Month: September 2005

No, really: get this book!

The FairTax Book

I have blogged elsewhere a couple of times ( _1_, _2_) about this book and the bill now in Congress that it details. I’ve also posted sporadically on the issue of taxation.

This book, and the bill it explains, answers almost all the issues I have with the taxation situation in the U.S.

The FairTax is NOT the “Flat Tax”. It is designed to replace all the federal payroll/income taxes you now pay (including Social Security and Medicare). More fairly. More efficiently. More helpfully—for individuals and the country as a whole.

And still fully fund all current federal government agencies and programs.

Check out the Fairtax.org website for some advance info while you’re waiting on your copy to get to you from Amazon.com. 🙂 And after you read your copy, consider signing up for one of the Fairtax mailing lists. The one for my home state has been a big encouragement to me, and a source of more information about how others are dealing with their congresscritters on this issue.

It’s time for taxes to be fair.

FairTax.

Crossposted at Cathouse Chat

Curry-their-favor ChickenRice

Did this for tonight’s dinner, kinda last-minute, throwing stuff together. This is note so much a “recipe” as a log of what went into the pan tonight. Modify freely:

Ingredients:
2 large boneless chicken breasts, “chunked” (cut into chunky pieces)
1 cup rice
1 Roma tomato, chunked
1/2 small onion, diced
1 clove garlic, minced finely (or thru your garlic press)
olive oil
salt/pepper
1Tbs curry powder
some green, banana or other mild peppers, chopped
dash or two of balsamic vinegar (it was out, I saw it and thought, “Why not?” Was good.)

Heat 10” cast iron skillet to medium-medium hot  Salt and pepper the chicken chunks. Oil in the hot pan.  Add chicken. When the chicken is white on all sides, add the garlic, onion, peppers and balsamic vinegar.  When the onion is clarified, add the curry powder and keep stirring it off the bottom of the pan re-coating the chicken.  Add the rice and fry it until it begins to “pop” a little, maybe even brown a tad. Add the water and tomato and bring it to a boil. Back it off to a simmer and cover.  About 20 minutes or so later, yum!

Well, Jean Fraud sKerry (for some reason he still insists on going by his nickname, “John Kerry”) is still counting on just letting his lies, damned lies and sKerryisms just fade away. The counter waiting on his release of the records he “faux-released” (only some records to friendly outlets that’ve released only select items) is still counting in my sidebar.

*sigh*

Let’s “delaborate” this process a bit, shall well [sic, sic, sic–was supposed to be “shall we” *sigh*]?  Bubba,

Here’s a sample of Gene Autry’s signature song (Album available at PMRS)

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Yeh, this one’s in appreciation of the fact that Diane’s sent a report (via Mel) that her evacuation from Baytown, TX not only went safely but that she’s on her way home, now and will likely be “Back in the Saddle” blogging by Wednesday or so.

Good news. Pray for safe trips for all those returning to homes, and for their recovery from whatever Rita effects their homes may have experienced. Glad this one wasn’t worse.

FWIW… eWeek reports:
“More Security Holes Found in Firefox

Symantec reports that 18 high-severity vulnerabilities were
reported for the Mozilla browser in the first half of 2005,
10 more than reported for IE.”
Of course, that lil squib doesn’t necessarily address other issues. For example, the vulnerabilities found in IE are often more severe because of the fairly deep hooks Internet Exploder has in the OS (and the overall bloated, crappy browser implementation in Internet Exploder). Then, of course, there’s the fact that Firefox’s vulnerabilities are usually patched expeditiously, instead of at the nearly glacial “speed” Microsoft applies to patching IE/Windows vulnerabilities.

But who really cares? Opera had far, far fewer security issues than either Firefoxed or Internet Exploder. And patched them faster than either of the other two, as well.

Ho. Hum.

🙂

Stop Illegal Immigration! (Let’s just call it what it is, shall we? Stop Border Outlaws! heh)

Here are a (very) few of the organizations and resources concerned citizens are manning:

California Border Police Initiative A site seeking to promote the organization of a new state police force in California strictly for the purpose of enforcing California’s border against illegal immigration: “It’s time to stop complaining about Washington not doing its job. It’s time to ENFORCE THE LAW and PROTECT OUR OWN BORDER…” An interesting idea.

FAIR: Federation for American Immigration Reform “FAIR seeks to improve border security, to stop illegal immigration, and to promote immigration levels consistent with the national interest—more traditional rates of about 300,000 a year.”

IllegalAliens.US “This site, besides mocking the term undocumented, is an illegal immigration primer whose goal is to provide information on illegal immigration prevention, enforcement, and attrition.”

IllegalAliens.US has a sister site, Report Illegals that offers a one-stop form “…to report illegal aliens (‘undocumented immigrants’) and illegal employers to the appropriate U.S. government agencies.”

A few more:

ProjectUSA
Americans for Immigration Control
American Immigration Control Foundation
Coalition for the Future American Worker
English First
9/11 Families for a Secure America

These are literally just a few of the many sites and resources available. Explore them. Consider the information they present. Discover just what a serious issue this is and make a committment to become in involved: Guard the Borders!

Blogs on Board:

———-

This has been a production of the Guard the Borders Blogburst, held every Monday at Euphoric Reality and other blogs. Our mission is to keep immigration issues at the forefront. If you’d like to be a part of it, send your blog URL and name to kit.jarrell@ gmail dot com.

————-

Well, she can’t seem to make up her mind what to call her blog (Just a Girl, now ;-), but Mel has the scoop on the inane names celebs gave their kids.

Hey, Mel: maybe they’re just trying to capture the real essence of the person. You know, like Gwyneth Paltrow wants her kid’s name to say “Bite me!” or something… I dunno, maybe the kid’s nickname can be “Sauce” or “pie a la mode”—heh

Just reading on through her blog, I hadda ask myself why I hadn’t blogrolled her yet.  Well, apart from the obvious, “What’s she calling her blog this week?” issue… (Just kidding, Mel. 🙂

Oh, as long as I’m noting new-to-my-blogroll blogs, how about that Mauser Girl? Heh.  You just have to check out the G.I. Love Chocolate Ice Cream.

Seen Dafydd ab Hugh’s new  blog, Big Lizards?

Well, what are you waiting for? Get outa here and go check it out! Well? GO!

(Sheesh… some people. 😉

Oh, BTW (what a thing to forget—guess I was in a hurry earlier)—thanks to Romeocat for the reminder. I had visited Big Lizards earlier this week, meant to go back and just flat lost track of it. *sigh*

In the wake of Katrina especially, more folks are thinking through what they might do if some sort of disaster struck their community…

Dean Ing is my go-to guy in that arena. He’s the kinda guy who can rehabilitate the pejorated term “survivalist” all by his lonesome with his down-to-earth approach to self-sufficiency.

I often recommend his novel, Pulling Through, as a painless way to be introduced to preparing for disaster (while not being caught up in some silly “Chicken Little” soap opera.) If you don’t need the fictional sugar to take some preparedness medicine, his OOP book, The Chernobyl Syndrome would fit the bill nicely as a comprehensive overview of small-scale, personal disaster preparedness. The link above is to four amazon.com affiliated selers who each have a copy of the hardback for sale. That’s not a lot of availablity, eh? I can tell you that I’m not selling my paperback copy!

A good thing about the book is Ing’s virtually painless “hobbyist” approach to self-sufficiency/disaster preparedness/survivalism. I think most of the readers of this blog would find his approach fun, if nothing else, and—what the heck!—you’d end up being more prepared to survive a disaster than probably 99% of Americans.

(Pulling Through is also available from some private sellers via amazon.com, and The Rackham Files—featuring more in a similar vein—

is available from amazon.com and from Baen Books, directly.) [UPDATE: I had read the first two chapters of The Rackham Files in an online preview. Just got the book.

Pulling Through

is included in it. Oh, and note the books were written in the 1980s (so references to political issues may be out of date) but are nevertheless pretty good disaster relief primers.

That last is “rolling on floor kicking myself in the butt”

Such a delish Chiles Rellenos recipe I posted for the Carnival of the Recipes this week…

And then didn’t submit to the Carnival.

Oh. Well.

OH! Can stop kicking myself, now: this just in from SWWBO:

September 21, 2005
Important Announcement

Okay- from now on, the Carnival of the Recipes’ deadline for recipes sent to recipe dot carnival at gmail dot com is noon Central on Saturdays.

Whoever is hosting can have it up anytime on Saturday or Sunday of their week.

I was stuck on stupid thinking that I (or anyone else) could easily put it together on a Friday morning!!!!

🙂