Surprise! BP Gas Gone; Wish Newt Was Too

oil spill in Gulf

You all remember that massive oil spill two years ago when we watched our screens night after night and saw that ugly slick spreading from Louisiana to Florida?  God, we thought it would never stop leaking.  And we never thought it would ever get clean.  Well it’s gone.  Chewed up and eaten.  The methane gas, which was a major component of the vast plume of oil and gas had disappeared in 120 days.   So has the propane and ethanol.  

It’s an unbelievable tale, like the elves coming into the night and finishing the cobbler’s shoes before morning, the bacteria gobbled up the evil do-do and saved our pristine Gulf of Mexico.  That meant millions of barrels of oil have disappeared. 

In fact, 4.9 million barrels were dumped into the ocean— twice as many as the crude spilled during the Exxon Valdez incident in Alaska—and two million remained after the clean-up was called to a halt.  Yet last August, only a year later, scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimated that most of the oil had dispersed.  Environmentalists immediately attacked the findings, but independent scientists verified the government's results.

And here’s something else.  Valuable fisheries also escaped the worst damage.

Miraculous.  The ocean's bacteria saved us from generations of disaster.

Now I wonder if other things can’t be reversed, like our frightening global warming.        

Newt Gingrich used to be motivated to save our planet and worked with Nancy Pelosi to solve this urgent problem.  He recently finished a new book, a sequel to his 2007, A Contract with Earth, with an entire chapter devoted to the subject.  But because of the evangelicals—specifically Rush Limbaugh—who doesn’t believe in global warming--he dropped the entire chapter and is publishing the book after the election. WHY?  The evidence of global warming is all around him.  It's closing in, yet I guess it's no longer a problem.  If the right winged Republicans say it isn’t so, it’s gone.
 

Instead, Gingrich now suggests that by the end of his second term, he'd like to create a colony on the moon, and if there's enough people gathered, start a state.

 In the next breath he claims that Obama’s out of touch with the American people.

It's just a good thing that when the Navy Seals worked their magic again last week, killing the nine Somali pirates and saving the two kidnapped victims, one an American woman, allegedly near death, both were still here on earth.  With Newt, he’d be rocketing them to Mars.  Wish he'd hitch a ride with them.  

 

Paula Deen's a Big Fat Fraud

Paula Deen

You know what chutzpah is?  That’s someone who kills his parents, then throws himself on the mercy of the court because he’s now a lonely orphan with no one to care for him.

Of course Paula Deen knows all this.  She could teach the class.  Her high-fat, sugar-loaded cookery has starred on the food network and guested on morning talk shows for years.  Suddenly, this lady who refuses to acknowledge that her menu can dig her viewers into freshly marked graves at ripe young ages, announces on the Today Show Tuesday that she has type II diabetes and will start to cook healthier meals.
WHAT?
Heads turn, eyes blink, and those swear words that can't be spoken on TV are blasted all over the media.  Not only that, but this sweet southern liar has been hiding her secret for three long years.  Three?  In the meantime, her fans have gotten fatter and sicker, and she has still withheld this knowledge, not once demonstrating healthy eating or any alternatives.  What a queen.

 

So why the sudden change, the world asks.  Chefs and nutritionists have been criticizing her for years.  Turns out it was simply a payoff.  A drug company offered Deen money to make nutritious dishes for diabetics.   Despite her millions, despite her previous criticism—Barbara Walters once accused her of telling kids it’s okay to eat cheesecake for breakfast and chocolate cake for lunch—she will start preparing leafy foods for a few thousand greenbacks more.  Well more like many many thousands.  And boy, the backlash has been fast and furious.
 

Anthony Bourdain, the New York chef and host of Travel Channel’s, “No Reservations,” tweeted on Twitter, “I’m thinking of getting into the leg breaking business, so I can profitably sell crutches later.”   Dr. Loren Green, a noted nutritionist called Deen more than a hypocrite because she was getting paid for her hypocrisy.
Deirdre Imus blogged that the only thing surprising about Paula Deen’s announcement on the Today Show was that she didn’t do it with a fried stick of butter hanging out of her mouth.

 By the way, where were the tabloids all this time?  Aren't these guys following celebrities day and night?  Oh, only Angelina and Katy Perry?  Then Paula Deen's too uncool to qualify?  I see.  So Deen was safe while the average American wasn't.  
Because The National Enquirer didn't know that there's a killer in the kitchen.  Oh, she may look innocent with her twinkling blue eyes and shining smile—while she’s furiously mixing some buttered fried chicken and melted cheeses, and lots and lots of eggs--but she isn't.

                                                                               
Hey, don't we have enough hypocrites running across our screens every evening, smiling while swearing they’d be perfect for president?
By the way Gingrich, I believe your wife, not you, that you DID ask her if she'd accept an open marriage.  And do you know why I believe her?  Because you always had a new woman waiting in the wings while you got rid of your present wife, even if your wife was sickly, even if she needed you desperately.  You needed your freedom but couldn't take the chance of being alone, not even for a minute.
So in reality you had a one-sided open marriage all along because you rarely stopped committing adultery.   By the way, got anybody now?  



Paula Deen might not be running for anything, but really, how many more do we need?  

Too Skinny to Stand

Cindy Crawford

If you thought models were thin twenty years ago, have you notice them lately?  They used to be real people, only 8% smaller than the average American women.  Today they are 23% thinner—so tiny that Cindy Crawford and Christie Brinkley would be plus size models today.   

Plus sized models?  Plus sizes are now sizes 6 to 12, and the average woman in America is a size 14.

What’s happened to our thinking?  Things have gotten so skewed, so entangled, we can't think straight  any more.  If we saw a couple of those models coming down the aisles of our supermarket, we’d swear they’re anorexic and want to drag them to the closest hospital and hook 'em up to the nearest I.V.   But on a runway they’re gorgeous?  Come on, what's so beautiful?  There isn’t any beauty around.

The top models are all size ZERO.  That means nada—nothing, like no fat on the bones, or a mushy pound of flesh to squeeze.  At the same time, we're all bombarded by videos of pour souls from Africa dying of hunger, and some celebrity begging us to send money to save these people from dropping dead on the spot.

skinny models

                                                                                                  

How about the models?  They’re getting sick too.

Luisel Ramos, a 22 year old South American model dropped dead of a heart attack after stepping off a runway in 2006.  She had been on a three month diet of green leaves and diet Coke after being told she could be an international sensation if she lost weight.   Six months later, Luisel’s sister Elana, also a teenage model, was found dead in her bathroom.  She, too, suffered a heart attack. 

But American culture won’t let go of its vise-like grip.  Researchers report that women’s magazines have ten times more ads and articles promoting weight loss than men’s magazines do, and three-quarters of the covers  on women’s magazines include a message about changing a woman’s body by either:  diet, exercise, or cosmetic surgery.   Is this self-improvement or self-destruction?
 

These non-stop messages about thinness make women constantly doubt themselves because they continually remind us that we're never quite right, that we're always in need of adjustment.   According to Jean Kilbourne, educator and author, the overwhelming presence of painfully thin women means that real women’s bodies have become invisible in the mass media.
 

Callista Flockhart

Do women realize that these models and many celebrities have eating disorders?  Have you seen Callista Flockhart, the actress engaged to Harrison Ford?  You telling me he still gets excited pressing his hands to her bones?
Stand her next to a broomstick, and you can’t tell them apart.   

Harrison please, I’m telling you, there’s others…    Let us all send a donation to Callista.  Maybe she’ll take a nibble.

Stieg Larsson, A Hero for our Time

Stieg Larsson

Stieg Larsson, the Swedish author of the Millennium trilogy, which includes The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and two major motion pictures, sold tens of millions of books, but unfortunately died in 2004 at the age of fifty.

All three novels became instant hits, but he just didn’t write about crime.  Larsson's passion was his tireless crusade for justice and morality—values that he fought for until the day he died. 

His real life's mission was exposing Sweden’s Nazi activities.  Though the country was neutral during World War II, Nazis infiltrated much of their everyday life, and Larsson later uncovered racial crimes in the 80’s and 90’s when he wrote for a British anti-racist magazine and then started his own called Expo.    

It was during this time that he received constant death threats and even bullets in the mail.  “You Jew f-----…  We’ll tear you apart…And we know where you live.”

But he didn't quit.  Exposing racists was so much a part of his life that Nazis are mentioned continually throughout his books and even in his fourth book called Millennium found in his computer when he died.

All his writings show how women in these Nazi families can only survive if they remain on a lower status.  Harriet, the missing character in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, remains alive by vanishing for forty years.   The two investigators looking for her come across a list of mysterious names written by Harriet but have no idea what they mean.  It is only when they realize that they refer to Jewish victims does it start to make sense.

Interesting, that when you glance at extremist groups, women are ALWAYS stuck on the bottom, in subservient positions, often beaten and disgraced.

Look at Afghanistan, the women used to be educated.  Now they’re stuck behind Burqas, pushed aside and punished for everything.  Same in Iran.  And some men in Saudi Arabia want women dead if they dare fight for their right to drive a car.

Gabrielsson and Larsson

                                                                                       

Larsson used to call himself a feminist.  He was.  Although afraid for his partner Eva Gabrielsson, he continued to put his life on the line and never stopped fighting for what he believed.   Isn’t that what we call a hero—a man of true integrity and grit?

It’s something we should remember when we pick up one of his books, see his films, or think of the man who passed.