AP – The White House has fully embraced one of eating’s hottest trends — seasonal cooking with ingredients grown at home.
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White House chef says Obamas eat seasonal
(AP)
SAN CLEMENTE, Calif. (The Blaze/AP) — For most of her 100 years, Minka Disbrow tried to find out what became of the precious baby girl she gave up for adoption after being raped as a teen. She hoped, but never imagined, she’d see her Betty Jane again. The cruel act of violence bore in Disbrow an enduring love for the child. She kept a black and white photograph of the baby bundled in blankets and tucked inside a basket. It was the last she saw of the girl – until the phone rang in her California apartment in 2006 with the voice of an Alabama man and a story she could have only dreamed. Disbrow, the daughter of Dutch immigrants, weathered a harsh childhood milking cows on South Dakota dairy farms. Her stepfather thought high school was for city kids who had nothing else to do. She finished eighth grade in a country schoolhouse with just one teacher and worked long hours at the dairy. On a summer day in 1928 while picnicking with girls from a sewing class, Disbrow and her friend Elizabeth were jumped by three men as they went for a walk in their long dresses. Both were raped. “We didn’t know what to do. We didn’t know what to say. So when we went back, nothing was said,” Disbrow recalled. Months passed. Her body began to change. Disbrow, who had been told babies were brought by storks, didn’t know what was happening. Her mother and stepfather sent her to a Lutheran home for pregnant girls. At 17, she gave birth to a blond-haired baby with a deep dimple in her chin and named her Betty Jane. In her heart, Disbrow longed to keep her. But her head and her mother told her she couldn’t bring an infant back to the farm. A pastor and his wife were looking to adopt a child. She hoped they could give Betty Jane the home she couldn’t. “I loved that baby so much. I wanted what was best,” Disbrow said. She never met them, or knew their names. But over the years, Disbrow wrote dozens of letters to the adoption agency to find out how her daughter was faring. The agency replied faithfully with updates until there was a change in management, and they eventually lost touch. Disbrow’s life went on. She married a fruit salesman who became a wartime pilot and drafting engineer and they had two children. She worked as a dressmaker, silk saleswoman and school cafeteria manager in cities spanning from Rhode Island to Minnesota and Northern California before moving to the seaside town of San Clemente an hour’s drive north of San Diego. Every year, she thought about Betty Jane on her May 22 birthday. Five years ago, Disbrow prayed she might get the chance to see her. “Lord, if you would just let me see her,” Disbrow remembers praying. “I promise you I will never bother her.” On July 2, the phone rang. It was a man from Alabama. He started asking Disbrow, then 94, about her background. Worried about identity theft, Disbrow cut him off, and peppered him with questions. Then, the man asked if she’d like to speak with Betty Jane. Her name was now Ruth Lee. She had been raised by a Norwegian pastor and his wife and had gone on to marry and have six children including the Alabama man, a teacher and astronaut Mark Lee, a veteran of four space flights who has circled the world 517 times. She worked for nearly 20 years at Walmart – and especially enjoyed tending to the garden area. Lee knew she was adopted her whole life, and grew up a happy child. It wasn’t until she was in her 70s that the search for her biological parents began. Lee started suffering from heart problems and doctors asked about the family’s medical history. She knew nothing about it. Her son, Brian, decided to try to find out more and petitioned the court in South Dakota for his mother’s adoption records. He got a stack of more than 270 pages including a written account of the assault and handwritten letters from a young Disbrow, asking about the tiny baby she had cradled for a month. He then went online to try to find one of Disbrow’s relatives – possibly through an obituary. “I was looking for somebody I thought was probably not living,” said Lee’s now-54-year-old son. He typed Disbrow’s name into a web directory and was shocked when a phone listing popped up. “I kind of stopped breathing for a second.” On the phone with her biological daughter, Disbrow was in disbelief. Her legs began to tremble. She couldn’t understand how a naive dairy farm girl without an education could have such accomplished grandchildren. A month later, Ruth Lee and Brian Lee flew to California. They arrived at Disbrow’s meticulous apartment on a palm tree-lined street armed with a gigantic bouquet of flowers. Disbrow couldn’t get over how Lee’s hands were like her mother’s. Lee was amazed at the women’s similar taste in clothing. They pored over family photo albums and caught up on the years Disbrow had missed. “It was just like we had never parted,” Disbrow said. “Like you were with the family all your life.” Since then, the families have met numerous times. Disbrow has gone to visit grandchildren and great-grandchildren in Wisconsin and Texas. She is planning to travel to Alabama in the spring, where they will celebrate her recently marked 100th birthday. Disbrow has started sharing her story with members of her church and community. The Orange County Register ran a story about Disbrow’s journey in December. The family’s improbable reunion also made the local newspaper in Viroqua, Lee’s hometown in western Wisconsin. “It has been such a surreal, amazing experience that I still think sometimes that I will wake up and it will just be a beautiful dream,” the 82-year-old Lee said. Disbrow’s daughter Dianna Huhn, 55, of Portland, Ore., said the reunion has filled a void for her mother – one that for many years, the sharp, stylish woman with sparkling blue eyes kept a deep, dark secret. “I have never seen my mother as happy,” said Huhn.
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Mom, Now 100-Years-Old, Reunites with Lost Child After 77 Years
Photoshop : Tennyson Hayes Who is Kevin McNulty? One happy man. The White House and entrenched incumbent Democratic Sen. Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey gave him a surprise early Christmas gift — and New Jersey politicos are grumbling. According to the New York Post, McNulty was nominated to a federal judgeship for which he hadn’t been previously mentioned. McNulty, it turns out, is New York Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer’s brother-in-law. The collective response: “What the…?” Not sure why there’s so much surprise and befuddlement. There’s never a holiday for cronyism: Sen. Charles Schumer’s brother-in-law was quietly nominated this month to a federal judgeship in New Jersey — a move that has some in the Garden State crying political foul, The Post has learned. Kevin McNulty, who is married to Schumer’s sister, Fran, was named to the US District Court by the White House late on Friday, Dec. 16. According to a boilerplate quote, President Obama believes McNulty is a “distinguished individual” who “will serve the American people with integrity and a steadfast commitment to justice.” Obama vouches for his “commitment to justice?” Uh-oh. Lautenberg and his aides have given no public explanation for the decision to go with McNulty even though the latter had never been publicly touted as a contender for the job, which carries life tenure and a $174,000-a-year salary. “No one knows why he did it,” said one person involved in the nomination process. “Everyone thinks it’s all about 2014 and Frank making sure he has Chuck in his corner.” The White House declined to comment, as did McNulty. …People involved in the judicial-nomination process in New Jersey told The Post they believe the surprise nomination was a naked political maneuver by the 87-year-old Lautenberg to stay in Schumer’s good graces. Lautenberg is worried that party elders will try to push him out of his beloved Senate seat because of his advanced age — something that Schumer, one of the party’s top opinion makers and fund-raisers, would be able to stop. “McNulty came out of left field,” said another source involved in the Jersey judicial politics. “McNulty’s not a dumb guy, but people were just, like, ‘How’d that happen?’ ” To be fair, McNulty seems to have a solid résumé . But the timing and manner of the nomination smack of desperate pandering by a Beltway barnacle clinging to power. Bah-humbug.
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No holiday for cronyism: Schumer kin gets judgeship for Christmas
Photoshop : Tennyson Hayes Who is Kevin McNulty? One happy man. The White House and entrenched incumbent Democratic Sen. Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey gave him a surprise early Christmas gift — and New Jersey politicos are grumbling. According to the New York Post, McNulty was nominated to a federal judgeship for which he hadn’t been previously mentioned. McNulty, it turns out, is New York Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer’s brother-in-law. The collective response: “What the…?” Not sure why there’s so much surprise and befuddlement. There’s never a holiday for cronyism: Sen. Charles Schumer’s brother-in-law was quietly nominated this month to a federal judgeship in New Jersey — a move that has some in the Garden State crying political foul, The Post has learned. Kevin McNulty, who is married to Schumer’s sister, Fran, was named to the US District Court by the White House late on Friday, Dec. 16. According to a boilerplate quote, President Obama believes McNulty is a “distinguished individual” who “will serve the American people with integrity and a steadfast commitment to justice.” Obama vouches for his “commitment to justice?” Uh-oh. Lautenberg and his aides have given no public explanation for the decision to go with McNulty even though the latter had never been publicly touted as a contender for the job, which carries life tenure and a $174,000-a-year salary. “No one knows why he did it,” said one person involved in the nomination process. “Everyone thinks it’s all about 2014 and Frank making sure he has Chuck in his corner.” The White House declined to comment, as did McNulty. …People involved in the judicial-nomination process in New Jersey told The Post they believe the surprise nomination was a naked political maneuver by the 87-year-old Lautenberg to stay in Schumer’s good graces. Lautenberg is worried that party elders will try to push him out of his beloved Senate seat because of his advanced age — something that Schumer, one of the party’s top opinion makers and fund-raisers, would be able to stop. “McNulty came out of left field,” said another source involved in the Jersey judicial politics. “McNulty’s not a dumb guy, but people were just, like, ‘How’d that happen?’ ” To be fair, McNulty seems to have a solid résumé . But the timing and manner of the nomination smack of desperate pandering by a Beltway barnacle clinging to power. Bah-humbug.
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No holiday for cronyism: Schumer kin gets judgeship for Christmas
Each year, researchers at 24/7 Wall St. compile a list of brands that are going to disappear in the near-term. Last year’s list proved prescient in many instances, predicting what should have been the demise of T-Mobile (were it not for the intervention of forces outside the market). Other 2010 nominees–including Blockbuster–bit the dust, while companies, such as Dollar Thrifty are on the road to oblivion. However, the 2010 list of brands that may disappear was not perfect. They missed the mark on a few companies. Notably, Kia, Moody’s, BP, and Zales appear to be doing better than expected. Nevertheless, brands that have stood the test of time for decades are falling by the wayside at an alarming rate. For instance, Pontiac–a major car brand since 1926–is gone, shut down by a failing GM. Blockbuster, as mentioned in the above, is in the process of dismantling, after it once controlled the VHS and DVD markets. House & Garden folded after 106 years. It succumbed to the advertising downturn, a lot of competition, and the cost of paper and postage. Its demise echoed the 1972 shutdown of what is probably the most famous magazine in history–Life. That was a long time ago, but it serves to demonstrate that no brand is too big to fail if competition, new inventions, costs, or poor management overwhelms it. This year’s list of the 10 brands that will disappear takes a methodical approach in deciding which brands will fail. The major criteria were as follows: A rapid fall-off in sales and steep losses Disclosures by the parent of the brand that it might go out of business Rapidly rising costs that are extremely unlikely to be recouped through higher prices Companies which are sold Companies that go into bankruptcy Firms that have lost the great majority of their customers Operations with rapidly withering market share Each of the ten brands on the list suffers from one or more of these problems. Each of the ten will be gone, based on the aforementioned definitions, within 18 months. 10. Nokia Nokia is dead. Shareholders are just waiting for an undertaker. The world’s largest handset company has one asset: Nokia sold 25 percent of the global 428 million units sold in the first quarter. Its problem is that in the industry, the company is viewed as a falling knife. Its market share in the same quarter of 2010 was nearly 31 percent. The arguments that Nokia will not stay independent are numerous. It has a very modest presence in the rapidly growing smartphone industry, which is dominated by Apple, Research In Motion’s Blackberry, HTC, and Samsung. Nokia runs the outdated Symbian operating system and is in the process of changing to Microsoft Window mobile OS, which has a tiny share of the market. Nokia would be an attractive takeover target largely because the cost to “buy” 25 percent of the global handset market would only be $22 billion based on Nokia’s current market cap. Microsoft, which is Nokia’s primary software partner, could easily buy the company and is often mentioned as a suitor. The world’s largest software company recently moved further into the telecom industry though its purchase of VoIP giant Skype, which has 170 million active customers. Two other large firms have many reasons to buy Nokia. Samsung, part of one of the largest conglomerates in Korea, has publicly set a goal to be the No.1 handset company in the world by 2014. 9. Soap Opera Digest The magazine’s future has been ruined by two trends. The first is the number of cancellations of soap operas. Long-lived shows which include “All My Children” and “One Life to Live” have been canceled and replaced by talk show, which are less expensive to air. The other insurmountable challenge is the wide availability of details on soap operas online. Some of the shows even have their own fan sites. News about the industry, in other words, is now distributed and not longer in one place. Soap Opera Digest’s first quarter advertising pages fell 21 percent in the first quarter and revenue was down 18 percent to $4 million. In 2000, the magazine’s circulation was in excess of 1.1 million readers. By 2005, it fell below 500,000 where it has remained for the last 5 years. Source Interlink Media, the magazine’s parent, which also owns automotive, truck, and motorcycle publications, has little reason to support a product based on a dying industry. 8. MySpace MySpace, once the world’s largest social network, died a long time ago. It will be buried soon. News Corp bought MySpace and its parent in 2005 for $580 million, which was considered inexpensive at the time based on the web property’s size. MySpace held the top spot among social networks based on visitors from mid-2006 until mid-2008 according to several online research services. Then Facebook came along. Facebook has 700 million members worldwide now and recently passed Yahoo! as the largest website for display advertising based on revenue. News Corp was able to get an exclusive advertising deal worth $900 million shortly after it bought the property, but that was its sales high-water mark. Its audience is estimated to be less than 20 million visitors in the U.S. News Corp announced in February that it would sell MySpace. There were no serious bids. Rumors surfaced recently that a buyer may take the website for $100 million. The brand is worth little if anything. A buyer is likely to kill the name and fold the subscriber base into another brand. News Corp has hinted it will close MySpace if it does not find a buyer. 7. Kellogg’s Corn Pops The cereal business is not what is used to be, at least for products that are not considered “healthy.” Among those is Kellogg’s Corn Pops ready-to-eat cereal. Sales of the brand dropped 18 percent over the year that ended in April, down to $74 million. That puts it well behind brands like Cheerios and Frosted Flakes, each which have sales of over $200 million a year. Private label sales have also hurt sales of branded cereals. Revenues in this category were $637 million over the same April-end period. There is also profit margin pressure on Corn Pops because of the sharp increase in corn prices. Kellogg’s describes the product as being “Crispy, glazed, crunchy, sweet.” Corn Pops also contain mono- and diglycerides, used to bind saturated fat, and BHT for freshness, which is also used in embalming fluid. None of these are likely to be what mothers want to serve their children in an age in which a healthy breakfast is more likely to be egg whites and a bowl of fresh fruit. 6. Sony Ericsson Sony Ericsson was formed by the two large consumer electronics companies to market the handset offerings each had handled separately. The venture started in 2001, before the rise of the smartphone. Early in its history, it was one of the biggest handset manufacturers along with Nokia, Samsung, LG, and Motorola. Sales of Sony Ericsson phones were originally helped by the popularity of other Sony portable devices like the Walkman. Sony Ericsson’s product development lagged behind those of companies like Apple and Research In Motion which dominated the high end smartphone industry early. Sony Ericsson also relied on the Symbian operating system which was championed by market leader Nokia, but which it has abandoned in favor of Microsoft’s Windows mobile operating because of license costs and difficulty with programmers. In a period when smartphone sales worldwide are rising in the double digits and sales of the iPhone double year over year, Sony Ericsson’s unit sales dropped from 97 million in 2008 to 43 million last year. New competitors like HTC now outsell Sony Ericsson by widening numbers. Sony Ericsson management expects several more quarters of falling sales and the company has laid off thousands of people. There have been rumors, backed by logic, that Sony will take over the operation, rebrand the handsets with its name, and market them in tandem with its PS3 consoles and VAIO PCs. 5. Sears The parent of Sears and Kmart—Sears Holdings—is in a lot of trouble. Total revenue dropped $341 million to $9.7 billion for the quarter, which closed April 30, 2011. The company had a net loss of $170 million. Sears Holdings was created by a merger of the parents of the two chains on March 24, 2005. The operation has been a disaster ever since. The company has tried to run 4,000 stores across the U.S. and Canada. Neither Sears nor Kmart have done well recently, but Sears’ domestic locations same store numbers were off 5.2 percent in the first quarter and Kmart’s were down 1.6 percent. Last year domestic comparable store sales declined 1.6 percent in the total, with an increase at Kmart of .7 percent and a decline at Sears Domestic of 3.6 percent. New CEO Lou D’Ambrosio recently said of the last quarter that, “we also fell short on executing with excellence. We cannot control the weather, economy, or government spending. But we can control how we execute and leverage the potent set of assets we have.” Shares are down 55 percent during the last five years. D’Ambrosio only reasonable solution to the firm’s financial problems is to stop supporting two brands which compete with one another and larger rivals such as Walmart and Target. The cost to market two brands and maintain stores that overlap one another geographically must be in the hundreds of millions of dollars each year. Employee and supply chain costs are also gigantic. The path D’Ambrosio is likely to take is to consolidate two brands into one–keeping the better performing Kmart and shuttering Sears. 4. American Apparel The once-”hip” retailer reached the brink of bankruptcy earlier this year, and there is no indication that it has gained anything more than a little time with its latest financing. It currently trades as a penny stock. The company had three stores and $82 million in revenue in 2003. Those numbers reached 260 stores and $545 million in 2008. For the first quarter of this year, the retailer had net sales for the quarter of $116.1 million, a 4.7 percent decline over sales of $121.8 million in the same period a year ago. Comparable store sales declined 8 percent on a constant currency basis. American Apparel posted a net loss for the period of $21 million. Comparable store sales have flattened, which means the firm likely will continue to post losses. American Apparel is also almost certainly under gross margin pressure because of the rise in cotton prices. The retailer raised $14.9 million in April by selling shares at a discount of 43 percent to a group of private investors led by Canadian financier Michael Serruya and Delavaco Capital. According to Reuters, the 15.8 million shares sold represented 20.3 percent of the company’s outstanding stock on March 31. That sum is not nearly enough to keep American Apparel from going the way of Borders. It is a small, under-funded player in a market with very large competitors with healthy balance sheets. It does not help that the company’s founder and CEO, Dov Charney, has been a defendant in several lawsuits filed by former employees alleging sexual harassment. See the rest of the list here. (Douglas A. McIntyre/Becket Adams— 24/7 Wall St. /The Blaze) [ Editor's note: This story was originally released in June of 2011. Since then, very little has changed for the companies on this list. Thus far, the predictions have proven accurate and relevant. ]
At New York Times , ” Joe Frazier, Ex-Heavyweight Champ, Dies at 67 .” Frazier won the undisputed heavyweight title with a 15-round decision over Ali at Madison Square Garden in March 1971, in an extravaganza known as the Fight of the Century. Ali scored a 12-round decision over Frazier at the Garden in a non-title bout in January 1974. Then came the Thrilla in Manila championship bout, in October 1975, regarded as one of the greatest fights in boxing history. It ended when a battered Frazier, one eye swollen shut, did not come out to face Ali for the 15th round. The Ali-Frazier battles played out at a time when the heavyweight boxing champion was far more celebrated than he is today, a figure who could stand alone in the spotlight a decade before an alphabet soup of boxing sanctioning bodies arose, making it difficult for the average fan to figure out just who held what title. The rivalry was also given a political and social cast. Many viewed the Ali-Frazier matches as a snapshot of the struggles of the 1960s. Ali, an adherent of the Nation of Islam, came to represent rising black anger in America and opposition to the Vietnam War. Frazier voiced no political views, but he was nonetheless depicted, to his consternation, as the favorite of the establishment. Ali called him “ignorant,” likened him to a gorilla and said his black supporters were Uncle Toms. “Frazier had become the white man’s fighter, Mr. Charley was rooting for Frazier, and that meant blacks were boycotting him in their heart,” Norman Mailer wrote in Life magazine following the first Ali-Frazier bout. Frazier, wrote Mailer, was “twice as black as Clay and half as handsome,” with “the rugged decent life-worked face of a man who had labored in the pits all his life.” Those were the days, man.
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Smokin’ Joe Frazier, Boxing Legend, Dead at 67
AP – President Barack Obama is in excellent health and tobacco free, his doctor said Monday in the results of the president’s second physical exam since taking office.
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Obama in ‘excellent health,’ physician says
(AP)
An Orange County group of skeptics, ” with a heavy atheist ‘bent ,’” have become tongue-tied in their campaign for secularism. California-based Backyard Skeptics head Bruce Gleason used $4,000 in anonymous donations to put up billboards with an anti-Christian Thomas Jefferson quote he had discovered. Gleason, however, is now apologizing to the secular community after news broke that The Jefferson Library Collection at Monticello could not find any such quote from the third U.S. president in their records. Gleason now insists that he may have misquoted Jefferson, but did not misrepresent his ideas, and put the billboard up in”good faith.” His words, not ours. ABC News on the controversy: The billboard harshly read “I do not find in Christianity one redeeming feature. It is founded on fables and mythology,” which Gleason has since tracked back to 1906 from an unknown author. Since the quote’s inaccuracy was revealed, Gleason has taken responsibility for the misquotation in order to deflect criticism onto himself rather than the group’s mission. “The billboard hurts us, because there are other religious people who have said, ‘Look at those atheists, they’re misquoting Jefferson.’ Well I take it upon myself to say, yes I made a mistake,” Gleason told ABC. In addition to buying billboard space, the Backyard Skeptics offers fellow non-believers “monthly meetings with interesting speakers as well as movie nights, science-oriented field trips, social dinner nights and outreach programs.” The Orange County Register reports that Gleason’s group got attention last month for tearing out pages of the Bible at Huntington Beach pier, and has put billboards up in the past in Santa Ana, Garden Grove, and Orange recently, and in Westminster in May. Gleason told ABC that he plans to replace the billboard with another, holding true to the same secular message.
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Atheist Group Takes Down Billboard with Inaccurate Anti-Christian Jefferson Quote
Reuters – President Barack Obama delivered on another foreign policy promise on Friday with plans to pull the last U.S. troops from Iraq. But in a re-election campaign all about the weak U.S. economy, he may not get much credit.
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Analysis: Will Obama’s foreign policy success help?
(Reuters)
