Well Said Mr. Gutfeld…Well Said.
Found at 90 miles: http://ninetymilesfromtyranny.blogspot.com/
Unfortunately, I Don’t See Any Difference in These 3 Asshats
From Moonbattery: http://moonbattery.com/
And Just Think…The IRS is Now in Charge of Your Healthcare. Let That Sink In…
From Moonbattery: http://moonbattery.com/
Celeste Giuliano Photo Tribute to The Glory Days of The Pin-Up Girls
Found over at Camp of the Saints. To see more go to:http://thecampofthesaints.org/2013/05/16/the-tcots-six-days-of-cheesecake-thursday-3/#more-20848
©All Photographs Copyright Celeste Giuliano Photography. All rights reserved.
Previous Servings of Cheesecake: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday
Please click on the logo to visit her website.
‘I have always loved the sex appeal of the women from the 40′s and 50′s. The women featured in Gil Elvgren and Alberto Vargas paintings, as well as the Hollywood starlets of that era, were all glowing with beauty and confidence. During this period, it was more about engaging the viewer with a flirtatious smile, with the tease of a garter or with tantalizing curves. This is something women of all ages, shapes and sizes can experience, but rarely do in today’s world.’
—Celeste Giuliano
O’Sucka Can’t Hide His Lying Mouth…Lies, Lies, Lies Just Spewing Out
@SarahPalinUSA Rips Obama A New One
Her latest posting on Facebook is worth quoting in full [tip of the fedora to Arko Leviathan via Luke K-Ski]:
Scandalous Hat Trick
Mr. President, when it rains it pours, but most Americans hold their own umbrellas. Today in the Rose Garden you dismissed the idea of a Special Counsel to investigate the IRS scandal. With that, your galling political hubris shined bright in the midst of today’s dark clouds.
Mr. President, how can we trust your Justice Department to conduct an independent investigation when there is a systemic violation of the Hatch Act throughout your administration?
Surely you are aware that the Hatch Act prevents certain federal employees from engaging in political activity. Specifically, it’s illegal for these federal employees to engage in action in support of or in opposition to a political party, a candidate for partisan political office, or a partisan political group.
Yet that is exactly what’s happened within the IRS, the Justice Department, and in the Benghazi cover-up. This scandalous hat trick is on your watch. It is not believable that you knew nothing about Obama administration actions in dealing with these scandals. And in regards to Benghazi, when you should have taken appropriate action to save American lives – for instance by calling in the Marines – you were AWOL. Just weeks before the election your team scrubbed the Benghazi talking points in 12 different versions, lied to the American people about some YouTube video being to blame for the deaths of brave Americans who put our country first, and you prove Michael Barone right when he writes, “What actually happened in Benghazi was out of sync with the Obama campaign line.” That’s why you all did what you did. Pure raw politics were at play during a horrific time of loss.
For more evidence of Hatch Act violations right under your nose, simply consider DOJ’s “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into the free press. Do you think they picked up some political talk when tapping the phones in the House press gallery?
Your team is out of control. Those who cannot remember the past and learn from it are doomed to repeat it, and that is exactly what is happening. Look back exactly 40 years ago this week and apply that disheartening chapter of American history to the team you’ve chosen and lead today.
Some of us warned America; we cautioned voters in 2008 that a community organizer with no executive experience and no sense of accountability would be a very poor choice for the nation’s top management position.
Mr. President, you said today that you have “complete confidence” in the Attorney General. America doesn’t. Eric Holder needs to appoint an unbiased Special Counsel to investigate the illegal political action of this administration. And then Eric Holder needs to resign.
Most Americans see ominous dark clouds looming beyond the White House Rose Garden, Mr. President. They’ll roll away only when light is shined on the Obama administration’s antics, and America will only recover when you cease avoiding responsibility in this mission of yours to fundamentally transform America. For that to happen, the press had better learn from their experiences of being duped and provide a deserving public fairer, more intelligent coverage.
Speaking of coverage, glad you finally called in the Marines… shame it was just to hold your umbrella.
It’s a shame they weren’t there to escort this disgrace from The White House grounds.
From Camp of the Saints: http://thecampofthesaints.org/
One of Great Britain’s Problems: islam Surging and Christianity Receding
Report: Christianity Facing “Catastrophic Collapse” In Britain, Number Of Muslims Surges By 75%…
We can all see where this is headed.
Via Telegraph:
Christianity could be facing a catastrophic collapse in Britain according to official figures suggesting it is declining 50 per cent faster than previously thought.
A new analysis of the 2011 census shows that a decade of mass immigration helped mask the scale of decline in Christian affiliation among the British-born population – while driving a dramatic increase in Islam, particularly among the young.
It suggests that only a minority of people will describe themselves as Christians within the next decade, for first time.
Meanwhile almost one in 10 under 25s in Britain is now a Muslim.
The proportion of young people who describe themselves as even nominal Christians has dropped below half for the first time.
Initial results from the 2011 census published last year showed that the total number of people in England and Wales who described themselves as Christian fell by 4.1 million – a decline of 10 per cent. [...]
They disclosed that there were in fact 5.3 million fewer British-born people describing themselves as Christians, a decline of 15 per cent in just a decade.
At the same time the number of Muslims in England and Wales surged by 75 per cent – boosted by almost 600,000 more foreign born followers of the Islamic faith.
From Weasel Zippers: http://weaselzippers.us/
American Education System: Nothing But a Brainwashing Camp for Children
Common Core GED book: ’9/11 hijackers were poor Afghanis’
[PROG WAY OFF]Homeschoolers will not escape the Common Core – at least those who take GED tests.
Once Common Core is nationally implemented and federally enforced, public education will become just another word for a forcible indoctrination of our children to induce them to give up their parents’ political, social, or religious beliefs and attitudes and to accept contrasting regimented ideas. This is the dictionary definition of brainwashing.
Only Pro-Death Abortionists Allowed at The IRS and Obama Wants it That Way
Report: IRS Denied Tax-Exempt Status To Pro-Life Group On Behalf Of Planned Parenthood…
This thing gets more unbelievable by the hour.
Via Washington Examiner:
IRS officials refused to grant tax exempt status two pro-life organizations because of their position on the abortion issue, according to a non-profit law firm, which said that one group was pressured not to protest a pro-choice organization that endorsed President Obama during the last election.
“In one case, the IRS withheld approval of an application for tax exempt status for Coalition for Life of Iowa. In a phone call to Coalition for Life of Iowa leaders on June 6, 2009, the IRS agent ‘Ms. Richards’ told the group to send a letter to the IRS with the entire board’s signatures stating that, under perjury of the law, they do not picket/protest or organize groups to picket or protest outside of Planned Parenthood,” the Thomas More Society announced today. “Once the IRS received this letter, their application would be approved.”
From Weasel Zippers: http://weaselzippers.us/
A Word From Churchill That Needs to Be Heard Today: Victory at All Costs over Tyranny
“Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat”
“I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this Government, I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many long months of toil and struggle.
“You ask what is our policy. I will say, it is to wage war with all our might, with all the strength that God can give us, to wage war against a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime.
“You ask what is our aim? I can answer in one word: Victory. Victory at all costs. Victory in spite of all terror. Victory however long and hard the road may be. For without victory there is no survival.”
—First speech as Prime Minister, House of Commons, 13 May 1940. Churchillfirst used the phrase “blood and sweat” in 1900; “Blood, sweat and tears” came together in his 1939 article, “Can FrancoRestore Unity and Strength to Spain.”
From Churchill Site: http://www.winstonchurchill.org/learn/speeches/quotations/famous-quotations-and-stories
C.S Lewis Remembered
National Conference 2013: Celebrating the Work of C.S. Lewis
byDavid Mathis|May 15, 2013
Fifty years ago this fall, C.S. Lewis quietly crossed from this life into the next.
While the assassination of John F. Kennedy captured the world’s attention on November 22, 1963, one Clive Staples Lewis — his friends called him Jack — breathed his last and took one big step toward becoming the kind of glorious creature in the coming new creation he speaks about in his famous sermon “The Weight of Glory.”
It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you…
From Desiring God: http://www.desiringgod.org/blog
The Doolittle Raiders: The Last of a Group of Real Men. Real Heroes.
THE LAST TOAST FOR THE DOOLITTLE RAIDERS
Lt. Col. James Doolittle leans over a bomb on the USS Hornet deck just before his “Raiders” began the bombing raid on Tokyo.
On April 18, 1942 80 men in 16 B-25 medium bombers launched from the USS Hornet and bombed Tokyo in death-defying mission, in retaliation for Pearl Harbor.
This past April, the last few remaining Doolittle Raiders met at Fort Walton Beach, Florida. Their custom is to bring a case of 80 goblets to their annual reunions. When a Raider dies a cup is upended.
This year, there are four left. They toasted the Raiders with aged cognac. It’s the cup of brandy that no one wants to drink. For this years reunion, the surviving Doolittle Raiders gathered publicly for the last time. They once were among the most universally admired and revered men in the United States. In April 1942, they carried out one of the most courageous and heart-stirring military operations in this nation’s history. The mere mention of their unit’s name, in those years, would bring tears to the eyes of grateful Americans.
Now only four survive.
After Japan’s sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, with the United States reeling and wounded, something dramatic was needed to turn the war effort around. Even though there were no friendly airfields close enough to Japan for the United States to launch a retaliation, a daring plan was devised. Sixteen B-25s were modified so that they could take off from the deck of an aircraft carrier. This had never before been tried – sending such big, heavy bombers from a carrier. The 16 five-man crews, under the command of Lt. Col. James Doolittle, who himself flew the lead plane off the USS Hornet, knew that they would not be able to return to the carrier. They would have to hit Japan and then hope to make it to China for a safe landing.
On the day of the raid, the USS Hornet encountered a Japanese fishing craft. Assuming that the Japanese military would be informed of their presence, the Raiders were told that they would have to take off from much farther out in the Pacific Ocean than planned. They were told that because of this they would not have enough fuel to make it to safety.
Iranian American Ex-mooslim – Amil Imani – Salutes Pamela Geller as Champion of Freedom
Iranian-American ex-Muslim, Amil Imani, salutes counterjihadist champion of liberty, Pamela Geller
Tragically, during these times of great peril, truth is sacrificed by the politically correct, the myopic self-serving in the liberally dominated media, and the ruling class. Against this backdrop, a woman of great courage and integrity labors tirelessly in speaking the truth and in the defense of liberty.
Visit Amils website
Amil on Facebook
Amil Imani Pamela Geller’s work in objectively revealing the true nature of Islam makes her a valued champion and defender of human dignity with liberty for all, and in particular, for women as longstanding victims of Islamic misogyny.
Geller methodically sheds light on the dark nature of Islamic beliefs and the barbaric practices involving the abuse of women in all ways, such as honor killing, female genital mutilation, child sex trafficking, forced child brides, severe abuse of homosexuals, and much more under the Stone Age Sharia law. Her work upholds and defends the ideals of human rights.
Liberty-loving people of America and the world over owe a debt of gratitude to Pamela Geller for valiantly exposing the racist and supremacist nature of Islam, for fearlessly braving where others dare not tread. She is a standard-bearer for human freedom and dignity. What does she get in return? A vicious and dirty hate campaign from jihadist apologists, fraudsters like the Southern Poverty Law Center, assorted left wing whacko groups, and even some Jewish organizations like the ADL, who should know better, and many threats by the Allah-following fanatics, simply because she speaks the truth about Islam.
If telling the truth about Islam is Islam bashing, then she is guilty.
The fact is that the self-righteous Islamist villains, their leftist apologists, and their paid mercenaries, do not trouble themselves to prove her wrong. Why is it that they do not disprove her naked truth about Islam? Conveniently, true to form, they shower her with all kinds of unspeakable epithets. Some of the more “civil” Muslims play the victim card. These latter types let out a hue and cry that they and their religion are smeared and victimized by people like Pamela. They consider her criticisms of Islam as Islam bashing. They accuse her of being a divisive racist who enjoys slandering Islam. For good measure, they also label her Zionist, in the pay of Israel and Israeli lobbies. Who is bashing whom?
Human nature is also the culprit, in part. We humans are attracted to hate like flies are to honey. Hate is an easy sell. It is appealing and little effort is required to hate. Hate gathers up the person’s or the group’s frustrations, anxieties, fears, paranoia and many other negative emotions in one handy bundle and hurls it at a convenient target. History is replete with instances of hate energizing the masses into the commitment of small and large-scale atrocities.
Truth is not always welcome and can often be greatly disturbing. But truth is the best weapon against evil and falsehood. When Geller points out the horrifying teachings of the Quran, she does not make them up. She cites Surahs from the Muslim Holy Book; Surahs and words that exhort Muslims to carry out all kinds of evil deeds against non-Muslims.
The truth is, Pamela Geller, is a heroine of our era. Heroes appear when circumstances call upon them. Heroes are those extraordinary people who stand up against evil at great peril to themself.
Pamela Geller is a courageous and intrepid human rights activist who has risen to fight for the rights of women and children under the iron fist of Islamic savagery. All of this brings charges of “hate speech” from the extremists and apologists for extremism and persecution. She honestly, and rightfully so, deserves to be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. She has done more for her country and humanity than President Obama has ever done. Ironically, he gets to keep his Nobel Peace Prize and she receives a barrage of insults and nasty attacks. The world is upside down, so it appears.
In addition to her distinguished resume, “Pamela Geller has broken numerous important stories — notably the questionable and illegal foreign sources of some of the financing of the Obama campaign, the anti-Semitic posts on Obama’s website, Obama’s political organizing in public school classrooms, ACORN’s destruction of Republican voter registrations, and many more. She has also been a staunch leader of the nationwide campaign against the Ground Zero mosque.”
Western people with their heads firmly encased in the cocoon of liberalism—the idea of live and let live—fail to see that Islam is anathema to the notion. Muslim sects do not even grant each other a modicum of tolerance. Muslims kill other Muslims on a daily basis, all in the name of Islam. They vie with one another to convert the world to their form of Caliphate. They do all this while also taking advantage of non-Muslim naiveté and destroying the God-given gift of liberty.
“Western elites – government and media – are paralyzed by fear, afraid to speak out against the life-destroying aspects of Sharia law that Islamic jihadists want to impose on the rest of the world. The risk of offending Muslims is, in their calculus, apparently greater than the risk of national or civilizational suicide,” once said the late courageous Journalist, Oriana Fallaci.
Why does all this happen? In her speech Fallaci explained that it was to a great degree because “truth inspires fear.” When one hears the truth, one can only be silent or join the cause. It is a call to a personal revolution, an upheaval, a departure – perhaps forever – from a life of ease and comfort. So most will prefer not to hear the truth — in no small part because of the difficulty of living up to it. Yet the real heroes, she said, are ‘those who raise their voices against anathemas and persecution, while most succumb — and with their silence give their approval to the civil death of those who spoke out.”
Like Fallaci, Pamela Geller is also a voice of rare courage. “I am not as young and energetic as you are, I am hopelessly ill. I shall not last long,” said Fallaci in her latter days. And when she departed from us, she only hoped men and women of courage would rise up and would continue her legacy. One can only thank God people like Pamela Gellar have risen up and spoken the truth no matter how bitter that may be.
Pamela Geller has been sounding the alarm for a number of years about radical Islam and jihadists’ imminent deadly threats. While America is the last haven of hope where liberty can reign, the Islamic jihadists draw heavily from their treasury flush with oil extortion money to bribe politicians and hire mercenaries to further their evil objectives.
“Islamic supremacism is seeping into every aspect of American life. Islamic jihad groups aren’t solely concentrating on terror attacks (although another one of those could come at any moment), but on the creeping encroachment to introduce Islamic law into this country, step-by-step and bit-by-bit, until finally America wakes up to a country transformed into an Islamic state. We must fight back now to defend our nation and our civilization, states our Champion of liberty, Pamela Geller.”
As an ex-Muslim and a proud co-worker of the same cause as Geller’s, I salute this courageous defender of liberty and urge all freedom lovers to do the same and join her ranks to stem the tide of Islamic tyranny. I have experienced first-hand the pall that Islam casts on the life of the individual and society. From cradle to grave, Islam imposes its oppressive, intolerant, and deathly dogma without let up. This archaic primitive belief of over 1400 years ago has been and continues to be at war with valiant people who refuse to lend their necks to its yoke of slavery.
Pamela Geller is a true heroine. She stands for all that is dear to free people. She is a stark contrast to the masses of the politically correct, the apathetic, and the hired Islamic apologists.
I have tasted Islamic poison and imbibed from the chalice of liberty. Islam aims to reclaim me and force the rest of mankind into its bondage and rob us all of the treasure of liberty. I am with Patrick Henry and Pamela Geller: “give me liberty or give me death.”
Amil Imani is an Iranian-American writer, poet, satirist, novelist, essayist, literary translator, public speaker and political analyst who has been writing and speaking out about the danger of radical Islam both in America and internationally. His numerous articles about Islam have been published in many newspapers and magazines around the world as well as in thousands of Internet magazines, websites and blogs. Imani’s writings can be found on his website Amil Imani.com.He has become a formidable voice in the United States against the danger of global jihad and Islamization of America.
He maintains a website at www.amilimani.com. Imani is the author of the riveting book Obama Meets Ahmadinejad and the upcoming thriller Operation Persian Gulf.
Need Money? Call O’Sucka and Ask Him.
Ya Gotta Love Grandpas…. (From the email inbox)
Love, Grandpa
Free Speech Trampled in mooslim Controlled Dearborn Michigan
Michigan Federal Judge Allows Muslim Violence Against Christians; Dearborn Stoning Caught On Video
.
. A severe blow for the freedom of speech, and victory for the advance of Sharia blasphemy laws here. “Michigan Federal Judge Allows Muslim Violence to Suppress Christian Speech; Immediate Appeal Filed,” from the American Freedom Law Center, May 14:
A Michigan federal judge today dismissed a civil rights lawsuit brought by several Christian evangelists who were violently assaulted by a hostile Muslim mob while preaching at an Arab festival last year in Dearborn, Michigan, which has the largest Muslim population in the United States. Video of the Muslim assault went viral on YouTube.
The American Freedom Law Center (AFLC) filed the lawsuit against Wayne County, the Wayne County Sheriff, and two Wayne County Deputy Chiefs for refusing to protect the Christians from the attack and threatening to arrest the Christians for disorderly conduct if they did not halt their speech activity and immediately leave the festival area.
Judge Patrick J. Duggan, sitting in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, granted Wayne County’s motion for summary judgment, dismissing the lawsuit. The judge also denied AFLC’s motion requesting that the court issue an order preventing the Wayne County Sheriff and his deputies from restricting the Christian evangelists from displaying their banners and signs on the public sidewalks outside of this year’s Arab Festival, which will be held in June. In the ruling, the judge stated the following: “The Court finds that the actual demonstration of violence here provided the requisite justification for [the Wayne County sheriffs’] intervention, even if the officials acted as they did because of the effect the speech had on the crowd.”
Robert Muise, AFLC Co-Founder and Senior Counsel, commented: “The First Amendment was dealt a severe blow today as a result of this ruling. Indeed, this ruling effectively empowers Muslims to silence Christian speech that they deem offensive by engaging in violence. And pursuant to this ruling, the Christian speakers are now subject to arrest for engaging in disorderly conduct on account of the Muslim hecklers’ violent response to their speech. In short, this ruling turns the First Amendment on its head.”
David Yerushalmi, AFLC Co-Founder and Senior Counsel, added: “This fight for our fundamental right to freedom of speech does not stop here. We have filed an immediate appeal of this ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. While Judge Duggan may have been the first judge to rule on this issue, he won’t be the last. Indeed, we are prepared to take this case to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary because it is imperative that our free speech rights not be subject to mob rule. This is the United States, not Benghazi.”
At least for now.
. Click HERE For Rest Of Story from The Daley Gator: http://thedaleygator.wordpress.com/
Just What A Tyrant Would Say…
Found at 90 miles: http://ninetymilesfromtyranny.blogspot.com/
The Hazards of an Overzealous Police Presence
Hazards, moral and other
by Mike
Herschel tells our militarized “police” personnel a thing or two about a thing or two.
Hey moron. When there is a child around, get your hand off of your damn weapon. I don’t care about your trigger discipline. When you unholster your weapon I don’t know what you will do. I have a child in my arms. Moron. Learn to use your brain.
There are many, many more such examples, and I’m not sure what the SWAT officer was talking about when he discussed the jubilation America displayed when Boston was locked down like a prison, but around these parts we were livid. We don’t want you. We don’t need you. We don’t see you in heroic terms. We think you’re dangerous and a hazard to the peaceable among us.
Finally, you have no moral right to unholster your weapon and point it at me, my family or my beasts. You don’t have a moral right to forcibly enter my home, and you don’t have a moral right to endanger me, my family or my beasts because you want to “go home at the end of the day.”
Oh, and by the way. I think your reflexive shooting of dogs during your stupid SWAT raids is cowardly and ham-handed (it happens all over America every day). If a dog comes after you when you force your way into a home, maybe you shouldn’t have been in that home in the first place. And most of the time if you can’t handle dogs without reverting to shooting them I think you’re a pussy.
All just part and parcel of keeping a population cowed, ignorant, and suppressed.
From COld Fury: http://coldfury.com/
Patrice, over at Rural Revolution Blog, Has a New Calf
It’s always convenient if calves are born in the corral for two reasons; one, the animals have the shelter of the barn if they need it; and two, we can dehorn or castrate the calves without having to embark on a wild goose (calf?) chase across the pasture to capture them.
Anyway, we came home from our neighborhood potluck last night — and saw that Lily had had her calf! She had just dropped it, and I mean just. The calf was still wet and hadn’t gotten to its feet yet.
Altogether now: “Awwww….”
My parents flew in to visit last week and are staying in Coeur d’Alene. My Dad came in for last night’s potluck, though my Mom wasn’t feeling quite up to it. So Dad — a city boy from birth — got to see a newborn calf and he watched enraptured as the baby struggled to its feet and took its first nourishing meal of colostrum. He’d never seen a newborn calf before.
Lily spent a good deal of time licking her baby. This accomplishes three things: (1) it cleans the newborn; (2) it stimulates the baby’s circulation; and (3) it familiarizes the cow with her baby’s unique scent.
The rest of the herd was eager to catch a glimpse of the newcomer.
While we’re not positive of the gender, the elegant long head makes me think it’s a girl. Boys usually have shorter heads. Younger Daughter tentatively has named her Leto, after the Greek goddess of motherhood (since she was born on Mother’s Day).
Cooking From Scratch – A Lost Art For Most These Days
The basics of kitchen equipment
I tried it for the first time while making biscuits for breakfast, and it worked just great.
I’d never used one of these gizmos before, but after watching a neighbor make biscuits with one, it looked like a spiffy idea. While a pastry blender isn’t a necessity — I’ve spent over twenty years making biscuits and pie crusts without it — it was delightfully handy and easy to use. So, it’s been added to my inventory of kitchen tools.
When Don and I were first married in 1990, I had only the most basic kitchen implements: some pots and pans, a few utensils, cups, etc. As I began cooking more, I gradually added more items that made cooking more convenient — cookie sheets, measuring cups and spoons, mixing bowls, a bread board, a cutting board, etc. Since I’m not a gourmet cook I don’t have “gourmet” items in my kitchen, but I have what is needed to cook from scratch.
Sometimes I am startled by what people lack in their kitchen. I’m not talking about newlyweds just getting started in life; I’m talking about established families whose kitchens lack mixing bowls or pie pans or a rolling pin. I recently met someone who didn’t even own a single measuring spoon.
I understand why this is. It’s because so few people cook from scratch anymore. People are busy, convenience food is cheap and abundant, and the art of a homemade meal has become rarer.
I don’t pretend to be a culinary genius in the kitchen (in fact, I actually rather dislike cooking though I do enjoy baking) but knowing how to cook from scratch is, I feel, important. No, more than important — essential.
Scratch cooking is one of those unheralded and under-appreciated skills that we should all learn because it’s the answer to an obvious question: What would you do if frozen pizza or canned chile or boxed macaroni-and-cheese were not available? This is a particularly important question for Preppers because it affects what foods they store.
With a few exceptions, most of your food storage should be ingredients, not prepared food. This means basic staples from which you can assemble complete meals. Most staples (properly stored) will also last longer than most processed foods.
Endless numbers of Preppers have stored away endless amounts of rice and beans, but often they lack the ability to cook up those rice and beans in tasty ways. Worse, lots of people have wheat stored away, without any real comprehension of how to turn that wheat into a loaf of bread.
Our pioneer ancestors were experts at cooking from scratch. They had no choice. The food they grew, raised, or caught was in “scratch” form and needed to be transferred into something edible. And yet pioneer recipes have come down through the generations as testimonies of the wonderful and delicious ways in which basic foods could make marvelous and nutritious meals.
Sadly that ability –- to take raw ingredients and create delicious meals out of them –- is either watered down or gone. We are so entirely dependent on prepared foods from the grocery store (or deli or restaurant) that the definition of “scratch” cooking means making a cake from a boxed mix.
So challenge yourself to take a bag of dried beans and make a meal out of it. Learn how to cook grains, beans, and rice, in addition to meats, fruits, and vegetables. For an additional challenge, grow some of those component ingredients yourself. Make note, then acquire, the kitchen implements necessary to create meals from scratch.
Stocking the kitchen with the basic tools for scratch cooking doesn’t have to be expensive, as my pastry blender demonstrates. Many items of excellent quality can be found in thrift stores.
So tell me — what’s your “must have” nonelectric kitchen tool you can’t live without? Post it so others who are just beginning to stock their kitchens can learn.
Stormbringer Gives Some Insight on Benghazi…
STILL SPINNING BENGHAZI: LATEST LIES
Gates: Some Benghazi critics have “cartoonish” view of military capability
Oh R-E-A-L-L-Y-?-?-? How very I-N-T-E-R-E-S-T-I-N-G for you to say that. Well I don’t have a “cartoonish” view of the military – having spent a quarter of a century wearing the war suit in Special Forces and maintaining a close professional association with Special Operations units to this day . . .
. . . let’s go through this by the numbers:
“We don’t have a ready force standing by in the Middle East, and so getting somebody there in a timely way would have been very difficult, if not impossible.”
Not exactly true – we had the Commander’s In Extemis Force (CIF) eight hundred miles away on a training mission in Croatia; less than six hours out by C-130. Perhaps not close enough to respond to the initial assault on the Consulate but they certainly could have made a difference during the follow-on fight at the CIA Annex compound. Closer to the fight, at least four Special Forces operators in Tripoli who were ordered – by somebody – to stand down.
I know about the CIF because that is my old outfit – everywhere we went we were required to bring our go-to-war pallets with full basic load of ammunition. In the event of a terrorist attack on one of the diplomatic missions in our theater, our job was to march to the sound of the guns. To turn off the standing orders requires a direct order from the National Command Authority – i.e the President, the Vice-President, the Secretary of Defense or the Assistant Secretary of Defense. One of those four gave the order to stand down, in other words.
Suggestions that we could have flown a fighter jet over the attackers to “scare them with the noise or something,” Gates said, ignored the “number of surface to air missiles that have disappeared from [former Libyan leader] Qaddafi’s arsenals.”
I’m going to throw out the 15-yard Bullshit Flag here; we know that over 6 hours elapsed from the beginning of the attack to when the CIA operators were killed by mortar fire – from a heavy mortar emplacement they had laser target designators on, and had requested air support hours earlier in neutralizing. They had also given higher HQ 8-digit coordinates on the mortars, as close as it gets in combat targeting. Former Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods (who died during the second phase of the attack, on the CIA Annex) were “lazing” enemy mortar position. They weren’t doing that for the good of their health – they were doing it because they had reason to believe there were air assets overhead; and they were on the phone speaking to somebody, directing them to laze those targets.
Furthermore, Libya does not have Syria’s Anti-Aircraft-Artillery (AAA) defense-in-depth. Sure, there are shoulder-fired man-portable anti-aircraft defense systems (MANPADS) available – but these are inneffective against a couple of fast-movers flying less than 200′ off the deck with their afterburners on. By the time the zoomies scream on by causing a couple of sonic booms over the bad guys, Hajii would be saying, “Holy Hookah Pipes, what was THAT???” I have personally seen this tactic defuse an attack on a political target in the Philippines.
“To send some small number of special forces or other troops in without knowing what the environment is, without knowing what the threat is, without having any intelligence in terms of what is actually going on on the ground, would have been very dangerous. It’s sort of a cartoonish impression of military capabilities and military forces,” he said. “The one thing that our forces are noted for is planning and preparation before we send people in harm’s way, and there just wasn’t time to do that.”
Again, bullshit. We had actionable intelligence live from the battlefield. Our guys on the ground – to include former Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods – were tooling around town between the Consulate and the Annex, and were reporting what they saw. On top of that, we had at least one drone, and various reports mention the presence of an AC-130 gunship – which would explain what Doherty and Woods were doing with the lasers.
The Ultimate Rebuttal:
Gates can say what he wants – one aspect of this entire disgraceful affair that nobody is addressing is the relief-for-cause of General Ham, commander of US Africa Command at Kelly Kaserne in Stuttgart, Germany, the evening of the attack, 11-12 September 2012:
Upon notification the attack in Benghazi was taking place, AFRICOM Commander General Ham immediately notified the CIF unit and communicated to the Pentagon that his forces were ready to deploy.
General Ham then received the order to stand down. His alleged response was screw it, he was going to help anyhow. Within 30 seconds to a minute after making the move to respond, his second-in-command apprehended General Ham and told him that he was now relieved of his command.
On October 18 2012, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced: ”President Barack Obama will nominate Army Gen. David Rodriguez to succeed Gen. Carter Ham as commander of U.S. Africa Command and Marine Lt. Gen. John Paxton to succeed Gen. Joseph Dunford as assistant commandant of the Marine Corps.”
It is very intriguing that Ham is immediately reassigned less than eighteen months into a three year tour. Maybe Ham attempted to send a reaction force against orders, or maybe he simply gave his chain-of-command a piece of his mind about hanging Americans to dry. At the very least the CIF and whatever other forces were available could have made those who killed our people pay while they were still on the scene.
Analysis:
What I’m seeing here is somebody trotted out former CIA Director Robert Gates, to assist with the mitigation and spin doctoring of BenghaziGate. Team Obama either has something they’re holding over his head, or – get this – they’re promising him a nice juicy plum. Say, an ambassadorship in London or Rome or Paris, or maybe even a spot on the ticket with the HildeBeest in 2016. Think about it; nothing could give Hillary more legitimacy in the area of foreign affairs and national security than to have a Republican former Secretary of Defense, former Director of Central Intelligence as her running partner?
The kind of people who rise to the top of organizations such as the Department of Defense and the CIA are raging egomaniacs – if not during their rise to the top, then certainly after breathing the rarified air at the top. Dangle a carrot like that in front of them, and a guy like Gates will sell his mother. Selling out his country is small potatoes, in comparison.
Wnat I’m waiting for is to hear what Petraeus has to say about all this – he testified on Benghazi and spouted the party line, and for his troubles the Obamatrons threw him under the bus. It will be very interesting to hear what he has to say if they bring him out, the second time around.
- STORMBRINGER SENDS at http://seanlinnane.blogspot.com/
Don’t Trust Politicians – They Are All The Same. They Will Not Save America.
Put Not Your Trust in Politicians
.jpg)
The Tea Party invested its energy into electing the right people, but as Rick Scott and Marco Rubio showed us, there may be no such thing as the right people. Politicians are in the business of selling out. The difference between Marco Rubio and Charlie Crist was that Rubio hadn’t really been tested.But that doesn’t mean politics is hopeless. It means politicians are hopeless. People however can still force politicians to do the right thing.
The NRA won its fight against gun control even though all the odds, political, financial and emotional, were stacked against it. Politicians had every reason to defect and evolve into a new understanding. And some did. But the ground held because enough of them knew that the NRA was in it for the long term and they would have to deal with it long after Bloomberg had moved on.
In 2012, amnesty and gun control both appeared to be equally unacceptable and were shunned by Republican politicians. If anything they shunned amnesty even harder than gun control. But one election loss later and most of the stalwarts, including Marco Rubio, Rand Paul and Paul Ryan have jumped on the amnesty train.
Victor Davis Hanson observes that, “in these divided times ideology and politics can easily trump considerations about character.” But accepting that character doesn’t matter may just be practical politics.
There may be leaders of good character out there who firmly resolve to do the right thing and never waver from their course, but they are the exception and the political system is designed to weed them out.
The self-motivated politician who never wavers is a lot to ask of any man. Even Churchill eventually buckled to Stalin. What can one expect of the senator from Idaho or Virginia?
Politics is not about politicians. It’s about people. Politicians are just the brokers in the political process. The real lesson of the Tea Party is not that you can intervene in a primary for the most conservative candidate and then sit back while he does the right thing, it’s that the only way to get the right thing done is to have an organization that is constantly involved in the political process.
Prohibition, an insane policy, was largely rammed through by a clever and relentless organization that built alliances and forced the issue down the throats of politicians who didn’t agree with it. The same tactics have been used for a variety of causes, including, most recently, gay marriage. In each case, most politicians who did not agree with a cause, came around on it because it was smart politics.
The politician who evolves concedes that he is up for grabs. Evolutionary announcements should be met with contempt, but they also signal that a politician who flips can be made to flop back again. Treating him as if he were an intelligent thinking individual with principles may be a mistake. It may be easier to assume that he has neither principles nor character and that he will go whichever way seems easiest. And the trick then is to reshape his environment so that he evolves into another shape.
For all the complaints that we need leaders, leaders may be the one thing that we do not need. The sort of people that we associate with leaders tend to be self-willed men with their own agendas. Christie and Bloomberg are both leaders, but their version of leadership is to pursue their private agendas without any accountability or regard for anyone else. What we need are not leaders, but organizations that are better at holding politicians accountable.
Hunting for principled politicians is like searching for buried treasure. It’s nice if we find some, but we can’t assume that we will.
The professional politician excels at pretending to have principles and then selling them out. Finding an honest one is like trying to buy a Rolex watch at a folding card table near Times Square. You may get the real deal, but the odds are that you will be ripped off because the people you are dealing with are trained con artists. They have pulled the same scam a thousand times. They are better at reading you than you are at reading them.
What politicians really do is move money around. They push pork for their friends and supporters who then reward them by making sure that they get reelected. It’s a simple financial transaction and any principles can only get in the way of it. They are salesmen for government spending and like all salesmen, they need a pitch strategy because “I’m going to give 10 million dollars of your money to the people who contribute to my campaign and organize groups that support me” is not a winner.
We may have reached the point where it’s smarter to ignore the pitch strategy, the stories, the speaking style, the declaration of principles, the Heritage approved reading list, and reduce everything back to a simple business transaction free of any hero worship or commitments.
It’s not smart for small government conservatives to believe in politicians anyway. If politicians were worth believing in, then one of the main arguments against small government trickles away. If there were a breed of politicians that weren’t hungry for power and able to find the balance between rights and regulations, why shouldn’t we trust them to run things? Such a breed of philosopher-kings doesn’t exist. And will never exist.
Most people, of all factions, rightly hold politicians in contempt and are suspicious of governments. The Tea Party would have done better to keep its distance from politicians, instead of allowing too many of them to wrap themselves in the Tea Party brand. Too much energy was wasted in getting behind politicians, instead of getting on top of them.
“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?”was the old Roman question. Who watches the watchmen? Politicians are a poor accountability method. They aren’t going to hold themselves accountable. Trying to play Diogenes hunting for an honest politician in Washington D.C. is an even bigger waste of time. There are hardly any and they may not be the ones you think are.
Politicians are tools. They were meant to be wielded by the people. A good politician understands that he is being held accountable. A bad politician doesn’t. Politicians don’t pay attention to people. They pay attention to organizations. The only way to lock in good behavior by a politician is to lock them into an organization that is capable of rewarding or punishing him.
The organization can’t just be money. There is an entire political class built around activism that consumes money and does nothing. The 2012 campaign should have been an education in that.
The left isn’t just successful because it has billionaires, but because it successfully organizes people. The successful organization of people is the difference between 2010 and 2012. If 2014 and 2016 are going to be any different, it will come down to building organizations that can transform the process.
Single-issue organizations like the NRA can be very effective. So can larger scale organizations. Many of them exist, but what they really require is ground level organizing. Money is cheap. People are hard to come by.
If conservative policies are going to win out, the decentralized conservative presence of the internet is going to have to be more directly leveraged in the real world. The people already exist. Bringing them into play in a structured way is what is missing.
The 2010 elections showed what is possible when the people get involved. And the 2012 elections showed what happens when the political class leaves the people behind. Sometimes the people class can win on its own, but even when it does, its victory, like all political class agendas, is a prelude to another sellout.
Principles can’t come from politicians because politics is now largely an economic transaction. They can only come from people who do not benefit from those government class transactions. The left has built a shadow government of organizations, but it has done so while linking those organizations to small, but sizable numbers of organizers and activists, who can rally the base. The right will have to duplicate its accomplishments if it doesn’t want to see the politicians that it wastes money and energy electing constantly “evolve” to the left.
Some readers have complained that this blog is too hostile or negative toward Republican politicians. If anything it’s not nearly negative enough. Cheerleading for favorite politicians is a waste of time. The solutions will not come from messiahs in suits. It will come when the number of conservative issues that politicians come to see as the third rail expands beyond gun control. It will come when the professional political infrastructure is contained by a conservative activist infrastructure that is as least as effective and powerful as its counterpart on the left.
It will come when we stop believing in electing the right man and accept that the honest politician is the one who stays bought. It may not be romantic or idealistic, but it is far more practical than waiting for the next Marco Rubio to come around.
Victor Hansen Davis Speaks on War in The Contemporary Age
Found at American Digest