Saving Foie Gras? It’s About Having ‘Guts!’

If it talks like a duck, and walks like a duck, then it must be….human?
Such is the quacky rationale of many activists as they hoot about animal-cruelty (including and especially all of us who callously continue our non-vegetarian ways), all the while grousing about “inhumane” treatment.
Perfect logic from Vegan Central.
Of course, they conveniently overlook that “inhumane,” by definition, can only apply to humans, and animals don’t have the same rights afforded people. Common sense tells us that outright animal cruelty, such as when Michael Vick ran a dog-fighting ring, is, and should be, against the law.  But doggone it, when we start listening to fanatics who want to outlaw everything related to consumption of animals, we become sheep being led to slaughter.
While these extremists may be irrational, they’re not dumb. They target areas with liberal populations, self-righteous legislatures, and city councils that think banning things is their paternalistic responsibility.   Nowhere have these folks been more effective than the People’s Republic of California, where for years restaurant patrons have been harassed for their love of certain delicacies.  The animal rights folks claim their mission is simply one of education, yet restaurant owners feel threatened and their customers intimidated. 
And with good reason, because the fanatics have just scored a “whopper” of a victory as one of the all-time greats is set to be outlawed —statewide — on July 1.
So what was their “beef” this time? Liverwurst?  Tripe?  Nope.
Or was it Right Whale, whose extraordinarily tender meat tastes even better with the knowledge that there are only about 300 of these beasts left in the wild?
No, the big “flap” in the Golden State was regarding foie gras, which is French for “really, really good food”.  According to the non-carnivores, the methods employed in making the delicacy (which has been enjoyed since ancient times) are—yes, you guessed it— “inhumane.”  The duck (or goose, if you’re in France) is fed a constant diet so that it fattens up and its liver swells to several times its “normal” size.  The animals are then “put out to pasture,” being sent to finer culinary establishments so they can end up in our stomachs. (Kind of “winging” it here, but the fact that the duck’s liver lands so close to our livers really has a poetic, full-circle effect.)

So what’s the big deal?
If you look at the facts, not much.  If you buy into deliberate misinformation, a lot.
Like most everything, there is more than one way to skin a duck, so let’s look at the real picture.  Ducks have no gag reflex, so the “force-feeding” is not painful. Sure, it looks bad when you see the video of the feeding tube inserted into the throat, but I saw humans doing that all weekend at the Jersey Shore.  Interestingly, both were intaking grain-related products: cornmeal for the duckies, and grain spirits for the humans.  Neither seemed to mind.
Speaking of New Jersey, a fascinating point comes to mind.  Every spring, birds making one of the longest migrations on the planet stop on the shores of the Delaware Bay.  Why?  To gorge themselves on the eggs of horseshoe crabs. Since their journey originates at the southern tip of South America and ends near the Arctic, they need a tremendous amount of energy.  Unfortunately for the birds, there aren’t too many service plazas along the flyway.  Armed with this intuitive knowledge, our aviary friends eat before they start their trip.  A lot.  Ditto for the stopovers.  
Interestingly, something happens to these birds as they gorge themselves for the expedition. 
Their livers swell to several times their “normal” size.
Given the “inhumane” nature of such an event, I hereby call on all horseshoe crabs to stop laying eggs on the beach.  It should also be illegal for birds to engage in any such feeding activity, and offenders should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.  Enforcement of this policy guarantees that the problem will be solved, and these migratory birds will never have to deal with large livers again.
They will all be dead from starvation.
*****
Let’s try looking for consistency from the “vegetarian outreach” side of the debate. (As an aside, that oft-used phrase is still puzzling me as to what it actually means.  Is it something like: “Help me! I can’t take it anymore….I’m about to eat a Big Mac!  Quick, I need an intervention!”
As a result of extremists, more than a few restauranteurs have voluntarily taken foie gras off their menus.  These are victories for the vegans, primarily because too many business people are cowards.  
Instead of banding together to aggressively advocate their side of the fight, and shelling out the money to hire the best attorneys, PR firms — and yes, lobbyists — to represent their interests, too many owners and chefs cave in at the first ripple of controversy. Tough to stomach, but birds of a feather flock together. And the restaurant owners keep getting plucked, issue by issue.
What they don’t understand is that their actions only embolden their adversaries.  They think that by appeasing the protesters, they will be left alone.  Dead wrong.  Every victory scored by the other side only reaffirms their moral authority, and they will be back.  Ducks today, veal tomorrow, then on to tuna, and who knows what next.  
Once the door opens, it never shuts.  Just look at Whole Foods, who banned the sale of lobsters and soft-shell crabs, no doubt because of the “inhumaneness.”  Any bets on how many restaurants will stop selling clawed creatures when the pot of protest on those creatures starts to boil?
And shame on Californians for allowing their elected officials to pull a bait-and-switch on them. At a time when the state is literally in the throes of bankruptcy, with job opportunities plunging, taxes increasing, and a one-year budget deficit larger than the entire GDP of many countries, the legislature and Governor ignore these real, human, problems and target foie gras .
So now, people are getting force-fed (on both ends), but duck livers are safe. Even Hollywood couldn’t have scripted that tragedy any better.
Bottom line regarding foie gras: no skin off my back.  It will always be available somewhere. More important, cowardly restaurant owners and chefs who cave in to the pressure tactics of extremists should be more concerned about their own “guts” than those of a duck. 
And that’s no bull.

Captain Courageous Corbett

Gov. Tom Corbett must be seeing some very good polling numbers coming out of Wisconsin concerning the June 5 recall attempt of fiscal warrior Scott Walker. 

Or maybe he’s just glanced across the Delaware in envy at the popularity of straight-shooter Chris Christie.
At meeting, yesterday, May 30, with editors of the Journal Register Co. — which owns most of the newspapers in the Philadelphia suburbs –he declared that school districts cannot expect help from the state with regard to their budgets.
Fine, except that the state is 99.999 percent of the reason that school districts are having budget problems and that Gov. Corbett has been dead silent on proposed reforms that would allow them to fix things on their own such as easing or abolishing prevailing wage requirements; allowing the furloughing teachers for economic reasons based on criteria other than seniority; and, most importantly, giving them back the power to replace striking teachers that it had decades ago when Pennsylvania schools were thought to be among the best in the world.
Gov. Corbett you are no Scott Walker.

The 1 Percent Are Democrats

So who is this 1 percent?

According to Bloomberg, the big dogs in the group are entertainment executives who easily eclipse the Wall Street guys.
The top three entertainment barons are Les Moonves, the CEO of CBS Corp.  who got $69.9 million in 2011; David Zaslav of Discovery Communications Inc. who got $52.4 million, and Philippe Dauman at Viacom Inc. who paid $43 million.
Compare that to the top-paid on Wall Street:  Jamie Dimon at JPMorgan Chase & Co, $23 million;. John Stumpf of Wells Fargo & Co., $17.9 million; and Lloyd Blankfein at Goldman Sachs Group Inc.;  $16.2 million.
Even  Brian Roberts and Steve Burke of Philadelphia’s own Comcast would have headed that class with pay  of $27 million and $24 million, respectively, despite pay cuts of 13 percent and 32 percent, respectively  from 2010.
You know just about all these guys were Obama supporters in ’08, right?
The 1 Percent Are Democrats
The 1 Percent Are Democrats

Tonight’s Meal

Tonight’s meal by Chef William Lawrence Sr. featured t-bone steak marinaded in his special sauce, grilled silver-dollar slivers of potatoes, fresh green beans and mushrooms, and an arugula salad with homemade blue cheese to start it off. 

The wine was a delicious homemade merlot.

The night gets four stars.

New Signs For Springfield Storm Drains

Next time you’re out for a walk in Springfield, Pa. check the storm sewer drains. The small, round faded “no dumping, drains to the creek” signs have been replaced by bright, sharp new ones featuring cartoons of smiling fish and frogs.

The Black Holocaust

Economist and Philadelphia native Walter Williams has estimated that 262,621 blacks were murdered by other blacks between 1976 and 2011.
He notes that about 7,000 blacks are murdered annually — this means that more than 50 percent of murder victims are black with blacks making up just 13 percent of the population. He points out that 94 percent of the time the killers are other  blacks.
In comparison, Williams says that between the years 1882 and 1968, 3,446 blacks were lynched at the hands of whites and that black war casualties from the Korean War (3,075), Vietnam War (7,243) and all wars since 1980 (8,197) come to 18,515.

Employment Bill Passes House Committee

The House Labor and Industry Committee, May 21, approved a bill designed to get unemployed Pennsylvanians back in the workforce, says State Rep. Jim Cox (R-129) 
House Bill 1539 would establish the Keystone Works Program to match unemployed individuals with employers interested in filling open positions within their organizations.
Under the bill, an employer must be able to provide the claimant with a maximum of 24 hours of unpaid training weekly for a maximum of eight weeks. 
Eligible claimants are those who are collecting regular unemployment compensation benefits, which they will continue to do  during the training period.
At the end of the eight-week period, the employer must consider the claimant for the job opening but is not required to hire him or her. Similarly, claimants would not be required to accept an offer of employment. 
The Department of Labor and Industry will determine whether the job being offered by the business is acceptable for the program and whether the claimant is an acceptable match for the job.
The bill now awaits consideration by the full House.  

Let’s Not Get Too Political As They Divide and Conquer

It is summer again. A struggle is taking place between those who want so support the downtrodden and help uplift the whole society, and those who want to grab everything for themselves and people who are like them while destroying all others. I think that this has been the primary battle on Earth since the beginning of the age of the human being. There have been forces that wanted to bless people and make those who were blessed be a blessing to everyone in which they came in contact vs. those who thought they were blessed because of their own superiority and who learned to despise those who God was said to love and want blessed, the downtrodden and the pure of heart.

The same old battle is fought again and again at the end of each
age and the beginning of the new. Humanity strives to jump to a new
state of creativity and awareness while other forces filled with
fear, greed, and lack of insight and vision, continually try to push
back toward the dark ages full of fear, discrimination, and created
scarcity so they may maintain their seats of power.

 

The main difference today is that we can see how scarcity is
created right before our eyes. We see how a few people working
behind the scenes can buy the rights of the many through bribery and
media manipulation. We couldn’t see that a long time ago. Because
of more information we can look at the major religions and see how
they played a part in perpetuating the myths that led to fear of the
other and constant wars in the name of God and country. It is as if
the sheet has been pulled back and we see all of the ugly people
conspiring behind the scenes to build empires for themselves
regardless what happens to the majority of the people in their
communities, countries, or even in the world.

This is a good thing. Now is the time for us to look at the place
from whence evil comes. It is time for us to sketch it into our
minds with hot irons, or chisel it into our psyches like truth
written in stone so that we can heal all of the separation that has
been created by these people and their spiritual ancestors, and begin
to rebuild the world the way most of us prefer. The racism, the
sexism, the religious bigotry, and homophobia has to go. These are
the tools they use to conquer us. It is time to realize that we
are part of an interdependent system. We are part of one world. We
are not separate. Poverty and oppression in one part of the world
translate to the same things in the other parts.

 

This is something we are recognizing today through this so called
war on terror. The major chance that we have to make this world
better is to get rid of the hate, nullify the effects of the haters
and Empire builders so that we can have life. When we can do this,
live in a multicultural world where we can enjoy others cultures and
share our own freely, we will create the Rule of Love, The Kingdom of
Heaven, Satchitananda, or even, as the far right conservatives say, all boats rise on the economic tide, on this Earth.

 

We will be what we were born as, a wonderful creative beings who are kind, loving, and capable of creating the world that most of us dream. A world of peace, a world of joy, a world of mutual sharing, in other words, a world of love.
It just takes letting go of the false identity that has been force
fed to us since the day we were born, and remembering who we really are. We are beings connected in an interdependent web of existence.
More than that, we are the guardians of that independent web. This is only if we decide to be that, though.  We have just forgotten who, and what, we really are and it is time to remember before global warming and WWIII..

 

Om Prakash is a Writer, Life-Coach, and Leader of Spirituality
Workshops. He is available for lectures and workshops on various
areas of practical spirituality. He is also the host of the talk show The Spiritual Warrior: Reclaiming your power at:
www.blogtalkradio.com/practical-spirituality.
For more info. visit www.nextstepcoaching.4t.com

 

 

Let’s Not Get Too Political As They Divide and Conquer

‘SWATting” As Political Terror

Almost two years ago — June 2, 2010 — a family on Cascade Road in Springfield, Pa. suffered a night of terror when a murder/hostage situation was reported to be occurring at their home via a 911 call. 

A SWAT team was called and a helicopter, guns were drawn, and the father of the house was handcuffed and wrestled to the ground. Instead of the home being a crime scene, however, it turned out that the families were victims of one big prank done by hacking the emergency dispatch system.
The practice of using the 911 system to send law enforcement on false and potentially dangerous alarms is called “swatting” and it is now being practiced for political reasons.
On May 26,  sheriff’s deputies were sent to the Georgia home of Erick Erickson, the editor-in-chief of the conservative website RedState.com.  to investigate a false report that he had shot his wife. 
Erickson had been writing about a swatting incident perpetrated on conservative blogger Patrick Frey aka Patterico, a California Deputy District Attorney, who was handcuffed following a 911 call reporting that he had shot his wife.
Frey had been writing about Brett Kimberlin, who is now Democrat political activist after serving 17 years of a 51 year sentence as the Indiana Speedway Bomber.
Another political victim of swatting is Mike Stack, the New Jersey resident who helped bring down New York Congressman Anthony Weiner. 
Former Justice Department attorney J. Christian Adams notes that the practice could easily be ended by a Justice Department led by an attorney general so inclined.