For you who’re wondering:
You don’t learn this in school. It’s closer to reality than you want to think.
And under the present path that the country and the world seem to be headed, it’s optimistic.
Monthly Archives: September 2011
Hi, Pot! I’m Kettle…
Just what I need… President Metrosexual calling the nation “soft”…
You mean, like this????
“The way I think about it is, you know, this is a great, great country that had gotten a little soft and, you know, we didn’t have that same competitive edge that we needed over the last couple of decades. We need to get back on track.”
Yeah, the nation got soft when “community organizers” demanded something for nothing, when MBA’s took over businesses because selling teddy bears is the same as selling tractors, and lawyers made sure that if your product was in the vicinity of somebody suffering an ‘injury’ they’d help you empty YOUR pockets in the interests of ‘fairness’.
But I’m not bitter…
Say what?
From the “Speaker to Morons“:
You live in a city. You don’t know how to change a tire or oil. You don’t know how to build a fire. You can’t communicate without a cell phone. You can’t fix your plumbing. You can’t set up your own wifi. You’re untrained in basic economics, chemistry, physics and history. You can’t prepare food without packages, and aren’t even aware that food has to be processed from root or bone before that. You only know and get paid for one very specialized task.
Yet you call me a “hick.”
Oh, and I suspect strongly that Michael Z. Williamson will be popping the cap off a celebratory beverage when He finds he’s been added to my blogroll.
Food for Thought – 30 September 2011
What’s scarier is what they’re scratching out…
Today in History – September 30
1452 – First European book printed with moveable type, Johann Gutenberg’s Bible, in Mainz, Germany. Mainz has a terrific museum devoted to printing, including a display of an original Gutenberg Bible. It’s worth a visit if you’re in the area. I was.
1544 – King Henry VIII draws his armies out of France. His army leaves behind a considerable amount of genetic material.
1791 – The Magic Flute, the last opera composed by Mozart, receives its premiere performance at Freihaus-Theater auf der Wieden in Vienna, Austria.
1791 – The National Constituent Assembly in Paris is dissolved; Parisians hail Maximilien Robespierre and Jérôme Pétion as incorruptible patriots. Yeah. Just like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are “incorruptible patriots”. And cool move, there Gaston: You get rid of a monarchy and pass control to a dictatorship by moonbat.
1841 – Samuel Slocum patented the stapler. Hey! A milestone IS a milestone…
1938 – At 2:00 am, Britain, France, Germany and Italy sign the Munich Agreement, allowing Germany to occupy the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia. Neville Chamberlain forever sets the standard for moonbat politicians being flim-flammed by dictators when he returns to London, waves a copy of the agreement and says it means “peace in our time.” Hitler says “a little piece of Poland, a little piece of France…” (and extra points if you can identify where the Hitler quote comes from…)
1938 – The League of Nations unanimously outlaws “intentional bombings of civilian populations”. Yeah, that worked. The League of Nations died. If only the UN would do the same…
1949 – Berlin Airlift ends after 277,000 flights. America faces down the Soviet Union. Today’s Left would not only have signed West Berlin Over to them, but would have held a star-studded concert to celebrate.
1954 – The U.S. Navy submarine USS Nautilus is commissioned as the world’s first nuclear reactor powered vessel.
1968 – First Boeing 747 rolls out. American aviation shows the world how it’s done.
2005 – The controversial drawings of Muhammad are printed in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. Muslims are driven to a killing frenzy by cartoons. Who knew? Other things that drive Muslims into a killing frenzy: Days that end with “y”. Puppies. Music. People smiling.
Kitchenry
You guys know that I’m mostly (75%) Cajun. I was raised in a house where Dad didn’t think he’d eaten on any day that didn’t include rice in a meal, and I learned to cook rice on top of the stove at an early age. I can still do it, and on occasion, I do. But these days, it’s a rare Cajun household that doesn’t have a rice cooker.
I’ve had one in my house since the eighties, at least. Some of them are cheap. You can actually buy a simple rice cooker from Amazon for twelve bucks plus shipping, and it’ll do three cups of rice, enough for a family of four. That’s a simple one: rice, water, push a button, walk away, after while you’ll hear a click or a chime, and the rice is ready. That’s what I HAD.
This is what I have now:
The old cooker was simple. It did white rice to perfection. If I wanted brown rice, I had to do a little trickery, juggling the amount of water to fool it into taking longer.
This thing is SMART. It has menus for white or brown rice, sweet rice (an oriental thing), porridge, and even CAKE. It also has a timer.
That ‘porridge’ thing? I like steel-cut oats. Cooking them used to be a matter of pouring them into a pot of boiling water and stirring frequently over the next half an hour or so. Not any more. Water, oats, cinnamon go into the cooker, I punch up ‘porridge’ on the menu and set the timer and I awake the next morning to the smell of cinnamon in the kitchen and a breakfast of chewy, tasty oats. I make enough to keep some in the fridge to microwave for the next day.
It’ll do the same thing for rice, white or brown, and I use it several times a week.
Terribly clever, those Japanese…
Food for Thought – 29 September 2011
Today in History – September 29
1789 – The U.S. War Department first establishes a regular army with a strength of several hundred men.
1916 – John D. Rockefeller becomes the first billionaire. Oil!
1936 – Radio used for first time for a presidential campaign. Obama loyalists try to get the ads pulled.
1938 – Treaty of Munich signed by Hitler, Mussolini, Daladier & Chamberlain. “If we give them a little of what they want, they will think we’re nice people and stop doing mean things.”
1942 – French government of De Gaulle cancels agreement of Munich. French government actually in FRANCE is collaborating its butt off. That 1938 agreement in Munich wasn’t worth the paper it was written on. Of course, from the safety of England, neither is the De Gaulle government…
1991 – Military coup in Haiti. Still having trouble with that whole ‘election’ thing…
Food for Thought – 28 September 2011
Today in History – September 28
1066 – William the Conqueror invades England: the Norman Conquest begins. Part of what makes us what we are…
1781 – American forces backed by a French fleet begin the siege of Yorktown, Virginia, during the American Revolutionary War.
1850 – US Navy abolishes flogging as punishment.
1928 – Sir Alexander Fleming notices a bacteria-killing mold growing in his laboratory, discovering what later became known as penicillin. He wasn’t “Sir” back then, just a science geek playing with bread mold.
1938 – Dutch Premier Colijn sends radio message “No war coming” . See! They had pacifist moonbats back then, too. 1940 – Nazi occupiers present “New Dutch Culture” in German. Premier Colijn is now right. The war was short and nasty and the Netherlands lost. Now they have ‘peace’.
1939 – Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union agree on a division of Poland after their invasion during World War II. It’s a neat agreement between two blood-thirsty amoral dictators. Two years later Hitler decides that he wants ALL of Poland. And the Ukraine. And everything else.
1958 – France ratifies a new Constitution of France; the French Fifth Republic is then formed upon the formal adoption of the new constitution on October 4. The way things are going, the next one will be written in Arabic, based on sharia.
1961 – A military coup in Damascus effectively ends the United Arab Republic, the union between Egypt and Syria, which brings up a seldom-considered point: If the Arab world DIDN’T have a common enemy, Israel, they they’d be quite happily slaughtering each other.
Balloon, Trial, One Each
Somebody has to be the first to say it. What’s “it”? Those inconvenient elections. You know, those silly events where the peasantry might just arbitrarily choose the WRONG kind of people.
So here it is:
Perdue jokes about suspending Congressional elections for two years
Submitted by jbfrank on 2011-09-27 13:57Speaking to a Cary Rotary Club today, N.C. Gov. Bev Perdue suggested suspending Congressional elections for two years so that Congress can focus on economic recovery and not the next election.
“I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won’t hold it against them, whatever decisions they make, to just let them help this country recover. I really hope that someone can agree with me on that,” Perdue said. “You want people who don’t worry about the next election.”
somebody has to get the conversation started, folks!
Her full statement?
“You have to have more ability from Congress, I think, to work together and to get over the partisan bickering and focus on fixing things. I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won’t hold it against them, whatever decisions they make, to just let them help this country recover. I really hope that someone can agree with me on that. The one good thing about Raleigh is that for so many years we worked across party lines. It’s a little bit more contentious now but it’s not impossible to try to do what’s right in this state. You want people who don’t worry about the next election.”
The linked article tries to make it sound like she was joking. Doesn’t sound like a joke.
Me, I’m listening to see if this thing pops up somewhere else.
Food for Thought – 27 August 2011
Today in History – September 27
1777 – Lancaster, Pennsylvania is the capital of the United States, for one day. For one brief day the population becomes example of large number of self-serving… nah… THAT’S Washington today. It took them a while to get that way, but they’ve got the act down pat now….
1821 – Mexico gains its independence from Spain, has been a bright example of good government ever since…
1903 – Wreck of the Old 97, a train crash made famous by the song of the same name. “They gave him his orders in Monroe, Virginia, said “Steve, you’re ‘way behind time…”
1908 – The first production of the Ford Model T automobile was built at the Piquette Plant in Detroit, Michigan. You could have any color you wanted, as long as it was black.
1941 – The SS Patrick Henry is launched becoming the first of more than 2,700 Liberty ships. America’s might produced ships like cupcakes…
1942 Last day of the September Matanikau action on Guadalcanal as United States Marine Corps troops barely escape after being surrounded by Japanese forces near the Matanikau River. A Coastie by the name of Douglas Munro gave his life to rescue a group of Marines trapped by the Japanese. His last words were, ”Did they all get off?” His medal was awarded by the Navy for his work with the Marines. He is the ONLY member of the Coast Guard to ever receive the Medal of Honor.
1964 – The Warren Commission releases its report, concluding that Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, assassinated President John F. Kennedy. It is widely debated as a cover-up.
1979 – The United States Department of Education receives final approval from the U.S. Congress to become the 13th US Cabinet agency. Public education is fast becoming equivalent in quality to public housing and public toilets.
Quotable Heinlein
(From Friday)
“It is a bad sign when the people of a country stop identifying themselves with the country and start identifying with a group. A racial group. Or a religion. Or a language. Anything, as long as it isn’t the whole population.”
“A very bad sign. Particularism. It was once considered a Spanish vice but any country can fall sick with it. Dominance of males over females seems to be one of the symptoms.”
“Before a revolution can take place, the population must loose faith in both the police and the courts.”
“… High taxation is important and so is inflation of the currency and the ratio of the productive to those on the public payroll. But that’s old hat; everybody knows that a country is on the skids when its income and outgo get out of balance and stay that way – even though there are always endless attempts to wish it way by legislation. But I started looking for little signs and what some call silly-season symptoms.”
“I want to mention one of the obvious symptoms: Violence. Muggings. Sniping. Arson. Bombing. Terrorism of any sort. Riots of course – but I suspect that little incidents of violence, pecking way at people day after day, damage a culture even more than riots that flare up and then die down. Oh, conscription and slavery and arbitrary compulsion of all sorts and imprisonment without bail and without speedy trial – but those things are obvious; all the histories list them.”
“I think you have missed the most alarming symptom of all. This one I shall tell you. But go back and search for it. Examine it. Sick cultures show a complex of symptoms as you have named . . . But a dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than a riot.”
“This symptom is especially serious in that an individual displaying it never thinks of it as a sign of ill health but as proof of his/her strength. Look for it. Study it. It is too late to save this culture – this worldwide culture, not just the freak show here in California. Therefore we must now prepare the monasteries for the coming Dark Age. Electronic records are too fragile; we must again have books, of stable inks and resistant paper.”