Heard an amusing program on NPR this evening. I was driving so I'm not sure I got all the facts straight. But this is more or less what I got. Obama's czars or some Obama group have been trying to decide if pizza counts as a vegetable for school lunch. They said that if a single slice had a half a cup of tomato sauce, then it counted. Pizza factions fought back and said no kid would eat pizza with that much sauce. Obama's czars caved. Two teaspoons is sufficient. This recalled the argument during Reagan years about whether ketchup was a vegetable and could count as one in school lunches. Reagan said yes. The communists screamed no. I don't know who won. Is there a real difference between ketchup and pizza sauce? Isn't it the same thing? SCOTUS should settle these things. But do we even know what a vegetable is? We don't know when a person is a vegetable much less when we're eating one. They are hard to distinguish from fruits. French fry manufacturers are going to try to argue that it's still enough like a potato to qualify as a vegetable next, the announcer said.
39 comments:
Kirby,
This is a hell of a spin on what's happened here. The Obama administration (unsuprisingly, given its general stance on childhood nutrition) is opposed to the notion that pizza should count as a vegetable. The pressure for doing so, unsurprisingly, comes from (a) big agriculture, and (b) conservatives who don't believe that the government should have a role in determining what people eat.
Obama didn't cave. Congress voted.
Can you at least pretend that facts matter?
Wasn't it some specific group within the Obama administration? I was driving and also talking with three kids coming out of dance classes, and am not sure I got all the details right. But you generally don't get them right either. I'll wait for JADL to weigh in. He generally has more time to suss out the truth. But what do you think: isn't tomato sauce a vegetable? Do you think it has to be a half a cup on a slice of pizza? That's too much sauce and it will get on the kids' shirts creating nightmares at the laundry chute.
Are you saying that all of Congress voted on whether pizza can count as a vegetable? I'm not sure this is what the story said, but as I said, I was driving.
Kirby,
It's easy to find reasonable news sources for this story. Just google "obama vegetable," and then hit the news tab. Here's a link to an AP story: Congress pushes back on healthier school lunches. I believe that this fully substantiates my earlier description. And just for the record, I do not play fast and loose with the facts, and I find it absolutely ludicrous that you would raise JADL up as someone who does.
Next, you raise the question of whether pizza can count as a vegetable. I'd argue that a good garden pizza (i.e., a pizza with lots of green peppers, onions, sliced tomatoes, etc.) could, but that the ordinary kid cheese pizza should not.
The issue, of course, is that "vegetable" in this discussion is really a surrogate for a complicated collection of nutrients, including vitamins, fiber, anti-oxidants, etc. This is why it's hardly worthwhile raising the point that tomatoes are technical a fruit -- as they generally meet this nutritional profile. Anti-oxidants and many vitamins, in particular, are sensitive to the long heating/reduction process used in creating tomato sauce. Moreover, and this is what is not generally acknowledged in the debate, most commercial pizza sauces (and ketchups) include significant amounts of high-fructose corn syrup, and this hidden sweetness is a big reason why pizza and ketchup are so popular with kids.
Needless to say, I do not believe that high-fructose corn syrup is a vegetable either, even if it is a corn-based product. As, for a reductio ad absurdum, are certain plastics.
Apparently the Obama administration contended that only a half cup of tomato sauce should be counted as a vegetable serving. Of course pizza can be served with other vegetables or fruits as toppings such as onions, peppers, pineapple, etc.
School districts normally employ nutritionists, so I think they can manage more nutritious and lower-calorie lunches, say, by adding more veggies to pizzas, baking rather than frying wedge-cut potatoes, etc. I should think local districts could sort out these issues reasonably without federal meddling.
The Obama administration also wanted servings of corn and peas reduced in schools.
To me, it's just another example of the Obama administration's top-down government-by-fiat regulation of every aspect of life, and we're inching ever closer to a nightmarish world order savoured by lunatic left totalitarians like Naomi Klein. . . .
JADL often has a completely different set of facts arranged around a different paradigm. I really don't know what's the matter with peas. That seems like a perfectly good vegetable. But I am often unaware of the latest beefs of the left. Is there something the matter with peas?
I have heard that there have been some complaints against corn. It's filling, but doesn't have substantial nutritional aspects.
I'm not surprised that the generals do want fitter fodder for their cannons, and are completely that they can't shoot the fatter kids out on to the field of battle and that they tend to get stuck and clog up the munitions.
I think probably the worst assumption on the part of my listening mind last evening was that I assumed that Obama's czars had something to do with this menu interrogation. As I think of it, I don't think I've ever heard of any of the czars actually doing anything (with the exception of the Maoist Van Jones, who came up with Cash for Clunkers). It seems they are just paid to dine out on the public's dime. I wonder if they use the nutrition guidelines suggested by the Obama administration as they dine.
Like JADL, I also think pizza toppings can be pretty tasty and nutritious. Onions, green and red and yellow and orange peppers, and pineapples are all good. I like to ask for anchovies, although of course they are not a vegetable.
I don't think anyone has ever defined exactly what a vegetable is.
I do think it's important to think about health. But it's ironic to me that a man that smokes (as Obama does) should be thought to think well about his health.
But Obama is all about legislating for others what they should do. It's about throwing his power around, and judging people according to standards that he doesn't accept for himself.
Still, anything that can slim kids down is a good thing. I think he should just give fit children and their parents money. If a family has children that fit the BMI, they should get cash. Parents who fit the BMI should also get cash.
Before we pay taxes, we should step on the scale. If we fit, because we are fit, we should get cash.
Meanwhile, the Pizza Godfather Herman Cain should make this whole pizza issue into his next big craze. I'd like to see a news article that begins like this:
"Under my administration, we will make government pizza and sell it for $9.99," says Herman Cain of Government Take-Out.
Instead of handouts, or ketchup quotas, let's have government get involved in take-out?
I am concerned with the obesity issue but we also have to consider costs and portions. It's often strange to me how far-reaching the Obama administration has become in terms of its meddling. You have to worry about who's getting kickbacks on their schemes, and how it relates to their campaign income as Obama puts together his war chest to destroy anyone who's still interested in personal liberty.
Kirby,
There's a nutritional distinction that is often made between "starchy vegetables" and "nutritional vegetables." Here, I'm making a nutritional distinction, which exists in parallel with, and in distinction with, cooking and scientific definitions of the same words.
In this case, starchy vegitables include most grains (corn, barley, wheat, rice) and as well as things like potatoes, avocados, and peas: they're high in starch (and so in calories), but relatively low in vitamins, anti-oxidants, and fiber.
Of course, big agri-business often revolves around the production of these starchy vegetables, and it's in their interest to muddy the waters by trying to get their products (which meet the cooking definition) to benefit from programs that are intended to improve nutrition.
JADL often has a completely different set of facts arranged around a different paradigm.
JADL is also on occasion shamefully misdirecting in the facts that he brings to the debate. I remember JADL making a big stinking deal of the fact that Obama didn't make a pilgrimage to either the WTC or Pennsylvania on 9/11. Of course, Obama was present at the 9/11 observance at the Pentagon, and this was known to JADL. There is something clever in using the truth to lie, and I'll accept no dissembling on this point as that is exactly what he was doing. No scholar would do this, whatever his publications, titles, or pretenses.
I don't mind having different facts brought to the debate. It's natural enough (albeit intellectually sloppy, and not in the true spirit of scholarship) to search out facts that support our positions, and not to search for facts that might refute them. I think that most of us have been guilty of this to some degree. One of the positives that comes from having a diversity of positions in debate is that it enables us to efficiently discover more diverse facts, as our positions give us an informal way of partitioning the search space. But you kid yourself if you believe that this is what JADL is doing. He uses facts casually and disrespectfully, and selects them in order to make an argument, even in cases when he knows of other facts that refute his argument entirely.
I do think it's important to think about health. But it's ironic to me that a man that smokes (as Obama does) should be thought to think well about his health.
I thought he quit, as a condition his wife insisted on were he to become President. But asking perfect consistency of a man is to insist on a test that none would pass.
But I'll note that the nutritional push comes more from the First Lady than from the President, and this is consistent with her long-standing efforts in community health (which include emphasizing both nutrition and exercise). There is, of course, a tradition in this country that First Ladies take on a visible social/domestic issue, and run with it. Consider, e.g., Laura Bush's focus on childhood education.
If Michelle Obama can get the country to slim down, and eat better, that in itself will be a great thing. She does appear from time to time on advertisements in children's programming (which is always on at our house). I salute this. I don't know if it's been effective, but I salute the effort. She has also made a vegetable garden behind the White House. I salute this, too. She appears to be fairly fit.
I hope that Obama has quit smoking. I have heard variously that he does still sneak cigs and that he wears nicotine patches. We all have only so much discipline. He needs a lot of it to do his rounds. When it's done, he probably has to unwind in various ways. This might but does not necessarily include smoking.
I hope he doesn't smoke. If he does, it shows how incredibly sneaky he can be, since no one ever seems to catch him at it! You'd think the conservative media would love to present him as a smoker!
But the one thing he does have is very good control of his personal image. He's a very nice looking man, and is often very well-coiffed and dressed. This is good for America.
It would be terrible if he was a slob, and couldn't dress. He is not a slob (although Michelle said he does throw his socks around and smells in the morning) but this is within the normal range of sloppiness of the American male. And her carping is within the normal range of the American female (although most women are more private about it).
Their kids appear to be presentable and not overly fat. That has to be a tribute to their parenting.
I have no quibble with their parenting.
It must be very hard to raise kids in a glass bowl as it were.
I respect them both for this.
Kirby,
I'd be completely unsurprised if Obama sneaks an occasional smoke. I doubt that the First Lady lets him keep cigarettes, so this probably means he has to bum them off of the Secret Service agents (who also make sure that there is no wife and no conservative media around when he takes his surreptitious smokes), who are likely provided by their service with a few for that purpose.
If you want to look for some great tragic moral flaw in this, you're welcome to it. But if there is, it's a ubiquitous great tragic moral flaw. I doubt very much that there's a man who wants to stay married who doesn't actively try to present to his wife the illusion that he's a better man than he actually is. Nor, for that matter, that almost every wife understands us better than we understand ourselves, and this means that they see through our pretenses, but allows them to go unchallenged in all but the most bitter of marital arguments.
from huffpo:
This time around, food companies that produce frozen pizzas for schools, the salt industry and potato growers requested the changes and lobbied Congress.
School meals that are subsidized by the federal government must include a certain amount of vegetables, and USDA's proposal could have pushed pizza-makers and potato growers out of the school lunch business.
This. This right here--this is the problem.
"the school lunch business."
There shouldn't BE a school lunch business but there is.
Why?
Because the government has mandated that schools must provide lunch. Since no school seems to be interested in growing and preparing its own food (though, honestly, that's what the law should stipulate if it's going to stipulate anything) that means that folks are going to get paid either to grow or produce (or both!) food that will then be cooked or prepared on site.
That means a lot of extra workers and a lot of money to go 'round--which means that congress does idiotic things like protecting the salt and potato industries at the expense of student health.
Stupid stupid and more stupid--all from government mandates and corporations willing to feed at the tit of mamma state.
I'll agree with stu on his point that our debates on current political topics aren't often scholarly exchanges but rather more like adversarial legal briefs.
But contra stu, I don't deliberately ignore contrary evidence in order to make a point seem stronger, for doing so actually weakens a given case.
stu's expertise in mathematics and statistics often enables him to make a strong case on specific economic analyses, but I notice he's dropped the "economists agree that . . ." consensus argument when I located and cited a number of well-known academic experts in the field who contradicted his faith in Keynesian approaches. Still, I appreciate his putting forward a number of economic facts and statistics on occasion.
And sometimes stu will dismiss a conservative theorist (e.g., Hayek) without showing a knowledge of the work in question, though it's fair enough to comment on a particular passage cited in the initial posting on LS.
All in all, I don't take personal offence at spirited opposition, though I don't particularly relish
accusations of dishonesty, lack of integrity, shamelessness, etc., and I'll try to avoid invoking such accusations in return. Public figures, however, are fair game, outside of vulgar abuse.
I'll agree as well that the First Family as such presents a pretty fair personal image of America, presidential and administrative policies aside. However, I'd contend that the Rs in general have better maintained a rhetorically restrained demeanour than have the Ds (especially when the latter venture upon class-war attacks on the former as "enemies," "killers," and "terrorists"). That sort of talk is both self-demeaning and potentially dangerous.
JADL,
However, I'd contend that the Rs in general have better maintained a rhetorically restrained demeanour than have the Ds (especially when the latter venture upon class-war attacks on the former as "enemies," "killers," and "terrorists"). That sort of talk is both self-demeaning and potentially dangerous.
Well, I'd have to disagree with you here.
Let me start with Kirby's constant carping that anyone to the left of Andrew Mellon is communist, which he is using as a pejorative. I've seen few accusations of "fascist" in return, even though the temptation to indulge in tit-fot-tat is powerful. And this is hardly unique to Kirby, as he's simply echoing the prevailing framing of right-wing talk radio/tv -- which is to oversimplify the world by reducing every question to a binary choice between "us" and the heathen, terrorist, islamophilic, communist, pejorative-du-jour alternative.
Ann Coulter characterized the entire left in terms of "Treason" in a well known eponymous book. The Bush doctrine amounted to little more than limiting our policy options vz. terrorism to military ones, and to ascribing the word "terrorist" not only to individuals, but to entire nations.
My intuition is that we can mine the comment sections of Kos and Redstate, and find enough vitrol in either to ensure a polarized repubilic from now until the rapture. But I'm also willing to bet that the worst of Redstate will in fact be worse than the worst of Kos. If you're familiar with Kos, you're aware that there's a regular Saturday column, the "Hate Mail-A-Palooza," which consists of a selected set of emails to kos from the past week. Trust me, "rhetorically restrained demeanour" is not a phrase that comes to mind. I'll accept that they're not representative, but I think you'll have to work pretty hard to find worse on my side.
I frame things in the dichotomy liberty loving versus totalitarian.
The progressives frame it as them versus the regressives.
I really do see it as the people who care about liberty versus the totalitarians.
And the others really do see it as the progressives versus the regressives.
I don't know can be done about that.
I don't know what a fascist is. There is no good description of what a fascist is outside of Italy. Mussolini was a fascist. He was also a kind of communist. But he wanted to turn the state into an economic machine. I don't know much about Mussolini's Italy. He started off as a kind of socialist, much like Hitler and Goebbels did. The idea was to care about the ethnic group that formed the foundation of the country, and to build industry around them. It had something to do with nationalism as it was coming into formation then, too.
The Finns also had to prepare themselves as a kind of nation based on common myths. This was what all the countries were doing then.
I'm not sure that loving your country is necessarily the same thing as fascism. I find the term difficult to fit into our discussion. But I do think that communism is a fairly simple set of problems. It means a one-party state, with a group of arugala eating monstrosities at the helm, all of whom are certain of their moral superiority to the masses, and to the group of capitalists that they replaced.
At any rate, there is something to be said for the right's descriptions and something to be said for the left's descriptions. Which is why we just keep talking around and across each other.
Hey guys!
Haven't been in for a bit, and I apologize for jumping in on the conversation :P
I think that Pizza COULD count as a vegetable if it had enough vegetables on it (not just tomato). I think to qualify as a legitimate vegetable the pizza would need to have more than one vegetable topping.
And despite what Stu might like to think about Conservatives, I'm firmly on the side of nutrition in public schools (if we're going to have school meals at all).
I think there are tons of great ideas around the world we would do well to adopt. In Japanese schools, children are served with a vast variety of items with contrasting flavours in very small portions. It keeps the child satisfied after salty, sweet, bitter, sour, chewy, crunchy, creamy, etc. flavour and texture profiles have been satiated. The French eat this way too. The fineness of a meal is dependent on how skillfully a chef balances these sensations rather than the portions. While I don't expect haute cuisine in the local middle school, people who treat themselves to wide variety of small portions tend to live longer, and happier lives. It could be coincidence, but look at the life expectancy in France and Japan, and at their typical diets and tell me that their diet isn’t more varied, and healthy than ours.
Personally, I would say we should:
1) Serve a glass of water or gentle non-caffeinated herbal tea along with low fat milk at every meal. Most children are actually dehydrated, and feelings of thirst are often misinterpreted as feelings of hunger, this trick lone has been used to trim many a pound off the dieter’s waistline.
2) Offer more whole and exotic grains like quinoa, bulghur wheat, and wheat berries. They offer more nutrition and fiber than traditional grain choices. They're also versatile, served hot or cold and can be dressed up in any number of ways. Quinoa is a protein power house! Protein fills you up, and helps build healthy muscle tissue.
3) Make sodium reduction a priority. Many kids eat FAR too much salt. A great way to reduce sodium intake is to make more meals in-house. Also, switching from canned to frozen (or ideally fresh and seasonal) vegetables reduces sodium and increases nutrition in one swell foop.
4) Offer low fat or fat free yogurt as a dessert more often than not, preferably sugar free, with a side of berries, a drizzle of honey, or more decadently a drizzle of fat free chocolate syrup.
5) You know how some class rooms have a “today’s weather” board where there’s a sun or a cloud or a snow flake to show the day’s weather conditions? I think every cafeteria should have a “TODAY’S LUNCH” board with a pie chart showing Protein, Carbs, and Fats, with the calories listed below for the full-lunch option. This way, kids can get a good idea of what X-amount of calories looks, feels, and tastes like. This will set them up for better decision making later on.
6) Appeal to the child’s spirit of adventure, and introduce her to interesting, healthy, and inexpensive dishes early on. Tabbouleh for fourth graders? Why not? They might love it, and the school board will love the price tag. Tzatziki and whole grain pita? Yummy and super cheap! Fresh veggies with hummus dip, easily made, and stores well.
7) Create preferential partnerships with local farmers to provide fresh fruit and vegetables when available, and fresh animal protein sources throughout the year.
8) If I were a liberal, I would think that offering an opt-in Multi-Vitamin program would be worth looking at. Vitamins are a great cost-effective way of improving general health, and may decrease absent days due to illness.
P.S. Shame on Stu for saying facts don’t matter to my husband! He lives for knowledge and is very conscientious. Also, I love him. So be nice!
Delivering vitamins to kids should be easy. Get them into the assembly line and have them open their mouths and move them right along, with a kind of Pez shooter popping them in.
I think the salt industry doesn't want to lose its hold on the kids. This part of the story may be the one part where we all agree: sodium is net bad.
Em brings up a good idea: lots of water. The kid in the photo is a disaster area and will definitely have heart problems. How to slim that kid down? Get him moving, moving, moving, and drinking lots of water.
We should try to make it win win for farmers and consumers using some interesting new grains like quinoa (old grains, or ancient grains, but new to me).
Em has some good ideas here.
How's the diet going, Em?
Mine has fallen off a bit I'm afraid. Two years back on sabbatical I forced off 15 pounds and was down to 165. I've bloated back up to 182. I'm about six pounds over the BMI for my height (5'10. which means I'm fat, but I do try to exercise for an hour every day (steps, walking, and doing marching games on Wii, etc.).
They said at McDonald's the new oatmeal fruit deal which is only 1.95 is also only 290 calories. It's not totally filling for breakfast but isn't bad.
We're supposed to avoid bagels and cream cheese.
At any rate, I see Stu as always trying to turn facts around so no doubt this is something he perceives in your husband, and God forbid, in me. People always notice their own sins in others.
This is why I always notice fat. I mean, I love to eat! I ate tons of food today: otmeal, Chobani yogurt, meatloaf (yes, I even fell off the vegetarian schtick), and then had yogurt raisins, a bagel with cream cheese, more yogurt, a couple of Oreos, and amd thinking about decaf cafe to top it all off as I have twenty more papers to grade this evening.
Oh la la!
Wouldn't it be great to know what Obama eats in a day, or in a typical year. A philosopher at Princeton named Peter Singer thinks that in the future we'll moralize about people of the past not on the basis of how they discriminated on race, gender and class, but on what they ate.
Always the left wants to say tsk tsk. I find that so repulsive I can barely stand it.
Instead, I'm in favor of the comedy of eating. In Petronius the lords of the manor prepare a giant pig with canaries inside so when they carve it the canaries fly out.
Obama should mandate surprises for the children along those lines.
too much emphasis placed on school
let the boys run outside more
read ballads
and waste time productively
i mean
that's what it's going to be about anyway
can someone explain to me
where important work is happening
maybe in catholic worker houses
but everything else is superfluous
everything
everyone take a year off
jh
Accomplish, accomplish!
Stu won't be able to respond for a few days as he's working on a math problem.
Just want to reiterate that I'm enjoying the conversation, and think it's fun that we have so many different viewpoints.
Does anybody have a wish to converse about anything specific? Brett often has ideas for posts that create firestorms of controversy, for instance.
I think the enormous disjunction between left and right is not an aberration but represents two alarmingly disparate paradigms -- one of them is Christian and solid and classically liberal (capitalist), and the other is Christian and leftist, which was once progressive, but now I find increasingly Marxist in spirit and orientation. But there are within these huge groupings massive disagreements, and growing resentments and such. Let's not forget that it took the first Christians centuries and centuries to hammer out some basic agreements. Dim Lamp wrote to me back channel that Pelagius and Arius (I think it was) actually had a fist fight over an argument (about the trinity?).
This sort of thing translates for us into many diametrically opposed problems. there is the law of love that is sketched out in Paul, but which is posed against the homosexual issue (also found in Romans). One part of Paul's letters is about love, the other part is about specifically which kind of love he finds acceptable, which some people today find increasingly unacceptable. Men walking in leather suits strikes some of us as unChristian, and others think it should be normative.
We have similar problems with abortion -- some think this is murder, and think thou shalt not kill is the answer to the problem. Others believe it is a question of freedom.
Similar debates haunt us throughout the culture -- should there be standards of weight, standards of health, or should we be able to eat anything we like?
In sum, I do think it's the standards. Some claim there should be no standards, and others that there should be, but it seems that everyone has slightly different standards.
The only universal is that child molesters are bad (hence the universal condemnation of Sandusky). And yet, Michel Foucault, the most powerful philosopher in all of academia (the most frequently cited) was clearly in favor not only of child molestation, but of child prostitution.
There are huge factions within academia who see nothing wrong with Sandusky, at least in principle, since they seem to see Foucault as the new messiah of sexual freedom on a Nietzschean basis.
Those of us who still believe in the Pauline standards are increasingly rare, even inside of the churches.
The BMI is an indexed standard from the 1950s. Almost everyone has lost sight of that standard now. I still think it's a good standard even if I am about 6 pounds over it, and can't seem to get those six pounds off without a sabbatical.
There are even some people who want to reject the notion of the standard sentence. In feminist theory the subject-object standard has been denigrated by various French feminists such as Helene Cixous and Luce Irigaray.
And yet we haven't given up on standards. Race, gender, class equality is the new battle cry. We hear it at OWS. We hear it from many quarters.
Is pizza a vegetable is just one tiny branch of an enormous octupus that the left is spreading throughout our culture in an effort to control not only what we think, but also what we grow, and what we eat, as they seemingly try to nudge us toward a one-party state overseen by Them.
I'm for faction, but also for a set of standards first articulated by God to Moses, and later, in different stages, throughout the Christian west.
the only universal principle that we share with all peoples eveywhere is that war is necessary and good that seems to be the fundametal idea war helps to preserve whatever it is we think we've attained and therefore it is necessary...and therefore human violence is prone to break forth at any given time for every human knows at some level that violence is an option
i support this idea but i feel we should not allow for weapons any longer
all war must be conducted with hand to hand combat we should at least acknowledge the chinese spremecy in this discipline of course they made gunpowder too but we will put heavy restriction upon gunpowder POOOOPH
either we imitate nature in compromising human life in the very manner all biological matter is compromised and leave it at that
or we posit that something else is important and pursue what that is
and believe and practice contemplation long extended periods of only thinking and writing and musing and making music - in the end these are the only satisfying earthly pursuits all else leads to war
instead of weapons use garden vegetables
the chinese have also shown us how to prepare vegetables
we can learn from them
this will level the playing field
everyone seems so frustrated by the way they are being forced to live
maybe something should change
more trout fishing
the soul is an arrogant coward
...snfff snill hmnh i smell something
where have i smelled that before
sniff sniff hmnh nice
jh
I'm glad to hear you're off vegetarianism, Kirby--you were starting to sound like no fun at all.
BMI can be off.
I mean, I know I'm a whare now, but back in high school I weighed 155 lbs. Though I thought I was fat (bad, bad body image issues) and I was at the top of the "normal" BMI range, looking at pictures I looked a bit like a heroin addict--so I can't imagine how I'd look at 120--the bottom of the scale.
"bottom of the normal scale"
Emmy's right - school lunches should be healthier, and she has great ideas - but she's sounding much more like a communist in your commie / freedom split, Kirby - and you AGREE with her!
How can you make fun of the arugula president and then agree with arugulafying student lunches!
What Emmy's proposing would require more money going toward education and changing the way things are done... both of which are generally not-very-Republican idears.
So I guess you're a Democrat on the school lunch issue, Kirby?
stu, my short remarks on the relative rhetorical demeanour of Rs and Ds in the context of my measured praise for the President's family demeanour was meant to refer in general to R and D political leaders (the latter who've, as I said, used class war terms like "enemies," "killers," and "terrorists" in their rhetorical attacks on R politicians), not the rank-and-file or conservative pundits; I see I should have made this more explicit, but now made so, it makes the your objection irrelevant to my contention.
Indeed, I sometimes consult liberal or left websites, Daily Kos included. Its founder, Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, a fellow war vet, once distinguished himself in remarks on the murders and mutilations of several American contractors (also fellow vets) in Iraq thusly:
". . . I feel nothing over the death of merceneries [sic]. They aren't in Iraq because of orders, or because they are there trying to help the people make Iraq a better place. They are there to wage war for profit. Screw them."
Though he later regretted these words, there are other examples I could find of his expressions of bitterness and depravity. I doubt whether you could find equivalent rhetorical excesses in the postings of Erick Erickson at RedState, though I rather prefer National Review Online, Hot Air et al for conservative opinion and analysis.
As for blog commentators, one can find countless examples of excess on both sides. Another example: I used to post (before my comments were deleted) years ago on the blogsite of Obama's neighbourhood buddy, the unrepentant terrorist (an apt epitaph) Bill Ayers, where (undeleted) bloggers routinely advocated the shooting or hanging of President Bush, Vice-President Cheney and their party's leaders.
I'll let Kirby defend his own expressions about President Obama's supposedly "communist" sympathies and associations; know that some bloggers (check out the award-winning Hullabaloo blogsite if you haven't already) the left have called the President a "fascist" over his crony capitalism. On Coulter's "Treason," I haven't read it, but I take your little jest in the same spirit in which Kirby refers to Obama as a communist. And you well know that the Bush administration engaged terrorism in a number of ways other than purely militarily. And on terrorists, Bush engaged not with not entire nations, but regimes (I assume you're referring to Afghanistan under Taliban rule).
As for right-wing talk radio (here I prefer Bill Bennett and Laura Ingraham), I do listen, and I agree with stu that many of the opinions are markedly issue-simplified and half-presented as entertainments--it's equivalent to the lib-left fulminations of the MSNBC crew.
As for your closing paragraph's remarks, I refer to my answers above.
Good luck on the math problem Kirby mentioned, and after that, you'll perhaps be free for another rhetorical cut or thrust.
I was with Emmy on lots of water and vitamins (both relatively cheap to implement). I didn't cross swords with her on the other stuff because she rarely comes here any longer, but I didn't endorse her whole menu regime. I think arugula is expensive. I cannot afford to eat salad. They do have free lettuce at our school's cafeteria, and some kids eat that and cover it with dressing. They have no other food.
I think that's weird. Why don't they bring some.
Do you remember the bill Cosby skit where he let his children eat cake? The wife was forcing him to make breakfast and he let his children eat chocolate cake because it had eggs and milk in it, and thought: that's as good a delivery system as any.
Peter singer at Princeton started eating shellfish because he decided that they don't have much of a nervous system. So, it's ok.
I love meatloaf. If I see it, I will eat it. My mom always made meatloaf, and I feel close to my mom again when I eat it.
I love that.
Kirby,
The diet is going moderately well. I lost around 50lbs so far. I've been pretty ill for the last week, so I think that number will go up soon through no virtue of mine own. Before I got sick, I was walking every day wearing my muscle toning shoes (they were a gift, don't laugh!) and generally having a good time doing it, since it gives me the chance to go "picking". Yes, like on American Pickers. :p
Also, I hope you don’t take offense at what’s to come. I’m going to go into an anti-phys. Ed. rant down below. Please bear in mind, that its present company and their families excepted
Thanks Brett! That's cute ;) I felt a little Communist, and it was fun for a change to be a raging, lunatic radical fringe-nut on the OTHER side of the fence!
But seriously, I'd be looking for changes that can be implemented in a cost-effective way where great benefits can be obtained by implementing fairly simple changes.
How hard would it be to switch from canned to frozen carrots, peas, and green beans?
I don't like arugula either. I think most salad bars in middle and junior high schools are just excuses for kids to drink ranch dressing by the quarter cup. If that's the only way you can get a kid to eat a piece of iceberg lettuce, it’s better not to bother. That lettuce has virtually no nutritional value anyway by itself, and cheap dressing is almost 100% fat.
High school might be different, cause there are hordes of body-conscious anorexic blonde cheerleader types that stalk the halls, hip bones and elbows akimbo. They might like salad bars, and we might be able to trick them into eating a little fat so they can grow breasts and menstruate. I personally like Greek salad.
Since I'm in the mood for it, I'm going to suggest something completely radical. We introduce a nutrition-based "physical education" program, and fire every freaking PE teacher who ever held a clipboard and a whistle.
Physical education, in as much as schools want to keep that organized form of mass torture, can be conducted at-will, after school hours, using parent volunteers to conduct the proceedings. This way, you'll have more time to teach the forgotten arts of MATH and LANGUAGES!
Seriously. Why are we still spending an hour a day doing jumping jacks and pushups that are doing precisely NO good whatsoever to our children’s’ waistlines when our kids basically suck at Math and Languages? That's child abuse.
In my school, those changes would have represented a savings of well over $250,000 a year. That's easily enough to upgrade the menu and devise a nutrition education program that will make a real difference in kids eating habits.
When I lived in Slovenia, I learned that high schools and universities had a physical education requirement, but people were free to pursue the required number of hours in pretty much any way they wanted. Things like fencing, horseback riding, rock climbing lessons, snorkeling classes—activities that even stubborn couch potatoes might enjoy! Beats the pants off of being humiliated in front of all your friends and getting yelled at in the process!
if we made the children reeally work for and then work off
their sustenance not only would they come to appreciate food but they'd have a developed sense of why we eat...compensate the pleasure with some suffering
then the pleasure moment is all the better
ancients knew this
why do we not
more manual labor for the kids
get 'em workin
school is highly overrated
turn off the tveez
and bring back boredom
put the kids to work
jh
pizza anyone
I like the crossified veggies; according to some diet experts, they are cancer fighters. Is the old shibboleth "You are what you eat" true? Maybe the apostle Paul was so determined to know nothing but Christ crucified among the Corinthians because he too had a steady diet of the crossified veggies! :-) Then there's those who complain about too much chicken -does that mean they're lacking in courage?
Romans 14 appears to be about vegetarian sainthood among the Romans. Not only were they doing all kinds of weird sexual things that Paul wanted to straighten out, but he also said that people who eat meat were ok. Does this mean that already they were getting holier than thou with regard to not eating animals and stuff?
It is all about grace. Paul all-encompassing, all-inclusive theme in Romans is grace. Grace for Paul addressing this particular issue means that folks give each other breathing room and tolerance room to eat according to what they can in good conscience. So diversity here should not mean "I'm better than you because I eat or do not eat this or that." Rather, "You it what you eat to the glory of God and I do the same."
Paul then is fairly laissez-faire when it comes to food, but not sexuality. There, he says there's a right thing to do and a wrong thing to do. Could anyone explain why he treats these two "things" differently? I was trying to explain it to myself, and couldn't, can't.
seems paul accepted and lived something
luther could not abide
Even though Paul was writing to Rome I don't think they had pizza there yet. It came later.
I did a quick search on who invented pizza? It was Naples. The first use of it in Italian is about the year 1000 AD. However, the tomato is a new world vegetable, and isn't recorded as a topping on pizza in Italy until about 1544.
It's strange that Obama is mostly for European ideas and ideals, but here he's standing firmly behind a new world vegetable. This is the first time I've been proud of our president.
Here's more on the invention of Pizza:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1695/who-invented-pizza
Now, who invented homosexuality? Was this something that was widely practiced among American Indians? I know the Greeks and Romans were heavily involved in it. Has it always been a human universal?
The Iranian Prime Minister Ahmadinejihad claims it doesn't exist in Iran, and that it never has. But do they have pizza in Tehran?
of course they have pizza in tehran
you may have to wander aboout like a canadian the two guys sitting in the back smoking hookah
but the pizza is good
old libraries in tehran
lots of intellectuals and artists
poets abound on the streets
of course there would be pizza
goat cheeze and celery anyone?
let's have a ghazal contest
7 0r 8 couplets
none of which have to correspond
with one another
and the theme of pizza has to
resonate in one of the couplets
like a twittering leaf
maybe we should all make a point of inviting politicians to our tables for meals and have the kids interrogate them
over pizza
time after time
jh
Mkay, but the rules are a little more complicated than that.
no doubt
no doubt
Will there be pizza in the afterlife?
no
there will be pizza in hell
but only pizza the onnly ffoodd in hell will be pizza
and most of it left over pizza from american food programs
satan himself (or herself) hey that's a thought has anyone ever thought of the possibility of satan being a woman satan will serve the pizza to order
rare or well done
got a black magic woman
pizza everyday everymeal and banjo and bagpipe players for entertainment for the rest of eternity every night you will be forced to eat more pizza and listen to duets of banjos and bagpipes
the catholics in heaven will be enjoying caviar and light sweet reislings with hardbread with ripe cheese on the side and mozart reconsidered and duke ellington
jh
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