Category: Uncategorized

I don’t know why Carol Platt Liebau’s blog isn’t somewhere in the stratosphere–“Mortal Human” or at least “Playful Promate” range in the blogosphere…

This morning, on Meet the Press, Tim Russert noted as he interviewed Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL):

It’s interesting, because in your own political past, when you were a congressman in the House of Representatives in 1983, you believed that Roe vs. Wade was incorrectly decided. You filled out a questionnaire calling for a constitutional limit to ban all abortions. You wrote a constitute [sic] saying that “The right to an abortion is not guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution.”

Of course, this will make life very interesting if Dick Durbin tries to characterize any postulated pro-life views of John Roberts as “out of the mainstream” — because when Durbin was pro-life, that view was less mainstream than it is today.

In any case, anyone who slanders American soldiers the way Dick Durbin did has no business even pretending to know anything about “mainstream thought” in America. _*_

…and the SCOTUS (Supreme Communists of the United States) stirred a tiny (wee, bitsy, teen-eintsy) spark of the Founders fire in June when they said it was hunky-dory in their books for governments to take private property with just about any lame excuse they could dream up.

Alarmed by the prospect of local governments seizing homes and turning the property over to developers, lawmakers in at least half the states are rushing to blunt last month’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling expanding the power of eminent domain.

In Texas and California, legislators have proposed constitutional amendments to bar government from taking private property for economic development. Politicians in Alabama, South Dakota and Virginia likewise hope to curtail government’s ability to condemn land.

Even in states like Illinois — one of at least eight that already forbid eminent domain for economic development unless the purpose is to eliminate blight — lawmakers are proposing to make it even tougher to use the procedure. (See story here)

And see The Open Source Amendment Project‘s Restoring The Right To Ownership of Property Petition.

Hit ’em high and low… and let your state legislators and congresscritters know you’ll for for anyone else if they don’t put a cork in the land grab schemes of their fellow politicians. Gripe longly, loudly and often to as many people as you can about the ____ (fill in your own descriptive) politicians grabbing private property with the lamest of excuses.

And let said pols know you’re doing it.

Crossposted at Cathouse Chat.

Europe as we know it is slowly going out of business. Since French and Dutch voters rejected the proposed constitution of the European Union, we’ve heard countless theories as to why: the unreality of trying to forge 25 E.U. countries into a United States of Europe; fear of ceding excessive power to Brussels, the E.U. capital; and an irrational backlash against globalization. Whatever their truth, these theories miss a larger reality: Unless Europe reverses two trends — low birthrates and meager economic growth — it faces a bleak future of rising domestic discontent and falling global power. Actually, that future has already arrived.

Yesterday and today: broadband access dead. Limited to a 28.8 dialup, now

*sigh* No blogging today (except for this “poor me” post 🙂

This makes the second period within the last month my cable internet access has been down. Last time, I was able to get a nominal 56K connection with my backup dialup connection. Not so today.

Ah, well… Another day.

Cornelia Funke’s a better juvie writer than J.K Rowling

OK, so last year, at Lovely Daughter’s insistence recommendation, I read Cornelia Funke’s Thief Lord. It was not half bad, and in fact it was quite a bit more than half good. And, as is becoming more and more common, it included a teaser: the first chapter of Inkheart, the book Lovely Daughter handed me to read today.

(Now that I’m considering Cornelia Funke books, I recall I was pleasantly disposed toward her insistence suggestion I read Thief Lord because I has earlier yielded to her when she touted Dragon Rider, also by Funke.)

I’m near the end, just taking a break to brew some joe and write this. Unless Funke goes seriously awry, this is a good book. Of course, marketing and other pressures: it’s the first of a trilogy… (Gee: can’t folks just tell a story and move on to another any more? *VBG*) Still, the way it’s reading, I’ll probably buy a copy of my own and get the other two.

No, it’s not the kind Irving Berlin meant*. This is hotter. Did some hot, sweaty mowing this a.m. and the temps were already—fairly early—in the mid 90s with the humidity dripping all over the place, making the air heavy long before I started dripping.

Ahhh… Lovely Daughter home again this weekend. Has a solid interview for a good job (with good recommendation from a friend and former college roomie who works at the place) on Monday afternoon… about 40 miles from home, rather than the coiuple of hundred miles away where the flake of an HR guy hired her for a job that didn’t exist…

Oh, that also means I get to drive the neat lil car we got to replace the Taurus that died on her as she was trying to get to The Job That Never Was. Fun.

Anyway, hot. I’m not gonna blog. Not gonna email. Broadband was out this a.m. anyway, when I was more likely to do some Saturday blogging. Hadda boot up an unfinished computer and hook a modem up to connect to a backup dialup connection just to see if any critical mail was in.

Nope. I’m gonna climb in some cool water, soak and read Inkheart, which Lovely Daughter thoughtfully brought home with her. So it’s a juvie? Who cares. Funk writes well, and it’ll be at least as good as the juvie (the HP book) I read last weekend.

I can do that cos I’m still running this place and you can’t make me blog. So there.

🙂

*”Heat Wave”
–Irving Berlin

We’re having a heat wave,
A tropical heat wave,
The temperature’s rising,
It isn’t surprising,
She certainly can can-can.

She started a heat wave
By letting her seat wave
In such a way that
The customers say that
She certainly can can-can.

Gee, her anatomy
Makes the mercury
Jump to ninety-three.

We’re having a heat wave,
A tropical heat wave,
The way that she moves
That thermometer proves
That she certainly can can-can

Call me David. (OK, so it’s not Herman Melville)

“Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am (stuck in the middle with you.)”

I thought that since it’s been a long time past that I’d first introduced myself to the blogosphere that I might clarify a tad that is missing from my skimpy Blogger profile.

Stealth libertarian (small “l”–the Libertarian Perty is todos wackos). Believe in a two-party system, just wish we had two other parties to choose from, at least one of which would honorably (that is to say, honestly) swear to uphold the Constitution.

Longing for the Republic the Founders and Framers devised and hoping to reinvigorate and preserve at least some small portion of that Republic for my grandchildren.

Sometimes curmudgeonly, always opinionated. I believe that fair argument is one of the great achievements of a civilization (which is one reason I have come to hate the Loony Left Moonbat Brigade and its fellow travelers in the Mass Media Podpeople’s Army and to despise the wimps who are political “leaders” on the so-called Right).

Fav quote:

“American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward to perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader. This pretended salt hath utterly lost its savor: wherewith shall it be salted? Its impotency is not hard to explain. It is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle. It tends to risk nothing serious for the sake of truth.”—R. L. Dabney, 19th Century Reformed theologian; member R.E. Lee’s General Staff.

Quote re: current events:

“These people killed innocent children to show disapproval of a government. They couldn’t even justify it as collateral damage, as the government officials in question weren’t near their targets. Aiming for a politician would risk their own hides, and that was something Ghassan just didn’t have the stomach for. Not until the doctors finished rebuilding him, anyway.”—from The Weapon by Michael Z. Williamson (Baen Books, August 2005)

I like to cook, work on computers (d’oh), make music, read (history, sci-fi, mysteries, soup cans, anything in print) and blindside people with off-the-wall humor.

So sue me.

Like languages. Am fluent in none. Well, perhaps moderately fluent in English.

This is still very sketchy, but I’m running this show, so it’s all ya get.

(Well, not really, but good anyway)

Now, this is important: this recipe is BEST made with a real hand-cranked ice cream freezer, cranked by available kids under the age of 13. (Why pick that age as the upper limit? See my post on “junior high”. Ooops. Haven’t posted on that yet. heh) Really. It just makes a better “ice cream” that way.

🙂

Keep in mind, you can adjust the amounts for bigger batches, if you want, but a half gallon or so is usually enough for a family of four.

This is pretty much as we made it when I was a kid. (Didn’t everybody make “Eagle Brand Ice Milk” in the 50s?)

Ingredients

2 (14 oz.) can Eagle Brand milk
1 qt. milk (or half n half)
1.5 Tbsp. vanilla extract

HAND CRANK ice cream freezer
rock salt
“lightly” crushed chunk ice
KIDS

As brine begins coming outa the weep hole, layer in more ice (and maybe a tad salt) every now and then.

When (if) the kids start to find the crank hard to turn (cos the stuff’s freezing up on ’em) you can take over the cranking.

All kindsa easy variations possible: add some peach, strawberry or blueberry preserves before freezing. (Blueberry preserves ought to be added when the stuff’s about frozen, IMO–just toward the last.) Lotsa variations. I like to substitute some scraped vanilla beans for the vanilla extract. Nice. Heck. I wouldn’t mind taking the rest of the bean and running it through a coffee grinder to milk more flavor, although it does change the flavor a bit.

You can store the ice cream in the cannister in the ice/brine mix (packed with newspaper/old towel–see, ya knew those’d come in handy) for a few hours, if necessary, but eating it right away or making it just before a meal, storing it in the brine/ice mix for just during the meal is probably best.

VW Bug asked in comments about where to get a hand crank ice cream maker. How about here?

No one can spoof Loony Left Moonbats as well as they can unintentionally spoof themselves. No one.