I don’t have a problem with the bacon part of this - heck, I think I’ve eaten more bacon over the past month than I have in the last year - but the dairy part of it I think I’d skip.

In some ways you have to feel sorry for the Susan G. Komen Foundation - I mean, hell hath no fury like rabid, pro-dead baby feminists scorned - but it still comes down to the fact that a private corporation has the right to fund whatever organizations they want to. If the SGKF felt that Planned Parenthood was using their funding for abortions, they had every right to either withdraw that funding or dictate the terms by which it could continue. Instead, they folded like a cheap bridge table and will continue to support (at least in a limited way) PP, which means not a dime of support from me and lot of other people in the future. I can find better ways to support the fight against breast cancer than to help fund a vile death industry with no redeeming qualities whatsoever.

This is what you get when you allow the same federal government agencies whose only interest is in retaining power to publish unemployment statistics. Perhaps it’s just anecdotal evidence, but my company has postponed the amount of new hiring they were planning for this year, and all I see around town is more small businesses failing without new ones replacing them. It’s bad out there, and if you want the real story just listen to those who are looking at the real numbers:

But right now there are some “bright spots” in the economy, and you are bound to run into family and friends that will repeat to you the nonsense that they are hearing on the television about how the economy is recovering. When they try to convince you that the economy is getting better, ask them these questions….

If the economy is getting better, then why did new home sales in the United States hit a brand new all-time record low during 2011?

If the economy is getting better, then why are there 6 million less jobs in America today than there were before the recession started?

If the economy is getting better, then why is the average duration of unemployment in this country close to an all-time record high?

If the economy is getting better, then why has the number of homeless female veterans more than doubled?

If the economy is getting better, then why has the number of Americans on food stamps increased by 3 million since this time last year and by more than 14 million since Barack Obama entered the White House?

If the economy is getting better, then why has the number of children living in poverty in America risen for four years in a row?

If the economy is getting better, then why is the percentage of Americans living in “extreme poverty” at an all-time high?

If the economy is getting better, then why is the Federal Housing Administration on the verge of a financial collapse?

If the economy is getting better, then why do only 23 percent of American companies plan to hire more employees in 2012?

If the economy is getting better, then why has the number of self-employed Americans fallen by more than 2 million since 2006?

If the economy is getting better, then why did an all-time record low percentage of U.S. teens have a job last summer?

If the economy is getting better, then why does median household income keep declining? Overall, median household income in the United States has declined by a total of 6.8% since December 2007 once you account for inflation.

The truth is far bleaker than the Obama administration would have you think. Just don’t expect the mainstream dino-media to start playing journalist and tell you the truth.

R.I.P. Ben Gazzara. I thought he was one fine actor - very edgy.

It’s time for the Red Sox to formally cut ties with Tim Wakefield so he can retire in good standing.

At my appointment yesterday, the doc came in with a big smile on his face. He congratulated me for a hard year’s worth of work, and was astounded when I told him about doing nothing over the past year but starting my Eades’ diet exactly one month prior. “You’ve done all this in five weeks?”, he asked. It sounded incredible, but like they say in finance and sports, numbers don’t lie. Here are the changes in just one month:

* Weight: From 170 to 155
* Waist size: From 35 3/4 to 33 3/4
* Blood pressure: From 138 / 94 to 124 / 82

Here are the changes since my last physical exam:

* Cholestorol: From 210 to 155
* LDL cholesterol: From 140 to 83

My cholesterol / HDL ratio (a predictor of heart disease risk, where under 5 is considered good) turned in at a fantastic 2.8.

So there you have it, folks, the results are in. There’s little question that the Eades’ diet works. And if it can work for me, it can certainly work for anyone. I’m now well into my two-week maintenance period and feel a great deal of satisfaction at what I’ve been able to accomplish in such a short time. And the truth is, it hasn’t been all that hard, or even all that bad. Picking the right time of year to do it has helped, and I’ve really stuck to the Eades’ recommendations. While I have little doubt there will be ups and downs going forward, I have no desire to go back to 170 lbs and the dietary lifestyle I was living prior to the New Year.

The doc’s final words are those I’ll keep with me for inspiration over the coming year: “155-160 looks good on you. Keep it up.”

If ever there was a day that perfectly underscores why conservatives like yours truly are not sold on Mitt Romney as the GOP nominee, this was it. I mean, how tin-eared can one be?

Check out this video of a bunny herding sheep, it’s awesome!

Both Tracey’s and my W2s have arrived, meaning that tax season is upon us.

Sure, it took a little time for me to get used to Heidi Watney replacing Tina Cevasio on the Sox games over at NESN, but I came to enjoy Heidi and her work just as much. That little nod and smile with a shrug of her shoulders she used to do (I wonder if she practiced that?) always worked for me. Now Heidi’s been replaced by someone named Jenny Dell. Well, I don’t plan on giving my heart away that easily this time. Besides, I won’t be seeing her that much anyways - no Sox games on NESN this year due to our fiscal belt-tightening effort.

It’s about time. Now I can go back to tossing a buck or two in the till whenever I see them fund-raising. You gotta love the way the AP paints this story (my boldings):

According to the AP, the move will mean “a cutoff of hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants, mainly for breast exams. Planned Parenthood confirms that Komen is the first, and only, organization to cut off funding since the Congress began debating the issue in earnest last winter.”

Bullshit. The move means less money given to PP for abortions, which is all they really exist for. Hopefully, the next step is Congress cutting off all PP funding. If they want to continue their death factories, let the oh-so-compassionate liberals and feminists so ardently in favor of killing unwanted babies put their money where their fat mouths are.

While I don’t agree with everything the Roman Catholic Church stands for when it comes to political action (my ties are entirely theological and dogmatic), I have to side with them on the recent decision by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) “contraception mandate” requiring all employers to offer their employees health insurance that provides FDA-approved contraception, female sterilization, and other “reproductive” services free of charge. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has it exactly right here: this is nothing but an outrageous frontal attack on religious freedom and civil liberty, and they’re right to declare they will not comply with this “Shut Up and Hand Out Abortion Pills” decision. Hopefully, the Obama administration will com eto their senses and back down; otherwise, there is little doubt it will be overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court somewhere down the road.

Of course, no one should be surprised at the Obama administration’s blatant attempts to shove it’s far-left ideology down the throats of American citizens. Just wait to see what happens if this banana republic dictator-wannabe gets re-elected.

Hopefully, this will finally seal the fate of Attorney General Eric Holder and his increasingly-implausible defence of his and his Department of Justice’s actions to coverup the illegal gun-running “Fast and Furious” operation that has left the Department with the blood of hundreds of Mexican civilians and one, perhaps two, U.S. border agents on their filthy, corrupt hands. Once again, this is a case of the Obama administration’s far-left ideology to impose their own agenda (in this case, increased gun control legislation) through actions that shred the U.S. Constitution.

Believe me, there have been other Presidents in our nation’s history who have been impeached for less. But I guess talking like that these days makes you a racist, doesn’t it?

R.I.P. Kevin H. White, former mayor of Boston. To me, he was a great mayor who loved his city, wanted to see the city prosper, and was a visionary the likes you just don’t see anymore. I have fond memories of Boston comedian Steve Sweeney going on the late, great Jerry Williams’ afternoon talk show to do his impersonation of “the mayor of the schitty of Borston”. Too bad there’s no audio of those appearances, they were a howl and great political satire. Condolences to his family and loved ones, he was a great man.

While I hadn’t seriously listened to any of their music except for whatever might have come across the radio or supermarket speakers in recent years, hearing their story told with all of those great songs reminded me just how good these guys were. Without question they’d have a firm place in The Great White Shank’s top ten of all-time great bands. With that in mind, here are ten of my favorite Bee Gees tunes; if you have others feel free to chime in:

10. “Lonely Days” (1970). Not much of a tune, actually - at least compared to others in their catalog - but I always liked it.

9. “How Deep Is Your Love?” (1977). Another cut from “Saturday Night Fever”, perfect for slow dancing on the disco floor with that chick you hoped you could end up taking home, but never did.

8. “You Win Again” (1987). A great example of how the band could still churn out solid pop nearly twenty years after they broke upon the pop scene. A modern take on their classic ability to combine melody and great harmonies.

7. “Stayin’ Alive” (1977). I mean, how can any Bee Gees list not have this one from “Saturday Night Fever”?

6. “I’ve Just Got To Get A Message To You” (1968). I’ve always liked the beat of this song and its odd combination of lyric (about a man condemned to die) and jaunty arrangement.

5. “You Should Be Dancing” (1976). Hard-pounding disco and a monster hit that was played in and danced to in every club that year.

4. “Words” (1968). Love the piano throughout, the almost tentative start and the dramatic low notes. I equate this song with my “coming out” year of not just hearing music, but, thanks to The Beatles’ “Hey Jude”, listening to it for the first time.

3. “Run To Me” (1972). The last of the “old style” Bee Gees releases, a lovely ballad with great harmonies. When they would return nearly three years later, they’d sound like a different band.

2. “How Can You Mend A Broken Heart?” (1971). Whenever I hear this song it brings me back to our last family vacation in 1971, driving to Niagrara Falls and Fort Ticonderoga and hearing my Mom singing the harmony in the chorus. Mom could always pick out the good harmonies!

1. “Nights On Broadway” (1975) - I remember when this came out, thinking how much of a departure it was from their traditional sound. A great rocker and the first sign they had exhanged one genre for another while still keeping intact their classic sound.

While the first two weeks of the Eades’ diet were tough - those three daily protein shakes regimen were definitely a wake-up call - the meal recipes were delicious, and I found myself adjusting easily to the dietary changes and not missing the alcohol and caffeine nearly as much as I thought I would. After that, for the next two weeks (the so-called “meat weeks”), the only part I didn’t like were the amino acid supplement tablets which were the biggest damned things I ever saw. After almost choking to dath on one of them, I just started smashing them into powder and taking them with a big glass of water.

So now I head into the last two weeks of the diet, which the Eades’ call the “maintenance weeks”. It’s during this time that, after two weeks of abolutely zero carbs, dairy product limited to the half-and-half I’d put in my two cups of morning half-regular / half-decaf coffee, minimal alcohol (two 4 oz. servings a week), and no veggies with sugars or starches, I start enacting my own plan based on their recommendations. In short, the last two weeks are designed to help you find that delicate balance between lifestyle and diet based on the lessons you have learned during the first four weeks. Just the fact I no longer have to take the leucine supplements is worth it!

I’ve thought a lot about where and how I go from here, and here will be my strategy from here on out:

1. No consumption of anything containing high-fructose corn syrup. I’ve already checked everything in my refrigerator and pantry, and tossed out anything containing the slightest amount of HFCS.

2. Restricting alcohol consumption to weekends only (Friday night through Sunday night), with four days of zero alcohol every week to maintain my liver balance and health. This I don’t consider much of a sacrifice at all, as I’ve come to truly enjoy and look forward to my club sodas on the rocks with a twist of lemon or lime.

3. Emphasis on foods with low carbs (no more than 60 grams a day) and eating organic as much as possible.

4. A drastic reduction in the nightly potatoes and rices, and sauces and gravies I used to enjoy regularly. Surprisingly, while I’ve missed my pastas and rice dishes, I’ve found that I enjoy a sliced tomato drizzled in olive oil along with some veggies either steamed or done on the stove top with olive oil just as enjoyable. There are some nice low-carb pasta options out there (the Dreamfields line is readily available at most supermarket chains), and, as long as you don’t go crazy you can find a pretty good balance there.

Considering that I was only looking to lose ten pounds and tighten up my midsection, the Eades’ diet has worked beyond my wildest dreams. Of course, I don’t think staying at 155 is a reasonable goal going forward (and to be honest, I would be ecstatic if a year from now I found myself stable somewhere around 160, give or take a pound or two), but I can’t wait to see what, if any, changes take place as I enter the final, maintenance weeks of my diet. Stay tuned.

The president certainly had facts and figures at his disposal. He boasted that his regulatory reforms “will save business and citizens more than $10 billion over the next five years.” Wow. Ten billion smackeroos! That’s some savings — and in a mere half a decade! Why, it’s equivalent to what the government of the United States borrows every 53 hours. So by midnight on Thursday Obama had already re-borrowed all those hard-fought savings from 2017. “In the last 22 months,” said the president, “businesses have created more than three million jobs.” Impressive. But 125,000 new foreign workers arrive every month (officially). So we would have to have created 2,750,000 jobs in that period just to stand still.

…

An honest leader would feel he owed it to the citizenry to impress upon them one central truth — that we can’t have any new programs because we’ve spent all the money. It’s gone. The cupboard is bare. What’s Obama’s plan to restock it? “Right now, Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary,” the president told us. “Asking a billionaire to pay at least as much as his secretary in taxes? Most Americans would call that common sense.”

…

The so-called “Buffett Rule” is indicative not so much of “common sense” as of the ever widening gap between the Brobdingnagian problem and the Lilliputian solutions proposed by our leaders. Obama can sacrifice the virgin daughters of every American millionaire on the altar of government spending and the debt gods will barely notice so much as to give a perfunctory belch of acknowledgement. The president’s first term has added $5 trillion to the debt — a degree of catastrophe unique to us. In an Obama budget, the entire cost of the Greek government would barely rate a line-item. Debt-to-GDP and other comparative measures are less relevant than the hard-dollar numbers: It’s not just that American government has outspent America’s ability to fund it, but that it’s outspending the planet’s.

Read the whole thing - it’s truth-talking few, if any of our electeds are talking about. And it should be - every day.

I’ve had this happen with one of our cats before, albeit in a car. Our cat Sparkle always found ways to get into places that were nearly impossible for her to get out of. One time that happened, she thanked me by puking all over me.

I guess this is where the saying, “if you can’t raise the bridge, lower the river” comes from. Yikes…

I have to agree with NRO’s Jonah Goldberg on this. I’m glad I never didn’t watch President Obama’s State Of The Union speech, I would have tossed my club soda and lemon right through the flat screen. He quotes the President and then nails him for his incredible hypocisy and misguidedness:

“This nation is great because we worked as a team. This nation is great because we get each other’s backs.”

No. Wrong. It is not so with America. This nation isn’t great because we work as a team with the president as our captain. America is great because America is free. It is great not because we put our self-interest aside, but because we have the right to pursue happiness.

I don’t blame the president for being exhausted with the mess and bother of democracy and politics, since he has proved so inadequate at coping with the demands of both. Nor do I think he truly seeks to impose martial virtues on America. But he does desperately want his opponents to shut up and march in place. And he seems to think this bilge will convince them to do so.

What I can’t forgive, however, is the way he tries to pass off his ideal of an America where everyone marches as one as a better America. It wouldn’t be America at all.

Oh yeah, like you “have the back” of anyone who happens to disagree with you and your destructive policies - we’re just racists out here, you know. But what should one expect from a so-called “genius” of a President whose goal for economic health includes this gem of wisdom:

“I laid out a blueprint for an economy that’s built to last, that has a firm foundation. Where we’re making stuff and selling stuff and moving it around and UPS drivers are dropping things off everywhere.”

Yeah, as long as that “stuff” is not black and gooey and leads this country to less dependence on foreign Middle East oil. In the spirit of AZ governor Jan Brewer, I’ve got a piece of advice for you, Mr. President: stuff it.

UPDATE: Replaced “foreign oil” with “Middle East oil” - after all, the Keystone pipeline would draw oil from Canada, and last I checked, Canada was a foreign country.

Still, any good gundown has winners and losers, and there were some tonight. Given the theme of this post, let’s rate them with bullets:

1. Mitt Romney (4 bullets). Not because he had a better debate than all the others (that goes to Rick Santorum, for which I’ll explain below), but because Santorum did so well compared to Newt Gingrich. If the sense was that Newt hit his ceiling after winning the South Carolina, partly because of the Romney’s attacks at the Monday debate, partly because Newt once again drifted off message and back into dream-weaving, Romney’s performance was enough to keep that going. Last night showed a more forceful Romney while displaying the same annoying weaknesses that Republicans and conservatives tear their hair out over: he got caught not knowing one of his ads criticized Gingrich out of context, and he got absolutely pistol-whipped by Santorum on RomneyCare. Still, he had good answers on his private sector experience, and he showed a more human side to him on the (stupid) Blitzer question on how his wife would make a good First Lady. His answer on why he was the most qualified to beat Barack Obama was solid, if not totally convincing. Because Newt didn’t win, Romney wins on points.

2. Rick Santorum (3 bullets). Santorum was much more animated, more substantial, and thus better able to separate himself from Gingrich and Romney last night than he had been able to do previously. Most will think he came out ahead in terms of style and substance, but one can’t help feel that this is all too little, too late for him. Unless GOP voters suddenly (and overwhelmingly) decide that both Romney and Gingrich are so flawed as candidates they can’t trust or take a chance on either of them, I don’t see Santorum as a major player in the primaries going forward. Lacking the money and the organization, a good debate alone is just not going to propel him anywhere at this juncture.

3. Ron Paul (2 bullets). Same Ron Paul. If you love him, nothing he can do will change your mind. To me he looked more pale and tired than usual. Got in his usual effective one-liners and quips that endear him to his following, but he’s not going to win the nomination.

4. Newt Gingrich (1 bullet). Newt needed a big performance tonight and came up short. Started off going negative on Romney before turning on Wolf Blitzer with another blame-the-moderator response that seemed forced and awkward (ultimately leading to a Romney counterpunch that left Newt ducking for cover), then spent the rest of the debate again emphasizing his Washington experiences in the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s. When Newt concentrates on substance and problem-solving, he’s the best up there, but lately this continous walk through the Reagan and Clinton administrations just makes him seem like a well-connected Washington insider living out past gun battles. I’ve counted out Newt before, so I’m hesitant to do it again, but his star seems to be fading, and fast.

So there you have it. Thankfully, there are no more debates for a month! My prediction is that Romney wins Florida by 7-8 points, which will send conservatives into a panic. In the unlikely event Newt arises again, it will only be because of a GOP repudiation of Mitt Romney and the thought of nominating yet another weak-kneed, spineless moderate as the nominee.

Make no mistake about it: the fear and trembling in conservative quarters is palpable and could turn into full-blown panic if Romney wins Florida. Santorum’s campaign is on fumes, and while Paul will continue to rack up enough delegates to make him a player at the August convention, no one seriously considers him a viable nominee. There’s a huge schism forming in the Republican Party - a lot of conservatives (count me among them) very worried about Romney in a head-to-head match against Barack Obama, and it’s not out of the question that someone like Indiana governor Mitch Daniels (who gave a boffo GOP response to Obama’s State Of The Union address the other night) could be prodded to enter late with the goal of gathering momentum into the convention and being a brokered choice everyone could get behind. I’d love to see that happen…

So I think I will.

Oh, but before I go, thank you,Governor Brewer! Someone needs to stand up for a state under repeated and concerted attack by the President and the Attorney General of this country. I wish the GOP in Washington woul show the same kind of fortitude.