Saturday--

I wasn't going to post at all this weekend but I simply couldn't pass up this item. The title (Superbugs Have Reached the U.S. for the First Time--Again) alone was enough to make me laugh and click on the link. When we combine a 24/7 news media looking for sensational stories to hype and a complex and potentially serious phenomenon we get a situation tailor made for hysteria.

This is an interesting N.Y. Times article on how the military is refocusing its training. As I read the piece with its reminder of the "conditions" on many of our bases in Afghanistan (and Iraq) I realized that the number of contractors the army depended on was not the only reaction to political necessity. The contractors allowed both the Bush and Obama administrations to keep the numbers of "troops" at a level acceptable to the public but also kept the soldiers relatively comfortable so they would put up with being deployed (and redeployed and redeployed, ad infinitum) to the "front lines" of the War on Terror.

I don't know what part of this I like more: that a Chinese company has made toilet paper with Donald Trump's and Hillary Clinton's faces on it or that The Donald's rolls are selling more than the Hillary rolls by 6-1. Beats the Halloween masks all to hell especially in a year where our choice will probably be between turds. How do you make that choice--which smells the least or which was easier to pass?

The Organic Prepper starts off her post today with the information that the General Mills flour recall, which encompasses 10 million pounds of flour, may be much worse that the original news made out and may grow. The flour was also shipped to restaurants and food processors so it might include pie crust dough, bread dough and cookie dough. I wouldn't doubt that cake and muffin mixes might be next. Her prescription is one we went to some time ago: buy local and cook from scratch.