A few days ago I was trolling the White House Photo Gallery and came upon this picture:
Why that was wonderful! The Presi took a little drive up the the Maryland suburbs for a meet and greet and a talk about equal opportunity. Bladensburg MD is a kinda depressed area. It wraps around NE and SE DC, the toughest neighborhoods in DC. However, the group behind the president gave me pause.
If they are representative of the area, I see they are mostly women and girls, with a lone row of guys on the back row. They are predominately of color, and the only white like guy clearly distinguishable is in the center of the picture just over the Bamster's left middle finger, but he appears to be of Asian descent. No symbolism there. Nope. None at all.
I went to Wikopedia to get a look at it's demographics. That notes that the makeup of the town is 70% African American, and 30% other. A close examination of the picture shows about 60 people (adults and kids) visible, and on close examination about seven non-black people. That's 11%. Not exactly equal to the demographic, but ok. What about the female to male ratio? According to Wikopedia, that should be about equal, with 47% male and 53% female. Looking this picture over, I can count about 10 males. That's like 16% male participation here. Methinks the deck was just a little bit stacked.
It does leave me thinking what happened to the missing guys and white people. Did the administrators just tell them "Sorry. The Presi doesn't want your type behind him when he talks about equality. Better luck next time". I wonder what kind of message that sent with you know, some animals being more equal than others. Do they even teach Orwell in schools anymore?
Here's a funny that I figured out from the White House Daily Photo today. This is a picture of the Bamster touring the fake Oval Office in the LBJ Library:
Looking at his eyes, there is almost a tear in there. It is unusual for the Presi to show so much real emotion. It's a kind of hungry look. So I got to wondering, what could have moved him so much? What was he looking at?
I poked around the LBJ Library web site looking for an answer. Since the fake Oval Office is modeled on the real one, I knew the fireplace was opposite of the desk. So he was looking toward the fireplace, and over it. What was there in the fake Oval Office that so captivated him. Well, this picture is hanging over the fireplace:
An old white guy? Was that what he was looking at with hunger in his eyes? An Old White Guy? Well, it's not just any old white guy, that's FDR up there. What about FDR would make the Bamster green with envy? That he was a real war time president? That his "New Deal" that damn near drove the country into the ground is the model for the Bamster's own administration?
Nope! I went to Wikopedia to read up in FDR to find out why he was such a point of envy for the Bamster. There it was in the second sentence:
Serving from March 1933 to his death in April 1945, he was elected for four consecutive terms, and remains the only president ever to serve more than eight years.
I am thinking someone might need a little NyQuil with their cookies to get to sleep tonight after a busy afternoon spent day dreaming...
So I was tooling around the White House photo gallery and saw this picture of the Presi and a couple of his guys (Podesta and McDonut) wanking around the south lawn.
Then I did a double-take. What the heck was going on out there and what was Podesta looking at?
So Weasel Zipper had a pointer to where kids were tweeting out pictures of what their school lunches were like after Michelle's healthy eating campaign kicked in. Now I know institutional food always leaves a lot to be desired, but these were pathetic. Let's take a look at these offerings from a paleoviewpoint to see why they will do nothing to make kids healthier and how the same food could be changed to be actually be a healthy.
Take this for instance:
Ok, so right off we have a a roll (bread bad!!!) and mashed potatoes (starch bad!!!). If you ate nothing but those two things you would end up 500 pounds and be that guy that they would have to use a forklift to roll your bloated corpse into your grave at 30 because they don't make caskets that large. The only redeeming thing in this meal is the ground beef - the corn is only marginally digestible and God only knows what's in the gravy.
How can this be improved? Frankly I don't think it can. Maybe some kind of casserole using the ground beef, asparagus, and some other veggies with a cheese crust would do it.
Next we have this:
Once again - a bread bun (bread bad!!!!). The packet of ketchup is just sad and has no nutritional value, and kiwis are not real fruit - there just isn't enough there and serving 1/2 of one gives you half of nothing. For God's sake, take the money you spent on a handful of kiwis and buy like three tons of bananas then give the damn things away. Pound for pound, bananas are the cheapest fruit, a no guilt filler, and there is nothing better, despite what those 'weird trick' ads may lead you to believe. Obviously you loose the bun here, but what else? Well, instead of a bun, you could go with these:
Or just opt for the scoop of salad, with the burger cut up and tossed in.
This was just frightening:
That roll of evil bread just dominates this meal. And three damn tiny tomatoes? Are you kidding me? The milk is good as far as it goes. I don't really drink much milk. My long suffering wife buys the skim stuff which is so devoid of flavor (fat) I can't bring myself to drink it. We went back and forth on the relative merits / demerits of skim vs. 1% vs. 2% vs. Whole. Since I eat enough cheese to get all the calcium I need, it's a moot point for me. I see no reason that, given an otherwise balanced paleostyle meal, that a glass of whole milk cannot be consumed along with it.
How to improve this? Take what's in the bun (assuming it's some kind of meat smothered in cheese and tomato sauce), add a layer of veggies underneath it (like cauliflower), slice up a real tomato and put that on top, then bake that for a while and serve it with packets of hot sauce that you steal from Taco Bell. Pitiful to yum in no time flat!
Finally i'll close with this:
Again, the ever present 1% milk. Again, i'd say go all the way (skim) or not at all (whole). 1% is for losers, plain and simple. Just to belabor the obvious - there's that stupid evil bread bun again. Why does Michelle want to poison our kids? Is she somehow beholden to the white bread council? Damnit women - break those bonds of slavery!
How to improve this? Take the chicken patty there, cut it up, and put it on a salad. It's like no one has thought of this before:
I think the tweet campaign about Michelle's gestapo school lunch takeover is admirable. Hopefully kids will learn about the right way to eat and avoid the fatty Michelle diet fads:
Additional Note:
Think I am just talking B.S.? Perhaps I am. All I know is in the last 1.5 years making exactly the kind of meal changes and choices noted above I dropped 80 pounds and am in the best shape of my life. I may be wrong, but I don't think so... your mileage may vary...
A lot of members can’t even afford to live decently in Washington
I was shocked! Those poor bastards! The sacrifice everything to campaign for years and years. They then are finally able to scrape up enough votes to get sent to do a thankless job in far away Washington D.C., and they find that they can't afford to live there decently. As if anyone could get by on the piddling salary they are paid. Perhaps they are just not familiar with the area and are making some bad choices. After all, they could be needlessly sharing boxes over heating grates on the national mall with homeless guys when, with a little knowledge they could be just a bit more comfortable.
Being the helpful guy I am, I decided to do a little research to see if I could find some decent digs for the destitute congress persons. First, we need to find a nice place to stay. Since they obviously are living in cardboard boxes given that they are getting by on just $174000 per year, maybe they could check in here:
Goolge Street View - 425 2nd Street NW
It's Mitch Snyder's CCNV shelter located just steps from the capitol building. I know, that may be just a bit dangerous for a congress person. Did you know that as Federal Employees, congress persons may qualify to live in family housing at the nearby Bolling AFB? Yeah, the housing for the military isn't the grandest digs in the world. Take this rat hole for instance:
Well there sure does appear to be a lot of options for a congress person to lay their weary, bill writing, filibuster breaking heads does there? But perhaps these locations, are not decent. Let's take a look:
Yes, that is certainly not a hell hole and just a little more substantial then the cardboard boxes these poor folks are used to living out of. But what is the cost? Well actually it's $125 a night with a cleaning fee of $50. Now let's say that congress is in session 160 days a year, and assuming the poor creatures would need to sleep over all those nights, that would be a cost of about $20,000 per year! That's like 12% of their whole salary! How can they live like that? How will they afford to get their tuxes cleaned for all those swanky cocktail parties they have to schlep to?
Which brings up a good point. Congress persons don't live on cocktail weenies and crackers alone. They do have to eat. Having worked in DC, I can tell you that it is not a cheap place to find nourishment. Here's what the current food truck situation looks like around the capitol:
Basil's Tyme sounds interesting. Let's see if it's in the range of what a starving congress critter can pay:
Yeouch! The congressional food stamps are not going to go very far eating like that! Maybe they should wonder out among the smelly tourist and ask for the 'Congressional Discount' at one of these:
I know, I know. They have their own cafeteria, but I imagine that like most cafeterias, the food is probably inedible. Here's a secret. Since they can barge into almost any government building they want, guess which government building located near the capitol has the best cafeteria? FBI? Nope - just imagine how plain the Hoover Burger must be. Treasury? The food taste good, except it has a lot of heavy metals in it that can be toxic. IRS? I guess it's ok, if you would like white bread as a side to your white bread sandwich. EPA? You don't even want to think about what they serve there. Nope, the best government cafeteria is the at the Agriculture Department. At least I have heard that's true. I have never been able to get in there at lunch as they guard their cafeteria like it's Fort Knox or something.
Well, I hope that helps! The last thing we want is our congress persons standing on 14th street holding up a sign like this just to have to eat:
Or, worse yet, going this route just to have enough to keep on legislating:
When I was looking around for the hero of the week I came out with two main contenders. The first was this group of guys:
Yep, he has a beard so right away you know he is not a US Marine. He is Philippine Lt. First Class Mike Pelotera and that group behind him are guys who are part of a contingent that rotate to live on this outpost of freedom:
Janes - BRP Sierra Madrid
They are there to lay claim to the Thomas Shoal for the Philippines against the raw aggression of China to seize the atoll. At stake are the massive undersea oil and gas deposits that lay below her keel. Nine or ten guys standing against the might of the Chinese navy; that takes guts!
My winner of hero of the week is this guy (or a guy that kinda looks like him):
An (unnamed) Lance Corporal British sniper. Seems the Taliban was advancing on their position with the aim of getting a suicide bomber in place to kill a bunch a infidels. He took the shot at 930 yards. The hot round set off the suicide vest, blowing the martyr and five of his friends to Allah. One shot, six martyrs: excellent conservation of valuable war resources. He was using this rifle (L115A3):
Read the title - watch the clip, you'll eventually get it...
(no, it's not really clever, but whatever)
So, you are probably wondering where I went and what was the crisis that caused a two month hiatus. To make a long story short, I unexpectedly became unemployed. Thus, my every waking moment was spent teetering between abject fear as to how I would support my family and aggressively pursuing my next job. In a word, it's been an interesting experience, one I will write about more in the future after I truly can say I have left the worst of it behind me and have let thoughts and emotions settle a bit. Suffice it to say that the end of my dark tunnel is in sight and it appears that one one way or another I will return to the land of wage earners in a week or two.
So for this introductory return post, I will merely introduce some links that caught my eye this morning that I found interesting (with commentary of course!)
First, was this odd little island where everyone is related to each other. The very first thing I thought about was with such a closed society, how do they avoid birth defects and the like? During my hiatus I became a vociferous reader, speed reading a book a day just to avoid boredom and put my mind on something other than the job hunt. One I just finished was David Rosenfelt's 'Dead Center'. Now while I generally read him for his smartass'd delivery and his love of dogs, this one obliquely addressed a small town where the cult-like bound residents never left. Again, I could not help but wonder about the small gene pool and the very real danger of birth defects. I am sure scientist love to study such things, am at some point I will look into this further, but that's where my head was at this morning...
The next worthy thing that caught my eye was this story about the apprehension of the dangerous taliban pajama boy. What caught my eye was not that he was using the rather ridiculous name of "Assad Biglosmurf" (which according to Google means literally 'lion of the big blue balls'),or that he apparently was plotting to train Syrians to bomb Americans. No, this is what caught my eye:
Half-Ass'd Beard
and this note from the article:
Teausant was also a member of the National Guard, assigned to the 118th Maintenance Company in Stockton. The Guard recently released Teausant reportedly because he lacked minimum qualifications.
The guy was in the National Guard and was allowed to wear a beard like that? I have no question as to how he was allowed to enlist, after all, the services have a hard time turning away anyone these days. My question was how he was allowed to stay in, then exactly how was he released? Did he get a 'General' or 'Honorable' discharge? I did a little digging, and true to form, the magazine whose job it is to get things right didn't actually bother to quote the National Guard spokesman to establish the truth about pajama taliban boy's relationship with the service. Here's what they actually said:
a spokesman for the Guard took issue with that characterization. Teausant enlisted with the Guard in 2012 but "never trained or served as a solider in the California National Guard," Capt. Will Martin, chief of media relations with the California Military Department wrote in a statement.
Next my attention wondered quite naturally to food. I found this little article about how to make homemade buttermilk and sour cream. I remember my first taste of buttermilk. I was probably about 8 or so, and my grandmother gave me some of the buttermilk that was from the fresh milk they got from the cow. It was all I could do to keep from throwing up! I do have to say that all the milk that I drank while on my grandparents farm tasted like buttermilk, with the acidic tang that you only get from fresh, raw milk. In any case, you need buttermilk to make sour cream. I will also say that I don't much use sour cream since as far as I can tell it's mainly good for putting on top of potatoes, a vegetable that I have abandoned since I went mostly-paleo due to it's uselessly high starch content.
Next I found this great idea article on things to wrap with bacon - a decidedly paleo friendly train of ideas. The ones that I saved in my recipe box? Bacon wrapped tomatoes and bacon wrapped strawberries. Pure genius! You know what's hard to spell? the word genius - I always try to start to spell it with 'gui', then the spell checker gets all confused and tells me I am actually trying to write a word synonymous with beer (Guinness)... that's why there aren't more smart people in the world right there. The modern spell checkers make us drink (or something).
Finally, just for fun I wondered over to buzzfeed. There I found this fairly accurate article about things you think while shopping at Costco. I have to admit that it's been a while since I've been to Costco. With the paleo diet, I really don't have much need for large bulk items that aren't really cheaper at Shoppers or the like. Since I became unemployed, we have been being conservative about where we buy our food, so big dollar places like Costco are out anyway. That being said, I can honestly say that when I did go there, I can recall saying most of those things - except for all the stuff about waiting for samples. I never had the patience for waiting for those things or trusted the people working them not to wipe their nose on their hands before handing me a cup of fried cheese.
With thoughts of drippy nosed Costco chefs I will wrap up my return blog post. I will not make any promises here about regularity posting but I will say i'll try. Thanks for your support.
