Just so everyone understands (as if you hadn't figured this out, but there is, in fact, logic to this).
(a) I'm a crusty old phart, and was when I turned 18.
(b) there are, generally, three types of material here: cooking, personal stuff, and crusty political commentary. And anything else that piques my interest. If you aren't interested in part of that, feel free to ignore.
(c) to reiterate one rule from long ago, if you object to something sufficiently to want to drag me into court, the only acceptable venue is Santa Clara County, California. Don't like that, you're free to go away (thank our Cannuckistan brethren for the need for _that_ one).
(d) I'm generally very accepting, even of people who piss me off. There is, however, a line. Find it at your peril.

over his refusal to answer questions about why he kicked loose the Black Panther voter intimidation case when it was already won.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/017/269heovc.asp?pg=2

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1229643/This-isnt-Britain-fought-say-unknown-warriors-WWII.html

"The overall impression any reader of the letters gets is that this generation feel unheard, unwanted and unimportant."

This was the big red flag I was looking for re. another round of recession.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20091128/bs_nm/us_holidaysales

That man has done more damage to San Jose small businesses since he started. He has a consistent policy of keeping small business around during redevelopment, to provide enough of a business climate that he can attract chains in... which proceed to predatorially attack the small business' niches. In this case, keeping Zanotto's downtown long enough to get Safeway to come in...who is now destroying Zanotto's. Note that he's also getting a Whole Foods in over by the Shark Tank. I'm curious what subsidies _they're_ getting.

http://www.mercurynews.com/bay-area-news/ci_13879199?source=rss

Oh, and note that they're going to get dinged $750K to pay back the loan needed to survive the city's ham-handed redevelopment efforts, after being sunk by the city's bringing in Safeway to compete in the boutique grocery market. Is that screwed up or what?

http://clientsfromhell.tumblr.com/archive

Been there, done that. They're great reading, though.

Go forth and begrizzle yourselves. ;>

An absolutely wonderful piece on America, American exceptionalism, and Thanksgiving, by Andrew Sullivan. Who I really, really wish would get over Sarah Palin, and go back to doing wonderful pieces like this.

http://www.mcgillreport.org/my_america.htm?2009

This is one of those recipes that I learned as a wee lad at my grandmother's knee. We'd have the whole mess of cousins over, and breakfast would be cheese egg rolls, hawaiian sweetbread, coffee, juice...and lots of kids crowding into the kitchen, being silly. ;>

Anyway, what this is is basically a very eggy crepe, with melted cheddar cheese inside.

Ingredients:
eggs
milk
flour (not all that much)
grated cheddar cheese

Proportions:
for each person, you can expect to use
1-2 eggs
approx 1/3-1/2 cup milk
1 spoonful of flour
roughly a handful of grated cheese

as an example, for four adults, I made 11 rolls, using 9 eggs, about 1 1/3 cups milk, and 4 spoonfuls of flour. Oh, and nearly half a brick of cheddar cheese.

What you do:
- In a bowl, mix a batch of the eggs and milk together, using either a fork or a whisk. Sprinkle the flour on top, and beat that in thoroughly. As you keep cooking, add more eggs/milk/flour, and mix it - you can keep a continuous stream going, pretty much, and stop when you've served everyone.
- grate the cheese ahead of time.
- heat a pan over medium heat. A non-stick pan works great for this. Alternately, use a seasoned cast-iron pan. I've found steel pans to not work well - they tend to stick, and are the least-easy to work with. Start the heat at medium-low, and edge it up as you go - it'll take you a couple tries, until you find the "right" heat.
- Pour a small amount of the egg batter into the pan, and swirl it around around until you've covered the bottom of the pan.
- As soon as it sets, sprinkle some cheese on top. Not too much - just a enough to cover everything.
- Once the cheese starts melting, roll the whole thing up.

At this point, I usually slice 'em in half with the spatula, and onto somebody's plate they go, ready to eat.

A couple warnings.

First, they're temperamental little buggers. You want a thin batter, and (like crepes) you don't want the base to be that thick - you really are going for a crepe-like result.
Second, don't put too much flour in. It's very easy to get too much flour in, and then you get a harder, crustier result that doesn't roll up very well.

Oh, yes. Practice makes perfect. Don't expect this to come out right the first time, or maybe even the second. Though they will be _tasty_ experimental failures. But with practice, you'll get the proportions and timing down. At which point you've got a scrumptious breakfast that kids and cheesehounds seem to love.

Someone managed to get the actual raw data and the official reported data for the same stations...and discovered that the data had been massaged to produce a warming trend where one didn't exist.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/25/uh-oh-raw-data-in-new-zealand-tells-a-different-story-than-the-official-one/

Read the whole thing. Yet another nail in the global warming coffin.

As my friend lonewolf45 notes over here. He's not surprised at the Brady tactic, and neither am I.

But what I'm simply appalled at is the NAACP brief. This is a "civil rights" organization. Here's their mission/etc. statements:
Our Mission

The mission of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate racial hatred and racial discrimination.
Vision Statement

The vision of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is to ensure a society in which all individuals have equal rights and there is no racial hatred or racial discrimination.
Objectives

The following statement of objectives is found on the first page of the NAACP Constitution — the principal objectives of the Association shall be:

* To ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of all citizens
* To achieve equality of rights and eliminate race prejudice among the citizens of the United States
* To remove all barriers of racial discrimination through democratic processes
* To seek enactment and enforcement of federal, state, and local laws securing civil rights
* To inform the public of the adverse effects of racial discrimination and to seek its elimination
* To educate persons as to their constitutional rights and to take all lawful action to secure the exercise thereof, and to take any other lawful action in furtherance of these objectives, consistent with the NAACP's Articles of Incorporation and this Constitution.


The brief they filed in MacDonald, however, advocates essentially rejecting all Privileges or Immunities views, and using the narrower Due Process route to incorporation. Oh, it's couched in defensive legalese. But that's the core of their argument. "We've got what we want. The hell with everyone else."

I'm amazed and appalled at them.

BTW, for those interested in such, briefs are here. _Thirty_ amicus briefs in support of plaintiffs.

---------------------
Looking through this, there's some amazingly GOOD stuff, too:
- Brief filed by 58 Senators and 251 Representatives in support of plaintiffs. Holy shit! Russ Feingold signed on to this. So did Mary Landrieu and Harry Reid, Of course, neither of CA's "representatives" bothered. For further amusement, so did Dan Lungren, who (as AG) did so much _damage_ to state gun rights. One should not, however, be surprised that there are _zero_ Bay Area representatives who've signed on.
- Brief filed by 34 California DAs, 8 Nevada DAs, and assorted other supporters. Again, not surprisingly, there are no Bay Area DAs here.
- Brief filed by a large number of state legislators from across the country. They explicitely state support for incorporation via PorI AND via Due Process. Yay!

http://blog.american.com/?p=7572

Prior private sector appointments to cabinet-level economic positions.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091125/ap_en_ot/eu_switzerland_polanski

This time, the court looked favorably on Polanski's offer of cash and the threat of sacrificing his family's home if he fled justice.

"Cash is king," said Peter Cosandey, a former Zurich prosecutor. Still, he said he could "hardly remember a case where bail is granted to someone who isn't even a full-time Swiss resident."

Am I pleased?

No.

This part, though, takes the cake.

"The 76-year-old appellant is married and the father of two minors," the court said as it considered Polanski's offer of a cash bail secured by his apartment in Paris. "It can be assumed that as a responsible father he will, especially in view of his advanced age, attach greater importance to the financial security of his family than a younger person."

Right. Kinda like his kids. I wonder how he, or his wife, would feel if someone doped up his daughter and raped her. She's 16. According to him, that's consensual.

Grrrrrr.

It appears the damage control effort emanated from within the WH counsel's office.

At least, it did according to the WH's own documentation.

So, what was that about lying to the American public?

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/New-documents-White-House-scrambled-to-justify-AmeriCorps-firing-after-the-fact-71483647.html

and failure to adhere means public vilification.

Fortunately they were forced to back down, and this dates from about 9 years ago, but still...

http://www.thefire.org/case/57.html

Seems have accumulated a fender-bender. The NYT has decided that it won't publish any of the hacked Hadley Climate Research Unit documents/emails/etc., because they were illegally acquired.

Orrin Judd spots this staggering moment of hypocrisy from the New York Times’ Andrew C. Revkin of their “Dot Earth” blog on Friday:

The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won’t be posted here.

http://pajamasmedia.com/eddriscoll/2009/11/22/all-the-news-thats-fit-to-bury/

Never mind the Times' previous willingness to publish the Pentagon Papers (which even the Supreme Court acknowledged were illegally acquired), or the inside scoop on the terrorist-finance-busting program from a few years ago.

I guess the "they were illegally acquired, so we can't publish them" thing only applies when you don't want your PC preconceptions busted.

The recent mammography brouhaha being an excellent example thereof. Under the legislation already passed by the House, mammograms for women 40-49 would not be covered by the "public option".

Gneat.

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTkwNmM5NjI5MThiOTMwODZjZDYyODYwYmYxNjllOGE=

http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=NzdiYTliN2MwYmJiNWY4OWVlZTA4ZmIwYzJkMjFjOGI=

Other readers pounced like wolf-sized Dobermans on an intruder. One guffawed, “That sentence by Sarah Palin could be entered into the annual Bulwer-Lytton bad writing contest. It could have a chance at winning a (sic) honorable mention, at any rate.”

But soon, the original contributor confessed: “I probably should have mentioned that the sentence quoted above was not written by Sarah Palin. It’s taken from the first paragraph of ‘Dreams From My Father,’ written by Barack Obama.”

The ruse should have been allowed to fester longer, but the point was made nonetheless: Some people hate Palin first and ask questions later.

My all-time favorite response to John McCain’s selection of Palin as his running mate was from Wendy Doniger, a feminist professor of religion at the University of Chicago. Professor Doniger wrote of the exceedingly feminine “hockey mom” with five children: “Her greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman.”

The best part about that sentence: Doniger uses the pronoun “her” — twice.


I have to agree. There's a lot of people who are too busy hating Palin to be bothered with facts.