Panna Cotta Shots

Set 1: [4 glasses]
8 T CranRaspberry juice
1/2 t gelatin [scant]
few drops creme de cacao

Set 2: [2 glasses]
3T Cassis
1/4T gelatin [generous]

Halve the liquid and sprinkle the gelatin over top.  Let sit a few minutes then stir.  Warm in microwave, 10 seconds at a time, until gelatin dissolves.  Stir in rest of liquid.

Pour into pretty shot glasses—about 1/3.  Set glasses into empty egg carton at rakish angles.  Refrigerate for about an hour til set.

Panna Cotta
1C Cream
1T sugar
drops vanilla
drops almond
1.5 oz shaved good chocolate [ScharffenBerger 70% or 99% recommended]
1/4C cream
1t gelatin

Put 1/4C cream into 2C pyrex spouted measuring cup and sprinkle gelatin over top.  Heat 1C cream on stove with sugar until sugar melts.  Do NOT allow to boil, but heat well.  Stir gelatin cream and add chocolate shavings.  Pour warm cream over top and stir.  Add vanilla and almond essence and stir more.  Keep stirring until gelatin is melted and chocolate incorporated.

Pour gently over top of chilled tilty shots.  Fill to almost top edge covering all gel.  Chill again—upright—for at least 2 hours.  4 would be better.  Garnish with dusting of nutmeg / chocolate shavings / single perfect raspberry / imagination.

Serve with demitasse coffee as an excuse to use demitasse spoons.  A good ruby port wouldn’t hurt.

Just for fun.

I’ll update and let ya know which was better…

Remember those sustainable high-rises?  Those 800sf apartments with a workplace downstairs and a smart train in walking distance?  Yeah.  Here’s another step towards herding us all in there.

The Obama administration will accept no more public input for a federal strategy that could prohibit U.S. citizens from fishing some of the nation’s oceans, coastal areas, Great Lakes, and even inland waters.

This announcement comes at the time when the situation supposedly still is “fluid” and the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force* still hasn’t issued its final report on zoning uses of these waters.

...Council on Environmental Quality *...

...WWF, Greenpeace, Defenders of Wildlife, Pew Environment Group and others produced a document entitled “Transition Green” shortly after Obama was elected in 2008. What has happened since suggests that the task force has been in lockstep with that position paper. ["Recommendations for the Adoption and Implementation of an Oceans, Coasts, and Great Lakes National Policy.” *PDF]

...some of these same organizations have revealed their anti-fishing bias by playing fast and loose with “facts,” in attempts to ban tackle containing lead in the United States and Canada.

Typical tactic.  Remember the “take the lead out of hunting” dealio recently, based on the claim that condors are eating the lead left in the wild and dying?

[Phil Morlock, director of environmental affairs for Shimano* and board member of Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation (CSF) *] fears that “what we’re seeing coming at us is an attempted dismantling of the science-based fish and wildlife model that has served us so well. There’s no basis in science for the agendas of these groups who are trying to push the public out of being able to fish and recreate.

“Conflicts (user) are overstated and problems are manufactured. It’s all just an excuse to put us off the water."

uhm… Yup.

”...unless anglers speak up and convince their Congressional representatives to stop this bureaucratic freight train, it appears that the task force will issue a final report for “marine spatial planning” by late March, with President Barack Obama then issuing an Executive Order to implement its recommendations — whatever they may be.

If ya can’t fish and ya can’t hunt… If ya can’t own private property nor set foot on national park/federal property… Well ain’t that the very definition of dependent?

It’s a series of small steps—lots of ‘em.

WZ

NB to GB:

Eric Massa was one of 39 House Democrats who voted against health care reform. A third of those Democrats were, like Massa, newly elected. All but one of them was, like Massa, from districts that voted for John McCain. A good chunk of them were, like Massa, in districts which had recently elected Republicans. ...

Put another way, he won the seat by the skin of his teeth and if he didn’t mind his P’s and Q’s, he would lose it.

So he was expected to vote against health care. His constituents didn’t want it, and he had to oppose it. That was understood by all, including the Democratic leadership of the House.

...The claim that Massa is being taken down for voting against health care, while others who did the same thing are being treated kindly and even rewarded, is preposterous.

It is an illogical and unbelievable lie.

Ace Healdines

Aww… who’m I kiddin’?  This is why I didn’t even look at her yet.  I knew there was a ‘rat in the woodpile somewhere… This poor boobette can’t even frame the question without tripping over her own preconceptions.

[psst.  Hey Blondie.  What if you asked the question, “How does this country best achieve an educated citizenry capable of self-governance?” rather than tread yet again the over-worked path of “How do we fix public education?]

”...Where I began as a proponent of “States’ Rights” in education, I have ended by believing that we will never meet our own expectations of public education unless the federal government is willing to play a consistent, long-term role; unless education truly becomes a matter of national policy, not just a matter of national rhetoric."

These words were written by Carly Fiorina in the introduction to her 1989 master’s thesis for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

PFD of full thesis here.  Stay tuned to Red County for his analysis of it—and his willingness to be convinced that Fiorina has actually changed her mind; he’s reached out to her campaign for comment.  Me—I’m gonna go have a nice lie down…

Pat Riotic

VDH clarity.

I have talked with a few students and employees over the last year and I think the angst behind the protests runs something like this. In sum, apparently state employees, teachers, and students believe that there is either (a) a “stash” of money somewhere that is unspent and could easily ease their pain (e.g.,” they” have all sorts of money and are lying to us about its undisclosed location); (b) we could raise income, sales, and gas taxes to even more record highs and encourage perhaps 4,000 a week to leave in consequence (e.g., why do some need BMWs or private planes when “we” need cheaper tuition?); (c) the 1% who pay about 50% of the state income tax burden could easily pay 80-90% of it (e.g., I get along on $50,000, so why can’t someone who makes $300,000 give $250,000 of it to meet “our” needs?); (d) we could renounce our debts to state bond holders (if they have excess cash to buy bonds, why are they so greedy not to give “us” some of it?) and use the savings for more subsidies, entitlements, and salaries (without my job at the DMV, prison, school (fill in the blanks), the rest of you could not survive.)

srsly.  RTWT.

...political influence and lobbyists are shaping Obama administration policy...

whaaa???!?!?

The emails show that the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) coordinated their response to a damning Spanish report on “green jobs” with wind industry lobbyists and the Center for American Progress (the progressive think tank founded by John Podesta and funded by George Soros).

*

Human Achievement Hour coincides with the earth hour campaign but salutes those who keep the lights on and produce the energy that makes human achievement possible. ... While earth hour activists will be left in the dark, Human Achievement Hour participants will be going to the cinema, enjoying a hot meal, driving their car or watching television. ... there is no limit to what mankind can achieve.

proposal by Sen. Tom Harman, R-Hungtington Beach ...“Jobs Protection Act" ...any bills that might be detrimental to businesses in the state would be analyzed by an existing bipartisan, six-member body called the Joint Committee on Boards, Commissions and Consumer Protections, which includes senators and Assembly members.

The analysis would assess the bill’s general effect on the state’s economy, whether it will raise taxes or fees, add environmental regulations, boost housing costs or increase requirements for workers’ compensation, disability or health insurance.

Analysts would calculate the estimated annual average cost for businesses to comply with each bill.

It’s complex.  It relies on the Demented Klownz in the CA legislature to make a decision based on financial realities, a subject they know only slightly less about than they do about orbital mechanics. 

It’s a start.

I’ve thought so often about moving.... somewhere... What an adventure!  Finding a suitable piece of property, near a suitable community [not filled with moonbats, socialists and runaway Californianz] with similar easy weather, no bugs, low on the dangerous critter scale… With a house or two that is/are already finished and shaped like I like, barns that are functional already, pastures that are already in fine shape and productive… Packing up over a half-century’s accumulated equipment, stuff, supplies, things that might be useful ... and weeding out the junk…

Figuring out how to gather up the whole family—getting everyone to agree on a place to move to—....

Dang!  Adventure my Aunt Fahny!

Some times making a Last Stand is just a matter of being too f’n tired to move on.  So… Last Stand it is. Besides—there’s no place else where this disease is not gonna spread if it’s not stopped NOW.

But with material like this—‘t’ain’ gonna be easy.

When Republican Steve Poizner ran against Ira Ruskin in a heavily Democratic state Assembly district in 2004, Poizner assured voters he was against the war in Iraq, was 100 percent pro-choice and would stand up to “Republican Party bosses."

But six years after narrowly losing that Peninsula race to the liberal Ruskin, Poizner — who now wants to be governor — is painting himself as the only “true conservative” in the GOP primary. ...

in May 2004 Poizner told a Bay Area News Group reporter: “The right wing of the Republican Party does not represent me.” And during a televised debate five months later, he accused Ruskin and his consultants of trying “to confuse people” and “make people believe that I’m not really a moderate Republican."

C’mon!  They’re telling me that in a state with 37 million [legal] residents to choose from, this is the best that Demented Klown Kollege, the CA Republican Party, can do?!?

Well....  If we can get the borders closed [yes - closed] I’ll enjoy watching the McMansion developments plowed under to create farm land.

We The People are, at once,
smart enuff to make the money to fund a ginormous system;
yet dumb enough to need a ginormous system to make decisions for us.

Robert Reich:  “...Set minimum federal standards because we’ve seen over and over again that the recipients of health insurance don’t know what they are buying ...”

George Will:  “...There you have the premise of this legislation and the core of today’s liberalism: the American people are such dopes they can’t be counted upon to buy their own insurance.

Rodgie