Doing Their Best to Kill Christmas Cheer ... Alan Caruba

Doing Their Best to Kill Christmas Cheer

By Alan Caruba

 

The one thing you can count on during the Christmas season is an avalanche of media-driven scare campaigns by environmental and self-appointed consumer protection groups that are intended to ruin it with claims that everything you eat or do has the potential of killing you and your loved ones.

Here’s an example; in December 2011 GreenLivingIdeas.com posted an article by Sanya Kanelstran to let everyone know that, during the Christmas season, “A heart attack can strike at any time in a person with coronary artery disease, but heart attacks are more likely during the festive season and especially between the Christmas and New Year period because of the change in diet and lifestyle around the holidays.” So, happy holidays and try not to die.

The folks at Naturalnews.com posted an item on December 17, 2010 that warned that “Those Christmas-colored snack chips and store-bought cookies, but watch out. Eating them may cause side effects such as hyperactivity, especially in children. That’s because nearly all Christmas-colored foods achieve their colors through the use of artificial coloring chemicals, including Red #40.”

ItsMyHealth.com issued a warning in November by Julie Robotham. “Traditionalists love their roast turkey with all the trimmings on Christmas day, but with food poisoning from poultry more prevalent than ever, it pays to take care with the preparation of raw meat.” Properly cooking turkey or any other meat is sufficient to kill most, if not all, bacteria.

The Internet is filled with these posts and, during the holiday season, you can count on the media to repeat them because scaring people is the stock-in-trade of most reporting. A welcome change from this is Fox News channel’s John Stossel who has devoted his career to debunking food and other claims that do not stand up to the scrutiny of fact-checking.

On a November 29, 2012 program, aired on Fox Business and Fox News, Stossel revisited the lies about finely textured, 95% lean beef. As I wrote in a commentary debunking the lies about “pink slime”, a term applied to this, “This lean beef is routinely added to lower quality hamburger to increase its protein content and its production has long been approved by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It actually improves the nutritional quality of a lot of cheaper hamburger.”

Stossel reported that “What some media outlets call ‘pink slime’ is perfectly safe because it’s just meat. It’s made from the meat that clings to the bones—the parts that the meat cutters missed. An added safety factor to kill any bacteria is its treatment with a tiny ammonium hydroxide gas.” There have been no reports of illness from the consumption of finely textured lean beef. Moreover, the process is also used to protect processed cheese, chocolate, and soda. And it exists naturally in beef!

In May, the Washington Times published a commentary by J. Justin Wilson, a senior research analyst at the Center for Consumer Freedom, a group devoted to debunking food and other product scares. In “Funny Food Hypocrisy” Wilson examined the ‘pink slime” campaign waged against finely textured lean meet. Along with a “bug juice” scare campaign, he identified them as “clever hooks adopted by activist food snobs who raised ill-conceived firestorms about lean beef trimmings and cochineal red food dye.”

Wilson wrote, “Contrary to the overhyped reports, lean beef trimmings make meals healthier, safer, cost-efficient and less animal-intensive. Cochineal food dyes, while derived from bugs, are actually all-natural replacements for artificial colors.”

At this time of the year and all year long consumers have to be skeptical of “fashionable prejudices against ‘processed food’”, said Wilson. “These people hoped to turn the ‘yuck factor’ into an irrational boycott.” As for finely textured lean meat, Wilson noted that, “As any butcher will tell you, people have used and eating trimmings in sausages and hamburger for centuries.”

If finely textured lean meat was removed from use and “one estimate says we’ll need to slaughter an additional 1.5 million cows a year.” That’s a lot of cows!

Every year at this time I receive dozens of catalogs from food vending companies offering all manner of delicious items from steaks to nuts. These companies, food producers, as well as your local supermarket are not in the business of killing consumers, nor is there any evidence of widespread food poisoning. The government has an army of inspectors at work to ensure that any reports are swiftly acted upon and, yes, they do track down and close facilities where any conditions warrant it.

Those Christmas cookies are not death traps for the kids and the Christmas turkey is not a mine field of bacteria. That hamburger you eat is as safe as modern technology and processing can make it and that’s very safe. Proper handling and cooking is the key to enjoying Christmas dinner.

My late Mother taught the art of gourmet cooking for over three decades, in addition to writing two cookbooks. She taught me and thousands of her students of the importance of keeping all kitchen surfaces on which food is prepared clean at all times. It’s very good advice and, along with the vast amount of food, meat, chicken, turkeys, and baked goods, you can expect to enjoy a very merry Christmas.

Don’t let the Christmas food killjoys kill your holiday with false food claims.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

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Alan Caruba's commentaries are posted daily at "Warning Signs" and shared on dozens of news and opinion websites. His blog recently passed more than 2 million page views. If you love to read, visit his monthly report on new books at Bookviews. For information on his professional skills, Caruba Editorial Services is the place to go! You can find Alan Caruba on both Facebook and Twitter as well.

The Left MUST Take Our Guns! ... J. D. Longstreet

The Left MUST Take Our Guns!
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet
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I want to clear the air, to explain something that ought not need explaining, but apparently does.

America's Founding Fathers did not create the 2nd Amendment to make the country safe for hunters and sportsmen.  The right to keep and bear arms was guaranteed American citizens to provide them/us the means to protect ourselves from a tyrannical government that we might some day be dumb enough to elect to office. 

Of course, we KNOW that will, ahem, never happen, right?

OK.  Moving right along ...

One other thing:  The Second Amendment is "the guarantor" of all the other amendments, too.  Without the Second Amendment,  the Constitution and the the Bill of Rights would not be worth the paper (or parchment) they are written on.

I mean, come ON folks!  Consider how the Constitution and the Bill of Rights have been devalued today, especially under the communist regime of Obama and the CUDS Party. (CUDS Party = Communist/Union/Democrat/Socialist Party)

Look.  Gun owners in America know they are under threat from the Obama Regime.  They KNOW THAT! They are moving quietly and quickly to preserve their personal armories. 

Why, a strange thing is happening nationwide.  Guns are just disappearing.  Yes.  They are being lost, somewhere, somehow.

Laugh, if you will, but gun owners have told me how their own weapons are, uh, going missing. Come to think of it, I think I might be missing a semi-automatic, or two.  Humm.

Not to worry, though.  I expect that when trouble begins those missing weapons will turn up in a cache somewhere in the midst of a swamp or the deep woods.

I have no doubt, at all, that the Obama Administration will make a move to strip Americans of guns -- and soon.  First it was necessary for him to regain the Office in a second term in which he would be immune from the anger of the voters.  He has now done that.  The door is now wide open and I fully expect him to step through it, the narcissistic ideologue that he is. He can't help himself.

Back in 2011 it was reported:  "March 30, 2011, according to The Washington Post, Sarah Brady—head of the gun-ban lobby formerly known as Handgun Control, Inc.—met with President Obama, who she said brought up the issue of gun control “to fill us in that it was very much on his agenda.”

According to Brady, as reported by the Post, President Obama told her, “I just want you to know that we are working on it,” and “We have to go through a few processes, but under the radar.”   SOURCE:  http://www.nrapublications.org/index.php/11920/obamas-secret-plan-to-destroy-the-second-amendment-by-2016/

You may recall that just days after his reelection Obama signaled the UN that his administration WOULD support the UN Small Arms Treaty.  I'm convinced it's a part of Obama's plan. 

Look for American gun owners to be hit from every direction when they make their move -- legislation, Presidential Executive Orders, international treaties, healthcare (as in Obamacare) -- the works! 

I would suggest Americans be mindful of Presidential Executive Orders to such agencies as Department of Homeland Security, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, -- and -- let us not overlook Obamacare.  See, the medical costs of gun violence WILL become an immediate healthcare problem in America.   

We recommend you take a look at The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Section 2716.  The folks at Ammoland.com  had this to say on their site:  "...  as the law requires Americans’ medical information to be culled and entered into a national database.

Centralizing these medical records will allow the FBI to troll a list of Americans for ailments such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) to deny them their gun rights, in the same way that the Veterans Administration has already denied more than 150,000 veterans their right to bear arms."
Read more here:  http://www.ammoland.com/2012/06/28/obamacare-decision-means-feds-will-continue-to-cull-gun-owner-information/#ixzz2E28fKL4S

Look.  I'm old enough to remember that back in the bad ole days of the Soviet Union, if you did not agree with THEIR socialist government you were ruled mentally ill by government doctors and sent away to "hospitals" where you were "brainwashed" until you DID agree with the Socialist government of the USSR.

Now that we have our own socialist government AND socialized medicine here in the good ole US of A, what makes you think it will be any different here, huh?  

Rest assured that at some point, in the not too distant future, there will be an incident in which large numbers of people will be victims of gun violence.  THAT will be the catalyst, the trigger, to unleash the gun control tsunami. The Obama Regime never allows a good crisis to go to waste, even if THEY have to create the crisis.

The Obama assault on the Second Amendment is coming as surely as day follows night.  If you don't believe that -- then you're kidding yourself.
You see -- the left MUST relieve us of our weapons to assure Obama a third term.  It's really quite simple.

© J. D. Longstreet
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What Everyone Knows ... Alan Caruba

What Everyone Knows

By Alan Caruba
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Does it strike you odd that everyone knows the nation is deep in unsustainable debt, millions are unemployed, et cetera, and yet those elected to the highest offices in the land cannot seem to find an answer to this looming disaster?

Instead, we are besieged hourly by news of charges flying back about the President’s “position” and the House Majority Leader’s dismay. Millions of words pour forth about Barack Obama’s insistence on increasing the rate that millionaires should pay and the fact that it would barely cover the cost of running the government for more than a few days, let alone the fact that they already pay over 40 percent of all the money collected from income taxes.

To add to the absurdity, in June the Federal Reserve announced that the median net worth of families had plunged by 39 percent in just three years, from $126,400 in 2007 to $77,300 in 2010. Need it be said that the largest drops occurred among middle class Americans?

By midyear 2012, U.S. housing prices were down 35 percent from the peak of the housing bubble.  The official U.S. unemployment rate had been above 8 percent for 40 months in a row.

The statistics are very depressing and I will not burden you with what is a very long list. I will, however, remind you that none of this can be solely blamed on George W. Bush who had the misfortune of spending his final months of two terms in office when the housing bubble burst.

The result of that was the bailout of Wall Street and the banks with the exception of the investment firm of Lehman Brothers. The big banks got gobs of taxpayer money, but lots of small banks did not. As Obama kept reminding us throughout his first term, he “inherited” the mess without mentioning that the mess came with the job he relentlessly campaigned for.

There is no one else to blame for the current dismal economic state of the nation except Obama. We have had presidents who did a comparably bad job and they were all “progressives”, the nice name for Socialists and even nicer name for Communists. All believed that government was the answer and all were wrong.

What everyone knows is that the federal government is too big, too expensive, and too wasteful of our money. It is supposed to govern with the “consent of the people”, but those in office tend to think that getting elected is all the consent they need to keep doing the same stupid things.

Obama is the quintessential Big Government believer. As far as he’s concerned there is nothing that could possibly be cut from its operation and budget short of a draconian “sequester” that will kick in on January 2. There is no problem that cannot be solved by throwing more money at it. There is no more privileged class in America than government employees.

The worst part of all this are the lies being told about the Republicans who we are supposed to believe have offered no suggestions as to what could be cut from the budget. Here are a few of the forty items Rep. Paul Ryan suggested be cut. You may remember him as the running mate of Mitt Romney. They are Republicans.

Cutting the Corporation for Public Broadcasting subsidy would save $445 million annually.

Cutting the America’s Treasures Program would save $25 million annually.

Cutting the International Fund for Ireland would save $17 million annually.

Cutting the U.S. Trade Development Agency would save $55 million annually.

Eliminating 68 duplicating education programs would save $1.3 billion annually.

Cutting the subsidy to the Woodrow Wilson Center would save $430,000 annually. Wilson was the president who gave us the income tax and the Federal Reserve.

Cutting the Community Development Fund would save $4.5 billion annually.

Cutting energy grants to states for weatherization would save $530 million annually.

One of my favorites is the $1.565 billion annually in subsidies to Amtrak, a railroad system that has never turned a profit since it was created in 1971.

Rep. Ryan’s proposed cuts would save more than $2.5 trillion over ten years.

As this is being written there is a $2.2 trillion counter offer to the White House that does not raise taxes on upper income Americans ($250,000 or more), but does include $800 billion in tax reform, $600 billion in health care cuts, and $600 billion in other cuts in discretionary and mandatory spending.

If I was President, I would move to eliminate the Department of Education on the grounds that it has destroyed the quality of education in America, producing just enough morons to get Obama reelected. I have no idea why we have a Department of Energy when it has generally been federal government policy to obstruct any effort to actually mine coal or drill for oil and natural gas.

And, surely, I would close the doors of the Environmental Protection Agency which has become the single greatest source of economic destruction in the history of the nation.

But “we all know that”, right?

We all know that we are over-taxed and that lower rates, as in the days of Kennedy and Reagan, would jump start the economy.

We all know we are looking at a world of pain because the President refuses to even negotiate with the Republicans. The best we can hope for is an end-of-the- year deal to “kick the can down the road.” 

By 2014 and the midterm elections, voters might decide to put legislative handcuffs on Obama by electing a Republican-controlled House and Senate. They did it for the House in 2010, but then forgot why. There are still left enough voters who thought Obama was so “cool” they preferred to keep him in office instead of a guy whose life has been a testament to success and clean living.

But we all know that, don’t we?

© Alan Caruba, 2012
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Alan Caruba's commentaries are posted daily at "Warning Signs" and shared on dozens of news and opinion websites. His blog recently passed more than 2 million page views. If you love to read, visit his monthly report on new books at Bookviews. For information on his professional skills, Caruba Editorial Services is the place to go! You can find Alan Caruba on both Facebook and Twitter as well.

 

May He Rest In Peace.

May he Rest In Peace.Van T. Barfoot died at the age of 92 on 2 March 2012.
Remember the guy who wouldn't take the flag pole down on his Virginia property a while back?

You might remember the news story several months ago about a crotchety old man in Virginia who defied his local Homeowners Association, and refused to take down the flagpole on his property along with the large American flag he flew on it.

Now we learn who that old man was.

On June 15, 1919, Van T. Barfoot was born in Edinburg , Texas . That probably didn't make news back then.

But twenty-five years later, on May 23, 1944, near Carano, Italy , that same Van T. Barfoot, who had in 1940 enlisted in the U.S. Army, set out alone to flank German machine gun positions from which gunfire was raining down on his fellow soldiers.

His advance took him through a minefield but having done so, he proceeded to single-handedly take out three enemy machine gun positions, returning with 17 prisoners of war.

And if that weren't enough for a day's work, he later took on and destroyed three German tanks sent to retake the machine gun positions.

That probably didn't make much news either, given the scope of the war, but it did earn Van T. Barfoot, who retired as a Colonel after also serving in Korea and Vietnam , a well deserved Congressional Medal of Honor.

 

What did make news...
was his Neighborhood Association's quibble with how the 90-year-old veteran chose to fly the American flag outside his suburban Virginia home.
Seems the HOA rules said it was OK to fly a flag on a house-mounted bracket, but, for decorum, items such as Barfoot's 21-foot flagpole were "unsuitable".

 

Van Barfoot had been denied a permit for the pole, but erected it anyway and was facing court action unless he agreed to take it down.

Then the HOA story made national TV, and the Neighborhood Association rethought its position and agreed to indulge this aging hero who dwelt among them.

"In the time I have left", he said to the Associated Press, "I plan to continue to fly the American flag without interference."

As well he should.
And if any of his neighbors had taken a notion to contest him further, they might have done well to read his Medal of Honor citation first. Seems it indicates Mr. Van Barfoot wasn't particularly good at backing down.

Van T. Barfoot's Medal of Honor citation:

This 1944 Medal of Honor citation, listed with the National Medal of Honor Society, is for Second Lieutenant Van T. Barfoot, 157th Infantry, 45th Infantry:

States DO Have The Right To Secede! ... J. D. Longstreet

States DO Have The Right To Secede!
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet
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Allow me to say, right of, that I do not believe my fellow Americans now calling for secession will actually go so far as to secede.  Although, eventually, there WILL be a breakup of the United States, that much is abundantly clear.

In my opinion, the petitions for secession are expressions of the frustration and anger of the general populace of America today.  It is vox populi -- the voice of the people.

Now that those of you who have placed your names on those petitions are being derided as "traitors"  Allow me to ask: Have you any more insight into why I take exception to my great-grandfather being called a "traitor" because he fought as a Confederate soldier for his home state of South Carolina?

The history of the era of the American Civil War has been so rewritten and sanitized to absolve the United States government of any fault, that it is really difficult to get to the truth behind what REALLY happened and what REALLY caused some 13 states, in whole or in part, to leave the Union.  

Here is a quote from one of my favorite Confederate generals --  General Patrick R. Cleburne: "I am with the South in life or in death, in victory or defeat. I never owned a negro and care nothing for them, but these people have been my friends and have stood up to me on all occasions. In addition to this, I believe the North is about to wage a brutal and unholy war on a people who have done them no wrong, in violation of the Constitution and the fundamental principles of the government...We propose no invasion of the North, no attack on them, and only ask to be let alone." ...  Patrick R. Cleburne

Later, Cleburne warned what would happen if the South lost.  He was spot on!  Here's what he said:  "Every man should endeavor to understand the meaning of subjugation before it is too late... It means the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy; that our youth will be trained by Northern school teachers; will learn from Northern school books their version of the war; will be impressed by the influences of history and education to regard our gallant dead as traitors, and our maimed veterans as fit objects for derision... It is said slavery is all we are fighting for, and if we give it up we give up all. Even if this were true, which we deny, slavery is not all our enemies are fighting for. It is merely the pretense to establish sectional superiority and a more centralized form of government, and to deprive us of our rights and liberties." --- Maj. General Patrick R. Cleburne, CSA, January 1864

The point is -- Most of what modern America knows about the "War Between the States" and the causation of that war is WRONG!

There was nothing in the constitution forbidding states from seceding.  There still isn't.   However, if you tell a lie long enough and loud enough,  eventually it will be accepted as truth.

Why, one of the country's most influential politicians of the day supported secession.  He said the following: "Any people anywhere being inclined and having the power have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right—a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can may revolutionize and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit."

Who was this man?  Well, it was none other than Abraham Lincoln!  Lincoln made these remarks on January 12, 1848, in a speech criticizing President James K. Polk's handling of the Mexican War.  

Please note this sentence from Lincoln's remarks above:  "Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it."   See, RIGHT THERE Lincoln expresses his belief that a portion, or portions, of an existing government has/have a right to secede -- as in the states of my beloved Confederacy.  

No, dear reader, if you want to know the real reason behind the War Between the States -- follow the money. It is (almost) always about money.  What you will learn is that the southern states were supporting the Union financially. Lincoln knew, without a doubt, that if the southern states were allowed to leave,  what was left of the United States would collapse. There would be no money to run the country of the US. THAT'S what the war was about. And all this time you thought it was about slavery, right?

Many, many, times I have told my readers that the conditions in America today mimic those of the decades prior to the War Between the States.   Modern America is now getting a taste of what my southern forebears suffered -- the frustration and anger that drove them out of the Union.  When a people's own government turns a blind eye and a deaf ear to their grievances, they sometimes take drastic action.
I'm not a fan of Abraham Lincoln.  I'm not a member of the Lincoln cult, nor am I a subscriber to the Lincoln myth.  In my estimation Lincoln was NOT a good man.  Here's why: "His notable actions as president include the initiation of a catastrophic war in order to prevent secession, the murder of 350,000 Americans, the attempted deportation of all blacks to Liberia, the destruction of the Tenth Amendment, the suspension of habeas corpus, the Union blockade, the imprisonment of 15,000 political opponents without a trial, the shutdown of critical newspapers, the restriction of firearm ownership, the rigging of elections, the draft, the murder of draft protesters, the division of Virginia for an electoral advantage, the destruction, plundering, rape, and murder of Southern civilian towns, the nationalization of railroads, the Morrill Tariff, the National Banking Act, the use of greenbacks, the creation of deficits, the genocidal policy toward the Sioux, the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act, the creation of a temporary income tax, the order to make medicine contraband, the attempted assassination of Jefferson Davis, the use of water torture on Northern civilians, and the cotton industry takeover."  SOURCE:  http://wiki.mises.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln   

Often many of Lincoln's enumerated actions above are excused by those who say: "But, he was trying to preserve the Union."  Maybe so. But it has to be said that Lincoln was trying to preserve something the people of the country, at least 13 states and assorted territories,  clearly did not want preserved.   Sort of like preserving oh, I don't know, maybe Obamacare, for instance. You know, something the people do not want today.

Yes, I DO believe states have the right to secede from the US.  The Tenth Amendment  to the US Constitution (known as the "Reserved Powers Amendment") says the following:  "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Note the phrase:  "nor prohibited by it to the States."  There it is. If the constitution does not give a certain power to the federal government and doesn't prohibit the states from exercising that power, then, it is left up to the states, and/or the people, to decide IF they want to exercise that power, HOW they want to exercise that power -- or not.   You can quickly see how a strong central government such as the one we have today (fathered, we might add, by Abraham Lincoln) finds this amendment a threat.

The secession petitions are a warning shot across the bow of the US government. Frankly, I expect the government to pay as much attention to these petitions as it did to the petitions of my southern ancestors in the 1850's.  Unfortunately, if future events take their natural course we may expect civil unrest to follow, and then, well, I don't want to even think about that. 

© J. D. Longstreet
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