Hunger in the Heartland: How a Record-Breaking Spaghetti Dinner Could Help Nebraska's Most Needy

by Nomad

Omaha spaghetti fundraiser in September hopes to bring the community together to break records for a good cause. 

Ms. Lin Leahy is a woman with a mission. 

Three missions in fact. 

The first mission?
This 54-year-old professional chef in Omaha, Nebraska has gathered together her friends, neighbors and co-workers in order to break the Guinness World Record. 

How? 

Well, with 3,780 pounds of pasta, 4,000 pounds of meatballs, Leahy aims to set the record for the most people served in one meal. That means, by serving more than 17,000 persons.

But it's much more than just a publicity stunt.

More than a Pretty Plate
With a board of directors made up of volunteers, Leahy's non-profit tax-exempt organization the Power of O.NE will also attempt to raise $100,000 for the Food Bank for the Heartland. 

But then, it's not just about the money. 

Her third goal is more far-reaching. The organization wants to raise awareness of food insecurities and also to remind people that a sense of community is formed when neighbor helps neighbor.

So, on Sept. 21, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., she plans to serve 20,000 plates of pasta, sauce, meatballs and green beans for $5 each at various local locations. Nobody will leave hungry, even if they can't pay. They hope people who can afford it will give more.

According to an article by Betsie Freeman, staff writer  for  the Omaha World-Herald,

So far, the group has found donors for all the food. The volunteers have reached out to area high schools and secured 13 serving sites in every corner of the metropolitan area. They estimate they’ll need 500 volunteers, and several groups already are interested in helping.

Is This Finally the End Of Issa's Benghazi Witch Hunt?

by Nomad

While the mainstream media looks the other way, a newly declassified report from Congress seems to exonerate the president and his administration in the tragic Benghazi attack on the consulate in September 2012 in which four Americans died.

The report clears the White House of any intentional or conspiratorial wrong-doing, blowing up the wild claims made by Republicans.

A report that the Republican-led House Intelligence Committee voted to declassify its completed Benghazi report last week has made a Hindenberg of the Benghazi investigation. It had all started so nicely too. With Mitt Romney inappropriately sneering in a midnight press conference. And when the Republican- led Congress decided to investigate claims of mismanagement and a cover up shivers of delight up the spines of die-hard conservatives.

It's all over now, Baby Blue. The report concludes that there was no clear advance warning of any organized terrorist attack, and that there was no "stand down" order issued to any American rescuers. Despite Republican claims to the contrary, the report also concludes that there was no attempt to clean up the site of the attack for the sake of politics. Finally, it finds that there was no conspiracy by the Obama administration to hide the facts or to cover up wrongdoing.
Basically every one of the allegations have been shown to be fictional. 

Committee Chairman Darrell E. Issa owes the American taxpayers a  millions dollars- up to over $14 million by some estimates- as well as apologies for his the baseless claims against the Obama administration.

Most of all, Issa and others who followed him, especially owes an apology to the victims of the attack. Back in May, at a Florida fundraiser, Issa clearly attempted to exploit the tragedy in Libya. He told his audience:

It takes very little time and very little committees if the administration wants to tell the truth. If the administration wants to continue delaying, denying and lying and covering up, it takes a long time.

There was a lot of time and a lot of money spent on Watergate to eventually get to the truth about the wrongdoing of Richard Milhous Nixon.

Wait.. Nixon, you mean, the Republican president? (But then he might well have cited the Republican President Reagan's Iran-Contra scandal too.)

Many on the Left knew these allegations were ridiculous and would lead nowhere.

But there is one thing this investigation has proved beyond a shadow of a doubt. This fiasco of a scandal investigation  is solid evidence that the Tea Party Republicans would rather waste time and money on baseless witch hunts than actually doing the work they are being paid to do.

Here's a syndicated post from the group, Americans Against the Tea Party

Obama vs. The Cheneys: A Question of American Values

by Nomad

When President Obama admitted that the CIA had, in the years after 9/11, committed torture, Liz Cheney, daughter of the former vice-president blasted the president, calling him an "utter disgrace." The interrogators, she said, were "patriots" and "heroes."

She failed to understand that the torture debate wasn't a matter of patriotism. It was a question of American values and what America stands for.

The Unseen Trap

In itself it was a fairly obvious thing to say. Last Friday, President Obama admitted that the CIA had committed torture. But what was surprising was his use of the pronoun "we." 

After handing over a report to Congress about an investigation into “enhanced interrogation techniques," President Obama said the CIA had “tortured some folks” after the Sept. 11 attacks.

“We did a whole lot of things that were right, but we tortured some folks. We did some things that were contrary to our values.”

What gives? I wondered. Presumably he was referring to the CIA during the Bush administration. If he were attempting to show solidarity with the CIA then it seemed a politically dangerous and needless thing to say. Indeed, many headlines from the so-called liberally-biased media simply read "We tortured folks, says Obama."

Now it is clear what he was doing: It was a bait for conservatives.

In short order, Liz Cheney, daughter of the former Vice President Dick Cheney, erupted with indignation about Obama's remarks. The venue was, predictably enough, Sean Hannity's show on Fox News.  

Hyperbole, like you never saw.

"..This president is an utter disgrace. He’s got a situation where... you’ve got crises erupting around the world."

A classic non-sequitur and a distraction. Obama wasn't there to talk about the problems of the world and she knew it.  Cheney, (Liz , that is) went on to say:

“And he is expending more time, more energy, more passion, more aggressive activity in targeting and going after patriots, heroes. CIA officers and others who kept is safe after 9/11."

Of course, Cheney's explosive rhetoric is aimed at dividing Americans, a lame attempt to stoke fears one more time. The Cheney apples do not fall far from the tree.

Additionally, there is a very real question about the accuracy of her allegation. Did torture actually keep anybody safe, either in the short or long term?

That's a statement that requires Cheney to prove and she is clearly not willing to attempt it. However, the unreleased U.S. Senate report, according to one source, is purported to conclude that the CIA’s use of harsh interrogation techniques following 9/11 attacks was ineffective and yielded no critical intelligence. 

That's bad news for the Cheney family.

Actually, President Obama never said that enhanced interrogation didn't save lives. He said only that these techniques were contrary to our values. Perhaps the moral question -which is what the president was referring to- is simply not something a daughter of Mr. Dick Cheney could possibly grasp.

Not in a million years.

And that is the trap that Obama set and the one into which Liz Cheney - clearly speaking in defense of her father's policies- unwittingly tumbled. It is a question of values, a question whether the ends justify the means. 

Just because we can find a rationale for doing it and a legal means to escape second-guessing, does it make it right? 

Spoofing Palin's New Money-Grabbing Gimmick

by Nomad

If honesty were a priority in politics, this is what Sarah Palin's new channel would actually look like.

Alas, parting the fools from their money seems to be a full time occupation with some politicians nowadays. 

Tea Party Debris: How Michele Bachmann has Made the GOP America's Spoof Party

by Nomad

If the Republicans have lost credibility among voters, they have only themselves to blame. Republicans should start asking why the Tea Party leaders like Michele Bachmann were allowed to make such a joke of their party? Where was the leadership?

We have all seen them and some of us have been fooled by them. Nowadays spoof news sites are everywhere on the Net, parodying the news. And these joke pieces can often sound quite convincing. I have seen endless rolls of roaring comments on FaceBook pages about news stories that were in fact completely imaginary.

As a blog writer who attempts to verify sources, it can be dangerous. I have very nearly used spoofed news as a source in the past before asking myself. "Does that even sound plausible?" Frankly, given the present state of politics in America at the moment, it's hard to know sometimes.

The Spoof that Wasn't

That's why when I saw this news story about Michelle Bachmann the other day, I hesitated and double-checked the source.  The title read:

Michele Bachmann Claims President Obama Wants To Use Unaccompanied Children For Medical Experiments

Reading and re-reading that headline, I was a little confused. After all, Right Wing Watch is most certainly not a news spoof site. The introduction seemed straight faced.

Rep. Michele Bachmann has a new theory about the unaccompanied minors fleeing violence in Central America who have come in large numbers to the southern U.S. border: they are future victims of a liberal plot to use unwilling children for medical experiments..

Finally I decided- against my better judgment- that this was not a joke. Bachmann had actually said this. 

(For the sake of my readership, I've decided not to reproduce her claims. Why? Simply because I am not qualified to explore the minds of lunatics. If you are interested in an analysis of her delusions and how she came up with this particular fixation, then go to the link above.)

  

From Laughing-Stock...

Fortunately, the number of people who take Bachmann totally seriously has probably always been small. However, like The Incredible Shrinking Man, Bachmann's audience may be microscopic but it never quite vanishes entirely. 

In the past, Michele Bachmann has shown that no allegation against Obama is too foul or insulting or outrageous to pass up. Her refusal to just say "No" to the addiction of nuttiness has made her a regular guest on the Fox News Network. Because of that, throughout the Obama administration, Bachmann has unintentionally made a laughing stock of the Republican party.