Day Of The Unhandy Man Waning - Waycross Journal

OPINION
Mullen’s Surefire Holiday Recipes
By JIM MULLEN
Universal Uclick Syndicate
Tired of trying to please everyone
during the holidays? Are you working
harder at home than
you are at work, but
still want that perfect,
old-timey, Norman
Rockwell look for
your table? Then
these simple recipes
are for you! They
making feeding a
crowd a snap, and the
Mullen
cleanup couldn’t be
simpler.
Here’s a complete holiday meal you
can put together in minutes.
• Homemade Turkey with Stuffing:
Drive to a big box store and buy a
turkey that’s already been cooked and
stuffed. Put it in the oven, reheat it, put
it on your fanciest platter and serve.
That delicious turkey smell will fill the
whole house. If anyone asks how you
cooked it, simply say, “It’s a secret family recipe. I could tell you, but I’d have
to kill you.”
• Homemade Cranberry Sauce: Buy
some cranberry sauce. Dump it in a
pretty dish and stir it up to make it look
lumpy. Don’t let anyone see the jar. Go
back out and watch a little TV with the
family — maybe a movie like “It’s a
Wonderful Life.” When anyone asks
what they can do to help, say, “Pour me
another glass of wine.”
• Scalloped Potatoes: Buy some
frozen scalloped potatoes. Cook them
in the microwave. Scoop them into a
fancy serving dish. Tell the kids to set
the table.
• Homemade Green Salad: Buy some
fancy lettuce, already washed. Put it in
a large salad bowl. Throw in some stuff
like olives and artichoke hearts that you
bought at the grocery store salad bar.
Stir it up with your fingers. Put your favorite store-bought dressing in a plain
bottle. Play a few rounds of Candy
Crush on your tablet.
• Homemade Cornbread: Buy some
cornbread. Tell your sister to go see
how the children are doing with setting
the table. Try to ignore her screaming
at them. Throw away the cornbread
packaging while everyone’s in the other
room. Slide cornbread into the oven to
warm it up.
• Homemade Dinner Rolls: They’ve
already got cornbread, what’s the matter with you? OK, if you really want
them, buy some from that fancy bakery
department down at the grocery store.
But make it look like you did something special. Take three sticks of soft
WAYCROSS JOURNAL-HERALD
ROGER L. WILLIAMS
Publisher
•
JACK WILLIAMS III
Editor
Founded 1875
400 Isabella St.
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butter, put them in a small bowl and stir
them up so it no longer looks like sticks
of butter. Tell people you churned it
yourself. No one really cares what the
food tastes like; they just want to know
that you worked your tush off.
• Homemade Gravy: Buy some
gravy. Put it in a microwavable gravy
boat. Microwave it until it’s hot. Don’t
let anyone see the jar. Dust some flour
on your hands.
• Homemade Sweet Potatoes: Oh,
come on. There’s enough food out there
for 30 people. Forget the sweet potatoes. What do you think, that no one
will show up next year because you
didn’t have sweet potatoes? Give it a
rest.
• Homemade Pumpkin Pie: This is
the one thing you absolutely must make
by hand. Just kidding. All pumpkin pies
taste pretty much the same. Buy it from
a store, warm it up, smother it in
whipped cream. Oh yeah, do the same
trick as we did with the butter: Squirt a
bottle of whipped cream into a bowl,
then whip it up a few times to look like
it’s homemade. People will say it’s so
much better than store-bought.
• Homemade Holiday Cookies: Buy
a bunch of different holiday cookies.
The kind that look homemade. Chip a
few of the edges so they don’t look perfect.
Unless you really enjoy cooking,
don’t let the holiday spoil your holiday.
The only way this could possibly be
easier is if you’re invited to someone
else’s house for dinner. Then, do the
right thing: Ask what you can bring.
Then go out and buy it. Just hope
they haven’t read this first.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Contact Jim
Mullen at JimMullenBooks.com.
GARY GRIFFIN
Managing Editor
•
DONNIE L. CARTER
Business Manager
JACK WILLIAMS, JR., Publisher (1957-1992)
JACK WILLIAMS, Editor & Publisher (1914-1957)
P-5 Waycross Journal-Herald, Tuesday, December 2, 2014
Blacks Used By Liberals
Thought for
Today
“And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea unto the city
of David, which is called Bethlehem. To be taxed with Mary, his espoused wife.” Luke 2:4-5
The Augusta Chronicle
You might not have heard of Elbert Guillory. But
if you happened to see any of the Louisiana politician’s advertisements on the Internet this past election season, you’ll likely never forget him.
In a series of videos produced by his FreeAtLast
PAC, the black Republican state legislator urges
African-Americans to so something many conservatives have long urged them to do: seriously rethink
their monolithic loyalty to the Democratic Party.
Liberal politicians, Guillory says convincingly
against a backdrop of impoverished black neighborhoods, are getting rich and powerful off AfricanAmerican voters while giving back policies that only
promote poverty and dependence in their communities.
“You see, black people are just being used by limousine liberals who have become our new overseers,” Guillory said in one ad that ran in North
Carolina, where voters ousted incumbent Democrat
U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan. “We’ve only traded one plantation for another.”
His message to his home state, where Democrat
U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu now faces a Dec. 6 runoff,
was equally sober: “You’re not Mary’s cause — and
you’re certainly not her charity. You are just a vote.
Nothing less and nothing more. For her, you are just
a means to an end so that she remains in power.”
Then there was his “We Will Have Nunn” ad in
Georgia, in which he noted how Democrats counted
on black voters to propel Democrat Michelle Nunn to
the U.S. Senate: “Just like always, black folk in
Georgia are being herded to the polls by overseers,
promising salvation. But who among us have they
saved?”
Could it be that African-Americans, after more
than 50 years of failed anti-poverty programs, are
discovering that the real solution to poverty lies in
traditional values, personal responsibility and a limited-government?
Blacks certainly need no better evidence of big
government’s failure than the past six years under
President Barack Obama.
He received 95 percent of the black vote during
his two elections, yet his administration’s policies
have done nothing to improve the lives of AfricanAmericans — or most anyone else, for that matter.
And how could they? There is no substance to the
Democratic Party agenda. There are only empty
promises of salvation-through-government and desperate, race-based fear-mongering.
Just look at the pathetic pandering Democrats employed this season.
There was Landrieu’s insinuation of bigotry in her
home state: “The South has not always been the
friendliest place for African-Americans;” the Georgia
Democratic Party’s “If you want to prevent another
Ferguson” mailers to black voters; and the Senate
Majority PAC ads that said Hagan’s GOP rival Thom
Tillis supports laws “that caused the shooting death
of Trayvon Martin.”
Democrats also tried to scare women, but fortunately the tired “war on women” ruse didn’t seem to
be any more effective than their ploy to alarm blacks.
“The lowest common denominator of fear and
race-baiting is something that the other party has
tried to do, and the voters said ‘no.’ They rejected
this,” said U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., the first black
senator elected in the South — by either party —
since Reconstruction.
Besides Scott, the GOP blazed other new trails for
African-Americans this election: Utah’s Mia Love
became the GOP’s first black woman ever to be
elected to Congress; and Texas House candidate Will
Hurd became the first black Republican elected in
that state since Reconstruction.
The Gainesville Times
In the great American novel To Kill A Mockingbird,
attorney Atticus Finch is explaining to his daughter
Scout how to deal with other people amid conflicts at
school: “You never really understand a person until
you consider things from his point of view ... Until
you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”
The novel centers on Finch and his two children
growing up in rural Alabama amid a racially inflamed
trial involving a black man accused of raping a white
girl. As in real life, there is no happy ending in Harper
Lee’s masterpiece, but valuable lessons to ponder
today.
Considering alternative points of view is not America’s strength right now. We have become so insular in
our opinions about politics, morality and societal
norms we fail to acknowledge that others may think
differently.
Like the fable of the blind men and the elephant,
each of us perceives truths based on our perspectives
and prejudices, formed from lifetimes of socialization
within our own enclaves.
This unfolded previously in the O.J. Simpson trial,
then again last year in the Trayvon Martin-George
Zimmerman case. One picture offers two different
views, like those optional illusion photos with hidden
images revealed only by changing one’s focus.
Recent incidents in Ferguson, Mo., from the Aug.
9 shooting to last week’s grand jury decision and subsequent violent protests, again point out that white
America and black America still aren’t singing out of
the same hymnal.
To many, the events in Ferguson played out like
this: A black teenager who had just shoplifted cigars
from a package store attacked a white police officer as
he sat in his vehicle. When the officer got out, the teen
charged him and the cop shot him dead in self defense.
That’s also how the grand jury saw it, electing not
to indict police Officer Darren Wilson in the death of
Michael Brown. They examined the evidence and witness testimony and concluded there wasn’t enough
there to seek criminal charges against Wilson.
Many have expressed the view that it’s cased
closed and justice served. The cigar thief was in the
wrong, the officer protecting himself and his city.
Many African-Americans see it differently. They
see a majority white police force with a heavy-handed
presence in a majority black town. They see a white
officer stopping a black teen with no provocation.
They see an angry young man feeling trapped and
provoked by a policeman, then shot in cold blood.
They see a justice system they believe has failed them
again, and believe a different outcome would have resulted had the cop and teen been of different races.
One side sees justice done in the legal sense; the
other side sees the perpetuation of social injustice.
Lost in the argument is the fact the two are not the
same thing.
The resulting protests are viewed differently as
well. People of both races may wonder how looting a
store has any relevance to the shooting or in any way
rights a perceived wrong. But African-Americans are
more likely to understand how frustration and desperation can boil over when hope is taken away.
Right or wrong? No, just black and white. And lots
of gray.
America’s Racial Divide
Child Hunger
SNAP Program Helps Kids
By DONNA BRAZILE
Universal Uclick Syndicate
A story from almost everyone’s childhood involves being told they should finish eating all of their
dinner. After all, the argument went, a child living in
Somalia, Indonesia or even down
in Honduras, is going without food
as you sit there and waste yours.
Today in America, parents don’t
have to point to a faraway, poor
country. Almost anywhere, in rural
communities and urban areas, they
can point across town or down the
street or, in many cases, right next
door to someone who is going
hungry.
Brazile
Food insecurity means “the limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate
and safe food.” That’s insufficient food intake, or
plainly, hunger. The United Nations Children’s Fund
(UNICEF) details the biological effects of food insecurity: “When individuals are undernourished, they
can no longer maintain natural bodily capacities,
such as growth, resisting infections and recovering
from disease, learning and physical work, and pregnancy and lactation in women.”
UNICEF focuses on emergency food, shelter and
medical relief to children in poverty-stricken nations.
The United States is wealthy. Yet, the statistics on
hungry, undernourished or malnourished children in
our midst are astounding.
In Washington, D.C., 28 percent of the children go
without enough food. New Mexico has the highest
number of hungry children at 29.5 percent. North
Dakota does the best out of 50 states: Only 10 percent of its children are underfed. Thirty-seven states
have between 20 to 30 percent of their children going
without enough food. In Texas, a whopping 27.4 percent of children go hungry daily.
As in the rest of the world, poverty is the cause of
hunger in the United States. It doesn’t matter if
you’re working two part-time jobs or one full-time
job, wages for most of the country have stagnated.
There’s a role for government to play in alleviating hunger and ensuring the most vulnerable in our
country have supplemental income to pay for food.
Derided by opponents as “handouts,” the federal
government’s SNAP program provides necessary
help for families, veterans, the disabled, and the elderly to deal with food insecurity. In 2012, 45 percent
of all SNAP participants were under 18, and 20 percent are elderly or have a disability.
The SNAP program has decreased fraud by threefourths in the past 15 years, ensuring that support
goes to those who need it. And SNAP is a no-brainer
economically: Every $1 in benefits generates $1.73
in economic activity by infusing money into local
economies and freeing up cash for other expenses.
Krista, of Leawood, Kan., is a teacher (22.5 percent of Kansas children are hungry). She told her
story to the anti-hunger organization Feeding America: “I didn’t really think much about what childhood
hunger looked like until I began working around it
every day. ... Hungry kids look like other kids. Except they aren’t. They eat like no one is watching,
they lick their trays clean, they finish quickly and ask
others if ‘they are gonna eat that.’
“The noise that you would expect in a busy school
cafeteria is absent. These kids are eating. There is no
playing or wasting because they know that this may
be their best meal of the day.”
Krista’s experience is by no means unique. In
2013, more than 21.5 million low-income students
received reduced-price or free meals in schools
through the federal government’s National School
Lunch Program.
While the logic of not wasting food might escape
many 5-year-olds, the worry about wasted food is a
real one. Even with 45.3 million people living in
poverty in 2012, food waste topped 35 million tons.
Further, food currently comprises 20 percent of what
we put into landfills.
Orange County, Calif., health officer Dr. Eric Handler saw an opportunity to take the food that large
establishments were throwing out and get it to hungry families.
Handler, a pediatrician, joined with Mark Lowry,
head of the Orange County Food Bank, to found the
Waste-Not Orange Coalition. The coalition’s goal is
to “reduce hunger and solid waste by facilitating the
donation of wholesome surplus food.”
Between just July and October of this year, the
coalition partnered with restaurants, food vendors,
businesses, hospitals and others to recover 28.6 tons
of food. They directed that food to people in need.
“Our goal is to find out which establishments are
currently donating food and which are not. And those
who are not donating goods, to educate them to the
fact that they are not held liable if food is not correctly prepared,” Handler told PBS for a story earlier this year.
Waste-Not Orange’s story is a powerful one for us
as we enter the holidays. We are a nation of caring
people — as we have proven time and again.
There are millions of families with parents working hard every day, children doing their very best in
school who simply can’t keep up with the rising costs
of food. Connecting them with perfectly good food is
smart for all of us.
Missing the opportunity to make a vital difference
in people’s lives would seem such an unfortunate
waste.
Read more about Waste Not Orange at wastenotoc.org.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Donna Brazile is a senior
Democratic strategist, a political commentator and
contributor to CNN and ABC News.