Steve Thorngate

Christopher Shea highlights a new study that analyzes the effect of U.S. grain and soy subsidies on the American diet. The study's abstract leads with its contrarian, we're-taking-on-Michael-Pollan angle: Many commentators have speculated that agricultural policies have contributed to increased obesity rates in the United States, yet such claims are often made without any analysis of the complex links between real-world farm commodity support programs, prices and consumption of foods, and caloric intake.

Here are some things I read recently but didn't get around to blogging about.

So, the Blunt amendment got killed in the Senate. And good riddance: you wouldn't know it from the L.A. Times's writeup, but the measure was a good bit broader than a reversal of the Obama administration's contraception mandate (which itself would have been nothing to celebrate). From the amendment text (pdf): A health plan shall not be considered to have failed to provide the essential health benefits package...on the basis that it declines to provide coverage of specific items or services because...providing coverage (or, in the case of a sponsor of a group health plan, paying for coverage) of such specific items or services is contrary to the religious beliefs or moral convictions of the sponsor, issuer, or other entity offering the plan. In other words, essentially a line-item veto of whatever the boss is morally opposed to, based on church teaching or otherwise.

So Bloomberg talked to some rich Wall Street types about dealing with the impact of reduced bonuses. All populist eye-rolling aside, I think this quote from Michael Sonnenfeldt--founder of Tiger 21, a "peer-to-peer learning group for high-net-worth investors"--actually makes some sense: Sonnenfeldt said [Tiger 21] members, most with a net worth of at least $10 million, have been forced to “re-examine lots of assumptions about how grand their life would be.” While they aren’t asking for sympathy, “at their level, in a different way but in the same way, the rug got pulled out,” said Sonnenfeldt, 56. “For many people of wealth, they’ve had a crushing setback as well.” Sure--you don't have to be destitute to experience the disappointment of unmet financial expectations.

Here are some things I read recently but didn't get around to blogging about.

Like a lot of Protestants, I've never been one to take the fasting element of Lent all that literally. But while I never set out to intentionally do the opposite, it sometimes seems to happen. This morning, I ate half a bag of jelly beans. I haven't done that in years. Then, with my brain exploding with sugar and my mouth with fantastic artificial flavor, I remembered what day it is. It's as if I got the Fat Tuesday memo a day late, and also missed the part about using up perishable bad-for-you food, not junk you couldn't spoil if you tried.

The new Century editorial offers that if the Republicans nominate Rick Santorum for president, his regular rhetoric about poverty might challenge President Obama to engage him on it--giving voters a chance to hear two different analyses of the problem instead of, you know, not hearing about it all. Somewhat more quixotically, I've found myself wondering whether there's an opportunity as well in Santorum's recent claim that environmentalism amounts to a "phony theology." Stephen Prothero's reaction is to challenge Santorum's desire to draw who's-a-real-Christian lines; Rachel Tabachnick's is to trace the "phony theology" line to the influence of the Cornwall Alliance. Good points both, but what interests me here is that Santorum's comments point to one of the basic theological questions for Christian eco-engagement: Is the emphasis on human membership in the wider creation or on human responsibility for it?

Here are some things I read recently but didn't get around to blogging about.

"Not God bless America, God damn America!" bellowed Jeremiah Wright from his former pulpit. "That’s in the Bible for killing innocent people." This sermon quote--actually, usually just the "God damn America" part, stripped of any context whatsoever--created a media frenzy, earned death threats for Wright and jeopardized a then-parishioner's presidential campaign. "I don't think God will continue to bless America," said Rick Santorum the other day, "if we continue to kill 1.2 million children every year." Unlike Wright, Santorum is himself a candidate for president. Yet two days later Google offers mostly crickets.

Something foul is brewing in the small-town Midwest, where I grew up: A few years ago, hog farmers throughout the Midwest noticed foam building on top of their manure pits. Soon after, barns began exploding, killing thousands of hogs while farmers lost millions of dollars. Wow, okay, so explosive pig-manure foam is a thing.

Here are some things I read recently but didn't get around to blogging about.

The Pentagon: Women can serve in more, though still not all, critical combat roles than before. Rick Santorum: "I do have concerns about women in front line combat. I think that could be a very compromising situation where - where people naturally, you know, may do things that may not be in the interests of the mission because of other types of emotions that are involved." John Potter: "I can't be the only one who thought of" 30 Rock.

As many of you have noticed, the Century no longer has links to Amazon on its website. To explain this, I took to the magazine.

We need states to take in enough revenue to provide the services people rely on. We need this more than we need tax-free online shopping.

Are Protestants more in line with the Catholic bishops on contraception than Catholics are? Or is it just that there's some correlation between being Protestant and being politically inclined to oppose most any proposal that starts with "Employers should be required..."?

I don't have much to add about Mitt Romney's assertion that he doesn't need to worry about the very poor on account of the safety net he aims to dismantle and the Democrats he aims to unseat. Except that you really should read Gail Collins.

My problem with the National Prayer Breakfast isn't simply a secularist one, i.e. government officials should avoid any event with a smack of sectarianism. What I object to is the political exploitation of the importance of prayer in American life.

Weeks ago I ranted about Fox News's absurd piece on how the new Muppets movie is out to turn children into free-enterprise-hating liberals. Now the film's about to come out in the U.K., and naturally Kermit and Piggy are doing press around the release. Turns out they're perfectly capable of defending themselves on their own.