Why does GOP object when Congresswomen speak?

It’s not just men interrupting women on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives — although there’s plenty of that here.  Unfortunately, women are interrupting other women, too.  So what’s the common denominator?  House GOP members are interrupting House Dems — who are women trying to explain how the House health-care bill would benefit women.  

It makes you wonder: Why are they so afraid to hear what these women have to say?    It’s really sad to see adults acting like filibustering two-year-olds.  (Sorry, two-year-olds, I don’t want to insult you.)

Junk foods: link to fat and sadness?

That’s what some researchers are saying. 

Researchers at University College London say a diet high in processed and fatty foods leads to higher risk of depression.   According to a story from AFP, those who ate “whole foods” were 26 percent less likely to develop depression than those who ate mainly processed foods or foods high in fat and sugar. 

And in today’s Huffington Post, Dr. Mark Hyman talks about research that links food allergies with obesity.   He says that common food allergens, like gluten, dairy, eggs, corn, yeast,  peanuts and soy, may trigger inflammation, which leads to an insulin reaction, which leads to storing fat in the body.   But what can trigger food allergies in the first place?  You guessed it.  Here’s what Dr. Hyman writes:

High-fat diets change the bacterial flora in the gut. Toxin-producing bugs are promoted by the high-fat diet while anti-inflammatory and protective bugs die off. (And there are over 500 species of bugs in your gut all fighting for territory.)

In fact, our highly processed, high-sugar, high-fat, low-fiber diet – plus many drugs like antibiotics, steroids, anti-inflammatories, acid-blockers, and hormones – completely alters the bacterial ecosystem in the gut, leading to breakdown, inflammation, and a leaky gut…

In fact, when you eat a bad diet, bad bugs flourish. Your whole gut ecosystem is upset and the outside world “leaks” in across a damaged gut lining. The result is not just obesity, diabetes, and heart disease, but so many allergic, autoimmune, and inflammatory diseases.

The new research provides more good reasons to stay away from the leftover Halloween candy and eat a healthier, more fiber-filled diet.  

Cat-ch the inspired music!

If jazz musicians can s-cat, then why can’t cat-s play jazz?   Check out the latest video of Nora the Piano-Playing Cat soloing at the piano, then comping with a piano student on a more classic tune.

If people playing the piano can inspire Nora the cat, I wonder if Nora can inspire people…like world-class jazz musician Diana Krall.  Maybe Nora will inspire Krall to add the rest-your-head-on-the-piano-keys technique in her future concerts!

Angst at a craft store seems out of place

Normally, I love shopping at craft stores, especially in the fall and winter.  I love smelling pine and cinnamon as I walk through the door.  I love seeing the dried flowers and baskets and fabric and decorations and crafts that people use to help transform their house into a home.

So I’m not happy to report about the unhappy atmosphere I’ve encountered at the same store in the last two weeks.   I think that when grumpiness hits a craft store, something’s seriously wrong.

My saga started last weekend, when I was looking for lamp shades.  A couple years ago, I’d found a really attractive lamp shade at that store, and for a good price.  I felt good about my purchase and the people who helped me at the cash register.  So last weekend I walked into the same store, hoping to bring home another good find.

I discovered that the store stopped carrying lamp shades.  But I happened to find a lightweight hoodie on sale that I thought one of my sons could use.  So I got into line near the checkouts, where maybe six people were waiting and one cash register was open.  Another cashier arrived and started calling for the next person in line.  But the next person I saw in line wasn’t moving, so I started telling people in front of me that another register opened.

Finally, a few people before me did go to the open register, but soon they stopped.  I was confused, so I walked up to the open cash register.  Finally, it was dawning on me that I must have entered the line in the wrong direction, so I said to the cashier, “Was I out of place in line?”  She curtly replied, “Yes.”   I felt crummy, but I knew my heart was in the right place.  I wasn’t trying to jump the line.  There was no sign to inform customers where to enter the queue, and I was encouraging everyone else before me to use the open register.

So I decided to brush off her ungracious tone.   My son liked the hoodie, and my husband thought it was just the right weight for a hoodie that he was also looking for.  So a couple days later, I decided to try the store again.  I bought him a hoodie.  But he has a long torso and long arms, and the hoodie I bought for him was just too short, so I went back to the store today to return it.

This time, there shouldn’t have been any issue with lines.  There was a special customer service desk for returns.  A big sign behind the customer service desk said the store prided itself on its “No Hassle” return policy.   So I walked on up.  The woman behind the counter asked me what I was returning, then she curtly told me: “You’ll need to get in line.”  I was taken aback at her tone, so I said, “Please?!”  in a tone that conveyed, “I’m sure you meant to add that to your sentence.”    But I got in line and waited.

Finally, it was my turn, so I went to the next available cashier.  I told her I had a return, but she wouldn’t help me.  “You’ll need to go to the customer service desk.”  I said, “I was there, and I was told to get in line!”  She said, “Well, then you’ll be next at that line.”

So I saw drill sergeant again at the same desk where I’d encountered her a few minutes earlier.   Then she asked me, “Why are you returning this?”  I replied, “I thought your store had a ‘No Hassle’ return policy.”   She said, “We do.  We just like to know why.”   Normally, I don’t mind telling stores why I’m returning an item, but with this person, I didn’t feel like my usual talkative self.

Then while I was waiting for drill sergeant to debit my credit card account, a lady maybe 20 years older than drill sergeant approached the desk to return something.  The cycle began anew.  Drill sergeant told her, “You’ll need to get in line!”  The lady meekly ignored the rude tone and said, “Okay.”

I was appalled at the poor customer service at this store.  It left me with such a bad taste in my mouth that I no longer saw the dried flowers, baskets and decorations. I no longer smell the cinnamon and pine.

The special atmosphere of the craft store was gone.

Want to be smarter? Start sweating

According to ABC News reporter Claire Shipman, people increase their brain power by about 10 percent after they exercise. So instead of “teaching to the test,” maybe schools should let kids run around for 20 or 30 minutes instead.

To see the short video from ABC News, click here.

And if we need to make an important decision, maybe we should first take a hike!

Follow the “peasant” analogy

This is a follow-up to the blog post below. Why would companies that took out life insurance policies on their low-earning workers call those workers “peasants”?

“Peasant” is not a term commonly associated with our society or economic system. Obviously, the people who coined the term “Dead Peasant Policies” were students of history…which makes me believe that we, too, should dust off our history books.

So I dusted off my college history text, The Mainstream of Civilization to 1500, copyrighted 1979, and looked up “Feudalism.” This is what I found on page 191:

“Feudalism may be defined by three characteristics: fragmentation of political authority, public power in private hands, and the lord-vassal relationship.”

Hmm. What struck me in particular was the phrase “public power in private hands.” It reminded me of the last three decades in which certain politicians denegrated the role of government in our society and insisted on privatizing whatever public resources they could.

It’s particularly relevant considering the billions of public taxpayer dollars that were privatized in order to bail out certain Wall Street institutions. What happened? After public dollars resuscitated those institutions so they could live to see another day, executives of those failed institutions considered themselves financially successful and deserving of bonuses. What did they succeed at? They succeeded at privatizing (for themselves) the financial resources of the public. To use a common phrase, they socialized their losses, and privatized their gains.

Here’s another quote from the textbook, on page 193:

“But counts, lords of castles, and their vassals had to have adequate incomes, and the scanty public revenues that remained — mainly tolls, market dues, and fines from courts — were inadequate to meet the needs of the governing class. In the end everyone in authority…was dependent on dues squeezed out of the peasants, who constituted the majority of the population.”

Is it any wonder, then, that the economically powerful in America would refer to wage-earner citizens as “peasants”?

No joke: “Dead Peasant” policies

Have you heard about companies making thousands or millions of dollars off the deaths of their wage-earner employees — and not helping the grieving  families who are struggling to pay their bills?  Learn more about “Dead Peasant” policies here.

Schlafly still blaming women

One of the people who helped defeat the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s is still at it, folks, and STILL blaming women and still not making any sense.   Here’s a short video of Schlafly talking at a radical right-wing confab last week, saying this: “the feminist movement is the most dangerous, destructive force in our society today…every social ill comes out of the fatherless home.”

May I interrupt Schlafly’s rant to point out that, logically speaking, it isn’t a woman’s presence in the home that makes a home fatherless?  It’s a man’s neglect.   To me, this is just the same kind of blame-the-woman logic that says women were “asking” to be sexually assaulted.  

Schlafly is still trying to blame all of America’s ills on women who want equal rights.    Remember in the 1970s, she said the Equal Rights Amendment would bring us — horrors — public unisex bathrooms and women in military combat?   Well today, even without the ERA, we have women in military combat and public unisex bathrooms, though we use them one person at a time — just like our bathrooms at home.

Schlafly appeared, along with some other extremists, at this year’s How to Take Back America conference.  Here’s some context for Schlafly’s speech.  And here’s another short video from the conference, showing a speaker who compared Obama to Hitler and advocated that we arm ourselves.   I wonder how we’re supposed to connect those dots!

Unfortunately, what’s more scary than Schlafly’s misogyny is the fact that some current members of our U.S. Congress actually attended and spoke at this event.

“Throw off the bowlines…”

Twenty years from now
you will be more disappointed
by the things that you didn’t do
than by the ones you did do.
So throw off the bowlines.
Sail away from the safe harbor.
Catch the trade winds in your sails.
Explore. Dream. Discover.

– Mark Twain
American writer and humorist

Fox News at its finest

It takes a lot of gall to take out a full-page ad saying CNN (and other television networks) didn’t cover an event — while using a picture CNN generated in the background of that ad!

But that’s what Fox News did.  Watch Rick Sanchez take apart Fox News.  He calls it as it is: a lie.   Apparently, Fox News must believe that if you didn’t promote the event, you didn’t cover it. 

And, yes, Fox News did promote the event.  Click this link to see behind-the-scenes footage of a Fox News producer (the woman in a green shirt) coaching the crowd to shout behind Griff Jenkins right before his on-air moment. 

So, to borrow a slogan from Fox News, “We report, you decide.”  Take a look: