How far we've come in the brainwashing of the masses if it's "abnormal" to grow certain types of plants in your house (my emphasis).
SYDNEY (AFP) — A Sydney suburb has been dubbed "cannabisville" after police found four apparently normal family homes were actually marijuana hothouses containing vast quantities of the illegal drug.
Sad.
Pictures from my most recent culinary class at Quality Street Kitchen and Catering are now up on the company's website. A bunch of my friends attended this class, so it was a very fun night.
Here are a few photos my wife was able to grab in addition to the ones linked above, which were taken by Rebecca, my sous chef for the evening.
The sexy Holli and Erin get their schwerve on dressing the mozzarella crostini. Thankfully resident Italian, Louis -- who speaks fluently in his native tongue -- was able to tell us "crostini" in Italian means "little..round..bread..uh..thing." Ah, the power of alcohol.
(In case you're wondering, it means "little toasts," but we love Lou anyway.)
At least we got Louis to model my statue of David apron, which he and his wife actually got for me during their last trip to Italy.
And as if you even needed to ask, of course that was my costume for Halloween two years ago.
Well, that's all for now. If you'd like to sign up for my next class, it will be taking place in August and I'd love to see you there. Check back here to keep an eye out for listings.
Jacob Grier highlights the absurdity of the state's tyrannical war against "raw" (unpasteurized) milk.
While I disagree with Grier's assertion that there is a need for "reasonable food safety laws" -- some might say these very laws have led to the government's incredible jailing of raw milk producers and confiscation of their property -- this is an issue that deserves widespread attention.
Great new blog, via BfloBlog.
Twenty-four-year-old Afghanistan war vet Matthis Chiroux bravely refuses to deploy to Iraq.
"I stand before you today with the strength and clarity and resolve to declare to the military, my government and the world that this soldier will not be deploying to Iraq," Chiroux said in the sun-filled rotunda of a congressional building in Washington.
"My decision is based on my desire to no longer continue violating my core values to support an illegal and unconstitutional occupation... I refuse to participate in the Iraq occupation," he said, as a dozen veterans of the five-year-old Iraq war looked on.
I know a lot of people argue that soldiers have contractual obligations to honor their terms of service, as any of us would in dealing with our employers, and to an extent I can understand this assertion. However, no one has a moral duty to honor commitments requiring him to willfully violate the property rights of another, especially in cases of war when the consequences of doing so ultimately bring wholesale death and destruction to innocent victims.
In short, the legal obligation to adhere to man-made contracts is secondary to one's moral obligation to refrain from initiating aggression -- aggression that in this case can only be deemed immoral and criminal given that it is in large part trained on hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens who bear no responsibility whatsoever for the events of September 11.
Chiroux likely faces the full scope of American military wrath as he has chosen to fight this battle in the U.S., but no amount of posturing will be able to erase the state's opprobrium if it decides to prosecute this soldier for appeasing his conscience.
How many immoral crusades would we be able to avoid if those expected to do the fighting and the dying had a legal right to dissent from battles they know are unjust?
It doesn't quite have the ring of my own "Governor Douchebag," but Paul Craig Roberts's critique of the commander-mis-chief is spot on.
Tim Carney examines the most recent farm bribe..er, bill..and explains how it enriches congressmen and sugar and ethanol producers at taxpayer expense.
Ron Paul nails it as he exposes the fraud of fractional-reserve banking and centralized monetary policy.
To every American who pisses and moans about high gas prices, crappy public schools, disastrous wars, onerous nanny-state regulations and more but didn't vote for Ron Paul in the primaries, I only have one thing to say: you were gift-wrapped the most ideal candidate of your age, and you blew it.
A buddy of mine had a great idea today. Given our propensity to party, he suggested having a going away party for the Constitution, considering we apparently have no use for it anymore in this country.
We figured as part of the celebration we could even order some "We the People" beverage napkins and provide them for guests as toilet paper -- you know, as a special touch to commemorate our politicians' figurative use of the old relic these days.
It's really too bad I don't gamble, smoke, or do drugs -- all things the state has decided to crack down on as part of its evil regime -- but I suppose we can all drink to these freedoms we no longer have as we shoot off our guns.
Witnesses in St. Mary's County, Maryland say off-duty deputy David Goff was intoxicated and unnecessarily beat on Shane Weasenforth, whom Goff approached and subsequently arrested after Weasenforth was seen riding an ATV along the shoulder of the highway (my emphasis).
With Weasenforth on his stomach and hands behind his back, the deputy struck the back of his head several times for no reason, witness Crystal Currie tells The Bay Net. Currie says she then screamed and the officer stopped being aggressive.
Currie estimates a total of five other officers arrived on the scene before it was all over, and she asked officers to administer an alcohol breath test on Dep Goff, but none responded.
“If we have these kind of people as our law enforcement, we might as well not have any. I am very frustrated that this happened and I want action to be taken,” Currie said.
Note that Goff was apparently driving under the influence when he stopped to confront Weasenforth, something that is par for the course for cops who are above the law.
Sheriff Tim Cameron said the department is conducting an investigation into the conduct of Goff, but that means next to nothing. Don't hold your breath waiting for the police to condemn the actions of other officers. Despite breathless claims to the contrary, the police protect each other, not us.
Until a panel of private citizens, for whom the police allegedly work, is allowed to oversee police conduct, cops will very rarely be held accountable for exhibiting the same behavior they arrest us for.
(Thanks to BC for the tip.)
Why is it that whenever an agent of the state loses his or her life in the line of duty, it's front-page news and treated as the gravest of human tragedies, while the demise of the businessman, hot dog vendor, nurse, or carpenter barely warrants mention on the bottom corner of page A-18?
Maybe I'd feel differently if the government paid anything more than lip service to any of the non-violent Americans killed by police each year.
The Salt Lake Tribune's Julia Lyon deserves an award for highlighting the government child abuse tragedy in Texas, where state officials continue to incarcerate 465 women and children who belong to the FLDS church.
Lyon reports the lies, deceit, and outright inhuman treatment to which these poor detainees are being subjected, and quotes mental health workers who are appalled by the actions of government agencies in dealing with the captives.
A boy estimated at age 3 walked along a row of cots asking for someone to rock him after he was separated from his mother, one employee wrote. Two CPS workers trailed the youngster taking notes but not helping him. His brother, age 8, eventually took the child into his arms and sat with him in a rocking chair.
Government is pure evil. The inane concept of engaging in wholesale child abduction (abuse) under the guise of "protecting" children from theoretical abuse is almost too perverse for words.
"They" meaning you. "It" meaning the loot you bring home as a result of your hard work.
You've got money. The government wants it to finance endless welfare programs. Screw you.
And before you go thinking you'll vote for McCain because it's only the Dems who want to raise taxes to create new entitlement benefits, remember he'd need to play ball all day and night with a Democratic Congress if he were president in order to get them to sign off on 100 years of war.
Just like Bush never fought McCain-Feingold because he needed the votes for the Iraq war.
I stopped at Popeye's to pick up a #3 meal for lunch today, as I've done a few times in the past month. The five-piece chicken finger meal was an even nine bucks every time prior, but today it cost me $9.34.
I didn't get more chicken with my meal this time; my dollars simply bought less.
Local politicians in Washington State have come up with a new plan to restrict development around Puget Sound. They want developers to pay farmers not to sell their land in exchange for permission to build more houses elsewhere -- a ploy known as "transfer of development rights," or TDR.
Farmers get paid extra to keep farming. Developers buy credits to build more houses where they otherwise couldn't — in this case on 300 acres away from the river on Arlington's eastern edge. Valuable land is saved from pavement. And government doesn't spend tax money to buy up land or impose environmental restrictions.
Politicians have apparently wised up to the shortcomings of using tax revenue to pay farmers to sit on their land. In 2006, Snohomish County forked over $2.1 million to Orin Barlond in order to keep him from selling his 71 acres, which did little but drive up prices other farmers expected to receive.
However, even though this new idea has been hailed by some as a way to "use capitalism to help the environment," there's a little problem:
But two years after the program started, no developer has bought a single credit.
This is almost too easy, but the reason this bright idea hasn't worked is simple: government regulation of privately property isn't really capitalism; it's fascism.
Even though developers can purchase these "credits" from farmers and exchange them for the government's permission to build in even greater volume someplace else, they're merely purchasing the "right" to build; developers still have to pay for the land they ultimately build on.
In other words, this gambit effectively does nothing but significantly increase costs for developers and, ultimately, their clients. The thing is, people usually don't throw their own money down the toilet.
The reason government is evil is because it can't fulfill any of its plans without the use of coercive force, to which local politicians in Washington State will invariably be forced to resort if they expect to prevent development on area farmland.
It may be "less evil" for the government to pay farmers not to develop their land as opposed to passing arbitrary edicts forcing them not to (see: Maryland), but theft is theft: either the state will rob individual farmers, via legislative fiat, of the right to sell their own property, or it will rob individual taxpayers in order to subsidize farmers who agree not to sell. Either scenario is immoral.
The unspoken truth here is that this land is more valuable to potential homeowners than it is to a handful of special interest environmental groups or individuals who might simply prefer not to have their precious views of Puget Sound dirtied by other people's private property -- or "sprawl," as it's come be known colloquially.
But that's tough. If people want to leave farmland undeveloped, they have every right to pony up the cash themselves and buy it from these farmers so they can sit on it for all eternity. Until they're willing to put their own money where their mouths are, the least we can do is expect them to keep their filthy paws off ours.
This is what happens when the government hyper-regulates "privately-owned" cab companies.
...with M&Ms.
I loved this comment by Manuel Lora, from whom I learned of this story:
...Cops these days can quite literally taser all they want and go unscathed. Yet a college student throws some M&Ms at the police and gets arrested for assault. Had he used a Baby Ruth or one of those giant one pound Hershy's, the college kid would have probably been fried at the chair.
Remember, it's your patriotic duty.
So cool that I bet most of us take it for granted and really don't realize how poor, standard of living-wise, we'd be without it.
Take, for example, my wife's purchase of a rectal thermometer tonight. My infant son's poor hind end aside, these remarkable little tools come in digital form nowadays and can be purchased for about only eight bucks-- and that's even considering the crappy value of the dollar today.
But think about it: for less than the cost of the five-piece chicken finger meal at Popeye's, you can buy an instrument that will tell you -- within a tenth of a degree -- what your child's temperature is. Put another way, the thermometer -- which I guarantee most of us take for granted -- will let you know whether your child is fighting infection, how severe said infection may be, and whether or not immediate medical assistance is necessary.
How many lives the thermometer -- this wonder of the free market -- must already have saved simply because it can provide us with an immediately reliable gauge of our health.
A new Barack Obama T-shirt being peddled by bar owner Mike Norman has some folks up in arms and insisting that the depiction of Obama as Curious George exploits racial stereotypes.
I have no idea whether or not Norman's a racist -- I certainly don't prescribe to his anti-immigrant views the article mentions -- but I will say that reflexively branding someone a racist because he caricatures a black guy as a monkey is likely just as suggestive of racism as any overt racist remark would be. After all, Obama's not the first politician who's been compared to Curious George.
If I had to guess, I'd say Norman's probably trying to push the envelope, but it's irrelevant. He's a private citizen free to express his opinions, and he's also free to suffer the consequences if his tavern loses business because of them.
Moreover, the discussion pertaining to racial equality really only applies to the government as it relates to its citizens. In a free country, human beings are free to choose and associate -- that is, free to discriminate; only the state must treat everyone equally, and in that regard it continues to fail miserably in myriad ways.
One man and his T-shirts offend me much less than democratic governments that rob Peter in order to redistribute his earnings to Paul in the form of endless state-sanctioned discriminatory welfare programs. In fact, I'm inclined to think we're making racial progress when two buffoons of different heritage can be mocked equally in the public square.
A nice synopsis from the Council on Foreign Relations, via the LRC blog.
Joshua Katz says no.
While Barr seems, in some ways, to be among the more libertarian-leaning conservatives, he is not a libertarian on the most important issue of our time – foreign policy. I have yet to hear an unambiguous commitment to immediate withdrawal from Iraq. Unlike Paul, he also has not promised to remove our troops from the other 150 countries in which they are stationed. Barr's campaign website uses the rhetoric of non-intervention, but a perusal of the articles available on that same website gives the lie to any idea that he opposes foreign intervention.
[...]
Much is made about Barr’s libertarian voting record in the US Congress. Yet the man who claims to be for privacy, who runs the Privacy Watch List, voted for what was, at its time, the most egregious violation of privacy on the books. Even if he now says he regrets this vote, what does it say for his judgment, for the positions he will take in the future? Besides, to what extent can he truly regret voting for the Act, if as recently as 2005 he was advocating for its reauthorization? The Patriot Act was not a difficult decision, and he made the wrong call on it. As President, he will face more subtle and difficult decisions. He has given us little reason to trust him.
Despite some rumors that Ron Paul will endorse Bob Barr's presidential campaign, don't believe the hype -- at least not yet.
Though some of Barr's goals are noble -- he shares Paul's desire to make significant cuts in spending and reduce the scope of the federal government -- Ron Paul is still rocking and rolling throughout the country spreading his own message of revolution. So why stop now? Paul has made it clear that his message is one of long-term reform, not short-term soundbytes.
Then there's Barr's reluctance to support immediate withdrawal from Iraq and his endorsement of income tax "reforms" like the Fair Tax or other flat tax alternatives -- Paul would get out of Iraq yesterday and wants to cut federal taxes to zero.
Paul could obviously endorse Barr with some caveats, but I just don't see the point. Barr may be "in it to win it," but all he'll really do is pull votes from McCain (commendable enough to be sure) before slipping back into obscurity.
Assuming Barr wins the Libertarian Party's nomination, I certainly wouldn't expect Paul to jump into Barr's camp anytime before the LP's convention on May 22. Paul will still be packing book stores and college auditoriums, and he has a full calendar of speaking engagements and visits scheduled over the next several months.
Personally, I think endorsing Bob Barr would be a mistake. Ron Paul has a passionate crop of loyal and ever-growing supporters of his comparatively radical platform, and endorsing another candidate takes the spotlight off his own accomplishments. If Paul aligns with anyone else, it should be someone like South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, who's probably the second most libertarian politician in the country and most capable of carrying the Ron Paul torch on to the 2012 election.
It's not like I ever thought John McCain stood much of a chance in November, but now all libertarian-leaning Republican voters will have a viable candidate on the LP ticket in Bob Barr (if he's nominated, of course), and will thus pull more than enough votes away from the McManiac to throw the election to the Dems.
I know, I know...six in one, half-dozen in the other.
Man arrested for DWI after drunkenly careening down the highway, swerving through a traffic light, and smashing into a police cruiser.
Just kidding. He was walking his bike across his yard. Listen to his story:
(Via Radley Balko.)
A man is sentenced to 180 days in jail after his 18-year-old daughter -- his adult daughter -- failed to pass a math portion of her GED.
I'm home sick today and way too tired to go off on this one. Have at it in the comments.
Aww, the boy wouldn't give officers his hands. Poor babies.
So arresting someone for underage consumption should come with an automatic trip to the emergency room now?
If you have to electrocute a kid in order to handcuff him, you're not much of a cop.
Maryland Sen. Roy Dyson argues in a recent op-ed that the Thomas Johnson Bridge that spans St. Mary's and Calvert counties is in desperate need of replacement, or at the very least relief from the volume of traffic it's expected to withstand each day.
I don't agree with Dyson about much, and not least his general outlook that all problems big and small can be fixed by the government, but he's right that this bridge -- colloquially known as the Solomons Bridge -- is frighteningly unsafe.
About 20 years ago, the bridge was closed for months, due to structural deficiencies. It got another band aid treatment. That's all it ever gets. A boat's eye view of the underside of the bridge is hair-raising. It is braced and over-braced. Its pilings appear to be in various stages of rot. For years, I have said…and I repeat it now "I don't think it's (the Thomas Johnson Bridge) safe."
It's funny that the shot of the "band-aid" braces included with Dyson's article only shows two reinforcement rods. One day I'll grab some photos from my boat showing braces containing at least eight rods.
This bridge needs to be replaced. My wife and I are so sick of traveling over it every day that we're in the process of trying to move to St. Mary's county so we won't need to cross it to get to work anymore. But aside from the hassle of traffic congestion, sooner or later many people are going to be killed by this bridge when a section plummets into the Patuxent River. Take a second and write that down. It's a virtual certainty.
While Dyson has the right idea here, it's too bad he doesn't push for outright privatization of the bridge. At this point, I'm not sure how many contractors out there would want to assume ownership given the headaches associated with building on or over the water in Maryland, but it would certainly speed up the improvement/replacement process if we didn't have to put our faith in the state to clean up this mess. Governments generally don't act until it's too late -- and that usually means that someone has to die before any money is allocated to fix anything.
We can kill two birds with one stone before we have to kill dozens of people with one bridge. Privatizing the TJ Bridge would mean saving taxpayers the burden of footing the bill while at the same time removing much of the bureaucracy that will ultimately hold up this project for years.
(Thanks to Rick.)
I'm fine with the police Taser.. if they want to use them on each other instead of the rest of us.
And hey, "They're all OK," so I suppose we're all fair game after all.
Three eighth-grade students in Minnesota have been suspended for refusing to pledge their allegiance to the state.
Lew Rockwell sums up this situation well:
The "Pledge of Allegiance" is an anti-secessionist oath of fealty to centralized government and its myths. Imposed on kids forced to attend government schools and other victims, it was written by an atheist Baptist minister and socialist after Lincoln's War. Ike added "under God" during the US Cold War against Russia, to keep the hierarchy of authority straight in everyone's mind:
1. God
2. Government
3. You
You'd have to be to vote for any of the establishment's leading candidates, writes J.H. Huebert in a nice review of Ron Paul's new book, The Revolution: A Manifesto, noting that when it comes to voters who continuously elect candidates from both parties who "drive the country further down the path of ever-bigger government, empire and economic ruin":
If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always gotten. The failure to grasp that simple fact is a strong indicator of insanity.
Sounds about right to me.
And for all you Ron Paul fans, be sure to check "Recommend" below Huebert's byline if you like this review, as it could provide a bunch of free advertising for Paul's book and thus increase its visibility.
In honor of Judge Ted Schneiderman, who ruled recently that medical examiner Lisa Kohler must delete all references in her report that Tasers contributed to the deaths of three men executed by police, I figured I'd put together a little list of people who've died after being hit by the state's latest weapon of choice.
- Robert Dziekanski, 40, died after being tasered by Canadian police.
- Emily Delafield, 56, died after being hit by multiple Tasers 10 times.
- Jose Perez, 33, died in police custody after being tasered.
- Frederick Williams, 31, killed by a Taser while in police custody in a suburb of Atlanta.
- Darry Turner, 17, died after being shot by Taser during a dispute in a North Carolina Food Lion.
- Otis Anderson, 36, died after being tasered as cops tried to subdue him.
- James S. Wilson, 22, died after being tasered by a sheriff's deputy.
- Mark Backlund, 29, died after being tasered by Minnesota State Police.
- Roberto Gonzalez, 24, died after being tasered by Chicago police.
- Alberto Romero, 47, died after Denver police stunned him with a Taser.
This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it's already far too long. Anyone who doubts the lethality of the Taser can do a simple Google search like I did and retrieve all this information within seconds.
My argument is not that these victims were all necessarily innocent when confronted initially by the police; it's that people are being electrocuted and killed even when they pose no mortal threat whatsoever to these officers. Disturbingly, the Taser is marketed as a "non-lethal" weapon that is all too frequently deployed when less lethal means of subdual are both available and more appropriate.
Everyone is entitled to the presumption of innocence and to his or her day in court. In a free society, one's fate is not ultimately to be placed in the hands of the police, who more and more are playing the role of judge, jury, and executioner before they even take a suspect into custody.
Compounding this atrocity is the apparent refusal by some judges even to acknowledge the potential lethality of the Taser, much less admit reference of their deadly consequences into evidence in America's courtrooms.
When the trend is to increasingly fight for the disarmament of the citizenry while simultaneously expanding funding for the paramilitarization of the nation's police forces, the only logical outcome will be a steadily increasing number of deaths among non-violent Americans at the hands of state-sanctioned thugs.
- Talk about the height of moral depravity. I can't even imagine having to listen to the children testify about their experiences here.
- That global warming thing is really kicking our ass.
- Oh no! Not consensual handjobs!
- A polygamist shell game? Maybe I'm missing something here, but wouldn't it be the pinnacle of insanity to give the state-kidnapped FLDS children to polygamist foster parents in Utah when you could just return them to their real parents in Texas?
- 1000 Southern Maryland motorists stopped at a Cinco de Mayo "sobriety checkpoint" without probable cause; a whopping four arrested for DUI. Come on, Maryland! I bet no one would even speed if you put tanks at every intersection!
Courtesy of your new American Police State.
Kurt Nimmo shares my exact sentiments.
I've heard of people making bongs out of just about anything in order to smoke weed. Corpse heads are a new one to me.
There are many reasons for today's rising gasoline prices -- from the tanking dollar to increased demand among increasingly prosperous nations like China and India -- but Michael Klare reminds us what the biggest source of demand might actually be: America's wars.
Every day, the average G.I. in Iraq uses approximately 27 gallons of petroleum-based fuels. With some 160,000 American troops in Iraq, that amounts to 4.37 million gallons in daily oil usage, including gasoline for vans and light vehicles, diesel for trucks and armored vehicles, and aviation fuel for helicopters, drones, and fixed-wing aircraft. With U.S. forces paying, as of late April, an average of $3.23 per gallon for these fuels, the Pentagon is already spending approximately $14 million per day on oil ($98 million per week, $5.1 billion per year) to stay in Iraq. Meanwhile, our Iraqi allies, who are expected to receive a windfall of $70 billion this year from the rising price of their oil exports, charge their citizens $1.36 per gallon for gasoline.
Klare argues that, whether we know it or not, this surfeit of petroleum spending is allowing foreign oil producers to "gobble up" American assets at such a rate as to render American superpowerdom obsolete.
Well, that would be one good thing about expensive gas anyway.
However, I don't necessarily agree that the United States' trade imbalance vis a vis petroleum is, per se, responsible for this country's economic distress. As Henry Hazlitt (among other Austrian economists) wrote, a country's exports are driven by its imports -- essentially, foreign nations must first acquire your nation's currency in order to turn around and spend or invest it in your country. And because one can only demand something by first producing something, having the ability to import is an undeniably good thing.
It is important to stress the invalidity of the oft-expressed maxim that "exports are good" and "imports are bad," as if these are mutually exclusive concepts. Nothing could be further from the truth. Free trade is good; centrally managed economies, defined by inflationary monetary policy, are bad. The dependence upon increasingly expensive imported oil that Mr. Klare laments is bad precisely because the federal government is taking us on joyrides of empire that can only be funded by taxation, inflation, and borrowing -- the borrowing further indebting Americans to foreign nations; the taxation and inflation indebting it to itself (assuming it doesn't later borrow to repay those debts, too).
The United States is falling apart in chunks, to borrow a phrase I heard recently, not because it has a trade imbalance in oil, but because the feds are ratcheting up enormous, crippling debt by financing escapades it cannot sustain in the long run. In my view, it has very little to do with what the state actually spends that money on.
Join the Ron Paul Revolution March on July 12 in the nation's capital. Go here for details.
One ancillary note, from the organizers who are in need of some monetary support to fund the march:
We need to pay $51.70 PER HOUR PER POLICE officer that will be required to help monitor the march.
Oddly enough, I thought taxpayers already funded the police for things such as this -- you know, using public property that we're constantly forced to maintain and all. But these are the times we live in. Apply for a permit to use property we already own, then get strongarmed by the city to subsidize overtime for the police force.
Reminds me of the stories told to me by my bar owner friends, who are essentially required by the county to pay off-duty officers $35 bucks an hour on weekend nights for "security" -- despite the fact that they already provide it privately. And if they don't agree to this "request" by the sheriff? Well, they can count on getting harassed and shut down for any number of "violations" his deputies find convenient. Why? Because they can, of course.
Never has there been a greater need for a revolution than now.
An 82-year-old "knife-wielding" hospital patient is tased by Canadian mounties.
“He did have a knife in his hand,” Kamloops RCMP Cpl. Scott Wilson said.
“He wouldn’t put the knife down.”
No indication that the man was actually threatening anyone with a knife, mind you, but officers maintain they had "no choice" but to electrocute him. Seems a bit excessive given that Tasers have been known to cause death in even healthy men in their twenties (don't expect the state to admit that, though).
Here's the best part:
Wilson said the man will not face criminal charges.
Cool. Let's risk killing people who aren't even exhibiting criminal behavior -- as criminal as the government thugs wielding the Tasers, anyway.
John Bolton wants the U.S. to bomb Iran.
Mr Bolton said that striking Iran would represent a major step towards victory in Iraq. While he acknowledged that the risk of a hostile Iranian response harming American’s overseas interests existed, he said the damage inflicted by Tehran would be “far higher” if Washington took no action.
Sounds a lot like the same old bullshit we heard about Iraq six years ago. And that's turned out so well.
It bears asking, who would we then set our sights on as a "major step towards victory" in an inevitable Iran debacle?
This recipe is the perfect accompaniment to a nice steak dinner or great just served alone for lunch. Most French onion soup recipes will call only for beef broth, but I think balancing it with chicken broth yields a much smoother and richer flavor. But feel free to experiment with all sorts of variations. I have, and this is merely the one I've settled on as the best.
FRENCH ONION SOUP
6 large sweet onions, thin julienne
8 cloves fresh garlic (4 chopped for soup, 4 whole for croutons)
2 quarts beef broth (8 cups water/8 beef bouillon cubes)
2 quarts chicken broth (8 cups water/8 chicken bouillon cubes)
2 cups dry white wine
2 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp. dried oregano
2 tsp. garlic powder
Kosher salt and cracked black pepper, to taste
Bouquet garni (2 bay leaves, 4 sprigs each thyme and parsley)
4 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
2 tbsp. unsalted butter
24 half-inch-thick slices French baguette (about 2 loaves)
6 cups gruyère cheese, grated or shaved
4 cups parmigiano-reggiano cheese, finely grated
1. Bring large stock pot to medium low heat and add olive oil. Add onions, season with salt and pepper, and sweat until caramelized, stirring occasionally. Once onions have caramelized (about 1 hour), add butter, garlic powder, oregano, and Worcestershire sauce. Add beef and chicken broth, wine, and bouquet garni to pot. Bring soup to boil and immediately reduce heat and let simmer for at least 30 minutes, but an hour or two if possible.
2. While soup cooks, prepare croutons by placing bread slices on ungreased cookie sheet and baking in 400˚F oven for 10 minutes (no need to turn them). Shred cheese and set aside. When croutons are done, remove and let cool. Brush with whole garlic cloves on one side.
3. Preheat broiler with rack 6-8" from heat source. Place oven-safe soup bowls on cookie sheet and ladle in onion soup. Place two baguette croutons garlic side up in each bowl and top with about 1/2 cup gruyère and 1/3 cup parmigiano-reggiano. Broil until cheeses are brown and bubbling.
Serves 12 easily, but it can serve up to 16 -- just prepare extra croutons.
As I've said many times in the past, John McCain will not win in November -- namely because he's to the right of Bush and because a Ron Paul independent/third party run would pull enough votes from McCain that he couldn't compete with the Dems.
However, it seems as though I've neglected to consider how many people just plain hate the warmonger.
Even though Paul has made it clear he's sticking with his Republican campaign, it's good to know that a full 26 and 22 percent of Republicans in North Carolina and Indiana, respectively, showed up to the polls yesterday precisely to vote against McCain. There is no other explanation for the results given that Huckabee, Paul, and Romney all received significant percentages of the vote even though only Paul remains in the race.
If we weren't staring down the barrel of an Obama or Clinton presidency, I'd take even more joy in knowing that McCain will not be taking the oath of empire in January. As it stands, however, it's kind of hard to be happy when you know you're getting whored either way.
Despite Britain's massive effort to spy on its citizens, ostensibly in the name of "crime prevention," officials have found it just isn't paying off.
(Thanks to Nathaniel for the tip.)
Cyril Moulle-Berteaux writes in today's WSJ that the housing crisis is over.
If Moulle-Berteaux means that market prices are beginning to fall, well yes, he's correct -- that's usually what happens during a market correction like a recession. But he misses the entire cause of this "crisis" in the first place. From his closing sentence:
Nonetheless, housing led us into this credit crisis and this recession. It is likely to lead us out. And that process is underway, right now.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Congress and the Fed, through their inflationary manipulation of the money supply and interest rates, led us to this recession. Period.
Talk about focusing on the symptoms instead of the disease.
The unbelievable story of Murat Kurnaz -- an innocent man beaten, starved, and tortured for years at the American gulag known as Gitmo after being cleared of any connection to terrorism -- as chronicled in exquisite detail by Will Grigg.
Purchase Kurnaz's memoir, Five Years of My Life: An Innocent Man in Guantanamo, here.
The D.C. City Council is considering a ban on sales of single bottles of malt liquor and beer.
Council members Muriel Bowser, Yvette Alexander and Marion Barry have banded together to back the ban, which will be considered Tuesday. They say sales of singles contribute to social ills in their communities.
Couldn't be the vast welfare funding of families, row houses, and dilapitated schools that discourages work, investment, competition, self-reliance, responsibility, and profitability that's contributing to all those "social ills," could it?
Nah. Let's instead go after entrepreneurs and their customers, who would be forced make more cost prohibitive alcohol purchases with the passage of this ban.
Despite the sophomoric claims of city council members, it's this type of constant government meddling that displaces private initiative and contributes most to the destruction of communities.
I particularly like this segment from an AP story today on the suicide of Deborah Jeane Palfrey:
A federal jury convicted Palfrey on April 15 of money laundering, using the mail for illegal purposes, and racketeering. Prosecutors said she ran the prostitution service for 13 years.
Just so we're all clear here, Palfrey was convicted on charges of victimless (non-)crimes, which she allegedly committed in her attempt to avoid being prosecuted for the victimless (non-)crime of prostitution.
Read this superb article by Johnny Kramer to learn how the feds continually weave their web of victimless crime law after victimless crime law -- all aimed at preventing consenting adults from going about their business in manners the state conveniently deems "immoral."
A former assistant district attorney wants the NYPD to improve accountability among its officers by adopting "pistol cam" technology that will videotape any encounter in which a gun is pulled.
The police want no accountability, even if that means allowing witnesses to record their actions, so don't for a minute think such a commonsense measure to reign in state power would ever come to pass.
Public surveillance cameras in the nation's capital, that is.
In only the past few days:
- A man in Erie, Pa., is electrocuted for posing the mortal threat known as running away from an officer (Running toward an officer? Self-defense potentially appropriate; running away from one? You decide);
- Man dies after being hit with "non-lethal" Taser during a traffic stop and subsequent "struggle" with an officer;
- Judge orders Taser references deleted from medical examiner's ruling that the weapon contributed to the deaths of three men.
Radley Balko argued yesterday that the Taser's "non-lethal" marketing probably accounts for police officers' willingness to use it in virtually any situation, even those in which their well-being is not in jeopardy.
Like Radley, I believe Tasers can be an asset if they're deployed in situations where, say, a more lethal 9mm would otherwise be used (assuming resorting to lethal force was appropriate). The problem, however, is that Tasers prevent officers from having to worry about getting their hands dirty, so to speak, by chasing suspects over fences or rolling around on the ground during fistfights, and have allowed them to take the lazy way out of frustrating situations under the assumption that Tasers will cause no physical harm. Nothing could be further from the truth.
And now, unbelievably, judges are apparently willing to suppress medical evidence suggesting that Tasers are lethal weapons if that means preserving the misplaced notion that they're not.
