I love bacon. I could eat it every morning for breakfast, but I stick with juice and fruit. Most of the time. When I go out to eat for a late Sunday Brunch which has a selection of both breakfast and lunch meats such as roast beef, I go for the bacon. Always. Here’s a chart which clearly explains why you should eat bacon. In moderation, of course.
Ok. In the battle of music on this site, I’ll keep this one short, unlike others who present their case in multi-parts.
The Grateful Dead are one of this most original and creative bands in American history. Friggin geniuses who could play rock, folk, bluegrass, blues, country, you name it.
And their concerts were stunning examples of improvisation. No band before, or since, could be on stage for 3 hours or more and just flat jam without an agenda.
RIP Jerry Garcia. Here’s to you, buddy.
Full disclosure. The author is a proud, native Pennsylvanian and a huge fan of Utz’s pretzels and potato chips. Mmmmm, tasty. There is a good reason for this. Pennsylvanians instinctively love chips and pretzels. It’s in their DNA. In fact, there is an unconfirmed rumor that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has officially enshrined chips and pretzels as one of the basic food groups, equal to fruits, vegetables, and Philly cheesesteaks. I need to check that out. In the meantime, here’s some startling evidence to confirm what I’ve said about DNA.
IMAGE OF NORMAL DNA
IMAGE OF A PENNSYLVANIAN’S DNA
In 1921, Bill Utz quit his job at a shoe factory in Hanover, Pennsylvania. With a $300 dollar investment, Bill and his wife Salie (not a misspelling) set up shop as a two-person operation in a summer kitchen behind their home in Hanover. Salie had good knowledge of Pennsylvania Dutch cooking and used hand-operated equipment to make about fifty pounds of potato chips per hour. While Salie stayed home making chips, Bill delivered them to “mom and pop” grocery stores and farmers markets in Hanover and the Baltimore MD area.
Today, Utz Quality Foods, Inc. is the largest privately owned snack food company in the U.S. It has over 2,200 employees and annual revenues of over $400 million dollars with distribution centers stretching from Maine to Louisiana. That’s a perfect snapshot of how successful free enterprise works.
Utz is certainly not a unique story of American capitalism. It has happened thousands of times in our nation’s history. But sometimes we need to be reminded that people like Bill and Salie Utz created something very beneficial not just to themselves, but to our country. Private sector jobs which supported the employees and their families. Personal income, real estate, sales, and corporate taxes which supported the nation, Pennsylvania, and the local community. Products which consumers freely bought and enjoyed. Major purchases from farmers who grew the crops and from manufacturers who made the equipment used by Utz.
Another important feature of Bill and Salie’s adventure with capitalism is that it didn’t cost anyone else a nickel. They took the risk, they used their own money, and they used their own labor to kick start this successful enterprise. As a result, over the nine decades Utz has existed, literally billions of dollars have been pumped into the U.S. economy and government treasuries.
At the end, there’s a link to the historical timeline of Utz Quality Foods. As you read through the history of the company, I think you will be struck, as I was, about the long term positive economic impact Utz has had, from the enormous expansion of their manufacturing facilities to an explosion in the number of employees. Just from one company. And yes, starting with Bill and Salie Utz, the Utz family did build that.
www.utzsnacks.com/about_history.html
Let’s talk about income redistribution done the right way.
For those of you who have followed this blog for a while, you may have picked up on the signal that Admin and I generally get along well. We have very little of substance on which we disagree. So we pick on inconsequential subjects, such as his love of that stupid and insipid band Green Day, and throw nerf darts at each other. Fun. No harm, no foul. Until Joe Paterno.
I will not bore the reader on the details of our disageement on Paterno, save for the fact that I defended Paterno, while Admin did not. It was all based on what happened in a locker room incident that happened in 2002 involving Paterno’s former defensive coach Jerry Sandusky. Subsequently, I learned that there was another similar incident in 1998 involving Sandusky, who resigned in 1999, but was allowed access to the Penn State athletic facilities, where he continued to sexually assault little boys. THAT changed my mind. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.
Paterno knew about the first and second incident and said “I wish I had done more.” Yes, Joe Pa, you should have.
Well, of course he isn’t. But I never thought I’d see the day when Admin attacked one of the most successful businesses in America, Southwest Airlines. Why? All because Southwest had the effrontery to kick off Green Day band member Billie Joe Armstrong from a flight because this slug got on the flight with the waistband of his pants somewhere close to his knee caps while revealing a butt crack which would make a member of a plumber’s union blush. Oh, the horror. Southwest enforced some modicum of decorum from its passengers on its flights. What next? Saying “please” and “thank you”?
ACTUAL MUGSHOT, WITHOUT EYE LINER, OF BILLIE JOE ARMSTRONG AFTER A DUI ARREST
BILLIE JOE WITH EYE LINER. WHERE’S THE LIPSTICK?
Here’s how it went down between Admin and me on the thread of “Farewell WYSP.”
SSS posts article of Armstrong getting booted off of a Southwest flight from Oakland to Burbank.
ADMIN: “Southwest Airlines Eats Shit. Are you actually condoning people getting thrown off airplanes because their pants are sagging? I guess that Federal Government mindset still breaths (sic) in you.”
SSS: “Are you against private businesses like Southwest Airlines which create thousands of jobs and SUCCEED? I could care less whether Southwest kicked this punk off their plane because of his low riders. It is THEIR AIRPLANE AND THEIR DECISION TO MAKE, not some government drone frisking little girls at a security checkpoint. If Southwest’s actions offend the public in general, then it’ll read about it on the bottom line of its annual report. This has absolutely nothing to do with a federal government mindset, but everything to do with letting a business alone and letting them run its show the way it sees fit.”
(edited) “Southwest Airlines commenced Customer Service on June 18, 1971, with three Boeing 737 aircraft serving three Texas cities-Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio. Today, Southwest operates 550 Boeing 737 aircraft among 72 cities. Yearend results for 2010 marked Southwest’s 38th consecutive year of profitability. Southwest is the United States’ most successful low fare, high frequency, point-to-point carrier. Southwest operates more than 3,400 flights a day coast-to-coast, making it the largest U.S. carrier based on domestic passengers carried as of December 31, 2010.
ADMIN: “Nice copy and paste about Southwest. It seems their reputation is doing better than their actual results. Their profits are on track to be down 30% this year and their stock has collapsed from $14 to $8.”
————————–end of thread————————–
You seem to be focused on profits and stock prices, Admin. Well, so what? Businesses have good years, and they have bad years. What else is new? Try and focus on the price of oil, please, since it is a harbinger of the profit margin of the airline industry. Anyway, you like people to bring facts and figures to the table when they show up on TBP. I did so with my “copy and paste” response above, which didn’t seem to meet your threshold of truth. So chew on these.
—-Southwest Airlines employs nearly 35,000 people. Those are PURE tax-paying jobs, in addition to Southwest’s corporate taxes.
—-Southwest Airlines has bought 550 Boeing 737 jet airliners. Tell me that hasn’t helped one of America’s most important manufacturers. Tell me that hasn’t helped Boeing’s growth. Southwest has been the LAUNCH CUSTOMER for the Boeing 737 300/500/700 series of jets. What that means is that these aircraft were first ordered and bought by Southwest. Let me put it more simply: Southwest Airlines has been critical to Boeing aircraft sales.
Want some more facts, Admin? Will a pie or bar chart help?
THIS ONE SAYS IT ALL. NO COMMENT NEEDED. SSS
PHOENIX – Phoenix police say a man tried to steal an ambulance left running outside a house fire but he didn’t get very far. Police spokesman Sgt. Tommy Thompson says 28-year-old Travis Ward took the vehicle, which was unlocked and had its keys in the ignition. It had been left running early Sunday to keep cool for anyone seeking medical care. Thompson says Ward drove the ambulance for a few blocks, striking a post, a fence and parked cars. He says the man told police he had used marijuana before the incident.
Ward was booked on suspicion of theft and criminal damage. It was not immediately known whether he has a lawyer.
ACTUAL PHOTO OF TRAVIS WARD
ACTUAL PORTRAIT, SUBMITTED BY AVALON, OF PRESIDENT QUINN
FROM: SSS
Chairman, Senate Judiciary Committee
TBP Nation
TO: The Honorable James Quinn
President
TBP Nation
Dear Mr. President:
I read with great interest, and great concern, your recent press release to TBP Nation, where you stated, “I favor legalizing drugs and shifting our expenditures towards treatment rather than criminalization.” I am aware that you have some very vocal and strong support for that view among some of your TBP Nation supporters, but as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, I hope you find the following of interest.
Article II, Section II of the Constitution states, “(The President) shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two-thirds of the Senate present concur.”
As you know, under Presidents Kennedy, Nixon, and Reagan, the U.S. has signed three international treaties regarding illicit drugs, all with the consent of the Senate. There are, as of 2005, 180 national signatories to these conventions, which are as follows:
1. The 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs. This convention was directed at cannabis, coca, and opiate derivatives, ie. marijuana, cocaine, and heroin.
2. The 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Drugs. This convention was directed at drugs such as amphetamines, barbituates, and LSD. Importantly, this treaty also states that nations have the discretion to substitute “treatment, education, after-care, rehabilitation, and social integration” for criminal penalties directed at drug USERS/ABUSERS.
3. The 1988 Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotic Drugs. This convention strengthened the language in the first two conventions and added controls on precursor chemicals and international money laundering.
Your stated written position on illicit drugs clearly implies that you would not only abrogate those treaties, but also nullify dozens of federal and state laws which have been passed in response to our treaty obligations. That’s going to be a Herculean task, and, according to most legal scholars, one on which you cannot proceed without the consent of the Senate.
Abrogation of treaties by the U.S. is exceedingly rare. Here are the two most famous examples, both of which were abrogation of bilateral, and not international, treaties.
1. In 1798, Congress passed the Act of July 7, which pronounced the U.S. freed and exonerated from the mutual defense treaties signed with France in 1778. At the time, the U.S. and France were in a quasi-war initiated by France when it starting seizing commercial U.S. ships carrying goods bound for Great Britain. When the law was passed, France had seized more than 300 U.S. ships. In Bas v. Tingy, the Supreme Court decided that this was legal since it was akin to a declaration of “public war” against the French Republic, a power granted to only the Congress by the Constitution.
2. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter declared that the 1954 Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty with the Republic of China (Taiwan) was null and void. Carter took this step when diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China were established. Enter Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, who sued Carter on the grounds that he did not obtain Senate consent. In Goldwater v. Carter, the Supreme Court did not rule on the issue, essentially throwing out Goldwater’s suit. The court ruled that the issue was a “political battle” between the Executive and Legislative branches based on the fact that the U.S. Senate never actually voted on the issue. Had the Senate done so and voted not to uphold Carter’s decision to abrogate the treaty, thus triggering a formal dispute between the Executive and Legislative branches, then the issue would have been reviewable by the court.
So there you have it, Mr. President. You may take a constitutional path, which will involve members of the Senate, or you may adopt the attitude of Jimmy Carter and French King Louis XIV, who said, “L’etat, c’est moi” (I am the State).
I remain,
Your most humble servant,
SSS
P.S. Let’s move away from this legal mumbo-jumbo, Mr. President, and cut to the fucking chase.
The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, just ruled that the state of Texas may proceed with the execution of Mexican national Humberto Leal, who was convicted of the 1994 brutal rape and murder of 16 year old Adria Sauceda. Here’s a brief description of what happened. Sauceda was found naked by authorities. A “bloody and broken” stick roughly 15 inches long with a screw at the end of it was also protruding from the girl’s vagina. Leal was high on cocaine the night he killed Sauceda.
I can hardly wait when “legal drugs” generate stories like this from coast to coast. Everyday. Guaranteed. Rest assured, Mr. President, I shall fight you on this issue every step of the way, on the beaches, in the air. I will never give up. I will never surrender.
RECENT PHOTO OF SSS