Category Archives: Politics & News

“We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Ban Bread!

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The Earth is in trouble and our carbon dioxide output is obviously to blame. I know this because Al Gore told me so.

We can fix the Earth and lose weight at the same time.

One of the oldest prepared foods and long called the “staff of life,” bread has been baked around the world for at least 30,000 years. Starch residue on rocks used for pounding plants some 30 millennia ago in Europe shows that prehistoric man ate flatbreads with no worries about carbon dioxide output.

CO2?

Yeast devours sugar, then releases carbon dioxide bubbles and small amounts of ethyl alcohol. When the kneaded dough is baked, the heat from the oven forces the yeast into overdrive, which quintuples the rate at which carbon dioxide is produced.

The released carbon dioxide is responsible for bread rising.

Former Vice President Al Gore and Live Earth founder Kevin Wall have called for a 90% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions worldwide by mid-century. “Nations all over the world are making progress in tackling the climate crisis. But too many proposals fall short of the strong, decisive action that’s needed,” Mr. Gore said in 2007.

Victor Preedy, Ronald Ross Watson, Vinood Patel report in Flour and Breads and Their Fortification in Health and Disease Prevention that “Worldwide, bread is one of the most consumed foodstuffs.”

After extensive, even exhaustive 10 minutes of Internet research, I discovered very little statistical data on worldwide bread consumption where “very little” is actually a vanishingly small number approaching, well, zero. I did the next best thing. I asked answers.yahoo.com and found that eating “a TON of bread each day” is the best answer — chosen by voters!

That seemed an order of magnitude or two over the top so I did the next best thing. I asked former North Puffin car dealer and Democratic party official, Mr. Paul “Buster” Door for his take. As a card-carrying member of the Far Green, Buster is always willing to chase assumptions around and around in his head until he comes up with an answer that sounds right.

“Well you see, Dick, it’s like this,” Buster said. “Man can live by bread alone but only the strongest do so. It is well known that prehistoric man ate flatbreads but it wasn’t until Bastet — she was that famed Egyptian foodie — invented yeast that bread sales really puffed up. The market expansion of bread swelled pretty much unencumbered for centuries but it suddenly plummeted in 18th Century Europe, particularly in France. The good news is that worldwide growth of yeast breads has risen back to a high of more than a pound per person per day now world-wide. And that’s why Frenchmen are 2.4 inches taller than they were in 1789.”

“Don’t forget,” Rufus added, “a pounder of beer is the equivalent of a pound of bread!”

The total population of humans is currently estimated to be 6.92 billion. “That’s on planet Earth,” Buster confirmed.

Earthlings release some 25 billion tons of carbon dioxide annually. Plants like rice, wheat, and corn eat some of it but there is plenty left for free floating hyperbole in the atmosphere. That works out to about 6.9 million tons per day.

“A pound of bread is mostly hot air,” Al Gore who should know said. Fresh bread is baked daily in every nation, in every state, in every city, in every hamlet in the world. The production of that 3.46 million tons of daily bread releases something slightly less than 1 million tons of carbon dioxide each and every day.

And that doesn’t take into account the energy required for the great bakery ovens nor the fuel burned to truck the bread from bakery to store.

Mr. Gore and Mr. Wall have called for bakeries to buy carbon credits until engineers can develop commercial methods to eliminate the emission of this dangerous greenhouse gas from bread production.

“We’re looking at salt breads using salts recovered from water desalination plants in Qatar right now,” Mr. Wall said. “The technology is very promising.”

It is worth noting that each and every person in Qatar releases 44.8348 tons of carbon dioxide annually, more than twice the per capita output of Americans. We need to eat more bread to catch up!

Except we can’t.

The new Gore-Wall diet embraces a balanced intake from all the food groups but bans bread.

That’s it. Don’t eat bread. Save the planet. It’s only good science.

Will Free Surgery Take this Screw out of My Backside?

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ShumpleCare = ShumlinCare. You say “rose,” I say “tomato.”

Vermonters will spend about $5 Billion on health care this year.

Last year, Harvard’s William Hsiao developed three models to reform this state’s health care system. Dr. Hsiao, an economics professor, and his team recommend a Single Payer Health Care System. It should be financed, they reported, by a payroll tax of 9% on employers plus 3.5% on workers.

The payroll tax would be imposed on all employers whether they currently provide insurance or not, whether they have a self funded ERISA plan or not. That idea scared Vermont’s largest private sector employer, IBM, which self-insures its thousands of Vermont employees as well as every small business owner in the state.

Five billion dollars.

New state revenue.

There is not a politician in the world not attracted to five billion dollars in new revenue.

The Vermont Assembly passed H.202, the UNIVERSAL AND UNIFIED HEALTH SYSTEM, last week. Governor Peter Shumlin is expected to sign it today.

ShumpleCare (H.202) has four principle components. It institutes a Health Insurance Exchange. It concocts a new bureaucracy, The Vermont Health Care Reform Board. It commits to single payer as the future of health care in Vermont. And it spawns Green Mountain Care to operate the single payer system.

Gov. Shumlin visited Northwestern Medical Center on April 25. The governor dispelled rumors of hospital closures under H.202. (He had told the St. Albans Messenger that some smaller hospitals would be closed.) Hospital CEO Jill Bowen noted that NMC and the governor “disagree on the need to understand the financial and operational details of healthcare reform before it is passed into law.”

Did Gov. Shumlin actually say there is no need to understand the financial and operational details of his healthcare reform plans before they are passed into law?

“Universal health care means universal,” David Karindler, a Vermont Workers Center organizer, said as he decried an H.202 amendment that excludes undocumented workers.

“This is the first time such hateful language has been put in legislation,” he added. “We’re all about inclusion in this state. This is about undocumented people flocking to the state. Why would they flock to a place with no housing and no jobs?”

Did Mr. Karindler actually say this is a bad law because it doesn’t cover people in this country illegally?

The Hsiao report predicted $580 million in savings. The law should spend $395 million of the expected savings to cover the uninsured and under insured, to provide basic dental and vision services, plus another $50 million to recruit new and retain current primary care providers. Wow. An extra $135 million for the Demorats to spend! Woo hoo!

Rep. George Till wouldn’t vote for ShumpleCare until the bill removed all traces of the term “single payer” and replaced it with the words “universal and unified health care system.” Wow. We changed the words. That makes it all alright. Rep. Till, a Democrat, represents Jericho, Underhill and Bolton in the Vermont State House. He is in his second term.

A rose by any other name still falls under Title 32, Chapter 233, §9772 of the universal and unified tax code.

To recap:

  • Vermont’s legislators want to control five billion new dollars each year.
  • Vermont’s governor told us not to sweat the details like cost.
  • Vermont’s lefty loons are revolting because the bill doesn’t cover illegal aliens.
  • Vermonters are left holding the bag. Again.

One great part about living in Vermont is our access to public officials. I’ve called four of the last five governors by their first names; several of them have sat in my living room. I don’t know Peter Shumlin. Yet. One great part about living in Vermont is our ability to talk to public officials. As long as they listen.

As Vermont goes, so goes the nation. Don’t say I didn’t Warn You.

Water into Whine

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Loverly day in North Puffin today. It’s not going to rain.

We’ve gotten over 9 inches of rain since April Fools Day, which is three times the normal rainfall for the period. The not-quite-great-but-still-pretty-darned-good Lake Champlain is more than three feet above flood stage and has broken the all time record for high water by more than a foot.

There was supposed to be patchy fog around this morning but not here. It will be at least partly sunny all day. The temp should be in at least the lower 60s and the 10-15 mph north winds all along the lake will tend to push the water back into the lake and slow the drop, but it ought not drive too much more onshore.

Last night’s report did show the water level draining down a couple of inches from the record high of 103.2 feet above sea level Friday afternoon.

Buying flood insurance never occurred to Bill Stapleton in Underhill. At least not until flood waters swept away 70 feet of his driveway. That cost him $2,000 to fix and temporarily stranded Stapleton and his wife, St. Albans Town Manager Christine Murphy who just approved our concert budget for Bay Day. There are 13,834 structures in the state in high hazard flood zones, and just 2,355 have flood insurance.

The flooding may continue for weeks and will continue to impact homes and camps through the spring and into the summer. Roads and people who are underwater now will be underwater for weeks to come. It usually takes 20 days per foot of drop to drain according to the National Weather Service. That means 60 days — well after the 4th of July — just to get back down to flood stage. If it doesn’t rain more.

Everybody’s talking about Memphis these days. In terms of water in your house, it is NOLA all over again here on the tenth largest lake in the United States and nobody has noticed.

WTF Difference Does It Make?

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WTF difference does it make? I mean really.

War by Hollywood. Or Bollywood. He’s dead and we say he’s dead.
He’s managing a Motel 5 in Roswell and we say he’s dead.
Somebody else is dead so he’s still missing but we say he’s dead.

The jihadists are mad at us ’cause we say we killed him. So what? The jihadists were already mad at us. Nothing new there.

Conspiracy theorists are mad at the Obama ’cause maybe he lied when he says we killed him. So what? The conspiracy theorists were already mad at Obama. Nothing new there.

Can’t we go back to a real news cycle like the high speed 40 mph chase of OJ?

Making Friends, Part I

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Two weeks ago in Boston, Geoffrey Mutai ran the fastest marathon ever with a time of 2:03:02. He blew by the standing world-best time by 57 seconds.

I don’t know if Mr. Mutai spends much time on Facebook but Sarah Greene of St. Albans does.

Ms. Greene also ran the Boston Marathon. She used Boston to kick off her goal to raise funds for the American Stroke Association by running a marathon in each of the 50 states. She ran her first, the VT City Marathon, a couple of years ago as a member of the ASA’s Train to End Stroke in honor of her grandmother. Her Gram had suffered a massive, debilitating stroke that left long-lasting physical and cognitive deficits.

Ms. Greene is using the Facebook to get in touch with friends to coordinate her marathons, have some peeps to come to cheer and support the cause, and to find place to stay on her journey.

Making friends.

“We use Facebook to schedule the protests, Twitter to coordinate, and YouTube to tell the world,” an insurrectionist said in Cairo.

Social media. It is our source for news. It foments revolutions. It is our source for lovers. It advertises brands. And it is the place the friends of our friends hang out.

Of the 32.7 hours per week Americans spend online, 22% is spent on social networks. That’s all? Twitter averages about 40 million tweets per day. (I did find the multi-tasking statistic fascinating: 57% of Americans watch TV and surf the Internet simultaneously.)

People meet on the ‘net all the time. They
get together, go out, have dinner, then,
you know — horrible axe murder.

Back in the Stone Age, when Usenet was the only “social network,” I met axe murderers I could never have discovered any other way.

Usenet is one of the original online systems. It started in 1980 at the University of North Carolina and at Duke more than a decade before the World Wide Web. People post “articles” that spread to groups on Internet servers around the world. Unlike the restricted friends lists in many social networks today, anyone can read and post to most newsgroups.

One writer I met on a newsgroup and later in real life was born in the former Yugoslavia, grew up in Africa, and was living in New Zealand in the time before she moved to the States to marry another writer in South Florida. They now live in Washington state. As it turns out, I’ve met a lot of reprobates at one time or another. My closest friend, Elizabeth “Liza” Arden, lives in the southwest. Peeps from Georgia and Michigan, a cop on Lon Guyland, a game developer from England, and a medical examiner from Maryland all showed up at a party in Pennsylvania. I met a Canadian who taught at UIC but has retired to Tucson on one of my trips to Arizona.

That leaves the virtual friends like the good Quaker girl from Wisconsin, a seismologist who returned the other day from Haiti, the ESL teacher in Korea, a musician in England, the Chicago nurse who emigrated to Israel, a whole raft of fruits and nuts and engineers and ordinary folk in California and Florida, a homeless man in Texas, a woman in Germany, and even a fellow in southern Vermont. And those are just some of the people I like.

So, Dick wondered, is Facebook the equal of Usenet for meeting new people? Will Sarah Greene succeed in her marathon quest for contributors and supporters?

Stay tuned.