MaxRedline

News Flash

Apparently some Democrat Congresscritters decided to live for a week on $32 of food stamps - or as the cards of today are called: Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Apparently, being Democratics, they were unable to grasp the concept underlying the term, "Supplemental Nutrition", and believed that food stamps should provide completely free food, rather than supplementing a food budget. Unsurprising, as they appear unfamiliar with the concept of budgeting in the first place.

Looking at the sales receipt proudly shown by Rep. Eleanor Norton, you begin to see why they had such problems. Who pays $3.39 for tuna? I can pick up a can for 79 cents. A pint of blueberries for five bucks? Hey, Eleanor - try waiting a bit and buying them in season - you could've bought a pint of strawberries for 1/4 the price, today. Pepperidge Farm crackers? Really? What's the matter, dearie - the store brand's not good enough, so you buy high-class (for the name only) on food stamps? And hey - ever heard of coupons? You can actually save money with those things.

Really, and I kid you not - I could have bought more food for less money; I do it all the time. Moreover, even a Congresscritter could buy a pepper start, stick it in a pot, and harvest peppers for weeks for less than she paid for one green pepper. But of course, that's not the point; the idea is to show how greedy and selfish Republicans are, and shopping high-end and stupidly is one way to do that.

Sorry, honey - not buying that, no matter how cheap it is. 

I do a better job of shopping every week. Of course, I'm using my own money. And I'm not out to garner political points; just feeding the family. All you've shown is just how out of touch with life in the real world you really are.

Related articles

More than two dozen House Democrats doing SNAP challenge to protest Republican cuts

Democrats take food stamp challenge to highlight GOP's proposed cuts

Cher, Cockroaches, And Styrofoam

Pirate Cher (Photo credit: zorro013)

New York City's nanny has had his ban on big soda overturned in the courts, but that little setback's not affecting his crusade to babysit everybody in the city. He's a little slow on the draw, though, as he's now going after a ban on styrofoam cups and trays - something that Porkland's nannies enacted years ago.

One of the City Council members, speaking in support of the NYC nanny's latest banning effort, noted that at the end of time, the only things remaining on the planet will be Cher, cockroaches, and styrofoam. That's kind of surprising, since Cher's a flaming Leftist; it seems odd that she'd be included in the list of surviving repulsive and evil things.

Ginsu Makes CR Best Buy

Wüsthof 

Consumer Reports tested a number of kitchen knife sets, and unsurprisingly, the forged knives from Zwilling (A.J. Henckel), retailing for $600, earned high marks. Wusthof, which also makes forged steel knives, likewise got high marks - and is likewise very spendy.

But the surprise winner, taking the Best Buy spot, was a $75 set of eight knives from Ginsu. Yep - the same folks who used to run those ubiquitous television ads:

There's Inediate In Seattle

Really. That's the official term for one Nevenna Shine, who's apparently decided to spend the next several months living only on a diet of light, water, and tea. Good thing she's doing it during the summer, as light's otherwise pretty darn hard to come by in the Emerald City. The resemblance of the term to "an idiot" is presumably purely coincidental.

Food, Glorious Food

Can you remember the last time you bought a salad at McDonald's? Me neither. They've noted that the salads they offer make up a whopping 2% to 3% of total sales - roughly equivalent to the number of commuters in the Portland area who ride light rail. So why bother?

Basically, they're just a tool to employ against the professional gripers who're always complaining about fast food being unhealthy, and whatnot. Hey, the choice is there; whose "fault" is it if people choose different options?

Of course, the Really Smart Folks think we should eat bugs. 

The Dutch are holding bug buffets and some are considering grinding bugs into meat patties to make them more palatable to Western palates.

One company's got a different idea: bug snacks. Coat the dried up critters with some sour cream and onion flavoring, or maybe a bacon and cheese flavor, and you've got some cheap, healthy eatin'. They go well with a nice Chianti.

Related articles

McDonald's CEO Lost 20 Pounds Eating Fast Food 'Every Single Day'

So Much For Accommodation

A couple of McDonald's franchises in Dearborn, Michigan made the grievous error of attempting to accommodate the local Muslims by offering halal chicken and nuggets. They started it in 2005, but it's over now: 

On September 2, 2011, Ahmed Ahmed, a Dearborn Heights resident, purchased a McChicken® sandwich from the Ford Road McDonald’s and discovered that the sandwich was not halal.

That's what he claimed, anyhow - though nobody could prove anything one way or the other. Still, he went ahead and sued, filing a class-action lawsuit which was recently settled to the tune of $700,000. Surprisingly, a month after settling, the franchises removed all halal products from their menus. Who could have seen that coming?

They say that they're merely simplifying their menus. Makes a lot of sense.

All non-Muslim eateries should follow suit and simplify their menus as well. The risk of frivolous, multi-million dollar lawsuits for trying to accommodate sharia law isn’t worth it and supporting sharia law is simply bad policy.

Related articles

Deal Approved In Muslims' Suit Against McDonald's

Drunk Driving Now Legal In Oregon

Oregon Supreme Court held today that a man pulled over for erratic driving and subsequently found to have a BAC of 0.15 - nearly twice the legal limit - was illegally denied an opportunity to present "sleep driving" in his defense. He claims that due to being asleep, he did not voluntarily get behind the wheel and was therefore not responsible for driving with a BAC twice the legal limit.

The new standard outlined in Friday's ruling could open the floodgates for new defenses: Some drivers will surely argue that sleep disorders led them to drive while sleeping, like in the case of the Portland man whose case was reviewed by the supreme court. But others could argue that they were so drunk or high that they lost all ability to make conscious decisions -- and they weren't at fault for driving while under the influence.

In all probabiity, he'll end up being re-tried and permitted to present this defense to a jury, despite having twice been convicted of DUII in the past decade. They may even buy it. Of course, this also opens the door to any number of sleep-related offenses; it's entirely possible - even likely - that there'll be a surge in sleep-rape, sleep-shooting, and other crimes for which the perpetrator cannot possibly be held accountable because he was asleep at the time and therefore not responsible for the acts.

This place gets weirder by the week.

Related articles

NTSB Wants .05 BAC to Be New Drunk Driving Limit

Sweetness

Re-evaluation of Aspartame: State of Play [PUBLIC HEARING] (Photo credit: ALDEADLE Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for EU)

Artificial sweeteners were developed primarily for dieters and diabetics, and they've always been kind of problematic. They often taste nothing like sugar, and it seems there's always some biological issue. Aspartame, for example, was good for you until it caused cancer and was bad for you but is now good for you again, saccharine had similar ups and downs, sodium cyclamate turned out to be so bad that it's actually banned, and now the latest entry, Splenda, was good for you but now may be bad for you.

At least, if you have diabetes, it's not looking good - the stuff, it turns out, isn't biologically inert, after all: it significantly elevates insulin levels.

Professor Yanina explained that they do not fully understand the implications that these rises could have.

She said: 'The elevated insulin response could be a good thing because it shows the person is able to make enough insulin to deal with spiking glucose levels. 

'But it also might be bad because when people routinely secrete more insulin, they can become resistant to its effects, a path that leads to type 2 diabetes.'

So what they know, at this point, is simply that, as has been the case with every artificial sweetener developed to date, it's doing something in addition to making foods and beverages taste sweeter - and thus, more palatable.

But hey - there's good news: High-Fructose Corn Syrup (HFSC) is found in all kinds of stuff, from bread to soda pop, but you can't buy it anywhere. However, in this artisanal new age, it's now possible for you to make your very own:

Mix 10 cups of Yellow Dent #2 corn extract with one drop sulfuric acid, one teaspoon Alpha-Amylase, one teaspoon Glucose-Amylase, and one teaspoon Xylose, strain through a cheesecloth, and heat. Then, once the slurry has reached 140 degrees, add Glucose Isomerase, bring to a boil, let cool, and enjoy!

Kind of reminds you of the old chemistry sets from back when you were a kid, doesn't it?

 

Related articles

Artificial Sweeteners Affect Metabolism And Insulin Levels

With All Other Problems Solved

Plums that have been genetically engineered to be resistant to the plum pox virus

6000 Portland nuts reportedly took part in a "protest march" against Monsanto over their dangerous genetically-modified seeds. Never mind that virtually every food item on the planet has been genetically modified over thousands of years; apparently the brain-dead see some hidden and nefarious danger associated with speeding up the process.

“March Against Monsanto” protesters say they wanted to call attention to the dangers posed.

Said "dangers" are, quite naturally, unspecified - much as have other overblown "concerns" such as the great Alar scare popularized by a number of noted scientists such as Meryl Streep. That little gem cost hundreds of millions in economic damage to apple growers across the Pacific Northwest, to say nothing of the damage inflicted upon distributors and even upon individual nutrition. This is the same deal, although as is almost always the case today, the widespread use of digital media makes it possible to promulgate fear and loathing much more quickly - and to wider audiences.

Genetically modified plants are grown from seeds that are engineered to resist insecticides and herbicides, add nutritional benefits or otherwise improve crop yields and increase the global food supply. Most corn, soybean and cotton crops grown in the United States today have been genetically modified.

Increasing the global food supply and improving nutritional qualities meaans that the lives of humans are improved, and that more can be grown on less land, which environmeddlists normally would hail in and of itself because less land use means more "natural" lands. They can't hail this development, however, because Monsanto. Big business, capitalism - can't have that; evil, evil, evil, blah blah.

“It was empowering and inspiring to see so many people, from different walks of life, put aside their differences and come together today,” she said. The group plans to harness the success of the event to continue its anti-GMO cause. “We will continue until Monsanto complies with consumer demand. They are poisoning our children, poisoning our planet,” she said. “If we don’t act, who’s going to?”

It's interesting to note how selective they are: if you oppose fluoridating water supplies or express skepticism regarding the significance of human activities in relation to planetary climate, you're immediately derided and branded as ignorant or "anti-science". They cheerfully "poison our planet" by driving electric or hybrid cars with incredibly toxic battery packs, and they're wildly in favor of aerial Cusinarts which kill millions of avain and mammalian species each year (because wind power is "greenSustainable"), and they think that wholesale habitat destruction for solar farms is just a neccessary tradeoff in order to Save The Planet™.

And they make wild claims about "poisoning our children, poisoning our planet" in the total absence of any supporting evidence.

Just like Meryl did in regard to Alar.

 

Related articles

The Cartoonish March Against Monsanto

Just In Time For The Weekend

Ethanol fuel plant in West Burlington, Iowa. 

The price of gas always goes up around the Memorial Day weekend, but this year, so's the price of grilling. Now, your basic spuds remain a good value for the money; packed with nutrition and, compared with most anything else at the store, dirt cheap, they can even be tasty.

A medium sized potato has about 110 calories per serving and is a better source of potassium than a banana (620 g versus 450 g). Also it contains about half of a person's daily requirement of vitamin C and has no fat, sodium or cholesterol. The vegetable is a good low cost option for obtaining other nutrients such as magnesium and dietary fiber.

If you know what you're doing, there are a few ways to cook 'em on the grill or campfire. And unlike a lot of other veggies (corn, for example), they're not used in government-subsidized production of biofools.

Alas, if you're hankering for steaks, burgers, or even chicken, the news isn't so good for grillers: those have shot up in price. Partly, it's due to the drought - but a lot of it's due to governmental biofool dreams. After all, that corn-fed, lovely marbled meat costs a lot more to produce because drought or no drought, government mandates for ethanol fuel additives are literally taking food out of the mouths of critters like chickens and cows - and by extension, out of yours.

Going into the Memorial Day weekend, a sirloin steak costs 7 percent more than last year, based on U.S. retail pricing data from the Department of Agriculture.

Hamburgers also are pushing higher: 3 percent more for ground chuck and 19 percent more for lean ground beef, the USDA data show.

“Beef has really skyrocketed over the past six months, but there’s been about a 10 percent increase over the past month,” said B.J. Hoffman, a competitive griller and caterer based in Windsor Heights.

Government's response to the citizen consumer amounts to a cynical "up yours":

I had that sucker hypnotized
He couldn't even make a sound
I proceeded to tell him his future then
As long as he was hanging around
I said
"The price of meat has just gone up
An' yer ol' lady has just gone down... "
Look here brother
Who you jivin' with that Cosmik Debris?

Don't'cha know, you could make more money as a butcher....

The way things are headed, better hope there's not another potato blight, because you may well be living on them just like the Irish did before their great potato famine hit.