Politics US Edition (2021-vol 2)

[Amentep]

I don't get what the big deal is about who is on the bill. There were 11 designs before Jackson, why does it freeze on him rather than Cleveland, Garfield or Stephen Decatur?

Also wasn't Jackson on a bill a bit ironic, anyhow? IIRC he was against paper money.

Maybe we should have just stuck with Liberty on everything...?

[213374U]

So, about that Ranger drama, because it's much more entertaining to me than dollar bill discussions.

Not that the guy isn't a piece of trash, what with calling for the 101st to come down on BLM protesters, but man. Media shooting themselves in the foot? Don't mind if I do.

[rjshae]

Coming soon: the Trump $-100 bill.

[Hurlshort]

Fruits and veggies have been way more expensive in the pandemic, for sure.

[rjshae]

5 hours ago, Achilles said:

Hmm. Prices feel pretty flat to me. I know meat went up a little.

Okay, perhaps it's a regional effect then. I swear though my grocery bills are up 20-25%.

[Guest]

26 minutes ago, Hurlshot said:

Fruits and veggies have been way more expensive in the pandemic, for sure.

Most of my veggies I buy frozen and the price has been unchanged.

I do pick up fresh produce once a week for taco tuesday, but don't really pay much attention to what I spend.

[Darkpriest]

5 hours ago, Achilles said:

Most of my veggies I buy frozen and the price has been unchanged.

I do pick up fresh produce once a week for taco tuesday, but don't really pay much attention to what I spend.

Frozen is a waste of good qualities of the food. 

I do my groceries myself, every 2nd day with no more than I know I'll cook/prepare for my household (i hate wasting food and money). 

I usually eat regional seasonal veggies and some meat from local butchers and Fresh fish on the delivery days for gourmet (I know when the plane with supplies fly in). 

I try to avoid exotic stuff, even though I like things like Avocado, becuase of how this affects deforestations and increases carbon footprint. (same reason, why I travel with public comm daily, and rent a car on occasions when I really need one - I'd buy one, if we'd have a kid though). 

Here, there were price increases in groceries overall though and you could notice them, still I'd pin a blame on giving free money, and increase of minumum wages. 

 

I know that in US this is much harder to do, but if you live long enough in some area and are willing to explore and talk in person to people working as salesmen there, you can get an idea where someone cares for quality of what they sell. 

Edited January 26, 2021 by Darkpriest

[Guard Dog]

You guys should consider growing your own vegetables. They grow just as well in flower pots and window planters as houseplants do, you know. Also there is  a range of products for indoor air gardens. They allow you to grow herbs and small plants right in your kitchen.

Self sufficiency is a big drive for me as most of you know. But you don’t need to move out to the sticks and start a farm to attain a small measure of it.  You cannot grow all your vegetables from an apartment or townhouse (probably) but you can do a little 

Edited January 26, 2021 by Guard Dog

[Boeroer]

2 hours ago, Darkpriest said:

Frozen is a waste of good qualities of the food. 

That is not correct. Frozen vegetables go into the freezer right after the harvest. When defrosted they contain more vitamins and other nutrients than "fresh" vegetables you buy at the grocery store. Because those are usually not very fresh due to transport and storage time. 
This doesn't apply to vegetables you buy directly from the farm store (depends how long the vegetables lay there of course).

https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/fresh-or-frozen-produce-the-health-benefit-is-all-in-the-mix

Also applies to fish and meat mostly. Freezing food leads to less waste, too. However it leads to more energy consumption.

One thing that does suffer and which makes frozen vegetables less appealing to me is the altered texture - and sometimes also taste. Some products such as potatoes can't be frozen without making them unbearable - potatoes already start to taste bad under 4°C. That and the increased energy consumption are the reasons why I usually buy fresh products. But if I want to make stew or something like that then frozen stuff is totally fine because it's all mushy afterwards anyway. I also freeze products I grow myself like berries or herbs for example. Some I can dry (like rosemary).

I'm the one who cooks in my family and I almost never have to throw away food. Not even the stuff we can't eat gets thrown away: Peels and stems, skin and bone etc. go to the rabbits and the chicken. Rabbits are the best speed composters I know. Two of them is enough to turn all of our household's vegetable/fruit waste into high quality fertilizer. Chicken just eat almost everything - even coffee grounds and tea leaves.  What doesn't get eaten by the animals (which is very litte) goes onto the heap of compost. Mostly that consists of cut grass, citrus peels and leaves though.

Edited January 26, 2021 by Boeroer

[Darkpriest]

@Boeroer

I have the luck to buy from a trusted small family outlet, where the guy wakes up at 1AM and takes a truck to collect vegies from farmer shops he trusts and then he puts all that food on shelves before he opens at 9AM

For me there is a matter of taste, also defrosting and how you do that does influence what you get back from a veggie compared to the fresh one. 

@Guard Dog

I grow sometimes only some herbs at home, like basil. We are terrible at home with plants upkeep I had a cactus dry out.... 

[Gromnir]

11 hours ago, rjshae said:

Okay, perhaps it's a regional effect then. I swear though my grocery bills are up 20-25%.

am pretty certain your pov is actually the norm. some o' this might be due to averages and how outrageous were the increases for staple foods at the start o' the pandemic--couldn't buy beans or rice at reasonable prices until perhaps late may in some places. we tend to live in the moment, and currently prices don't look outrageous to us save in specific avoidable examples, but if we average in first four months o' the pandemic... our personal bill would still be lower just 'cause our shopping habits were kinda unique, but even Gromnir saw how wacky were prices in spring and summer.

have read multiple news stories which show grocery bills has increased on average particular for city dwellers who is less likely to have access to large supermarkets where costs is defrayed more easily than corner markets. this effect is s'posed exacerbated by people being less likely to bargain shop during the pandemic. over the past few months, more people have A store which is geographic close compared to past when people would look for best prices in town and then alter their lists accordingly.

and again, even the posters in this place observe that meat is tending to be more expensive and for some people such is a large percentage of the bill.

am suspecting you are the norm as 'posed to the exception. perhaps many obsidian posters who responded live in the burbs instead o' city? dunno. we would be wary o' extrapolating a national norm from a sample size o' less than a dozen. 

as to growing of plants, we have a legendary capacity to visit ruin and corruption 'pon the vegetable world. if ferns knew fear they would quail at the mere mention o' our name. if succulents had sphincters, they would pucker in our presence. am suspecting the dozen mighty redwoods which grow in our yard would laugh at our powers o' death and destruction, but all other members o' the plant world are just victims, potential victims, awaiting our reaper's touch.

am not particularly good with plants... and such wasn't just a way to get out o' a few chores as a kid growing up on a ranch/farm. probably.

HA! Good Fun!

 

Edited January 26, 2021 by Gromnir

[Hurlshort]

Growing your own fruits and veggies also requires quite a bit of organization at harvest time. We have 3 lemon trees, but trying to get my daughter, who seems to live off lemon juice, to harvest and juice them is a monumental task. So a good chunk of them just sit and go to waste. At least we have gotten good at handing off the persimmons to people, and we do eat the apples and pears as they get ripe.

Our vegetable garden is a joke. I might get a couple meals out of them during harvest time, but it is just tomatoes and and squash. There isn't enough of them to really feed the family of 5.

[Guard Dog]

It took a little work and reading a few books before I got the hang of it. But it is extremely satisfying. A lot of work but worth it. This spring I’m going to try something different. 

[Gromnir]

right down the road from Gromnir

https://www.davisranchproduce.com/index.html

prices and minimum actual decreased this year. for six months (edit: 'pon reflection, were more like 4.5 months) almost all our vegetables were hand picked by Gromnir, but not grown as while am ok with food preparation, am otherwise only able to turn plant life into fertilizer.

we still have many bags filled with frozen corn.

is fantastic when the watermelons, honeydew and cantaloupe become available. last year we were even given access to some o' the trellis vegetables such as snow peas, though those were a smidge more expensive.

am suspecting more places such as this exist and people just don't know about 'em or think it's too much effort.

HA! Good Fun!

Edited January 26, 2021 by Gromnir

[Guard Dog]

Honeydew fresh off the vine! It just don’t get better than that!

[Gromnir]

we didn't mention tomatoes. sacramento valley tomatoes is as good as it gets. absolute ideal conditions. 

Covid-19 Contracted by Scores of National Guard Members in Washington

also, am knowing we linked the off the rails articles from axios, but here is the final installment for those who missed it:

Episode 8: The siege

But then President-elect Biden materialized on the TV to address the nation. The room fell silent. Sen. Tom Carper, who represented Biden's home state of Delaware and had served alongside Biden in the Senate for eight years, filmed the speech on his iPhone.

"At this hour, our democracy is under unprecedented assault," Biden said in a somber voice. "Unlike anything we’ve seen in modern times. An assault on the citadel of liberty." Biden urged Trump to step out on national television immediately and call for an end to the riot. At the end of his speech, the room erupted in bipartisan applause.

Moments later, CNN aired a recorded video message from Trump, speaking from the Rose Garden. "I know your pain, I know you're hurt. We had an election that was stolen from us, a landslide election," the president opened provocatively, before meekly telling his supporters they had to "go home."

But he ended defiantly, jaw up, telling his followers who brought mob rule to the Capitol, "We love you. You're very special." The president had done the minimum — less, really — and he had kept the mob on his hook.

Senate staff inside the room were steaming. "That was pathetic," one said angrily. The president couldn't even be bothered to make a live speech, and then essentially he had closed with a validation of the mob.

Within hours, major social media platforms had removed the president's video and suspended Trump's accounts, warning of the risks of further incitement.

...

and so it goes.

HA! Good Fun!

[rjshae]

Growing your own fruits and veggies is worth it for the flavor alone.

[Darkpriest]

5 minutes ago, rjshae said:

Growing your own fruits and veggies is worth it for the flavor alone.

My grandma, near 100ys old, is still growing them on a small piece of land each season. She comes from rural areas, and she has a tiny piece of land in a small farming commute, who use some land on the outskirts of a big city, and each takes care of their own tiny piece for personal use. The strawberries, rasberries, tomatos, carrots, applea, cucumbers, etc. Flavor like no other. 

[Guard Dog]

Biden said the capitol building was the “citadel of liberty “? Now THAT is funny!  That’s like calling the fox the defender of the henhouse!  That’s like referring to a pimp as an HR manager. 
 

The citadel of liberty if it even exists is the bookshelf, the library, the church, mosque, and temple,  maybe the classroom, definitely the gun safe. And most of all In that space between the ears of the people who value it. It sure as hell is not going to be a capital building or anywhere politicians gather

[ComradeYellow]

Sanders in new push for $15 minimum wage under Biden: 'For me, it's morally imperative' (msn.com)

Raising the minimum to $15 would more than double the current $7.25-an-hour federal minimum wage,

but many Republicans oppose the move, saying it would hurt business.

Corporations are people to you know.

[Malcador]

14 minutes ago, Guard Dog said:

That’s like referring to a pimp as an HR manager. 

Everyone knows a pimp is a Project Manager.  The qualification is PMP, after all.

[Hurlshort]

Always fun to see people against government handouts AND against a livable wage. 

[Guest]

9 minutes ago, Malcador said:

Everyone knows a pimp is a Project Manager.  The qualification is PMP, after all.

The PMP certification process involves submitting documentation to show that the applicant has at least 2,500 hours of experience flexing da pimp hand on qualified hoes.

4 minutes ago, Hurlshot said:

Always fun to see people against government handouts AND against a livable wage. 

It's not about helping people. It's about acknowledging the primacy of the just-world hypothesis.

Edited January 26, 2021 by Achilles

[Guard Dog]

Does anyone here think price controls are a good idea? Artificially fixing the price of a widget based on some arbitrary value or idea?

[ComradeYellow]

1 minute ago, Guard Dog said:

Does anyone here think price controls are a good idea? Artificially fixing the price of a widget based on some arbitrary value or idea?

No.  The world economy is interconnected and is becoming more competitive between the powers that be (a good thing).  Whether you run a state or private business, you have to adapt to the circumstances.