Posted on 07/16/2010 11:00:19 AM PDT by Nachum
President Barack Obama (D) is treating his multi gazillion dollar spend our way out of debt and unemployment stimulus as his own private make work program, tossing taxpayer dollars to favored constituents, such as unions, and to favored areas, such as his home city of Chicago.
And now he's making it even more private, choosing his family's personal cook, Sam Kass, imported from Chicago, as...Senior Policy Advisor for Healthy Food Initiatives. As reported in Judicial Watch, prior to his latest elevation
Michelle Obama made Kass a "Food Initiative Coordinator" for her new healthy nutrition program which is supposed to eliminate childhood obesity within a generation, especially in the nation's inner cities. The First Lady claims that childhood obesity is a threat to national security and a crisis equivalent to AIDS and youth violence.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
The list, ping
Personal Cook?
I hear he has great buns!
Didn’t one of the Roman emperor’s make his horse a Senator or something to that effect?
Off to Google this very subject right now....
YEP.
Yeah. From when they lived in Chicago.
Now he heads up a 400 million dollar taxpayer funded “healthy foods” initiative.
Thanks MObama!
Why not, he is as unqualifed as the rest of 0bama’s staff.
/johnny
Beats head on desk.
Beats head on desk.
Beats head on desk.
Beats head on desk.
Beats head on desk.
Beats head on desk.
Beats head on desk.
Beats head on desk.
Beats head on desk.
Yea....what’s that song Rush used to play about that black woman senator from IL.....”moving up” or something...hey man, barry and michele are gonna live as high on the hog as they can get away with...after all “The Man” has been keeping them down for so long...Oh, wait, they got to the best schools through the white Man’s affirmative action...yea, well, too bad sucker!!
Incitatus was the favored horse of Roman emperor Caligula. Its name is a Latin adjective meaning "swift" or "at full gallop".
According to Suetonius's Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Incitatus had a stable of marble, with an ivory manger, purple blankets, and a collar of precious stones. Others have indicated that the horse was attended to by eighteen servants, and was fed oats mixed with gold flake. Suetonius also wrote that Caligula planned to make Incitatus a consul.
Incitatus was named not only a citizen of Rome, but a member of the Roman senate.
The horse would "invite" dignitaries to dine with him in a house outfitted with servants there to entertain such events.
TWICE a month, President Obama’s senior policy advisers gather at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building to hash out strategies for improving the health of the country’s children. Among the assistant secretaries, chiefs of staff and senior aides sits an unlikely participant: a bald, intense young man who happens to be the newest White House chef.
His name is Sam Kass. And when he’s not grilling fish for the first family or tending tomatillos in the White House garden, he is pondering the details of child nutrition legislation, funding streams for the school lunch program and the best tactics to fight childhood obesity.
Part chef and part policy wonk, he is reinventing the role of official gastronome in the Executive Mansion. Indeed, Obama administration officials describe him as a vital conduit to the first family. “How do I get to the first lady, how do I try to transmit ideas and messages to her? Sam Kass,” said Kathleen Merrigan, the deputy agriculture secretary. “He’s been a real ally when we talk about farm to school.”
Mr. Kass, 29, forged a close bond with the Obamas while cooking for them and their children for about two years before they moved to Washington and has golfed with the president on Martha’s Vineyard. Behind the scenes, he attends briefings on child nutrition and health, has vetted nonprofits as potential partners for White House food initiatives and regularly peppers senior staff about policy matters. (“Do we have a toxicologist who specializes in colony collapse disorder?” Mr. Kass asked in a recent e-mail message about the Department of Agriculture’s position on honey bees, Ms. Merrigan recalled.)
While he is steeped in all matters locavore and was a moving force behind the White House garden, Mr. Kass has no formal culinary training and has never run a restaurant or hotel kitchen.
He has baked Swiss chard frittatas for students on the White House lawn, prepared chicken salad with red onions and toasted almonds at the Department of Agriculture’s cafeteria and sprinkled crab meal and ladybugs — instead of chemical fertilizers and pesticides — on the first lady’s garden.
Friends say he cooks primarily for the Obamas, while the executive chef, Cristeta Comerford, handles most formal gatherings.
(People magazine called Mr. Kass one of “Barack’s Beauties” in its list of 100 Most Beautiful people this year.)
“We find ourselves in a fight to salvage a food system that has been ravaged by an approach of quantity over quality,” he wrote. “The industry our society has built around food is harmful and unsustainable.”
Mr. Kass has toned down that kind of talk since he came to the White House in January. These days, he describes big agricultural producers and fertilizer and pesticide companies as “partners,” not obstacles to reform.
Mr. Kass and other officials say improving school lunches and widening access to farmers’ markets for people on government aid will benefit the poor. “He’s often the one who stops the conversation and says, ‘People will do this and won’t do that,’ ” said Jocelyn Frye, Mrs. Obama’s policy director, who has pronounced Mr. Kass’s collard greens and barbecued chicken “very good.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/04/dining/04kass.html
******
People are losing jobs and we need this ‘policy wonk’ why?!
Obama, et al, are SO OUT OF TOUCH!
Does Michelle Obama even know how to cook?!
Thank you. Got distracted @ work.
As a point of interest, the story could have just been propaganda dreamed up by Caligula's enemies. However, if it were true, the most common interpretation of this event is that Caligula had no special desire to elevate his horse. Rather, he was making a mockery of everyone else. "You're a senator? You seem like a horse's ass -- just like my dear friend Incitatus!" "You're an important dignitary? Would you like to come to a feast? In my horse's stall!"
Personally, I think Obama is doing the same thing. "You stupid Americans! As an elected official I have no time to waste on you -- I tee off in 30 minutes. But do not worry, my cook shall rule over you while I am away!"
Thats the more interesting question to ask.Maybe he and Obama were sharing noodles.
As a guy who’s been with them since Chicago, I would imagine this cook has seen and heard a lot. It may be that Obama really likes him, and wanted to promote him as a favor. But it could also be that the cook knows things about Obama that are best kept under the rug. A nice new title with a fat check attached to it could buy a fair amount of silence.
So a guy who should be competing on The Next Food Network Star is, instead, vaulted to the position of overseeing almost a half billion dollars.
The deputy agriculture secretary has to go to this schmo to gain access to the White House?
I’ve run out of the capacity to be gobsmacked. And that is something.
I think this may be Obama’s first appointment of someone with real world experience in his field.
He probably is great with tube steak..
Bullseye.
Doesn’t sound like “fantasy” to me - but a likelihood.
Cooking for them for about 2 years before they moved to DC? That goes back to when Malia with 6 and Sasha was 3.
Didn’t I hear Michelle go on this week about her starting to cook one night a week—and then working up from there—so their daughters would have more nutritious meals? Somehow the “I was there as an overworked mom, learning about nutrition for my kids” bit doesn’t quite jive with having a personal chef.
Food Czar. we really shouldn’t be surprised, you know. it just isn’t that unusual with this bunch.
Do you mean you don’t have a PRIVATE CHEF?! /s
Lol. Well I’m capable of fantasy, but not this time. It stretches credulity to think this man hasn’t seen some very awkward (to Obama) stuff. I’d love to know what it was, but as long as he’s happy as a ‘senior policy advisor’ I’m guessing it will stay under wraps.
LMBO! Good one!
Birds of a feather...
NO KIDDING! lol!
Kass doesn’t have the typical pedigree of a Washington mouthpiece — or of a highly trained chef, for that matter. He earned a history degree from the University of Chicago and then traveled the globe for 5 years before resettling in Chicago.
He’s a really passionate activist and we all knew he was working for the Obamas
*******
If there was any theme to Wednesday night’s episode of Top Chef D.C., it had to be this: Assistant White House chef Sam Kass is a total, to-die-for hunk, more than deserving of his spot on People magazine’s list of the 100 most beautiful people.
Eater thinks Kass is hot enough to make a straight man reconsider. “Our chefs file in for the Quickfire and see this week’s guest judge, Assistant White House Chef Sam Kass. Woah! Was Michelle in charge of this hire? I am a straight man, I am just saying I don’t think there is a place on that guy where you couldn’t crack a walnut, am I right? (No locavoro.)”
We Love DC was “busy staring at [Kass] wondering if it would be possible to get trapped in an elevator with both him and Tom.”
******
Sam Kass, is an environmentally conscious University of Chicago graduate who founded a home cooking service that focuses on ingredients from local farms.
“The new administration’s goal is to stimulate the economy, and a big part of it is the green initiative,” English says. “Industries are dying and you need to create new ones. The benefits of having a chef in the White House who cares about local food and local farms are very obvious. Using local farmers is a great way of stimulating the economy and creating new jobs.”
Kass doesn’t have the typical pedigree of a Washington mouthpiece — or of a highly trained chef, for that matter. He earned a history degree from the University of Chicago and then traveled the globe for 5 years before resettling in Chicago.
He’s a really passionate activist and we all knew he was working for the Obamas
*******
If there was any theme to Wednesday night’s episode of Top Chef D.C., it had to be this: Assistant White House chef Sam Kass is a total, to-die-for hunk, more than deserving of his spot on People magazine’s list of the 100 most beautiful people.
Eater thinks Kass is hot enough to make a straight man reconsider. “Our chefs file in for the Quickfire and see this week’s guest judge, Assistant White House Chef Sam Kass. Woah! Was Michelle in charge of this hire? I am a straight man, I am just saying I don’t think there is a place on that guy where you couldn’t crack a walnut, am I right? (No locavoro.)”
We Love DC was “busy staring at [Kass] wondering if it would be possible to get trapped in an elevator with both him and Tom.”
******
Sam Kass, is an environmentally conscious University of Chicago graduate who founded a home cooking service that focuses on ingredients from local farms.
“The new administration’s goal is to stimulate the economy, and a big part of it is the green initiative,” English says. “Industries are dying and you need to create new ones. The benefits of having a chef in the White House who cares about local food and local farms are very obvious. Using local farmers is a great way of stimulating the economy and creating new jobs.”
White House Chef Sam Kass mixes up Honey Crisp Apple Salad at the USDA Cafeteria...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yj6pQhc99Gc
Oh, that is really, really hard to make a SALAD! /s
No, I don’t have my own personal food czar.
Da Chicago Way!
He [Kass] is part of a University of Chicago network that takes in the Obamas and many of their close friends and associates -- some, like Kass, who ended up in Washington. Kass attended the U. of C. Lab School for high school and some of his elementary years. His father, Robert, a fifth-grade teacher at Lab, taught Malia Obama last year. His mother, Valentine, who lives in Alexandria, Va., is a science educator at the National Science Foundation who, while at the Museum of Science and Industry, was the director of Omnimax productions and programs. White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett knows Robert Kass from her days when she served on the Lab School board. Susan Sher, Mrs. Obama's chief of staff, is a past chairwoman of that board. Karen Duncan, the wife of Education Secretary Arne Duncan, is a former Lab School athletic director who is now working with Kass on encouraging schools to serve healthy school lunches.
...... it fits the mold of people with no experience .
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