Nanny State

Republicans ❤ Alcohol, More Than Democrats, And Even The WORLD!

Published by Papa Giorgio


This important bit of info comes way of Libertarian Republican:

U.S. Republicans beat Africans, Asians, Latin Americans, Euros and even U.S. Democrats. Muslim Middle Easterners the most intolerant of alcohol by far

From Eric Dondero: 

Pew surveyed views on hot button social issues, like abortion, divorce, homosexuality, gambling and alcohol. Overall, Americans, both Democrats and Republicans were far more open and tolerant than virtually all other cultures around the world. 

A couple of exceptions: Republicans were less respecting of divorce than Europeans, and more pro-life on abortion, and opposed to gay marriage.  And the GOP is not as tolerant as it could be on legalized gambling.

[….]

….the gap between Dems and Repubs was significant, a full 5%…

[….]

Bottom line from the libertarian perspective: The Republican Party is consistently the home of anti-prohibitionism and anti-Islamism. Which makes all the sense in the world considering Dems today favor hugely expansive taxes on alcohol, nanny-state regs on bars, opposes lowering the drinking age to 18, and are the party that caters to Muslims.

…read more…

Christian owned alcohol shops in southern Lebanon receive threats from Muslim groups

Protests have been made and threats issued over recent months against Christian-run shops that sell alcoholic beverages in the South of Lebanon, a ‘feudal’ territory ‘belonging’ to the Shiite Islamic Hezbollah movement and its militias….

Algeria on the verge of closing down all Bars, banning all Alcohol

The two, Hachemi Sahnouni, who helped found the Islamic Salvation Front, and Abderazak Zeraoui Hamadache, said that alcohol is “perverting our youth and destroying our religious morals.”

The call to close all bars recalls the period referred to as the “black decade” in the 1990s when extremists imposed their will on many villages and cities.

Liberal-run city of Portland, OR moves ahead with ban on Beer sales downtown

….If the OLCC gives the city the green light, stores would not be able to sell single containers of malt liquor or domestic beer over 22 ounces, or malt liquor or domestic beer with more than 5.75 percent alcohol. They also wouldn’t be able to sell wine with more than 14 percent.

And this:

Originally, the target area included Old Town, Goose Hollow and the downtown core but now the OLCC is now looking at adding the Pearl District and Northwest 23rd Avenue to the roster

Note – The Portland city council is entirely Democrat. Additionally, the Mayor Sam Adams (yes, that’s his real name) is also a Democrat.

Also, from an old post: “Lift a Pint for Global Warming!” And why many think “Global Warming” is good:

During the Middle ages, from about 800 to 1300, the world went through five centuries of higher temperatures than average…yes, even higher than today.

During this era, the Vikings traveled around the known world–over land to the East, and by sea to the West. Warmer weather in the North meant less difference in temperature between the North and the Equator, hence fewer and less severe storms on the oceans. The higher temperatures also made it possible to grow grain and other food products in more Northern regions, including Greenland. There was a reason why they called it ‘green’ land: it actually was very green during that period. Since Vikings were ale drinkers, they had ale on their ships, rather high alcohol ale. Because of the warmer global climate, they were able to brew it with local grains from many of the territories to which they traveled. They spread their brewing techniques far and wide, even to Newfoundland (Canada), which the Vikings called Vin-land, since they found grapes over there.

Speaking of grapes, the warmer weather permitted grapes to grow in vineyards as far North as Northern England, the Low-Lands (today’s Belgium and the Netherlands) and vast territories in the East. The consumption of wine and beer mingled amongst the classes. Wine had always been reserved for the wealthy, but its new found abundance allowed it to spread down the hierarchical ladder of society. The line between wine and beer drinkers had also been geographically defined, since locals drank alcoholic beverages made from what was locally available, grapes or grains. That changed: brewers and vintners lived on the same lands now.

Thanks to the abundance of food produced during the constant good weather in that era, the population doubled or even tripled in some places, where it had been constant during the colder era (300-800 a.d.). The abbeys, who were so important in spreading the brewing technique and the cultivation of yeast-strings, became very rich and powerful. Less flooding (less strong storms) allowed them, for example, to create “new land” in vast quantities on the sea in today’s Flanders (Belgium) by building dikes. The cities emerged because each harvest produced more food, and more children stayed alive to become adults thanks to better weather and better food. International trade flourished over land (roads were not washed away as often as in the past) and over sea (less intense storms, more predictable weather). Thanks to the global warming in that era the brewing and consumption of good beer multiplied. More people, more successful people (cities, abbeys), more thirsty people, better grains cultivated in more territories were all factors that contributed in the creation of many new and diverse styles of beer. Wine making and beer brewing techniques influenced each other, especially in today’s Belgium, where rich cities, free from Royal rule, took advantage of the abundance and the freedom to trade.

The overall wealth was so great, optimism so high, food growing so easily, that nobility of the era in Western Europe could look beyond their borders. They were able to take a large number of their men, much of their treasure, and travel to the Middle East in an attempt to liberate the region from the Muslims, who had invaded and enslaved all the Christian lands. Indeed, this was the beginning of the Crusades, and there were many of these organized mass summer trips.

 

The FDA Is Holding Thousands Of Pounds Of Mimolette Cheese Captive

Published by Papa Giorgio

From Video Description:

With immigration reform in the news, here’s another tale of the federal government telling foreigners that they’re not welcome in the United States: The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is holding thousands of pounds of mimolette cheese captive in a New Jersey compound because the regulators say the orange-hued, gouda-like fromage has too many mites on its rind.

Never mind that the mites – tiny, microscopic insects – are supposed to be there as part of a cheese-making process that goes back hundreds of years. The mites help to aerate the rind of mimolette, thus helping to produce the cheese’s distinctive attributes. Many other cheeses – including hugely popular varieties such as Stilton and high-end “bandage-wrapped” cheddars – also have rind mites that serve similar purposes. The FDA worries that some people might have allergic reactions to the insects.

Virtually all of the mites are blown off the cheese with compressed air or wiped off by hand, but some always manage to stick around. Although it has no official or definitive guideline of how many mites per square inch is acceptable or safe, the FDA has decided that a recent uptick in the number on mimolette is grounds for holding the cheese hostage.

The result, explains Jill Erber, the owner of Cheestique in Alexandria, Virginia, is that once American cheese shops sell out whatever supplies they have left, the United States will be a mimolette-free zone. As she told Reason TV, there is simply no way to know how or when the prohibition might be lifted.

Erber, like other cheesemongers, isn’t taking the arbitrary FDA action lying down. As a way of drawing attention to the situation, Cheesetique offered patrons of its Alexandria and Shirlington, Virginia free chunks of mimolette if they posted Facebook pictures of themselves frowning. Another Facebook page, Save the Mimolette, has over 2,000 likes and is rallying forces to say “No to the Mimolette ban in the US! Let us eat stinky cheese!”

For Erber, who worries the FDA will extend the ban to other mite-rind cheeses, the issue is about more than just cheese. “Food is one of the products for which it’s easy to say less regulation is better,” she explains. “The research is out there, let people look into what they want to eat. If they’re concerned about the safety of a particular food, they shouldn’t consume it.”

And, she adds, “It’s less about the actual cheese and more about ‘I want my choice.'”

Nanny of the Month (ReasonTV)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Video Description:

This month’s lineup of of busybodies includes the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, where administrators may ban booze in dorms–even for students of legal drinking age (guess those college kids would just stay dry!). Then there’s Chi-Town, where officials are using GPS devices to track food trucks to make sure they don’t wander within 200 feet of any fixed businesses that sell food, including convenience stores. Violators could face fines of $2,000. Compare that to the $100 fine you’d face for parking in front of a fire hydrant and you get an idea for just how seriously city officials take the threat of competition. (Good thing the Institute for Justice is on the case.)

But this time the nanny of the month comes to us from deep in the heart of Texas, where administrators at San Antonio’s Northside school district are tracking kids with radio frequency identification chips. Dozens of electronic readers have been installed in the school’s ceiling panels to keep tabs on the kiddos while they’re at school. The official number-one reason for going RFID is to “increase student safety and security,” but–since district funding goes up when attendance goes up–it’s clearly all about the Benjamins.

With school-based tracking going back to at least 2004, the Lone Star State has been something of an RFID trailblazer. In fact, Northside is considering expanding the program to cover all of the district’s 97,000 students.

We Evolved Into Needing Progressive Democratic Ethics/Government

Published by Papa Giorgio

Really the idea of “progressive, democratic evolutionary ethics” is meaningless if true (see here). Dennis Prager discusses a recent defense of Bloomberg’s “soda-ban” by an evolutionary professor from Harvard. He [Dennis] even wrote about this in a recent article:

————————————–

Control of Language (1984'ish)
To differ with the left is not only definitionally sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, homophobic, Islamophobic, racist, and bigoted (SIXHIRB, as I have labeled it) — it is now against science itself….
Science Demands Big Government

The quotation of the week last week had to be that of Harvard professor Daniel E. Lieberman in an opinion piece for the New York Times.

Lieberman, a professor of human evolutionary biology, was among those who publicly defended New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s plan to ban the sale of sugared soft drinks in cups larger than 16 ounces.

And he did so using, of all things, evolution.

Now, we all know that humans have always needed — or evolved to need — carbohydrates for energy. So how could evolution argue for Mayor Bloomberg’s ban on sugar, a pure carbohydrate?

“We have evolved,” the professor concluded his piece, “to need coercion.”

[….]

Evolution explains love, altruism, morality, economic behavior, God, religion, intelligence. Indeed, it explains everything but music. For some reason, the evolutionists have not come up with an evolution-based explanation for why human beings react so powerfully to music. But surely they will.

Now, along comes Professor Lieberman, not merely to use evolution to explain human behavior but to justify coercive left-wing social policy.

In other words, the left is not only progressive when it coerces citizens to act in ways the left deems appropriate but also science itself — through evolution — inexorably leads to government coercion on behalf of such policies.

Whereas until now, the democratic left has attempted to persuade humanity that left-wing policies are inherently progressive, this Harvard professor has gone a huge step further. Left-wing policies are scientifically based. This is exactly how the Soviet Communists defended their totalitarian system. Everything they advocated was “naoochni,” “scientific.”

To differ with the left is not only definitionally sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, homophobic, Islamophobic, racist, and bigoted (SIXHIRB, as I have labeled it) — it is now against science itself….

…read more…

Here are the original comments by Prager on this deterministic proclamation:

Nanny State Lunch Police ~ Big Government Craziness (Updated!)

Published by Papa Giorgio

The Blaze has this jaw-dropping story:

A North Carolina mom is irate after her four-year-old daughter returned home late last month with an uneaten lunch the mother had packed for the girl earlier that day. But she wasn’t mad because the daughter decided to go on a hunger strike. Instead, the reason the daughter didn’t eat her lunch is because someone at the school determined the lunch wasn’t healthy enough and sent it back home.

Yes, you read that right.

The incident happened in Raeford, N.C. at West Hoke Elementary School. What was wrong with the lunch? That’s still a head-scratcher because it didn’t contain anything egregious: a turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips, and apple juice. But for the inspector on hand that day, it didn’t meet the healthy requirements.

See, in North Carolina, all pre-Kindergarten programs are required to evaluate the lunches being provided and determine if they meet USDA nutrition guidelines. If not, they must provide an alternative.

But that’s not the worst of it. Instead of being given a salad or something really healthy, the girl was given chicken nuggets instead. On top of it, her mother was then sent a bill for the cafeteria food.

…read more…

Rush Limbaugh talked with a caller on his radio show about this issue… here is the transcript from that conversation:

RUSH: By the way, at West Hoke Elementary School in Raeford, North Carolina, every student had their lunch box inspected. And I think every student failed in having a nutritious lunch by the agent in charge, which is probably an SEIU union cafeteria worker.

[…..]

RUSH: Lucas in Boone, North Carolina.  Welcome to the EIB Network.  Hello.

CALLER:  Greetings from the People’s Republic of North Carolina.

RUSH:  Thank you, sir.

CALLER:  About eight months ago my wife and I decided to enroll our son in daycare here in North Carolina, and I got this huge packet of sheets that I had to fill out, and they, you know, field trip permission slip, take your photo permission slip, and one of them was, “By signing this you agree that you’ll meet the state’s requirements for a preschool lunch,” even though I’m packing it.  And it says I have to have six ounces of milk or a milk substitute, four ounces of meat or a meat substitute, three ounces of grain, three ounces of vegetable, three ounces of fruit, and goes on and on and on.  And I did not sign it and I fought about it with them and they pointed me to the state official that I could talk to, and they told me that, “If your son doesn’t like milk just pack it anyway and we’ll dump it out for you and then you can pack something else.”  And I said, “Do you know how much a gallon of milk costs?”  And they said, “Well, that’s the rules and you have to follow ’em if you want to be in daycare.” So now I’ve got the government telling me that I’m not smart enough to feed my own child.

RUSH:  Yep.  North Carolina, same state as the kindergarten requirements I just described.

CALLER:  It’s unbelievable.

RUSH:  Same state.  And, I’ll tell you what, this is all coming from Michelle Obama.  There are agents in preschools, kindergartens in North Carolina examining the preschool students’ lunch boxes.  State agents!

Likewise, the UK paper, Mail Online, did a story on this kerfuffle:

A preschool girl was told her homemade meal wasn’t healthy enough so a school cafeteria monitor made her eat chicken nuggets instead.

What could be less healthy than chicken nuggets? A turkey and cheese sandwich on whole wheat bread with a side of a banana, potato chips, and apple juice.

‘What got me so mad is, number one, don’t tell my kid I’m not packing her lunch box properly,’ the mother from North Carolina, who wished to remain anonymous, told a local newspaper.

‘I pack her lunchbox according to what she eats. It always consists of a fruit. It never consists of a vegetable. She eats vegetables at home because I have to watch her because she doesn’t really care for vegetables.’

The Department of Health and Human Services requires students to eat lunches that consist of meat, milk, grain, and two servings of fruit or vegetables.

It isn’t clear what the entire meal that the cafeteria at West Hoke Elementary School consisted of, but all that the picky four-year-old girl ate were the chicken nuggets.

That said, Jani Kozlowski, the spokesperson from the DHHS children’s division said that the meal sounds like it would have passed the federal guidelines test.

‘With a turkey sandwich, that covers your protein, your grain, and if it had cheese on it, that’s the dairy,’ Ms Kozlowski told The Carolina Journal.

‘It sounds like the lunch itself would’ve met all of the standards,’ she said, not having worked with the school in question herself.

On top of the wasted food that was sent home with the little girl at the end of the day was a $1.25 bill for the ‘healthy’ school lunch.

‘I don’t feel that I should pay for a cafeteria lunch when I provide lunch for her from home,’ the mother wrote in a letter to her state representative.

Jessica Alba Begins Another~Science-Based~Celebrity Crusade

Published by Papa Giorgio

Jessica Alba went to Capitol Hill to get Congress to require somebody in the government to regulate all the chemicals in all products. “We’re not asking for tax dollars or anything,” she says, demonstrating her in-depth knowledge of the US Department of Fairies, Elves and Other Free Midnight Labor system of carrying out massive new regulation schemes.