Sequestration: The President’s ugly Child

Posted on February 27, 2013 by Mike Shortall

How many people realize sequestration, which The White House continually warns will be a “disaster” for the country and its citizens from Arizona to Connecticut, was actually The White House’s brain-child???

Don’t listen to the hype … or the lies. The sky, if it falls, will not be the sole responsibility of Congress. Heck, it wasn’t even their idea.

The Public is a pawn in this chess game. The political pressure being applied by The White House, in the form of Dire Economic Impacts on individual states and even the victims of Superstorm Sandy, is intended to force Congress (i.e. Republicans) – by portraying them as the troublemakers – to cave in so they can pass to the American people an even bigger financial federal budget burden without cutting a single one of the Democrats’ Sacred Cows.

Sequestration was the gamble suggested by then White House Chief-of-Staff Jack Lew (Secretary of the Treasury nominee) and White House Congressional liaison Rob Nabors. It was endorsed by President Obama before being presented to the Senate Finance Committee, and proposed as a negotiating strategy to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev) during the 2011 negotiations to raise the National Debt Ceiling.

Certainly House Republicans accepted the sequestration as part of those negotiations, but it wasn’t their idea; it wasn’t their gamble.

It was the President’s idea of “leadership” in difficult political times. Push it off; deal with it later. Maybe, just maybe it will go away on its own.

Keep that in mind as you continue to hear about how Sequestration will damage your benefits; your income; your local economy!

Remember it when The President shows up on C-Span or the nightly news speaking about the dangers of sequestration and surrounding himself with Emergency Responders, teachers, healthcare workers, and seniors warning about all the damage the sequestration cuts will entail.

Sequestration: The President’s ugly child!

Who were those people in the background?

Posted on February 25, 2013 by Mike Shortall

Now I know the Obamas receive a lot of criticism was those who do not agree with them politically, socially, economically, etc. Some of it is over-the-top, some of it valid as well.

But performances like tonight, where Michelle presented the Best Picture Nominees and Winner at The Oscars, is what gets people talking about their priorities and values.

As Michelle spoke live from Washington, D.C. to the Hollywood elite, many of whom contributed significantly to The President’s re-election, her backdrop consisted of several young military personnel in full parade dress.

(View the entire segment here.)

She spoke about overcoming obstacles, courage, the importance of art to young people, and “that vitally important work” being done in Hollywood …

Seriously … Their “vitally important work” …

But never once was the presence of those young people in uniform acknowledged, their service recognized.

It appeared that those courageous young people in their dress uniforms were there simply as drapery.

Did you notice?

What’s wrong with that picture?

Papelbon deserves credit for Honesty in Leadership Remarks

Posted on February 23, 2013 by Mike Shortall

Phillies closer Jon Papelbon

Don’t be too hard on Jon Papelbon for his remarks about a lack of leadership on the Philadelphia Phillies last season. He is dead-on correct. He nails the problem I had last season with players like Hunter Pence, Shane Victorino, even J-Ro.

No one – it seemed to me – stepped up to fill the void left by the absence of their injured stars/natural leaders. Someone to shake life into a team that wallowed in a state similar to the characters, Vladimir and Estragon in “Waiting for Godot“. Waiting for Someone to come along and show them the way.

Give Papelbon credit for seeing things like they were; recognizing his own role in the leadership void; and his promise to get more involved this year!

Nothing like a little honesty to set a tone for an important season!

Go, Phillies!!

Diet by App, February 22

Posted on February 22, 2013 by Mike Shortall

What have you lost for me lately? a Malayan Flying Fox!

What have you lost for me lately? … 2.5 lb. Malayan Flying Fox

First weigh-in since buying the Lose It! app. Down 2 pounds to 234 (Start weight: 236). Probably closer to 2.5 pounds had I entered my starting weight properly (236.4). About what I expected, in view of my learning curves.

One trick learned is the ability to push over-budget calories into the next day. Some might say this is “cheating”; but it helps me handle the ups and downs easier. First, it relieves some of the guilt and dietary pressure when you wander (i.e. bull-rush the feeding trough) off course. Second, you get the chance to make good on your wandering without forfeiting whatever progress you have already made.

This week the program was complicated a bit further when I chalked up another year on this Big Blue Marble. So sorry, Ms. Lose It! … Chocolate-frosted, yellow birthday cake trumps Diet App every time …

… along with the Imperial Wolf Fish dinner at Bonefish Grill, accompanied by several adult beverages forced upon me by several non-diet-conforming family members. (Which is why I love them!).

Also found that by pushing some of those over-budget birthday calories into the next day, ….

a) didn’t feel like committing seppuku the day after my birthday splurge;

b) could manage my “wild” birthday craziness by a little budget-cutting sacrifice the following day; and

c) still end up 322 calories UNDER budget for the week!

Tasted better than he looks

Solved the problem of accurately entering (to the best if one’s ability and time) the nutritional and caloric data from home-cooked meals and restaurant dining. By googling a meal, like my Imperial Wolf Fish dinner (450 with the au gratin potatoes), you can usually find a comparable meal described and valued for entry in the Lose It! app.

Don’t obsess over being down-to-the-calorie completely accurate. Close enough is good enough. Found several menu/nutrition websites that listed my Bonefish Grill meal. It wasn’t an exact match, if looking at a picture might indicate, but close enough for government work (favorite adage).

So far, so good …

Diet by App

Posted on February 16, 2013 by Mike Shortall

After years and years of fighting the urgings of friends and family, I have finally stopped resisting The Forces of Nature (Electronic) and sheepishly joined The Legions of The Empire.

Yes, I got an iPhone for Christmas!

So now I am finally plugged into to an even more convenient electronic umbilical, whose benefits in the past I have steadfastly questioned as unnecessary, more costly, and therefore unwelcomed. My old flip phone now lies as silent and as dormant as a February lawn.

My days of wondering how the outside world survived without my uninterrupted electronic availability are as far off as the hair of my long ago youth. I feel as I imagine Neo would, had he decided to swallow the Blue Pill instead of the Red. All I’m missing is a set of quick-connect cable ports.

Yet I have to admit, there are a lot of neat features to owning my Portal to The Matrix. There is indeed an App for Everything! Some are silly and superfluous, if silly and superfluous resides in the eye of the beholder. Some are fun to have, as I have fallen for a few of its games and gimmicks. And some appear of significant benefit!

Most recently, I have become smitten with a weight loss app, appropriately named Lose It!

Over the years I have tried any number of diets in one form or another. The Atkins/South Beach/We-Hate-Carbs, the LowCalorie/LowSugar/LowTaste, the JennyCraig/SlimFast/LeanCuisine …

They all worked for a while, and then they didn’t for one reason or another. Usually because I just lost interest and motivation. One factor in my inability to commit to a lesser me was the gut feeling that I didn’t know what I was doing; had no EASY way to figure out how I was doing; and had no interest in PAYING someone to lead me through it.

(EASY being an obvious requirement when I find eating much less aggravating than trying to figure out whether WHAT I was eating was actually helping or hurting. Having to lose weight is annoying enough, even when you KNOW your health would improve; but having to WORK at it was … Well, it’s just plain annoying times two!)

Now before you get to thinking this is a Lose It testimonial; I have only been plugged into this app for about week. So Success is a long, long way off. But since I sometimes have difficulty coming up with brilliant insights and marvelous story-telling with which to fill these pages; I thought I would invite you all to follow my journey to a Lesser Mike.

It MIGHT be fun. It could – like so many of my other dieting attempts – end up being a colossal failure. If Vegas had a line on this little venture, I’d bet the Under (achievement). If nothing else, it will be informative and – most likely – whiny, petulant and full of self-pity/loathing/flagellation.

From time-to-time I will let you in on how I’m doing; what I’m doing; and what the results look like.

For what more could anyone ask?!?

Here’s the point from where I started roughly a week ago as it appears in my Lose It! profile:

Starting weight: 236

Goal Weight: 200

Plan: Lose one-and-a-half pounds a week

Daily Calorie Budget: 2,020

Goal Achievement: August 3, 2013

Other considerations: I get to the gym at work at least 3 times a week, concentrating on cardio/calorie burning through elliptical and treadmill machines and throwing in core exercises (for golf and lower back) or light weight work. This usually allows me to burn somewhere between 250-350 calories a day.

So, what’s to like about the Lose It! app?

The app is oriented towards caloric intake, with goals broken down by Day and by Week; so if you have a Bad Food Day you can see immediately what it does to your program. Intermittent stumbling is inevitable, especially when you combine Me with Diet! So if you have a very bad Diet Day, you can adjust your next day(s) activities and food intakes to get your noncompliant self back on track.

Some of Lose Its features include:

a wealth of nutritional information on a broad range of foods and food products
a bar-code reader for purchased ingredients and packaged food products that makes inputting caloric data easier than attempting to divine said data from your 10th grade class on nutrition
feature that allows you to create and save meals and their nutritional and caloric values for repeated meals
an easy-to-complete profile that allows the dieter to enter baseline data and goals expressed as pounds lost by week
a graph that provides a visual picture of weight progress (dieter input of weight)
daily log of foods eaten and a rolling total of daily calorie intake
daily calorie budget, along with front-page display of how your budget stands for that day and week
more graphs on nutritional breakdown and weekly calorie budget
a Friends connection for group motivation

The app will store those foods and meals you select in a menu similar to your iPhone Contacts format for easy repeat usage. (I found it relatively easy to gather information on first-time meals not included in the Lose It! app by simply “Google-ing” the basic content of the meal, and looking for a nutritional website containing the necessary data. Once you build and enter the data, the app will store it for later use if needed.)

The feature I love most is the ability to calculate and value the calories burned through exercise, work, and simple everyday activities. The list of activities is about as all-inclusive as possible. You can find a broad range of workout activities and get calorie credit for such activities as gardening, golf, lawn mowing (a favorite of Cranky Man’s Lawn … duh), house cleaning, snow shoveling and … ahem … sexual activity!

Many of the activity choices allow you describe the level of vigor with which you pursue said activity, with accompanying levels of calorie credit.

In the end, I’m sure this – like any other weight-loss program – depends on the will and loyalty of the dieter. But from my point-of-view, Lose It! takes a lot of the guesswork out of monitoring caloric intake and effort output that many health professionals recommend as the way to shed excess cargo.

I just like that it makes it easier for those of us who disdain uncertainty and the constant research required to achieve that sense of knowing what one is doing.

Here’s hoping I found something that will work with me as well as for me!