Monthly Archives: June 2011
Food Pyramid [Triangle] replaced by MyPlate for $2,000,000
“I challenge you: Name for me a single government program which has accomplished its intended objectives, rather than the opposite… which has not done more harm than good.” ~Milton Friedman
Has anybody noticed kids are getting fat as fuck?… So why’s the Government retiring the Food Pyramid? Well… first of all, only the fucking government would create a pyramid just to use it as a triangle. It’s a perfect metaphor for everything they do. Secondly, that food triangle has been teaching kids for the last 20 years to basically eat the exact opposite of the Atkins Diet. Eat five servings of carbs for every one of protein?… Goddamnit.
So the Government taught kids to spend their childhood carbo-loading and sitting at a desk 8 hours a day (throw in some beer and a nap, and that’s literally how sumo wrestlers pack on the pounds). Right about now supporters of big government are screaming “Ridiculous! Sure the food pyramid was wrong, but kids are fat because they ignored it and ate fast food.” So the only reason the program wasn’t more harmful was… because it was so ineffective? Well, that sounds like the perfect rationale for doubling down and spending $2 million creating “MyPlate.”
Did the First Lady just bullshit you?… Yep. Nobody can possibly find that fucking $2 million embarrassment of a logo “useful.” Why?… Clearly it’s only useful for people having trouble grasping the fundamental concepts of the food/plate relationship (“Put my food on a plate, you say?… Preposterous!”); unfortunately whatever traumatic brain injury left them in such a state, also made them incapable of learning from diagrams… It’s a catch 22.
Now for the interactive portion of our program: A Time Trial. While introducing MyPlate Michelle Obama actually said “Parents don’t have the time to measure out exactly three ounces of chicken or to look up how much rice or broccoli is in a serving. That has confounded me as a parent for a very long time. I still don’t know how much protein comes in X number of ounces.”
(Read more from absolutedespotism.com)
I like how they discuss obesity as a national security issue. Our job is to be fit an healthy “iron youth” so that we can fight wars for our politicians. Makes me to want to run for my life — to McDonald’s.
Rep. Justin Amash (MI): Davis-Bacon Act 06/13/11
Listen carefully and you’ll understand why unions love government projects.
After 10 years, no security unit is fit to take over from coalition in Afghanistan
Not a single Afghan police or army unit is capable of maintaining law and order in the war-torn country without the support of coalition forces, The Independent on Sunday can reveal. Almost a decade after international troops were sent in to overthrow the Taliban and help to establish a functioning democracy in Afghanistan, a combination of poor training, lack of numbers, corruption and illiteracy has left the country unable to protect its own people.
The grim official assessment of the capabilities of the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) is a major blow to the hopes of a troop withdrawal by 2014, a timescale that assumes the ANSF will be able to start taking the lead in fighting the Taliban from next month. The commander of Nato’s mission to train the ANSF has admitted the task will not be complete until at least 2016.
This comes after a decade in which tens of billions of dollars have been spent building up the Afghan army and police. Yet they remain too dependent on coalition forces, according to the latest progress report on Afghanistan from the US Department of Defense. It cites assessments made in February that show how, of more than 400 Afghan units, none is rated as independent – defined as capable “without assistance from coalition forces”. (Read more from independent.co.uk)
Send moar tax dollarz!!!1!
The Whitest Kids U’ Know – Pledge of Allegiance
The Speeding Freight Train You Hear
The mainstream financial media are running stories on the next financial crisis. This is unheard of two years into a so-called economic recovery. So weak is this recovery that the old pre-2008 confidence has not returned.
The first sign that “this time, it’s different,” was Treasury Secretary Geithner’s statement, which received widespread coverage, that there will be another crisis.
On May 18, The Daily Beast ran a story on Geithner’s unexpected appearance at the initial screening of an HBO movie, Too Big to Fail, which dramatizes the crisis of late 2008, during which time Geithner was president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. In an interview, Geithner said this. “It will come again. There will be another storm. But it’s not going to come for a while.” (Read more from lewrockwell.com)
Ron Paul: End Obamacare, Abolish the IRS, Eliminate Support for Big Government
Ron Paul: Still right about everything.
Tenn. law bans posting images that “cause emotional distress”
Canadian intellectual property lobbyists caught faking counterfeit data so they could try to enact new border measure provisions that could lead to the searching of luggage as travellers enter Canada
This week the Canadian IP Council, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce’s IP lobby arm, issued a release placing Canadian counterfeiting costs at $30 billion per year. That figure is being used to lobby the government to enact new border measure provisions that could lead to the searching of luggage as travellers enter Canada. It is tempting to dismiss the claims on the basis that the policy rationale makes no sense – if counterfeit toothpaste is indeed “coming across the border in droves” as the Chamber claims, searching traveller luggage won’t address that issue. Moreover, it should be noted that even the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement features an exception for de minimis imports that an individual might carry as it recognizes that addressing counterfeiting concerns does not involve targeting individuals. Yet given the decision to resurrect the bogus $30 billion figure, it is important to again call attention to its origins and how it is simply a fabrication. (Read more from michaelgeist.ca)
First responders watch man drown, Citizen tries and fails to rescue him, Fire Dept gets increase in budget
Alameda, California, has immediately changed its policies after first responders watched a man drown in San Francisco Bay and did nothing to rescue him.
The man was apparently suicidal, CNN affiliate KTVU reported. After he entered the bay off Alameda Beach on Monday and stood in neck-deep water, then treaded water, police and firefighters who were called to the scene did not set foot in the bay.
. . . .
Local officials said that because of a lack of funding for shore-to-water rescue, firefighters had no one properly trained to go into the water, KTVU reported.
“It’s muddy out there. We don’t want them sinking. We don’t want them in distress,” Alameda Interim Police Chief Michael Noonan said in the KTVU report.
One local resident, addressing officials at a meeting about the incident, said, “It just strikes me as unbelievably callous that nobody there with any sort of training could strip off their gear and go and help this person.” (Read more from cnn.com)
People violently arrested for dancing at Jefferson Monument
Adam Kokesh and others were staging a peaceful protest.
The Changing Face of the Police and the Death of the Fourth Amendment
Peter Schiff: ‘US economy heading for disaster’
Russia says a fifth of defense budget stolen
A fifth of Russia’s state defense spending is stolen every year by corrupt officials, dishonest generals and crooked contractors, Russia’s chief military prosecutor said in an interview published on Tuesday.
President Dmitry Medvedev says endemic corruption is holding back Russia’s development, but anti-bribery groups say the problem has become worse since Medvedev was steered into the Kremlin by his mentor Vladimir Putin in 2008.
“Huge money is being stolen – practically every fifth rouble and the troops are still getting poor quality equipment and arms,” chief military prosecutor Sergei Fridinsky told Russia’s official gazette, Rossiiskaya Gazeta. “Every year more and more money is set aside for defense but the successes are not great,” he said, adding that kickbacks and fictitious contracts were being used to defraud the state.
Fridinsky did not give specific figures, but Russia has set more than 1.5 trillion roubles ($53 billion) for national defense in its 2011 budget, indicating theft of more than $10 billion a year from the sector. (Read more from news.yahoo.com)