Day: September 12, 2005

Sorta Smores: chocolate-marshmallowy goodness  without the campfire…

These are almost too easy to submit as a Carnival of the Recipes entry, but they can be sooooo good it’d be a shame not to.

This is another one of my patented “not-quite-a-recipe recipes” OK? Just remember, it can’t be “Sorta Smores” with the typical graham cracker, ’K?

Ingredients:

• Tea Biscuits. NOT graham crackers. I prefer a Mexican vanilla tea biscuit, but any you find tasty will likely do the trick.
• Mini-marshmallows. The regular size just won’t do, folks.
• Your fav sweet chocolate or chocolate bar.

Procedure:

• Finely shave or grate the chocolate bar
• Place tea biscuits on a plate and add mini-marshmallows and shaved/grated chocolate bar. Don’t go wild with either. The marshmallows will go much further than you may think.
• Nuke for NO MORE THAN 30 seconds in microwave. (Our MW does fine with about 15-20 seconds for 3-5 “Sorta Smores”.)

Let ‘em cool a bit and have ‘em with hot chocolate or coffee.

Variation? Snickers bars (very small chunks dispersed among the mini-marshmallows), of course. And of course, lots of variations in types of chocolate can be fun. Haven’t tried white chocolate with this, but I might.  Just have fun with it.

And yeh, if you absolutely must, you can do this over a campfire. *sigh* Barbarians…

🙂

Or just self-made idiots?

Actually, I can believe both to be true.  Consider two separate cases of ideologically-driven stupidity from Mass Media Podpeople in the last couple of weeks, both concerning Katrina coverage, which among Mass Media Podpeople has been almost universally critical of George Bush.

The federal response to Katrina was not as portrayed

It is settled wisdom among journalists that the federal response to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina was unconscionably slow…

…But the conventional wisdom is the opposite of the trut

Jason van Steenwyk is a Florida Army National Guardsman who has been mobilized six times for hurricane relief. He notes that:

“The federal government pretty much met its standard time lines, but the volume of support provided during the 72-96 hour was unprecedented. The federal response here was faster than Hugo, faster than Andrew, faster than Iniki, faster than Francine and Jeanne.”

That’s one lying meme being promoted by the Mass Media Podpeople’s Army and their fellow travelers among the Loony Left Moonbat Brigade.  But one simply expects that when a MMP’s lips are moving…

But what about this? Michael Kinsley, often over-the-top in his leftist cant, found it too much to stomach that CNN was coaching news anchors to… well, let me just quote him, courtesy of Drudge

:

“The TV news networks, which only a few months ago were piously suppressing emotional fireworks by their pundits, are now piously encouraging their news anchors to break out of the emotional straitjackets and express outrage. A Los Angeles Times colleague of mine, appearing on CNN last week to talk about Katrina, was told by a producer to ‘get angry.'”

Heh.  Outright lies about federal response time and coaching news anchors to “get angry”—“fair and balanced” sure ain’t the watchword of most so-called “news” reporting.

Were Mark Twain around today, he might have to amend his adage to “Lies, damned lies and news reports.”

Just a little FYI concerning taping conversations, whether phone or in-person.  If you are NOT associated with law enforcement, “one-party consent” is the rule in 38 states and the District of Columbia. Twelve states require all parties to a conversation to give their consent to taping.  Google the requirements for your situation to be sure, but here’s a rough outline from The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. (Yeh, I think “reporters” in the site’s title ought to be “reporters’ ” but who am I to correct the usage of so august a group?  Heh)

STATE-BY-STATE ALPHABETICAL LIST

Alabama – One Party
Alaska – One Party
Arkansas – One Party
California – All Party
Colorado – One Party
Connecticut – All Party
Delaware – All Party
District of Columbia – One Party
Florida – All Party
Georgia – One Party
Hawaii – One Party
Idaho – One Party
Illinois – All Party
Indiana – One Party
Iowa – One Party
Kansas – One Party
Kentucky – One Party
Louisiana – One Party
Maine – One Party
Maryland – All Party
Massachusetts – All Party
Michigan – All Party
Minnesota – One Party
Mississippi – One Party
Missouri – One Party
Montana – All Party
Nebraska – One Party
Nevada – One Party
New Hampshire – All Party
New Jersey – One Party
New Mexico – One Party
New York – One Party
North Carolina – One Party
North Dakota – One Party
Ohio – One Party
Oklahoma – One Party
Oregon – One Party
Pennsylvania – All Party
Rhode Island – One Party
South Carolina – One Party
South Dakota – One Party
Tennessee – One Party
Texas – One Party
Utah – One Party
Vermont – One Party
Virginia – One Party
Washington – All Party
West Virginia – One Party
Wisconsin – One Party
Wyoming – One  Party

“Regardless of the state, it is almost always illegal to record a conversation to which you are not a party, do not have consent to tape, and could not naturally overhear.”

As I suspected, the Falls Creek Baptist Assembly/Katrina “detention center” story was mis-reportage/overblown or agenda-driven. Yes, apparently there may have been some FEMA people there doing a little bureaucrapic (yes, I meant to spell it that way) muscle-flexing, but it’s NOT a FEMA site. I received several emails filling me in on the status of the situation, and one pointed me to this from http://www.bgco.org (there’s a link on the front page to the article, “Governor Asks Falls Creek to Remain on Standby for at Least 5 More Days” dated September 8).

“…Falls Creek remains on standby, at the request of the Governor, for at least another 5 days. (Until at least Tuesday, September 13)    The Oklahoma Highway Patrol, medical personnel, Oklahoma Disaster Relief teams and other government agencies remain onsite at Falls Creek until further notice from Governor’s office….”

So, over-reaction by the narrator of the account to all the government presence? One or two pushy low-level government employees (very likely!)? A combo of the two? It just didn’t sound like something that could be done there, and fortunately that seems to be the case.