Confusion, Weekly Points and the Cursed 1.1 Pound

Over a period five months last year, from roughly January to June of 2010, I lost 40 pounds. The weight loss was conscious, though I didn’t sign up with any particular program. I implemented a Weight-Watchers-meets-South-Beach-meets-Stop-Eating-Double-Cheeseburgers-and-cook-more-from-home sort of conglomeration.

It worked (probably more due to the Stop-Eating-Double-Cheeseburgers portion of the plan than any other part of it)…

… Until I got lazy.

A few weeks ago I could no longer deny the fact that the weight was starting to creep back up on me, and though I hadn’t yet gained everything I’d lost, it was  getting to a point where it was more a matter of when I’d top back out at my heaviest, not a question of if.

Plus, I knew I still had more weight left to lose.

For this reason, I signed up for Weight Watchers. The focus on lifestyle change is what really attracted me- this is something I can do for the rest of my life, and be healthy doing it. I’ve been doing the Points Plus program for 3 weeks now, and I’m happy to report that I’ve lost a total of 11 pounds (or, more to the point, I’ve lost all the weight I was previously starting to gain).

Sounds good, right?

This morning, however, after weighing in, I found myself disappointed. I mean, yeah, at Weight Watchers they promote healthy weight loss- which means no more than 1-2 pounds a week, and I get that… but seriously?

1.1 pounds?

I hail from the “go on a diet and lose 50 pounds in 10 days” kind of world. I get that’s not even a little realistic, let alone healthy, but still.

Stubborn thoughts don’t die easily.

Ugh.

My main struggle of late seems to be with my Weekly Points, and what in the world I’m supposed to do with them.

Do I use them?

Ignore them?

I’ve tried to research this issue on the internet, and the answers I’m finding are confusing and contradictory. Officially, Weight Watchers says that I should use all my weekly points, in addition to my dailies, and that in doing so, I will continue to lose weight. This is attributed to the fact that the weeklies are built in to my plan, so I should enjoy them, as they don’t carry over from one week to the next.

Trolling through forums and discussion groups, however, I’m getting a different reaction. Some seem to think their weekly points are the devil, and swear to never penetrate them (these are the bitches people that tout, “I get sooooo many points in a day, I couldn’t possibly use them all, let alone my weekly allowance too!”).

I decided to ignore those freaks.

Next, we have the people who claim to use their weekly points, religiously, and still lose the weight. These people say that before they started using their weekly points, they would find themselves either stagnant from one week to the next, or losing ridiculously small amounts of weight- .5 here, .3 there (or say, 1.1 pound *Cough*). It wasn’t until they started using every single one of their points that the weight started to drop- religiously- 1.5 to 2 pounds per week. The theory seems to be that the more you eat (healthy food, natch), the higher your metabolism, the more fat your body burns.

Kind of makes sense…

… But…

Eat more to lose more?

Huh.

I’m not convinced yet, so I’ve settled on a compromise. Rather than eat all of my weekly points, I think I’ll try to think of them as Overdraft Protection, like a bank account. They’re there if I want a treat, but aren’t for normal, every day use.

We’ll see how that tips the ol’ scales, and take it from there.

Here’s to another week, and another (or a couple!) pound.

Yup.

 

Cain denies proposing racial profiling

Cain is in hot water… again.

He wants voters to believe his “targeted identification” policy proposal is not the same thing as racial profiling.

Here, in his own words, Cain tells us what the term really means, as it relates to the TSA using this approach in airports:

Targeted identification is a deliberate approach to figure out patterns associated with people who have tried to kill us…I’m simply saying we should not be afraid to identify those characteristics that have basically been consistent in people who have tried to hurt this country.

In contrast, here’s the definition of Racial Profiling:

Racial profiling is a form of discrimination by which law enforcement uses a person’s race or cultural background as the primary reason to suspect that the individual has broken the law.

See? Totally different!

Or not.

Go ahead and pull those Muslims aside, get to the business of robbing them of their civil and Constitutional rights, all in the name of “targeted identification”.

In the spirit of Herman Cain and his supporters, I have been motivated to propose my own “targeted identification” plan. Moving forward, black people should be allowed to violate the rights of white conservatives. This is appropriate because people who look exactly like they do have been actively harming minority Americans for generations.

Carry on!

 

Bill Looman, Georgia Business Owner, Draws Fire For ‘Not Hiring Until Obama Is Gone’

We will not hire until Obama is gone

Sadly, it doesn’t surprise me that this business owner is unwilling to hire anyone while the President is still in office. He’s in good company, and the only thing that makes this particular man unique is his willingnes­s to be upfront about it.

There are many people on the right- including a lot of the elected politician­s- who do not want America to thrive in any way while President Obama is in office. If we, as a country, fail on his watch, they get to blame Obama without having to confront their personal racism against him.

Those same people will claim racism is dead in the US, pointing to our black Commander in Chief as proof, while simultaneo­usly hijacking our country to all-but guarantee his failure.

 

Rocrast Mack’s Murder At Alabama Prison Followed Trail Of Violence By Guards

A 24 year old man is brutally attacked, beaten and murdered while serving a 20-year sentence in an Alabama Prison for selling $10 worth of crack-cocaine to an undercover officer. Upon investigation, it is determined the young man was brutally killed by six corrections officers at the prison.

On the night in question, the inmate was suspected- yes, merely suspected- of masturbating under his sheets while a female guard was present.

The ranking guard has been charged with intentional murder.

Two other guards were brought up on federal charges for violating the prisoner’s civil rights, and covering up the assault. They have entered guilty pleas.

A commentor at the end of the article writes that “pris­ons are full of animals who prey on the weaker”- hopefully this person sees the irony of their words. This statement obviously holds true for the guards as well, and not just the inmates, as is implied.

While I support the intentional murder charge against the ranking officer, I think all six of the guards should have been charged as well.

Many people state that an inmate’s propensity towards exaggeration when making allegations of brutality against officers hinders the state’s ability to properly investigate the claims.

While I do understand that some inmates will exaggerate abuse allegations, that has no bearing on the fact that when an inmate is murdered by six officers, there’s no question about what occured. There is no question about what a heinous and violent act it was.

A man is dead, killed at the hands of six men, all of which had a duty to uphold the law.

Clearly there was no exaggeration here.

That this inmate was forced to pay the ultimate price for doing something so comparitiv­ely minor makes me wonder if the female guard in question was a white woman. Seems like there was some overkill involved in this beating.

Whatever the motivation, it was personal, and not merely six men “just doing their jobs”.

 

I am the 99%

I have remained largely silent on the Occupy Movement until now.

I support the message the Occupy protestors are trying to send, and agree that we need serious reforms to better balance social and economic disparities.

I, too, believe that corporations have too much political power; I find it deplorable that a rich few in this country keep getting richer off the backs of the middle class, the disadvantaged and the poor, steadily decreasing our salaries, our benefits, and programs that can help many of the less fortunate survive, and in many cases, thrive.

I find it appalling that our politicians can cut crucial funding to help women, children, the homeless and the poor under the guise that “we can’t afford” these programs, while simultaneously handing billions- hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars- to corporations that lied and cheated themselves into dire straits.

That the government labeled the banking institutions “too big to fail”, propping them up, while allowing us to be pushed out of our homes and out of our jobs is detestable.

The people of this country- the small business owners, the middle class, the working class, the veterans- are the people that built this nation from the ground up. These are the people the government should have deigned “too big to fail”, or at the very least, “too important to fail”. Instead, it was a bunch of nameless, faceless billionaire corporations who knowingly- and criminally- suckered people into homes they could not afford; companies that openly took huge risks, gambling with the livelihoods of the masses that the government deemed worthy of “bailout”.

That these corporations financed all of it with money nobody actually had available to spend, finally sticking it to those who could least afford the backlash by way of shady mortgages is maddening.

Finally, as everyone knew it would, the bubble burst.

The banks responded to the crisis by blaming the middle class. They took no responsibility for the fact that they manipulated and wheeled-and-dealed their way into an economic crash of epic proportions. No, they simply responded that the homeowners should not have purchased homes they couldn’t afford to live in- even as it was those very banks that were manipulating and tricking those people into believing they could and should do it.

It was everyone else’s fault but the banks’. The reality that they, themselves, were willing participants in what amounted to a glorified Ponzi scheme was lost on them.

No one forced these people into those mortgages, after all!

The government, it seemed, agreed, and gave the banks $700 billion in tax payer money to keep them from closing shop. They said it was necessary to “shore up” the economy.

The banks, in turn, on a handshake, agreed to begin lending money again, to do their part to get the economy moving.

The politicians of C Street believed the lying CEOs of Wall Street, despite the undeniable proof that Wall Street, in its criminal behavior, had helped create mess we found ourselves in…

… and the rest is history.

It’s largely understood today that the banks did not fulfill their end of the bargain, and after receiving the bailout money, did not begin lending again, as promised. Instead they paid out their golden parachutes and multi-million dollar bonuses to the richest among them, making them even richer…

… doing so, yet again, off the backs of the middle class and working poor.

They are the 1%.

Outrage and unrest was the predictable outcome. The only surprise is in the fact that it took so long to come to fruition.

Here we stand, in the middle of the moment, giving birth to a movement that has long been gestating.

Is it perfect? No.

Do we need to make changes? Absolutely.

That being said, however, I am still- proudly- the 99%.

 

Herman Cain, Sinking Ships and the Tea Party Princess

… at the beginning of the day, I hadn’t recalled as much as by the end of the day.”

So said Herman Cain, during a Fox News interview with Neil Cavuto while discussing the allegations of sexual harassment against him. Cain was referring to the fact that when first asked about the allegations, he conveniently remembered nothing- that is, until he realized that those pesky women were not going to disappear.

Suddenly, by his own admission, his memory improved. The more detailed the accusations, the more clear it became that this wasn’t going to go away, the better his recollection.

Convenient.

Since these allegations hit the news waves, Cain has been on a non-stop publicity tour, speaking to any number of media outlets. He says he wants to be as visible as possible, sharing with the world that he “doesn’t have anything to hide”.

Cain wants us to believe he is being upfront about these allegations, but in reality, he spends most of his time piling on slightly hysterical-sounding denials. On the rare occasion that he’s willing to talk about it (only to sympathetic conservative news outlets, ironically) he  peppers his denials with inconsistent statements.

First, he has no recollection of the incidents in question.

Next, he backs away from his assertion of amnesia, instead blaming his unwillingness to answer these accusations on the fact that the women in question were choosing to remain anonymous. How can he answer accusations from people who refuse to come forward and identify themselves?

So Politico provided him with the name of one of his accusers.

He still refused to answer.

Cain did eventually go on to confess that he had vague knowledge of the incidents in question, then later still admitted he was extremely familiar with the investigations and fully recalls them…

… Though he swore he had no idea about the financial settlements.

Some say we owe Cain the benefit of the doubt, as he’s found himself in a “he said, she said” situation in which no solid evidence of his lurid behavior has been brought to light.

Others claim that Cain is being attacked by left-wing liberals who simply hate the fact that a conservative black man is running for office (Cain himself has blamed Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, and most recently, liberals). He wants America to believe the allegations against him are simply part of a vast Democrat conspiracy, liberals bent on sending him straight to hell.

Really?

Then how come the sole woman willing to come out and accuse Cain publicly is actually a conservative?

Wait- it gets even better- not only is she a conservative, but she’s a teabagger member of the Tea Party.

Ooh. There goes that whole Liberal-Left-Wing-Conspiracy theory.

That I do not trust nor believe Herman Cain has nothing to do with his politics, and it has nothing to do with the color of his skin. My views instead have everything to do with his own behavior, his tactics in choosing how to (or how not to) address the allegations laid at his feet.

This is not a “he said, she said” situation.

It is a “he said, they said” scenario.

They.

As in plural.

This is not a situation in which some crazy lone-wolf of a woman has come out of the woodwork and made baseless allegations against a man of power. There are women, all of which are saying the exact same thing.

As Cain attempts to convince us that he is not, in fact, a boneheaded sexist pig (anybody see the most recent debate, by the way? Where he calls Rep. Nancy Pelosi “Princess Pelosi”? Oh Sorry. I digress), he puts himself in a situation that invites more questions than answers. His “recollection” of the events in question change and evolve as the women’s allegations become more clear and detailed.

In a single day he goes from having zero memory of these incidents to suddenly remembering them, albeit not clearly.

Next, by his own statements, we learn that actually, his recollection of the events are crystal clear- but only where the investigations are concerned.

Financial settlements?

What financial settlements?

Even on this point, his memory has inexplicably improved, and now remembers that the National Restaurant Association, while under his direction, did pay these women some money.

First he said it was $10,000.

Next, it was $45,000.

But, he says, those were separation agreements, not financial settlements, the funds were paid without his knowledge.

Riiight.

Cain expects people to simply swallow his contention that despite the fact that he was president of the National Restaurant Association during the time the allegations were made against him, he had no knowledge that the organization- people who worked for him- entered into financial settlements with the women who- it bears repeating- were making allegations against him.

Look- I know that was a monster of a run-on sentence, but it was necessary.

Read it again.

Cain simply refuses to give Americans credit for having a brain. He refuses to acknowledge that as individual people we are capable of forming our own opinions based on the evidence- yes, even circumstantial- laid before us. This despite the nonsense he continuously tries to force-feed us.

If it walks like a duck…

The story has completely fallen apart. Cain did that to himself. His own words, his own contradictions, his own back-pedaling has made him unbelievable in the eyes of the public. The Democrats didn’t do it to him, nor did his skin color.

He simply did it to himself.

*Poof!*

And that, my friends, is the sound of a sinking ship.

 

Civics Lesson

 

Immigration, Abortions and Collective Bargaining

We earned a series of victories last night, all throughout the nation. Our country, contrary to what many would have us believe, apparently isn’t nearly as right-wing nutty conservative as one may think.

Americans took to the polls yesterday, and in domino-like fashion, managed to accomplish some pretty great, progressive-like things.

In Ohio, voters gave power back to the unions, reversing prior legislation that stripped the collective bargaining rights of teachers, firefighters and others.

In Arizona, the author of the state’s hideously bigoted controversial immigration law suffered a terrible blow, losing the recall election. Senator Russell Pearce lost to fellow Republican Jerry Lewis, who has promised to take a more “cooperative” approach in trying to work through the issues of immigration throughout the state.

Finally, and perhaps most especially, Mississippi was unsuccessful in its attempt to pass Amendment 26. Known widely as the Personhood Amendment, it would have amended the Mississippi Constitution to state that life begins at conception (or cloning) and ends at birth.

The obvious point in drafting such legislation would be to allow Mississippi a way around Roe v. Wade, effectively illegalizing abortion in the state.

Not only would this measure have opened the door for other states to completely outlaw abortion, it also would have pushed one of the poorest, least-educated states in the country back into the stone ages of reproductive rights. Because life would have been defined as beginning at “the moment of conception or equivalent thereof”, many forms of birth control would have been banned- it wouldn’t have just impacted abortion rights. Further, even the ease in which couples could obtain in vitro treatments would have been impacted; in some cases, fertilized eggs do get destroyed in the lab, and under the proposed amendment, a fertilized egg is a person.

Oh- and there were zero provisions, in case you were wondering, to allow emergency abortive procedures to save a mother’s life, or in cases of rape and/or incest. I guess we, as women, were just expected to man up and take one for the team.

Even if it, quite literally, killed us.

I was nervous, as election day approached. I’m not a resident of Mississippi, but I am a supporter of human rights, regardless of where the humans may find themselves residing.

If any state could have pulled it off, Mississippi could have. Long touted as the nation’s “most conservative state”, Mississippi houses exactly one abortion clinic.

But they didn’t do it.

I breathe a sigh of relief…

… because for the moment, at least, the good guys won.

Onward.

 

Rick Perry = Drunken Idiot?

Rick Perry recently gave a speech in New Hampshire.

Some people say he seemed…

… Uh…

A bit under the influence.

I watched the video- analyzed it, really.

I think he was drunk- or on drugs.

Either way, God help us if he was sober, and people actually take him seriously.

Shudder.

I think John Stewart was right when he said:

 Best-case scenario, that dude’s hammered. Worst-case scenario, that is Perry sober, and every time we’ve seen him previously, he’s been hammered.

You be the judge:

 

FOX News: Cain Harassment Issue: Who Said What to Whom?

Cain Harassment Issue: Who Said What to Whom?

I’m guessing Herman Cain never heard the old adage, “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire”.

We are beginning to learn more details of the sexual harassment allegations against the quirky candidate. Most recently, another allegation, made by an altogether different woman has surfaced, adding to the previous two on record.

… And then there were three.

As for Cain’s bid for the Presidency, it’s over- even if he refuses to admit it.

Rather than speak on the topic of these allegations in any intelligent fashion, he points the finger at Rick Perry, then Mitt Romney, and oh, look! He’s back to pointing at Perry again!

I’m getting dizzy.

Slightly nauseated too.

This guy is disgusting.