hedgehog
hedgehog's Journal"Black Friday flurry as UK retailers push discounts"
A flurry of promotions tied to Black Friday have been causing a frenzy for some UK retailers, with a fight breaking out in one Asda shop apparently over discounted televisions.
Asda, owned by the US consumer giant Wal-Mart, has half a million products on offer.
US shops traditionally offer big discounts on the Friday after the US Thanksgiving holiday.
These offers have been increasingly common in the UK in recent years.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25154497
Meet Rep. Stephen Fincher (R-Tenn.):
WASHINGTON — A Tennessee congressman who supports billions of dollars in cuts to the food stamp program is one of the largest recipients of federal farm subsidies, according to new annual data released by a Washington environmental group.
Using Agriculture Department data, researchers at the Environmental Working Group found that Representative Stephen Fincher, a Republican and a farmer from Frog Jump, Tenn., collected nearly $3.5 million in subsidies from 1999 to 2012. The data is part of the research group’s online farm subsidy database, from which the group issues a report each year.
In 2012 alone, the data shows, Mr. Fincher received about $70,000 in direct payments, money that is given to farmers and farmland owners, even if they do not grow crops. It is unclear how much Mr. Fincher received in crop insurance subsidies because the names of people receiving the subsidies are not public. The group said most of the agriculture subsidies go to the largest, most profitable farm operations in the country. These farmers have received $265 billion in direct payments and farm insurance subsidies since 1995, federal records show.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/23/us/politics/farm-subsidy-recipient-backs-food-stamp-cuts.html?_r=0
Tennessee ranks among the top seven states for food stamp use, followed by Alabama and Georgia, according to the Pew Charitable Trust. About 20 percent of Tennessee's population receives food stamps
http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2013/nov/02/food-stamp-cuts-hit-home/
More here: http://farm.ewg.org/region.php?fips=TN08&progcode=total&yr=mtotal
Turkey - baste or steam?
I'm old fashioned and holding out for basting - my son insists that placing a pan of water to provide steam is better.
I think I just came up with my argument - the basting provides the drippings for gravy.
Pie crust for vegetarians?
I always made my pie crust using lard and butter. I need an alternate to the lard. I don't want to use any hydrogenated vegetable oils ( Crisco), so I'm looking for a natural shortening solid at room temperature. I was thinking coconut oil, but the consensus here is that the coconut flavor will come through.
Any suggestions?
"Heavens, Mary, we'll laugh again....It's just that we'll never be young again."
For indivduals as for epochs the process of aging is normally a quiet and gradual affair, but the realization of youth having passed comes often as not with a suddenness, even a shock. Most of us, I suspect, mark that moment well and often thereafter in idle passages find ourselves touching the wound it left. My moment, and that of many like me, came with the death of Kennedy, and along with the others, I knew it. About the third day of that long, terrible time Mary McGrory said to me, "We'll never laugh again." And I answered, "Heavens, Mary, we'll laugh again. It's just that we'll never be young again." And I really knew that: knew it in recesses of the mind from which memories rarely return save in just such moments. I found myself at one point before a television camera being asked by a gentle and thoughtful Negro journalist did I think the dreams of the New Frontier would ever be realized, and I replied, thinking of nothing, and looking nowhere, that I was reminded of the passage from the Tempest, "We are such stuff as dreams are made of," and asked did he recall that that passage began with the words, "Our revels now are ended." Which was all I had to say. My mind for the moment stopped, and it was only weeks later, seeing a transcript of what I had said, that I realized I did not in fact know how Prospero began that soliloquy. Not fortune, nor pain, nor yet the fiercest will could have wrung it from me. Only the realization of a youth having passed summoned it forth, which is to say summoned a power that was there but was not being used.
Daniel P. Moynihan
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1967/11/4/moynihan-assesses-the-role-of-architecture/
Are there conspiracies to bring down the Obama Presidency?
I think the answer is yes.
Given what we know about the Koch brothers, the Te Party and even Republican Congressional Leadership, we know there are conspiracies out there.
So given that knowledge, knowing that there were multiple groups with reasons and means to kill Kennedy, I'd say a conspiracy there is at least possible.
Given the number of people with the means and reasons to cover up any conspiracy, I think we will never know for sure.
Proof you live some place with real winter:
- you listen to the radio every morning for school closings, and can recite the name of every school district within 60 miles, in alphabetical order.
Kennedy's assassination: Conspiracy or lone killer, I think the fact that we even ask the question
is significant.
If someone suggests conspiracy in regard to most events, isn't our knee jerk response to get out the tin foil hats? Yet discussions of the Kennedy assassination depend on reams of carefully collected data to prove that it was a lone gunman. Why isn't the suggestion dismissed out of hand?
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