Come to the First-Ever Slow Food Nation!


The first annual event of Slow Food Nation takes place on Labor Day weekend 2008 in San Francisco with enjoyable, accessible and educational activities for all. Check out all the event details at http://slowfoodnation.org/.

Slow Food Nation is a subsidiary non-profit of Slow Food USA and part of the international Slow Food movement. It was created to organize the first-ever American collaborative gathering to unite the growing sustainable food movement and introduce thousands of people to food that is good, clean and fair.

Slow Food Nation is dedicated to creating a framework for deeper environmental connection to our food and aims to inspire and empower Americans to build a food system that is sustainable, healthy and delicious.

'Dere wasa dis frogg
Gone jumpa offa da logg
Now he inna bogg.'


- Anonymous
Translated by George M. Young, Jr.

Taking apart the various aspects of economic activity, Fr. Pesch throws the light of the Moral Law on such topics as the manufacture of material goods, exchange of goods, remuneration and wages, justice in pricing, and—of course—he looks at what he calls the two "absurd consequences" of the individualist, free-market school of thought: Capitalism and Socialism.

"In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American... There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."

Theodore Roosevelt 1907

Charles Maurice de Talleyrand – on the perfect cup of coffee: "Black as the devil, hot as hell, pure as an angel, sweet as love."

Incredible Story





In 1986, Peter Davies was on holiday in Kenya after graduating from Northwestern University .


On a hike through the bush, he came across a young bull elephant standing with one leg raised in the air. The elephant seemed distressed, so Peter approached it very carefully.


He got down on one knee and inspected the elephant's foot and found a large piece of wood deeply embedded in it. As carefully and as gently as he could, Peter worked the wood out with his hunting knife, after which the elephant gingerly put down its foot. The elephant turned to face the man, and with a rather curious look on its face, stared at him for several tense moments. Peter stood frozen, thinking of nothing else but being trampled. Eventually the elephant trumpeted loudly, turned, and walked away. Peter never forgot that elephant or the events of that day.


Twenty years later, Peter was walking through the Chicago Zoo with his teenaged son. As they approached the elephant enclosure, one of the creatures turned and walked over to near where Peter and his son Cameron were standing. The large bull elephant stared at Peter, lifted its front foot off the ground, then put it down. The elephant did that several times then trumpeted loudly, all the while staring at the man.


Remembering the encounter in 1986, Peter couldn't help wondering if this was the same elephant. Peter summoned up his courage, climbed over the railing and made his way into the enclosure. He walked right up to the elephant and stared back in wonder. The elephant trumpeted again, wrapped its trunk gently around Peter legs, lifting him carfully then slammed his stupid ass against the railing, killing him instantly.


Probably wasn't the same elephant.

[T]he socialism you seek has ALWAYS proven to fail when applied. Sure, it makes you FEEL good, more equal and all that, but IT DOESN'T WORK.

Political leaders of both parties have appropriated billions of dollars to subsidize major agribusiness corporations to destroy food; the latest appropriation was $14 billion. They call the process “bio-fuel” or ethanol production, but because the amount of fuel produced is less than the amount of fuel it takes to produce it, the only correct term for the process is systematic destruction of the food consumed in the process. Agribusiness giants include Archer Daniels Midland, whose income was $44 billion last year, are subsidized to burn up America’s surplus food (mostly corn), while they carry out their principle business, marketing the remaining food which is made more scarce, expensive, and profitable in the process. Congress has created over us the first nearly foolproof, open-ended, food monopoly. This finacial scam is to big and too well sheltered not to come from the highest level of banking and politics.

When the Earps and "Doc" Holliday showed up in Tombstone, a large local gang of men called the "Cowboys" pretty much had the run of the place...

No politician should be allowed to occupy an office for more than four years. Citizens should be allowed to shoot at the bastards after three. After serving the nation as an elected official for the proscribed four years, a person should be offered two choices.

Move quietly back from whence you came or be stood up in front of a firing squad.

You only need two tools in life: WD-40 and Duct Tape. If it doesn’t move but it should, use WD-40. If it does move but shouldn’t, use the Duct Tape.

Dr. Paul is continuing his bid for the Republican nomination to spread the message of constitutional government and personal freedom, build the GOP back to its traditional roots, and continue the grassroots activism his candidacy inspired. To date, he has received over one millions votes in Republican presidential contests.

A pickpocket is obviously a champion of private enterprise. But he is not a champion of private property. The point about capitalism is that it preaches the extension of business, but not the preservation of belongings; it also tries to disguise the pickpocket with some of the virtues of the pirate. The point about communism is that it tries to reform the pickpocket by forbidding pockets.

You fail to acknowledge you were presented (by the National Center for Homeopathy) with over 100 high quality, scientifically based, pre-clinical and clinical studies showing that homeopathy is safe and effective. Your author also failed to acknowledge that he received an extensive briefing about the evidence in favor of homeopathy from world renowned scientists at Penn State University and the University of Arizona.

As a result of enforcing an urban growth boundary, “Portland [is] in a better position to weather the ups and downs of real estate investment over the long run,” Sinclair said.
In addition, Portland presents an affordable option for real estate investment in the western region of the U.S. The median cost of housing in Portland is $283,000, according to the most recently published NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Opportunity Index for 2007; this is a great deal cheaper than the median price in its larger Pacific Northwest counterpart, Seattle, which is estimated at $380,000. The difference is even more dramatic when comparing Portland with major cities in California; median home prices in Los Angeles and San Francisco are $515,000 and $770,000, respectively.

Not listening to reason /
Doesn't mean you have faith.

It is true that the era of cheap food is over - on account of rising production and fuel costs, and the diversion of huge quantities of food crops into the biofuels market. However, this also shows that we should be moving away from oil and chemical based food production such as GM and embracing sustainable methods like organic and low- input farming - based on renewable energy use and carbon reduction strategies.

By removing subsidies for biofuels, we 1) direct food back to the food supply, thereby easing prices, 2) promote investment in sustainable alternative energy solutions, 3) agitate the monopoly link between corporate farms and the petroleum products they use, 4) put additional pressure on automakers to seriously consider the development of non-petroleum powered and, certainly, of non-biofuel powered vehicles.

So, I exhort you: help stop the subsidy of biofuel production. If there is a natural market for it, it will stand on its own.

I also made the point that a farmer working his field in rural Denmark has faster and cheaper Internet access than someone in New York or Boston.

What if every potentially great new medium had been filled with "content" like this? What if, instead of actually MAKING Citizen Kane, Orson Welles had simply published a Web diary?

64a. Care at the Beginning
What lies still is easy to grasp;
What lies far off is easy to anticipate;
What is brittle is easy to shatter;
What is small is easy to disperse.

Yet a tree broader than a man can embrace is born of a tiny shoot;
A dam greater than a river can overflow starts with a clod of earth;
A journey of a thousand miles begins at the spot under one's feet.

Therefore deal with things before they happen;
Create order before there is confusion.

To perform a deeper financial analysis I decided to use the same worksheet and formulas used in the College Board report, but apply assumptions that more closely matched what the average student experiences attending a US college. This dramatically changed the results.

China was awarded the Summer Games in a fair international competition and has spent a lot of money getting ready for them. Any attempt to spoil the games will do a great disservice to the athletes, the Chinese government and the Chinese people. It will do nothing positive and will only harden attitudes and end up making the world even more dangerous than it already is.

Americans in particular should keep in mind that we are currently engaged in mismanaging two occupations of two countries that we illegally invaded. Neither enterprise is going well. Neither is our economy. In short, we have enough on our own plate without trying to steal a bite off of China's plate. We should make sure that Afghanistan and Iran are the last wheezes of the sick American Empire and shut it down and return to our republic.

Morrow, the counselor, described his regret as sneaking up on him in midlife -- more than a decade after he impregnated three girlfriends (one of them twice) in quick succession in the late 1980s. All four pregnancies ended in abortion.

Years later, when his wife told him she was pregnant, "I suddenly realized that I had four dead children," said Morrow, 47, who lives near Erie, Pa. "I hadn't given it a thought. Now it all came crashing down on me -- look what you've done."

...

"I have this stain on my soul," Aubert said, "and it will always be there."

He hopes to organize a father's section at this month's march in Washington protesting the 35th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, the Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion.

Aubert pictures men by the hundreds praying, chanting -- and waving signs: "I regret my abortion."

Have an analytical mind? Like to cook? This is the site to read!

The U.S. spends twice as much as other industrialized nations on health care, $7,129 per capita. Yet our system performs poorly in comparison and still leaves 47 million without health coverage and millions more inadequately covered.

This is because private insurance bureaucracy and paperwork consume one-third (31 percent) of every health care dollar. Streamlining payment through a single nonprofit payer would save more than $350 billion per year, enough to provide comprehensive, high-quality coverage for all Americans.

But accountability has gone out of style.

...

[T]his all amounts to a gigantic bail-out. And that it is a brilliantly bad idea from which financial capitalism may have a hard time recovering.

Like a well-meaning surgeon slicing up arteries to salvage the appendix, the Federal Reserve is only trying to help.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN)
Rep. John Boehner (R-OH)
Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA)
Rep. John Campbell (R-CA)
Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA)
Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ)
Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC)
Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ)
Rep. Louie Gohmert, (R-TX)
Rep. Jeb Hensarling, (R-TX)
Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC)
Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL)
Rep. John Kline (R-MN)
Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC)
Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO)
Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA)
Rep. Joe Pitts (R-PA)
Rep. Todd Platts (R-PA)
Rep. Tom Price (R-GA)
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI)
Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ)
Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA)
Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA)

Meanwhile, the politicians continue to run deficits year after year, in spite of the looming financial crisis. More debt means more interest charges. Interest payments will already consume $272 billion in 2008 (Page 56). This means that nearly one dollar out of every four you pay in personal income taxes will go to these interest payments. (The personal income tax is expected to bring in $1.2 trillion in 2008 [Page 30]).

The Government Accountability Office estimates the future shortfall in funding at $53.3 trillion (Page 6). Other experts say the number is almost certainly higher. This means that every full-time worker owes a staggering $440,000, courtesy of government excess. Eventually, that debt must be paid, either in higher taxes, or in reduced benefits. These numbers represent a looming crisis of staggering proportions.

To address this flawed and corruptible process I have proposed a very simple change called the Sunlight Rule, which mandates that bills be presented to Congress and staff for review in their final form no less than 10 days before they come to the floor for a vote. This would allow the representatives of the American people time to read the bills before having to make a decision on them. Every now and then you hear criticisms of congressmen and women for not reading the bills. That is a problem, however in cases like the Omnibus spending bills, a few hours is not nearly enough time to comb through and evaluate the hundreds of pages they contain. The rules do not currently specify any amount of time that must be allotted for Congress to read or deliberate any legislation before a vote. That needs to change.

Congress should read the bills. But to do that requires an appropriate amount of time. More appropriately phrased, Congress should be ALLOWED to read the bills. And no member of Congress should, in good conscience, vote affirmatively on a bill they haven't fully analyzed.

since Congress has repeatedly committed “legislation without representation,” strong measures to prohibit these Congressional misrepresentations are both justified and required.

To this end we have created the “Read the Bills Act (RTBA).” RTBA requires that . . .

Each bill, and every amendment, must be read in its entirety before a quorum in both the House and Senate.

Every member of the House and Senate must sign a sworn affidavit, under penalty of perjury, that he or she has attentively either personally read, or heard read, the complete bill to be voted on.

Every old law coming up for renewal under the sunset provisions must also be read according to the same rules that apply to new bills.

Every bill to be voted on must be published on the Internet at least 7 days before a vote, and Congress must give public notice of the date when a vote will be held on that bill.

Passage of a bill that does not abide by these provisions will render the measure null and void, and establish grounds for the law to be challenged in court.

Congress cannot waive these requirements.