Month: October 2006

[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

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.

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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.

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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.

Ya know, instant cappuccino mixes are just a way to gull the, well, gullible into drinking instant *spit* “coffee” dontcha?

(I’m going on the road tomorrow, so don’t let the timestamp fool ya into thinking I’m here. I preposted Friday and Saturday. I’ll check my moderation queue for trackbacks to this weekend’s linkfest when I’m around a computer.)

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h.t. reader HH via email.

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The Fair tax blogburst was delayed this week due to issues beyond twc’s control… and a couple within twc’s control. So be it. Folks, do take note of any congresscritter placement this year especially as regards this issue (and illegal immigration). The fair Tax bill could go a long way toward ameliorating many of our woes, all by its lonesome. 😉 Think on these words from Jonathan of Publius Rendezvous:

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With this heated election approaching faster than one could imagine, we thought it would be a time to throw the FT BB into the debates to see where each of our respective candidates reside in these matters.

We have grown fast and have expanded further than Terry and I anticipated in such a short time, which should prove to be interesting as we will hopefully see. Since we have members of numerous states, and numerous districts of the House of Representatives, let us see where the incumbents and their challengers reside when it comes to the Fair Tax.

This is where Terry and I ask for a small Homework assignment, but Terry and I will be participating, as well…..

What we shall do is send a letter to each of the respective campaigns for the district you reside asking them how they feel in regards to the Fair Tax. It can be something as simple as an e-mail, and you can tell them that the Fair Tax BlogBurst will be curious to see their answers….that way, when we hear back from them, we can all report for our readers where these individual candidates stand. We have provided a form letter below, so feel free to borrow this letter and use it/modify it for your convenience. Readers of the FT BB, we encourage you to do the very same and send either Terry or I an e-mail and let us know what they have to say.

This should prove interesting, and should prove to be informative for voters, as well.

Continue reading “Fair Tax/OTA”

13 of my Thursday non-work-related (i.e., “my time”) to-do list tasks, unordered as to priority, simply listed:

1. Write my T-13 post. 🙂

2. Remove ECM from parts car for car #1 (for mechanic to use in car#1).

3. Make chili for dinner.

4. Feed the animals. Again. *sigh* 😉

5. Scan through a few blogs.

6. Call parents. “duty” call. *heh* Let ’em know road trip their way is scheduled for Saturday (fair warning: weekend bloggage will be virtually nonexistent). Subnote: learn their new phone number. Speed dial ain’t gonna make it.

7. Clean or replace idle air control valve car #2.

8. New battery car #2 (beginning to see a pattern to my Thursday to-dos?)

9. Clean n prep car#2 for trip.

10. Play chauffeur for Wonder Woman’s “running around to clinics when the kids have school off day” (yeh, pretty much eliminates a lot of work, today. ‘S’all right, though). Note; Her car’s at the mechanic and she doesn’t drive stick.

11. Tape Smallville for WW. (Even though it’s gotten almost too weird to watch. Once was pretty fair show, but now, I dunno. I’ll save my commentary about how bad TV has improved my reading list for another time.)

12. Pre-post a coupla days’ posts.

13. Get to bed early, cos tomorrow’s even more filled with non-work-related extras.

TB’ed to Thursday Thirteen, where you can find a list of lists.

Crossposted from Stop The ACLU:

Liberals always act shocked and astonished that conservatives believe that an organization claiming to be the guardian of religious liberty is actually is actually America’s number one religious censor. They will spout off token cases where the ACLU veered from its normal path of hostility toward Christian religious expression to defend free speech. They have a handful of cases they try to convince us with. However, the ACLU’s history can easily be looked at and the cases against religious expression far outweigh these token cases. If the ACLU were consistent in its positions on religious liberty despite the religion their defense on the issue would be much easier. However, many cases point out that it isn’t religion in general the ACLU fight, but the Christian religion in particular.

When the Tangipahoa Parish School Board in Louisiana opened its board meetings with a prayer like they had for 30 years the ACLU sued. After the ACLU won that case and the School Board ignored the court ruling, Louisiana ACLU chief Joe Cook called for them to be jailed and compared them to terrorists. Mr. Cook is currently leading an attack on plan for a Katrina memorial paid for with private funds to be erected on private land simply because it is in the shape of a cross and might offend some sensitive passerby. When valedictorian of Foothill High, Brittany McComb, decided to share her faith voluntarily at her graduation cermony the ACLU said it was the right call to pull the plug. And of course we are all familiar with the ACLU’s crusade to eliminate the Mt. Soledad war memorial because it is a cross that might offend some atheist.

It has become a tradition for the ACLU to attack Christian nativity scenes every Christmas. They has already started early this year. We have all witnessed the ACLU’s hatred of Ten Commandment displays across the nation. The ACLU sue city counsil after city counsil over praying in Jesus name. They don’t sue to stop all prayer, but in every case the target has been Christian prayer. They even fought for the right of a Wiccan to pray at a counsil meeting. Many times it doesn’t even take a lawsuit. They just type up a threatening letter and that does the trick.

If the ACLU were consistent to oppose all religions in its seperation of church and state quest it would be one thing, but in all too many cases it is Christianity that is targeted while other religions get a pass. The cases of double standards are numerous. A few blatant examples are how the ACLU fought to revoke the tax exempt status of the Catholic Church while fighting for a tax exemption for Wiccans and how they fight against any Christianity being exposed to school children yet are found absent when Islamic indoctrination is going on. In fact they were involved in creating the rules to allow such indoctrination to take place.

There is no doubt that the ACLU are overzealous in their quest to secularize America and erase its Christian heritage. The good news is that there are organizations out there fighting them, and people standing up to protest against them. Currently they are attacking Lakeview Elementary School for promotion of a Prayer at the Flagpole event, a National Day of Prayer event, the activities of a “Praying Parents” group, teacher-led voluntary classroom prayers, and a Christian theme and overtly religious songs at a Christmas program. The school is not denying these charges but asserting that Muslim, Jewish, and Hindu students have “a constitutional right to pray or to read their scriptures at school as well. They did not cave in to the ACLU’s threats but gathered a group of over 600 people to protest the ACLU in a prayer vigil.

The prayer rally, organized by two Mt. Juliet commissioners, drew hundreds, with about 200 stuck in a 1.5-mile traffic jam. The event, which also attracted some local politicians and pastors, took place outside the school recently named in a lawsuit for alleged constitutional violations.

It is encouraging to see people standing up to the ACLU in defense of their rights that they feel are being threatened. However, this will not stop the ACLU from proceeding with its attacks. On the other hand it will ultimately be the power of the people and their desire for freedom that will have to put a stop to the ACLU’s attempts to criminalize Christian free speech through the courts. One effective way to assert this power is to get out and vote for people that oppose the ACLU’s anti-Christian agenda.

Everytime the ACLU wins a case against these small schools and local governments they are awarded massive money in attorney’s fees through your tax dollars. Often this is used to threaten these cash strapped schools and local governments to surrender before the case even goes before a court. There is current legislation, the Public Expression of Religion Act, that seeks to put a stop to this extortion. It has already passed the House and will be up for vote soon in the Senate. It is very unlikely it will pass if liberals take control. Put an end to this abuse. Get out and vote for people you know will support this much needed legislation. Cut the ACLU off from the government teat.

This was a production of Stop The ACLU Blogburst. If you would like to join us, please email Jay at Jay@stoptheaclu.com or Gribbit at GribbitR@gmail.com. You will be added to our mailing list and blogroll. Over 200 blogs already on-board.

Well, PC Magazine’s sticking it’s nose in the air again. I dunno… where do they think their major readership is from?

Dialling in Dual Phones is a decent enough article, but the title just about gave me a rash. Who do they think they are giving the term a British spelling? An American invented the rotary dial, from whence the term “dialing” came into general usage… especially “dialing in” referring to phone usage, so using the British spelling of “dialing” is doubly irritating.

Yeh, yeh: picky, picky, picky. So? When in America, spell as Americans do.

Oh, and don’t try speaking Spanish to me, either. I’m trying to forget whatever I learned in my years of Spanish classes and living on the Texas/Mexico border. Let ’em all speak and write American English if they wanna be here. Yeh, not even Brit English, as long as they’re writing for a mostly American audience.

Snooty writers…

*heh*

On my way to a busy day mostly away from access to twc, so if y’all trackback or comment here and your tbs/comments don’t show right away, just hang in there; I’ll be back to pull things from my moderation queue later.

Meanwhile, a quick lil cat health tip.

Our largest (most, urm, “assertive”) cat had a weight problem. She’d bully the other cats away from the food bowls and scarf things down until her “sufficiency had been surrensified” as my ole pa used to put it “back in the day.”

Soooo… after long time working at various solutions: bowls of cat food in widely separated places only helped a little. The other cats seem to “snack” at their food, so she’d go raid those bowls between scarfs of her own; putting down less food simply penalized the other two. What to do?

After multiple experiments, I think I may have finally hit on a solution. I found a food (a combo of two foods) the other two like but that she does not. Oh, when she’s truly hungry enough, she’ll eat it, but otherwise, she turns her nose up at it, while the other two eat to their hearts’ content.

Big girl has lost weight and stabilized at a more healthy configuration. The other two seem fine.

Now, when I serve them their food, I can do it all in one handy (for me) location. Big girl simply looks at me with disgust and walks away after a few sniffs and/or, grudging nibbles… but she does come back later when she’s really hungry.

I wonder how that would work with people? Purina Monkey Chow? An “All you can eat” diet. Complete nutrition but too disgusting for even chubbos to want to eat…

I wonder what Stuck On Stupid thinks of the idea…

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See Chaotic Synaptic Activity’s crosspost here for more detailed analysis of some of the presenting problems/opportunities of the Iraq War, and then… and then there are my lil semi-incoherent ramblings…

It seems to me that the Iraq War presents us with a set of unique advantages we did NOT have in Vietnam :

• The tribal, religious and cultural divides (Advantage? Yes, but only if someone in the feddle gummint with real influence has both the brains and the balls to take advantage of these factors)
• A growing awareness of the lies of the Mass Media Podpeoples’ Hivemind culture among more and more Americans
• The simple fact that a partitioned Iraq would create more problems for Islamic terrorists while at the same time going a long way toward providing a potential for some sort of peaceful resolution to the area… at least for the Kurds (leaving aside for the moment the problem of Turkey–a real but handleable problem for the Kurds, who, after all are still Saracens at heart. *heh*).

The problem with these factors is that there is literally no one in the feddle gummint who is in a position to use them AND has the simple intellectual horsepower to recognize them AND the balls to take advantage of them and run with them.

Paul Bremmer set the stage for a very real potential for American failure by disbanding the Iraqi Army (90%+ of whom were not rabid Baathists), ignoring (insulting) tribal leaders and playing proconsul. Of course, the fact that he did so with the full knowledge and support of the Bush administration compounded his sins.

But all we need is for one voice in the feddle gummint–one voice with real influence–to stand up and call the emperor’s butt-naked behind what it is. Could you say steamroll? I think public opinion could really burgeon in favor of a partitioned Iraq if all the facts were clearly explained.

“OK, kids. Since you can’t play nicely together, go to your separate rooms. No soup for you.”

Then, if they wanna keep on fighting, they can play Kilkenny Cats until the cows come home and it’s not be a threat to us.

“We tried to help, but these folks are just too backward and savage for a civilized solution.”