Get in my belly

The California primaries are tomorrow, and I don’t know who to vote for. And let’s not get into the ever-present California propositions — the Superbowl was sprinkled liberally with ads for and against the series of four propositions on gaming deals with various native american tribes.

I don’t believe in voting on this concept of “electability”. It’s always seemed like some sort of projection of yourself onto the American public, like playing some sort of cat-and-mouse mental games with everyone else, and it makes me feel like a pawn in some game I don’t quite understand. So I just can’t bring myself to do it, or really, even consider it. Who am I to say that the public will respond to a certain candidate in a certain way? And I don’t trust polls unless I see the polling methods and the statistical errors.

For the first part of the primary season, I was leaning about 75% towards voting for Clinton. She has plans within plans. She totally knows all about the attack alligators that hang out in the moat around the White House. She’s developed a tough skin to deal with all of this. I already knew who she was, I was happy with having her as a choice to vote for, and didn’t really care to learn more about any other candidate. And Obama seemed so positive and optimistic about everything, and I am too cynical for that.

A couple weeks ago I read a New Yorker article about Clinton vs Obama and how in some sense, it’s a question of how one views the role of the President. Is the President a do-er, or is he or she supposed to be an inspirer? This question is still lingering with me, and at the time, tipped the scales back to near-even.

And then this weekend, those goddamn Obama ads got me all teary and I totally feel manipulated by the forces of advertising agencies. But it worked and now I’m about 60% Obama and I’ve got 24 hours left. I don’t know how to decide — I don’t really want to decide — I think I’ll just go and see what the pen wants to do tomorrow morning.

I would rather have the option that was occasionally pulled out in high school class president elections and decide that we will have co-presidents for the next 8 years.

By the way, the best proposition ever is on the San Francisco ballot this year:
Proposition C: Shall It Be The Policy Of The City Of San Francisco To Support And Facilitate The Acquisition Of Alcatraz Island For The Express Purpose Of Transforming Alcatraz Island Into The Global Peace center?

Hippies are hilarious.

These guys were parked outside of Steven’s building a couple of weeks ago:

They explained about the garlic truck art installation (is it an installation if it’s mobile?) and gave me some garlic. I think this might be the farm the older dude runs, but I can’t be sure — the website’s a bit inscrutable.

Awesome:
You go local in Berkeley, you’re gonna eat. I had been curious to see what might happen if you tried to squeeze food out of what looked mostly like bricks and steel girders and shoes in trees.

AG goes on to name-drop all the major local players. And I mean local. Dude, I want my own chicken.

Read it here.

Okay, that’s it. I’m officially boycotting Whole Foods. Project Goldmine?!

[Posting on Kenya later today. Promise.]

Jeff Yang offers up a really compelling piece on how racism figures in this whole Chinese food scandal thing.

And apparently you don’t know either. Sorry if you don’t have TimesSelect, but basically, Krugman addresses our food system’s problems thus: “Who’s responsible for the new fear of eating? Some blame globalization; some blame food-producing corporations; some blame the Bush administration. But I blame Milton Friedman” [who "called for the abolition of the food and drug sides of the FDA" and "help[ed] to make our food less safe, by legitimizing what the historian Rick Perlstein calls ‘E. coli conservatives’: ideologues who won’t accept even the most compelling case for government regulation.”].

And then goes on to say that our compromised food system is the result of failings in regulation (the FDA has neither the jurisdiction nor the resources to ensure that all that stuff coming over from China (or the Ivory Coast or Chile or wherever New Yorkers’ and Ypsilantians’ food comes from these days) is safe to eat.

[On a sort of related note, why hasn't there been more talk about all the tainted drugs and dog food that have been traced to counterfeiting in China? There's mention, and maybe I'm just not very cognizant of what's going on, but you would think this would prompt, I dunno, more of a reaction from the public or lead to calls for more local sourcing. Which is really the issue with Krugman's piece, but I'm getting to that.]).

He also points out how the FDA seems powerless to really do all that much about agribusiness giants like ConAgra, who aren’t really required, it seems, to explain themselves when their products are suspected of contamination.

I’m not even going to get to the point of his piece here, because I think, what he’s really not getting, is that the reason his salad might be a “risky” lunch option is that he’s not getting any of it from a source he knows (and trusts, obviously) — doesn’t even know just where that lettuce came from (because nobody is required to tell us in this country). It might require a little more time on your part, but maybe, Mr. Krugman, you should think about getting your lettuce from the farmers’ market (directly from the people who grew it — they can even tell you how they did it and would probably love for you to see where your salad came from) or a CSA (ditto).

What’s most disturbing about your salad, Mr. Krugman, besides the fact that you don’t seem to know where it really came from, is that you don’t seem to care that you don’t know.

[Update: Irene notes that Krugman does make a good point about the FDA and the need for more regulation, and I don't disagree. However, he (and I and probably you, if you're reading this) can afford (on many levels) to make food choices that make this of less import.]

Once again, Michael Pollan has wrangled all the unwieldy, wayward, gone-to-seed elements of the issue, and corralled them into something close to digestible (if the state of the food system can indeed be called such) and puts forth some really cogent arguments about why we really ought to speak up about the farm bill.

More (and how to actually go about doing something).

Michael Pollan’s essay in the NYTimes Sunday magazine: Unhappy Meals. Nothing like nutritional science to take all the joy out of eating.

[Related story: At a Farm Bill workshop last week, a speaker (a nutritionist, it must be noted) was about to describe a point she was making as the "bread and butter" of her remarks, but then corrected herself, saying that she felt compelled to say instead "whole grains and olive oil". Something's wrong with our society when bread and butter have become the pariahs of the table. Which reminds me: I need to go pick up some Beurre d'Isigny and a loaf from Sullivan Street Bakery.]

But then Robert pointed up a profile of this guy, and I have to say, I’m pretty intrigued by his book.

I’ll be back with something more substantial soon, now that I’m beginning to get my life in order back in the Big Apple. In the meantime, required reading:

Dan Barber’s op-ed on the Farm Bill.

i’m behind on everything these days, but i just wanted to post how nice it is to see this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/12/washington/12policy.long.html
Bush’s Plan for Iraq Runs Into Opposition in Congress
By THOM SHANKER and DAVID S. CLOUD
Democrats and moderate Republicans expressed profound
skepticism about President Bush’s call to increase the U.S.
military commitment in Iraq.