I’m totally fed up with all the clowns yelling about the Federal deficits. They compare the Feds with state and local governments, and with people, saying that the Feds should budget like people.

The problem is that the Fed does budget like people, within the restrictions of a new Congress every two years, and a new executive every 4 or 8 years. The majority of the country is in debt.

If you have a mortgage, a car loan, or a credit card balance, you have a deficit. If a state or local government issues bonds, they have a deficit.

The reason so many people are in debt is because the clowns decrying the Federal deficit, are the same idiots who told people they were stupid for paying off their mortgages and having real equity in their houses. These are the cheerleaders for “home equity lines of credit” which helped to inflate the bubble that just burst.

I remember Greenspan talking about the “danger” of running a surplus and paying off the national debt, when Clinton started doing it.

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The FDA says: “HVP stands for hydrolyzed vegetable protein, a substance used in small amounts to add flavor to many commercially processed foods, such as soups, hot dogs, chilis, stews, dips, salad dressings, gravies, frozen dinners, and snack foods.”

The stuff is everywhere, which is why Moi’s post, Hydrolized Vegetable Protein Recall, affects a hell of a lot of people, most of whom wouldn’t welcome the addition of Salmonella to the list of ingredients.

The FDA has a PDF of the products being recalled, eight pages and growing. You will note that a number of the products have “organic” in their names. Excuse me, but I seriously doubt that HVP is a naturally occurring substance, although Salmonella certainly is.

More information at FoodSafety.gov.

Dallas Seavey won the $3K in gold for the Halfway Prize, but there is a horde on its way that have completed their 24-hour layover, who will soon whiz by. There has been a marked increase in the number of dogs being dropped, Lance Mackey is down to 13 dogs. That probably reflects the early relative warm temperatures and the lack of snow to cushion the trail.

The weather has gotten colder, but there have to be dogs who are not bouncing back from their earlier exertions and don’t want to run. People miss the point that teams are playing when they pull that sled, and if they decide they aren’t having fun, they stop playing and nothing will make them do it again until they are ready. In the old days mushers would whip dogs and they might move, but they wouldn’t put any more than the minimum effort into it. If the dog doesn’t want to do it, it won’t get done. Lead dogs are important, not just for following orders on direction, but for cheerleading. A musher in the Quest carried his primary lead dog on the sled for a couple of checkpoints, because that dog could keep the others charged up until the secondary lead dog got the hang of the job and the respect of the team. It really is all about the dogs.

At Cripple
1 Dallas Seavey (19)
2 John Baker (8)
3 Martin Buser (37)
4 Bruce Linton (65)
5 Michelle Phillips (36)^R
6 Robert Nelson (32)
7 Jeff King (15)
8 Hugh Neff (56)
9 Mitch Seavey (41)
10 Lance Mackey (49)
11 Sebastian Schnuelle (35)
12 Sven Haltmann (42)
13 Sonny Lindner (44)
14 Hans Gatt (20)
15 Rick Swenson (57)
16 Ray Redington, Jr (9)
17 Cim Smyth (3)

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March 11^th, 2004, Madrid

Nuestros profundos condolencias en vuestra perdida.

Todos somos Madrileños.

M-11

BBC In Depth