Eating and Drinking at the White House

Most of us will never be fortunate to have a meal or an adult beverage at the White House. This week, four people got together  for some brews(one a resident) and last month  4 top business people had what I guess we should call a working lunch in the  President’s private dining room . The “Beer Summit”  as a brilliant commenter wrote on my humble blog, has been well covered so we shall address it second. However, one  does wonder why there was  a fourth person at the table, a surprise attendee, if you will. Guess Mr Biden  had some free time.

Anyway, last month there were 4  business people (we will  presume them to be somewhat important in their fields) had a meeting with the President. I don’t really care what they talked about. What intrigues me is that their credit card numbers were obtained and they were billed for their meal. Who woulda thunk it? We will further presume that  these people were invited to the White House, making them guests. Wonder why they were billed and of course  how much? Were they charged for the ambiance, was a  tip automatically added to their bill and oh yes.They better check that  credit card statement next month to be certain no unusual charges were added. Apparently, this event was part of an ongoing dialogue with corporate chieftains. It was   s pearheaded by Valerie Jarrett, an FOO( Friend of Obama ) from Chicago. She and other Whie House officials seemed  unconcerned about the billing process. No doubt, Emily Post would turn over in her grave at this breach of protocol. Of the 4 CEO’S present  only the    Cola-Cola representative had no comment. Smart  guy, is he  not, cannot say anything nice, say nothing at all.

Now, back to the Beer Summit. Wonder  if it perhaps could be a trend setting event? Wonder if the  brews served will be able to use this fact in their advertising? (Bud Light, Blue Moon, Sam Adams Light and  a  nonalcoholic  beer for Biden; Buckler)

Arms summits, peace summits and now   beer summits – maybe there could be a botox summit and invite Pelosi and Kerry. Only kidding, a little.

Obama Comes to North Carolina- Yay

The president ambled down to the Tar Heel State today to talk about health care I guess. I didn’t go even though Raleigh is only  about 3 hours or less from here. For some unknown reason, I didn’t receive an invitation. Apparently some other more prominent people failed to receive an invitation as well, since they were not there. Specifically, Sen Kay Hagan was busy elsewhere. Three of the “Blue Dog Democrats” from Congress were also awol. Reps Heath Shuler, Mike McIntyre and Larry  Kissell apparently had other more pressing business.

Seems sort of odd, does it not that you would not be there when your president visits your state. You know, hop on Air Force One, zip down for a great photo-op and  be back in D.C. for dinner. Especially since Gov. Perdue and most of the state’s top  Democrats were there. Guess the Blue Dogs were back in the capitol having their arms twisted to vote for the health care bill. Wonder if they were meeting with one or both of the Emanuel brothers?

It appears from listening to Maxine Waters that some members of the party’s more liberal wing are totally on board with the attention the Blue Dogs are getting and perhaps the influence they may be wielding. It can be kinda fun to watch Democrat vs Democrat, but one should remember that at sundown, they are still Democrats.

Should You Shop At Home?

For accuracy purposes we will assume home is the the town or city in which one lives, not shopping at ones domicile. Just wanted to be clear on that. All things being equal, I would prefer to shop at home. You know, support local merchants, your friends and neighbors. Money spent at home is circulated in  such a way as to benefit the local community more than say money spent in a neighboring  community. There is the obvious benefit  of sales tax collections, of course. But also there is the reality that money spent at home circulates at home and is re spent, etc.

So, having said all those good things, why should one not do all of their consumer spending where they live?  Availability or lack of it would be the obvious factor. If there is a product that you cannot find at home, you must find other alternatives. For example, I have t wear a certain type of shoe at work which cannot be obtained locally or maybe I should add cannot be obtained without difficulty.

This , I suppose, brings me close to the reason behind the post. it often appears to me as if  local merchants really don’t care about your business. Not all of them, but a  fairly significant number. Poor customer service that is reflected in how one is treated in the place of business, how the employees act(more involved with each other than the customer), perhaps  even treating some customers better than others. From time to time, due to a slight , perceived or real, I will tell my wife that I have paid my last visit to such and such a store or that my feathers have been ruffled. That has become almost a catch phrase. She will say from time to time that eventually there will be no where else for me to patronize. To some degree, that is ok , since I really  do not enjoy shopping very much.But,  alas, one must venture out in public from time to time. For that reason, I am quite thankful for The Marina Restaurant and The Sandwich Shop to name  a couple. There are some others  but they will do for now.

Customer service, dead or terminally ill and can Obamacare fix it? I wish I knew. And yes, this very day, I had a place that”ruffled my feathers” so now I feel much better, thank you.

Mixed Health Messages

Health issues can be quite complex and hard to decipher. I present 3 examples that illustrate  how that is true. About 2 weeks ago the President nominated Dr Regina Benjamin to be the next  Surgeon General, our nation’s top doc and #1 health care advocate. Dr Benjamin practices on the Gulf Coast  of Alabama and has had very noteworthy medical career. She  has focused her practice on those who number among the under served. Her clinic has had to overcome the wrath of Katrina as well as a devastating fire. She has received a number of honors, all seemingly well deserved.

In her personal life, she has lost a number of family members to disease, such as diabetes, lung cancer(due to smoking)  and HIV related illness. She says that she would want to focus and wellness and prevention plans to keep people from dying of preventable diseases.

Ok, now for the mixture angle. Dr Thomas Frieden is head of the CDC. He apparently considers obesity as a preventable disease, but not by individuals themselves.  He alluded to the 26% obesity rate in our country and has this quote”Reversing obesity is not going to be done successfully with individual effort,” it will be done successfully as a society( translation -government). CDC researchers also said that spending on obesity-related diaeases  takes up 10% of health care spending.

Number 3 comes from the left coast, courtesy of the LATimes. The article is titles Tough Love for Fat  people, Tax Their Food to pay for healthcare.Don’t laugh just yet. The Urban Institute has a report that suggests using strategies that  were employed in the tobacco wars against fatty foods. Simplified, tax those chips, cookies , sodas, candies etc. What a government gold mine , all to be used for healthcare of course. They say that a 10% tax on theses evil foods along with new labeling identifying the healthier foods  would work wonders. Now whose work do they site? The Surgeon General who reported on the dangers of smoking way back in 1964 (this report was key in getting my dad to quit smoking)  and  continued to raise the bar .

Ok, do we have any connections?  Our Dr Benjamin is herself an overweight person. Some have already raised  this issue, both  as a  factor in  her favor-different perspective, knows the issues etc- and as a negative- how can she advocate against weight related issues if  she is struggling with them. A conundrum, we have, as Yoda might say.

Personally, I have always had a bit of difficulty with physicians who seemed of the mindset- take my advice, but I don’t . Could our Dr Benjamin fall in  that category, perhaps. Would she be wont to push aggressive measures that target what one eats and seeks actually to influence or control ones behaviour in that area? It will be interesting to watch. Too bad, one can only stock up so much Mello Yello ahead of time.

Cat Or Dog- No Middle Ground?

We  go boldly into the  quagmire of all quagmires; cat vs dog, feline vs canine, paw to paw. As a former owner of both species, although who can  own a cat, (Remember dogs have  masters and cats have staff.) I feel uniquely qualified to tackle this inter species conflict. To assist, I will use Bill Cosby and  the university of Sussex in Great Britain.

As a disclaimer, I will admit to having liked  some of our ( 4)  cats quite a bit. However, none can measure  up to the sainted Rameses, golden retriever extraordinaire.

Ok, first Mr Cosby, who my wife credits for dog ward tilt, He did a monologue many years ago, entitled, “Cats and Dogs”, which I had on 8 track tape. Showing my old geezerness, I know. The year was 1968 and a lot more important stuff obviously happened. But the album 200 M.P.H. had Cosby’s classic take on why dogs were better than cats. Just a few examples.

• Cats dont do anything
• They sit on the sofa and shed and make you sneeze
• If you tell them to catch mice, they will answer, no, because I’m  full or some  of them haven’t bathed yet
• Cant tell a cat , come here fido, he will likely answer what or you can’t  be talking to me

Dogs on the other hand

• They are always trying even if unsuccessfully
• Brings you your slippers, ones chewed up, cant help it  got sharp  teeth

And if 60′s humor doesn’t  help, we have 2009 university research. We already know cats are manipulative so that is sort of the starting point. Yet another British study analyzed their purring to tell us how they manipulate. Of course, why a university wants to  analyze the purring of house cats is beyond me.

Anyway, Karen McComb is our animal -communication researcher recorded these dastardly feline sounds. She learned that a hungry cat alters his/her purring to simulate a baby’s cry. Here is the shocker. These sounds played back are well nigh impossible for people to ignore. Well, duh! Hang on for the rest of her analysis. She suspects this human type vocalization is is rather natural for cats. They learn to exaggerate it to get what they want. I knew it all along. That is why they are called cats!

I resy my case- dogs rule and cats  drool-ta da!!!

Not Your Typical Gator QB

Even a nominal sports fan has heard of Florida QB Tim Tebow. The young man has a Heisman Trophy from 2007 and has led Florida to 2 national titles. If you have ever watched him play, he is more like a fullback than a QB. Of course, at  6ft 3in and 240 pounds he is well equipped to be the battering ram type player. Whether or not it translates to  pro football stardom remains to be seen, since he does not play an NFL style game.

But somehow I don’t think he minds  a whole lot. His  story is  rather  well known, son of a missionary to the Philippines, who survived  a  potentially life threatening birth to become a star athlete. But I like his non football side even more. His dad considered him a miracle baby since had prayed diligently for a preacher. Although God gave him a  quarterback, he could very well end up being both a preacher and a  quarterback. He makes mission  trips  to the Philippines and elsewhere and has an active  and somewhat effective prison ministry.  Perfect?  Of course not  and makes no claim to be.   A good representative of his school and college sports in general, to be sure. After all, the cover article  in last week’s Sports Illustrated by Austin Murphy had very little in the way of negatives.

Here  is what I find interesting . One of the blogs that i read regularly is Get Religion. Their focus is on how religion and religious topics are treated in the media, for good or bad. Their post on the SI article wasn’t bad although they noted that more critical questions could have been  asked  and that    it was almost a  fawning piece. Some of the comments I read made a similar point. True, the article was overwhelmingly complimentary, but so what? All too often, both college and pro sports stars make off the field news for other reasons. (Fill in your own choices here. ) And interestingly enough, if the “bad boy” in question produces results on the court or field and draws fans, i.e. makes the team money, this boorish behaviour or worse is often overlooked.

So, here we have an All American QB at a famous party school who writes scripture verses in his eye black- a problem, not for me. Guess I won’t have  a  problem  if  Florida has a successful season, unless they beat the Tar  Heels in the national championship game. I would have to draw the line there.

My Little Town Has A Museum

To be accurate, it is located here but it sort of belongs to our region, hence the name Museum of the Albemarle. The   museum is the northeastern regional branch of the North Carolina Museum of History, located in Raleigh. The museum is a very impressive structure that dominates the landscape across from the Pasquotank  River.

The actual  building took quite a while, partially or maybe primarily  to  due the cost involved.  There was state money involved, a significant amount, and over 1.5 million$ in private funds. That also  is impressive. To  be fair, I guess one should say it is a work in progress. There are some ongoing programs for children that are a  benefit to  youngsters throughout the 13 county region served by the museum. I have only visited the museum a couple of times, which seems a bit odd for a self-proclaimed history buff. I must admit to being underwhelmed. I know, I know, there are more exhibits now and  a Coast Guard themed exhibit is coming later this year. Given the fact that a large Coast Guard base  is located here that seems a very good idea.

A couple of nagging thoughts crop up when I think of the museum. It seems awfully big compared to its antiquated predecessor and it is just big. In the course of my job, I have occasion to go by the museum regularly. On one instance I was asked by an individual from out of town- ” What is that?  Therin  lies my second “issue” with the  museum- signage, something to readily identify itself. Just recently, a rather well   done stone  sign has been  constructed on one side. There is a small sign at the front door- MOA. I believe the museum does itself a disservice by not being more readily  identified to the casual observer, unless it doesn’t want to be. Nah, museums aren’t elitist are they?

Anyway, guess I owe it another visit soon to get an update. Sure hope the gift shop has improved.

The End Is Near Or Is it ?

There are always people who are telling us that the world is approaching its end. Many, if not all, are well meaning and seriously believe what they are saying. In fact, there has been extensive talk in recent years about maybe the end of the world being December 31,2012, according to the Mayan calendar. Well, sorry to disappoint you, this post has noting to do with any of that.

After a hiatus of several years, I renewed my long dormant subscription to Sports Illustrated and rediscovered many things that I like about the magazine, along with some new things. Of course, the photos are top notch and I marvel at the detail in some of the 2 page photos . What I am really enjoying is a little sidebar item called “Sign of the Apocalypse”. For some reason, these quirky little items intrigue me more than a lot of the articles.

Just 2  to brieflyillustrate. there is a minor league baseball team named trhe Hudson Valley Renegades, located in the town of FishkillNY ( bet there is a good story there too). Anyway, as minor league teams must do, they set out to do a promotion, an old-fashioned ladies’ night. Dont’ know any specifics but  I suspect that women got  a ticket at a free or deduced rate. Not so fast said Duchess County government officials. If you do that you will violate New York  State Human Rights Law. More ominously  you will violate the federal guarantee to equal protection. Am I the only one who sees a problem there? In reading it to my son, he seemed to lean towards the  side of the government. Think those folks in Duchess County might have more important things to deal with?

Ok, one more. This is  just pure fun, unless you are a fan of the Detroit Lions football team. The poor Lions went 0-16 in 2008, the first NFL team to accomplish such a feat. Their apocalyptic contribution comes from the team website. An ad on the site encourages fans to watch streaming video and relive the 2008 season. Suppose that was  a short video? Maybe it showed the players  running on the field for game 1  or something. I understand Lions fans. I was  a Washington Redskins fan in the 60″s when a good season was maybe 1-11 or lo and  behold, 2-10.

Thanks SI for helping to keep the fun in sports.

Controversy In Cambridge

By now,  many of us have heard about an incident in Cambridge,Ma involving Harvard professor Dr Henry Gates. Just to establish some facts; Dr Gates  is a friend of both President Obama and Oprah, the president has spent time in Cambridge as a student and the President responded to a question at his press conference regarding the  incident. Oh yes, one additional thing, if there is a quintessential liberal town in this country  I  would think  it  to be Cambridge. The nonpartisan Bay Area Center for Voting Research ranks it  the 8th most liberal city in the United States. Sounds a bit low, but I guess it will do.

The above paragraph generally represents facts about the situation. Beyond that, the best thing I have heard was a television interview with Bill Cosby. He was asked a rather lengthy question about the situation and gave  what I deemed to be a reasoned and  thoughtful  answer. He said several things but what struck me the most was his first comment. ” I wasn’t there.” His answer seemed  a bit more presidential than Mr Obama’s. And  this is what struck me most about  Mr Obama’s  response.  He  admittedly said he didn’t have all   the  facts but proceeded anywayto  interject himself and by extension his office into what needs to be a local matter. The President used the word stupidly in describing the actions of law enforcement  and then  said through a spokesman  that he called no one stupid . ABC reporter Terry Moran has a sit down interview that I believe airs tonight. In the interview, the President says he is surprised by the controversy his comments have caused(fyi: a good deal of the controversy involves avowed Obama supporters who think he went too far) and that surprises me. Having been in office a while, he should be well aware of the “bully pulpit” as Theodore Roosevelt termed it. The President’s comments about anything are newsworthy and they have an impact, for good or bad.

Perhaps, he could have someone get  him the facts next time. I fear this situation has the potential for causing more havoc than necessary. As Cosby said, may cooler heads prevail.

I Think The T-Bird’S Been Taken Away

For you young whippersnappers, the reference is to a Beach Boys song from a lifetime ago entitled “Fun, Fun, Fun” and yes I still listen to it. Apparently, there are federal agencies and powerful  individuals who do not heed that song.

Just to name a couple, the Justice Department and Department of Agriculture are “encouraging”  their employees to hold meetings in tamer locations. The two cities that seem to be high on the avoid list are Las Vegas and Orlando. Las Vegas, NV of course, home  state of Harry Reid who is  up for re-election next year. We all know about Florida  and  its importance in presidential elections. Now, Senator Reid was disturbed enough to send a letter to the White House on June 26 requesting that the informal policy against federal meetings in Vegas be reversed. Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel replied on July 14  that he agreed that policy should not dictate location. All is well, right? Wrong!

In at least one federal agency, “robust justification”, whatever that is, must be provided to have approval for  a resort area meeting. It gets better. There is apparently a list of preferred destinations. Notice 2 in particular.

• Chicago                                 Milwaukee
• Denver                                   Phoenix
• Portland, Or
• St Louis
• Washington, D C

Anything jump out , of course, Chicago. And you know, federal employees in Washington wold dearly love having their meetings there. Just gotta cross the street. Thought I would throw in some additional choices, just as a    public service. During the summer, meet in places like  Amarillo, Tx or Lincoln, Ne. In the winter,try Billings,Mo or  Boise, Id. No offense intended and I have never been to any of those cities. Give them a chance. Almost forgot, the Obamas love  Hawaii and Marthas Vineyard. Wonder if they are on another list? (Oh yeah, cant go anywhere in Texas, might run into someone there.)

A goverment blacklist that  includes  Mickey Mouse doesn’t seem to fit, does it?