Southern cooking at its "finest"

"The specialty is a buffet, which typically includes sweet potatoes, macaroni and cheese, deep-fried Twinkies, fried chicken, cheesy meatloaf, greens, beans, and creamed corn. Every meal is served with a garlic cheese biscuit and one of Deen's famous hoecakes. Her sons are also involved in managing the restaurant, which is popular with tourists to Savannah."
...
"In January 2012, she announced she has had type 2 diabetes for the last three years."
...

Maybe she will come out with a "lite" version that would have stir-fried Twinkies instead...

New studies reveal caffeinated coffee protects against Alzheimer's, diabetes, depression and prostate cancer

Of course, as with any research, one has to add the qualifier "this week". But still this sounds pretty good!

Can I have a pony too?

"AARP, formerly the American Association of Retired Persons and a powerful interest group for older Americans, recently launched a national advertising campaign urging members of Congress to protect current and future retirees from cuts to their Social Security and Medicare benefits."

Now they tell us!

Ok, this is a little out of date, but of course nothing has been done about it.

Not that there is anything that can be done at this point...

"Do you hear that rumble in the distance? That is the Baby Boomers - they are getting ready to retire. On January 1st, 2011 the very first Baby Boomers turn 65. Millions upon millions of them are rushing towards retirement age and they have been promised that the rest of us are going to take care of them. Only there is a huge problem. We don't have the money. It simply isn't there. But the millions of Baby Boomers getting ready to retire are counting on that money to be there."

One of these days, right to the moon, Newt!

n a time of economic distress and an angry determination amongst Republicans to turf President Barack Obama out of the White House, Gingrich's detour to the moon - he has promised to establish a permanent lunar colony within eight years - is a gift not only to satirists but also to his opponents. It's the kind of subject, really, that you'd have to be from another plan[e]t to think would gain you some traction in a Republican primary battle.

I'm in favor of space travel, but it should be private, which is also what Ron Paul said.

He also got the best response from the audience by saying that we should send some politicians to the moon. One way, I assume...

"A Way to Make People Buy Homes Again"

The idea that making people buy homes will help the economy recover is an example of a modern day "cargo cult":

'The primary association in cargo cults is between the divine nature of "cargo" (manufactured goods) and the advanced, non-native behavior, clothing and equipment of the recipients of the "cargo". Since the modern manufacturing process is unknown to them, members, leaders, and prophets of the cults maintain that the manufactured goods of the non-native culture have been created by spiritual means, such as through their deities and ancestors, and are intended for the local indigenous people, but that the foreigners have unfairly gained control of these objects through malice or mistake. Thus, a characteristic feature of cargo cults is the belief that spiritual agents will, at some future time, give much valuable cargo and desirable manufactured products to the cult members.'

In this particular case, it is economics rather than "the modern manufacturing process" that is unknown to the "members, leaders and prophets of the cult", but the essential error is the same: trying to acquire the end product of a process by miraculous means rather than through the hard work and knowledge necessary to implement the process in question.

I'm expecting an objection from the Condiment Defense League

As Jonathan Turley pointed out,

"Elected Officials Score Lower on Civics Tests Than Average Citizens (Who Score Lower than Basic Condiments)"

If you want to take the test yourself, it's here.

That depends on the definition of "detained"

Sen. Rand Paul’s chief of staff Doug Stafford responded to the TSA’s claim that the senator was “not detained at any point.” “Well, I don’t know what bureaucrat manuals call it, but: an innocent American citizen who was offering to cooperate while also attempting to stop an invasive search was not allowed to proceed without complying,” Stafford said in an email to TheDC.

You certainly wouldn't want to invest like this!

Over the last decade, [Ron] Paul's portfolio has beaten the market as well as the vast majority of hedge funds, yet Barron's labeled Paul's investment strategy a "financial planner's nightmare." Okay, so what? After all, should an investor's priority be how soundly their financial planner sleeps or the identification of suitable and timely investments that present a value proposition?
Perhaps Barron's feels Paul was too focused on winners, and needed to diversify into some losers.

Austrian economics in five minutes

Without property rights, there cannot be a free market in the exchange of goods and services.

Without a free market, without a willing buyer and a willing seller, it is IMPOSSIBLE to know the real price of anything.

Without the price, it is IMPOSSIBLE for anyone to make the necessary economic calculation, that is to know when the inputs to an activity (labor or raw materials) costs more or less than the output of an activity (the value of the thing produced or service performed).

Without the economic calculation, it is IMPOSSIBLE for an economic activity to make a profit and thus be sustainable. Conversely, it is IMPOSSIBLE for an unprofitable economic activity to be sustainable.

Without profit, it is IMPOSSIBLE to have resources from which to feed, clothe and house those who are involved in the activity.

Without profit, it is IMPOSSIBLE, to have excess resources to set aside in the form of savings.

Without savings, it is IMPOSSIBLE to have capital to invest in new economic activities.

Without the ability to have property rights to those savings, it is IMPOSSIBLE to evaluate all of the other possible economic activities to find the ones that carries the least risk when compared to their anticipated return, and to properly allocate savings to the most promising investments.

Without new economic activity and without the ability for others to invest as it suits the saver, the economy cannot have the opportunity nor the resources with which to adapt to changing circumstances, let alone to provide jobs and resources for the next generation.

Without honest money, government is free to destroy the very means of accounting for, saving and exchanging wealth. Without the assurance that money will retain its value, people will not save but instead will either consume excess wealth or will store it in forms like fixed assets that preclude investment in new economic activity.

In other words, without property rights, a free market, price information that allows economic calculation of profit, the ability to save with the assurance those savings are free to be invested when and where the saver sees fit, and without honest money, a sustainable economy is IMPOSSIBLE.

Without a sustainable economy, it is IMPOSSIBLE for humans enjoy any level of prosperity. This is exactly the reason that North Koreans are reduced to foraging for bark and grass to fill their empty stomachs. Their government forbids property rights, forbids a free market, destroys price information, confiscates savings, forbids investment and has no economic growth.

Liberty, property, profit, investment, capital and honest money are the only means of creating a sustainable economy. All other ways have been tried and have failed utterly. Yet, somehow, property rights, profit, capital and honest money are still considered to be evil, particularly in the thinking of people still yearning for the perfect socialist Utopia. Socialism is in reality the economy of death.

At $1 million/oz., there's PLENTY of gold

"The gold coin standard, although imperfectly adhered to, permitted startling economic growth combined with falling prices in the 19th century," [Ron] Paul wrote in his 1981 book "Gold, Peace and Prosperity: The Birth of a New Currency." "In the 67 years since the abolition of the gold standard, the Consumer Price Index has gone up 625 percent. In the previous 67 years, under an imperfect gold coin standard, the CPI increased 10 percent."

Mark Thoma, an economics professor at the University of Oregon who also has written on the gold standard, said there's not enough gold in the world to cover the value of global transactions and thus alleviate the need for paper money — meaning governments would still want to float their currencies' value against gold.

I guess that depends on your definition of "counted"

*Gingrich won most of the votes of people who said religion counted; Romney won those who said it did not.

The American way of life (or death)

Sickcare, the fast-food/packaged food industries, the entertainment industry and the Marketing/Mainstream Media complex are all facets of one system.

Read the whole article.

Taking a "fair and balanced" CNN moderator to task

Following a back-and-forth between Republican presidential candidates Gingrich, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum, King changed the topic, only to be booed by the crowd.

Because he had completely ignored the fourth candidate on stage, Paul.

Paul laughed off the oversight, noting “John, once again, it’s a medical subject and I’m a doctor!” Paul, an obstetrician, went on to weigh in on the subject.

Sure, if by "uphold" you mean "eviscerate"

Addressing what supporters claim about the NDAA, Paul continued:

Some have argued that nothing in Section 1021 explicitly mandates holding Americans without trial, but it employs vague language, radically expanding the detention authority to include anyone who has substantially supported certain terrorist groups or associated forces. No one has defined what those terms mean. What is an associated force?

But as noted by Paul, members of Congress are all too willing to infringe upon constitutional rights under the guise of security, and to use fear mongering to coerce Americans into willingly allowing their rights to be infringed upon. He even referred to a statement by Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) regarding the indefinite detention of American citizens. Paul observed,

Sadly, too many of my colleagues are too willing to undermine our Constitution to support such outrageous legislation. One senator even said about American citizens being picked up under this section of the NDAA, "When they say I want a lawyer, you tell them, shut up. You don't get a lawyer."

Is this acceptable in someone who has taken an oath to uphold the Constitution?

"Freedom is slavery"

according to George Orwell's "1984".

Now let's hear what Rick Santorum says about freedom:

"According to Santorum, who apparently fancies himself as an historian, freedom in America means "the freedom to do what you ought to do – what you
are properly ordered to do [by a politician like himself] – as someone living a good, decent, and ordered life" (emphasis added). "That’s the
differentiation that I believe Ron Paul and I have with respect to what liberty is," said Santorum. To Rick Santorum, "freedom" means doing what
government "properly" orders you to do, as long as government is controlled by good, proper, moral people like himself, the K-Street lobbyist for the
Pennsylvania coal mining industry (and anyone else who will pay his huge fees for influence peddling)."

What does Ron Paul want?

On the surface, I'm not sure why anyone needs to ask this question. He wants to be President, as do all the candidates; otherwise, he wouldn't be running.

But on another level, that is a good question, even though the author of the referenced "article" doesn't know it. The reason Dr. Paul wants to be President is to greatly reduce the Federal government's intervention into our lives. So in that way, his desire is greatly different from that of the other candidates, all of whom want to increase that intervention.

Of course, it's a little harder to change the rules in the real world

In the days since the encounter with five Iranian patrol boats in the Strait of Hormuz, American officers have acknowledged that they have been studying anew the lessons from a startling simulation conducted in August 2002. In that war game, the Blue Team navy, representing the United States, lost 16 major warships — an aircraft carrier, cruisers and amphibious vessels — when they were sunk to the bottom of the Persian Gulf in an attack that included swarming tactics by enemy speedboats.
...
General Van Riper’s attack was much more complex and sophisticated than anything that could have involved the Iranian boats last weekend. The broad outline of the 2002 war game was reported at the time, but in interviews since last weekend’s episode, General Van Riper and other officers have provided new details about the simulation.

In the war game, scores of adversary speedboats and larger naval vessels had been shadowing and hectoring the Blue Team fleet for days. The Blue Team defenses also faced cruise missiles fired simultaneously from land and from warplanes, as well as the swarm of speedboats firing heavy machine guns and rockets — and pulling alongside to detonate explosives on board.

When the Red Team sank much of the Blue navy despite the Blue navy’s firing of guns and missiles, it illustrated a cheap way to beat a very expensive fleet. After the Blue force was sunk, the game was ordered to begin again, with the Blue Team eventually declared the victor.

At least there are only two places the government overspends

Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul returned from the campaign to warn of global consequences if Congress fails to curb spending.

"I believe we're in denial here in the Congress," Paul said on the House floor. "If we had the vaguest idea of how serious this crisis is financially, not only for us but for the world, we'd cut spending, because you can't solve the problem of debt by accumulating more debt."

The Texas lawmaker deadpanned that the federal government's overspending is at least [be] limited to two places.

"Where do we spend too much money? In two places: overseas and domestically."

Keystone XL rejection causes Canada to look to China

Harper, Oliver and Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird had all said they supported the Keystone XL pipeline and that they would find alternate markets for Canadian energy if the U.S. isn't interested.
Harper is visiting China next month and is expected to discuss ways to increase trade.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2012/01/18/pol-keystone-xl-pipeline.html

What they conveniently forgot to mention was that the intended destination for the "oil" being sent south via the Keystone XL pipeline wasn't the US anyway.

Fantasy -> reality

With all the spinning coming out of the news media, we need someone to translate the news from fantasy into reality. Let's give it a try.