TRUMP'S VORTEX OF DEATH

 Just a reminder that we would not be choking on Trump’s Vortex of Death if we had elected one of these two men as president when we had the chance. Maybe there’s still time with Pete in '28.

PLASTICS IN PROCESSED FOOD

 

 

 

Last year I experienced some crunchy, bitty-ness in a side dish at a restaurant. The pieces were too small to see in the dish, and I couldn’t go digging inside my mouth at the restaurant, but somehow they seemed non-organic, so I didn’t finish it. One’s tongue can identify even small bits of paper or fishbone easily. This seemed like something that didn’t belong.

 

A few months ago, I noticed similar bitty-ness while eating ravioli filled with artichoke and crab. It had come from a store. This time, I found the particle, a piece of plastic, shown flattened out in the accompanying photo. I can only speculate but suspect carelessness in preparing or filling the bags of crab or artichoke. Plastic is everywhere, as we all have learned.

 

These two incidents and others in the past, together with recent press about ultra-processed foods leading to increased cancer cases in younger individuals, convinced me to write something about it.

 

The message is this: If you wish to minimize your ingestion of unhealthy food additives, intentional or accidental, that have been associated with increased risk of cancer, it would be wise to avoid all processed foods. I think about children especially. 

 

The links below address cancer risk and foods, not plastic per se. I include a link to my blogpost on how to prevent obesity (some of it tongue-in-cheek)

 

 

     https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/242892/ultra-processed-foods-linked-increased-risk-cancer/

     https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/causes-of-cancer/diet-and-cancer/food-controversies

http://james-channing-shaw.blogspot.com/2009/10/ways-to-combat-obesity.html 

 

TRUMP? REALLY?

 

Many in the US and around the world are astonished by the estimates of high-functioning Americans who are voting for Trump despite who he is in 2024. They seem to admire and love his smash-your-face style and his misogyny, dishonesty, and all the rest.

Hard to fathom how anyone could put their trust in this man. However, my experience has given me a good perspective on understanding how such a thing can evolve:

 

I grew up in the 1950s in a family of John Birch Society anti-Communist fanatics who loved Herbert Hoover, hated FDR, hated JFK, hated Democrats, hated SCOTUS Chief Justice Earl Warren, hated all social programs, hated taxes particularly (my uncle Jake---a doctor---even chose a year in a federal penitentiary rather than pay his back taxes because 'they would just go to Communist programs!'). My parents loved William F. Buckley, Jr. and devoured The National Review weekly, listened to Paul Harvey daily and eventually Rush Limbaugh, loved Ronald Reagan of course, became affluent, classist (bow ties and champagne please) and closet racists, were hard-working, loving parents with strong family values, went to church as Episcopalians, tolerated Catholics and Jews, and viewed most other religions and denominations with what seemed to be a degree of pity. They despised Hillary Clinton, and my mother thought that the Holocaust received more attention than it deserved, the war being over for so many years and all. The makings for MAGA maniacs filled my neighborhood. The only thing missing was an obsession with gun ownership, although my father owned two hunting shotguns, a .357 magnum and a .38 handgun for my mother when she was home alone, though she had no clue how to use it. 

I fell into line until young adulthood. But of their six children, two became pro-Trump Republicans. I no longer can communicate much with them. One is in finance, the other (now deceased) was a fundamentalist Christian.

 

My parents died of natural causes during W’s presidency. Watching Barak Obama get elected would probably have killed them. They are gone now so I’ll never know if they would be in Trump’s camp today. They certainly would have been in 2016 against Hillary and 2020 against Biden. Hard to believe, when everything else about them was so forthright, accountable and truthful. 

 I wish my parents were still living. I would love to have a political discussion over champagne or a very dry martini. 

In the meantime, remember this: the ultra-rich will still be ultra-rich even after they pay their fair share of taxes!