We live in an age of marvels

What will they think of next. Here's a new product that will help kids get their homework done.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/5343111/Ball-and-chain-to-force-children-to-study.html

Girls gone wild

Susan Whatshername seems to be suffering from Post Dramatic Stress Syndrome as a result of all the attention she's been receiving since she wowed the judges and the audience with her performance on Britain's Got Talent. According to this article in The Sun, Susan has a bit of a mouth on her. I think her mouth should be washed out with whatever they call soap over there in Blighty.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/tv/britain_got_talent/2451169/Susan-Boyles-two-four-letter-rants-in-one-day-Britains-got-Talent.html

And in equal opportunity news, Brenda Lee, a reporter and self proclaimed Roman Catholic Priestess, showed up in in a self described cassock at the Los Angeles airport and got into a bit of a tiff with the Secret Service because they wouldn't let her give a letter to President Obama. Besides getting mad at the Secret Service, she also got mad at the Associated Press photographer because she thought he was trying to take a picture up her dress when they carried her away to the funny farm for observation.

Come to think of it the Secret Service guys were just doing their job; but maybe she's right about that Associate Press photographer. Maybe he was trying to take a picture up her dress, the pervert.

The whole situation sounds quite stresful. I hope she's not suffering from Post Photographic Stress Syndrome.

http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Reporter-Dragged-Kicking-and-Screaming-From-Near-Air-Force-One-.html

Consider yourself warned that if you follow the links that are contained in the story about Brenda Lee you will find some strange stuff that is only believed in isolated parts of Georgia and in Reverend Wright's church in Chicago.

But, one sometimes finds gold amidst straw. The paragraph at the bottom of Brenda's latest article in the Georgia Informer about Catholic Priests exercising modern day Droite de Seigneur privileges is. . . is. . . is. . . let's just say that paragraph is startlingly inventive. I hope Brenda writes more before the aliens come back to get her for more experiments.

Vive La France

Here's an excellent video from Reason.tv that gives you an idea of what to expect after President Obama makes this country more like France.

http://reason.tv/video/show/773.html

Veronique de Rugy has it exactly right. It's one thing to visit France; but another thing entirely to live there.

And, in other news, here's a preview of a scary new movie. Warning, it has violence, hysteria and a brief appearance by Vice President Joseph Biden.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6duTolZMGmI

Who is John Galt, er, Tom Golisano?

When lifelong committed lefties like tom Golisano start talking and writing things that could have been pulled from the pages of Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged you know things are getting tense on the taxation front.

The irony, of course, is that once Golisano gets established as a Florida resident he will immediately start voting for new tax and spend laws that will eventually make Florida as dysfunctional and corrupt as New York.

Interesting quotes:

"Politicians like to talk about incentives -- for businesses to relocate, for example, or to get folks to buy local. After reviewing the new budget, I have identified the most compelling incentive of all: a major tax break immediately available to all New Yorkers. To be eligible, you need do only one thing: move out of New York state."

". . . the top 1 percent of earners account for about 50 percent of state revenue and are the ones who can and will leave. "

"Like I said, I love New York. But I'm not going to pay any more for the waste, corruption and inefficiency that is New York state government."

Wesley Mouch, er, Barack Obama, better get on this quick. Surely he can find some way to chain Tom Golisano and the other rich traitors to their homes in high tax states. President Obama should consider getting congress to pass a new law making it illegal for people to move across state lines without permission. It wouldn't be hard to draft such a law since the old USSR had one whose language can be copied. Or, President Obama could have his attorney general get a copy of Atlas Shrugged and just copy the Anti-Dog-Eat-Dog Bill or the Equalization of Opportunity bill that Wesley Mouch put into effect.

You can read the whole thing at the link below.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/05202009/postopinion/opedcolumnists/adios__new_york_170074.htm?&page=0

Hat tip to Kathry Jean Lopez of National Review whose post on The Corner led me to this New York Post column.

The wisdom of the ages

We ignore folk wisdom at our peril.

For instance: I've always remembered Pop as saying that you shouldn't plant your garden until May 20th because of the danger of frost. Sam, on the other hand, has always claimed that Pop's edict was that you can plant anytime after Mother's Day. We've gone around about this for years; and for years Sam has maintained that I've been planting too late.

Like the slow drip. . . drip. . . drip of Chinese Water Torture, uh, Chinese Intensive Interrogation, Sam's constant negative feedback and Al Gore's incessant harping about global warming have weakened my allegiance to my own remembrance. So here I am on May 18th with all my carefully nurtured tomato and swiss chard and zucchini and cucumber plants already set out in the garden; and Linda mentioned this morning that they're predicting possible frost tonight.

Now, in a proper world, a mob of us peasants would rise up and go on a rampage with our shovels and rakes and hoes. We would put a dunce cap on Sam and equip him with a set of flimsy wings with which to stir the air over the tender tomato plants. And we would then storm off to capture Al Gore, the false Shaman, so as to render him down for fat to fuel smudge pots. The renderings from Al would fuel a lot of smudge pots and thus save a lot of crops.

But. . but. . . unfortunately we can't do those things, just yet. . . because the folly of the whole global warming hysteria has not yet become clear to enough of the population.

So instead we are reduced to reliance on our own singular efforts. In my own case I'm okay; because it happens that yesterday Linda replaced the living room drapes. The lining of the old drapes is a very thin material which will make perfect plant caps. You can bet that I'll be cursing later today as I go about tenting all the plants.

Meanwhile: in other news, Alec Baldwin has the Filipino segment of the great global multicultural community a tad upset. Alec was joking the other day about importing a Filipino mail order bride for breeding purposes; and it seems that Ramon Revilla, a senator in the Phillippines, was not amused. He threatened to open a big can of whup-ass on Alec.

For myself, I wasn't terribly offended by Alec's remarks about mail order brides because I'm not Filipino. But I was wondering how it is that Alec didn't get some negative feedback from the Gaia community for wanting more children, they being bad for the environment and all. And that got me to wondering how it is that Baldwin is still here in the United States. As I recall Alec was one of the lefty idiots who threatened to leave the country in the event George W. Bush was re-elected back in 2004. Why is Alec Baldwin still here in the U.S. spouting his racial hatred? Shouldn't he be, like overseas somewhere, like maybe in The Phillippines?

And another thing. How is it that President Barack Obama's continuance of George W. Bush's evil war in Iraq has not caused lefties like Alec Baldwin to go ballistic? Back before the recent election I distinctly recall being reminded that the war in Iraq was evil and that it was moreover causing terrible problems because it was costing $8 Billion per month.

Well, here we are, well into President Barack Obama's new Hope and Change regime, and Barry has found time to spend like many trillions of dollars on Hopey Changey stuff; but somehow he hasn't found time to end the war in Iraq, which was just funded by Obama's Democratic Party controlled congress for another eight months at the rate of, uh, $8 Billion per month. Surely the left still cares about that $8 Billion per month.

And surely President Obama wasn't lying back during the campaign when he constantly promised to end the war in Iraq and do a whole bunch of other Hopey Changey stuff like close the evil and illegal prison down in Guantanamo Bay where President Bush put all those misunderstood sons of liberty who our military captured in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Thinking about President Obama has me remembering some old wisdom of Aunt Mary R's. During virtually any discussion of politicians she would remind you that "they're all whoremasters." She couldn't get away with saying that today of course because calling Barack Obama a whoremaster, or criticizing him in any way, would quickly be denounced as racism by the baying leftist pack, he being half Kenyan and all.

If President Obama was half Filipino, apparently, anybody could go on national TV like Alec Baldwin and joke about buying one of his daughters with a credit card on EBay and having her shipped to his home for breeding, and none of the politically correct crowd of race hustlers would turn a hair.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D988KQ001&show_article=1

Update: In other news, our pal Alec Baldwin has suddenly discovered that he hates Detroit cars and wants to see U.S. auto workers out of work after shilling for Chevy Tahoes for years. And he goes on and on about global warming despite the fact that he wants to wants to buy and import a Filipino to make another carbon spewing offspring. Do the United Auto Workers Union and the National Organization for Women know about this guy?

http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MmU4YzVlYWExNzMxOTU2NDlhMDA2MjgyM2FjMTg5ZGM=

Hat Tip to Greg Pollowitz, of National Review's blog Planet Gore, who evidently has a strong enough stomach to keep a closer eye on Alec Baldwin than I do.

Mangia, mangia, tuta cosa

Forget about buying cookbooks. Clara Cunnicciari will teach you to cook for free. I'm going to serve Linda her poor man's meal one of these nights, right after I remember to make lobscouse.

The best part about Clara is that she's so absent minded. In her pepper and eggs video she said she never uses a cutting board; in this video she pulls out a cutting board. Also, in this video she tells the same story twice within a couple of minutes. Plus, she makes you cringe from the way she's handling a knife; it's surprising she still has all her fingers at 91 years old.

She'd better hurry and make all the videos she wants to make before the nanny state people take away her knives and disconnect her stove.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OPQqH3YlHA&feature=channel

Wow! Even the Spender in Chief is starting to get it

"We can’t keep on just borrowing. . . We have to pay interest on that debt, and that means we are mortgaging our children’s future with more and more debt.”

What a shocking statement! And what's even more shocking is that it wasn't made by some dreary economist or some boring anal-retentive accountant. It was made by none other than President Barack Obama, the Spender in Chief, the Guns and Butter Guy, the Damn the Torpedoes, Full Spend Ahead Guy. And he made that statement a few days after he signed the largest deficit spending budget in all of recorded time.

Duh!

And double duh!

Last year the man promised not to increase taxes on anyone earning less than $250,000. And he promised expensive goodies to every special interest group this side of Pluto. And 53% of you all elected him on those promises. And here we are, less than four months into his time in office, and now he tells us that chickens have an unfortunate tendency to come home to roost, to borrow a colorful phrase.

Here's a news bulletin for you. President Obama can tax every penny that the rich earn and it won't pay for more than a small down payment on the trillions and trillions of new spending bills that Nancy Pelosi and her pals in congress passed and that he quickly signed into law, breaking another one of his promises, which was that his new Hope and Change administration would post all new laws on the internet so everybody could see what he was doing.

The government can only pay for its spending in three ways. It can tax, it can borrow, or it can print money. It's already taxing at near the limit of what it can without dipping into the pockets of the middle class and the working class for a lot bigger chunk of their earnings. It's already borrowing at about the limit of what it can without causing those pesky foreigners to demand higher interest payments on the already existing huge government bond debt. And it's already printing at the rate of about a hundred billion per month.

For now the Obama economy appears to be working; but it's working like an old car whose radiator is overheating while it's driving on the level. The minute the world economy begins to recover from the recession interest rates are going to shoot up fast and high. That will choke off the recovery. Google stagflation if you have time to learn a little about economics and rational expectations and negative feedback.

Meanwhile, you can read all about President Obama's sudden discovery of basic economics in the Bloomberg article I've linked to below.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aJsSb4qtILhg&refer=worldwide

It's a great time to be alive; but a pall is settling over the world

Mark Steyn recetnly gave a great speech at Hillsdale College. Here are a few paragraphs:

""Give people plenty and security, and they will fall into spiritual torpor," wrote Charles Murray in In Our Hands. "When life becomes an extended picnic, with nothing of importance to do, ideas of greatness become an irritant. Such is the nature of the Europe syndrome."

The key word here is "give." When the state "gives" you plenty—when it takes care of your health, takes cares of your kids, takes care of your elderly parents, takes care of every primary responsibility of adulthood—it's not surprising that the citizenry cease to function as adults: Life becomes a kind of extended adolescence—literally so for those Germans who've mastered the knack of staying in education till they're 34 and taking early retirement at 42. Hilaire Belloc, incidentally, foresaw this very clearly in his book The Servile State in 1912. He understood that the long-term cost of a welfare society is the infantilization of the population.

Genteel decline can be very agreeable—initially: You still have terrific restaurants, beautiful buildings, a great opera house. And once the pressure's off it's nice to linger at the sidewalk table, have a second café au lait and a pain au chocolat, and watch the world go by. At the Munich Security Conference in February, President Sarkozy demanded of his fellow Continentals, "Does Europe want peace, or do we want to be left in peace?" To pose the question is to answer it. Alas, it only works for a generation or two. And it's hard to come up with a wake-up call for a society as dedicated as latterday Europe to the belief that life is about sleeping in."

The entire speech is here: http://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis.asp

A trillion here a trillion there

First a warning. The five minute video at the post below is about a very boring subject and your share of the loot they're talking about is only $30,000, so it may not be worth your time.

I'm not the most careful person in the world about balancing our checkbook; and I'm even less careful about doing anything that can be called budgeting; but it's just a little shocking to find out the the Federal Reserve doesn't regularly balance its multi-trillion dollar checkbook. And it's even more shocking that the Federal Reserve doesn't keep track on who it sends the trillions to and how much it gets paid back.

http://zerohedge.blogspot.com/2009/05/federal-reserve-can-not-account-for-9.html

And, in lighter news: The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article about Italian bicycle racing, which, unsurprisingly, is far more manly and authentic than the sissified French variety.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124209602462609577.html#mod%3Darticle-outset-box%26articleTabs%3Dcomments

Fry me kangaroo brown, Sport

The title of this science article was too good to change. Gino's in Norristown may have been way ahead of the curve on reducing greenhouse gases. They were rumored to be serving kangaroo meat hamburgers way back in the 1960's.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080811074908.htm

And, in related news: it turns out that cows are 25 percent less gassy if you're careful what you feed them. I could have told them that.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090507145752.htm

And, proving that some scientists aren't getting enough brain food in their diets, these fellows just discovered that you gain weight if you eat more.

Their stunning conclusion - "To return to the average weights of the 1970s, we would need to reverse the increased food intake of about 350 calories a day for children (about one can of fizzy drink and a small portion of French fries) and 500 calories a day for adults (about one large hamburger)," Swinburn said. "Alternatively, we could achieve similar results by increasing physical activity by about 150 minutes a day of extra walking for children and 110 minutes for adults, but realistically, although a combination of both is needed, the focus would have to be on reducing calorie intake."

I would sure love to have a couple of pieces of the pizza that the mildly chubby kid in the picture is scarfing down. I bet he would love it even better if it had pepperoni on it.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090508045321.htm

Finally, in completely unrelated news: Antiques Roadshow junkies can find a virtually unlimited number of appraisals to waste time watching at pbs.org. And those who are truly desperate can find unlimited timewasters at hulu.com

At least the recent monsoon didn't drive any of these into the house

Little ants are busy making a nest in our mailbox and box turtles are fleeing in panic to higher ground. Both the insects and the reptiles are reacting to the fact we've had over six inches of rain here in the past week or so. Yesterday they could have filmed a Bollywood celebrate the coming of the monsoon dance number on our lawn. This morning they could have filmed a new Godzilla versus Mothra movie down at the creek, co-starring the insane goose that spent an hour or so maniacally splashing under the bridge.

I haven't seen any of these (http://news.aol.com/article/giant-spiders-invade-town/466956?icid=mainmaindl1link4http%3A%2F%2Fnews.aol.com%2Farticle%2Fgiant-spiders-invade-town%2F466956) yet; but I'm keeping a wary eye out.

In other nature news, the bad linear growing bamboo is making an unbelievably vigorous break for freedom this spring. Shoots are coming up all over the place in an area about fifty feet in diameter around the main clump. It's an impressive but, I fear (hope?), futile effort. As soon as the ground dries up, if it ever dries up, I'll introduce those new shoots to my friend John Deere. Hopefully the box turtles will all be wise enough lay low. I really don't want to know if Mr. Deere can beat his existing fifty or so yard record for flinging half of a turtle.

In completely unrelated news, my barber at the Quick Cuts this morning was, I think, Charlie Jiggs great grandson. My unsureness comes from the fact that he was a little confused as to whether his grandfather was a part time barber and he had never heard talk of the Redpeppers or of a cousin Gussie P. So he may be descended from another Charlie P in Norristown. He's going to send me his email address so I can send him a picture of the Redpeppers to show his uncle Steve. There was a Stevie Jiggs in Pop's generation as I recall, brother to Frankie, Louie and Charlie; but I don't think we ever met him.

In still other news, I bought a couple of red sweet pepper plants at the Redners. I fear my garden is going to be as overcrowded as always again this year, even though I've almost doubled its size. I have 16 tomatoes, six zucchinis, four cucumbers and a whole bunch of swiss chard to squeeze in there. And that assumes I give Sam, Jase and Marianne some of the truly excessive number of cherry tomato swiss chard plants that I started from seed as an insurance policy against cutworms, rabbits, groundhogs, rampaging birds, etc. There's no worry about the deer since I'll be fortifying the new larger garden as well as last year's circle.

Update: I just introduced the cute little ants to Mr. Raid. Au revoir little ants.

And, I just opened an email from Don A down in Florida that included this link to the worlds neatest train set. If Naz has access to the internet he will go nuts over this train layout. Well worth the five minutes or so. This train set is as elaborate as the Barbarossa plan.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN_oDdGmKyA&feature=player_embedded

Why indeed?

President Obama has gone out of his way to kill the Washington D.C. education vouchers program despite the fact that he is sending his own daughters to a private school and despite the fact that he has fought to shower money on virtually everything else in the country.

Veronique de Rugy of National Review linked to an interesting short video in which the mother of one of the children affected, a woman who marched for Obama, asks "Why?".

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NzU2YzFjMTBlMTA4NDk2Zjk4N2Q4MDE2YzVmOTNkMDY=

The state of inner city public school education in this country has been far worse than merely shameful for decades. City governments and the the state and federal governments spend more and more while the inner city public schools achieve less and less. Meanwhile the teachers unions and other special interests fight any program, such as education vouchers, that attempts to do something concrete and measurable about the problem. It's hard to avoid coming to the conclusion that the teachers unions and the politicians who control education are actively working to ensure that inner city people remain uneducated. At very best the teachers unions and city politicians don't give a damn.

Jas is down in Florida or I would ask him about this

While Jas and Kathy are busy enjoying themselved down in The Villages there has been shocking new research that may explain global warming. I went down to Jas's Post Office to try to get the Postal Service's official explanation; but the clerk yelled at me to "Get lost, Schmuck!" just like she yelled at the six people ahead of me in the line that snaked through the piles and boxes of undelivered mail in the lobby.

http://joannenova.com.au/2009/05/03/shock-global-temperatures-driven-by-us-postal-charges/

Not that I'm complaining, but both of my faithless brothers have been completely incommunicado since they went to Florida. They don't call, they don't write; it's like they've fallen off the face of the earth. I called Al R on Saturday morning, so I know that Jas was still alive and had been seen as of Friday of last week; but for all I know he and Sam may have been eaten by boa constrictors or alligators out on one of the golf courses since then.

Linda and I are bearing up as well as we can under the strain. On Saturday night we managed to combine the Chasse' with our former Waltz routine up at the Ballroom on High where there was pleasingly sparse attendance, so the dance floor was relatively open for experimentation. Dawn, Barb and Patsy all asked where Jas and Kathy were and how they were doing. I had to tell them that I had heard nothing.

A great history lesson

Cossetted idiots have been blathering about war crimes a lot recently because three (yes 3) Al Quaeda big shots were waterboarded in order to cause them to talk about the plans and makeup of their organization. Most of the posturing is politically motivated; but there are actually some truly amazing idiots out there who think war is some kind of refereed sport whose rules can be neatly written down in a book like the rules for a baseball game. It simply isn't so, and it never will be so.

This moral backbiting game recently resulted in comedian John Stewart parrotting the increasingly but wrongly held idea that President Harry Truman's use of the atomic bombs against Japan was unnecessary and a war crime. The only thing nice that can be said about people who believe that is that they may deserve some leniency by reason of insanity or by virtue of lack of education about the attitudes of the leaders of Japan and the attitudes of a significant portion of the Japanese people during World War II.

Later John Stewart turned around and retracted his judgement of Harry Truman as a war criminal, probably because he was informed by his horrified writers and political commissars that Truman was a Democrat. He was probably also informed that Truman was the immediate successor to Franklin D. Roosevelt who is a Democratic Party Saint, in part because he ordered the development of the atomic bombs and the long range B29 bombers which Truman later used to drop them on Japan. The only reason Roosevelt himself didn't order the use of the atomic bombs was because they weren't ready before he died. You can be sure of that because Roosevelt never shrank from ordering the firebombing of cities, though, and the firebombing attacks killed many more people than the atomic bomb attacks.

Don't get me wrong here. I'm not attacking Roosevelt or Truman for those decisions. They were running this country during a war to the death. Based on lot of reading I think they prosecuted that war with reasonable competence and reasonable humanity given the nature of the times and the nature of the other combatant nations.

Here is a video takedown of the whole concept of the atomic bombing of Japan as a war crime. It's excellent.

http://www.pjtv.com/video/Afterburner_/The_True_Story_of_the_Atomic_Bombs/1808/

I feel like I wasted my time in college

Relative to these guys I was very lazy during my college days. I never applied myself as much as these guys obviously have.

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZjZkNzY0ODA4MmY1MjMwNzRjMGI2N2IwNGMwYzBkNTI=

Meanwhile, it appears we're not doomed to freeze in the dark

Quietly and stealthily the drilling companies have been finding ways to produce potentially enormous amounts of natural gas right here in the U.S. And the politicians have started to list natural gas along with wind and solar when they talk about "alternative" sources of energy.

Laissez les bon temps roulez.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124104549891270585.html#mod%3Darticle-outset-box%26articleTabs%3Dcomments

As is usual on the Wall Street Journal site the comments on the article are well worth skimming if you're interested in the topic. The WSJ limits comments to subscribers who provide their full name with the comment so there are fewer annoying trolls, and the commenters generally know a bit about economics, unlike politicians and many so called environmentalists.

Heavens to murgatroyds - I'm very, very mildly famous

Commentary Magazine's Contentions Blog chose one of my comments as their Post of the Day.

"A large part of MoveOn’s success was rooted in the fact that it was well launched and organized long before the start and most especially the bogging down of the Iraq war provided it with its most effective issue. The Tea Party movement is most interesting because it seems well launched and ready to grow long before the ‘chickens’ inherent in Obama’s statist policies can reasonably be expected to ‘come home to roost.’

There is simply no way to pay for Obama’s initiatives with taxes only on those earning over $250,000 or even $150,000 and there is no way the economy can resume rapid long term growth anytime soon given the much larger share of output that Obama’s plans will consume. The anger at passing on the tax and slower growth burden on to the children and grandchildren will pale next to the anger that will arise once people see taxes and slower growth impact on their own household finances."

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/gjermani/64111

Here's a swine talking about the flu on MSNBC

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/30494440#30494440

http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/us_world/Swine-Flu-0428.html

I wonder what the environmentalists and the Mayor of New York think about him suggesting that people shouldn't use subways to get to work.

I also wonder if anyone in his family has taken the subway anywhere since he was bought lock stock and barrel and became "the Senator from MBNA" thirty years ago.

Finally, I wonder who's doing his makeup. He looks like he has dropsy or something.

Meanwhile, the Muslims in Egypt are franticly killing all the pigs owned by the Coptic Christians, even though the pigs being killed have nothing to do with spreading Swine Flu. This makes sense from a Muslim standpoint since its a great new way to get at what they really want to do, which is to starve out the Copts or force them to flee the country as they have been patiently doing for 1400 years. We should offer asylum to any and all Egyptian Coptic Christians who want to come to the U.S.

http://www.reuters.com/article/GCA-SwineFlu/idUSTRE53T4BA20090430

Au contraire - it's great news for porkophiles

Every so often one comes across a great example of how ignorant even very smart people can be about simple economics. The other day, for instance, Richard Besser, who is an MD and acting head of the Centers for Disease Control, said that swine flu is "not helpful to people who eat pork."

Au contraire, Dicky, swine flu is great news for porkophiles who are smart enough to understand that you can't get the disease from a pork chop or a fresh ham or a slab of bacon. It may be wise to avoid contact with recently arrived travellers from Mexico; but avoiding contact with a nice porkette sandwich won't do you a bit of good on the swine flu front.

Prices of pork in the market are going down, folks.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N28343516.htm

A great poster that says it all about energy

Environmentalists are blocking every energy related project they can, even projects like wind and solar that they say they want.

For the time being we here in the U.S. have sufficient access to energy. But every year our population increases; and every year our need for more electricity and gasoline and natural gas and heating oil increases. If the loonies keep blocking projects aimed at building power plants and refineries and developing more oil and gas wells there will eventually be shortages.

I liked the poster this fellow developed in response to Earth Day. North Korea is an object example of what happens when government bureaucrats control everything.

http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YTMwMjJhNzYzMWIyY2ZmZmE5ZmUwMTU4MjA2MmNmZmQ=

And, in other news: the sun remains quiet, very quiet. We've had a few unseasonably warm days here in Collegeville recently; but if the sun is going into a significant quiet period as some scientists suspect things may get pretty chilly around here.

If you think global warming is a reason for running around screaming and shouting that the sky is falling, you should do some googling on the subject of the Little Ice Age and get a grip on something really worth hyperventilating about. Even if global warming is real, it's effects on agriculture and such at the levels the alarmists project are trivial relative to the sort of disruptions that significant global cooling would cause.

But we'll all be dead of swine flu by then anyway, so why worry.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/the-missing-sunspots-is-this-the-big-chill-1674630.html

Two more innocent victims of George Bush

If their father had been home to teach elementary safety rules this accident would never have happened; so these two boys are victims of George Bush's war on terror.

He would have told them, "Don't pull the pin until you're ready to throw it into a crowded restaurant."

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hj_VEag9J7Nz_r_N9uq6Ng3hBMqAD97ODIVO1

How come Matty and Sonny never played this sport?

Competitive firefighting. The best event is a combination of drag racing and ladder climbing. A verbal description of it can't be adequately comprehended by anyone who hasn't had at least a few beers. You have to see it done to appreciate it.

This video also has the drag racing, hose laying and hose control event.

You'll have to check out some of the other related videos if you want to see the competitive ladder climbing and bucket brigade event. That's pretty nifty too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0ZSSwTsmrY&feature=related

Incidently, I celebrated Earth Day by picking a couple of plastic supermarket bags of broccoli rabe. I steamed it for three minutes and then mixed it with a bulb of chopped garlic and a bunch of olive oil while it was still hot. I sprinkled on salt several times as I gently mixed it. It took a surprising amount of salt. I was careful with the timing of the blanching and gentle with the mixing because I took a lot of flak from Mom and Aunt Mary one time for turning a batch of rabes too mushy.

I saute'd a nice portion for a few minutes in olive oil to take the heat out of the garlic and we had that with dinner. The rest is in four freezer containers that will provide the makings of a lot of sandwiches. I like it with boiled ham on either a seeded hard football roll (which is the best as long as one has teeth strong enough to handle it) or on sliced seeded split loaf from Corropolese. I also like to put a little mayonnaise on that sandwich, which used to make Pop nuts when he saw me do it. Pop had a very negative opinion of mayonnaise.

I wonder if Vince Foster's gun is still in the evidence locker

David Kellerman, the Chief Financial Officer of Freddie Mac, appears to have committed suicide. Here's a quote from a news story about it. The link to the story is below.

"Kellermann, 41, had has been with Freddie Mac for more than 16 years.

He had been named acting chief financial officer in September 2008, taking over after Anthony "Buddy" Piszel resigned. Freddie Mac's CEO David Moffett resigned last month.

Government-controlled Freddie Mac, based in McLean, has been criticized heavily for reckless business practices. Some say those practices contributed to the nation's housing and financial crisis. Freddic Mac owns or guarantees about 13 million home loans.

As CFO, Kellermann was responsible for the company's financial controls, financial reporting and oversight of the company's budget and financial planning."

http://www.wtopnews.com/?sid=1657033&nid=25

It's interesting that this guy's predecessor, Anthony "Buddy" Piszel, suddenly started making political contributions when he became CFO of Freddie Mac in 2006.
http://www.campaignmoney.com/political/contributions/anthony-piszel.asp?cycle=08

Maybe, that's not surprising though, because according to his employment agreement that I found on the web (but can't seem to link to) Piszel was given a $7.5 Million signing on bonus for taking that job in 2006. And his employment contract guaranteed him $1.2 Million in severance pay, so that's probably what he got when he resigned last fall after two years there. There's nothing wrong with that, except for the fact that it's a bit more than odd to give a fellow a $7.5 Million signing bonus for a job that pays only $650,000 in salary per year, and it's an interesting coincidence that such a fellow should suddenly become very interested in making big political contributions.

Paul G. George, who signed Piszel's employment contract, made only $7,400 in political contributions in 2008, so I'm guessing he's a relatively little fish at Freddie Mac even though his title is Executive VP of Human Resources. He signed the Piszel contract; but my guess is that it was negotiated by someone else with a whole lot more clout.
http://www.freddiemac.com/bios/exec/george.html
http://www.campaignmoney.com/political/contributions/paul-george.asp?cycle=08

Checking around the web I find that David Kellerman doesn't appear to have made many political contributions at all - those I found were just little ones. So he was probably a regular up from the ranks accountant type guy and not a wide awake political hanger on like most of those who have run Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac over the past few years while tens of billions have been squandered.

Accounting can apparently be a dangerous profession, just like lawyering, as Vince Foster learned. You want to be very judicious about opening up musty file drawers when you work in a place that serves as a cash machine for the politically powerful. You never know what you're going to find. You might find yourself falling forward onto the floor after a double tap to the back of the head; or you might find that you're being set up to take a fall and get depressed.

People have killed and been killed over a whole lot less money than the amount of loot that was laundered through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac over the past couple of decades.

Three men in a boat and the river upset

Jas just called me to cancel today's scheduled Scrabble and Pinochle games because he and Kathy are driving down to Florida a day early. They'll be down at their house in The Villages for the next couple of weeks. I'm imagining that I feel like Butch did when he drew a problematic Canasta hand.

Little did Butch know in the 1960's; but he almost surely coined a phrase that was new to the English language. When playing Canasta with Rose and Mom and Pop he would say, "Three men in a boat and the river upset." When I publish this post that phrase will appear on the web for the first time.

Sam's outrageous nickname for Rose and Butch was "Pruney and Mumbles;" which still makes me, him and Jas laugh on Saturday mornings when we remember it. It may well be the best nickname combination ever invented. Rose was one of those people who wrinkle up amazingly as they age. She was pruney at least twenty years before she died in the 1990's. And Butch, of course, mumbled. That phrase, "pruney and mumbles," had never appeared on the web until I published it in a post last fall.

At Harry's Potato Market in the 1960's Eddie Fight used to say "Smarty eh! Smarty had a party." That phrase, as I've transcribed it, will appear for the first time on the web after I publish this; but after searching around I think Eddie was parrotting a slight modification of the first line of a racist couplet from his youth. If you're interested in that couplet you can find it (where I did) in an online page from a book named Language, Communication & Education published in 1990.

This brave new internet world where one can skip blithely from learning the derivation of "Smarty had a party" to learning the surprisingly long and complex history of "Eenie, Meenie, Miney, Moe" is something else, something fantastic. And after I publish this it will be able to provide someone with a bit of a sense of the world of Eddie Fight. But it can't bring back the full flavor of a Dairy Queen banana split enjoyed on a hot summer evening by a 14 year old.

Eddie Fight was an interesting character. His face was wrinkled, pruney, like Rose's; but he also had the most amazing cauliflower ears and an interestingly mis-shapen nose. Pop mentioned years after I knew Eddie that his real last name wasn't "Fight." In his youth he had liked to fight in all venues, especially bars; but he never fought very well and he was a Bantamweight who liked to take on Heavyweights. When I first met Eddie he was living in the back of the potato market shed where Lefty used to sleep on the pile of burlap bags until the time he pulled a knife on Patty. Later Harry put Eddie up in the second floor apartment of a small commercial building he owned about a couple of hundred yards down Ridge Pike from the potato market.

I think Harry used to pay Eddie something as well; but he rarely did any work. He might wait on a customer if Patty and I were both busy with other customers; but mostly Eddie sat on an apple crate under the awning with Harry on the long summer evenings and reminisced about old times. Sometimes Gap B joined them. Gap owned Trooper Banana so, like Harry, he was a produce entrepreneur. Gap liked to gamble, and there were several groups of poker players who really, really liked to have Gap in their games; so his schedule only allowed him to come over every once in a while to discuss commodity prices and logistics and high finance with Harry as Eddie listened respectfully.

Patty, who hadn't learned the obvious lesson from the knife incident with Lefty, used to mock Eddie. And Eddie would respond, "Smarty eh. Smarty had a party." Sometimes his fists would clench up when he said that; but Eddie's prime fighting days were mostly over by that time; and anyway, Patty was the son of his padrone, so it would have been very bad form for Eddie to take a poke at him. Not that Patty didn't often deserve a poke.

Along about 9:30 or so Harry would give us the word to close up the Potato Market and Patty and I would cover up the watermelons and tomatoes and cantaloupes and other stuff with tarps while Harry would go back and get Kingy, and later Major, to set up for guard duty. You didn't want to get within reach of Kingy or Major's chain once they were on post for the night.

John S used to love riding his bike recklessly right along the perimeter of the beaten earth area where Kingy spent his mostly lazy days, just to provide him with a little thrill. John got a big kick out of Kingy's impotent fury when he did that. Until one day when he skidded and fell over the wrong way, into the beaten earth area. It was amazing how many puncture wounds Kingy managed to inflict before John could scramble out of reach.

Often, on especially warm nights, after we closed up the Potato Market, Patty would drive me down to pick up his cousins, Joe A and Butchy D, and we would go over to Saint Gabes home for bad boys to play water basketball. Bold as brass, Patty would walk into the boiler room and turn on the pool lights when we arrived. Mostly the gate to the pool was unlocked so getting in was no problem; but if it wasn't unlocked we would scale the fence. The irony of us sneaking into a detention center completely escaped me at the time. Patty said it was OK as long as we were quiet, so it was OK.

We would play water basketball until one of the brothers noticed the lights or the din we were making and came down to tell us we had to leave. Sometimes the brother would officiously make us line up against the fence and give us a short lecture. Patty was always very respectful of the brothers and very contrite; but sometimes we would wait in the car for a few minutes until the brother had returned to the dormitory if Patty felt the game had been cut too short. Once the coast was clear he would turn on the lights again and we would return to the pool. Even I knew that immediately returning to the scene of the crime was a bad idea, and Joe A used to be terrified; but we never got caught twice on the same evening so Patty evidently had the situation figured right. He later became a lawyer with the Public Defender's office.

After our game, usually about 11:00, our toes hurting and oozing a little blood from pushing off against the rough pool bottom, Patty would take us to Dairy Queen for a banana split which we would eat as we tooled around in Harry's old Chevy before dropping off Butchy D in Bridgeport and Joe A in Jeffersonville.

Those days are long gone and a present day Dairy Queen banana split is merely the palest shadow of what it was then, so Eddie with the cauliflower ears has the last laugh after all and Butch's sentiment says it all.

Smarty eh. Smarty had a party.

Three men in a boat and the river upset.

The sad degeneration of the human race

These three modern age wimps plan to ride from China to the English Channel on horses. They're planning to take three years to cover the 5,000 miles, riding less than 5 miles a day, which takes less than an hour on a walking horse. No doubt they'll spend the other 23 hours in each day luxuriating around the pool of a luxury hotel eating dainty finger foods and giving interviews about their arduous journey.

Back when men were men and horses were horses the Mongols covered fifty or sixty miles a day even though they often had to take time out from covering ground to attend to a bit of rape and pillage.

But the Mongols ate finger foods just like these modern wimps. Before setting out in the morning each Mongol put a nice cut of meat under his saddle blanket. Bouncing along on top of the meat all day tenderized it; and the heat and sweat from the horse cooked and seasoned it. I'll bet that steak was tasty at the end of a long day in the saddle.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.bfe2a5099d50f7a32a3ab49f3447dd0e.671&show_article=1

The party of Joe Sixpack raises the tax on beer to $1.25 a glass

Put the spend like drunken sailors Democrats together with the "tax fairness" Democrats and then splice them with the bend over and let me put this proctoscope up your butt nanny state Democrats and you get a $52 per barrel tax on beer in Oregon. There's change we can believe in. And now they're going to tax Joe Sixpack to cry in his beer about it.

Coming soon to a state near you.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123976316293519743.html

A tip of the hat to Veronique de Rugy, who linked to this post at National Review's blog The Corner

Billions for contributors, a few red cents for the rest

Over the past couple of years Goldman Sachs and other big contributors to the politicians down in Washington have bought up tens of billions of dollars worth of so called "toxic assets" at very large discounts from the banks and other institutions that originally bought them at face value.

It's almost as though Goldman Sachs and George Soros and the other big money political contributors knew something was in the works to make those "toxic assets" smell as sweet as the sea breeze off the Horn of Africa.

Starting in November, just before the election, the politicians and their bagmen conveniently made a plan to buy up those toxic assets at face value with your tax dollars. The architects of that plan were (big surprise!) Treasury Department and Federal Reserve Bank appointees who spent long careers with Goldman Sachs, and various other speculative companies controlled by George Soros and other big contributors to the politicians. Those bagmen (Rahm Emmanuel almost surely collected and counted the small bills for President Obama; I don't know who picked up the suitcases of loot for President Bush - his bribery collecting mechanism is less obvious) worked closely with Barney Frank, Chairman of the House of Representatives' Banking Committee and Chris Dodd, Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee.

The hundreds of billions of tax dollars that are providing windfalls ($13 Billion for the 100 partners who own Goldman Sachs, for instance - $130 Million each) are being laundered through AIG and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The chief guys who set up the laundering program are Ben Bernanke, appointed by President George W. Bush, and Timothy Geithner, appointed by President Barack H. Obama.

Goldman Sachs partners and their employees contributed about $6 Million in officially reported bribes to politicians in 2008 (75% to Democrats, 25% to Republicans). In order of bulging pockets, the following politicians collected the most boodle from Goldman Sachs over the past 20 years: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Mitt Romney, John McCain, Jim Himes, Chris Dodd, Rudy Giuliani, John Edwards, Arlen Specter, Rahm Emanuel, John Sununu, Jack Reed, Michael Skelly, Max Baucus, tom Harkin - the list goes on and on and on and on.
See http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=d000000085 for the details.

In return for the $6 Million, the politicians have so far paid back $13 Billion of your tax dollars to Goldman Sachs. That's a one year return of over 200,000 percent.

That's real "investment banking." Somali pirates don't get returns like that and their main expenses are for used rubber boats and boiled peanuts to feed their crews of cutthroats.

George Soros gave about $3.5 million to politicians in 2008; and Soros is probably even smarter than the Goldman Sachs partners if you judge based on his success at making billions by manipulating currencies over the years. Figure that Soros has also made at least a 200,000 percent return on his "investment" and you can assume that he's in his money bin rolling around in something like $10 Billion of your tax dollars.
see http://www.newsmeat.com/billionaire_political_donations/George_Soros.php

Talk about pirates! Shiver me timbers!

Referring to pirates, President Jefferson (or somebody) famously said, "Millions for defense, not one red cent for tribute."

Presidents Bush and Obama and their handmaidens Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Rahm Emanuel, Ben Bernanke and Timothy Geithner apparently believe in the motto, "Billions for contributors, a few red cents for the rest."

All in all, we're complacently overlooking the largest theft in the history of the world, the very Godfather of all thefts; while President Obama is keeping the media and us dazzled with his fancy footwork as he walks his new pooch and his smooth mouthwork as he proclaims how much he cares about the poor chumps who are going to get some crumbs from his programs.

A Treasury Secretary with his briefcase can steal a whole lot more than 10,000 men with guns. It's been written that 'every man defines the extent of his own greed." True enough, since Tim Geithner took the time and effort to cheat on a paltry 30 Grand or so in taxes while he was being groomed to steal tens of billions in the smoothest heist since that clever dude cheated his brother Ishmael out of his birthright for a bowl of porridge.

Incidently, please don't read this as a partisan attack on the Democrats. When politicians steal on this scale they make sure everybody dips their beak so they can be sure nobody important enough to get attention will squeal. Just to prove this really is a bipartisan post, here's then Senator Obama yucking it up at a roast held in 2005 for Rahm Emanuel. You will notice that there are no suitcases of small bills visible in this video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHX-g1FtaMs&feature=related

Some dreams come true

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY

And, if you haven't seen this other one, it's worth a listen also. It's of Paul Potts, a cell phone salesman, getting his big chance to show what he can do.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k08yxu57NA&feature=related

Of course there are limits to what can be expected of amateurs, so here's a professional doing Nessum Dorma the way all of us shower singers wish we could sing it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VATmgtmR5o4&feature=related

And, it's impossible to listen to Pavarotti doing Nessum Dorma during the Easter season without being lured to him doing perhaps the greatest song ever written. I especially like that Pavarotti clearly looks at his musical score many times as he's singing, even though he must have sung Schubert's Ave Maria a thousand times.

Oh for the innocent long ago days when the nuns marched us from Holy Saviour school down to the church singing this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uYrmYXsujI&feature=related

Full credit where due

Navy Seal snipers efficiently eliminated the three Somalian pirates who were holding and threatening the life of an American hostage.

Three cheers for the Seals. We all owe a great debt of gratitude both to the Seals directly involved in this situation and to all Americans who dedicate their careers to the arduous training necessary to carry out such feats, especially insofar as the Seals, like all of our fighting men and law men, also put their own lives at risk in situations dicier than this one in our defense.

Three cheers also for President Obama. We owe him gratitude for his clearheadedness and quick correct decisionmaking in promptly signing the death warrants of those pirates by giving the Seals and their onscene commander freedom to act as necessary to protect and rescue the American involved.

Are you adapted to run for your dinner?

Here's an interesting article on the subject of why people can run such long distances. I think I'm going to go out and try to run down a deer one of these days.

http://seedmagazine.com/content/print/the_running_man_revisited/

Speaking of dinner; we had a very nice Easter dinner at Jas and Kathy's house yesterday. All the usual suspects were present and accounted for except for Sam and Deb and Delores W., who presumably went to the wilds of New Jersey to celebrate the holiday with Deb and Delores side relatives. Alex and Christina drove down from Boston for the weekend which made it really great.

Johnny, Jennifer and Kathy put together a combo of lamb, ham, lasagna and cavatelli that was excellent; and of course there were several fine desserts, of which Linda and I contributed Mom and Aunt Mary's rice pie, or at least that's what the 2002 recipe scrawl in Mom's handwriting calls it. It's really more of a solid egg pudding. It came out excellent, at least it did after we baked it for more than twice as long as the one hour that Mom's directions specify.

1 cup rice cooked for 15 minutes and then cooled
3 pounds of ricotta cheese
2 cups of sugar
1 dozen eggs
2 tablespoons of vanilla extract
(Mom's recipe also calls for "1 cup milk?". Fortunately I didn't put that milk in. If I had put it in we would probably still be waiting for it to solidify)

Blend the cooled off cooked rice and the ricotta. Blend the eggs and the vanilla with the sugar. Blend the two mixtures together. Pour into a greased 9x13 inch pan. I used a glass baking dish and I put it on a cookie sheet for fear it would spill over because it was pretty full.

Mom's directions call for baking it for one hour at 350. After one hour the middle was still liquidy. At that point Linda let it continue to bake at 350 for another 20 minutes. I came in and noticed that the middle was still liquidy, but the edges were starting to brown. So I reduced the temp to 325 and let it continue to bake for another 20 minutes. Finally I reduced the temp to 275 and let it bake another 20 minutes, after which I turned off the oven and left it in there for another 30 minutes or so.

People seemed to like it; but only about 40% of it was eaten by the crowd of twenty or so. Marianne and Kathy must have really liked it because they took another 40% off our hands. The remaining 20% has already been cut into by Linda (last night) and me (I'm eating a big chunk right now); but I think I'll cut this recipe in half when I make it again next Easter.

Reflecting back I recall that there was always at least some of this recipe left over even back at the height of holiday gorging when 40 or more would troup through 403 Walnut during the course of Easter Sunday. Back then of course Mom would have brought 4 apple pies or so and Aunt Mary would also have made cream puffs if she didn't make one of those huge four decker six inch high cookie sheet sized rectangular rum and cream cakes. And Aunt Nancy would have brought her nonpareil rice pudding.

And we would have eaten those desserts after a a marathon of ravioli and stuffed olive eating. Sam, Matty and me each at least once managed to down twenty of Mom and Aunt Mary's huge meat raviolis, very easy to take because they came in three distinctly different forms - flat ones fried and then powdered with sugar, curly ones served al dente and white with grated cheese and (can't remember the name of the spice right now - note to self, get gingko biloba before you forget its name, also write your name, phone number and address on a card in your wallet in case they find you wandering around confused one of these days soon), and finally with traditional gravy and meatballs. All washed down with as much soda as you wanted to drink.

It's surprising any of us survived those dinners. Of course, the fact that we did survive is evidence of another survival adaptation. After they ran the antelope to death those long ago ancestors of ours ate the whole thing raw if they could, or at least several pounds of its juicy liver and other innards, before the lions and leopards and hyenas could have a chance to steal the carcass from them.

Two ducks just waddled down from the pond and hopped into the creek near the bridge. And there have been a couple of geese hanging around; but I haven't seen any evidence of a nest yet.