At Schooligan Nation. (It ain’t exactly Mozart.)
(I’m on the road, so don’t let the timestamp fool ya into thinking I’m here. I’ll check my moderation queue for trackbacks to this weekend’s linkfest when I get to a computer.)
Make a Federal Case Out of It
[NOTE: I am not a lawyer, but I played one on stage once.]
Seriously. If the feddle gummint is going to stick its nose in everywhere it doesn’t belong, I’d say clog the feddle courts up with as many cases as could possibly be related to the bloated feddle gummint codes and regulations as possible.
Example: kid gets off a school bus and assaults Diane. Strong liklihood it’s a race hate crime (the kid was black) AND the school district has culpability (not a regular rider of the bus, bus driver refused to ID the kid… and provided a getaway vehicle before the police arrived). Katrina-related? Was in a Houston suburb. Lotsa NO families still hanging around feeding off the public teat there.
According to one witness, the kid who bowled Diane over has made threats on her son’s life. While on school property.
All kinds of possible feddle gummint angles to explore. For charges against the kid and for lawsuits against the school district. All it’d take would be a creative and energetic attorney, looking for a cash cow to milk. Heck, to slaughter. Heck, just credibly (and honestly) threatening such action ought to shake the money tree a bit.
As for the kid, well, the tale reminds me of a time I was living in “the good part of the ghetto” in KCMO. Kid was walking by our house, about to take a shortcut through a vacant lot next to us. I was working on a car and had our German Shepherd laying at my feet. Ufda (the dog) rose to her feet, growling, hackles raised. Kid pulled a Saturday night special outa his pocket and threatened the dog. I pointed out to him that if he shot my dog, I’d kill him with the wrench I had in my hand. He backed away.
Later that day, I saw the same kid staggering down the street, bloody and beaten. Someone had taken his popgun away from him and beaten the royal sh*t outa him with it.
I suspect the kid who assaulted Diane is gonna end up in pretty much the same condition some day Real Soon Now, in the natural course of events… if he lives that long. Behavior such as the tale told at Diane’s Stuff relates is one of the very real reasons for the mortality rate among young Black men.*
Not a racist remark, just an observation of fact.
*Yeh, yeh, young jackasses of any race stand a better shot of sying young from bad cases of stupidity combined with too much testosterone. But the figures don’t lie (no matter how hard some folks try to obfuscate about the causes of those figures). NOTE: the link’s to a pdf.
Young African American men die at a rate that is at least
1.5 times the rate of young white and Hispanic men, and
almost three times the rate of young Asian men (Fig. 6).
While the death rate drops for men ages 25 to 29 for most
groups, it continues to rise among African Americans.
Maybe, just maybe folks ought to look into that situation honestly… ya think? Nah. Too many unfomfortable facts out there that’d screw up the faux liberals’ positions.
“Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for the West as it commits suicide.”—James Burnham
Chili
Commenter to my Thursday Thirteen post brought about a search for my chili recipe in twc. Hmmm…. the whole thing’s not anywhere collected and put in one place. So, here goes. I’ve collected the various pieces and put them into one post. It’s one of those “more of a process than a recipe†recipes.
My Fav Chili
1.) About a pound of roast beef, shredded, preferably leftovers.
2.) 3-4 cups of beans, cooked. (See below for the process. Use canned beans only if you must.) Pinto beans, only, please.
3.) A whole, large yellow (sweet) onion, chopped. Hint: if you chop your yellow onion the day before and store it in a ziplock baggie in the fridge, the onion will be sweeter,
4.) A couple of cloves of garlic, minced. (In the post I excerpted this part of the recipe from, I originally wrote “cups of garlic.” That’d make for some really strong chili. *heh*)
5.) About 1/2 to one cup of Red Sauce. Use the recipe for red enchilada sauce (see below). If you have no sense of taste, just use the packaged chili powder junk. (Blech!)
6.) At least two tablespoonsful of freshly ground cumin. I use more. (grind it in your “spare” coffee grinder like I do. :-))
7.) A few leaves of dried oregano, crushed between your hands and dusted off into the pan…
8.) A sparse dash or two of chinese five-spice. Yeh, it’ll work. Just trust me on this one.
9.) A can of chopped tomatoes or some of your fav spaghetti sauce (can cut the earlier oregano if you choose this route).
Get the onions and garlic started clarifying in a medium-heat skillet with some olive or corn oil (diff flavors, your taste). Add the beef (already cooked, preferably “leftover†roast). Add the herbs and spices and cook, covered at lower heat, until the beef’s done (you’re way ahead if you went with leftovers!). Add the red sauce, tomatoes and beans and simmer for an hour or so, checking to see if any added water’s needed from time to time.
From an early blogspot twc post:
Basic Beans
Wash and sort 2-3 cups of pinto beans (more or less, depending on folks to be fed, how much you want left over for chili, etc. NOTE: I don’t guarantee the method below for red beans)
In a heavy stock pot, cover the beans with water-about 2″-3″ more water than beans. Bring to a boil, remove from heat and let sit for an hour or so. After an hour or so off heat, you have a decision tree branch:
1.) Do beans often give you gas? If so, and if it bothers you or others around you, toss the water and cover the beans with fresh water before proceding.
2.) If beans don’t seem to give you gas or passing gas doesn’t bother you or those around you (in my family, we call passing bean gas “love farts”—well, at least I do), then go ahead and cook the beans in the water they’re in.
Add a ham hock. No, don’t get fancy or make some sort of substitution. Add a ham hock. Bring the mess to boil again, then cover, back the heat off to a simmer and leave it. After about an hour cooking time, you can add salt or other seasonings to your taste. With the ham hock in, all I usually add is a little salt. When are the beans done? Take a bean or two out and blow on ’em. If the skin curls away from your breath either the beans are done or you have some knarly breath, dude.
Red Enchilada Sauce for enchiladas, chili, and a whole mess of other dishes (Makes 16 oz.—give or take)
8-10 dried Anaheim peppers (actually, I tend to use more). Clean the seeds out for merely “sorta-hot”. Leave the seeds in for a little spiciness. Tear the peppers up into pieces and then either
a.) Use an electric coffee grinder to powder the chiles to a fine powder and add boiling water to make 2 cups liquid. Blend in blender. Set aside and let it come together for a little bit. (My preferred “quick sauce” method) OR
b.) Place the pepper pieces in a sauce pan and cover with boiling water. Place a saucer (or whatever works) on top of the peppers to hold them submerged under the water and then leave them all day soaking. Remove the peppers from the water, place them in a blender with enough water to make 2 cups and blend.
If you absolutely NEED a thicker and/or milder sauce, use a little corn flour in the blending stage to thicken/whimp out the sauce. Keep the corn flour down to less than 1/4 C for each 2 C water, otherwise it’ll really begin to taste “corny”. (Only have corn meal? Put a little in your coffe grinder and make corn flour out of it. Don’t have a coffee grinder? Get one! 🙂 You can cut the heat and really thicken the sauce with just a couple of tablespoonsful. OK, that is all there is to real Red Enchilada Sauce. It’s really just chiles and water.
You can put what you don’t use in a glass jar and refrigerate for maybe a week.