New Year’s Resolutions: Good Luck

Well, we’re about ready to shove 2011 aside and welcome 2012. I’m saying that in advance of New Year’s Eve, since, as with almost every other year, I’ll be long asleep before the ball starts to drop in Times Square.

I never make New Year’s resolutions. As I opined at this time last year, why set yourself up for disappointment so early in the year? Still, I know many do establish resolutions or goals for the year. According to a story on CNN, as many as 40 to 45 percent of Americans will make New Year’s resolutions this year. And about half of them will be successful after six months. Good for them.

And while I don’t make resolutions, I do try to pull my head out of the sand at the end of December and take a look at the year ahead.

In 2012, I’ll become eligible for Medicare. And I’m starting to grow my hair longer so when I appear before one of the Obamacare Death Panels those in charge will view me as Comrade Rob instead of Mr. Jewell. Just kidding. (Note to self: I hope.)

In May, I’m planning to head to Pittsburgh to run the half marathon. Might as well keep running as far as I can for as long as I can. What else is there to do when every day now is essentially Saturday? Golf? Nah. As one pundit observed, golf is a good walk spoiled.

And I’ll continue at my post as a pajama-clad citizen journalist, keeping a bleary early morning eye out for the important issues and well as for the ludicrous and ridiculous stories and the miscreants Inside the Beltway and elsewhere who are behind them.

So, good luck with your resolutions.

And Happy New Year!

Holiday Eating: Fighting the Battle of the Bulge

Good grief. Will this long national nightmare currently being played out in Iowa ever be over? I spent 60 minutes chasing the treadmill belt this early a.m. and what I found out from the Talking Heads on CNN and Fox News was that Newt was down, Paul was up, and Santorum is climbing fast. And Romney, who most conservatives don’t like, will most likely win the GOP presidential nomination anyway.

As Michael Barone opines in the WSJ, “As Iowa Goes, So Goes Iowa.”

Anyway, I’ve got bigger fish to fry. As we near the end of the year, my running log shows that I’ve hit the concrete or treadmill belt for about 1,400 miles. Still, I’m gaining weight — which I attribute in part to a mutant thyroid and a fondness for Jameson over ice. And like many others, this time of the year is particularly challenging.

I’m a big believer in exercise. But I’m not so sure exercise along wins the battle of the bulge. Here’s from the NYT, “Curbing Holiday Weight Gain With Exercise“:

The next few months, filled with holiday feasting, represent a dire threat to most people’s waistlines. Even those of us who normally eat a wholesome diet can find ourselves gorging on fatty, high-calorie foods and gaining the annual Christmas inner tube. But several new studies promote a simple and effective response: Run or walk from the buffet. Even if you’ve already overindulged, the studies suggest, exercise can lessen or reverse the unwelcome consequences.

For the studies, Paul T. Williams, a staff scientist in the life sciences division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, enlisted the help of more than 100,000 runners and, for a second study published last week in the journal Obesity, almost 40,000 walkers. He had each group fill out extensive questionnaires that asked about their running or walking history, including when they’d begun running more than 12 miles a week or walking at least half a mile most days of the week, as well as, for the runners, their current mileage, best race times, numbers of recent marathons, and so on. The questionnaire also asked about current and previous body weight: how much they had weighed when they started exercising, what they weighed now, their waist size and height. Finally, the volunteers were asked about eating habits, and specifically, how much red meat (beef, pork and lamb) they consumed each week and how many servings of fruit they ate each day.

“We used servings of meat and fruit as markers of the overall quality or type of the diet,” Dr. Williams says. People who frequently eat meat and rarely have fruit are more likely, over all, to be eating a fattier, higher-calorie and potentially less healthy diet, he says.

Certainly, in his new research, they weighed more. Among both the runners and walkers he studied, whether male or female and whatever their age, those who ate more meat and fewer servings of fruit tended to have a higher body mass index, an indicator of overall body fat, than those who ate less meat and more fruit. They had also gained significantly more weight over the years.

Unless they exercised diligently. The more someone walked or, even more strikingly, the more they ran, the less likely they were to have gained large amounts of weight, even if they ate what the study politely calls a “high-risk diet.” Runners who ticked off about five miles a day stayed relatively lean over the years, even if they regularly consumed a meaty and presumably high-fat diet. Most still had gained some pounds, according to their running and weight histories, but less than would have been expected, given their eating habits.

“Usually, B.M.I. and waist circumference increase if you eat more meat and less fruit,” Dr. Williams says. But his data indicate that exercise reduces this effect. The more miles run, the less a person is likely to be affected by questionable dietary choices or by what Dr. Williams calls “lapses, like those that happen during the holidays.”

These are hardly the first studies, of course, to suggest that exercise can help to control weight or reduce the depredations of an imperfect diet. A 15-year study of more than 30,000 middle-aged women by Harvard researchers found that while virtually all of the women gained weight over the years, those who walked about an hour a day gained the least, averaging less than five added pounds over the 15 years. The study did not examine eating patterns, though.

An interesting animal study published this year looked directly at the effects of exercise on rats eating a high-fat diet, however. The rats were given free access to fatty foods for 12 weeks, by which time they all had become rotund and developed metabolic syndrome, a constellation of unhealthy conditions that includes insulin resistance, poor cholesterol levels and high blood pressure. Then the researchers divided the animals into several groups, with some remaining on the high-fat diet but running every day, while others were switched to a standard kibble, and still others changed nothing. This new program also lasted 12 weeks.

By the end of that time, the rats that ran had managed to “reverse almost all the atherosclerotic risk factors linked to obesity,” the researchers found, even though they remained on the high-fat diet. They also had stopped gaining weight. The rats that had been switched to a standard diet but didn’t run improved their metabolic profiles, too, but not as much as the running rats. The researchers speculate that exercise activates certain metabolic pathways that undo the damage of a high-fat diet, even if that diet continues.

Dr. Williams suspects that similar mechanisms are at work in human exercisers, and that the effects are commensurately greater the more a person exercises. “It’s well established that endurance training enhances the body’s ability to burn fat” from foods, he says, so serious runners can incinerate the fat marbling a serving of beef before it is stored as flab around the waist. Which means that, if you work out dutifully, you should “get through the holidays without too many regrets,” he says.

Oh, well. I guess it could be worse. I could be chasing after voters in Iowa, munching on corn dogs and fried chicken.

Wonder how Ron Paul stays so thin doing that month after month?

 

 

Wage Gap: Congress and Federal Employees

OK. It’s the week after Christmas and there isn’t much going on. In fact, there are so few Facebook updates and Tweets that I expect nobody is working. Wonder how the social media gurus generate billable hours under these conditions? I digress. And the most popular story on USA Today: “Maria Shriver reconsidering divorce?”

Wow. What happened to the Kardashians?

Anyway, emerging from this information black hole are two stories that point to the salary gap between members of Congress, federal employees and, ah, most other people — if they are fortunate enough to have jobs at all.

First, members of Congress. From the NYT, “Economic Detour Took a Detour at Capitol Hill“:

When Representative Ed Pastor was first elected to Congress two decades ago, he was comfortably ensconced in the middle class. Mr. Pastor, a Democrat from Arizona, held $100,000 or so in savings accounts in the mid-1990s and had a retirement pension, but like many Americans, he also owed the banks nearly as much in loans.

Today, Mr. Pastor, a miner’s son and a former high school teacher, is a member of a not-so-exclusive club: Capitol Hill millionaires. That group has grown in recent years to include nearly half of all members of Congress — 250 in all — and the wealth gap between lawmakers and their constituents appears to be growing quickly, even as Congress debates unemployment benefits, possible cuts in food stamps and a “millionaire’s tax.”

Mr. Pastor buys a Powerball lottery ticket every weekend and says he does not consider himself rich. Indeed, within the halls of Congress, where the median net worth is $913,000 and climbing, he is not. He is a rank-and-file millionaire. But compared with the country at large, where the median net worth is $100,000 and has dropped significantly since 2004, he and most of his fellow lawmakers are true aristocrats.

Largely insulated from the country’s economic downturn since 2008, members of Congress — many of them among the “1 percenters” denounced by Occupy Wall Street protesters — have gotten much richer even as most of the country has become much poorer in the last six years, according to an analysis by The New York Times based on data from the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit research group.

Next up: federal government employees. Here’s from USA Today, “Federal workers starting at much higher pay than in past“:

Newly hired federal workers are starting at much higher salaries than those who did the same jobs in the past, a lift that has elevated the salaries of scientists and custodians alike.

The pay hikes have made the federal government a go-to place for many young people.

A 20- to 24-year-old auto mechanic started at an average of $46,427 this year, up from $36,750 five years ago. The government hires about 400 full-time auto mechanics a year.

A 30- to 34-year-old lawyer started at an average of $101,045 this year, up from $79,177 five years ago. The government hires about 2,500 lawyers a year. And a mechanical engineer, age 25 to 29, started at $63,675, up from $51,746 in 2006. The government hires about 600 mechanical engineers a year.

Behind the boost: The government is classifying more new hires — secretaries, mail clerks, chaplains, laundry workers, electrical engineers and wildlife biologists — as taking more demanding versions of their jobs and deserving more pay.

The higher pay also reflects the more challenging jobs federal workers often do. The Bureau of Prisons’ 1,250 cooks earn an average of $66,225 a year. “They don’t just cook meals. They’re also correctional workers supervising inmates,” spokeswoman Traci Billingsley says. [Note to self: Say what?]

Other findings in a USA TODAY analysis of federal workers’ pay:

•Job security. Workers are holding on tightly to their federal jobs in the weak economy. The rate of quitting has fallen 29% since 2007. Ordinary retirements are down 11%. Early retirements are down two-thirds. Disability departures have dropped one-third. Layoffs are increasingly rare, too. Under the Obama administration, layoffs from reorganizations have dropped by two-thirds to fewer than 300 a year in the 2.1 million person workforce. Workers are 13 times more likely to die of natural causes than get laid off from the federal government.

•$100,000. The portion of federal workers earning $100,000 or more grew from 12% in 2006 to 22% in 2011.

Note: “Workers are 13 times more likely to die of natural causes than get laid off from the federal government.” LOL

I know. I know. It’s easy to criticize members of Congress and federal government employees. And I’m sure that most are hard working, conscientious and capable. (Well, maybe that’s stretching it a bit for members of Congress.)

But at a time when unemployment or under-employment is well in the teens, when the middle class is shrinking and the number of people living in poverty is  increasing something doesn’t smell right here.

Oh, well. Back to Maria Shriver and the Kardashians.

Air Jordan Shoes: Worth Fighting Over?

OK. I guess this is a sign that I really am getting older. Admittedly, the only sport I dislike more than pro football these days is pro basketball. And the chances of me going mano-a-mano on the floor at a shopping mall  to grab a pair of basketball sneakers are, well, zero.

Again, as with most matters, I must be missing the big picture. Nike unveils the new version of the shoe the end of last week and in many USA cities it’s more dangerous being a clerk in a shoe department than being a valet parking attendant in Baghdad.

Here’s the action in Seattle, as reported by Business Week, “Police pepper spray rowdy shoe shoppers in Seattle“:

Police used pepper spray to break up fights among pushing and shoving customers waiting outside a Seattle area mall to buy the first Nike retro Air Jordan basketball shoes that went on sale early Friday.

Tukwila (tuhk-WIL’-uh) Officer Mike Murphy says about 20 people were sprayed in a group. One man was arrested for assault after police say he pushed an officer. No one was injured.

Murphy says more than 1,000 people lined up to buy shoes at 4 a.m. at four stores in the Westfield Southcenter mall. He says the stores sold out and all but about 50 people got their Air Jordans.

Hundreds of customers also lined up outside shoe stores in downtown Seattle and at a mall in Federal Way.

Across the country, at least four people were arrested at a suburban Atlanta mall after a crowd of customers broke down a door before a store selling the Air Jordans opened.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

Police reportedly used pepper spray to break up fights among shoe buyers who pushed and shoved outside a Seattle area mall to pick up some of the first Nike retro Air Jordans that went on sale early Friday.

Seattle TV stations report hundreds of customers had been waiting for hours outside the Westfield Southcenter mall and police were on hand to control disputes that broke out over line-cutting or pushing.

Hundreds of customers also lined up for hours outside stores in downtown Seattle and a mall in Federal Way.

One buyer walking away with the shoes told KING-TV it’s a classic style and the shoes that retail for $180 are selling for $400 on the Internet.

Gee. Kind of like the good old days when I had to get into a scrum on Christmas Eve and hope to grab a Honey Baked Ham. I digress.

And if you are venturing out shopping on this Monday after Christmas, heed the advice of Sergeant Phil Esterhaus of Hill Street Blues fame: “Hey, let’s be careful out there.”

And by the way, who is Air Jordan?

 

Happy Festivus: Enjoy the Holidays

Wonder if some of the House Republicans will be returning to DC today to celebrate Festivus. Clearly, some must have some grievances about how the House leadership created such a major debacle over extending the payroll tax.

No matter. Festivus, as I opined last year, is the best holiday of the year. And since I have given my vast editorial staff the day off to being celebrating the holidays, here’s my post from a year ago:

OK. I’ll admit it. I’m pretty much of an asshat when it comes to most things these days.  But when it comes to political correctness, I’m indifferent about the controversy that engulfs the nation this time of year. Is it Merry Christmas? Or Happy Holidays?

Hard for me to get my shorts in a knot over all that. Why? Because the best holiday of the year is celebrated on December 23: Festivus.

For the thousands one or two of you who read these posts regularly, you may recall that I opined on this celebration a year ago: “Happy Festivus: Grievances Anyone?” An excerpt:

Ah, “A Festivus for the Rest of Us” — a day set aside to “air our grievances.” Gotta love it. But for those not yet into the spirit of Festivus, here’s the back-story:

“Happy Festivus” is the traditional greeting of Festivus a holiday featured in “The Strike” episode of Seinfeld. The episode first aired on December 18, 1997. Since then many people have been inspired by the goodness of the Seinfeld holiday and they now celebrate Festivus as any other holiday.

According to the Seinfeld model, Festivus is celebrated each year on December 23rd. However many people celebrate it other times in December and even at other times throughout the year.

The original slogan of Festivus is “A Festivus for the rest of us!” Instead of a tree an unadorned aluminum pole is used, in contrast to normal holiday materialism. Those attending Festivus may also participate in the “Airing of Grievances” which is an opportunity to tell others how they have disappointed you in the past year, followed by a Festivus dinner, and then completed by the “Feats of Strength” where the head of the household must be pinned. All of these traditions are based upon the events in the Seinfeld episode.

To get you in the mood for your own Festivus celebration, here’s from Seinfeld:

And regardless of how you celebrate, I hope you enjoy the holidays with your family and friends.

A Gift Idea: Slap Leather by Jessica Jewell

OK. I know there is a lot of stress this time of the year as everyone is trying to finish the last-minute holiday gift shopping. Even Prez O and the First Dog, Bo, got into the act yesterday, sneaking out of work early to do some shopping.

So as a public service and stress reducer I offer the following. My daughter, Jessica, found out last night that her first book of poetry, Slap Leather, has been published by Dancing Girl Press & Studio.

Here’s from Jessica’s blog, Budajest:

I don’t like to do a lot of self promotion on this blurb, but tonight my chapbook, Slap Leather, published by dancing girl press, came out. I am very happy and very proud of the book and the press. Thank you to everyone who made it come together. Here is a little sample. Happy Holidays everyone!

THE GRASS WIDOW

If you haven’t heard
of the grass widow,
hang around. She’s fond
of fires, is half seas over
for flumes. Doesn’t draw
the blinds at night—

prefers the moon
and her convolutions.

They say she stitched
closed the beak
of a meadowlark.

Sing-songed, the grassland
ocean in her throat.

Full as a tick and twitching.

If you want to order the book, here’s the link to Dancing Girl Press.

And I’ll bet the Prez wishes I would have sent this info to him yesterday. Then he could have avoided a trip to the shopping mall.

Lisbeth Salander: Did China Strike Again?

I guess it’s OK to let women and children back on the streets in DC. Members of Congress are heading for the hills — without approving an extension of the payroll tax cut or forcing Prez O to say yes or no to the proposed energy pipeline from Canada to the Gulf Coast.

Ho-hum.

Here’s a much more interesting story coming from Inside the Beltway this morning.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting this morning that hackers in China gained access to the computer systems and networks at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — the primary lobbying group for businesses in this country. Here’s from the WSJ story, “Chinese Hackers Hit U.S. Chamber“:

A group of hackers in China breached the computer defenses of America’s top business-lobbying group and gained access to everything stored on its systems, including information about its three million members, according to several people familiar with the matter.

The break-in at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is one of the boldest known infiltrations in what has become a regular confrontation between U.S. companies and Chinese hackers. The complex operation, which involved at least 300 Internet addresses, was discovered and quietly shut down in May 2010.

It isn’t clear how much of the compromised data was viewed by the hackers. Chamber officials say internal investigators found evidence that hackers had focused on four Chamber employees who worked on Asia policy, and that six weeks of their email had been stolen.

It is possible the hackers had access to the network for more than a year before the breach was uncovered, according to two people familiar with the Chamber’s internal investigation.

One of these people said the group behind the break-in is one that U.S. officials suspect of having ties to the Chinese government. The Chamber learned of the break-in when the Federal Bureau of Investigation told the group that servers in China were stealing its information, this person said. The FBI declined to comment on the matter.

A spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, Geng Shuang, said cyberattacks are prohibited by Chinese law and China itself is a victim of attacks. He said the allegation that the attack against the Chamber originated in China “lacks proof and evidence and is irresponsible,” adding that the hacking issue shouldn’t be “politicized.”

And more:

When sophisticated cyberspies have access to a network for many months, they often take measures to cover their tracks and to conceal what they have stolen.

To beef up security, the Chamber installed more sophisticated detection equipment and barred employees from taking the portable devices they use every day to certain countries, including China, where the risk of infiltration is considered high. Instead, Chamber employees are issued different equipment before their trips—equipment that is checked thoroughly upon their return.

Chamber officials say they haven’t been able to keep intruders completely out of their system, but now can detect and isolate attacks quickly.

The Chamber continues to see suspicious activity, they say. A thermostat at a town house the Chamber owns on Capitol Hill at one point was communicating with an Internet address in China, they say, and, in March, a printer used by Chamber executives spontaneously started printing pages with Chinese characters.

“It’s nearly impossible to keep people out. The best thing you can do is have something that tells you when they get in,” said Mr. Chavern, the chief operating officer. “It’s the new normal. I expect this to continue for the foreseeable future. I expect to be surprised again.”

The ability of rogue nations like China and Russia, criminals and other miscreants to easily gain personal information, security documents and so on represents a serious risk to our economy and national security. Here’s an interesting article in Time, “Hackers Are the New Mob: White House Gets Serious on Cybercrime.”

When I read the story this morning about the US Chamber I kind of chuckled. Not because it’s funny. It’s not. But because opening this week in theaters around the country is the flick “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.”

It’s based on one of the books in Stieg Larsson’s popular trilogy “Milennium” series.

And the main character is Lisbeth Salander — who among other things has the ability to essentially hack her way into any computer or access any organization’s entire network.

I read the three books in the series, and it strikes me that what Lisbeth was doing in the world of fiction is, ah, doable in the real world.

And that’s scary.

Maybe the nation that has access to the most Lisbeth Salanders will win.

Think about it.

Death of Two Leaders: Timing Is Everything

Well, as best I can tell, Kim Jong-il is still dead. Ditto for the Senate-passed version of a plan to extend the federal government payroll tax cut. Although unlike Kim, the tax proposal will most likely come back to life once voters recognize that for many this latest Congressional gridlock will amount to what will certainly look, feel and smell like a tax increase.

Oh, boy. A tax hike in an election year. Woot! Sarah, come on down. Everything is forgiven. (See NYT — “Palin Says It’s Not Too Late for Folks to Jump In.”) I digress.

Back to Kim. I know that during the slow holiday news cycle his death gives the TV Talking Heads something to opine constantly about — even though they aren’t offering any new insights about what’s going to happen in North Korea. Still, it’s too bad that Kim croaked over the weekend because that overshadowed the passing of another world leader who merits attention: Vaclav Havel.

Havel was acclaimed writer, but more importantly, he was a dissident and then government leader who essentially ousted the Communists from Czechoslovakia and helped set the stage for the Europe Spring that crumbled the Berlin Wall.

Here’s from the NYT, “Czechs’ Dissident Conscience, Turned President“:

Vaclav Havel, the Czech writer and dissident whose eloquent dissections of Communist rule helped to destroy it in revolutions that brought down the Berlin Wall and swept Mr. Havel himself into power, died on Sunday. He was 75.

His assistant, Sabina Tancevova, said Mr. Havel died at his country house in northern Bohemia.

A Czech Embassy spokesman in Paris, Michal Dvorak, said in a statement that Mr. Havel, a heavy smoker for decades who almost died during treatment for lung cancer in 1996, had been suffering from severe respiratory ailments since the spring.

A shy yet resilient, unfailingly polite but dogged man who articulated the power of the powerless, Mr. Havel spent five years in and out of Communist prisons, lived for two decades under close secret-police surveillance and endured the suppression of his plays and essays. He served 14 years as president, wrote 19 plays, inspired a film and a rap song and remained one of his generation’s most seductively nonconformist writers.

All the while, Mr. Havel came to personify the soul of the Czech nation.

His moral authority and his moving use of the Czech language cast him as the dominant figure during Prague street demonstrations in 1989 and as the chief behind-the-scenes negotiator who brought about the end of more than 40 years of Communist rule and the peaceful transfer of power known as the Velvet Revolution, a revolt so smooth that it took just weeks to complete, without a single shot fired.

He was chosen as post-Communist Czechoslovakia’s first president — a role he insisted was more duty than aspiration — and after the country split in January 1993, he became president of the Czech Republic. He linked the country firmly to the West, clearing the way for the Czech Republic to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1999 and the European Union five years later.

Both as a dissident and as a national leader, Mr. Havel (pronounced VAHTS-lahv HAH-vell) impressed the West as one of the most important political thinkers in Central Europe. He rejected the notion, posited by reform-minded Communist leaders like Alexander Dubcek in his own country, and years later by Mikhail S. Gorbachev in the Soviet Union, that Communist rule could be made more humane.

His star status and personal interests drew world leaders to Prague, including the Dalai Lama, with whom Mr. Havel meditated for hours, and President Bill Clinton, who, during a state visit in 1994, joined a saxophone jam session at Mr. Havel’s favorite jazz club.

Even after Mr. Havel retired in 2003, leaders sought him out, including President Obama. At their meeting in March 2009, Mr. Havel warned of the perils of limitless hope being projected onto a leader. Disappointment, he noted, could boil over into anger and resentment. Mr. Obama replied that he was becoming acutely aware of the possibility.

Mr. Obama said that he was deeply saddened by Mr. Havel’s death. “His peaceful resistance shook the foundations of an empire, exposed the emptiness of a repressive ideology and proved that moral leadership is more powerful than any weapon,” he said Sunday in a statement.

Articulating Discontent

It was as a dissident that Mr. Havel most clearly championed the ideals of a civil society. He helped found Charter 77, the longest enduring human rights movement in the former Soviet bloc, and keenly articulated the lasting humiliations that Communism imposed on the individual.

In his now iconic 1978 essay “The Power of the Powerless,” which circulated in underground editions in Czechoslovakia and was smuggled to other Warsaw Pact countries and to the West, Mr. Havel foresaw that the opposition could eventually prevail against the totalitarian state.

Mr. Havel, a child of bourgeois privilege whose family lost its wealth when the Communists came to power in 1948, first became active in the Writers Union in Czechoslovakia in the mid-1960s, when his chief target was not Communism so much as it was the “reform Communism” that many were seeking.

During the Prague Spring of 1968, the brief period when reform Communists, led by Mr. Dubcek, believed that “socialism with a human face” was possible, Mr. Havel argued that Communism could never be tamed.

OK. I know that Kim Jong-il had a stockpile of nukes and was playing the game of life with at least one loose screw.

Still, Vaclav Havel, and others like him, helped shape Europe and the world through their courage and belief in freedom. Too bad that message got lost this week.

Timing is everything.

Whoopi Goldberg: Energy Expert?

Well, it looks like members of Congress aren’t finished with their navel-gazing over the extension (or not) of the payroll tax cut. And one of the stumbling blocks — at least for House Republicans — is the provision about whether to go ahead (or not) with the construction of an oil pipeline from Canada to the Gulf Coast. Wonder if Woopi Goldberg could help sort out this key economic and energy issue?

I’ve never watched The View — but apparently Woopi’s creds on engergy-related issues stem from the fact that she is an expert at passing gas.

Here’s the story as reported in The Daily Mail, “Woops! Whoopi Goldberg stuns The View panel as she passes wind on live television“:

She’s used to making others laugh, but Whoopi Goldberg’s jokes are typically intentional.

Not so today, when the 56-year-old comedienne farted on her daytime talk show, The View.

Whoopi interrupted Homeland star Claire Danes with the very loud, very unsettling noise.

Her fellow co-hosts, Sherri Shepard, Joy Behar and Elisabeth Hasselbeck looked on in stunned bemusement.

The Oscar winner isn’t shy about her penchant for passing gas in public, especially when it happens to be on her ABC morning show.

She admitted as much back in May when Dr. Oz made an appearance on the programme.

While discussing the benefits of fibre with Oprah Winfrey’s resident doctor, Whoopi revealed that she had been farting all morning long and does so quite consistently on TV.

Host Barbara Walters was so disgusted that she moved to the other side of the couch.

Oh, well. Who says the quality of intellectual debate in this country has declined? I digress.

And something tells me that if the House Republicans balk as expected tonight at endorsing the Senate-approved two-month payroll tax package, it will go over like, well, a fart on The View.

A One-Fingered Salute for Hawaii Five-O

OK. I know I should be fretting about the big news stories: the extension (or not) of the payroll tax holiday, Newt getting the nod (or not) from the GOP, and the war in Iraq coming to an end (or not). But like almost everyone else, I’m bored with those stories. So here’s one I like.

As I opined last week, the nation pretty much yawned through the 70th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. And that’s too bad, since as a nation we owe the greatest generation who fought and won that war our gratitude. Hey, let’s face it. Without them, we would be speaking German now and getting ready to order Sushi for lunch. I hate Sushi. Just sayin’.

Anyway, here’s the story. A group of vets who survived the Pearl Harbor attack were in Hawaii last week to commemorate the event. Good for them. But apparently bad for the crew of the CBS show Hawaii Five-O — who apparently couldn’t be bothered to pause their filming for a few minutes as the vets attempted to play the national anthem, conduct a memorial service in a cemetery, and so on.

Well, let’s see how that played out, as reported by the Daily Mail, “It was priceless: The moment angry Pearl Harbor veterans gave the stars of Hawaii Five-O a mass one-fingered salute“:

In days gone by this hardened bunch of war heroes may have taken a different approach.

But now, aged in their 90s, they decided to protest the only way they could when a TV crew filming hit CBS show Hawaii Five-O nearby annoyed them.

The 24-strong group were taken to Hawaii by the Denver-based Greatest Generations Foundation for the Pearl Harbor attack’s 70th anniversary.

But, as they tried to pay their respects at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, 50 yards away the Hawaii Five-O crew was being too noisy.

According to the veterans, the crew ignored their ceremony’s more solemn moments and the national anthem and just continued to film.

Steffan Tubbs is a host on Denver radio station 850 KOA and a foundation board member and has led criticism of the CBS production team.

‘The national anthem was played, colours were presented, and I noticed a couple of people didn’t stop and show their respects,’ he said.

At one point veterans were placing roses at anonymous graves when Mr Tubbs said a crew member ‘shushed’ the group and told them to move on.

Here are these guys coming back for their final visit to Pearl Harbor and Hawaii,’ Mr Tubbs said. ‘It was the ultimate disrespect.”The whole time this production crew is on the graves. Cameras, lights, tracks for the cameras. You name it.’

So, at his suggestion, the veterans took action and issued a mass one-fingered salute, military-style.

The obscene gesture was delivered in unison from a bus as they were leaving, and left them all in stitches of laughter.

Mr Tubbs said: ‘This was immature of me, but I said, “Gentlemen, if you so choose, how about we give them one big one-fingered military salute?”’

The last thing the production crew saw, he said, was a bunch of 90-year-old men flipping the bird at them.

‘It was one of the priceless moments of my life.’

Sweet.

This story, of course was made in heaven for Fox and Friends, and the Talking Heads opined in detail about it as I chased the treadmill in the early a.m.

Soon to follow came an apology from CBS:

CBS’s executive producer for the television series Hawaii Five-O, Peter Lenkov, issued an apology on Tuesday, December 14, 2011, on behalf of the Hawaii Five-0 production unit, to “veterans and members of the Greatest Generation Foundation whom we unintentionally offended when our events coincided.”

And according to a story in the Hawaii Reporter:

After apologizing, Lenkov said: “Our production crew is 80% staffed with local Hawaiians, many with ties to the military.  We recognize the privilege of filming in Hawaii and we are acutely aware of the deserved respect for its culture, history and the reverence that should be afforded to all of our veterans, particularly those who served so nobly in Hawaii and at Pearl Harbor.  Furthermore, the series we produce carries a demonstrative pro-military message.

“Contrary to some reports, to show respect, our crew did cease production for the playing of the national anthem, taps and for the remainder of the ceremony. When we resumed filming, we did encounter visitors from the ceremony. Any rudeness by our staff can only be attributed to haste to finish our work, not a lack of respect for men and women who have served and sacrificed for their country.  And for that, too, we sincerely apologize to any that were offended.”

OK, Mr. Lenkov, but try to keep in mind that without those vets and many more like them, the name of your show as best I can tell would be: ハワイファイブ- O

Think about it.

[Note: If it turns out that the above translation is actually the Web address for a Japanese porn site, blame Google. The editor who handles the foreign news desk for this blog is on vacation.]

And for those of you still stressed about fining the perfect gift for the holidays, here’s another shameless plug for the new e-Book written by my daughter, Jessica: The Passengers.

Jessica is a writer of fiction and poetry. She writes action/adventure novels under the pen name Benjamin Bricco.

Here’s a description of The Passengers:

Six strangers from different parts of the world meet on a private plane in Thailand. Most believe they are traveling to the eastern islands for work and play. Only one knows the truth: the plane is heading west, to the secret island home of Amador Covas-Callas, the drug overlord of the Far East. Kate Shaw, a prize-winning photographer, along with two missionaries and a private pilot, are unaware that they share a plane with one of America’s leading drug distributors, Marcus Keller. Keller, however, wants to be free of the dark shadows that haunt anyone who works for Amador Covas-Callas. He intends to convince the pilot, Syd Hopkins, to guide the plane to the western islands where he will face the cartel leader once and for all. The passengers on the early November flight must confront more than a change in direction, however. They must survive the broken airplane plummeting through the sky after being shot down by the cartel, a preacher who is descending into madness and an angry Andaman Sea. Not all members of the party will survive. But those who do will have their lives changed forever.

The book is available on Apple iBooks, and for those who use Kindle and NOOK and Sony readers.

C’mon! Admit it. Aren’t you tired of reading the same John Grishman book over and over again?