The City Council is putting South Los Angeles on a diet.

The council voted unanimously Tuesday to place a moratorium on new fast food restaurants in an impoverished swath of the city with a proliferation of such eateries and above average rates of obesity.

The action is believed to be the first of its kind by a major city to protect public health.

“If you suppose that good intentions justify intruding on the lives and properties of your fellow citizens:
Do you appreciate being the target of somebody else’s good intentions, or haven’t you had that particular dubious pleasure yet?” Cat Farmer

Sacramento businesses are being told to get greener - or else.

The Sacramento County Environmental Management Department has begun issuing enforcement orders to businesses not complying with a new recycling ordinance.

Violators face fines of up to $1,000 per day for each violation, although lower amounts are being assessed, according to a county news release…

…Under the ordinance, all businesses and non-residential properties that subscribe to garbage service of four cubic yards or more each week are required to have a recycling program, the department’s Web site states.

According to Dennis Green, the department’s hazardous materials division chief, his agency is the first jurisdiction in the western states to issue mandatory business recycling requirements, the release states.

More than 2,000 inspections and 38,000 educational documents in support of the program have been distributed since August.

I have a friend, executive type, VERY capable, and she’s a native Kenyan, now back living in Nairobi sparkplugging an air-charter company for cargo and clients. She’s very enthusiastic about Obama, and her enthusiasm was catching, so I set out to argue Obama’s case, promote him, speak well of him, and started a list of good things about Obama.

First of all, there’s the abundance of Dark Cloud Dispersion that follows Obama everywhere, and the leveling of seas and the cooling of the polar ice-caps when he needs it. Or their warming, as need be. Obama’s rainbows make it easy for me to practice the Om Mane Padme Hum of Obama-Life and chant quietly, “See, Say Pwethay!”

Above that, there is the rational feminine pulchritude and the response of women at Obama’s rallies and speeches, who logically insist that their hearts go pitty-pat and their thighs tingle. Its a level-headed, passionate and unrehearsed reaction to Obama’s Plans for Hopeful Change. Hopeful women hear his plans and then realize they must change, their knickers and all, twisted or knot!

Better than that is Obama’s effect on the sharp, hard-boiled reporters of our nations media. They grin and blush and ask Obama questions that Obama can answer without taking his eyes from the teleprompter! This is amazing! These brave, level-headed men and women KNOW HOW TO ASK the tough questions Americans need to make an informed decision, and by golly, those journalists and reporters KNOW the questions that need asking! And if they ask, Obama shifts gears and reminds them that ‘we can CHANGE!’ The reporters KNOW to avoid asking questions that might reflect poorly on Obama’s principles, his vision or his cognitive ability. We must be Perfectly Clear, hey?

Further up the list is Obama’s outreach to America in words such as ‘never’, ‘the worst’ and ‘the most’… He has a knack for verbal spin, each little phrase a gyroscope toddling along a thread of not-really-Marxist better-than-Marxist social justice, which Obama and Michelle will impose on us for our own good, all ten years of his presidency. Or nine, whatever, but I never need to doubt that Obama is the one to ‘fix’ these ‘worst’ problems, Obama is the one Hillary’s waiting for in Denver.

Just below middle on this list of attributes and characteristics that make Obama a force to be reckoned with is his ability to spend 20 years in a racist, ‘black’ theology church with an obviously hateful, bitter white man pretending to be black while he shouts ‘God DAMN America!’ and yet Obama WAS NOT INFLUENCED even a little bit. Honest. And Obama’s life-long, unreconstructed bomb-using anti-American friends? Wow, what a guy! He supports ACORN without being a nut!

Just above middle in my list of things I’m trying to support in Obama is Michelle, his wife. Golly, she is a real piece of stuff, isn’t she?

“Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.”

I mean, there it is, right? Michelle has figured it all out, seen that all of us are ‘uninformed, uninvolved’; she saw right through 280 million American adults’ hypocritical denial and phony productivity and self-reliant personal responsibility and she’s going to be sure Obama DEMANDS and REQUIRES us to get with his program! Or else!

A few positions from the GREATEST THING about Obama on my list, is Obama’s assurance and virtual assumption of the American presidency already! Holy mackerel, Obama is practicing positive imaging, and he uses that fake ‘presidential seal’ and Obama’s dismissive non-pledge of allegiance and revisionist change of American protocol even BEFORE being elected, that lets him NOT place his hand on his heart and NOT recite the Pledge, because ‘everyone KNOWS’ Obama is a good citizen, and can change America hopefully, even when lesser creatures sneer that ‘Change and Hope is NOT a plan!‘

Near the top of this list is Obama’s removal of the American flag, Old Glory, from the tail of his campaign airplane! Hey, that is DECISIVE, and classy! Better than Old Glory is the Big Red O, now on the tail. Let the ‘Story of O‘ begin! Obama is bigger and MUCH MORE IMPORTANT than America, can’t you SEE?

Just below the number one position on this list of Obama’s good points is his refusal to waste time visiting American troops in Germany. That is just, well, words fail me when I try to find descriptions of how much this should rock America’s complacency! Obama didn’t want to frustrate or upset those wounded troops by telling them of his “End the War in Iraq No Matter What!” plan to withdraw troops on a timetable known to all the world. Obama knows that some of those small-minded losers who enlisted because they had no other options would probably have knee-jerk reactions against such a bold appeasement, so he decisively avoided the whole problem. Obama will continue in this strong, bold manner in his role as Commander-in-Chief-Executive.

And the number one positive attribute is Obama’s ability to speak the foreign language of the Muslims, taqqiyeh, the forked-tongue language noted by Native Americans as ‘politician-speak’. Other politicians speak evasively on things like national security, top secrets and critical national defense, but Obama has the demonstrated ability to lie convincingly about, well, nearly everything.

These are Obama’s good points. I’m studying ways to let everyone I know hear of these. America should KNOW before making that November Decision, eh?

Obama’s speech at Hitler Victory Monument

Did Obama REALLY call himself a ‘World Citizen’? Did Obama really assume or assert his ‘world citizen’ status without MENTIONING the Faith of Baha’u'llah, and the millions of humans who serve therein as ‘World Citizens’?

According to eye-witnesses, Obama apparently did. He made NO MENTION of the Glory of God, Founder of the Baha’i Faith, or its world-wide, practical efforts over the last 160 years, to bring hundreds of millions of humans into the arena of ‘World Citizenship’.

But then, what can we expect from this man who, in visiting Israel, does not visit Mount Carmel or the golden-domed edifice which crowns God’s Holy Mountain and links, more positively and more powerfully than ANY American could, Israel to Iran?

What should we think of Obama, with THREE HUNDRED ADVISORS, who cannot see the value of world peace based on justice, the one-ness of humankind, and courtesy? And being ignorant of Baha’u'llah (al Mahdi, the Lord of Hosts) and His Forerunner, The Bab (The Gate, al Qaim, ‘One like unto the Son of Man‘) is, in THIS Day, no excuse. If 300 ‘advisors’ are blind to Someone promised in EVERY RELIGION and in every past era, then they are probably also blind to the smaller facts of life.

Obama, if you want to be a ‘World Citizen‘, then you should ACT like one. Ask the Universal House of Justice or your American National House of Justice, or visit the House of Worship in the Chicago suburbs when you return from your junket. The standards are not too high, you can be included, IF you choose to act in accordance with the Will of God for THIS Day and Age!

Steven Harmon Contra Costa Times Sacramento Bureau

The full text of McCain’s opinion piece rebutting Obama’s New York Times op-ed:

In January 2007, when General David Petraeus took command in Iraq, he called the situation “hard” but not “hopeless.” Today, 18 months later, violence has fallen by up to 80% to the lowest levels in four years, and Sunni and Shiite terrorists are reeling from a string of defeats. The situation now is full of hope, but considerable hard work remains to consolidate our fragile gains.

Progress has been due primarily to an increase in the number of troops and a change in their strategy. I was an early advocate of the surge at a time when it had few supporters in Washington. Senator Barack Obama was an equally vocal opponent. “I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there,” he said on January 10, 2007. “In fact, I think it will do the reverse.”

Now Senator Obama has been forced to acknowledge that “our troops have performed brilliantly in lowering the level of violence.” But he still denies that any political progress has resulted.

Perhaps he is unaware that the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad has recently certified that, as one news article put it, “Iraq has met all but three of 18 original benchmarks set by Congress last year to measure security, political and economic progress.” Even more heartening has been progress that’s not measured by the benchmarks. More than 90,000 Iraqis, many of them Sunnis who once fought against the government, have signed up as Sons of Iraq to fight against the terrorists. Nor do they measure Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki’s new-found willingness to crack down on Shiite extremists in Basra and Sadr City—actions that have done much to dispel suspicions of sectarianism.

The success of the surge has not changed Senator Obama’s determination to pull out all of our combat troops. All that has changed is his rationale. In a New York Times op-ed and a speech this week, he offered his “plan for Iraq” in advance of his first “fact finding” trip to that country in more than three years. It consisted of the same old proposal to pull all of our troops out within 16 months. In 2007 he wanted to withdraw because he thought the war was lost. If we had taken his advice, it would have been. Now he wants to withdraw because he thinks Iraqis no longer need our assistance.

To make this point, he mangles the evidence. He makes it sound as if Prime Minister Maliki has endorsed the Obama timetable, when all he has said is that he would like a plan for the eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops at some unspecified point in the future.

Senator Obama is also misleading on the Iraqi military’s readiness. The Iraqi Army will be equipped and trained by the middle of next year, but this does not, as Senator Obama suggests, mean that they will then be ready to secure their country without a good deal of help. The Iraqi Air Force, for one, still lags behind, and no modern army can operate without air cover. The Iraqis are also still learning how to conduct planning, logistics, command and control, communications, and other complicated functions needed to support frontline troops.

No one favors a permanent U.S. presence, as Senator Obama charges. A partial withdrawal has already occurred with the departure of five “surge” brigades, and more withdrawals can take place as the security situation improves. As we draw down in Iraq, we can beef up our presence on other battlefields, such as Afghanistan, without fear of leaving a failed state behind. I have said that I expect to welcome home most of our troops from Iraq by the end of my first term in office, in 2013.

But I have also said that any draw-downs must be based on a realistic assessment of conditions on the ground, not on an artificial timetable crafted for domestic political reasons. This is the crux of my disagreement with Senator Obama.

Senator Obama has said that he would consult our commanders on the ground and Iraqi leaders, but he did no such thing before releasing his “plan for Iraq.” Perhaps that’s because he doesn’t want to hear what they have to say. During the course of eight visits to Iraq, I have heard many times from our troops what Major General Jeffrey Hammond, commander of coalition forces in Baghdad, recently said: that leaving based on a timetable would be “very dangerous.”

The danger is that extremists supported by Al Qaeda and Iran could stage a comeback, as they have in the past when we’ve had too few troops in Iraq. Senator Obama seems to have learned nothing from recent history. I find it ironic that he is emulating the worst mistake of the Bush administration by waving the “Mission Accomplished” banner prematurely.

I am also dismayed that he never talks about winning the war—only of ending it. But if we don’t win the war, our enemies will. A triumph for the terrorists would be a disaster for us. That is something I will not allow to happen as president. Instead I will continue implementing a proven counterinsurgency strategy not only in Iraq but also in Afghanistan with the goal of creating stable, secure, self-sustaining democratic allies.

Emphasis added.

Grumps

Sweden has a real thirst for European Union subsidies paid for school milk, which each year amount to 70 million kronor. But this amount could be reduced, since compensation will no longer be provided for dairy products used by school cafeterias in warm food…
…Schools can receive the EU subsidy for cold parmesean cheese sprinkled on a dish of spaghetti, the Board says, but cheese or milk used in warm lasagna in a school kitchen would apparently not qualify.

Let me get this straight…European countries receive subsidies from the EU for school milk. The schools pass along only 30% of this savings to parents (in the UK anyway: “On average, schools pass only 30 per cent of the combined EU and Top-Up subsidy to parents, retaining the other 70 per cent, or £5m, to cover their costs of administering the scheme.”) yet the European Commission that makes the rules for the program is adding more layers of bureaucracy to the scheme which will inevitably drive up the administrative costs. All at the expense of the taxpayers. For rules that apparently no one can adequately explain.

Can anyone make sense of this?