Author Archives: Fubar

Food-borne illness, that is. What DID we do before the giant monolithic federal government told us to wash our hands and our food before eating it?

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Food and Drug Administration has proposed new food safety rules that should significantly reduce the number or foodborne illness outbreaks in the United States.

Produce farmers will have to ensure the water and soil they use are clean, and that measures are taken to prevent animals from entering the fields. Basic hygiene practices — like hand-washing — will be taught to workers.

Foodborne illnesses tied to listeria, e-coli, and salmonella cause an estimated 3,000 deaths each year.

Trucking companies are not going to be exempt from regulations either, as well as packing plants; they are subject to inspection and having a “safety protocol” in place. I believe they are ALREADY inspected by OSHA, USDA,and DEP but let’s inspect them again, shall we?

The FDA is also setting requirements for the safe transport of food, and to set standards for trying to prevent intentional contamination of food apply to domestic and international
preventive controls — food facilities to have a written plan to identify hazards, put steps in place, verify they are working and outline any problems that may arise.

Reasons stated are the outbreak of tainted peanut butter this year, which was proven to be from unsanitary machinery in the making of peanut butter – NOT THE FARMER OR THE HAULER; the salmonella outbreak that was caused by cantaloupes.
Regulations = more cost. Bend over, again.

You can give feedback to the FDA regarding this here

Took the kids to see the Hobbit, the Unexpected Journey in 3D yesterday.  I wasn’t really expecting  too much, although the Lord of the Rings series is  amazing, because I had heard that it was all special effects and no plot and that Jackson didn’t follow the book. Two of my daughters are experts on J.R.R. Tolkien and fantasy fiction in general and they were not disappointed.

All I can say is Go. See. It. I probably read the Hobbit about 3 decades ago and don’t remember much, but there was plenty of plot, unlike most Hollywood regurgitations. My daughter said some things were changed, but I’m sure it was for time. The movie  was 3 hours long. The sword and hand to hand combat scenes were AWESOME. The central theme of the protection of divine providence was  obvious. In one scene Gandalf states that evil is best fought with small acts of kindness and love. I’ll admit I was blubbering like a small child at this point. (Yeah, it’s fun to go to the movies with Mom).

The story starts out with the hobbit, a young Bilbo Baggins being recruited as a burglar for a journey with 13 dwarves who have lost their home (greed) when a dragon took over their mountain and all their gold.  Gandalf feels compelled to remove Bilbo (sloth) from his familiar comforts to fulfill to help restore the dwarf kingdom.  Along the way, they come across trolls (gluttony), the orcs (wrath), goblins (wrath),  and Thorin must deal with his conflict with the elves (envy and pride). Bilbo Baggins  confronts Gollum (lust) and learns humility and courage along the way, as well as acquiring the Ring.

The 3D effects took a little bit to get used to. We sat in the very first row, which is a little uncomfortable anyway, and some of the chase scenes made me momentarily nauseous, but it was definitely worth the $11 /ticket. I don’t support Hollywood in general, because most of what they vomit out is garbage, but the Hobbit was A+.

And for the ladies, if you are sick of metrosexual Justin Beiber types, the dwarves were not only ass kicking, they were easy on the eyes ( esp.. Thorin, Fili, Kili, Dwalin). It may have been three hours long, and a few times I kind of forgot why they were traveling and got wrapped up in subplots and charachter flaws, and I would have sat for another 3 hours to find out what happens next.

Can’t wait til the The Hobbit: the Desolation of Smaug is released.

“Another government official, who asked not to be identified, said just because an application is denied or on hold – because of the part of immigration law dealing with terrorism-related activity – doesn’t mean that person is a terrorist.

The official stressed, “Terrorism-related inadmissibility grounds (TRIG) in immigration law are broad in scope and they don’t always differentiate between armed groups and the purpose of their activities. So they include activities that we wouldn’t commonly consider to be ‘terrorism,’ such as activities that were performed under duress. They also don’t have an exception for ‘freedom fighters,’ such as a resistance group that is fighting a dictatorial regime.”

Aldosary is charged with maliciously damaging federal property by means of explosives and being a felon in possession of a firearm. A federal judge in Phoenix has set a preliminary hearing for Tuesday morning.”

Wow. I feel safe, don’t you?

Do you have a supply of yeast in your prepper’s cabinet for making your own bread? Nothing better than a homemade loaf of bread. What if you are running out?

Baker’s Yeast is sold in lb. packages or envelopes. It’s good to have on hand for scratch loaves of bread, but if you have a sourdough starter you are set for life. Before yeast was commercially grown and sold in packages, people would capture “wild yeasts” from the air to make raised cakes and bread.
It’s more likely that some of the yeast comes from your hands and the grains in the flour itself, so don’t go all sterile and cleaning crazy before you make starter and bread. (Note: I’m not responsible for any resulting gastrointestinal distress -use good judgement)

You can also ‘make’ yeast from scratch

Potato Sourdough Starter

Ingredients:

3 medium potatoes, peeled and cubed
4 cups water, for boiling
2-1/4 tsp (1 pkg) active dry yeast
1 cup warm water
1 cup bread flour
1/3 cup sugar
1-1/2 tbsp salt
Preparation:

Peel and cube 3 potatoes. Boil potatoes in 4 cups of water until soft.

You’ll be using both the potato water and the potatoes in the starter. Drain the liquid off into a large bowl. Mash the potatoes and add mashed potatoes to the liquid. Stir and set aside until lukewarm.

After the liquid potatoes are slightly warm, stir in yeast and warm water.

Mix in the remaining ingredients.

Cover bowl with clean kitchen cloth {or cheesecloth} and let set for 24 hours at room temperature.

Pour starter into large jar or jars, cover, and store in the refrigerator.

Use starter as called for in sourdough recipes. 1 cup of potato sourdough starter can be used in place of 1 package active dry yeast.

Use the starter up within 2 weeks. At the end of two weeks, make a new starter from scratch or follow the starter directions above, replacing the dry yeast with 1 cup of leftover starter.

You can also buy a premade starter here

There are other sourdough starters that don’t call for potatoes, you can try a few to find one that suits your tastes.
I use a small crock about flower pot size to start the starter in. If it is successful, you might have overflow, so don’t fill to the top. Keep it in a warmish place to get it going. Lidded plastic ice cream containers work well for frig storage.

There is a sustainable agricultural college in Vermont that uses oxen as beasts of burden by the students to learn farming techniques. When one of the 2 resident oxen became injured it was planned that they would both be slaughtered (since they work as a pair) and served in the cafeteria. On the farm, this is called reality. Farmers that lose an animal that can’t be put into the food chain have to pay for it’s removal, or compost it.

Unfortunately, instead of just going ahead with the acquisition of new oxen to replace Friday, Saturday and Sunday’s menu, the admin of the college had a meeting with the members of faculty and attendees of college and word got out. Typical moonbat rallying led to a facebook and twitter campaign that garnered support and signatures (by some reporting thousands, or 3 million, or 4 million signatures, depending upon which source), because we all know that the lives of two oxen are more important than anything else we face today.

The decision to slaughter the oxen triggered a storm of protest that included e-mails to faculty and administrators and online alerts and petitions pleading for the animals to be sent to a sanctuary. Many messages were heated and some were threatening. Veganism is the Next Evolution, or VINE, Sanctuary in Vermont had offered to take them.

The college added: “These groups also harassed and threatened local slaughterhouses, making it impossible for them to accept our animals and carry out our decision expeditiously. One of the few Animal Welfare Approved slaughterhouses in the area was forced to cancel our appointment as a result of these hostile threats.”

Lou, the injured ox was euthanized and buried on college property a few weeks ago, because he was suffering and no longer fit for consumption. Result: wasting 1,000 lbs of meat and sending a message that threatening violence does pay. And did the sustainable farming college learn anything from this episode? It was obvious that they knew what was really going on.

The college president characterized the decision to slaughter the oxen as “a typical decision made every day on ­every farm.”

The animals, “worked for us,” he said. They were not pets. They were not mascots. They were working oxen on the farm. They’re now going to go on to the next stage.

“Others would say, ‘Why don’t you send them to a sanctuary?’ That could be another decision, but it wasn’t the decision that we made. Some people don’t like our decision. They want to force their views on us.”

Said Ackerman-Leist: “It’s now no longer just about Bill and Lou, no longer just about Green Mountain College. It’s about the ability of farms to make their own decisions about livestock.”

More here

This story is a chilling example of what happens when the mob mentality is more powerful then reason. It’s with little consolation that academia was victim to the monster they helped create, as all our private property rights are now under assault.

LockenLoad writes: ” Folks were starting to think I was full of shit about the Ohio vote. There is NO question in my mind this election was stolen.”

November 8, 2012, By Arlen Williams

 Was the election stolen? Remember all those lawsuits by Democrats demanding that any voter identification laws be repealed. Well, now we know why they filed them. They needed to steal the vote in certain key states so that Obama could be reelected.

Curiously, Obama lost in every state that requires a photo ID to be produced before voting. A list of closely contested state elections with no voter ID, which narrowly went to Obama include: Minnesota (10), Iowa (6), Wisconsin (10), Nevada (6), Colorado (9), New Mexico (5) and Pennsylvania (20). This amounts to a total of 66 electoral votes. When added to Romney’s total of 205 electoral votes, that would give Romney 271 electoral votes, enough votes to win even without Ohio or Florida.

More below the fold…

During the election and debates, something we didn’t hear much about was climate change. Mostly because it’s very low on the list of concerns of Americans, unless you are the global food police. This should scare you, if you weren’t already.

Food production accounts for almost a third of global greenhouse gas emissions, more than twice the amount the United Nations has estimated comes from farming, according to studies published Wednesday, while climate change will require a complete recalibration of where crops are grown and livestock raised.
Emissions across the entire food system — including manufacturing fertilizer, as well as transporting and refrigerating food — need to be reduced as they total somewhere between 19% and 29% of man-made greenhouse gases, a study from the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research said.
“We are coming to terms with the fact that agriculture is a critical player in climate change,” said Frank Rijsberman, chief executive of the global grouping of research organizations.

October 31,2012 article

Have you stocked your freezers yet? Learned how to can meat? The food police don’t want you to have protein.

One of the most high-impact changes Americans (and citizens of other wealthy nations) can make is to reduce their meat intake. A report published earlier this year on options for mitigating behavioral climate change found that global non-CO2 emissions could drop by more than 50 percent by 2055 if global meat demand dropped by just 25 percent per decade. Conversely, if meat consumption continues to rise at the current rate (corresponding with a global increase in income), greenhouse gas emissions would go up 76 percent.

Read it here

Know how they are going to do this? The EPA is regulating hay as a pollutant.

Farms, for example, will be required to comply with costly permit mandates and have to pay a “cow tax” on each animal and an annual fee on greenhouse gases emitted. EPA estimates that over 37,000 farms and ranches will be subject to greenhouse gas permits, at an average cost of $23,000 per permit each year, affecting over 90% of the livestock production in the country. “The EPA will proceed to issue regulations, industry by industry, until virtually every aspect of the American economy is constrained by strict regulatory requirements and high energy prices.”..
Farm Dust Regulations being proposed are so tightened, they would be below the dust created during normal farming operations and be impossible for rural American farms to meet…

Here’s the Senate report

Bizarro World, indeed.

Good NEWS!

Rep. Allen West is leading by more than 300 votes in Palm Beach County, Fla., a hopeful sign for the Tea Party favorite fighting for his political life after Tuesday’s election, a source told TheBlaze.

No winner has been declared in the congressional race between the Republican West and his Democratic opponent Patrick Murphy, though Murphy had a 2,456-vote lead in the unofficial vote total.

But a Republican observer who has been monitoring the counting process said West pulled ahead in Palm Beach County on Thursday as the initial count continues. Ballot printing errors led to ballots that could not be fed through scanners in some areas, so Florida election workers have been forced to reproduce their contents onto new ballots that can be read properly, the observer said. As the votes are counted for the first time, West has taken a slim lead…

The Blaze has the rest

Some of my relatives owned a nursery and were confident that the transplanting of trees and other large rooted shrubs fare better planted in cooler weather, without the threat of a long, possibly dry and a very hot season before them. (How many have planted something with high hopes, only to see it wither and die without careful vigilance in watering?) Some of us are still in the window of successful planting, and since fruit and nut trees  may take up to three to five years to bear, you might want to get rolling on this project.

Depending upon your preferences for fruit, nut or berries, you have to consider your climate and what zone  you live in, generally determined by your first and last frost dates.

See the U.S. zone map here
See Canadian map here

You can buy mail order “bareroot” trees (cheaper and larger variety of species) or you can go to a nursery and buy pre-dug stock. Some mail orders also send potted plants/trees.

Bareroot trees are so named because the plants are dug from the ground when they’re dormant (leafless), usually in fall, and their roots are shaken free of soil. Kept cool, with their roots packed in moist material, such as damp sawdust, bareroot plants are easy to store and ship in good condition. They can be ordered for either fall or earlyspring shipment. Mail-order nurseries selling bareroot trees often have wider selections than do local nurseries. Such trees may cost from one-third to onehalf as much as a same-sized container-grown tree. If you’re buying a named variety of a plant, it will be genetically identical and will grow equally well in other regions where it is hardy.

How to dig a hole directions

The best advice I ever got about planting a balled tree is to dig the hole not only a foot deeper than the ball; but at least two feet wider (around all sides) as roots tend to spread horizontally, as soil density allows.

The benefit of buying from a nursery is  that you are guaranteed stock that is grown in your area successfully. If you are buying fruit trees, you have to do some research  about pollination.Self fruitful (self pollinating)  trees  may do better with other varieties planted near them. Some trees require a “male” and “female” of the same species.

Here is a good guide on planting and pollination.

…what to do if you see voter fraud, and that includes intimidation.

My kid is coming with me to vote, she heard about the voting machines flipping over to Obama after choosing Romney and wants to make sure my vote counts.
That’s another good idea, take your kids to vote. Let them see the process, they need to know how important this election is. They need to know that our republic is based on citizen’s participation.

Found this on Freedomworks This includes phone numbers for every state.

Voter fraud is a contentious issue of late; liberals swear it is a myth propagated by evil racist conservatives. We know better. Most on the right are aware of the voter fraud issue but many have little to no idea how to combat or report violations; consider this your crash course.

First and foremost, step one in any instance where you see or suspect voter fraud is to alert the state officials who oversee the election process. For most states this is done by the Secretary of State, in other states, there is a State Board of Elections. Notifying these officials is paramount as they are the ones who ultimately certify and authenticate elections. Alert them before you call Fox News or blow up Twitter, though drawing as much media attention as possible is beneficial, you want to make sure you follow a process. I have included a contact list for each state at the bottom of this post.

DES MOINES, Iowa—President Barack Obama is planning an outdoor rally here on Monday, but one store within the event’s security zone is taking a stand against Secret Service searches inside the shop…

The Obama campaign was not amused. A store clerk told Yahoo News that the sign went up Monday morning, and Obama staffers have asked for its removal. The store is refusing.

Heh

Evidently, the cause of everything unholy in our world is a certain former Governor of Massachusetts.

The fatal meningitis epidemic sweeping the United States can now be traced to the failure of then-Gov. Mitt Romney to adequately regulate the Massachusetts pharmaceutical company that is being blamed for the deaths.

At least 344 people in 18 states have been infected by the growing public health crisis and 25 have died so far.

That is according to Salon because Romney was governor of Massachusetts from 2003 to 2007.

This is in direct contrast to what CNN is reporting, that the compounding center was aware of contamination, but did nothing to address it.

– The company at the center of a deadly meningitis outbreak was warned by its own environmental monitors of bacterial contamination of its facility months before the first cases were reported, a government report said Friday.
Mold, and in some cases, an overgrowth of bacteria was detected in different areas of the New England Compounding Center’s two “clean rooms” nearly 90 times since January, the Food and Drug Administration report said.
Clean rooms are intended to be sterile environments in which drugs are produced.

Read the rest

Alan Colmes started it on twitter

Incidents are being report in Ohio, North Carolina and Kansas, that when choosing Romney in the voting booth, Obama is actually highlighted.
 

He played around with the field a little and realized that in order to vote for Romney, his finger had to be exactly on the mark,” Nancy wrote in an email. She said “the invisible Obama field came down about 1/4 [of an inch]” into what should technically have been the Romney area. In a phone interview with TheBlaze, she explained further that her husband said he felt the area on the touchscreen that could be pushed to vote for Obama was larger than that for Romney.

Read the whole shebang at the Blaze

Does this bother anyone else immensely, that this is being blamed on “calibration” ?

Have you heard of the 15 yr old Pakistani girl shot in the head by the Taliban, because she had the audacity to work for education reform for girls?
Probably not, because you don’t hear about this on mainstream media.

Malala has come to be a symbol for a girl’s right to education.

At the age of 11, she began writing a blog under a pseudonym for the BBC about life under the Taliban in the Swat Valley. After the military ousted the militants in 2009, she began publicly speaking out about the need for girls’ education. She appeared frequently in the media and was given one of the country’s highest civilian honors for her bravery.

Malala was shot and critically wounded on Oct. 9 as she headed home from school in the northwest Swat Valley. The Taliban said they targeted Malala, a fierce advocate for girls’ education, because she promoted “Western thinking” and was critical of the militant group.

read the rest here

Malala will have a lifelong road to recovery from a traumatic brain injury, because she had the courage to take a stand.

For Cryin’ out  Loud …

Yesterday I posted in ‘off-topic’ how the lady at the second Presidential debate with the stupid AK-47 question was a registered Democrat who is also possibly an Obama campaign worker.

Now this from the Daily Caller:

Early Thursday, the federal government finally revealed that California had, in fact, under-reported jobless data, skewing the national jobless claims results. This week’s updated jobs report corrected the error and showed unemployment claims spiking back up by 46,000 to 388,000.

Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown appointed Morgenstern to lead the California Labor & Workforce Development Agency in 2011. The state agency oversees the Employment Development Department.

Morgenstern is an Obama campaign donor.

from the blog of common sense/tumblr

Heh. A study done in Norway, shows that couples who share household chores are more likely to divorce. So, THAT’S what is causing the high divorce rate!

In what appears to be a slap in the face for gender equality, the report found the divorce rate among couples who shared housework equally was around 50 per cent higher than among those where the woman did most of the work.
“What we’ve seen is that sharing equal responsibility for work in the home doesn’t necessarily contribute to contentment,” said Thomas Hansen, co-author of the study entitled “Equality in the Home”.
The lack of correlation between equality at home and quality of life was surprising, the researcher said.
“One would think that break-ups would occur more often in families with less equality at home, but our statistics show the opposite,” he said.
The figures clearly show that “the more a man does in the home, the higher the divorce rate,” he went on.

the rest is here at Telegraph

I found this article interesting, as I did not know that homeschooling in Germany is actually illegal.. We have many freedoms in this country that we take for granted.

DARMSTADT, Germany, October 5, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) – A district court in Darmstadt, Germany has revoked custody of four children from their parents and ordered it turned over to the Jugendamt, Germany’s child protective agency.

The reason for the drastic measure? The parents were homeschooling their children.

Dirk has good reason to fear that he may eventually lose his children. Homeschooling is illegal in Germany under a law dating back to the Hitler era, and in recent years the country has become increasingly Draconian in enforcing the law – removing children from their families, levying heavy fines, and even sentencing homeschooling parents to jail.
According to HSLDA, the court who ruled against the Wanderlichs said that the public has, in HSLDA’s words, “an interest in counteracting the development of parallel societies and that religious or ethnic minorities must be ‘integrated’ through schools.”

The ruling aligns with reasons given by Germany’s leadership for maintaining the ban. “In our increasingly multicultural society, school is the place for a peaceful dialogue between different opinions, values, religions and ideologies,” Berlin’s education minister, Juergen Zoellner, told BBC in 2010.

Read the rest here

Some Texas school districts now require students to carry or wear an RFID chip, similar to those used in ear-tags to track cattle, in order to increase attendance and for “safety”.

Noncompliance results in typical liberal bullying tactics.

From RT

A school district in Texas came under fire earlier this year when it announced that it would require students to wear microchip-embedded ID cards at all times. Now, students who refuse to be monitored say they are feeling the repercussions.

Since October 1, students at John Jay High School and Anson Jones Middle School in San Antonio, Texas, have been asked to attend class with photo ID cards equipped with radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips to track every pupil’s location. Educators insist that the endeavor is being rolled out in Texas to stem the rampant truancy devastating the school’s funding. If the program is judged successful, the RFID chips could soon come to 112 schools in all and affect nearly 100,000 students.

Students who refuse to walk the school halls with the card in their pocket or around their neck claim they are being tormented by instructors, and are barred from participating in certain school functions. Some also said they were turned away from common areas like cafeterias and libraries.

More below the fold…

Stay out of my uterus, but open your wallet, so sayeth the Hollywood moonbats.

A who’s who of Hollywood is behind a new campaign sponsored by the pro-abortion Center for Reproductive Rights supporting an online campaign for a Bill of Reproductive Rights. The campaign complains about Republicans and pro-lifers who oppose the Obama HHS abortion mandate that forces religious groups to pay for abortion-causing drugs.

Meryl Streep, Kevin Bacon, Kyra Sedgwick, Amy Poehler and other top actors and actresses are behind the new push. Lisa Kudrow, Tea Leoni, Sarah Silverman, Martha Plimpton, Audra McDonald and other stars join them.

“Every day, the opponents of our fundamental reproductive rights are passing laws designed to take those rights away,” Streep says in a video for the campaign. “They’re shutting down doctors and clinics across the nation. They’re making it nearly impossible for millions of women to get the essential healthcare they need.”

The Bill of Reproductive Rights petitions call for “a full range of safe, affordable and readily accessible reproductive healthcare,” including abortion and say Americans have the right to “make our own decisions about our reproductive health and future, free from intrusion or coercion.”

The full petition reads:

“We the people of the United States hereby assert the following as fundamental human rights that no government may deny, and that our governments at every level must guarantee and safeguard for all.

1. The right to make our own decisions about our reproductive health and future, free from intrusion or coercion by any government, group, or individual.

2. The right to a full range of safe, affordable, and readily accessible reproductive health care including pregnancy care, preventive services, contraception, abortion, and fertility treatment—and accurate information about all of the above.

3. The right to be free from discrimination in access to reproductive health care or on the basis of our reproductive decisions.

the whole article here on prolife news