Search Results for: mcdonald's

Yesterday we took a look at some incredibly dense people who clutter up our world. And I heard from people who really, really, wanted everything I wrote to be satire. Sadly, it wasn’t. There really are United States citizens who can’t find the U.S. on a map. There are also people who think that Back to the Future is a documentary. These people are, to be polite, morons. What kills me about each and everyone of them is that, when presented with proof that they are 100% wrong, they’ll just shrug and say “we agree to disagree.” No, no we don’t. Facts are not opinions. They either are or are not. You do not get to say “Ohh, I like this fact but not that one.” That’s not how facts work. Facts are what we build opinions on. Without them everything you say is meaningless. Which, as it turns out, applies to one out of five grown adults.

So let’s take a peek at some people who can declare, with 100% unshakable conviction, that they saw President Barack Obama rob a McDonald’s.

Or it might have been former President Ronald Reagan.

Was he Ronald Reagan or Barack Obama? Seems the people who witnessed a masked man robbing a Burger King restaurant in Lake Park, Fla., weren’t so sure.

Employees initially reported that a man wearing all-black clothing with red gloves and sporting a Ronald Reagan mask held up a Burger King at gunpoint on Tuesday morning, Palm Beach County sheriff’s office spokeswoman Teri Barbera told The Palm Beach Post News.

The robber, who had a woman accomplice also wearing a mask (president not specified), demanded money from the cashier and made off with about $400, according to the Miami New Times.

Detectives who reviewed the restaurant’s surveillance video determined the gunman was actually wearing a mask resembling Obama, the Palm Beach Post reported.

There was no explanation for the presidential discrepancy.

It’s not the first time a masked Obama bandit has struck a fast-food restaurant.

On Jan. 28, a man robbed a McDonald’s in Riviera Beach, also in Palm Beach County, while dressed in black wearing an Obama mask, according to the Palm Beach Post. This time, he had white gloves.

Sheriff’s officials didn’t immediately return a call to msnbc.com about whether they think the same person is responsible for both holdups.

All them there prezzidense look alike to me.

Oy freaking vey.

And, obviously, that can only happen in Florida. Just like getting bit in the butt by a bear while taking out the trash.

Also in Florida a woman seemed hell bent on setting the record for being the stupidest criminal in history by trying to smuggle tainted urine IN to a drug test.

A vagina, while typically thought of as an organ used for reproduction or sexual activity, has many uses, as is evident by the studious criminals often profiled on The Huffington Post. We have covered everything from the hiding of knives and marijuana pipes, to an innovative 27-year-old woman who allegedly stashed more than 100 items — including 54 bags of heroin and loose change — in her vagina.

So while the act itself comes of little surprise, the items female criminals will hide in their lady bits still tends to raise an eyebrow or two at the HuffPost Crime desk. Case in point: Mischelle Lindy Salzgeber, a 20-year-old woman from Dade City, Fla.

According to police in New Port Richey, Salzgeber, who is on probation for dealing in stolen property, attempted to thwart a drug test using someone else’s urine.

Salzgeber’s alleged crime may not be unique, but her technique is certainly interesting.

Authorities suspected something was amiss when they conducted a body scan of Salzgeber. The X-ray scan revealed Salzgeber had what appeared to be a pill bottle hidden deep inside her vagina.

Questioned by police, Salzgeber allegedly said the item was actually a small vodka bottle. The young woman said the bottle, which was empty, had contained another person’s urine and that she had tried to use it to pass a drug test at the probation office, police said.

Unbeknownst to Salzgeber, the urine that she allegedly used in place of her own was found to be dirty. The failed drug test led to Salzgeber’s arrest.

Salzgeber was arrested on a felony probation violation. She is being held without bond at the Land O’ Lakes Detention Center.

Of course, as you may already know, anything a Floridian can do a Nigerian can do better. Or, if not better, at least with a cooler accent.

Want to get noticed for a rock-solid stomach? Try ingesting almost five pounds of heroin pellets.

During a patdown, customs agents spotted a Nigerian woman at a D.C.-area airport on March 14 who had what was described as an “abnormally rigid” stomach, by U.S. Custom and Border Protection officials.

Security personel working at Washington Dulles International Airport became more suspicious of 52-year-old Bola Adebisi when she gave vague answers about her destination, according to authorities

That led to a brief, forced stay in a nearby hospital where an X-ray allegedly revealed that 180 drug-filled pellets gave her the firm tummy.

Adebisi was hospitalized until she passed all the drugs, which weighed in at 4 pounds, 12 ounces — touted as the largest bellyful of drugs found in the D.C.-area.

Customs officials put the street value of the drugs at $180,000.

This seizure crushes the previous record, set by in 2011 when Yomade Aborishade, 46, of Lagos, Nigeria expelled 100 pellets with a combined weight slightly over four pounds.

“The amount of pellets and heroin this woman ingested is incredible, a serious health risk, and very troubling if these numbers become the new normal,” CBP Port Director for the Port of Washington, D.C. Christopher Hess said in a press release. “We’re hopeful that this arrest sends a strong signal that CBP officers are proving to be successful at detecting internal concealment methods, and that we remain committed to working with our law enforcement partners and intercepting this deadly poison before it can reach our communities.”

Adebisi faces criminal charges.

“touted as the largest bellyful of drugs found in the D.C.-area” …. I did not know there was a competition between various “areas” for finding the moist prolific drug mules. What could they possibly win?

No, I really don’t want to know, but thanks anyway.

Let’s wrap this day up with proof that there’s hope for humanity. First, let’s take a look at a nice young lady who got good grades and was, therefore, promptly expelled from school.

A school that barred a sixth grader after she dyed her hair pink with her parents’ blessing to celebrate her good grades lifted its ban on Tuesday following an outcry from civil rights advocates.

After missing three days of classes, pink-haired Brianna Moore headed back to Shue-Medill Middle School in Newark, Delaware, on Tuesday after administrators reversed their decision after a call from the Delaware branch of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

“We’re on our way right now,” said Kevin Moore as he drove his 12-year-old daughter to school.

At his daughter’s request last week, he helped dye her hair a shade called crimson storm, which has a pink hue, as a reward for improving her grades.

But when she showed up for school the next day, she was sent home and told not to return until her hair met school policy mandating a “natural color, brown, blond, black, natural red/auburn.”

The ACLU soon got in touch with attorneys for the school district and asked, “Don’t you think this is unconstitutional?” said Kathleen MacRae, ACLU executive director in Delaware.

Moore was invited back to school with assurances she would not be punished, said Wendy Lapham, school district spokeswoman.

“The hair is not going to be an issue,” Lapham said.

Next schools will regulate skin tone.

“I’m sorry Ms. Whiffenpooof, you’re too tan to learn today.”

Of course schools exist not only to teach our young but to crush their dreams and rip their souls out of their chests.

First the story of the happy youth who was trying to better himself and the world around him.

This prom season, Minnesota student Mike Stone is on a mission to bring a special lady to his high school dance: a porn star.

The situation might call to mind scenes from the 2004 movie “The Girl Next Door,” in which three teens take porn stars to prom as part of a plan to film a modern sex-ed video. But it seems this Minnesota student just wants to stand out on his special day.

In an interview with the Daily Dot, Stone said many of the girls he asked to prom were already going with someone else. So, he took a different route and hopped on Twitter to contact some adult film stars.

After nearly 600 Tweets, at least two porn stars have offered to take Stone up on his offer.

Megan Piper, who never made it to her senior prom, said she’d be willing to attend the dance as long as Stone took care of the travel costs from Los Angeles.

“If you can get me there, then yes :),” she tweeted.

And adult film star Emy Reyes was honored by Stone’s proposal and responded by saying, “Awww that’s reappear [sic] hun and i would love tooo.”

Now, the teen’s next mission is to raise about $400 to buy his possible date — who, as of late Tuesday afternoon, appears to be Megan Piper — a plane ticket to Minnesota for the big night on May 12.

Piper said she’s excited about the possibility of attending the dance with Stone.

“I thought it was really cute, and I thought it would make his night by saying ‘yes’,” she told The Huffington Post.

The 19-year-old moved from Georgia to Kansas during her senior year of high school and couldn’t attend her own prom. She even had a navy dress with a corset top picked out for the occasion.

“It was so cute,” she recalled. However, if she does fly to Minnesota, Piper says she’s using the opportunity to shop for a new gown.

When asked about the possibility of Emy Reyes attending the dance, Piper said she was open to sharing the spotlight with her friend.

“If she decided she wanted to go, too, that would be really cool,” Piper said.

As of a couple of hours ago, Stone, who says he’s 18, did not have a PayPal account set up to receive donations, but that might soon change with the amount of exposure he’s been getting.

However, the teen’s special date might very well be a surprise to his parents and principal, who reportedly have no clue what Stone has been planning, the Daily Dot reports.

As for Piper, the adult film star isn’t keeping her boyfriend in the dark about her potential date.

“He knows I love him so he doesn’t mind,” she said.

Regardless of how Stone’s plan pans out, he now joins the ranks of several teens who have taken extraordinary measures to secure a date to prom.

Much like Stone, 18-year-old Kevin McGuire used social media to secure a date with Taylor Swift. And although the songstress won’t be able to attend McGuire’s prom, she invited him to the Academy of Country Music Awards as her date.

Brady McHale, on the other hand, took advantage of his position as volunteer firefighter and executed his prom proposal atop a ladder truck positioned outside of his high school’s windows.

Ashley Shay decided to take a more public route, pitching her prom proposal on a local billboard.

**Sniff** Makes me proud to be a man. The youth does his “Y” chromosome proud. Naturally his dream was crushed some estrogen fearing flunky.

A Minnesota high school has reportedly barred one of its students from taking a porn star to prom.

Mike Stone, 18, said he scored his dream date after firing off tweets to celebrities and porn stars including former Charlie Sheen gal pal Bree Olsen.

Another porn star, Megan Piper, said she’d attend the May 12 event at Tartan High School in Oakdale on condition that Stone pay for her plane ticket from California, the Minnesota Star-Tribune reported.

But the plans were scuttled after a local community website got wind of the plans and Stone was hauled into the principal’s office, according to the Daily Dot Internet newspaper.

“He was saying that it’s not a good thing to do that,” Stone told the Daily Dot. “I said, ‘I was just doing it to see what actually happened.’”

In a statement to the Star-Tribune justifying the ban, the superintendent of Stone’s school district cited a policy that restricts those whose “visit is not in the best interest of students, employees or the school district.”

Stone told the Daily Dot he wasn’t punished by school officials, though his mother was furious with him after receiving a call from his principal.

Yeah, I can see a mom having an eensy weensy bit of an issue with the whole “My baby’s boinking a porn star” thing. Because, let’s face it, that’s where this whole thing was headed.

Bless his soul.

One thing’s for sure, neither he nor the pink haired lass above will ever fall prey to the whole “world is flat” brigade.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.

Regular readers of this blog know that I am not the poster child for a healthy lifestyle. I maintain an “in office” stripper pole and think that bourbon and beer should be a food group. Until about a month and a half ago I was a pack and a half smoker. The menthol kind that doctors completely lose their minds over too, not just regular old smokey-poos. My idea of healthy exercise consisted of walking to and from the fridge. That being said, I have made some changes in my life recently. Besides quitting smoking I now walk three miles a day and no longer wash down breakfast with a beer. A late lunch, certainly, but not breakfast. But, despite all the years of self abuse, and fun – let’s be honest about that, it turns out that I’m in better shape than a 17 year old girl.

MSN Today is reporting about a young lady who collapsed, and nearly died, due to eating McDonald’s food.

Even if you’ve never had a McNugget, you could be guilty of eating a high sodium diet.

Imagine eating nothing but salt-filled McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets. For 15 years. That’s exactly what Stacey Irvine, a 17-year-old factory worker from England did—and it just may kill her. But before you write this story off as just plain crazy, do you know how much salt you’re taking in? And what it’s doing to your health?

As reported by the Daily Mail, when Stacey Irvine’s mother first took her to a McDonald’s restaurant 15 years ago and bought her some Chicken McNuggets, it was love at first bite. Since then, the British teen has eaten almost nothing but Chicken McNuggets. A diet like this not only lacks vital nutrients, it also serves up a dangerous amount of salt. A 10-piece order of Chicken McNuggets packs in 900 milligrams (mg) of sodium, more than half the sodium you should have in a single day.

A McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets every now and then won’t hurt you. But a 10-piece order packs in more than half the sodium you should have in a single day.

Irvine recently collapsed at work, and was rushed to the hospital struggling to breathe. She’s home now, but the amount of salt she’s been eating means she’ll need to clean up her diet faster than a McDonald’s employee turns around an order at the drive thru window. All that salt can lead to an increased risk of heart attack or stroke, particularly as she ages.

“The food industry creates a preference for very salty foods with the high salt content of their products, then creates products to satisfy that preference, and it becomes a feedback loop,” says David Katz, MD, founding director of Yale University’s Prevention Research Center.

While most people aren’t surprised to hear that a high-sodium diet raises blood pressure, most Americans would be downright shocked if they knew how much salt they really eat. The US government recommends that adults should consume no more than 1,500 mg of sodium a day, about two-thirds of a teaspoon. The average American really takes in 3,436 mg a day—more than double the recommendation.

Before you reassure yourself that you’re fine—after all, you banned the salt shaker from your table long ago—it turns out the biggest culprits are processed and packaged foods. “The vast majority of salt, 80% or more, is already in processed and pre-prepared foods,” says Marion Nestle, PhD, professor of nutrition at New York University.
Here’s just how fast the salt can add up on a typical day:

Breakfast: 1 whole grain bagel (490 mg) with 2 Tbsp fat-free cream cheese (211 mg) and 6 oz yogurt (95 mg)

Snack: 2 Tbsp peanut butter (147 mg) on 6 wheat crackers (194 mg)

Lunch: Sandwich with 2 slices low-salt turkey (432 mg), 1 slice American cheese (266 mg), and 2 tsp mustard (114 mg) in a flour tortilla (490 mg) with 1 dill pickle spear (306 mg) and 1c vegetable soup (960 mg)

Snack: 1 wheat pita (340 mg) with 2 Tbsp hummus (114 mg)

Dinner: ½ c pasta (4 mg) with ½ c jarred tomato sauce (480 mg) and 2 meatballs (232 mg), 1 slice garlic bread (400 mg), and salad with reduced fat ranch dressing (336 mg)

Dessert: Homemade apple crisp (495 mg) with ½ c vanilla ice cream (53 mg) and 2 Tbsp caramel sauce (60 mg)

The grand total: 6,219 mg, more than quadruple the daily recommended amount.

So even if you’ve never touched a McNugget, you can still quickly eat more sodium than you should. And all that salt doesn’t only hurt your heart and your waistline. An emerging body of research has also linked excessive sodium intake to cancer, osteoporosis, diabetes, dementia, sleep apnea, and kidney disease.

Scary stuff. But what’s even scarier is that it’s not easy to kick the salt habit: Chances are, you’re addicted to the stuff. Your body only needs about 500 mg of sodium a day to maintain the right balance of fluids, transmit nerve impulses, and move your muscles. When you eat far more than that—as most of us clearly do—your brain chemistry is altered. Research shows that salt actually triggers the release of the feel-good neurotransmitter dopamine, which makes salty foods as addictive as nicotine and alcohol.

And just like with any addiction, eating salty foods makes your body crave more. In other words, the more Chicken McNuggets you have, the more you crave them. No matter what the cost.

Okay, let’s back things up here a little bit. Her mother took a two year old child to the junk food capital of the world and let her choose what she was going to eat? Not just once or twice but for the rest of her life? Which, as noted above, may not be for that much longer.

I’ll put this into a little perspective for you. If you sat down and ate an entire can of Pringles you would have ingested less salt than that single order of McNuggets. Pringles clocks in right around 36% of your suggested daily salt intake.

That’s right, potato chips lathered in salt are healthier than McNuggets.

“But they’re made from chicken,” the woefully ignorant among you whine. Fifty percent of a McNugget is chicken. The other fifty percent involves ingredients other people use to make bath mats and bombs.

And it is that other fifty percent that McDonald’s is finally putting to an end. MSNBC reports that the stuff of food nightmares has finally been laid to rest.

McDonald’s confirmed that it has eliminated the use of ammonium hydroxide — an ingredient in fertilizers, household cleaners and some roll-your-own explosives — in its hamburger meat.

The company denied that its decision was influenced by a months-long campaign by celebrity chef Jamie Oliver to get ammonium-hydroxide-treated meats like chicken and beef out of the U.S. food supply. But it acknowledged this week that it had stopped using the unappetizing pink goo — made from treating otherwise inedible scrap meat with the chemical — several months ago.

Besides being used as a household cleaner and in fertilizers, the compound releases flammable vapors, and with the addition of certain acids, it can be turned into ammonium nitrate, a common component in homemade bombs. It’s also widely used in the food industry as an anti-microbial agent in meats and as a leavener in bread and cake products. It’s regulated by the U.S. Agriculture Department, which classifies it as “generally recognized as safe.”

McDonald’s decision was first reported this week by the Daily Mail, a blaring British tabloid, which trumpeted it as a victory for fellow Brit Oliver against the monolithic U.S. food industry.

Oliver’s campaign began in April, when he included a segment on what he called “pink slime” on his TV show, “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution” (warning: some readers may find this video distasteful):

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wshlnRWnf30&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&version=3]

The use of treated scrap meat “to me as a chef and a food lover is shocking,” Oliver said. “… Basically we’re taking a product that would be sold in the cheapest form for dogs and making it ‘fit’ for humans.”

Todd Bacon, McDonald’s senior supply chain officer, told the Daily Mail that the decision “was not related to any particular event, but rather to support our effort to align our global beef raw material standards.”

In a statement, McDonald’s clarified that it stopped using “select lean beef trimmings” — its preferred term for scrap meat soaked in ammonium hydroxide and ground into a pink meatlike paste — at the beginning of last year.

“This product has been out of our supply chain since August of last year,” it said.

Sarah Prochaska, a registered dietitian at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, said that ammonium hydroxide is widely used in the U.S. food industry but that consumers may not be able to know what products include it because the USDA considers it a component in a production procedure — separating scrap meat — and not an ingredient that must be listed on food labels.

“It’s a process, from what I understand, called ‘mechanically separated meat’ or ‘meat product,'” Prochaska told NBC station KSDK of St. Louis.

While the government considers it safe, it certainly “does not look anything like ground beef,” she said. And since it’s not on nutrition labels, the only way to avoid it “would be to choose fresher products, cook your meat at home, cook more meals at home,” she said.

Now some of you may have seen that email thread about how manually separated meats use beaks and snouts and stuff like that. They don’t now and never have. The truth is, in many ways, worse, since they specifically use the parts of the animal that butcher shops pay to have carted away as waste due to the fact that eating them is lethal.

That is until you mix them with bomb making materials. Then they’re fine.

Does that even remotely make sense to you?

Just FYI, we are the only industrialized country that allows this stuff to be fed to people and most schools are still using it in their lunches. In other words, learn to cook, get your kids bag lunches and quit feeding them poison.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoyvE19s2C0&w=420&h=315]

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Friday morning around 9:10!

In my time here at World News Center I have railed against the complete insanity of putting the pretend food at McDonald’s into your body. More often than not you’d be better served just eating the Styrofoam and washing it down with Draino. And let’s face facts, it’s not like I live a healthy lifestyle. Beer, bourbon and babes comprise my daily diet. Oh, okay, I will toss down the occasional burrito to keep a sense of balance. But even that lifestyle is healthier than McDonald’s food. Meat that does not decay, chicken cleansed with bleach and additives that, taken alone, could cause fatal illnesses do not inspire confidence. And yet Americans line up 3 deep to go nom nom nom and chow down on this crap. And how much food is in that little wrapper you’re handed? Try this; take a 4 oz. steak, 3 oz. of fresh lettuce and tomato and 4 oz.’ of pasta with an ounce of alfredo sauce. You now have the equivalent of a Quarter Pounder with Cheese. That does not include fries or anything else. That’s just looking at the carbs and content of the sandwich and splitting it out into a healthy alternative. If you sat down to the meal I just described you would be full at the end. Not so much so with the sandwich since your body isn’t processing it right away. It’s just a big lump that arrived all at once. So you’re still hungry and it’s off to the counter you go to get an apple pie and a shake or something else.

McDonald’s will point out that it’s not their job to make sure Americans eat healthy. And they are 100% correct. They will also point out that it is government health regulations that force them to add so many additives and stuff to their food and also it’s the only way to turn a profit because without all that stuff the cost would go through the roof.

Fortunately for the common people there is a crusader out there who has deep pockets and a vision of a world where fast food can also be good food. This company has put their money where their beliefs lie and has begun serving only locally grown foods wherever possible and supplementing them with only the highest quality and freshest items.

And they’ve been turning a tidy profit to boot.

Who are these great crusaders for a better world?

McDonald’s.

Greetings from McDonald’s, or “MacDo,” as they call it here in Paris, where I am comfortably ensconced in a McCafé enjoying a croissant and a grand crème coffee. I’m surrounded by people of all ages who are talking with friends, reading, or typing away on their laptops like me.

The beauty of McDonald’s in France is that it doesn’t feel like a fast food joint, where hordes of people shuffle in and out and tables turn at a fast clip.

McDonalds is the world’s largest food chain. It operates in 123 countries around the world, and just this week the company said it plans to open another 1,300 restaurants in 2012.

Naturally, the U.S. is its no. 1 market, but guess who is no. 2? You got it: France. A paper out this month by three graduates of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business says McDonald’s is such a success in the land of Michelin three-star restaurants because it has adapted to French eating habits and tastes. There are now 1,200 franchises in France; the company opened 30 restaurants per year in the past five years alone.

Even in these harried times, the French spend more than two hours a day at the table. Sitting down to a meal is a cornerstone of French culture, and McDonald’s seems to get that. French McDonald’s are spacious, tastefully decorated restaurants that encourage people to take their time while eating. And the cozy McCafe’s with their plush chairs and sofas have become an extension to many restaurants.

I remember there used to be a few Burger Kings in Paris, but McDonald’s closest competitor went belly up years ago. The Wharton study says it’s because they tried to transplant the total American dining experience to France, without taking into consideration French preferences.

McDonald’s, meanwhile, offers all kinds of Frenchified dishes, from the Alpine burger with three different kinds of cheese to tasty little gallette des rois, or King’s Cakes, popular after Christmas and sold by all the bakeries. Last year, it introduced the McBaguette.

Another reason McDonald’s works so well here is that the food is locally sourced and very high quality. As we all know, France is the land of haute cuisine. But it’s also the land of good cuisine. The French appreciate quality in any category, even fast food. Restaurateurs in France know they’ll go bust if they offer substandard products. I’ve had friends from India tell me that the Indian restaurants in Paris are among the world’s best.

And if you like good meat (who doesn’t?!), then McDonald’s France is clearly superior. In the U.S., McDonald’s says its cattle are mostly corn-fed. While the company doesn’t address on its site whether growth hormones and growth-promoting antibiotics are added to the animal feed consumed by the animals it buys, it’s a reasonable assumption that they are.

French cattle are all grass fed, which many argue makes them tastier. Growth hormones are illegal here and each animal has a passport showing where it was born, raised, and slaughtered, according to McDonald’s France. That’s called traceability, and we don’t yet have such a national system in place.

As for chicken nugget lovers, French chickens, unlike some of their American counterparts, are not rinsed in chlorine to disinfect them. The regular use of chlorine in the U.S. chicken industry is why poulet americain has long been interdit in the European Union.

Of course you can still find French people who dislike McDonald’s because it represents American hegemony in a globalized world and the homogenization of food and culture. French anti-globalization activist Jose Bove actually served prison time a couple years back for sacking a McDonald’s restaurant in southern France. For a friend of mine who lives in Burgundy — pretty much the French heartland — MacDo is the symbol of malbouffe, or bad food and bad eating — a major slur here. He says he’d never take his two young sons to eat chez Ronald.

But this McDonald’s in Paris’ 15th arrondissement is brimming with parents who’ve brought their kids in for lunch. There’s a good dose of teenagers too. Like teenyboppers back home, French adolescents, or ados, love to hang out at MacDo — they just gather in the café instead of the parking lot.

I’m not a big fan of France, I’ve been there a few times and can think of many other ways to get insulted for far less cost. That being said, I have eaten in the McDonald’s in Canne. The first thing I noticed was that the food tasted like food. There were real flavors. Also, instead of the standard yellow mustard there were several varieties of Dijon. The whole cost of the meal was about twenty cents more than the same meal here.

Now, the big question, could it work here? My guess is yes. The loco-vore movement, demanding better access to locally and organically grown foods, has grown every year. I try and get to as many of their events as I can to pick up fresh veggies and meats. If you’ve ever had fresh killed chicken on a farm you know that it bears little resemblance to the bland slab of whiteness that passes for chicken these days.

To make it work our government would have to stop sucking the big toe of companies like Monsanto and allow farmers to grow healthy food. I know that sentence reads odd but that is the situation we find ourselves in. Food grown organically, without gene splicing or chemical alteration, is severely limited in its marketability under current regulations. The situation was completely reversed until the 1970’s.

Then you could only buy foods “in season.” Hot houses extended some of those seasons but, for the most part, you based your shopping on what you knew would be around. There were winter recipes and summer recipes and so on. It sounds quaint because it is. But it also guaranteed that you were only eating food that had been grown naturally.

And, since we truly are what we eat, isn’t it best we eat foods that aren’t lethal?

Now sit back and enjoy a video my friend Marcie (about 50 seconds in, pink dress) and her friend put together to show what joys a kitchen can hold.

And they’re all good for you.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-QMNQup360&w=420&h=315]

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Friday morning around 9:10!

I got an irate email the other day concerning a column I wrote earlier this week. The young lady, she mentioned which college she is currently attending, was appalled that I had focused on a series of articles that covered a month’s worth of time to make people seem stupid. She is correct. At least about the time it took for all the articles to become pubic knowledge. She took further umbrage at the fact that I had not shown one iota of sympathy for these people and, instead, blithely dismissed them as being unworthy to participate in the human race. A race which, as far as I’m concerned, they’d already lost. She went on and on in high dudgeon for quite some time until she finally closed with this; “There is no way you could slander humanity if you only focused on the reports of just one day.” She’s young, as I mentioned, so she doesn’t yet understand that I libel humanity, not slander it. That being said, I like a challenge. I spent all of ten minutes finding today’s stories. In fact my problem wasn’t finding stories but choosing between them. Unfortunately for this young lady’s world view, the planet is being overrun by morons. And they are being aided by the woefully incompetent. For example, Air Canada had to delay a flight for four hours because it had a kitty in its cockpit.

Yeah, I said it.

Seriously, a cat got loose and shut down an airline. Why does that not engender feelings of security in me? Why am I more surprised that these things just don’t plummet from the sky at random intervals?

I think you know the answers.

And while that’s whimsical, this next one isn’t. Police in Chandler Arizona arrested a rapist who, in a moment of glorious stupidity, gave his victim his phone number.

A Chandler man accused of raping a woman in an alley was caught after he gave the woman his phone number.

The suspect, who said he had been assaulted a day after the attack, told investigators he deserved it because “God was punishing him,” police said.

Rafael Chavez, 31, was booked on charges of sexual assault and kidnapping, a court document said.

Chavez admitted to being intoxicated from alcohol, smoking marijuana, and using cocaine before raping the victim, who was walking down an alley early Saturday morning behind her home near San Marcos Golf Course.

According to police statements, Chavez approached her in his tan Honda Accord, asked her how she was doing, and offered her a ride, which she refused.

Police said Chavez then stopped the car and “placed her in a tight hug, pushing her against a nearby building, [while] kissing her.”

She did not fight when Chavez forced her into his car “because she was scared.” He then drove a short way until he was in an alley behind a fast-food restaurant and raped her, a report said.

Chavez then returned the woman to the alley where he first confronted her and then gave her his phone number before letting her go.

Police used the phone number to contact Chavez, whom the victim positively identified in a lineup.

Oh man, there is so much wrong there I don’t even know where to begin. I am glad the woman sought medical and legal assistance. I once helped a friend deal with a similar situation and know how brain crushingly difficult those decisions can be. But people, and I use that term loosely, like Mr. Chavez need to have a state sponsored time out.

Of course Mr. Chavez isn’t the first, nor will he be the last, to invoke the name of God to justify ill conceived actions. Police in Seattle responded to a call that an evil baby needed to die.

A 33-year-old Federal Way woman is behind bars following charges that she poured cleaning powder down an infant’s throat.

King County prosecutors claim Mabinty Williams was babysitting the 4-week-old girl on Jan. 10 when she poisoned her with a clothing soap. According to charging documents, police were called to her home after she told neighbors there was an “evil baby” in her apartment.

According to charging documents, Federal Way police arrived at the apartment in the 29200 block of Military Road South to find the baby suffering from chemical burns on her face. Investigators contend Williams, a certified nursing assistant, told police the child “changed” while she was watching her.

Writing the court, Detective Brigit Clary said Williams had been watching the girl since about 8 a.m. that morning as a favor to some family friends. In the four hours before police arrived, Williams had called her husband 16 times to complain about the child.

Just before noon, Williams knocked on her neighbors’ door.

“There’s someone in my house,” Williams allegedly said. “It’s a baby, and it’s evil.”

Williams went on to say the baby’s eyes “changed to blue” while she watched.

The neighbors called police, who responded to find the infant gasping for air and covered in white powder, Clary told the court. The baby was bleeding, and had chemical burns near her mouth; a nearly empty 32 ounce jar of Totally Awesome Power Oxygen Base Cleaner was found nearby.

Williams was arrested at the scene. According to charging documents, Williams nonsensically claimed to have seen a man standing near the baby but could not explain where he came from, how he left or what he did to the child. She allegedly said the child’s eyes “went blue,” and denied pouring cleaner on the infant.

A pediatrician at Children’s Hospital determined the child sustained chemical burns on her mouth and eyes.

Writing the court, Senior Deputy Prosecutor Charles Sergis noted Williams may have mental health problems. She has no criminal history.

Williams has been charged with second-degree assault of a child. She remains jailed on $100,000 bail.

For the record, my eyes change color dependent on my mood and blood pressure. They can go from smoky gray to hazel to green or blue. It’s not common but enough people are born like this she should have been aware of it.

Now, that being said, did they really need to run a free ad for Totally Awesome Power Oxygen Base Cleaner? Couldn’t they just have said “a common household cleanser?”

Of course some people take terror to a level you never even thought of. Oklahoma State Senator Ralph Shortey wants to outlaw ….. FOOD MADE FROM ABORTED HUMAN FETUSES!

I bet you never knew this was even remotely an issue.

Last week, Oklahoma State Senator Ralph Shortey introduced a bill that would ban “the manufacture or sale of food or products which use aborted human fetuses.” But which foods or products use aborted human fetuses? Let’s investigate.
NPR speculates that Shortey’s bill has to do with a recent boycott aimed at PepsiCo for working with a company called Senomyx that “has been accused of using proteins derived from human embryonic kidney cells in its research.” Quoth Shortey:

The senator says that his research shows there are companies in the food industry that have used human stem cells to help them research and develop products, including artificial flavorings.

“I don’t know if it is happening in Oklahoma, it may be, it may not be. What I am saying is that if it does happen then we are not going to allow it to manufacture here,” Shortey tells KRMG’s Nicole Burgin.

As an impartial journalistic outlet, we’re not here to tell you that Ralph Shortey is an utter moron whose incompetent attempts to ban stem cell-derived medicine reveal his all-encompassing idiocy, nor to tell you that the use of aborted human fetuses in food would already be in clear violation of a variety of different federal and state laws. Nor, for that matter, are we here to tell you that you should or should not be eating aborted human fetuses. What we are here to do is find out what foods are made using aborted human fetuses. We’ve contacted a number of the country’s largest food companies and asked: do you use aborted human fetuses in your food products?

Companies That Do Not Use Aborted Human Fetuses in Their Food Products

McDonald’s
Products include: Big Macs, Chicken McNuggets, Filet o’ Fish, McRib, McChicken, McGriddle
Contains aborted human fetuses? Ashlee Yingling, media relations: “The answer is no. McDonald’s does not use aborted human fetuses in its food.”

Nestlé
Products include: Perrier, Häagen-Dazs, Gerber, Powerbar, DiGiorno Pizza, Butterfinger, Kit Kat, Alpo, Frisky
Contains aborted human fetuses? Hilary Green, head of R&D communications: “Nestlé does not use aborted human fetuses in its food products.”

PepsiCo
Products include: Pepsi, Diet Pepsi, Tropicana Orange Juice, Doritos, Quaker Oatmeal, Mountain Dew, Fritos, Gatorade
Contains aborted human fetuses? In a letter to “Children of God for Life,” PepsiCo consumer relations representative Margaret Corsi writes: “These claims are meant to suggest that human fetal tissue is somehow used in our research. That is both inaccurate and something we would never do or even consider. It also is inaccurate to suggest that tissue or cells somehow are being used as product ingredients. That’s dangerous, unethical and against the law.”

Companies That Might Use Aborted Human Fetuses in Their Food Products

Burger King
Products include: WHOPPER®, WHOPPER JR.®, Chicken Tenders, BK® Chicken Fries, Bacon & Cheddar BK TOPPERS™ Burger
Contains aborted human fetuses? Possibly. Burger King has not responded to our request for comment at this time.

General Mills
Products include: Cheerios, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Bisquick, Fruit by the Foot, Bugles, Chex Mix, Hamburger Helper
Contains aborted human fetuses? Possibly. General Mills has not responded to our request for comment at this time.

Kraft
Products include: A-1 Steak Sauce, Boca Burgers, Capri Sun, Crystal Light, Jell-O, Lunchables, Oreos, Teddy Grahams, What Thins
Contains aborted human fetuses? Possibly. Kraft has not responded to our request for comment at this time.

Coca-Cola
Products include: Coca-Cola, Diet Coke, Coke Zero, Sprite, Zico
Contains aborted human fetuses? Possibly. Coca-Cola has not responded to our request for comment at this time.

Wendy’s
Products include: Dave’s Hot ‘n Juicy 1/4 lb. Single, Bacon Deluxe Single, Bacon Deluxe Double, Frosty
Contains aborted human fetuses? Possibly. Wendy’s has not responded to our request for comment at this time.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say “None of the above.”

This is the same inbred and ignorant mentality that led some in South Dakota to push for a law that would ban any court from operating under Shiara law. Because, as you know, the millions of conservative Muslims who live in South Dakota …. what? oh, okay, the hundreds of thousands …. no? the tens of thousands …. well, damnit, how many freaking Muslims are there in South Dakota?

246.

That’s right, there are fewer Muslims than there are WalMart employees in South Dakota. And, as evidenced by this blog, you have more logical reasons to fear people at WalMart than you do any followers of Islam.

Of course, not all idiots are a threat to society. Some are just a drain. Police in Eugene Oregon arrested a man on his way home from jail. Mostly because he stopped off to rob a bank.

Authorities say it was a busy morning for a man released from an Oregon state prison. After a bus ride home to Eugene on a state-paid ticket, they say he held up a bank at 10:02 a.m. Tuesday and was back in custody three minutes later.

The Register-Guard reports that 48-year-old Adam Ashe had been behind bars since May 2009, when Roseburg police arrested him in connection with a fire in a post office trash can. Police said Ashe told them he wanted to burn down the post office because he was angry about troops being sent to Iraq and Afghanistan.

He was convicted of arson last year and released early Tuesday.

Eugene police Officer Kirk Farley was sitting in his patrol car outside a Home Federal Bank branch on Tuesday when Ashe robbed it. Farley made the arrest.

An FBI court affidavit says Ashe has confessed to the bank robbery.

Ah yes, burning down a post office as a form of political protest. Why didn’t Dr. King think of that?

Well, we wouldn’t be the World News Center you know and love if we didn’t have one story from Florida. And this one has everything you could possibly want. It has a family named Springer, a loving relationship, a stable home and an alligator in he bathtub.

A Florida man’s efforts to save a baby alligator have landed him in jail.

The Marion County Sheriff’s Office said Alexander Springer was keeping the foot-long gator in a bathtub.

Springer’s wife, Teresa Springer, said she tried to tell her husband to get rid of the gator, but he didn’t listen.
“I told him he better get rid of it because one day he was going to get caught,” she said.

Deputies showed up at their home after a report of a domestic disturbance. While deputies were at her home, Teresa said she showed them what was living in her tub.

“He told our detectives that he basically got the alligator from a friend and he was protecting it and was going to release the alligator the next day,” said Judge Cochran with the Marion County Sheriff’s Office.

She said her husband had no plans to release the gator. She said he built an enclosure in the backyard with chicken wire and a pond because he planned on keeping it as a pet.

“Why would I want a gator in my house? I’m scared of them. That’s not a natural habitat for an alligator in the first place,” she said.

Springer was arrested. The alligator was released in a local lake.

What’s the moral of the story?

“Leave alligators in their natural habitat and don’t try to hide them in your bathtub,” Teresa Springer said.

That’s the moral? Really? What about “This is the best grounds for divorce ever without requiring a threesome videotaped and played on You Tube?”

“Your honor, that waste of a Y chromosome kept a man eating reptile in our bathtub. The same tub where I like to get all slippery and naked and use my loofa in new and interesting ways.”

“Divorce granted, see me in my chambers Mrs. Springer.”

Anyway, for the young lady who wrote in, I hope this proves – once and for all – that the world is filled with people you never want to be in an elevator with.

Be safe out there and sing along with Chicago’s very own Trackbaby.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrcglL4TuW4&w=560&h=315]

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Friday morning around 9:10!