Lady M’s Salad-Bar-A-Rama: umm, umm, umm!

Grist (an environmental magazine whose motto is “Gloom and doom with a sense of humor®” – although you may  miss the humor part unless you read the “comments” section)  reports:

First Lady Michelle Obama is expected to announce on Monday a major new initiative that would place up to 5,000 salad bars in public schools nationwide, despite uncertainties over how local health inspectors might treat those salad bars and USDA nutrition-tracking rules that could prove a major impediment.

Lady M and Commissar Leon want you to fight obesity

Butt surprisingly, most kids don’t eat salad. Not for lunch. Or dinner. They don’t like it. The only thing they’ll eat off a salad bar are raisins, baby carrots, fried chow mein noodles and bacon bits. Although I guess that technically meets the nutrition requirement of a balanced fruit-vegetable-protein-carbohydrate meal. Which is apparently a real concern of the federal government:

But schools also are deterred by USDA regulations that require students to pass by a cash register or “point of sale” station after they have been to the salad bar to ensure that they have served themselves the correct portions of fruits and vegetables required under the federal lunch program.

Those darned federal school lunch program regulations! That’s going to require a whole new squad of food police in every school cafeteria, and we haven’t even factored that into the budget yet. We’re thinking of bribing the little children into making the right food choices by giving them a toy with every Happy Salad Meal that meets our federal lunch program guidelines:

Part of our trade agreement with India

  Indian craftsmen making Lady M’s Happy Salad Meal toys

(Lady M) has embraced more fruit and vegetable consumption as a major plank in her efforts to improve American diets and combat weight-related illnesses, especially among children. Kass, who directs the First Lady’s nutrition efforts, was seen as central to bringing the various salad-bar interests together and developing a unified effort under the White House banner.

Who would have thought there was such a thing as “various salad-bar interests?”

I’m not sure who all those “various salad-bar interests” are. Aside from the food service contractors who enjoy HUGE contracts with the federal government to supply food for school lunches. Their fat contracts will now be embiggened by the addition of tons of fresh fruits and vegetables. And the SEIU of course.

Do you have any idea how many more food service workers it takes to chop up all those green peppers, broccoli, cauliflower and radishes that the kids won’t eat? And then clean up the mess at the end of the lunch hour and throw away all the uneaten fruit and veggies?

And do you know how much it will cost government-paid food contractors to buy all that produce from certified SEIU-friendly fresh food distributors? Who will buy the produce from other certified SEIU-friendly fresh food handlers and processors? Who will get all that produce from comprehensive-immigration reform friendly “organic” farmers?

The answer is: $4.5 billion. For starters. Think of it as part of our economic stimulus plan. That’s why we need more money. It’s for the children. And their fat behinds.

Meanwhile, Sarah Palin is passing out cookies at schools in Pennsylvania. Cookies! How subversive can you get?

 Is this even going to be a contest?

I thought the Dems were supposed to be the populists around here. I can tell you right now, they’re never going to win the hearts and minds of the American people with fat-free tofu and alfalfa sprouts. Oh, and another thing: sending “fat report cards” home to mom and dad telling them that their children are obese: probably not an endearing feature of the new wOrld order either.

The Dems better hope that Ann Coulter gets her way about repealing the 26th Amendment and raising the voting age to 30. Because if you offer anyone under 30 a choice between chocolate chip cookies and tofu stocked salad bars, I think I know how that vote’s going to go.

Oh, and by the way, bad news for Lady M’s Salad-bar-a-rama: after all her hard work and sacrificing, America’s consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables: down this year. I wonder if it has anything to do with Bush’s recession?

Moovin’ ‘n Shakin’ the Bacon

Our “Let’s Move” program was on the blocks while we hit the campaign trail and the world stage. But now we’re back. Yesterday we put the word out that royal purple was the hue du jour for color matching to Lady M’s workout gear. Newark Mayor Cory Booker obliged,

as did NY Police Chief Ray Kelly.

We donned our new grey gabardine top with a new  grey and red metallic brocade skirt, accessorized with a recycled shoofly on a 3 foot drapery cord, in Newark, where we went to tell the kids to get their fat behinds moving. The skirt was very short, the boob belt was very big and the boots were to die for. Or at least that’s how they smelled to me.

 

I had the seamstress install some expansion joints in the skirt, just to prevent any embarrassing wardrobe failures. I’m pretty confident with the containment system, which does meet NASA standards, but the external layer can only withstand so much pressure (approx. 35k psi) before giving way. I think she did a pretty good job (the seamstress). You have to look really close to even see where she installed them. Maybe now Lady M will consider using her more often.

MO slipped into her work out gear for the Harlem P.A.L. appearance.

 

Here’s our sexy royal purple work out gear that the team was ordered to coordinate with. Sexier from the front than the back however.

Grabbing the relay bag – in designated lavender hue

Later, Lady M ordered the kids to move their fat behinds. She looked like she meant business.

 

Nice relay, wait! Hue violation! This bag is red!

Big Guy’s day didn’t go quite as well, aside from the gloating over GM’s IPO which he’s taking credit for and using as an offset to the deficit ( he doesn’t really know how accounting works). Of course the bondholders and common shareholders are still ticked off about getting screwed in BO’s bail out that gave the biggest piece of the pie to his union buddies. Butt they’ll forget about it by 2012.

On the other side of yesterday’s ledger (we’re still working on that “ledger” concept with Big Guy) we had to record a few negatory entries.

First there was the  Ahmed Ghailani decision: Guilty on 1 count, not guilty on 284 counts, and that one was “conspiracy.” No, really! As Big John (Ashcroft) used to paraphrase legal conventional wisdom: “you can convict a ham sandwich on conspiracy.”

We’re putting the best spin on it we can, but by most measures 1 our of 285 isn’t a very good batting average.  If this is the best we can do when we hand pick the prosecutors and the judge, maybe the civilian courts system isn’t the way to go with terrorists after all. If this is Eric’s idea of a “failure is not an option” outcome, I’d hate to see the “failure is a distinct option” result. Regardless, don’t look for GITMO to be throwing a “going out of business” sale anytime soon.

And our START button treaty with the Ruskies? Forget about it. R-word Jon Kyl doesn’t want to even consider it in the Senate’s lame duck session. So Big Guy called a meeting with our heavyweights to see how to get his “Disarm America First” initiative back on track: Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and James Baker. Man, I never thought I’d see the day we’d have to ask Hank Kissinger to help us ram one up America’s butt.

No word yet. They’re still  napping.

Then Democratic wonk James Carville goes on record with this complete inanity: "If Hillary gave him (Obama) one of her balls, they’d both have two," That’s very disrespectful of Big Guy’s Secretary, butt it is an excellent lesson in Government style addition and subtraction.

Butt that’s not the end of it: he goes on one of our own networks (CNN) in order to refuse to apologize:  "If I offended anybody, I am not sorry and I do not apologize," explaining that it was a joke. Need I mention that we do not joke about BO’s manliness around here?

Moving on to the tax cut front: more bad news. You would have expected disagreement from the Republicans – butt they refused to even show up at BO’s conference (another diss). Since only the Dems came you might have thought they could agree on a strategy for extending the tax cuts... butt you’d be wrong. Big Guy couldn’t even herd his own cats.

When he left for Lisbon last night, everyone around here was relieved. I sure hope he feels the love in Europe. Otherwise we’re going to have to up the meds again.

Off we go

Seriously, our Thanksgiving turkey isn’t going to have much to crow about this year, butt he will get a Presidential pardon. I HOPE!.

Mr. Podesta Consults. Beware of Free Advice

Look, I’m not trying to be an alarmist, but this, from John Podesta, is the last thing we need around here: advice on how Big Guy can act more like a South American dictator. In his current state of mind, this is just a little too tempting.

"He needs to rise above the definition of the presidency as just being a skirmish between Republicans and you," said John D. Podesta, the president of the Center for American Progress and a former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton. "If he spends two years in the scrum with these guys, that's what they want. He's capable of doing things on his own without them."

Seriously, don’t those guys over at Center For American Progress read tea leaves? America has grown a bit weary of wandering around in the progressive forest for the time being.

Here’s a little bit that I excerpted from the Executive Summary:

The U.S. Constitution and the laws of our nation grant the president significant authority to make and
implement policy. These authorities can be used to ensure positive progress on many of the key issues
facing the country through:

• Executive orders
• Rulemaking
• Agency management
• Convening and creating public-private partnerships
• Commanding the armed forces
• Diplomacy

The ability of President Obama to accomplish important change through these powers should not be
underestimated…

The report continues to list specific ways these powers can be used. I’ve added some editorial comments, to further clarify Mr. Podesta’s recommendations to Big Guy.

• Reduce oil imports and make progress toward energy independence. ed. reduce supply of oil and replace with domestically generated “green” energy like corn, solar, windmills and mice on treadmills resulting in $10.00/gallon gas and higher inflation than we will get from “Quantitative easing” alone.

• Generate solar energy on U.S. Air Force hangar roofs. ed. See? I told you.

• Create a web portal to empower housing counselors, reduce burdens on lenders and speed up home mortgage
modifications. ed. create a portal that makes all of your private financial information available to the Federal government. This will allow a new bureaucracy of government employees to dictate the terms of loan modification to the banks who have customers in default, ensuring that you pick up the tab for those who were “twicked” into buying a home they could not afford.

• Focus on health care prevention in implementing the Affordable Care Act. ed. I think this means in order to make care affordable, the government will prevent health care treatments if it deems it non-cost-effective.

• Replace costly, inhumane immigration detention policies with equally effective measures. ed. Issue an executive order of Amnesty.

• Streamline and simplify access to federal antipoverty programs. ed. Create more victims, completely dependent on the government.

• Use new information technology for faster, more transparent freedom of information. ed. Create new systems that makes your personal information more transparent to your government.

• Collect data on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans in federal data surveys. ed. Oh great! This will come in handy when the Mooslims take over!

Oby, Rach, better run while you still can! What on earth are these Progressives thinking?

Obama Settles In to His “New Normal” World

We can’t even get bipartisan agreement on when to hold our bipartisan meeting with the R-words. Citing scheduling conflicts, Mitchy and Jon-Bon told Big Guy’s staffers they were unavailable for the big Bi-Par meeting on extending the tax cuts this week. But they aren’t fooling anyone, this is just a blow-off. And need I mention, we are not accustomed to that around here. Yet.

Big Guy still thinks he’s in charge of setting the agenda for the lame-duck session, and has identified his top priority acronyms:

START, a treaty with the Ruskies in which we agree to get rid of all of our nuclear weapons and they pretend to get rid of theirs. The R-words have already thrown a monkey wrench into this plan.  So it looks like BO is going to have to meet with Pootie-Po empty-handed in Lisbon this weekend.

Is it just my angle, or does this picture make these two look like little men with disproportionately large heads?

 

Big Guy’s second priority, the  DREAM bill will provide a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants brought to this country against their will as children. He also wants to throw in free tuition for a college education at the institution of their choice - in order to make up for the fact that they had to endure such long wait times in the crowded ER room while growing up.

Somewhere further down the list of lame-duck priorities is extending the Bush tax rates, or, as we like to say around here, giving tax “cuts” to the middle class. While sticking it to the rich. I suppose the R-words are going to object to that too. Fat Cats.

We did manage to squeeze in a Medal of Honor ceremony yesterday for one of the bravest and most selfless soldiers we’ve ever had the honor of receiving at the Big White. BO did the honors, even though “brave” and “selfless” are characteristics that he doesn’t have any up-close and personal experience with.

Brave, selfless S/Sgt Salvatore Giunta, our first living Medal of Honor winner since Vietnam, receives his medal. Nearly everyone in the room was humbled.

If he did, he would have covered it in one of his first two autobiographies. Maybe he will have the opportunity to encounter them before he writes his next one.

Lady M, having recovered from her Asian jet-lag and able to – finally – squeeze into her containment system again, came out to join the ceremony and pass out her signature hugs.

Imagine my relief when she showed up sans pink Cinderella slippers, toxic green heels or boob belts - and actually covered up the guns. I would like to take credit for this nearly respectable image but actually she forgot about the ceremony, and thought she was dressing to meet with the new assistant pastry chef. I will keep that in mind for future ceremonies.

Lady M was originally planning on going to Lisbon with Big Guy on Friday. Butt since she got all her Winter Holiday Shopping done in India, she’s decided to stay home and run the country instead.

What do you say we just get rid of the middleman, Val?

Paranoia Strikes Deep. The Obama Chronicles

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Honey, I Shrunk the Presidency!

In the D.C. world where it seems that everything else is “unexpected,” isn’t this just predictable:

At the predictably unproductive G-20 summit meeting in South Korea, the president faced demands from China and Germany that the Federal Reserve stop its policy of "quantitative easing" -- which is, given Republican obstructionism, one of the few tools available to promote U.S. economic recovery. What Mr. Obama should have said is that nations' running huge trade surpluses -- and in China's case, doing so thanks to currency manipulation on a scale unprecedented in world history -- have no business telling the United States that it can't act to help its own economy.

But what he actually said was "From everything I can see, this decision was not one designed to have an impact on the currency, on the dollar." Fighting words!

Butt wait a minute! This is friendly fire! From none other than Pauly Walnuts over at the New York Times!

His whining is becoming tiresome. Always, it’s “The sky is falling! The sky is falling!” with him anymore.

Paul Krugman, trying to figure out which way the wind is blowing

But the bitter irony goes deeper than that: the main reason Mr. Obama finds himself in this situation is that two years ago he was not, in fact, prepared to deal with the world as he was going to find it. And it seems as if he still isn’t.

Yeah, butt as Big Guy says,  "As you know, you go offshore with the world you have. Not the world you might want or wish to have at a later time."    

And then there’s this from the op-ed pages of our very own home town newspaper:

“…we believe Obama should announce immediately that he will not be a candidate for reelection in 2012.”

Boy oh boy. Leave town for 10 days and the snakes just start slithering out of every crack and crevice. Isn’t it bad enough that Big Guy has to do “hand to hand combat” with his R-word “enemies,” now we have to do battle with our so-called friends too?

What choo lookin’ at?

Honestly, Big Guy returns to the Big White after his 10 day diplomatic mission to Asia and immediately people are jumping all over his case for embarrassing America. Hey! Is it his fault that Bush drove the damn car into the ditch!

BO’s most successful stop: lickin’ a macha popsicle at the Big Buddah Shrine in Japan.

Oh dear! It looks like our incredible shrinking President just keeps getting smaller and smaller.

Well, it is autumn in Washington – maybe he’ll just head south for the winter. I hear South America is beautiful this time of year.

Meanwhile, Lady M is still recuperating from exhaustion following her most recent round of sacrifices for her country.

“ Hand on heart when National Anthem plays, hand on heart when…”

Today she’ll be recovering with the mocha caramel chocolate chip and extra crunchy Cheetos.