Monday, December 31, 2007
The Pony and The Pooch
proving yet again that people hate those upon whom they are dependent
Iowans can’t look away.
John Edwards is angry, ...His message is resentful, confrontational and paranoid, verging on the openly hateful. And Iowa audiences are loving it.
Edwards is like a stand-up comedian who has honed his act down to the most effective material. In the case of the comedian, all that’s left is laughs; in the case of Edwards, almost all that is left is unbridled hostility.
...This corporate greed is killing the middle class, killing American jobs and it is stealing your children’s future,” Edwards tells a rapt crowd of a couple hundred people in the lobby of a high school here.
The reason we don’t have universal health coverage, according to Edwards, is “very simple” — the drug companies and insurance companies oppose it. In fact, everything is “very simple” to him. In his down-home Manichaean vision, dark corporate forces are responsible for everything he doesn’t like.
...He complains that the mill where his father worked has now closed.
...like a train wreck.
Hoppy Gnu Ear!
and the best of all to come!
8 oz. chopped dark chocolate
[I used 1.5 oz of 99% and the rest 68%]
1.5 cups of whipping cream
4 egg yolks, slightly beaten in a bowl
2 Tbsp. of superfine granulated sugar
1 tsp. of vanilla extract
4 tsp of Curacao
A dash of salt
Measure out everything and put in little bowls or whatever is at hand. You’ll want ‘em quick once you start.Heat the chocolate in a double boiler [a steel bowl over a pot with a coupla inches boiling water], whisking until melted.
Stir in the sugar and heavy cream, whisking until smooth.
Beat a tablespoon or two of chocolate mixture into the bowl with the beaten egg yolks. Gradually add the egg-chocolate mixture back into double boiler pan.Whisk and cook for about 3 minutes over medium heat.
[make sure the flame doesn’t come past the edges of the pot. It will burn your fingers *and* the chocolate]
Stir in the vanilla, Curacao and salt.Strain through small sieve to remove any possible cooked egg lumps. [being impatient, I skipped this part. I could see that I had successfully managed not to make any scrambled egg clumps]
Pour into small ramekins, demi tasse cups or any pretty small dishes that hold a cup or so. Chill until firm (at least 2 hours)
Top with a dollop of whipped cream and some chocolate shavings, or some powdered sugar, orange rind, candy cane piece, mint leaf—get creative. Serve with demi tasse spoons.
Port goes well with this.
Worth a Listen
sounds good
Desperation?
omg she’s making them check her mouth!
[izzat Don Rickles?]
[is he gonna call her a Hockey Puck?!?]
Sunday, December 30, 2007
eIroning
Libturd subterfuge
*clicky*clicky*
[interesting comments...]
This follower of Marx Morks slipped this little ‘note’ into an iPod case—in place of the iPod.
This country, with the bounty that Americans have created, is predicated on certain standards of behavior. If 99% of folks are decent, honest and self-diciplined, things work just fine. Increase that percentage of those with sticky-fingers / those with agendas other than making this outfit run well, and we gots Trouble.
That way lies 3 hour waits for TP while gubbmint “quality control” checkers check the TP for anthrax and propaganda and other gubbmint checkers check on the checkers.
Thing is, gubbmint is, by definition, not actually capable of doing all of this checking. Neither is private industry. If folks aren’t “self-checking” none of this Freedom business is ever gonna work.
But that means returning to the “olden days” when wrong-doers were punished societally—not just legally—with disapproval and even shunning. Understaaanding, excusifying, and toooolerance of victimy whinging is gettin’ us nowhere fast. Free People cannot afford that self-indulgence.
Something else Soviet we’ve been infected by: cultural miserablilsm.
[Apparently this is a not “another isolated incident."]
ha!
$1 per Bear goes to the USO.org
Hey MO!!
Saturday, December 29, 2007
Desert Night
ToDaZeD NOT Photoshopped
This photographer has figured the key to amazing night shots.
Moonrise over a wrecked trailer in an abandoned junkyard in Hodge, CA on Route 66 near Barstow. Night (just after dusk), full moon, 30 second exposure, flashlight-painting. Canon 20D
Go feast your eyes.
Oprah Hits That Wall
$700 ‘little white shirts’ - sureyeah :: $7 candidates - not so much
Winfrey’s website has been buzzing for weeks with angry postings about her involvement in the Illinois senator’s campaign
“stop pushing Obama down our throats."
“...It is a manipulation and an abuse of her power and influence on the American culture...."
A Rose by any other name...
do / not do / doo doo
Here’s a phrase that’ll chill your blood: Pro-Muslim officials at the Pentagon...
Pro-Muslim officials at the Pentagon are putting political pressure on one of the U.S. military’s most important specialists on Islamist extremism, according to defense officials.
Stephen Coughlin, a specialist on Islamic law on the Joint Staff, met recently with Hasham Islam, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon R. England’s close aide. The officials said Mr. Islam, a Muslim who is leading efforts for the Defense Department’s outreach to Muslim groups, sought to convince Mr. Coughlin to take a softer line on Islam and Islamic law elements that promote extremism.
There is also evidence that a whispering campaign is under way to try and discredit Mr. Coughlin as a “Christian extremist with a pen” and force him out of the building, according to the officials.
Mr. Coughlin came under fire from pro-Muslim officials after a memorandum he wrote identified several groups that are being courted by Mr. Islam’s community outreach program as front organizations for the pro-extremist Muslim Brotherhood.
Mr. Coughlin based the memorandum on documents released as evidence in a federal terrorism trial that he stated “are beginning to define the structure and outline of domestic jihad threat entities, associated nongovernmental organizations and potential terrorist or insurgent support systems.”
Mr. Coughlin noted that the documents identified one of the Muslim Brotherhood front groups as the Islamic Society of North America, whose leaders were hosted by Mr. England in April at the Pentagon, raising concerns that the deputy defense secretary does not understand clearly the nature of the Islamist threat he is working against as the No. 2 official.
...That approach has kept military and civilian officials from conducting much-needed assessments of how Muslim extremists are waging war because doing so would involving [sic] analysis of Muslim religious tenets, a politically taboo subject area.
[emph mine - e-C]
Yep. PC will be the death of US all.
Addendum: Apparently, the ChiComs ain’t satisfied with the Latin American Coms playing footsie with the iSlams.
China has offered to sell jet trainers [likely China’s K-8] to Venezuela in what U.S. officials say is further evidence of Beijing’s efforts to sell weapons and expand its influence among the militaries of Latin America.
...Venezuela is transforming its armed forces away from the U.S. military model toward preparing to fight “asymmetric wars and wars of resistance.” China, too, is restructuring its military for asymmetric warfare, specifically computer and anti-satellite weapons for use against the United States.
Friday, December 28, 2007
We Could Play At Questions...
What good would that do?!?
Claude Allegre, a former [French] education minister and a physicist by profession… calls Gore a “crook" presiding over an eco-business that pumps out cash. As for Gore’s French followers, the author likens them to religious zealots who, far from saving humanity, are endangering it. Driven by a Judeo-Christian guilt complex, he says, French greens paint worst-case scenarios and attribute little-understood cycles to human misbehavior.
Yet the Goracle is still giving his little slide show—at $6,500/minute—with no Q&A. Probably doesn’t wanna be asked about Václav Klaus…
It is not about scientific ecology; it is about environmentalism, which is a new anti-individualistic, pseudo-collectivistic ideology based on putting nature and environment and their supposed protection and preservation before and above freedom. [RTWT]
Apparently Hillary! has decided she likes that “don’t bother me with questions” tactic, too. Wonder what she’s dodging....
Reigning Confusion
a “neener neener” ??!??
The Pakistan government has claimed that PPP leader Benazir Bhutto did not die of bullet or shrapnel injury, thereby creating a controversy over as to how the leader was killed.
Speaking to reporters at a press conference, Javed Cheema, Interior Ministry spokesperson, said that the injury on the slain leader was actually caused by the lever of the sunroof of her vehicle.
Benazir peeped out of the sunroof of the SUV but the shock of the explosion by the suicide bomber made her fall back. She got injured on her skull by the lever, Cheema said.
Cheema also claimed that Al Qaeda leader Betulla Masood ordered the killing of Bhutto. The Pakistan government has intercepts of congratulations message on her killing,
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Putz Wannabe
almost makin’ it
uh oh...
here we go
Former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has been killed in a suicide bomb blast in Rawalpindi.
...shot twice at close range as she entered her car after an election rally speech before a suicide bomber blew himself up close by.
A party aide said she was shot once in the neck and once in the chest as her car pulled into a main street.
A police officer at the scene said: “As party leaders, including Bhutto, started coming out a man tried to go close to them and then he fired some shots and blew himself up."
Rehman Malik, a security adviser for her Pakistan People’s Party blamed the government for failing to protect Ms Bhutto.
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Kicker
Pie, face.
A “Photo Journal: A Mongolian Nomad Family” caught my eye while following another linky. I love this kind of stuff so I cliked thru.
When the snow sets in, the temperature can fall to minus 40C. [-40F] The family will move into the mountains, where firewood is available.
Deforestation is a serious problem in Mongolia, because of the demand for winter fuel.
The women do most of the milking ... Dairy products are the staples of the nomad diet, along with rice, flour and a little meat. ...By October, there is little grass left ...so the livestock’s meagre diet is supplemented by the family’s scraps.
[The men are] responsible for herding the family’s animals and making occasional trips into town for staples such a rice and flour. ...[and] the heavy work, such as the dismantling of the yurts every few months so the family can move on.
The felt walls [of the yurt] are supported by a wooden framework that can be collapsed quickly and packed onto yak wagons or vans.
Some yurts have their own generators for electric lighting and television.
Wow. A life so entirely different from my own. Sure, they raise cows; we raise cows—but ... And they’ve been living much like that for thousands of years, except they’re coming slowly into this century with their generators and their TV.
There’s a certain appeal to that life for me, out with the endless views, the rhythms of life based on the milking cycle, the seasons and the rise and set of the sun. No ‘tards shouting into cellfones, waiting in lines, fighting strangers to get to the produce racks or the cheese bins. No traffic… Yet I think I wouldn’t do it so well.
Oh yeah; the ‘kicker’ I promised? The last line of the story:
Life here is almost entirely sustainable.Next time ya hear an enviro-greenie or a planner say “sustainable,” know that this kind of life is what’s really being talked about.
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Merry Christmas
From our house to yours
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{/if}
