Crush Liberalism

How to ruin Halloween for kids

Today’s timely Google “How to” of the day is entitled “How to Give Healthy Treats for Halloween.” Another title for this article could just as easily be “How to piss off a bunch of children”, or “How to guarantee that the neighborhood snot-nosed little bastards will be rolling TP on your house this evening!” Excerpt:

Many parents dread the arrival of Halloween with its tooth-rotting, unhealthy fare. Make a change in your neighborhood with different treats that are healthy, useful or surprising. Challenge kids to expect something a little different this Halloween and they may just have even more fun.

1. Seek out healthier alternatives to candy. There are many ideas to consider:

Different flavors of popcorn – tie in small cellophane bags with ribbon (for parties only)

Individual packages of fruit or applesauce – even pudding is a better alternative than candy. These are usually sold in 4 or six-packs. Just break them up and give an individual pack to each child.

Little packets of organic raisins (sultanas) – but see dentist’s concern below

Granola (muesli) bars (but watch their sugar content also)
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Cheese sticks, wrapped cheese (like Babybel); cheese cubes for parties
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Instant spiced apple mix or hot chocolate mix
Fruit bars – there are many pure fruit bars available now. The thin ones are especially good value and will slip into many treat bags as a filler
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Plain dark chocolate is better than candy. Make sure it has no cream filling or high sugar content. Some claim chocolate even helps to prevent tooth decay. It has certainly been proven that the antioxidants in dark chocolate are healthy. Purchase small pieces in little packets or package small pieces in cellophane (for parties only).

2. Invest in small games, kits or novelty items instead. Look in dollar stores, party stores, toy stores etc. Buy in bulk if possible and repackage into little treat bags.
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5. Give mini-toothbrush sets. Maybe this sounds corny but it is a healthy reminder to kids getting so much candy that brushing their teeth is really important.
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My, what a nation of pansies we have become! Look, no one is a bigger health fanatic than I am, but for the love of (insert preferred deity here), people: it’s freakin’ Halloween!

Let the kids get their sugary treats, and let them eat some before going to bed. Contrary to popular belief, the sugar will not keep them up. Instead, they’ll get a little sugar buzz, then they’ll crash faster than Patrick Kennedy heading to the Congress for his 2:30 a.m. vote.

October 31, 2006 Posted by crushliberalism | Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

ABC reporter eschews "balance" in global "warming" reporting

From the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee:

ABC News Reporter Bill Blakemore declared “I don’t like the word ‘balance’ much at all” in global warming coverage at a journalism conference in Vermont over the weekend.

Blakemore, who reported on August 30, 2006, “After extensive searches, ABC News has found no such [scientific] debate” on global warming, (http://abcnews.go.com/US/print?id=2374968) said he rejects ‘balance’ in order to justify excluding any skeptics of manmade catastrophic global warming from his reporting. He made his remarks at Friday’s panel discussion at the Society of Environmental Journalists annual conference in Burlington.

Blakemore lamented “the deep professional shame that I discovered two years ago,” regarding how he believes the media had been manipulated by skeptics of manmade catastrophic global warming.

“Of course [skeptics] play on the idea that we have to be ‘balanced,’” he noted.

“It was very lazy of us for 10 years when we were asked for balance from the [climate skeptic] spinners. We just gave up and said ‘Okay, okay – I will put the other side on, okay are you happy now?’” he said. “And it saves us from the trouble of having to check out the fact that these other sides were the proverbial flat earth society.”

Blakemore also took on the role of psychologist in explaining that global warming presents an “existential” dilemma and people face what he termed “psychological obstacles” about whether to believe the dire predictions that the planet is facing a climate crisis.

“We are looking at serious mainstream scientists now tell us that maybe – it’s over. It’s hard. It’s the kind of news you have to take in small doses,” Blakemore explained. [EPW note: Many scientists dispute the notion that mankind has created a climate doomsday. See: (http://epw.senate.gov/pressitem.cfm?party=rep&id=264777 )]

“Denial is initially natural and healthy; the psychologists tell us it is what we do to hold our meaning system together, so that we can at least function at first when trauma happens and we are all being delivered a major trauma here,” he explained. He added that greenhouse gas theory is akin to “3rd grade science.”

“Does [extreme weather patterns] fit exactly within the predicted pattern that we projected almost 30 or 40 years ago? This is the little logical problem that we journalists can still work on and solve,” Blakemore said. (EPW Note: 30 and 40 years ago, scientists were erroneously predicting a coming ice age. See last week’s Newsweek’s retraction of global cooling reporting 31 years after its initial report: (http://epw.senate.gov/fact.cfm?party=rep&id=265087 ))

“The problem is we journalists have not stood up on our own feet and said ‘Excuse me, this is going to be my assessment of where the scientific assessment is.’ Because those spinners would say you got to listen to who — for the scientific assessment and they will point to their favorable [skeptical] organizations.” He also said, “I am a professional journalist; don’t tell me how to do my job.”

Blakemore said skeptics of global warming should be ignored because some of them are being funded by industry. But he has failed to note that scientists he promotes such as James Hansen, Michael Oppenheimer, are both recipients of huge sums of money from environmental special interest groups.

When Blakemore reported on January 29, 2006, that NASA scientist James Hansen was alleging that the Bush Administration was censoring his scientific work, he failed to inform viewers that Hansen had received a quarter of a million dollars from Teresa Heinz Kerry’s foundation, the Heinz Foundation, and subsequently endorsed her husband Democrat John Kerry for President in 2004 http://www.abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=1555183 In addition, Michael Oppenheimer is a paid partisan of the group Environmental Defense.

Blakemore also told the journalism conference that global warming was an ever present entity that “affects everything in the weather, everywhere all the time and in every instance.”

Blakemore has also lavished praised on Vice President Al Gore and his movie “An Inconvenient Truth”, comparing Gore to Shakespeare and Robert Frost. http://blogs.abcnews.com/theworldnewser/2006/05/al_gore_and_an_.html

I’m just sure this reporter’s view never makes its way into ABC reporting, right? Nope…no liberal media bias!

October 31, 2006 Posted by crushliberalism | Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

Kerry’s Quote of the Day

Un-freakin’-believable! From Jean-François Heinz-Kerry:

You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.

Translation: If you do good in school, you can go to Yale like me; if you don’t, your dumb #ss is relegated to the armed forces. Is it OK to question their patriotism now? What about their purported “support” for the troops…can we question that now?

What a condescending, arrogant #sshole! No wonder 70% of the military voted against him in 2004! I guess the soldiers, who are able to detect bullsh#t when they see it, weren’t “stupid” enough to vote for his blueblood #ss, were they? Do I even need to mention that (a) HE was in the military (a point he reminds us all of ad nauseum), (b) many servicemen (and women) use the G.I. bill to pay for their college at the conclusion of their military service, or (c) there are college-educated personnel in the service right now in enlisted and/or combat capacity? No, instead Kerry lets his inherent contempt for the military slip through. For my veteran visitors here, remember that: Kerry thinks you’re stupid.

Congrats, Senator Ketchup, on being a first class sonofabitch. I hope your party is stupid enough to give you their nomination again in 2008.

October 31, 2006 Posted by crushliberalism | Uncategorized | Leave a Comment