Does The Buck Still Stop With You, Mr. President?

It's turned out that the Christmas Day Bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was only interrogated for 50 minutes before he was mirandized and provided with a Government-paid lawyer. Can you guess what happened next? Yep, you got it - he shut up. Even more stunningly, the Obama administration is defending it's decision by pointing out that before being mirandized, Abdulmutallab gave the FBI some good intelligence. So why stop?

It just doesn't make any sense.
Many people who support Obama are pointing to how Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, was treated by the Bush administration. With just a superficial glace at both cases, they may indeed seem to be very similar. Reid was also mirandized and got 'lawyered up'.
If you look a little deeper, though, it's apparent that there are a few critical differences in the two cases.
In the case of Richard Reid, his flight landed at approx. 12:55 pm and he was allegedly informed of his rights about 4 hours later, at approx. 5:07 pm. Whereupon, he was interrogated for hours and eventually did talk.
Also, Reid's terror attack took place on December 22, 2001. Just 3 months after Sept, 11th., when the Department of Homeland Security wasn't formed yet. That didn't happen until November, 2002. You could argue that the Bush administration created the Dept. specifically in reaction to the Reid debacle, in fact.
If anything, the 8 years that have elapsed since Richard Reid's 'shoe-bomb' attack should have taught us how to handle situations like this. Apparently, the lesson here is that Obama is just fine with treating a terrorist as a criminal, and not as an unlawful combatant. Even after 8 years of intense targeting of the US by terrorists around the world, Obama is still oblivious. Perhaps willfully so...

You Must Embrace The Bagels

When I tell people that I'm a Chef, they usually seem to think that it must be a wonderfully creative profession, that I get to sit around all day dreaming up fabulous recipes, sampling all kinds of tasty foods and maybe strolling around the local Farmers Market in search of the best produce...
The reality is quite different from that. The reality is that you do basically the same repetitive tasks everyday.
The trick is to make it all consistent and of superior quality.
We sell handmade bagels, for instance. Everyday I have to make the dough, let it rest, weigh out each bagel portion, hand-form them, let them 'proof', dunk into sweetened boiling water, sprinkle various toppings on them, and then bake.
I'll tell ya, it can get pretty boring.
That's why we run specials everyday, it's a chance for us to experiment with different ideas and to just plain do something different. Sometimes a very popular special will 'make it' to the regular menu - which then, ironically, just makes it another daily task to perform.
I must warn you, though, that most restaurants use their specials boards to feature food that is about to go bad... a sad fact, I'm afraid.
And by the way, no, I don't eat gourmet meals every night. In fact, I hardly cook when I'm home at all, and usually end up eating cereal a few nights a week

One Year into the Obama Presidency -or- The Boulevard of Broken Dreams

Wednesday will mark the 1 year anniversary of Barack Obama being sworn into the office of the President of the United States.
Let's take a look back at some of the broken promises of the 'hope' and 'change' campaign.
The most outlandish campaign promise that was immediately broken, was the Obama guarantee of unprecedented transparency, including the promise of broadcasting health care reform negotiations on C-Span. So far that has not happened. Instead, these 'talks' have taken place behind closed (and locked) doors... Obama and his cronies are going to ram the monstrosity of a health care bill through, ignoring the fact that most Americans don't want it, and they are willing and able to use every trick in the book in order to do it.
We were also promised 5 days to look over and comment on all non-emergency bills before they were signed into law. This is almost laughable, I mean, who really believed that to begin with? Of course, we have not seen even one bill on the White House website that we have been able to comment on before it was passed into law.
Obama also promised that he would end the income tax for seniors making less than $50,000. That promise has completely fallen off of the Obama radar it would seem. He's had ample opportunity to enact this pledge, a year's worth of opportunity in fact, and yet he has done nothing. I suspect it will remain that way.
I could go on with more examples....
We're only a year into the Obama presidency and things aren't looking so dreamy.

Will Obama be blamed for Haiti the same way that Bush was blamed for Katrina?

The disaster in Haiti has brought out a few people who are still complaining about how Bush handled Hurricane Katrina. I find it truely astonishing that anyone would try to lay any blame whatsoever onto President Bush for what happened in the Katrina-damaged states. It was a ridiculous argument then and it's even more ridiculous now. In the case of a natural disaster, the Federal government will, of course, be slow to act. It may be physically difficult to get food and water into the effected areas. Not to mention the fact that there will always be bureaucratic hoops to jump through, which, during an emergency situation, will be sped up - but, still, it'll take a few days for the actual money to reach those who need it. Anyone with a brain must realize that it's up to the local politicians (Mayor, Governor, etc.) to prepare for whatever natural disaster(s) may hit their respective states. It's up to them to ensure that the citizens of their states will have emergency systems open to them until the Feds can step in and help. Especially in New Orleans, where a hurricane could spell out disaster to the levee-dependent city. Why didn't Mayor Nagin plan for such a disaster? Why were there no emergency supplies of food or water in the Superdome? Why were school buses left untouched, when people could have used them to evacuate? Why was there no enforcement of the mandatory evacuation? These kind of questions were hardly asked at the time, let alone 4 years hence. Instead, Bush became the man to blame. Bush was cast as the white, rich, racist who thought nothing of leaving thousands of people to suffer and die.
Not only that, but Mayor Nagin was actually reelected! By saying things like, "This city will be chocolate at the end of the day." and "I can see in your eyes, you want to know, 'How do I take advantage of this incredible opportunity? How do I make sure that New Orleans is not overrun by Mexican workers'?"
What has the world come to? Sometimes I feel like I'm living in the Twilight Zone.
Although the context is different, I wonder if President Obama will be blamed for the slow response of emergency relief to Haiti? He is the leader of the free world afterall, why'd it take him so long to get food, water and medical aide to an island approx. 750 miles from Florida?

Nuke The Hippies!

WARNING! This is satire..I do not actually want to 'Nuke' anyone, or anything. (Unless they deserve it) Please read with due caution. If you are sensitive, or have no sense of humor, you may want to ignore me altogether.
It all started with the famous T-Shirt: 'Nuke The Whales'...I thought that was hilarious when I first saw it as a kid. As a grown-up (well, that's debatable really), I saw the slogan again and thought, Huh, what else could you 'Nuke'? What are some things that I'd like to get rid of and never see again? And it came to me, of course!... HIPPIES!
Just think of what a wonderful world we'd live in if we could get rid of the hippies...to never again have to see all of that long, greasy, straggly hair, to not have to ever smell patchouli again... we could abolish Tie-Dye! We could outlaw rose-colored glasses... we could get rid of that stupid Peace sign....
Now, with the liberal (ie Hippie) movie, Avatar, I think that we may have found a way to actually put my 'plan' into action. Could we possibly convince the hippies that there really IS a place just like Pandora? We'd have to say that Dick Cheney has diabolically managed to shrink down their 'paradise world' and has hidden it deep in the mountains of some far-away island in the Pacific. We could tell them that the island has only electric vehicles and all of the electricity comes from solar panels that are installed (free of charge, naturally) onto each home... Psst, you can have all the weed you want, man, and it's FREE!
Word about this new 'Pandora' would spread like wildfire. We'd get them all out there as a group, and well, you know the rest....
Of course, I could go with my other, also funny, idea: Pave The Seas!

Some People Have a Way with Words, Others Not Have Way...

In the future, you can expect to see my own brand of political commentary. Take for instance Harry Reid's racist statement. (that Obama was a good presidential candidate because he was "light-skinned" and "had no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one". ) What he's really saying is that if Barack Obama had been dark-skinned and spoke with a 'Negro dialect', he would not have been an acceptable presidential candidate. I must ask then, why not, Harry Reid?
Statements like that point to the general double-talk that is rife within the Democrat Party. If you really want to understand the Democrats, listen to what they are NOT saying....