Category Archives: pundits

Are you smarter than…

Pew News IQ quiz here.

Eleven questions. No tricks.

Interesting and simple test. It’s astonishing that so many people got less than half right.

These results say that 80% of the (voting age) public doesn’t have a clue – and that’s pretty scary.

Test your knowledge with 11 questions, then be ready to shudder when you see how others did.

There are age and demographic breakdowns at the end.

No wonder politicians and fear mongers take such advantage, or maybe they are as ill-informed as those they attempt to “inform.” An even more frightening thought.

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Filed under current events, news, politicians, politics, pundits, survey

The Great Cookie Conspiracy

Baby with cookie

I need my cookie fix

It’s as vast as your waistline and as timeless as a Twinkie. You’ve just crossed over into the Conspiracy Zone.

Submitted for your approval, a conspiracy that stretches back almost 100 years to the very bowels of America. In December 1917, one Candy Cane of the Mistletoe Troop in Muskogee, Oklahoma, executed the first Girl Scout cookie sale. Only interrupted by World War II, Girl Scout cookie sales have continued unabated to this very day. You may even be receiving or have received your shipment. And like most of us, you may have some left over from 2009, 2008, and maybe even 2007. They are almost fruitcake fiendish in their ability to maintain a shelf life, or live in the back of your freezer.

It is this very quality that is the basis of our latest conspiracy theory.

Consider this: Since 1917, and certainly since the end of WWII, the average American’s waistline has expanded faster than the universe. In a recent survey of 100,000 Americans, 20% of men were portly and 25% were so fat they had trouble finding their waist when it was to be measured. And 60% of women were pear shaped. (http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/6254.php)

As of 2007, sales of Girl Scout cookies were estimated at about 200 million boxes per year. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girl_Scout_cookie)

And now the Girl Scouts even have a web site where you can go and download recipes so you can use your thin mints in making brownies and your crumbled up Samoas in your batter-fried shrimp dish. Is it any wonder that these are the two top selling Girl Scout cookies? (http://www.girlscouts.org/program/gs_cookies/cookie_faqs.asp)

Add to that this reality: now even schools are getting in on the act of selling processed sugar delights to raise money. Why, just the other day as I walked down the hallway of my daughter’s school, a cute red-head boy offered to sell me a dozen Krispy Kremes so he could go on a field trip to Washington, D.C. It has gotten that brazen. It has gotten that out of control!

And last night, well, last night when a young man from a local high school walked up to my door and under the cover of darkness attempted to deliver my order of cookie dough so he could buy a new band uniform, it hit me: It’s a conspiracy!

Our school children are making us fat! And what’s worse, they don’t even know they are doing it. They are in the thrall of powers larger than themselves.

And it’s been going on for almost a century!

That cute red-headed boy wanted to go to D.C. not to learn, but to get his next level of indoctrination.

Why have not our enlightened pundits spoken up? Where is Rush and Bill, Glenn and Sean? Has Rush been Do-si-Do-ed into submission? Has Bill been Thin Minted? Is Glenn just a Tagalong for those behind this conspiracy? Has Sean been slipped thousands of Samoas to keep quiet?

Even Sarah is silent on this issue. Does she not feel an obligation to retard this vast and growing conspiracy?

Where has my thin America gone? It brings tears to my eyes as I try to tie my shoes. I just want my thin, unMinted America back. Will nobody save us from ourselves?

I can’t bear to think about it any longer. I have to go and have my milk and cookies now to drown my sorrows. Maybe a Trefoil or two will help. I’ll call my childhood friend, the Cookie Monster, and see if he can come over and assure me everything will be alright, that my world isn’t crumbling.

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Filed under conspiracy, humor, pundits, Random Access Thoughts, writing