Saturday, November 8, 2008

Plans for a Food Policy?

Ethicurean, has a rather extensive post exploring what the newly elected American president might do differently about food, farms, and related systems of energy and technology in the United States:

According to Speech Wars, between April and October, John McCain uttered the word “agriculture” only twice, and “nutrition” just once. Barack Obama did slightly better, referring to “agriculture” twelve times and “nutrition” four times. He gave farms a passing mention in his speech at the Democratic National Convention in August. But let’s face it: for the most part, food was a quiet issue, sacrificed to our discussions about race and religion, gender and sexism, oil and bailouts.
Meanwhile, food prices continued to rise. Our nation continued to lose farms daily. We continued to spend billions of dollars treating lifestyle diseases like heart disease, diabetes, and obesity. Rural towns continued to wither. Fertilizer runoff continued to damage our drinking water.

There’s no way around it: the Obama administration will need to address food issues head-on.

Last month, Michael Pollan published a sweeping letter to the next president, Farmer in Chief, in the New York Times. After Pollan’s article was published, the American Farmland Trust noted that “there is no topic of greater importance than the issues [Pollan] raises…it is time to elevate these issues to their rightful place on our national agenda.”

Turns out Obama might agree; Obama read Pollan’s article and even worked it into discussions of energy policy. So what might we expect from an Obama administration when it comes to food policy? Maybe quite a bit. In his plan for rural America, he lays out a number of policy positions that are a departure from the status quo.

Read the whole post here: What does an Obama win mean for the U.S. food supply?

As of this moment ...

4192 Brave men and women will not be returning from Iraq
ALIVE!

Twenty-Two Hundred

Some days you are the Lion and some days you are the Baboon.
The secret is in knowing the difference!

Among the offices Barack Obama has yet to fill, one has a special importance to his family: first dog.

At his first postelection news conference on Friday, the president-elect called choosing a dog a "major issue" in the Obama household and a hot topic on his Web site.

"We have two criteria that have to be reconciled. One is that Malia is allergic, so it has to be hypoallergenic," he said. "On the other hand, our preference would be to get a shelter dog, but a lot of shelter dogs are mutts like me."

*****

With everybody else putting their two-cents on this issue of massive importance (And no, I am not joking. The selection of a canine family member is of the utmost importance.), my two-cents is 'get the mutt', they make better friends than most 'pure breeds'.

Chipotle Beef Chili

You need:

1 teaspoon extra olive oil
1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
1 cup water
Nonstick spray coating
2 cloves garlic, minced
3 to 4 teaspoons chopped, chipotle peppers
8 ounces beef top sirloin steak
1 teaspoon dried basil, crushed
1 14-1/2-ounce can no salt added/low sodium tomatoes, undrained and cut up
1 teaspoon dried oregano, crushed
1 teaspoon chili powder
1 8-ounce can no salt added/low sodium tomato sauce

How to:

1. Trim fat from beef. Cut beef into bite-size strips. Spray a large saucepan with nonstick coating. Preheat on medium-high heat. Cook and stir beef in saucepan over medium-high heat for 2 to 3 minutes or until beef is browned. Remove beef from saucepan; set aside.

2. Carefully add oil to hot saucepan. Cook garlic in hot oil until tender. Stir in undrained tomatoes, tomato sauce, water, chipotle peppers, basil, oregano, chili powder, and cumin. Bring to boiling; reduce heat. Simmer, covered, for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

3. Return to simmering. Simmer, covered, for 5 minutes more, stirring occasionally. Return beef to saucepan. Heat through. Makes three 1-1/2-cup servings.

Bali nightclub bombers executed

Three men convicted of killing 202 people in a 2002 bombing at two nightclubs on the Indonesian island of Bali were executed by firing squad early Sunday.

Imam Samudra, Amrozi bin Nurhasyim and his brother Mukhlas, who is also known as Ali Ghufron, were executed at 12:15 a.m. at Nusa Kampangan prison, said Jasman Panjaitan, a spokesman for Indonesia's attorney-general.

Same old clap-trap

"His promise to 'spread the weath around', scares the shit out of me. Watch your wallets with the Democrats in charge!"

The quote above and many such quotes are coming from the still ignorant and ill-informed about Obama's and the Democrats Landslide (a true landslide and not just called one to benefit the republicans as they have called every election they have stolen) last Tuesday.

They are ignorant to believe the lies they are fed by the republicans - particularly the repugican fringe - and woefully ill-informed as to who is better for your wallet.

From the very beginning of the republican party to today, the largest and most severe tax hikes in history have been their doing - every single one!

And it is not only taxes but investments as well are far better off with the Democrats in charge than when the republicans are screwing everyone over.

Each party has 'controlled' the government for 40 years each - give or take - since the stock market crash of 1929 that plunged us into Great Depression.

Now here is a little fact for you to chew on all you wing-nuts out there.

If you had $10,000 dollars to invest in 1929 and you only invested it during times republicans were 'in charge' you would have made a profit of $41,000 dollars in those forty years and have $51,000 dollars in the bank.

Not too shabby you say.

But wait ...

With the Democrats in charge and with that same initial $10,000 dollar investment invested only when they were in charge for their forty years you would have a profit of $375,000 dollars and have $385,000 in the bank.

OK, so tell me again that the republicans are better for my wallet again?!

Statehood

Found this over at Grow-A-Brain.
Do you know when your state joined the United states?

Monkey waiters ... Honest!

I have had some 'monkeys' for waiters in restaurants before but not quite as literal as these.
A restaurant in Japan has two monkeys waiting on tables.
Check out this BBC video of the two waiters in action.

No asylum for bin Laden

His son that is ...

Spain has rejected a final appeal for asylum by a son of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and put him on a plane bound for Egypt, the Interior Ministry and a lawyer for the man said Saturday.

Omar Osama bin Laden and his British wife left Spain on a commercial flight Saturday afternoon, the day after his final appeal for asylum was rejected, lawyer Bianca Sharma told The Associated Press.

"We fought to the last minute," Sharma said. "We used up every legal avenue and it wasn't possible (to stay)."

The couple arrived late Saturday at Cairo airport. Egyptian security officials said they were opening an investigation to determine what prompted the couple to seek political asylum in Spain.

The younger bin Laden, 27, flew to Spain on Monday and spent the week in a transit area at Madrid's Barajas Airport. He claimed he would not be safe if returned to an Arab country.

Sharma described her client as a "beautiful person" who had "nothing to do with fanatics or terrorists." She said his petition was denied for political reasons, and that after arriving in Egypt he would eventually be returned to Saudi Arabia, where he holds citizenship.

Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba confirmed that bin Laden's son had been deported, saying his application for asylum did not meet any Spanish requirements. The Interior Ministry denied his bid for asylum on Wednesday, and turned back the appeal Friday night.

The government says it usually seeks a recommendation from the U.N. refugee agency in asylum request cases, and that the agency had also recommended against asylum.

Omar Osama bin Laden - one of the al-Qaida leader's 19 children - caused a tabloid storm last year after marrying a British woman, 52-year-old Jane Felix-Browne, who has since taken the name Zaina Alsabah.

In an interview with Spain's El Mundo newspaper before her husband's deportation, Felix-Browne said her husband was very upset about the possibility of being sent back.

"Omar is very depressed," she said. "He says it would be better to be dead."

The couple have been living in Cairo. The younger bin Laden has not renounced his father, but has said he wants to be an "ambassador for peace" between the Muslim world and the West.

Osama bin Laden is believed to be hiding in the Pakistan-Afghan border region.

The younger bin Laden moved to Afghanistan with his father in 1996 after living with him in Sudan, and trained at an al-Qaida camp. But Omar has said he has not seen his father since he left Afghanistan in 2000 and returned to his homeland of Saudi Arabia.

Addendum:

It looks like he isn't wanted in Egypt either ...

The son of al-Qaida leader Osama Bin Laden was questioned at the Cairo airport by Egyptian officials on Saturday after his application for asylum in Spain was rejected, said an airport security official.

Omar Osama bin Laden sought asylum in Spain, claiming he wound not be safe if returned to an Arab country.

Spain said his application did not meet its requirements.

Bin Laden, 27, and his wife were then sent back to Egypt, where they have lived for the past year.

Egyptian officials said they were opening an investigation to determine what prompted the couple to seek political asylum in Spain.

The Egyptian airport official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press, said a decision had not yet been made to allow them in the country.

Cash found walls becomes nightmare

A contractor who found $182,000 in Depression-era currency hidden in a bathroom wall has ended up with only a few thousand dollars, but he feels some vindication.

The windfall discovery amounted to little more than grief for contractor Bob Kitts, who couldn't agree on how to split the money with homeowner Amanda Reece.

It didn't help Reece much, either. She testified in a deposition that she was considering bankruptcy and that a bank recently foreclosed on one of her properties.

And 21 descendants of Patrick Dunne - the wealthy businessman who stashed the money that was minted in a time of bank collapses and joblessness - will each get a mere fraction of the find.

"If these two individuals had sat down and resolved their disputes and divided the money, the heirs would have had no knowledge of it," said attorney Gid Marcinkevicius, who represents the Dunne estate. "Because they were not able to sit down and divide it in a rational way, they both lost."

Kitts was tearing the bathroom walls out of an 83-year-old home near Lake Erie in 2006 when he discovered two green metal lockboxes suspended inside a wall below the medicine chest, hanging from a wire. Inside were white envelopes with the return address for "P. Dunne News Agency."

"I ripped the corner off of one," Kitts said during a deposition in a lawsuit filed by Dunne's estate. "I saw a 50 and got a little dizzy."

He called Reece, a former high school classmate who had hired him for a remodeling project.

They counted the cash and posed for photographs, both grinning like lottery jackpot winners.

But how to share? She offered 10 percent. He wanted 40 percent. From there things went sour.

A month after The Plain Dealer reported on the case in December 2007, Dunne's estate got involved, suing for the right to the money.

By then there was little left to claim.

Reece testified in a deposition that she spent about $14,000 on a trip to Hawaii and had sold some of the rare late 1920s bills. She said about $60,000 was stolen from a shoe box in her closet but testified that she never reported the theft to police.

Kitts said Reece accused him of stealing the money and began leaving him threatening phone messages. Marcinkevicius doesn't believe the money was stolen but said he couldn't prove otherwise.

Reece's phone number has been disconnected, and her attorney Robert Lazzaro did not return a call seeking comment. There were no court records showing that Reece had filed for bankruptcy.

Kitts said he lost a lot of business because media reports on the case portrayed him as greedy, but he feels vindicated by the court's decision to give him a share.

"I was not the bad guy that everybody made me out to be," Kitts said. "I didn't do anything wrong."

He's often asked why he didn't keep his mouth shut and pocket the money. He says he wasn't raised that way.

"It was a neat experience, something that won't happen again," Kitts said. "In that regard, it was pretty fascinating; seeing that amount of money in front of you was breathtaking. In that regard, I don't regret it.

"The threats and all - that's the part that makes you wish it never happened."

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Trying to save historic Tin Pan Alley

A group of New Yorkers is fighting to save Tin Pan Alley, the half-dozen row houses where iconic American songs were born.

The four-story, 19th-century buildings on Manhattan's West 28th Street were home to publishers of some of the catchiest American tunes and lyrics - from "God Bless America" and "Take Me Out To The Ballgame" to "Give My Regards to Broadway."

The music of Irving Berlin, Scott Joplin, Fats Waller, George M. Cohan and other greats was born on Tin Pan Alley.

The buildings were put up for sale earlier this fall for $44 million, with plans to replace them with a high-rise.

The construction plan fell through amid the turmoil in the economy, but the possibility of losing the historic block hastened efforts to push for landmark status for Tin Pan Alley.

"The fear of these buildings being sold for development crystallized their importance, and the need to preserve them," said Simeon Bankoff, executive director of the Historic Districts Council, a nonprofit preservation organization aiming to secure city landmark status for the buildings, which would protect them from being destroyed.

The Landmarks Commission is "researching the history of the buildings and reviewing whether they'd be eligible for landmark designation," said Lisi de Bourbon, a spokeswoman for New York's Landmarks Preservation Commission.

No date has been set for a decision, which she said depends on "a combination of historical, cultural and architectural significance."

The block is sacred to Tim Schreier, a great-great-grandson of Jerome H. Remick, whose music publishing company occupied one of the houses and employed a young sheet music peddler named George Gershwin.

"I'm not opposed to development in New York, but we have to balance development with history - and this is definitely American cultural history," said Schreier.

From the late 1880s to the mid-1950s, the careers of songwriters who are still popular today were launched from the buildings at 45, 47, 49, 51, 53 and 55 West 28th.

Nearby, high-rise condominiums have pushed out old brownstones.

The four-story Tin Pan Alley buildings house street-level wholesale stores selling clothing, jewelry and fabrics; eight apartment units fill the upper floors.

It's a noisy neighborhood, with trucks beeping as they back up amid street hawkers selling bootleg movies and knockoff perfumes.

A century ago, the windows of music companies broadcast a cacophony of competing piano sounds that earned the area the nickname Tin Pan Alley, to describe what one journalist said sounded like pounding on tin pans.

Leland Bobbe, a 59-year-old photographer, has been renting his apartment at Remick's old building since 1975.

He says it's important to salvage the buildings in a neighborhood "that has lost its uniqueness."

"It's just another symbol of what New York was and what it will no longer be."

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