won't show us any more than two years of his tax returns; his own father originated the practice of sharing tax returns with the American people, saying that candidates who won't share their returns are hiding something.

He has criticized President Obama's handling of ending the war in Afghanistan.  Asked what he'd do different, all he can really offer is "the same thing - only I'd do it better."

And now, his plan to re-invent our tax plan is similarly lacking in substance. He'll lower taxes, but increase revenues by closing loopholes.  Which ones?  He can't say.  Can he give an example?  No, but they'll off-set the cuts in taxes.  How?  He can't say.

Even Fox "News" is getting tired of the evasive responses: