SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:08 P.M. ET:

GOOD FOR HER!  – Dame Vera Lynn, whose very name will bring back memories among our older readers, is coming out with a new album...at the age of 97.  Dame Vera was the "sweetheart" of the British forces in World War II.  Her renditions of "We'll Meet Again," "The White Cliffs of Dover," "There'll Always be an England," and other songs inspired the British war effort.  She was the most famous singer of the Second World War.

RAND AT BERKELEY – Rand Paul got a rousing reception at the king of left-wing campuses today.  He spoke at Berkeley, where his father also spoke from time to time.  His reception shouldn't shock anyone.  The Pauls are favorites at college campuses where libertarianism and its offshoots tend to have a following.  I get the feeling there's more noise than numbers here.  Obama was able to make something of the "youth vote" in his runs for the presidency, but they're difficult voters to motivate.  We don't make predictions here, but once Rand Paul announces for the presidency, his views on social issues, and his left-of-Hillary foreign policy may turn off many of these same young voters who cheered him today.

CRISIS – From the New York Post:  "Michelle Obama’s crusade against sugar and fatty foods has inspired the White House pastry chef to pursue healthy cooking outside the first family’s kitchen.  Longtime executive pastry chef Bill Yosses has announced the 'bittersweet' decision to leave the White House and move to New York, where he will teach people how to eat more healthfully, according to The New York Times.  Still, the 60-year-old chef — who, while cooking for the Obamas, had to replace 'the usual blitzkrieg' of butter and cream with healthier ingredients like fruit purees, honey and agave — is not ready to give up the good stuff.  'I don’t want to demonize cream, butter, sugar and eggs,' he told the paper."  The war on whipped cream produces a major casualty.

RELATED TO THE ITEM JUST ABOVE – From The New York Times:  "Many of us have long been told that saturated fat, the type found in meat, butter and cheese, causes heart disease. But a large and exhaustive new analysis by a team of international scientists found no evidence that eating saturated fat increased heart attacks and other cardiac events.  The new findings are part of a growing body of research that has challenged the accepted wisdom that saturated fat is inherently bad for you and will continue the debate about what foods are best to eat.  For decades, health officials have urged the public to avoid saturated fat as much as possible, saying it should be replaced with the unsaturated fats in foods like nuts, fish, seeds and vegetable oils.  But the new research, published on Monday in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, did not find that people who ate higher levels of saturated fat had more heart disease than those who ate less. Nor did it find less disease in those eating higher amounts of unsaturated fat, including monounsaturated fat like olive oil or polyunsaturated fat like corn oil."  I feel vindicated.  Edy's Rocky Road.  That's for me.

March 19, 2014