Saturday, March 29, 2014

The condemned man shall eat a hearty meal. The last pizza before I start Jenny Craig

Starting tomorrow I am going back on the Jenny Craig Weight Loss Program. I have had considerable success in the past using this diet plan but not much success in keeping it off for a long period. Now I have decided to jump into the fray again. 

In honor of my last dinner before the diet I decided to make my favorite food: Pizza. I wanted to get rid of a lot of stuff in the fridge so it wouldn't be around to tempt me (cheese, pepperoni, pizza dough). So here are some pictures and I will be blogging my progress on Jenny starting tomorrow. It'll take about 30 weeks to lose what I want to lose so check in on Saturday for the next Jenny Update. 

I had some pepperoni, roasted red peppers, artichokes red onions on hand and some homemade pizza sauce in the freezer. I roasted some grape tomatoes to concentrate their flavor and they are really delicious.
On the peel ready to go into the oven
It came out pretty tasty so a fitting denouement to the play that is delicious dining. For 30 weeks or so...

Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Scott Brown won't say whether he support's Obamacare's Medicaid expansion

Because he hasn't got the brains to figure it out or because he's such an asshole he won't take a stand on something until after he's bamboozled to rubes and ideologues into voting for him? To whit (from ThinkProgress.com):



Hey! How youse guys doin'? (What a douche!) 
Former Massachusetts senator and current New Hampshire Republican Senate hopeful Scott Brown refused to give a straight answer on whether or not he supports the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid provisions, on the same day that Granite State legislators gave final approval to an expansion alternative that’s already proven successful in states such as Arkansas.


Obamacare gives states the option to accept generous federal funding to expand Medicaid eligibility for their poorest residents who earn up to 1.38 times the poverty level. By law, the federal government must pay the full cost of expansion for the first three years and at least 90 percent of the cost in the following years. The politically divided New Hampshire legislature passed a so-called “private option” alternative to Medicaid expansion on Tuesday afternoon that will provide more than 62,000 low-income residents with robust federal subsidies to buy private plans through the state’s Obamacare marketplace — a measure that Gov. Maggie Hassan (D) is expected to sign promptly.


But Scott was still ambivalent about Medicaid expansion during an event in Rochester, New Hampshire on Tuesday. The Washington Examiner’s Rebecca Berg tweeted that when Brown was asked what he thinks about Medicaid expansion, he equivocated in his response. The candidate said that both he and New Hampshire residents support a “safety net,” but that legislatures should be weary of Medicaid expansion’s future costs since the Obama administration may renege on its funding promises:

BROWN: I believe there needs to be a safety net for people. That’s what [New Hampshire legislators] are wrestling with. But here is the challenge — as I am speaking to legislators and people around the state, they are very, very concerned about the promises that have been made by this administration. Not only by President Obama, but by Senator [Jeanne] Shaheen saying that you can keep your health care, you can keep your doctors, it’s not going to cost you any more. And they misled the people.


So I have told people, and I would tell not only this legislature, but every legislature throughout the country, be very, very careful about the promises that the president and this administration are making when it comes to funding. Their concerns are, what happens at the end of three years? Is it then going to be an unfunded federal mandate, that the citizens of New Hampshire will have a whole new program that they didn’t really want —they want to be compassionate, but they really didn’t want this plan — and how are they going to pay for it? That’s what they are wrestling with. So I would encourage the legislature to be very, very wary of the trail of broken promises by this administration on this issue.


That’s far from the definitive answer on Medicaid expansion that some reporters have been hoping to get from Brown, who has branded himself as an ardent ACA opponent and voted to repeal the health law on three separate occasions while serving in Congress.


Obamacare may actually wind up being a political thorn in Brown’s side as he tries to make his way back into the U.S. Senate. While New Hampshire Republicans overwhelmingly disapprove of the ACA, thousands of locals — including several Republican state legislators — have insurance for the first time, or are saving significant amounts of money, thanks to the health law. Almost 22,000 state residents enrolled in private Obamacare plans between October 1 and March 1, and the newly-passed private option Medicaid expansion could insure another 62,000 poor people in New Hampshire.

Former Centerfold Sen. Scott Brown (R-Where do I live?) can't even answer why he should be elected!

Sen. Scott Brown (R-Airhead)
Republican air-head and empty suit Scott Brown has said some pretty stupid things in his public career. Read Steve Benen's account of the sheer stupidity of Brown when asked even simple questions like 'why should the voters of New Hampshire vote for him?'. From MSNBC.com:

Up until yesterday, my favorite quote from former Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) came in 2010, a few months into his brief tenure on Capitol Hill. Lawmakers were tackling Wall Street reform and the Republican said he wasn’t entirely comfortable with financial regulatory reform because it would add “an extra layer of regulation” to the industry. He was apparently unaware of the fact that an extra layer of regulation was the point of the legislation.
 
Asked what kind of changes he’d like to see to the proposal, Brown, reinforcing fears that he just didn’t know what he was doing, went on tell a Capitol Hill reporter, “Well, what areas do you think should be fixed? I mean, you know, tell me.”
 
That was my favorite Scott Brown. Yesterday, however, the former Massachusetts senator, now running in New Hampshire, delivered an even more striking classic.
“Do I have the best credentials? Probably not. ‘Cause, you know, whatever. But I have long and strong ties to this state,” he told The Associated Press. (My emphasis)
It’s not every day that a Senate candidate questions his own qualifications for the office, on the record, responding to a question he knows is coming.
 
Nate Silver appeared on a Sunday show the other day and was asked about the Senate race in the Granite State. He said Scott Brown’s odds of success are “a little overhyped,” which seems like a fair assessment.
 
Oddly enough, this wasn’t the only strange thing Brown said about his candidacy recently.
 
Last week, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) presented Brown with a bipartisan opportunity: both campaigns, she suggested, should sign a “People’s Pledge,” intended to limit outside spending. By all appearances, Shaheen was hopeful that Brown would agree – after all, when he ran for re-election in Massachusetts, the “People’s Pledge” was not only effective, it was also his idea.
 
But in New Hampshire, Brown immediately rejected Shaheen’s offer out of hand, calling the offer “hypocritical.” Why? Because as he sees it, Shaheen allies have already run some negative ads against him, which he thinks means the “horse has kind of left the barn.”
 
Dave Weigel noted the problem with the argument.
This is lame stuff that ignores how the first pledge came about. It happened after Brown allies spent months attacking Warren with TV ads. On Nov. 9, 2011, Crossroads GPS went up with a TV ad ripping Warren for saying she’d provided the “intellectual foundation” for Occupy Wall Street.
 
One month later, Crossroads GPS went back on the air to attack Warren for her TARP oversight. Yes, after attacking her osmotic endorsement of #Occupy, they said she was too close to Wall Street. It’s politics, don’t think too hard about it.
 
It was only at the end of January, two months after Karl Rove’s group had splattered Warren with its contradictory messages, that both candidates signed the pledge. Nobody claimed that the “horse was out of the barn.” That was the point – it was early and the horse could easily be led back into the barn.
Does Brown’s rhetoric make any sense at all? Probably not. ‘Cause, you know, whatever.

Monday, March 24, 2014

Party Time at The Vatican! - Holy Hypocrites

File this under 'Why am I not surprised?' From TPM.com

German authorities intercept cocaine-filled condoms destined for Vatican

German customs officials at Leipzig airport intercepted a shipment in January that contained 340 grams of cocaine packed into 14 condoms inside a package of cushions from South America, German weekly Bild am Sonntag reported Sunday.

According to the Associated Press, Bild am Sonntag cited a German customs report that said the package was addressed to the Vatican postal office, which means any of 800 residents could have picked it up.

But the identity of the city's resident drug fiend is still unknown, according to the AP, as a sting operation coordinated by Vatican and German police failed to determine the intended recipient of the package.