the3rdrock.com

On this date in Feb­ru­ary 16th, 1959, Fidel Castro became the Prime Min­is­ter of Cuba. Since then, accord­ing to the man who was charged with pro­tect­ing him for most of his regime, he’s sur­vived over 600 assas­sin­a­tion attempts. Fabian Escal­ante, the former head of the Cuban Secret Ser­vice, claims that the assas­sin­a­tion endeavors break down like this: the Eis­en­hower admin­is­tra­tion tried to kill Castro 38 times; Kennedy, 42; John­son, 72; Nixon, 184; Carter, 64; Reagan, 197; Bush Sr., 16; Clin­ton, 21. (The accur­acy of Escalante’s stat­ist­ics, espe­cially attempts since the Nixon admin­is­tra­tion, is in dis­pute.) There are only so many dif­fer­ent ways you can ambush someone with a sharp­shooter, so some of the ways the CIA plot­ted to kill Castro were pretty wild. Here are just a few of the unortho­dox meth­ods con­sidered to oust the Beard.

1. Femme fatale. Mar­ita Lorenz, just one of many women Castro coun­ted as a mis­tress, allegedly accep­ted a deal from the CIA in which she would feed him cap­sules filled with poison. She man­aged to get as far as smug­gling the pills into his bed­room in her jar of cold cream, but the pills dis­solved in the cream and she doubted her abil­ity to force-feed Castro face lotion, and she also just chickened out. Accord­ing to Lorenz, Castro some­how figured out her plan and offered her his gun. “I can’t do it, Fidel,” she told him.

2. Poisoned wet­suit. While there’s noth­ing sus­pi­cious about receiv­ing ran­dom diving gear from your enemy right in the middle of the Bay of Pigs Inva­sion, the CIA gave it a shot. In 1975, the Sen­ate Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee claimed it had “con­crete evid­ence” of a plan to offer Castro a wet­suit lined with spores and bac­teria that would give him a skin dis­ease (and maybe worse). The plan sup­posedly involved Amer­ican law­yer James B. Donovan, who would present Castro with the suit when he went to nego­ti­ate the release of the Bay of Pigs pris­on­ers. A 1975 AP report said the plan was aban­doned “because Donovan gave Castro a dif­fer­ent diving suit on his own initiative.”

3. Ball­point hypo­dermic syr­inge. An ordinary-looking pen would be rigged with a hypo­dermic needle so fine that Castro wouldn’t notice when someone bumped into him with the pen and injec­ted him with an extremely potent poison.

4. Explod­ing cigar. But this was no par­lor trick – this cigar would have been packed with enough real explos­ives to take Fidel’s head off. In 1967, the Sat­urday Even­ing Post repor­ted that a New York City police officer had been pro­posi­tioned with the idea and hoped to carry it out dur­ing Castro’s United Nations visit in Septem­ber 1960.

5. Con­tam­in­ated cigar. They may have given up on the TNT sto­gie, but the idea of spik­ing his smokes was still being floated around. The CIA even went as far as to recruit a double agent who would slip Castro a cigar filled with botulin, a toxin that would kill the leader in short order. The double agent was allegedly given the cigars in Feb­ru­ary of 1961, but he appar­ently got cold feet.

6. Explod­ing conch shell. Know­ing that Castro liked to scuba dive, the CIA made plans to plant an explos­ive device in a conch shell at his favor­ite spot. They plot­ted to make the shell brightly colored and unusual look­ing so it would be sure to attract Castro’s atten­tion, draw­ing him close enough to kill him when the bomb inside went off.

7. Nair. Well, maybe not that brand spe­cific­ally, but accord­ing to that 1975 Sen­ate Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee report, the U.S. believed that mess­ing with Castro’s beard was mess­ing with the man’s power. The CIA figured that the loss of the beard would show Cubans that Castro was weak and fal­lible. A half-baked scheme was hatched to use thal­lium salt, the chem­ical in depil­at­ory products such as Nair, in Castro’s shoes or in his cigar. The chem­ical would be absorbed or inhaled and cause the fam­ous facial hair to fall out. (Wait, wasn’t this an epis­ode of Get Smart?)

8. LSD. In what was mostly an effort to dis­credit Fidel, not kill him, a radio sta­tion where Castro was giv­ing a live broad­cast would be bom­barded with an aer­o­sol spray con­tain­ing a sub­stance sim­ilar to LSD. When Fidel had the requis­ite freak out live on the air, Cubans would think he had lost his mind and stop trust­ing him.

9. Handker­chief teem­ing with deadly bac­teria. The CIA was seem­ingly obsessed with cov­er­ing Fidel in harm­ful bac­teria and tox­ins, because they also con­sidered giv­ing him a germ-covered hankie that would make him very ill.

10. Poisoned milk­shake. Accord­ing to Escal­ante, the closest the CIA ever came to killing Castro was a deadly dessert drink in 1963. The attempt went awry when the pill stuck to the freezer where the waiter-assassin at the Havana Hilton was sup­posed to retrieve it. When he tried to unstick it, the cap­sule ripped open.

Source: mentalfloss.com

http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/117438

The U. S. State of Geor­gia has a new Bill on the table, the “Right to Travel Act”.

Here’s a quick sum­mary for you…

From the Geor­gia Gen­eral Assembly website.

BE IT ENACTED BY THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF GEORGIA:

SECTION 1.
This Act shall be known and may be cited as the “Right to Travel Act.”

SECTION 2.
The Gen­eral Assembly finds that:

(1)
Free people have a com­mon law and con­sti­tu­tional right to travel on the roads and high­ways that are provided by their gov­ern­ment for that pur­pose. Licens­ing of drivers can­not be required of free people because tak­ing on the restric­tions of a license requires the sur­render of an inali­en­able right;

(2)
In Eng­land in 1215, the right to travel was enshrined in Art­icle 42 of Magna Carta:
It shall be law­ful to any per­son, for the future, to go out of our king­dom, and to return, safely and securely, by land or by water, sav­ing his alle­gi­ance to us, unless it be in time of war, for some short space, for the com­mon good of the king­dom: except­ing pris­on­ers and out­laws, accord­ing to the laws of the land, and of the people of the nation at war against us, and Mer­chants who shall be treated as it is said above.

(3)
Where rights secured by the Con­sti­tu­tion of the United States and the State of Geor­gia are involved, there can be no rule mak­ing or legis­la­tion that would abrog­ate these rights. The claim and exer­cise of a con­sti­tu­tional right can­not be con­ver­ted into a crime. There can be no sanc­tion or pen­alty imposed upon an indi­vidual because of this exer­cise of con­sti­tu­tional rights;

(4) Amer­ican cit­izens have the inali­en­able right to use the roads and high­ways unres­tric­ted in any man­ner so long as they are not dam­aging or viol­at­ing prop­erty or rights of oth­ers. The gov­ern­ment, by requir­ing the people to obtain drivers’ licenses, is restrict­ing, and there­fore viol­at­ing, the people’s com­mon law and con­sti­tu­tional right to travel;

(5)
In Sha­piro v Thompson, 394 U.S. 618 (1969), Justice Pot­ter Stew­art noted in a con­cur­ring opin­ion that the right to travel “is a right broadly assert­able against private inter­fer­ence as well as gov­ern­mental action. Like the right of association…it is a vir­tu­ally uncon­di­tional per­sonal right, guar­an­teed by the Con­sti­tu­tion to us all.” The Art­icles of Con­fed­er­a­tion had an expli­cit right to travel; and we hold that the right to travel is so fun­da­mental that the Framers thought it was unne­ces­sary to include it in the Con­sti­tu­tion or the Bill of Rights;

(6) The right to travel upon the pub­lic high­ways is not a mere priv­ilege which may be per­mit­ted or pro­hib­ited at will but the com­mon right which every cit­izen has under his or her right to life, liberty, and the pur­suit of hap­pi­ness. Under this con­sti­tu­tional guar­an­tee one may, there­fore, under nor­mal con­di­tions, travel at his or her inclin­a­tion along the pub­lic high­ways or in pub­lic places while con­duct­ing him­self or her­self in an orderly and decent man­ner; and

(7) Thus, the legis­lature does not have the power to abrog­ate the cit­izens’ right to travel upon the pub­lic roads by passing legis­la­tion for­cing the cit­izen to waive the right and con­vert that right into a privilege.

Con­tinue

Essen­tially what they’re say­ing, is that the act of driv­ing is a Right, not a privilege.

Being a “Bible Belt” State, I won­der if this is, some­how, a bib­lical statement?

In a coun­try in which some States allow driv­ing from as young as 15 (Geor­gia is 18), these being the States you want to avoid on a roadtrip, do you really want to take your chances with someone driv­ing with skills essen­tially untested bey­ond those of a 14(-17) yr-old?

Let’s not for­get, we’re deal­ing with automatic-biased, straight-road-driving, tanks here, com­manded by school-led instruct­ors without so much as a thought as to advanced driv­ing skills.

If you are not required to be licensed, there is surely no legally-enforceable way to ensure that you receive adequate train­ing (not cer­ti­fic­a­tion) of your abil­ity to handle a machine eas­ily cap­able of caus­ing untold amounts of dam­age and of killing scores of people and animals.

How­ever, with some thought, fur­ther ques­tions arise, accom­pan­ied by an array of pros and cons.

If driv­ing is a Right, thereby doing away with the licens­ing of drivers, is the licens­ing of vehicles (and that deriv­at­ive income) thus defunct?

Where will the money to main­tain the road infra­struc­ture come from?

Will vehicles still be required to be registered? This requires a ‘licens­ing’ authority.

How will offend­ers by caught; and pro­sec­uted, if there are no rules to be abided by, agreed to by the hold­ing of a driver’s license.

Will ‘Learners’ still exist?

If your health reaches a level unsuit­able for driv­ing, such as gradual-onset blind­ness, how will you be forced off of the road by authorities?

If driv­ing is a right, will cars be tested for road­wor­thi­ness, con­sid­er­ing that they are a requis­ite tool for the act of driving?

In addi­tion, we must surely pre­pared to cel­eb­rate the forth­com­ing and inev­it­able clean­ing of our oh-so-polluted genepool.

Lastly, and this is a per­sonal favour­ite, will the age-old argu­ment of roads for cars come to an end? “We pay license, so we can drive here!” is a favour­ite chant of the driver when faced with cyc­lists on the road. If this is what it takes to shut you up, I applaud this oth­er­wise ludicrous sentiment.

In this overly-sensitive age we unfor­tu­nately found ourselves exist­ing in, the bane of Polit­ical Cor­rect­ness is right up there with Fem­in­ism for the title of Non­sense Ideas That Don’t Work.

Nobody wants to be around a bunch of hairy-legged extrem­ist women claim­ing that “Pussy Power” ‘won the West’, eschew­ing the bene­fits of ‘period poten­tial’ and con­fus­ing the hell out of all men as to whether we should or should not hold doors open for you. We like women.

My gripe today is with the eggshell-walking politically-observant pun­dits who choose to change the names of everything because per­son X in group Y, related to spe­cies Z *may* find it offens­ive as a res­ult of someone call­ing him or her, prob­ably quite rightly so at the time, an Idiot.

The world has changed races, entirely, without any­one even noti­cing it. Now that’s a remark­able feat, if ever.

Where once exis­ted “Whites”, “Blacks”, “Asi­ans”, “Col­oureds” and count­less oth­ers, we now have “Caucasi­ans”, or “Europeans”, “African-Americans”, “Smart People”, “Mixed-Race” and count­less others.

For one, we are prob­ably all a huge mix to begin with. It’s 2012; we’re animals…get the picture.

For two, there are more slurs per race than we could prob­ably get through, together, in a week. At one stage or another, I hated you, you hated me, we hated them, they hated us, every­body hated every­body. If you’ve never been the tar­get of a slur, you’re either blind and not in the vicin­ity of the slur­rer, mute or dis­trac­ted. Some­body some­where hates you. Get over it.

As gen­eric as the old titles were, the new ones are equally stu­pid, so put on your boots and crush a few ‘shells. I am not from Europe (I wish I was, but I’m not), so I’m not really a “European”, am I? My gov­ern­ment would like me to think so, but then, they’re also happy to take my taxes.

If I am to be con­sidered a “caucasian”, where does the Asian factor into it? There’s no record of an Euro-Asian romp any­where in my fam­ily tree.

Are you see­ing the stu­pid­ity here?

In my opin­ion, the “Black” com­munity, who some­times prefer to be referred to as “Black” and at oth­ers as “African-American” are the most daintly handled. If I look more like the back­ground of this ‘site and they look more like the col­our of the font you’re read­ing, surely it is reas­on­able to call each of us “White” or “Black”?

Just as I can­not really claim to be European, how can >Amer­ican< “Blacks” claim to be “African-American”?

For the record, kiss­ing the ter­minal floor when you land in African for the first time makes you look really, really stu­pid. We all laugh at you.

Some­times “polit­ical cor­rect­ness” back­fires, in a big, big way…

Case in point:

The Omaha sus­pen­sion of a white high-school stu­dent ori­gin­ally from South Africa is send­ing shock waves across Amer­ica as debate rages over who can claim rights to the term “African-American.”

South African nat­ive Tre­vor Richards sus­pen­ded over African-American campaign

The case cen­ters on Tre­vor Richards, a junior at West­side High School, who moved from Johan­nes­burg to Neb­raska six years ago.

Richards and his class­mates, 16-year-old twins Paul and Scott Rambo, were booted from classes last week after dis­trib­ut­ing posters tout­ing Tre­vor as a can­did­ate for West­side High’s “Dis­tin­guished African-American Stu­dent” award on Mar­tin Luther King Jr. Day.

“The posters were inten­ded to be satire on the term African-American,” Scott Rambo told the Omaha World-Herald.

Prin­cipal John Crook says the posters were disruptive.

“It was offens­ive to the indi­vidual being honored, to people who work here and to some stu­dents,” Crook told the paper. “My role is to make sure we have a safe envir­on­ment, phys­ic­ally and psy­cho­lo­gic­ally. We can’t allow that kind of thing to be hung up on our walls.”

Records from 2002–2003 indic­ate only 56 of Westside’s 1,632 stu­dents were black, and some in this year’s stu­dent body were reportedly upset by Richards’ poster.

Iron­ic­ally, the first two recip­i­ents of the stu­dent award were white.

“It was not inten­ded at the begin­ning to be one race only,” Clidie Cook, who helps organ­ize the annual event, told the World-Herald.

But West­side offi­cials pushed to change that, feel­ing the spirit of the honor meant giv­ing it to a black stu­dent, and by 2001, the min­is­terial alli­ance in charge spe­cified it was for blacks only.

Since the sus­pen­sions last week, the issue has been picked up by the Asso­ci­ated Press wire ser­vice, and has become a hot topic for colum­nists, talk radio and Inter­net messageboards.

“There is no room at the inn for the view­points of con­ser­vat­ives, liber­tari­ans, Chris­ti­ans, or con­sti­tu­tion­al­ists in the pub­lic indoc­trin­a­tion sys­tem,” says David Hunt­work, a con­ser­vat­ive act­iv­ist in Fort Collins, Colo., who cri­ti­cized the squash­ing of “this gal­lant expres­sion of grass-roots activism.”

The ABC tele­vi­sion affil­i­ate in Omaha, KETV, has been swamped with com­ments on its Inter­net mes­sage­board.

Among the postings:

• I attend West­side and I am in sup­port for Tre­vor. Tre­vor is one of only maybe one or two other people that are actu­ally from Africa. Tre­vor is more of an African-American than any other “African-American” at West­side. It is also wrong that there is an award for only black stu­dents when every other award at West­side is for every­one and every­one has an equal chance to receive those awards if they try.
• If you mean black award, say black award. If you must be racist, that is.
• Why are white Amer­ic­ans con­stantly houn­ded, ridiculed and stripped of any racial iden­tity? Why is it OK for every­oneto be racist, except white Amer­ic­ans? … Can you ima­gine black stu­dents get­ting sus­pen­ded for join­ing the “black stu­dent union” or any other black group on any cam­pus, or work­place in Amer­ica? This racism against white Amer­ic­ans must stop.
• I think the admin­is­trat­ors should be fired. This is going too far. Let’s get a grip people! God this makes me sick. Fire those people!
• As a Cana­dian white male, I have worked with and befriended a few black people. I never once heard them refer them­selves as African-Canadians.
• [T]echnically, Tre­vor is most likely Afrikaans-African-American or Dutch-African-American con­sid­er­ing the white des­cend­ants of South Africa are from those European des­cents. So if you want to talk tech­nic­ally, he still is not eli­gible for this award. The truth is that every­one who is writ­ing these absurd com­ments knows what African-American means. It is a black per­son. The term given to this eth­nic group has changed over the dec­ades from Negroes to colored people to black and finally African-American. It is a descriptor.

The label “African-American” is not uni­ver­sally used by blacks today, as evinced by com­pan­ies and groups such as Black Enter­tain­ment Tele­vi­sion, the Con­gres­sional Black Caucus, and the National Asso­ci­ation for the Advance­ment of Colored People, bet­ter known as the NAACP.

A search of more than 200 U.S. news­pa­pers geared pre­dom­in­antly toward blacks finds at least 16 have the word “black” in the title, while only five have “African-American.”

As World­Net­Daily repor­ted last sum­mer, a mem­ber of Con­gress, Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee, D-Texas, ignited national con­tro­versy when she reportedly sought an affirmative-action plan of sorts for hur­ricane names.

“All racial groups should be rep­res­en­ted,” Lee said, accord­ing to the Hill. She hoped fed­eral weather offi­cials “would try to be inclus­ive of African-American names.”

By the defin­i­tion, young Tre­vor is indeed “African-American”, moreso than prob­ably all of those claim­ing to be at his school.

As if hav­ing an award to mel­low the tur­bu­lent spir­its of the artificially-aggrovated non-native minor­ity wasn’t enough, now there’s a fight over who’s pig­men­ted enough? Really?!

What a crock of shit.

Source: wnd.com

Amer­ic­ans are not gen­er­ally regard­est as the bright­est bunch. Of course this state­ment implies that it refers to the col­lect­ive, which is, admit­tedly, wholly unfair. As with most places, I’ve met undeni­ably dim spe­ci­mens and impress­ively bright ones. It is regret­table though that, for most people, a country’s intel­lec­tual repu­ta­tion is largely based on the actions and words of their news­makers, namely their politi­cians. American’s repu­ta­tion is tak­ing a pound­ing at the moment, which isn’t neces­sar­ily a bad thing, so long as they end up cre­at­ing life for it…

Des­pite being rebuffed by voters in Mis­sis­sippi and Col­or­ado, pro­ponents of the “per­son­hood” move­ment are still push­ing to enact legis­la­tion in states like Ohio and Oklahoma that would give zygotes the same rights as Amer­ican cit­izens. These bills would not only crim­in­al­ize abor­tion in all cir­cum­stances, they would also out­lawcom­mon forms of con­tra­cep­tion, as well as in vitro fertilization.

To poke fun at the absurdity of the meas­ure, Oklahoma state Sen. Con­stance John­son (D), has tacked on a pro­vi­sion affirm­ing — in the words of a fam­ous Monty Python song — that every sperm is sac­red:

State Sen­ator Con­stance John­son of Oklahoma City has served Oklahoma’s 48th Sen­ate Dis­trict since 2005, but it was yesterday’s intro­duc­tion of Sen­ate Bill 1433 that really pushed her over the edge. The bill sought to define human life as begin­ning at the moment of con­cep­tion, before it’s even implanted in the womb, and offers full legal pro­tec­tion to those tiny mul­ti­celled lumps. In the words of the bill, “the unborn child at every stage of devel­op­ment (has) all the rights, priv­ileges, and immunit­ies avail­able to other per­sons, cit­izens, and res­id­ents of this state.”

John­son sub­mit­ted an amend­ment of her own to the bill, which would have added the language,

How­ever, any action in which a man ejac­u­lates or oth­er­wise depos­its semen any­where but in a woman’s vagina shall be inter­preted and con­strued as an action against an unborn child.

Among other things, Johnson’s amend­ment would essen­tially out­law oral sex, anal sex, and mas­turb­a­tion. Were it not a satir­ical bill, it would almost cer­tainly be deemed uncon­sti­tu­tional.

To prove that her amend­ment was in jest, John­son voted with her col­leagues to table it later in the day. But it does illus­trate a ser­i­ous point: only about half of fer­til­ized eggs develop into a preg­nancy. If Repub­lican law­makers are will­ing to declare every cluster of cells with the poten­tial to become a fetus a per­son, why stop at fer­til­ized eggs? Why not sperm as well?

To protest the inher­ent sex­ism of the per­son­hood bill, another Demo­cratic sen­ator attemp­ted to add an amend­ment that would require the father of the child to be fin­an­cially respons­ible for the mother’s health care, hous­ing, and other expenses while she is pregnant.

I’ve never been to Oak­lahoma, but I can only assume it’s full of bible-bashing, ichthys-toting, cross-wearing, hymn-preaching sandal-wearing, straight-laced ignora­muses. Or Jews.

Sperm in vain (or Semen in vain or Seed in vain; Hebrew: זרע לבטלה, pro­nounced: Zera Lev­atala) is a Talmudic term and concept that refers to any sexual act in which a male’s sperm is con­sciously “wasted”,^[5] whether because she is preg­nant, infer­tile, or eld­erly. This is proper for the pur­pose of ful­filling the “Onah” Mitzvah-commandment, the husband’s mar­ital obligations.

“But why all these pre­cau­tions? — Because oth­er­wise one might emit semen in vain, and R. Johanan stated: Who­so­ever emits semen in vain deserves death, for it is said in Scripture.”

—Babylon Talmud, Tract­ate Nid­dah, p. 13a

Prior to the 20th cen­tury, it was a Jew­ish term usu­ally (but not only) refer­ring to male mas­turb­a­tion. In Shulkhan Arukh, on Yoreh Deah, it is stated that wast­ing sperm is con­sidered a sin greater than any sin in the Torah.

Homo­sexual inter­course is also con­sidered an act of sperm in vain, as mas­turb­a­tion. Even mar­ital sexual acts in which the sperm does not enter the vagina are con­sidered no less an act of sperm in vain.

The Halakhic atti­tude towards female mas­turb­a­tion is found in the opin­ions of the Ben Ish Chai,^[6] who says that it is wrong because it cre­ates evil forces (Qli­photh) and brings the woman to con­nect spir­itu­ally with the evil angel Samael, and Rabbi Moshe Fein­stein,^[7] who for­bids it because it involves indul­ging in sexual fantasy about men, which falls under the pro­hib­i­tion of for­bid­den thoughts, which are for­bid­den for women as well. How­ever, it does not carry the sever­ity of male mas­turb­a­tion, because it does not involve the release of seed.

In mod­ern days, the Halakhic ques­tion on whether tak­ing male semen and sperm for the pur­pose of med­ical exam­in­a­tions or insem­in­a­tion remains in dis­pute among Jew­ish legal authorities.

If you want to live your life as a socially-inept, ignor­ant, anti­quated and intol­er­ant entity reli­ant on meta­morph­osed prin­ciples you were not around to con­trib­ute to, com­ment on or verify, go right ahead. I have no prob­lem with that or you, but tabling a bill sug­gest­ing that recre­ational sex be out­lawed is fail­ing to see the basic needs you feel, desire and require.

Any per­son pro­claim­ing a life without sexual desire or action is pos­sible is a liar.

If you think the world’s at war now, out­law recre­ational sex.

A good Friend of mine recently sent me some choice words in reply to the sub­ject of baby showers. I think they are suit­ably applic­able here too…

You can’t tell me the thought of rub­ber duck­ies and frilly baby-blue or pink baby-grows, with dimin­ut­ive gir­affes embroidered onto the front of them, crossed her mind as beads of sweat trickled their way down her tits as she gasped and moaned orgas­ming with each thrust of a veiny nine-incher?!

Per­son­hooders, go and get rogered, you uptight wank­ers.

Sources: ThinkProgress.org & Wiki­pe­dia: Juda­ism & Sexuality

The party in [drunk with] power in the [near failed] state of South Africa, is ‘cel­eb­rat­ing’ it’s cen­ten­ary this year…by ‘invest­ing’ and […] MANY mil­lions of Rands — up to a bil­lion, some ana­lysts pre­dict — most of it belong­ing to the long-suffering taxpayer.

With all of the rhet­oric, back-patting and BS being thrown about, you’d think the ANC would be able to spell the names of those they revere the most, right?

“Among black South African lead­ers, Oliver Tambo was prob­ably the most highly respec­ted on the African con­tin­ent, in Europe, Asia and the Amer­icas. Dur­ing his stew­ard­ship of the ANC he raised its inter­na­tional prestige and status to that of an altern­at­ive to the Pre­toria Gov­ern­ment. He was received with the pro­tocol reserved for Heads of State in many parts of the world.” — ANC web­site

Hey, Amer­ica! The GOP is, yet again, look­ing out for you. This week, Con­gress took a break from vot­ing to make sure none of your tax dol­lars will go to all those abor­tion clin­ics NPR wants to open in our national parks, to pass a fed­eral law that only the nation that inven­ted Feb­reze­would tolerate.

They have affirmed that pizza is a veget­able. Yes, the tomato sauce on pizza is enough for Amer­ican politi­cians to define it and allow it to be served as a veget­able in school lunch pro­grams across the US.

Never mind that toma­toes are a fruit, and com­mer­cial tomato sauce has so much sugar in it that not only is it not a veget­able, but it should be clas­si­fied as a dessert. In fact, it takes a big set of balls to even call school lunch pizza, um, pizza. I think the only chance we have of instilling any sense into these politi­cians is if we douse it with squirt cheese and serve it in a microwave­able pouch.

And poor Michelle Obama. The First Lady is work­ing so hard to get kids to put down the Cool Ranch deep-fried tobacco dogs, or whatever it is they con­coct with that meat sub­stance pet food com­pan­ies rejec­ted that got sold to pub­lic schools. It is a Sis­yphean task just to get these lunch pro­grams to serve some­thing, any­thing, fresh and healthy that hasn’t been grown with Major League Baseball-style ster­oids. Why? Because we live in Amer­ica, where people, who have been elec­ted to pub­lic office, do not believe in cli­mate sci­ence, but do believe pizza is a veget­able. I envy your tenacity, Flotus.

I knew big Pharma and the NRA had power­ful lob­bies, but appar­ently, the frozen food industry’s “par­tially hydro­gen­ated, tomato-ish sauce-coated, food-like card­board sub­stance” lobby is more influ­en­tial than I had ini­tially real­ised. And these big food giants have done won­ders con­vin­cing us all fresh pro­duce is insur­mount­ably incon­veni­ent and, like lem­mings, we go along with it, buy­ing pre-packaged ver­sions of these clearly ined­ible options.

And it’s not just veget­ables. Fruit has also been bas­tard­ised as just too much of a nuis­ance to eat, so enter the franken­fooders to sim­plify it for us. Fruit Roll-Ups? They have brain­washed us into believ­ing the bur­den of haul­ing around an apple or a pear had become so daunt­ing, we needed someone to mix up fruit with some corn syrup and “Roll It Up”.

See? Now we do eat fruit because it’s easier. So you never have to exper­i­ence that pesky fresh fruit juice squirt­ing you in the eye or, worse, to stress out hav­ing to get up off the couch to wash it. You can just “unroll it”. And it never goes bad. Ever. It’s prac­tic­ally a miracle.

So, in a coun­try where fer­til­ised eggs are people and assem­bling bur­gers is a man­u­fac­tur­ing job, and ber­ries are bet­ter in the form of shoe leather, why not call a sug­ary fruit paste sauce that comes out of a can and is poured onto dough that comes out of a box, topped with cheese that’s spelt Cheez and comes out of a Whiz, a vegetable.

And in case you were won­der­ing, yes, Axe Body spray is now con­sidered a bath.

Let’s be hon­est here, sometimes genet­ics do play a part in a person’s size.

That’s per­fectly accept­able — and understandable.

Pregnancy-related weight gain, illness-linked weight gain and age-appropriate weight are not the sub­ject here, excess is.

If any part of you wobbles, rolls or cov­ers bey­ond the norm’, you’re the topic of dis­cus­sion here.

Using the excuse that you’re “big-boned”, genetically-predisposed or ill — for more than a medically-appropriate term — is noth­ing but laziness.

Most larger-than-average people have the abil­ity to exer­cise, diet and eat healthily.

If your weight raises the eye­brow of any­one with a med­ical degree and your girth neces­sit­ates more than the norm’ for any­thing you need or want, bey­ond those of a per­fectly valid excuse, you’re fat because you’re lazy and stupid.

Weight reg­u­la­tion should, ideally, be handled one one’s self.

Wor­ry­ingly, the Idiocracy now feels the need to legis­late what we define the 0ur foods as.

Sur­pris­ingly, the US Con­gress is head­ing up the task, hav­ing recently decided that the humble tomato should move up the hier­archy. When applied to a pizza base, a pizza is no longer a pizza, it is…a VEGETABLE.

That’s right, your entire pizza is now a vegetable.

Besides the obvi­ous stu­pid­ity here, there is the quite sci­entific fact that a tomato is in fact a fruit.

The Mind boggles.

Scary news, when you con­sider that the USA is the 9th-fattest nation on the planet, with nearly 75% of their cit­izens clas­si­fied as ‘obese’.

So, if you’re fat, you’re stu­pid — but you pos­sibly be vin­dic­ated in that you’re fat because your gov­ern­ment is stupid.

Your gov­ern­ment made you fat. We blame them for everything else, why not our fat too?

Source: The­Guard­ian.co.uk