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Nudge Nation [Darleen Click]

pie_naziMichelle Obama has done so spectacularly well with school lunches, it is only natural and right for the USDA to look at ways to regulate grocery stores …

For our own good, of course.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is suggesting major changes to grocery stores to “nudge” Americans to purchase healthier foods when they shop.

The agency commissioned an “expert panel” to make recommendations on how to guide the more than 47 million Americans on food stamps into spending their benefits on fruits and vegetables.

The group released an 80-page report this month presenting their ideas, which include talking shopping carts and a marketing strategy for grocery chains that would feature better store lighting for healthier items. […]

The “MyCart grocery cart” would provide dividers for shoppers to make sure they are selecting enough items in each “MyPlate” category, the USDA’s food icon.

“MyCart is a nonfinancial approach that would use behavioral economics to encourage healthier purchases by any consumer, including SNAP participants,” the report said.

The cart would be color-coded, physically divided, and have a system installed so that when the shopping cart reaches its healthy “threshold” it would congratulate the customer.

“The algorithm would group the purchases to classify them using the MyPlate designations and to provide consumers with a message of support or encouragement (e.g., “You achieved a MyCart healthy shopping basket!”),” the report said.

The panel based this approach on a $999,891 government-funded study entitled “Nudging Nutrition,” arguing the research “suggests an intervention of this sort might be successful in modifying consumer shopping behavior.”

No word yet about government-funded and mandated adult pacifiers and home-monitoring systems.

And here we thought the Soup Nazi was just a fictional character …

106 Replies to “Nudge Nation [Darleen Click]”

  1. sdferr says:

    Colored Soylent!

    It’s good for you. And soooooo nutritious

  2. Drumwaster says:

    I, for one, would have no problem with people getting their grocery money from taxpayers being told that they are only going to be allowed to buy, y’know, actual groceries with them. However, the EBT cards used today (to reduce the stigma of being on the public dole, rather than standing up and providing for yourself) are accepted at liquor stores, corner bodegas, and a wide variety of shops that have nothing to do with food for the family.

    If you expect someone else (which includes your fellow citizens, even if they are strangers living in some other city or State) to pay for your basic subsistence (food, rent, utilities, etc.), you should expect to get told what to spend it on. Don’t like it? Get out and hustle and pay for them on your own, and no one gets to tell you what to spend it on. See how that works?

    That having been said, the First Lady should be politely but firmly told to STFU and tend to her own family, given that she is ALSO living on the public dole, in government housing. And no one elected her to her position.

    And any bureaucrat (also on the public dole, remember) trying to “nudge” consumers NOT being thusly subsidized should be also told to STFU and get back to counting paperclips before someone notices that his job might not be needed, and his pension could be better used to reduce the public debt.

  3. leigh says:

    That having been said, the First Lady should be politely but firmly told to STFU and tend to her own family, given that she is ALSO living on the public dole, in government housing. And no one elected her to her position.

    This.

  4. Darleen says:

    Drum

    I agree – food stamps under whatever name should work like WIC – coupons for specific food items. Period.

    What I don’t like is that the USDA report wants to institute this for ALL consumers.

  5. Car in says:

    I volunteer to follow food stamp users around the grocery store and harrass them into making a better use of my money.

    “WTF are you doing in the chip isle”

    “Soda? I DON’T think so.”

  6. I Callahan says:

    the EBT cards used today (to reduce the stigma of being on the public dole, rather than standing up and providing for yourself) are accepted at liquor stores, corner bodegas, and a wide variety of shops that have nothing to do with food for the family.

    Could you imagine the screaming by the independent “grocers” if your idea was proposed? We live in a time where nobody is individual, and everyone is part of a “special interest.”

  7. geoffb says:

    First, food stamps came in because the food processing and retail industry argued that the “surplus” food program, which is where the “government cheese” came from, was unfairly competing with them and they wanted their share of the market.

    Now as to this.

    The cart would be color-coded, physically divided, and have a system installed so that when the shopping cart reaches its healthy “threshold” it would congratulate the customer.

    What kind of urban, take your little cloth sack to the market daily crap is this? Most everyone in the nation buys items that are on sale and stocks up a pantry and freezer with food which is eaten over days, weeks, months, even years with the vacuum bag tech. Why would any shopping trip match any given mix of ‘healthy.”

    Not just that but food is not all that is sold at the supermarkets. Yesterday I bought 33 boxes of kleenex because they were on sale and we will use them as needed. They get stored as do almost every other item we get that isn’t perishable and can’t be stored some how, like bananas or milk.

    A woman who couldn’t figure out how to keep fresh fruit in the house while making over $300,000 per year at a no show job now wants to tell me how to shop for food? I was doing food shopping before she was born as I started in Boy Scouts learning how to shop for a camp-out on limited funds.

  8. happyfingers says:

    the cart would be color-coded, physically divided

    h8rs

  9. Eingang Ausfahrt says:

    the EBT cards used today…are accepted at liquor stores, corner bodegas, and a wide variety of shops that have nothing to do with food for the family.

    Indeed, with SKUs on everything, it should be easy enough to code the damn cards for “no sale” when someone tries to buy pool noodles with them (an event I actually saw).

    …when the shopping cart reaches its healthy “threshold” it would congratulate the customer.

    This is what gets me, these stunning arrogance of these asshats thinking people need to be patted on the head, and thinking that their choices should be everyone’s. Do they actually think grown adults are going to pay attention to some annoying electrovoice built into the cart. ? Perhaps they’ll do it like sleazy car dealers where the store manager will ring a bell, throw some confetti, or have the bag boys (I know sexist, I denounce myself) sing some damn song ?

    How do they propose people won’t just put the frozen White Castle’s in the veggie compartment of the cart (I would) ? Are they going to put RFIDs in everything ? If so, how do they propose doing that to a bunch of grapes ?

    These people are truly stunning idiots who have no conception of the second and third order effects of their inane ideas, let alone the logistics necessary to implement and sustain them.

  10. gahrie says:

    I for one welcome this benevolence from our noble leaders, may they be blessed. I often find myself wandering the aisles of my local grocery staring blindly at all the choices….wishing that someone would guide me. Sadly, all too often I end up stumbling out of the store carrying nothing but an armful of Cheesy Poofs and Mountain Dew.

  11. Car in says:

    erything, it should be easy enough to code the damn cards for “no sale” when someone tries to buy pool noodles with them (an event I actually saw). – See more at: https://proteinwisdom.com/?p=54451#comments

    i believe they already do this with WIC.

  12. happyfingers says:

    i heart bill clinton’s wink-wink nation!

  13. fritz62 says:

    From a purely practical standpoint, how would these carts hold up in the rain, sleet, and snow of a northeastern winter. What person in their right mind would choose to use these carts, knowing it would mark them as someone using food stamps.

    There would a row of unused talking carts, driving up the price of produce for the rest of us.

  14. McGehee says:

    I await with bated breath the creative sorts of vandalism that will be demonstrated on these carts. Think Scotty in Star Trek III.

  15. bgbear says:

    Government created problem, costly government proposed solution. Win, win!

  16. Eingang Ausfahrt says:

    What person in their right mind would choose to use these carts, knowing it would mark them as someone using food stamps.

    Silly lad, everyone is mandated to use them, ergo, no stigma.

  17. bgbear says:

    When I was a wee cub, we got the “commodities,” the USDA canned and boxed surplus food*. I had no problem with it. We had friends who would poor the contents into brand name packaging.

    *BTW, when I criticize the modern Welfare state I will no doubt get called a hypocrite by many (we also got AFDC). This may come as a surprise but, at 5 years old I did not have a lot of input on the family situation. Also if we could return to the welfare levels of the 60s and 70s, I would be quite happy.

  18. steph says:

    Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day;
    Give a man an EBT card and … no, that doesn’t work.
    Give a man an EBT card and a MyPlate, and … hmmm, still not there.
    Let’s try this: Give a man an EBT card and a MyPlate, and a MyCart Grocery Cart – THAT’S THE TICKET!

    Next!

  19. bgbear says:

    I was thinking. If the shopping carts were partitioned, homeless people would be the most hurt.

    Why does Michelle hate homeless people?

  20. Shermlaw says:

    Thirty-some years ago, I worked in grocery. That was back in the days when food-stamps were paper. I cannot count the number of recipients who would use their subsidies to buy the most expensive, name brand stuff with their stamps, and then spend a hundred bucks cash American on liquor, smokes and dog food.

    BTW, we forget WIC was instituted because people weren’t buying the right stuff for the their kids with their food stamps.

    Subsidies don’t work unless the people accepting them have the moral compass necessary to use them correctly.

    As for “nudging” us toward a specific goal, the market will always win. If people want potato chips, they will eat potato chips regardless whether the harridan Michelle disapproves.

  21. Eingang Ausfahrt says:

    I was thinking. If the shopping carts were partitioned…

    Actually, when they get done partitioning these things, they will be the size of Escalades, because there will have to be partitions for the non-food items, e.g., for the pet food, for the paper goods, for the cleaning items, etc. etc.

    The evident fact that they appear not to have thought of this goes to show how out of touch with reality they are.

  22. bgbear says:

    eingang Let’s just cut out these half measures and have purple WebVan like trucks deliver proper groceries directly to the recipients.

    Teamsters and SEIU Unite!

  23. Eingang Ausfahrt says:

    Bgbear – absolutely, if everything is rationed and delivered, no one can make bad choices.

  24. BigBangHunter says:

    – Actually the first O’bitches talents are not limited to the food feild. (She does look natural in that su-chef outfit, something like Aunt Jamima with an uglier smile.)

  25. steph says:

    That neckerchief does do a good job a covering M’s Adam’s Apple.

  26. happyfeet says:

    this will mostly just spawn a new market for “grocery stores for adults” I think

  27. Eingang Ausfahrt says:

    this will mostly just spawn a new market for “grocery stores for adults” I think

    If so, it looks like that means you are going to have to get used to the MichelleCarts (TM).

  28. bgbear says:

    I think Jezebel was nudged.

  29. McGehee says:

    this will mostly just spawn a new market for “grocery stores for adults”

    Thus confirming Her Yetiness’ hatred of markets — not that it needs confirming.

  30. I Callahan wrote: Could you imagine the screaming by the independent “grocers” if your idea was proposed? We live in a time where nobody is individual, and everyone is part of a “special interest.”

    We live in a time where most everybody is lacking in Virtue, refusing to pull their shifts as Guardians Of The Republic. ‘Rational Self-Interest’ – HA! – it’s Slothful Self-Interest.

  31. bh says:

    I’ve probably mentioned this before but this notion of “nudging” was quite alive at the U of C when most of the intellectual leaders of the movement had no such idea that it would become this menace.

    The idea at that point was really to test the idea of homo economicus as a real thing in the world. Some of us split majors with econ to encompass psych and neuroscience. It was a fascinating topic of study as in, “Reality isn’t conforming to the classical models.” Why aren’t people making fairly easy (by way of computation) choices the way you’d expect?

    For awhile it was called behavioral economics and it was good because it sought the truth. It seemed of a piece with public choice theory that our heroes had developed previously.

    Nudging didn’t have to be nudging as a discipline. This wasn’t baked into the cake from the beginning. It was corrupted.

  32. bh says:

    To give an example, I sat in a graduate seminar back in the 90s discussing how our fuller understanding of homo economicus would better inform our ability to write a truthful investment prospectus and thereby head off some significant portion of asset misallocation.

    We really did think that. Many of us. We did.

  33. McGehee says:

    Why aren’t people making fairly easy (by way of computation) choices the way you’d expect?

    THE SCIENCE IS SETTLED! THE MODELS SAY YOU’LL DO X, SO BY GOD YOU’D BETTER DO X IF YOU KNOW WHAT’S GOOD FOR YOU, WHICH YOU DON’T, BUT WE DO, SO SHUT UP AND DO AS YOU’RE TOLD!

    Or to put it another way, I would say the corruption was, in fact, baked in — and the modelers were as always the last to find out.

  34. bh says:

    It’s possible, McG. The first person to point me in this direction was Becker though. It was of a piece with his overall scholarship.

    If I had to guess at the original injection of malice it would be when the law school first took notice of the possible uses of such thinking during some random interdisciplinary seminar or another.

  35. BigBangHunter says:

    – Its a known fact McGehee that puppets cannot see their strings.

  36. bh says:

    Let’s not malign Becker here, please, BBH. That’s probably not your intention here and you simply read McG’s comment before my follow up, I assume.

  37. dicentra says:

    Why does Michelle hate homeless people?

    They can’t contribute actual money to political causes and they often forget to vote all 25 times.

  38. McGehee says:

    I’m of the opinion that malice isn’t a necessary ingredient of corruption; the saying about power is inapt because corruption is integral to human nature, overcome only by the practice of virtue.

    Many have pointed out that the worst evils visited on man have been by those wanting power only so they may do good.

    Something about paving the road to hell. Or using Pax on the Miranda settlers.

  39. bh says:

    I’ll think on that, McG.

    To put the emotional cards on the table, Becker was a mensch. A true mensch.

    Analytically though? Yeah, I’ll think about it. I won’t discount the possibility that the grand thinkers of his generation shouldn’t have published a paper or two when they saw what was happening in the world.

    They loved the truth though. That really was their motivation, I think. They wanted to know what was going on.

  40. Drumwaster says:

    Many have pointed out that the worst evils visited on man have been by those wanting power only so they may do good.

    Must be a yearning deep in human heart to stop other people from doing as they please. Rules, laws – always for other fellow. A murky part of us, something we had before we came down out of trees, and failed to shuck when we stood up. Because not one of those people said: “Please pass this so that I won’t be able to do something I know I should stop.” Nyet, tovarischee, was always something they hated to see their neighbors doing. Stop them “for their own good” – not because speaker claimed to be harmed by it. — Robert Heinlein

    Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. — C.S. Lewis

  41. sdferr says:

    So did some other much older guys love the truth, and we’re accounted unacceptably dangerous to the city for it. The city, rising to its own defense either ran them off or killed them.

    But all that has changed. Machiavelli saw to it.

  42. sdferr says:

    were. Fucking auto-fill again.

  43. McGehee says:

    I won’t discount the possibility that the grand thinkers of his generation shouldn’t have published a paper or two when they saw what was happening in the world.

    Oh, I don’t know about that. I’m also of the opinion one should publish the truth and let the chips fall where they may.

    Ideas do have consequences, but the idea that one should suppress an idea to avoid its consequences, has consequences of its own.

  44. McGehee says:

    After all, kids learn best not to touch the hot stove by touching the hot stove.

  45. Drumwaster says:

    Not to mention the fact that Lucifer and his cohort rebelled not because he was evil, but because he thought he could do the job BETTER than the extant regime…

  46. sdferr says:

    So, what’s the truth about splitting this heavy atom, Mr. Fermi? Ah! Lots of energy, you say? And can your science tell us when to use it, and when not? No? Hmmm, that’s odd.

  47. Drumwaster says:

    OT: Two main stories in the news, 45 years ago today…

    One involved keeping a promise made by a Kennedy, the other involved breaking a promise made by a Kennedy…

  48. bh says:

    At the end of the day, I’d like a clear delineation made between those doing the discovering and the scholarship with those hijacking their work to make evil in the world.

    If we keep those lines bright and separate, we’ll do better going forward. To my donkey-kicked mind, anyway.

  49. newrouter says:

    > but the idea that one should suppress an idea to avoid its consequences, has consequences of its own.<

    very true

    Blogger Fired by Scientific American After Defending Richard Feynman

  50. sdferr says:

    Can’t help but approve the distinction bh. Would that the old regime of distinct moral prudence governing the two distinct endeavors could be revived along with it. But maybe Machiavelli obliterated the possibility?

  51. bh says:

    I just deleted a three paragraph comment here, sdferr.

    To make a long story short, (and jump back a couple decades to my college interview) we find this very clearly in Machiavelli’s discussion of Livy. He says it outright.

  52. bh says:

    Shit. I’ve been looking around for awhile now. I don’t have the book anymore. Thought I did.

  53. bh says:

    Give me a second.

  54. sdferr says:

    rats for my selfish loss of the three paragraph comment. Not to rebuke your choice. Just rats.

  55. bh says:

    I put notes in the margins of books, when I was younger I annotated everywhere.

    Give me second, I do probably have it somewhere here.

  56. sdferr says:

    Here I offer another comment on Machiavelli’s teaching, not from myself, but from Leo Strauss:

    *** Books like the Discourses and the Prince do not reveal their full meaning as intended by the author unless one ponders over them “day and night” for a long time. The reader who is properly prepared is bound to come across suggestions which refuse to be stated. Pen or typewriter, to say nothing of hand and tongue, refuse their service. The reader thus comes to understand the truth that what ought not be said cannot be said. It is fortunate for the historians of ideas, to say nothing of others, that there are not many books of this kind. Still, there are more of them than one would easily believe, for there were more great men who were stepsons of their time or out of step with the future than one would easily believe. As Faust put it to Wagner, “the few who understood something of the world and of men’s heart and mind, who were foolish enough not to restrain their full heart but to reveal their feeling and their vision to the vulgar, have ever been crucified and burned”; not everyone belonging to those few failed to restrain his full heart, Goethe was the last great man who rediscovered or remembered this, especially after he had returned from the storm and stress of sentiment to the tranquillity of fullness of vision. After him, social reason, sentiment and decision and whatever goes with those “dynamic forces” united in order to destroy the last vestiges of the recollection of what philosophy originally meant. ***

  57. bh says:

    Okay, I found it:

    As all those have shown who have discussed civil institutions, and as every
    history is full of examples, it is necessary to whoever arranges to found a
    Republic and establish laws in it, to presuppose that all men are bad and
    that they will use their malignity of mind every time they have the
    opportunity; and if such malignity is hidden for a time, it proceeds from
    the unknown reason that would not be known because the experience of the
    contrary had not been seen, but time, which is said to be the father of
    every truth, will cause it to be discovered.

    While there is wisdom here, we must also consider the direct statement as stated. We must, must, assume men to be evil.

  58. bh says:

    Is that necessarily true?

    He’s going farther here than he needs to by way of prudence with mob rule. He goes farther than a properly insightful anti-democrat needs to.

    If this was ever truly the case then we wouldn’t have so many presidents. There are exceptions to be found. This isn’t a universal truth.

  59. sdferr says:

    What might we remark? Might we remark that it is very interesting to see both of the two early towering figures of our western civilization, one, a man, the other, a Man-God, did not write (save in the sand with a stick)?

  60. bh says:

    I know it probably annoys you guys but I’m a young pup here. A dumbass, if you will.

    So, again, I’ll have to think about this (in terms of what I might remark).

  61. bh says:

    The more accurate answer is that I don’t know exactly and I’ll have to think about it, really.

  62. sdferr says:

    That phenomenon, just on the simplest level, say, when I’m asked the question “Who is wise?” easily returns the answer, “How about either of these two?”

    Yet what about?

    How to live best!: again at the simplest, most cursory level.

    Yet again though, one was a kind of playful scoundrel who laughed and never cried. The other, though possibly playful, was nothing like a scoundrel, and who never laughed but could be seen to weep.

  63. bh says:

    How to live best is an honest question. A good question.

  64. sdferr says:

    And the cut? The cut seems to cross between pity on the one hand and pride on the other, or the caring godly place on the one hand and the independent merely human place on the other.

  65. bh says:

    As we are we will best continue to be. We’ll continue to be independent humans.

    I don’t think “merely” fits. We are what we are. What we’ll see in our lives is remarkable. After all, c’mon, we keep remarking upon it. Shakespeare did.

  66. sdferr says:

    I meant ‘merely” in this sense: that Aristotle, for instance, could work his “mere” human way upward to his highest account of being, the cosmic god, nous to noein, thought thinking itself as it’s translated, without the benefit of divine revelation. And where he arrives at that pinnacle? The cosmic god is not caring about us puny creatures in Aristotle’s account. Not a bit. It is pure to itself.

  67. bh says:

    In that sense, in the beauty of math or a naked womamn, then, yes, I hear what you’re saying.

  68. sdferr says:

    It’s probably better I should say something like ‘strictly un-aided human’ or some such more complete expression than a stark merely, since the merely has to be modified by the wider situation to be readily grasped. But that seemed to be the deal as Aquinas understood it, and I’d be loath to disagree with him.

  69. McGehee says:

    We must, must, assume men to be evil.

    Men are not born civilized, but most be taught as children what they may or may not do as civilized men. A society that neglects this is doomed sooner rather than later.

    If that amounts to assuming men are evil, I’m okay with it.

  70. sdferr says:

    So here we go: three pitches and Samardzija has the first two outs on the ten day road-trip of death.

  71. bh says:

    Our buddy Tommy played within a certain set of rules. Dollars to donuts you’d find a different, more Hellenian viewpoint in his diaries.

    I say this as a great admirer. But, throughout, you see the influences.

    Our buddy, Tommy, he doesn’t appreciate the beauty of the world? He rejects it as sinful?

    He does not.

  72. bh says:

    If that amounts to assuming men are evil, I’m okay with it

    .

    My thrust here, McG, is that we don’t have to make that assumption. That we’re allowed to do otherwise as our very founders decided to do.

    Machiavelli is not a friend of republics. Never was. He muddied the waters as best he could as his patrons wanted.

  73. bh says:

    Wait a sec, sdferr. Let’s take the discussion of Tomas offline.

  74. sdferr says:

    No summum bonum. Which if possibly not entirely novel to Hobbes, is sufficiently novel to catch our attention. Seems too, to carry highly interesting consequences, through which we’re living, if I don’t miss my guess.

  75. bh says:

    Heh.

    It’s a funny thing.

    As a person who can learn a great deal from the assorted historians and classicists here, I sometimes wonder about boring people.

  76. bh says:

    Okay, give me a sec. Maybe I had some thoughts on this as younger Jer.

    It’s entirely possible I was just as donkey-addled then.

  77. bh says:

    Okay, it really doesn’t even take that long when I think about it. I got nothin’. Highest good for Aquinas isn’t really a thing I have a feeling for whatsoever.

  78. sdferr says:

    Unity with God in heaven hosanna-ing him for eternity, would be my guess, but it’s just a guess.

  79. sdferr says:

    If Jonathan Schoop ever learns to hit we’ll be on easy street. Just don’t look like it’s going to happen anytime soon though.

  80. newrouter says:

    >I sometimes wonder about boring people.<

    I Wonder Why

  81. sdferr says:

    It’s a pretty good surmise that eros isn’t boring to most people, nr, though that would probably depend on the object of whoever’s erotic attention that happened to be in question, right? We’ve all been stupefied at some point or other by a friend in the grip of his mania going on and on about the love of his life, and then turned right around and done the same thing to him.

  82. newrouter says:

    the eros is good for baby making otherwise larry summers hit it out of the park. you go grrl.

  83. newrouter says:

    women: what shoes do i wear to the disaster? men stfu

  84. sdferr says:

    Her eros is for shoes, his for peace and quiet?, or — her’s for his opinion, his for keeping it to himself? Either way, the syllogism will end with “men are evil”.

  85. sdferr says:

    Schoopy homers on 3-2, man on third — yields a 2-1 lead. Easy street done come for a half-inning.

  86. sdferr says:

    heh, Tillman, what a joke.

  87. bh says:

    >I sometimes wonder about boring people.< I Wonder Why Wait, you mean you weren't sincere last night when you apologized? Weird. I don't know what to make of this.

  88. bh says:

    I mean, you’re not a piece of shit liar, are you, nr?

  89. McGehee says:

    Bh, the Founders assumed their posterity would be taught virtue. In its absence, what we are seeing is inevitable.

  90. sdferr says:

    Steven Hayward: Murraypalooza, or Why Liberals Are Panicking

    It isn’t truly Charles Murray who causes the panic of course (he’s just a messenger), but the science — actual as opposed to pseudo-science — which, even if it advances with the appearance of a glacier advancing, nevertheless arrives to destinations the political left simply cannot tolerate.

    We’ve seen that before, I believe, for instance in the panic exhibited by Stephen J. Gould and his ideological brother in arms Richard Lewontin, both of whom could see quite clearly the utter devastation serious biological science would do to their beloved Marxism. So they reacted accordingly. The approaching scientific upset Murray and Hayward herald here should reduce that old set-to to the metaphorical level of a struggle of (with apologies to E.O. Wilson) ants beneath the feet of Hector and Achilles.

    heh. Nature will out.

  91. bour3 says:

    How about impolitely and quite firmly “Shut the fuck up you unelected cow!”

    Bossy the cow, Bossy the cow, Bossy the cow, nanner nanner nanner nanner.

    Bossy the cow, Bossy the cow, eats like a straight up PIG, and bosses everyone around.

    Nobody elected you, Bitch, nobody. Nobody. Nobody. Nobody.

    You have to say everything three times or four for it to begin to sink in, to counteract them saying everything repeatedly.

    I’m racist. I notice this about blacks. They do say everything at least twice. One for each ear, I suppose. And now that I mentioned it, you will notice it too.

    My favorite thing is to repeat the double declarative with its interrogative form as if I didn’t comprehend the first and second time. So it goes like this.

    “The United States has an obesity problem and it must be addressed. The United States has an obesity problem and it must be addressed.”

    “But what about obesity, shouldn’t that be addressed?”

    To emphasize ridiculously the double talk.To emphasize the double talk.

    But what about the double talk, shouldn’t that be emphasized?

    It goes on and on and on.

    But what about it going on all the time?

    See? See?

    But shouldn’t I see? Shouldn’t I see [Obama eating] Google images.

    Soft drinks, hot dog, ice cream, pizza, french fries, fizzy drink in a paper cup, paper cup, paper cup, paper plate, paper plate, paper plate, bbq sandwiches, funnel cake, fair food, chicken wings, hot dog, hot dog, hot dog, hamburger, hamburger, hamburger, fried chicken wings, ice cone, ice cream, smoothie, frosty, smoothie, smoothie, pizza, hot dog, hot dog, hot dog, hot dog, paper cup with straw, paper cup with straw, paper cup with straw, french fries, french fries.

    How about you shut the fuck up?

    Madam Mao. Just shut the fuck up. Nobody elected you. Nobody elected you.

    But did anyone elect her?

    I could not be more annoyed.

    Take it from me. I know whereof I speak. I live what I propound. I show every day what I do with good food. This woman, these two people annoy the living shit out of me. They must be talking to somebody else because they are sure as hell are not talking to me.

    Paula Dean, “She eats more than any other guest I had on the show. She kept eating during commercials. Know what the Obama’s favorite food is? Hot wings.”

    I love that woman. Sycophants are greatly annoyed with Paula Dean for that revation and that fills my bleak wicket heart with joy.

    They know not whereof they speak, but speak the do and speak they do, and worse they do not livewhereof they speak. That is for you guys, or whoever it is she is talking to, certainly not for themselves. That is how we spot the false prophets right off, as with climate change, as with fiduciary responsibility, as with racism and the the like, they do not, cannot live whereof they speak.

  92. bh says:

    Bh, the Founders assumed their posterity would be taught virtue. In its absence, what we are seeing is inevitable.

    Thinking about this for a couple days now I think I agree. I might dither over whether or not they viewed (self-guided or somehow internally disciplined) education to be that very virtue in itself without guessing whether or not anyone might disagree with such a position

  93. happyfeet says:

    barack obama is one angry motherfucker

    and hungry

    so fucking hungry

  94. McGehee says:

    Education is a process; death begins when learning ends (and I read that as literally true).

    Virtue is something that must learned and then practiced or it is meaningless. Of course, one of the virtues that must be taught is that of applying what you believe to be right, in your own life, regardless of the perceived costs or rewards.

  95. bh says:

    I think we’re on the same page here, McG.

  96. geoffb says:

    [A]nd hungry

    so fucking hungry

    Probably nothing left on the table.

  97. happyfeet says:

    my sister went to paula’s comeback event in houston

    all i remember from the report is there were tears

    and that paula’s husband took a scary fall off the stage

    me personally i’m paula agnostic

    she hasn’t regained any relevance ex-post-obamawhoring herself

    not with me anyways

  98. newrouter says:

    >I mean, you’re not a piece of shit liar, are you, nr? <

    good morning sunshine! you make the day.

  99. Eingang Ausfahrt says:

    she hasn’t regained any relevance ex-post-obamawhoring herself

    not with me anyways

    I am sure she would be positively crushed were she to find that out.

  100. happyfeet says:

    she’s already been maximally fucking crushed

    were you not paying attention?

  101. Eingang Ausfahrt says:

    were you not paying attention?

    I must confess I do not keep up on pop culture as you do, but when I need to know what is in the grocery store checkout magazines, Tiger Beat, or going on with the Kardashians, you will be my go to guy.

  102. Caecus Caesar says:

    *thhhhwp*

    *pwahhhh*

    **** […] the president popped into the East Room, where the first lady, Michelle Obama, was holding a mock state dinner for children to promote her Let’s Move nutrition initiative. “My big thing,” he confessed to the kids, “chips and guacamole!” There was plenty of laughter all around. ****

  103. The American Deadly Sin

    Last week, frequent Protein Wisdom commentator I Callahan remarked: We live in a time where nobody is individual, and everyone is part of a “special interest.” We live in a time where most everybody is lacking in Virtue, refusing to pull their shifts a…

  104. parallax says:

    “…revolutionists are using a technique that is as old as the human race, — a fervid but false solicitude for the unfortunate over whom they thus gain mastery, and then enslave…” David O. McKay

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