The Washington Cooking Show
In collaboration with 
Your all-weather reporter of Views of a Foreigner has been snooping and sniffing around town and found some remarkable new Washingtonian cooking recipes. Among others, those that Michelle puts on her website for school kids that are widely rejected; recipes that really put your kitchen on fire.
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I was strolling along Pennsylvania Avenue near the White House, stumbling on at least fifteen to twenty police cars with stern-looking policemen staring at me.
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Granted, I look a bit weird with my Martian face, but can I help it? Anyway, my eyes caught little pieces of paper tied to the fence around the White House premises. Wondering what they were, I opened one and it had clear instructions by Michelle for passers-by on how to steam healthy broccoli that former President George H. Bush refused to eat. You remember that when he made that public, some ten hazmat trucks threw tons of broccoli in front of the White House sent by angry farmers.
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That was the main reason why they blocked off the whole space in front of the White House with killer fences as if you are entering a high-security prison. Well, in view of the November 2014 congressional elections Michelle wanted to make good with the farmers and pinched this message on the fence: just drop your garden broccoli in a pan with boiling-hot water and all you have to do is go back to your TV and continue watching your soap until you smell something burning and then it’s ready to serve for dinner later. Now I hear Michelle is being sued for multiple kitchen fires.
But what surprised me more was that the paper went on with clear instructions on how to climb the fence and enter the White House premises.
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Shocked, I showed it to the stern-looking policeman.
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He said he belonged to the Secret Service and that he was not allowed to tell the truth. Pressing him that I was a foreign reporter from Mars who would send in the Martian army on pre-election day to carry out illegal voting for Republican candidates, he caved and said the instructions meant to encourage reckless pedestrians to jump the fence so that TV would direct attention to the beleaguered inhabitant of the White House to defend his broccoliramacare program.
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He ended by saying, “And this is the truth.”
Walking along in the sun on a typical Indian summer day in Washington D.C., I ran into a grey-haired employee of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), more commonly known as the EDA (Environmental Destruction Agency). A huge oversized building full with oversized people from eating too much broccoli.
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I recognized him because he proudly carried his ID-card on his extensive chest. Presenting him with my Martian press card, he asked me greedily what I wanted to know. He said they were so maligned by the American People that he really wanted to set the record straight. When I told him we had a lot of coal on Mars that we happily used to warm our underground cities, he became very agitated.
“Coal is bad for your health,” he assured me.
“How do you know?”
“It’s causing Carbon Dioxide and will kill you, even on Mars,” he explained.
“But we use it for cooking, heating, electricity and by the way, aren’t you exhaling that stuff?”
“Too much of the same good cannot be good. We recommend people that they hold their breath,” he said, with a straight face. “Inside the EPA building, all employees are required to hold their breath. Those who do it longest get a bonus of one hundred thousand dollars and then get promoted away to the CIA but still stay on the payroll. I know because I am.”
“Gee, what wonderful things taxpayer money can do. Do you know anything of that secret space plane that came back from the sky?”
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“Of course, don’t you know? It was an EPA spy plane to prick holes in the ozone layer to let out the CO2 into the stratosphere and at the same time import radiation from the sun to promote global warming.”
“But I thought you guys were fighting global warming,” I said, astonished.
“Nobody wants to believe us, so we must find other ways to prove our point.”
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“How smart! Killing two birds with one stone. But with those windmills you are supporting you already kill so many birds that soon you won’t have any left to prove points with.”
“Don’t worry,” he said, convincingly. “We have the United Nations Panel on Climate Change, and they concoct the best lies ever with tax-free money.”
“Yeah, “I said. “We on Mars often wonder how they do that. When we put our laser thermometers through your ozone holes to measure Mother Earth’s temperature, you have not warmed up for the last eighteen years, and actually got colder; your seas have not been rising, and the Antarctic ice has increased. How come this discrepancy?”
“Discrepancy?” he mocked. “Ever heard of computers? You cook-up what you put in and you get out what you want. Who says it isn’t true? Computers are always right. Ask Microsoft or Apple or even Al Gore.”
“But isn’t that falsifying science?” I asked.
“Not if you get paid for it. They have to feed their kids, too.”
“With broccoli, I guess.”
“Our Commander-in-Chief’s standard evening dinner served by his Michelle,” he said, winking his eye, and walked back to his office.
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Your all
Inequality
Kathryn of Omaha TV and her panel of Mother Earth’s Weekly Squirms is on-screen and millions of viewers have tuned in. Take-a-listen.
Kathryn: “Glad you are still with us, Mars Man, to tackle another fad that is overflowing today’s media, namely “inequality”. A French economist, Thomas Piketty, has written a tome of 800 pages about the increase in inequality between the haves and the have-nots on Mother Earth over the last one hundred years. The book “Capital in the 21st Century” has brought forward a tsunami of criticism and acclaim. Does Mars have a similar problem?”
Mars Man: “Definitely not. Inequality is human-made. The great Mars Magnifier gives every Mars Man what we need. It’s supra-natural, gender-neutral and omnipresent, and was created by the Big Bang of Mars. Every Mars Man taps from it from birth and lives happily ever after. We don’t need to work, don’t have to pay taxes, and have a sea of time enjoying ourselves. We never get bored because we are too busy having fun.”
Kathryn: “But that’s wonderful. Why don’t we have such a machine on Earth?”
Mars Man: “As I told you at your last Round Table, at Big Bang Time, Mother Earth disqualified itself because Eve handed Adam the testosterone apple, and everything has been going downhill for you since then.”
Kathryn: “But how do you define Mother Earth’s inequality syndrome?”
Mars Man:”Your inequality is a natural phenomenon. I don’t understand why someone has to write an 800 page tome about it, much less where you would find the time to read it, only to advance a French argument favoring higher taxes on people who work harder than those who don’t and want to keep their hard-earned money grow over time.”
Kathryn: “What’s wrong with that French argument?”
Mars Man: “First of all, it’s French. The French popular advice is if you want to get rich, marry a wealthy person who’s plain-faced and can’t find a partner, and then have a mistress or lover on the side to keep your sanity, while using the money of the plain spouse to live well. So, the French say, taxing that bad person to poverty makes sense. But destroying money is unproductive because then it stops working, and as you know taxed money goes down the drain and that’s a waste. That’s why so many wealthy people are leaving France today and want to come to Mars.”
Kathryn: “And what’s the second point?”
Mars Man: “I was getting to that. Inequality is good. You say on Mother Earth that someone else’s grass is always greener. Humans want to keep up with the Joneses. It’s an incentive to do better, have upward mobility, make new things. On Mars, we do that for fun. On Mother Earth, you do it for money. But if you tax the hard-earned money away, you kill the incentive to work more and go back to the stone age.”
Kathryn: “People here are arguing that the rich must be taxed more to spread the wealth.”
Mars Man: “Why do some people get rich and others don’t? A film star, a smart person? Why not tax someone only because he or she was born beautiful, to give it away to the ugly? Tax George Clooney ninety-nine percent of his salary? And why not tax someone because he got more brains than someone else?”
Kathryn: “Don’t give the tax people here any ideas, they might just do it. Let me get our panelists in. Bob Foolsman, how do you look at it?”
Bob: “All men are born equal and have the right to the enjoyment of life and liberty. That’s what Jefferson and his followers said.
A system that is based on rewarding talent, hard work and achievement creates inequality and hurts the person who has no talent and lacks the incentive or has no brains. But that person still has a right to the enjoyment of life, thus needs a home, a TV and a long chair to look at it.”
Fred Garfinkel: ‘But that’s utopia. Why not give him or her a swimming pool, too? Mitt Romney turned companies around so that they and their workers contributed to the Treasury instead of drawing unemployment checks. That’s an art. Art is worth money and he earned it and paid taxes on it. And yet, he gets slurred for not paying taxes by a politician who gave him the middle finger and only receives a salary from the taxpayer and doesn’t produce anything good.”
Mars Man: “To us Martians, that is Topsy-turvy. You know the story in your Bible: those two servants who invested the money of the absent landlord got rewarded for it on his return, and the one who didn’t and put it under his mattress, got punished instead. That was the right decision, but on Mother Earth you want to do the opposite.”
Charles Hammerschmidt: “And where to does it all lead? Look around. Stagnation. Nobody in his right mind wants to work to only pay more taxes. We are all born unequal. Inequality is a fact of life. Bob is just jealous because he wasn’t born a George Clooney.”
Fred: “I’m jealous of those NFL football players, or the Yankees, Tiger Woods and Roger Federer, all worth multiple millions of dollars. I am simply not as good at it, however much I try. There you have it: inequality. But nobody talks about them, it’s always the CEOs and families that built wealth with their hands and minds that get clobbered.”
Mars Man: “Your politicians have a knack for getting on the bandwagon when they believe a significant portion of the populace likes to vent their frustration that they’re not equal to those who are successful.
If they do and vote for more taxes, the inequality will even grow larger: less investment by the wealthy means less jobs for the unequals and even lesser chance to get even, while the wealthy have other means of capitalization to keep their money growing.”
Kathryn: “Well said, that’s the end of the show. Wish you a good journey back to Mars City, Mars Man.Viewers, thanks for joining us.”
Religious Wars
Sci-Fi Mars Man landed at the Branson cornfield again, near Omaha Nebraska, for another interview with Omaha TV. Kathryn and her team of experts sit around the table and Mars Man, freshly dressed in his human alternate costume, sits in front. The red light switches on and millions of TV viewers tune in to Kathryn’s much watched show, “Mother Earth’s Weekly Squirms”.
Kathryn starts: “Welcome Mars Man, good to have you here again. You’ve seen and heard of all the religious strife on Mother Earth. What’s your view point?”
Mars Man: “A never ending story, Kathryn. Man on Earth has killed in the name of God or Allah since Paradise was lost to the evil snake that spurred Eve to hand Adam the testosterone apple. We on Mars don’t have apples or snakes, so we don’t have your problem. But it’s clear the end of religious killings on Mother Earth is not in sight.”
Kathryn: “But why do you think humans on Earth are so adamant about fighting each other’s religion?”
Mars Man: “It’s all about power. Leaders use religion to create followers to enhance their position, then fight other leaders with a different religion that seek the same power trying to overthrow yours. Your Bible is already full of religious strife. Jews, Christians and Muslims have fought each other from day one.”
Kathryn: “But why is someone else’s religion bad?”
Mars Man: “Because their followers may take your power away.”
Father Benedictus: “But that’s a preposterous way of looking at religion. Religion is to honor God and to live by His example of goodness and peace.”
Mars Man: “If this is so, few of your humans seem to understand let alone adhere to that. Even the Jews axed to pieces the board of ten commandments that Moses brought down to earth. And the Pharaohs found the seven plagues as an Act of God slightly overdone.”
Father Benedictus: “Christianity is the right religion. Our whole civilization is built on it. The Romans fought it but lost and our Pope is in Rome. It’s a religion of peace, not war.”
Mufti Ali: “I beg to disagree. Mohammed was the last prophet who erased all false religions that were spread around before. Allahu Akbar. Even President Obama said that the five o’clock call to prayer was the sweetest sound on earth.”
Father Benedictus: “Christ was a man of peace, turning the other cheek. Your Mohammed took the sword to force people to follow Islam and your intolerant people have never stopped fighting Christians or fighting among yourself.”
Mars Man: “Interesting exchange, but if I may, Christians have fought each other as Catholics and Protestants and waged many bloody wars from the Middle Ages through the Twentieth Century. Islamists have and are still waging wars between Sunnis and Shiites. Both of you seem to forget that while you are singing psalms in church or kneeling down in mosques hailing peace, the moment you’re outside you fight each other and everybody else.”
Mufti Ali: “The Christians started the Crusades and bombed us out of Spain, so we have the right to get even.”
Kathryn: “I wonder if there is a more positive way we could look at our religious differences. Any suggestions, Mars Man?”
Mars man: “You should abolish all religions and start one anew that everyone can believe in. Your United Nations might be a good place to start.”
Kathryn: “Reverend Jude, you’ve been silent so far, do you think that’s a good idea?”
Reverend Jude: “Thanks, Kathryn, for giving me the floor. I for one do not think so. The Catholics have the Pope and many Bishops, but we Protestants are Episcopal, Baptist, Presbyterian, Methodist, Anglicans, Lutherans, Pentecostals, Latter Day Saints, you name it. We could never unify on a new religion, and we don’t have any money left for new wars as the IRS is taking it all away from our followers.”
Father Benedictus: “Same for us. We’re broke after paying astronomical fines for homosexual offense.”
Mufti Ali: “The only new religion could be Islam. Allahu Akbar.”
Reverend Jude: “You guys started six hundred years after Christ and are just now in the midst of your bloody religious wars. We have had ours for the last five hundred years and have settled them. By my calculations, you still have five hundred years to go to settle yours between Sunni and Shiites and all other tribal sects in-between, to decide what sort of Islam should prevail. From the news reports and all the beheadings and rapes, you’re doing just fine. So far, you wouldn’t have a vote.”
Mars Man: “It may be necessary to create a Religious Security Council where the mainstream religions are represented to enforce some unity in this total chaos.”
Mufti Ali: “We would have two seats, one for Sunnis and another for Shiites, both representing billions of followers.”
Reverend Jude: “If you claim two seats, we would have at least five to represent our billions of followers.”
Father Benedictus: “And we Catholics would claim the majority because we pay most of the fines.”
Mars Man: “You’re forgetting Hindus and Buddhists, both entrenched in South and East Asia, and the Jews, all over the world….”
Mufti Ali: “Hindus are not allowed in. They’re apostates who beat us into Pakistan. China is taking care of the Bhuddists. Israel will be thrown into the sea, leaving other Jews powerless. Allahu Akbar.”
Mars Man: “…And the Russian and Greek Orthodox Church. Putin would want them to have seats too.”
Kathryn: “Mars Man, to witness our round table discussion, it would seem your idea would lead only to more wars.”
Mufti Ali: “The final war will be when the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei gets the bomb and blows you all to smithereens so that the Mahdi can come to clean up the mess and install the one religion for those still left on earth.”
Reverend Jude: “Islam and Christianity agree on “The Day of Reckoning”. It’s in the Bible and the Koran.”
Mars Man: “Hallelujah! Finally agreement!”
Kathryn: “We better close this discussion before another disagreement pops up. Thanks Mars Man for an enlightening round table. Viewers, see you next time!”
Third World Aid – Are We Fooling Each Other?
Kathryn of Omaha TV: Hello Mars Man. Welcome again to The Mother Earth Weekly Squirms show for your feature interview. You have in front of you Mr. John Black, former Total Loss Bank employee and reputable consultant for several continental institutions, Governments and Development Agencies. I am sure you people on Mars are eager to hear about the experiences of a seasoned development economist before he turns his abilities on Mars. As you may have seen, Mr. Black posted recently his list of international cultural chocks from which he is still recovering.
Mars Man: Thank you Kathryn. Very honored to be your guest again and welcome to Mr. Black, an old acquaintance of mine whose illustrious career I have followed through the years. Yes, I reviewed Mr. Black’s list of cultural shocks with great interest. If I may add one of my own it is Mother Earth’s habit to paint us as monsters while you look like wobbly skeletons yourself. Mr. Black, please tell us why you felt it necessary to go into the business of developing underdeveloped nations.
John Black: Thank you Mars Man for that important question. Frankly, I don’t have a clue. I think it was because I got a better salary and it was duty-free.
Mars Man: That’s a very honorable ambition and a good starting point for economic development. So, what do you think you have achieved?
John Black: An immense array of achievements. First, an innumerable amount of frequent flyer miles that allowed me to take my wife on my trips first class to nowhere where she could spend her time at the swimming pool drinking punch. Second, the beauty of development is that underdeveloped countries don’t maintain the investments you finance for them and that means my job never ends, as I have to do it over and over again multiple times. It’s a copy and paste job and I get paid well for it.
Mars Man: Well, we on Mars would value our money better. Why do they have that attitude?
John Black: Good question. If you give a kid a lollypop and tell him he has to pay for it he won’t take it. If you give it to him free, he will and believe you will give him the next one free, too. Meanwhile he will do nothing to earn it.
Mars Man: Don’t you people train them to do better, then? After all, you and they are using tax payer money.
John Black: Oh yes we train. They love training. Free food, free drinks, free hotels, free showers, away from wives or husbands, shopping, and then go for the next training. And on taxpayer money, using Other Peoples Money (OPM) is a sound business principle even taught at Harvard Business School and standard in the Obama White House.
Mars Man: But don’t these countries learn anything then?
John Black: No. For two reasons: first, we mostly train the wrong people, and second if they apply what they learn they won’t be sent on training again.
Mars Man: Have you not made any progress then?
John Black: Yes and no. If I achieved anything it was immediately destroyed. I witnessed seven coup d’états, two murdered presidents, and continuous strife in several countries. All my projects went bust. You fill one hole with another. But as I said, this makes my life easy because I only have to open my drawer and take out the old documents and turn them into new ones by changing the document number and start over again. Recycling is the king of repetition.
Mars Man: What happened then to all the tax payer money you spent?
John Black: It went to pot. Don’t believe our Annual Reports.
Mars Man: And where did the money in the countries go?
John Black: The goal of development lending is that the money is used for the purpose intended. But the meaning of that purpose is in the eye of the beholder. You see, transparency is a subjective proposition. For you, transparency may mean you see clear. For others it may mean you see nothing.
Mars Man: See nothing?
John Black: Well, yes. Like looking through your fingers. No trace. Invisible for the eye of a western accountant.
Mars Man: Money embezzled?
John Black: No, shared among the beneficiaries.
Mars Man: Are you speaking of corruption?
John Black: Corruption in the Third World is a misnomer. It’s sharing the wealth. Obama does it too.
Mars Man: But wouldn’t these countries have courts to prevent taxpayer money from being misappropriated?
John Black: Courts in these countries are like community organizations. They, police, and nationals all work together for the purpose intended and that is sharing the wealth. The president gets most and the underlings the crumbs and nobody gets convicted because that’s unsocial. Only those who object to the system go to jail.
Mars Man: So you must look back on a productive career indeed?
John Black: Most definitely. My grand children will still be working on it, and so will be theirs. No better and never-ending enterprise with plentiful tax payer money. We are transforming the Third World.
Mars Man: Thank you Mr. Black for this enlightening interview. For our listeners on Mars: It’s a pity we don’t have a Third World. We should invite Mr. Black to create one for us. Thank you Kathryn. Till next time.
Stephen Colbert Fights the Dutch Olympics!
Oh boy! What was Steve mad! Ranting like Jillert Amane! The great all time supporter of the all time Olympic US Blade Skating team! His “investment”did not pan out this time. Cutting “Dutch” Tulips furiously in half on Prime Time TV! Showing contemptuously the famous Dutch “wooden shoes” that are only used in “Holland” to please the American tourists. At some point I was afraid he would throw the wooden shoes at me from the screen. What a show.
OK, the Dutch speedskating coach Jillert Anema touched a bit hard on the favorite US national sport, “football” (which is called “voetbal” in Holland translated into “soccer”in the USA and then made into “football” here, but the “foot” is only used when punting for a goal, whereas in the “real football” it’s all with the foot. Rugby, called after a town Rugby in England where it was developed in the 16th century, is a bit of a mix, but played without all the overdone body armor as in US football). But was Jillert not a bit right with the current criticism in the US media on NFL stars turned “knuckleheads” for the rest of their life after so many head-injuries?
I take issue with the hurt of the American media saying that Jillert’s “rant” was “Anti-American”. That is a typical self-conscious reaction. His point was that if the USA want to participate in international speedskating, it needs to better prepare to win, and maybe spend a little less on national football, which is not an international sport. Holland is not anti-American but your best friend, and friends quibble occasionally. We all remember Shani Davis, an AFRICAN AMERICAN on SKATES!, winning the all round world championships in 2005 and 2006 and gold on the 1000 meters at the 2010 Olympics. What happened to the team?
Now, let’s go down to Steve’s accusations that the Dutch don’t even know how to call their own country; “Holland”, “Netherlands”, “Low Countries”, or whatever. It’s YOU, Steve, who doesn’t know. It’s them “foreigners” who call us that.
Item: “The Netherlands” MEANS “Low Countries”. “Nether” means “lower”.
item: in 1588, the Dutch and the British beat the Spanish Armada! “Viva Olanda”! Stands for Holland.
item: in 1688, William III “stadholder”of the then “Republic of Holland” (it was not The Netherlands yet, though the lands were low) beat the French Louis the Fourteenth to french fries (translation: smithereens) by becoming King William III of England through his marriage with Mary Stuart, affectionately called “King Billy”in Scotland and Northern Ireland (yes, that’s the same guy of the College of “William & Mary”). Louis the Fourteenth reportedly said: “ces salauds des Pays-Bas” (those bastards of the “low lands”) – Vive les Pays-Bas!
item: around 1614, the Dutch established “New Netherland” (Nieuw Nederland) along the Hudson River, which became “New Amsterdam” and remained so until the British took over in 1665 and named it New York. That’s a good one. You weren’t even Americans then! I’m sure that if at that time we had the Amsterdam coffee shops you Americans love so much, Holland would have stayed by popular demand and you would not have needed the Boston Tea Party with all its current ramifications.
item: New York has a famous Holland & Holland gun room, a town called “Holland”, and so many other things called “Holland”, including double-dutch and going dutch, not to forget my dutch uncle.
We call “Holland” “Nederland”, which means “low land”, since a good deal of it is below sea level, but you foreigners prefer “Holland” to “The Netherlands” because it’s shorter. Can we help that?
And please don’t throw those Dutch shoes at us. You would miss them. It is reported you wear them at home for comfort.
As for the Olympics, coach Jillert Anema was right: speedskating is a world sport, and US football is not (he was joking that you always think you ARE the World, but you aren’t anymore since Michael Jackson passed away). USA (350 million people) won second place with 28 medals (11 gold), Norway (5 million people) won third place with 26 medals (9 gold) and LowLand Holland alias The Netherlands (16.8 million people) won fourth place with 24 medals (8 gold). In sum Norway did best. But USA Meryl Davis and Charley White were fabulous in figure skating. Just wonderful. I loved them (but your Canadian neighbors think Putin rigged the figuring to help Obama out of his care mess). The Dutch are speedskaters and you do what you are good at, internationally.
As for the Blade US Skating team, why not just buy them
After all, the US team’s T-shirt you showed on TV was made in Bangladesh!(Donate now and help put skaters on track for winning Olympic medals — plus, for any donation over $30, you’ll receive a Colbert Nation/ Speedskating shirt!)
Your TV sports guy says football is much more “exciting” than two guys or girls racing “round and round”. True, speedskaters don’t pound on their competitors, they only do “sport”. That’s boring.
And why do you call us Hollanders “Dutch”? Again, not our fault and it’s so confusing. We call ourselves “Nederlanders”, but in English that sounds too much like “Neanderthals”. The great American informed people might not know the difference. So better keep it at “Dutch”. Dutch derives from the word “Deutsch”, the language that developed in the Germanic countries in Europe as of the Renaissance. Dutch are not “Pennsylvania Dutch”, these originate from Germany. English-speaking people pronounced Dutch language “Dutch” because it was part of the “Deutsch” or “Germanic”languages. But the Dutch language is quite different from German (compare for example Spanish and Portuguese). But why then was President Reagan nicknamed “Dutch”? Nobody really knows, unless from Reagan’s Memoirs that his father nicknamed him “Dutch” because as a baby he looked like a “fat Dutch boy”. Wherever he got that from is a mystery to me. He may have looked at that ad showing a Dutch boy smearing his bread with Dutch butter and growing up “strong”.
So, Steve, stop confusing us names. Get your skating team to use Dutch butter and the USA Blades will go speedy gonzales like your Amtrak or our TGV.