1354: Pat Robertson: Haitians Deserved Earthquake

From the BBC:

Promiscuous women are responsible for earthquakes, a senior Iranian cleric has said.

Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi told worshippers in Tehran last Friday that they had to stick to strict codes of modesty to protect themselves.

“Many women who do not dress modestly lead young men astray and spread adultery in society which increases earthquakes,” he said.

America’s christianist mullah would surely agree.

I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog video excursion I present: From My Dad.

Found in my electronic chapbook.

Ian Fleming did this all the time, and not without knowing what he was about. James Bond”s supporting players were all caricatures, deliberately twisted to comic-book grotesquery. They had improbably names and unlikely physical attributes and mannerisms. This made the Bond books vivid and memorable and had a great deal to do with their success. It also made them utterly unrealistic and ruined them for those readers for whom the illusion of reality is a requirement for the enjoyment of fiction. p. 225

From Telling Lies for Fun and Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers by Lawrence Block.

I”m holding at 257 pounds this morning. My breakfast is a small banana with a Danon Light & Fit yogurt, 1/4 cup of Grapenuts and black coffee. I followed that at midmorning with a protein boost in the form of a single egg sandwich on one slice of Stone Oven”s multi-grain bread.

This has been one of those days when I would be sorely tempted to just order a pizza, but I”ve been so busy that there just wasn”t time for it. I ate my turkey and Swiss sandwich for lunch and nibbled on the carrot sticks and apple slices in mid-afternoon. We had another Israel independence day celebration at school with food following. I kept myself to a cup of Israeli salad (chopped tomatoes and cucumbers) and three bagel chips, two with hummus. On my way to my evening student I ate the celery sticks and cucumber slices in rice vinegar and finished off my buffalo and Swiss with tomato and red union along with the whole wheat pasta with broccoli for dinner when I got home. I had the other half of the apple in lemon juice for desert.

I”ve just put the kettle on to make my mug of Tension Tamer with 1 tsp of honey.

Update @ 1036, 0647: Pat Robertson: Haitians Deserved Earthquake

Our nation works only when the citizenry are hyper-vigilant, watching every move our elected officials make and assume that if politicians are not closely watched, they will go wrong. We can trust our Constitution, but nothing else. If 22 percent of Americans trust their government, the men and women charged with upholding our Constitution, that’s way too big of a percentage.

From Reuters:

Nearly 80 percent of Americans say they do not trust the U.S. government to do what is right, expressing the highest level of distrust in Washington in half a century, according to a public opinion survey.

Only 22 percent of Americans say they trust the government “just about always” or “most of the time,” according to the Pew Research Center survey released on Sunday.

Americans’ trust in the federal government has been on a steady decline from a high of 73 percent during the Eisenhower administration in 1958, when the “trust” question was first posed in a national survey, the research center said.

Do you know what your elected officials are doing right now?

Roldo Bartimole writes:

Here are some questions I would appreciate answered from the Cuyahoga County Commissioners and/or their attorney Jeffery Applebaum. I don”t believe any of the questions would interfere with the sticky problem of negotiating the best prices for the project. That”s the excuse being used to keep the public in the dark, it appears.

Presumably, proper plans and a proper lease would answer these questions.

Here are my questions. Somehow I ended up with 13 categories of questions. I hope I didn”t jinx the project:

– Will Cuyahoga County taxpayers pay for the site and construction of the medical mart to be used as a private business of MMPI of Chicago? (Actually, we already know. The answer is yes.)

– Will Cuyahoga County taxpayers consider the MMPI Medical Mart a property tax exempt building? In other words, will it ever pay any property taxes? (I think we already know this answer, too. It”s yes.)

– Will Cuyahoga County taxpayers finance the furniture, Continue Reading »

I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog video excursion I present: From My Dad.

Found in my electronic chapbook.

By concentrating on details and not attempting to describe photographically, you greatly increase your chances of writing something the reader will happen to remember. By relating those aspect of the character worth mentioning, and by omitting pedestrian physical description, you make an impression upon the reader. p. 225

From Telling Lies for Fun and Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers by Lawrence Block.

This is a consideration on my Going Up From Egypt. Chaos rules my life right now and I”ve felt overwhelmed of late as a result. While no one can ever remove all chaos from their life, we, and I, can do much to reduce the chaos. One aspect of my journey is to greatly reduce the frenzy that is all too often my mindless eating; a big portion of the stuff I wanted to eliminate from my life is a part of me, about 80 pounds of me.

I started this morning (at 258 pounds) with black tea, with sugar; a whole-wheat bagel, toasted with butter; a hardboiled egg plus black coffee. That was followed by two cupcakes with blue and white sprinkles during Sunday school – we were celebrating Yom H”Atzma”ut (Israel independence day) – and a small pizza from Heinan”s for lunch.

This afternoon I hit Zagara”s and bought: six, 3.2 oz. of skinless chicken breasts; 1.06 oz. of sliced deli turkey (enough for eight sandwiches); 2, 7.4 oz. buffalo patties; a dozen large organic eggs; 8.8 oz. of Swiss cheese (10 slices); 32 oz. of whole wheat spaghetti; 32 oz. of whole wheat rigatoni; four, 3 oz. whole wheat Bollillo sandwich rolls; 8 oz. of broccoli; a 13 oz. red onion; a 14 oz. slicing tomato; four, 7.5 oz apples; and six, 5 oz. bananas.

I used the four rolls with half the turkey and eight slices of the cheese to make sandwiches for lunch this week. I froze three and will eat the fourth tomorrow. I”ll pack 1/2 of an apple in lemon juice, and a cup each of celery and carrot sticks with rice vinegar in the lunch as well. I”ll slice up the last of my English cucumber (a cup, also in rice vinegar) as an afternoon snack.

For supper I grilled one of the buffalo patties on my Foreman grill (hardly any fat in the tray afterwards) and topped it with the remaining two slices of Swiss cheese. While that was grilling I put 1/2 cup of the whole wheat rigatoni on to cook and chopped up the broccoli to steam with garlic and red-pepper flakes. When the broccoli was steaming I sliced the onion and tomato and then chopped up one slice of each. I served the broccoli and pasta with 2 tbsp. of parmesan cheese.

I”ve begun reading Jon Kabat-Zinn”s Mindful Eating, A guide to rediscovering a healthy and joyful relationship with food. Mindful eating is nothing more than eating meditation, being there then. Easy to say, a few seconds to learn and a lifetime to practice and never perfect. The intent is to simply experience nothing but the food for the duration of the meal. Your monkey mind will work overtime to distract you to the point of stealing the experience of eating from you. How often have I had this happen to me? A life-time”s worth of meals. I think I may have experienced a handful of mindful meals. My goal, a dream with a plan, is to correct that.

This evening as I ate, I focused on the color, scent, texture and taste of my food. I also realized that my mind bounced every which way when I allowed it to leave the food in front of me. The plate was quite full and I surprised myself by realizing half-way through that I was also full. Nearly an hour later I still feel full. This is good. I filled a container with the rest of the meal and placed it in the refrigerator. It may become tomorrow night”s dinner.

The broccoli is important. Years ago I bought a copy of Andrew Weil”s Eight Weeks To Optimum Health and really liked the book. After reading that book I discovered that I really did like eating broccoli when it is steamed for five minutes so that it retains its crispness and takes on a bright green color. Weil”s recipe is simple: to the broccoli add a drizzle of olive oil, garlic and red-pepper flakes; steam for five minutes and serve over pasta (part of the dinner I had this evening). Weil recommends eating broccoli twice a week.

To Weil”s recipe I”m now adding an Asian broccoli recipe from Jamie Oliver”s Food Revolution. Again, starting with perfectly steamed broccoli, Oliver creates a dressing of: fresh ginger (I need to buy ginger root and a good grater), garlic, fresh red chile (I”m not sure if I can find fresh, red-pepper flakes may be my substitute), sesame oil, olive oil, soy sauce, balsamic vinegar and fresh lime juice. I”m going to try this for dinner on either Wednesday or Thursday.

Dinners can be problematic for me when I have evening students like I do Monday and Tuesday this week. Those, plus the times I don”t pack a lunch, are when I eat the worst, grabbing fast food and wolfing down several hundred calories on the run and not really tasting, or enjoying, the food I”m fueling my body with. This is the way you get to weigh 258 pounds.

As I prepare for bed I”m enjoying a cup of Celestial Seasonings”s Tension Tamer tea with half-a-tablespoon of honey. It always helps me to unwind and sleep well.

Andrew Sullivan writes:

Over the last decade, it is surely evident that big government has come back with a vengeance. And one has to grasp that part of the tea-party anger is pent up from the Bush years. Most of the rational tea-partiers accept that the GOP has been as bad – if not worse – than the Democrats on spending, borrowing and the size and scope of government in recent years. They repressed this anger during the Bush years out of partisan loyalty. Now, they’re taking it all out on the newbie. It’s both fair and also unfair.

It’s fair because Obama is a liberal who believes government can and should help the poor and disadvantaged and has proven it by providing access to insurance for the working poor. But it’s unfair because Obama’s fiscal and governing record is massively distorted by the impact of the bank meltdown, the steep revenue-killing recession, and the stimulus.

Above the fold on the right of this morning’s Plain Dealer
(not yet posted — gee, I wonder why? — online).
Looks like they got around to posting it at 1245.

County Lets MMPI Keep Med Mart Budget Secret…

I want to know the opinion, in detail, of every single candidate for the County Council on this travesty.

1… BOOM…!

I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog video excursion I present: From My Dad.