The evil Napolitano (as opposed to the good one) speaks to Australians about why they should be aligned and supportive of the US military-industrial-surveillance-security complex. Reader Chris Bieber writes, “Mussolini said the same thing…only in Italian.”

A woman in Dallas who had recently undergone a knee reconstruction was arrested for trying to refill her prescription. Ann Lenhart called to get her pain prescription refilled, which was Norco, an opioid pain medication. The pharmacy called Ann and asked her what time she would pick up her prescription. They had a cop waiting for her, and she was hauled off in a cruiser, taken to jail for a night, and charged with obtaining a controlled substance by fraud, which is a felony charge. She had to get an attorney to secure her entrance back into her workplace because she had been branded a criminal. The police dropped charges after they decided to talk to her doctor and discovered the prescription was legit (as if her knee brace and permanent IV line weren’t enough of an indication). Oh, but of course, she could have faked that.

Miss Lenhart is suing CVS for false imprisonment, defamation, etc. Good for her. This reminds me of a time several years ago, after each of my two shoulder reconstructions, when I was given Demerol, also an opioid, under some very liberal pain management by my orthopedic surgeon. Once I left the hospital, he wrote me a prescription for Demerol, and there was only one place within a decent range of my home that would fill it (a local hospital pharmacy). When I showed up to pick up the prescription, sealed in a plastic armour jacket and sling from the waist up, with my two elderly parents in tow, I was treated suspicious and with disdain. Thanks to Charles Everett for the link.

The race mongering never ceases. A story from Yahoo notes that a blacklist, or a whitelist for that matter, is racist:

The word “blacklist” has been banned from use by Britain’s Scotland Yard over fears that it is racist, a media report said Monday.

Not just that.

The computer term whitelist that was used to denote a list of acceptable contacts has also been banned, reported The Sun.

And I thought that ebony and ivory were living in perfect harmony? Thanks to Travis Holte for the link.

I’ve always chuckled at how Kashi was placed upon the throne of “natural” cereals. People trusted the brand name and swore they were “eating healthy” if they were eating Kashi. A “natural” cereal, however, is a bit of a stretch – it is sort of like saying there is a natural soda or a natural Twinkie. That said, Kellogg’s Kashi brand has received some bad press lately.

The controversy went viral a week ago after a Rhode Island grocer tacked a note to one of his store shelves, telling customers he wouldn’t sell the cereal because he found out the brand used genetically engineered, non-organic ingredients. Photos of the note began popping up on Facebook pages and food blogs as some consumers claimed Kellogg was misrepresenting its cereal.

The soy in Kashi cereals comes from soybeans that have had a gene inserted to protect the soybeans from the herbicide Roundup, which kills weeds.

Kashi has done nothing wrong, says David DeSouza, Kashi general manager. “The FDA has chosen not to regulate the term ‘natural,’ ” he says. The company defines natural as “food that’s minimally processed, made with no artificial colors, flavors, preservatives or sweeteners.”

The word “natural” is one of the most abused words in the marketing orbit. After all, looking at the definition above, wouldn’t packaged rattlesnake poison qualify as “natural?” The Big Food, corporate state conglomerates are mighty good at maneuvering within FDA guidelines and intentionally misrepresenting their products while banking on the ignorance of consumers. In the end, however, I blame the consumers who refuse to take accountability for the acquisition of simple knowledge on food matters and thus doom themselves to perpetual ignorance and self-imposed serfdom.

Note this article in The Atlantic: “How Vegetable Oils Replaced Animal Fats in the American Diet.” The authors describe the process by which Crisco and other partially hydrogenated vegetable oils came to replace animal fats in the average American home. What the authors don’t do, however, is discuss how the medical establishment-government-Big Food complex intervened in markets with scaremongering tactics to demonize animal fats and praise the replacement of natural, healthy fats with trans fat-loaded, industrial products such as Crisco.

Thanks to Procter & Gamble the United States boosted the production of a waste product of cotton farming, cottonseed oil. To ensure a steady, cheap supply for soap production the company formed a subsidiary in 1902 called Buckeye Cotton Oil Co. Before processing, cottonseed oil is cloudy red and bitter to the taste because of a natural phytochemical called gossypol (it’s used today in China as male birth control) and is toxic to most animals, causing dangerous spikes in the body’s potassium levels, organ damage, and paralysis.

An issue of Popular Science from the era sums up the evolution of cottonseed nicely: “What was garbage in 1860 was fertilizer in 1870, cattle feed in 1880, and table food and many things else in 1890.” But it entered our food supply slowly. It wasn’t until a new food-processing invention of hydrogenation that cottonseed oil found its way into the kitchens of America’s restaurants and homes.

Now see the back cover of a 1950 Crisco cookbook.

Some folks may remember the reports last year of a butter shortage in Norway when the low-carb, high-fat revolution took hold. Dr. Andreas Eenfeldt reported on his blog, earlier this year, that Audi had placed ads that tempted buyers for the new Audi R8 by giving away a pound of butter for free with the purchase of the car.

There is a funny article in MedPage Today: “Kids Today Are Really Different.” The thesis of the article is essentially a psychobabble way of saying that a lot of folks just don’t grow up anymore. As usual, the solution offered is more government programs (on a global level) and more quasi-governmental academic experts to fix human beings who are infantilized by Big Government and the institutionalization of perpetual adolescence.

A reader, Mitch Black, reminded me of the great Star Trek episode, “The Return of the Archons.” This episode is described as “The Enterprise discovers a planet where the population act like zombies and obey the will of their unseen ruler, Landru.” Society is built around obedience, while Landru, the master, uses mass telepathy to command conformity and subservience. Except when Captain Kirk and crew leave, they leave behind “a party of experts who will help restore the planet’s culture to a Human form.” Sound familiar?

Do you have a moral obligation to sacrifice the life and happiness and future of your child for the collectivist-altruist false hope that you are benefitting society as a whole with the sacrificial offering? Rhiana Madenberg writes:

So for me and my family, we are making the choice to be a part of the greater system, hoping to see a trend of more families with the time and means to invest in public schools actually doing so — because if we don’t take the time to make quality public education a possibility for all children, who will?

It has been 150+ years since the appearance of the first compulsory schooling laws, and the government daycare enslavement camps are more destructive and violent than ever. But we owe it to the political beneficiaries of the system to keep funding their futures and their totalitarian central planning devices?

A reader, Michael Manley, sent this GPS map to me (Andover, MA).