So yesterday I went to the newest sandwich shop in Our Fair Town, a newly-opened D’Angelo’s (a regional chain that should be recognizable to anyone from New England), and found myself face-to-face with The Killer Tomatoes. No tomato on your sandwich, pal. Some guy Texas died from a bad tomato, so we’re not using ANY tomatoes.
Sheesh.
Look, check out this list of how many states DO NOT have a problem with salmonella in their tomato production stream. Now, granted, the mechanism of distribution for food products in this country means that quite often the produce you are eating came from some place very far away from where you live, but would it really be THAT hard for fast food operators and restaurants to find out where their produce was coming from? ‘Cause, if they came from any of these 28 states or the several foreign countries on the list, there’s no reason to pull them from the shelves except SCAREMONGERING.
Except, of course, the opportunity for all of these guys to save a couple of bucks for a month or so by not buying tomatoes. You see, tomatoes are among the most expensive produce items commonly purchased by food sellers. They’re difficult to ship long distances because of their relative fragility and are more prone to price fluctuations due to weather concerns than hardier produce. You might remember a couple of years ago when the price of tomatoes went through the roof because of bad weather, and a lot of restaurants either stopped buying tomatoes or raised their prices for items that included tomatoes. So here they have the perfect excuse to not buy them, even though the vast majority of commercial buyers of produce are not getting their tomatoes from the affected areas.
Now, I know full well that there aren’t a whole lot of locallay grown tomatoes available in New England any time before mid-July, but I know from buying tomatoes at the greengrocer that our produce comes predominantly from California or Florida, neither of which are associated with this problem. So I would like to respectfully ask all the cheapskate restaurant bean counters and fearmongering PR people to STFU and bring back my tomatoes.
Thank you.
Q: Hey Mitt! Who is already setting up his campaign to run for president in 2012?
The Mittster Says: I am!
Q: So, does that mean you don’t expect to be John McCain’s choice for Vice President? Or that you DO expect to be the nominee, but expect to lose in November?
The Mittster Says: Good question! Next person please!
It’s been about a week since the news broke about Ted Kennedy’s medical condition, and the initial flood of pre-obituary tributes and emotional responses has had a chance to wane a bit. Now the pundits and bloggers have moved on to write about what’s next, and many, particularly those Democrat-friendly types, have come to a somewhat obvious, though reasonable, observation: that Hillary Clinton should take a page from Ted’s book and settle into her Senate seat rather than spend the remainder of her political career keeping her options open about running for president.
I, personally, agree with this idea 100%. A long Senate career like Kennedy’s gives a politician so much more opportunity to play a role in shaping the future of the country than the comparably-short tenure one has in the White House. If Ted Kennedy had won the Democratic nomination in 1980 and had gone on to somehow beat Ronald Reagan, he would have disappeared from the active scene in Washington twenty years ago, to while away the time sailing and carousing (I doubt he would have sobered up if he’d retired to private life years ago). Instead, he has accomplished more than many of his contemporaries on either side of the aisle and will leave the Senate with a genuinely well-earned reputation as one of the great legislators.
Timothy Noah at Slate took the time in this piece to clarify some of the misconceptions around the idea of Kennedy’s post-1980 career. It wasn’t until 1985, after Reagan’s landslide re-election, that Ted Kennedy actually publicly announced that he would give up his presidential ambitions. Many pundits and bloggers have created the impression that Kennedy made his announcement after the 1980 campaign, but he did briefly consider running in 1984. I don’t know that those five years make a huge difference in the grand scheme of things — Noah seems to be trying to make more of this particular fact than it really is. His decision was as much a milestone for the political scene of the late 1960s and 1970s as Lyndon Johnson’s decision not to run in 1968. The pundito-bloggers are just compressing time in their own memories. The parallels between the Carter-Kennedy campaign of 1980 and the Obama-Clinton campaign of 2008 are strong and clear, and Hillary Clinton has the fortune of a historical model to help her lay the foundation for her political future.
The Clintons have done a lot to erode their political capital with the general public through this election season, just as our collective memory was getting ready to solidify around a much more forgiving vision of the Bill Clinton administration. While they don’t seem to have alienated too many people in the party’s power echelons as much, those movers and shakers will be far more swayed by public opinion against the Clintons if they make any obvious movement toward a 2012 campaign. They have more to lose than to gain at this point. Saving what face they can by easing up on the fight going into the convention will be enough salve for now, but if Hillary Clinton is truly interested in helping her “base” of working-class Democrats and not just serving her own ego, then she should stay in the Senate for at least a couple more terms. Four years from now, when we are all rueing the day we voted for Barack Obama or John McCain, she’ll have more seniority and more power than either of them, and probably a better legacy.
Gov. George W. Bush of Texas said today that if he was president, he would bring down gasoline prices through sheer force of personality, by creating enough political good will with oil-producing nations that they would increase their supply of crude.
”I would work with our friends in OPEC to convince them to open up the spigot, to increase the supply,” Mr. Bush, the presumptive Republican candidate for president, told reporters here today. ”Use the capital that my administration will earn, with the Kuwaitis or the Saudis, and convince them to open up the spigot.” — New York Times, June 28, 2000 (via)
Average price per gallon of gasoline in July, 2000 = $1.59
Average price per gallon of gasoline in May, 2008 = $3.80
Saudi Arabia’s leaders made clear Friday they see no reason to increase oil production until customers demand it, apparently rebuffing President Bush amid soaring U.S. gasoline prices.
It was Bush’s second personal appeal this year to King Abdullah, head of the monarchy that rules this desert kingdom that is a longtime prime U.S. ally and home to the world’s largest oil reserves. But Saudi officials stuck to their position that they will only pump more oil into the system when asked to by buyers, something they say is not happening now, the president’s national security adviser told reporters. — Associated Press, May 16, 2008
Well, on the positive side, there’s finally a list where it’s just as well that the U.S. isn’t Number One: we are #108 on the list of highest retail price per gallon for gasoline
Mission accomplished, eh George?
