09:35 – I told Barbara that I’d checked Sam’s Club on-line and that they carry cases of 24 boxes of Wheaties, so I’d ordered two cases for her. I apologized for getting only 48 boxes rather than the 50 boxes that she’d dreamed I’d ordered. Which just proves that even 31 years of marriage isn’t enough to fully develop a husbandly survival instinct.
I just walked Colin through a Southern blizzard, which is to say that there’s some white flaky stuff falling from the sky. Around here, that counts as a White Saturnalia.
I’m doing laundry and Barbara is working on her Christmas stuff. Later today, we’ll work on kit stuff. Amazingly, we’ve managed to keep all kits in stock, although we’re still low on several of them.
I’m gradually getting Barbara used to using some of the shelf-stable foods that we’re storing for emergencies. The other night she was about to fry hash browns when I presented her with a 3-pound can of Crisco butter-flavor shortening. The manufacturer rates the shelf life of that stuff at one year for an open can stored at room temperature. In a sealed can, it’s good for at least five to ten years. I keep a dozen cans frozen, which should extend their shelf life well into the 22nd century.
Barbara usually fries hash browns in vegetable oil, and was afraid that the Crisco would make them “taste funny”. I convinced her to try it, and afterwards she said that the hash browns actually tasted better fried in the Crisco. Next up, using the butter-flavor Crisco for making fried chicken.
When I cook hash browns I just grill them, no oil. I figure they get enough oil when they’re pre-cooked, and I *do* notice a bit of oil residue.
Roll yer own damn hash browns and fry them in lard; along with some poached eggs on red-flannel beef hash, a side of grits (converted during my time in TX), fresh fruit and a pitcher of iced fruit juice, preferably cranberry, and Bob’s yer uncle!
Blue skies and sun today here; 14 right now with (thankfully) no wind. The weather liars say it’ll hit the fotties on Wednesday, Xmas Eve.
OFD, that’s me knocking on your front door. Now that’s my kind of breakfast (lard, necessary for a breakfast of champions and good cooks). I might add a thin cut piece of last night’s prime rib, warmed in the skillet. I’ll try to remember to bring it next time.
Thanks to Global Warming and the Jet Stream we have rain and temps in the 40s.
What more can you say? Obola apologizes to Castro. My wife knows a lot of Cubanos. They either came from Cuba or their parents did. There is no love lost and they would gladly slit either Castro’s throat in the night.
We have had a bitterly cold winter here in the Land of Sugar so far. We got 4 or 5 inches of rain yesterday and the temperature never got above 60 F.
Managed to get my truck stuck in the mud yesterday while trying to fix the septic tank. One of my guys had to go get his tugem strap and pull me out. The back wheels where down about a foot or so in the mud where I tried to rock it. Limited slip usually works for these situations but I was not careful on entry point. In fact, four wheel drive in this case would have just dug me deeper.
OFD, that’s the kind of breakfast I cook when there’s anyone around to eat it. Anyone besides me, that is — I certainly eat all that but don’t bother cooking all that if it’s just me. Though I’ll point out that you forgot the bacon.
I just finished a 20 oz. can of hash with half a dozen extra large eggs on top. I empty the can into a pre-heated cast iron skillet, plop the eggs on top, cover, and let it heat up until I’m ready for it. As it happens, “when” was about 25 minutes today, as I made three loaves of pumpkin bread and tossed them in the oven before I ate. And, yes, I can make hash from scratch, but it’s generally too much work.
No, Bob was my father, and the world is not a poorer place for his absence.
“There is no love lost and they would gladly slit either Castro’s throat in the night.”
Our new best pal, Raul, was in charge of the secret police there for a very long time and an interesting account of how they operated can be found in “Against All Hope,” by Armando Valladares. But what the hell, we have our own secret police, and some of them are not above doing the same sorts of things to their own fellow citizens.
@Mr. DadCooks and Mr. SteveF: I would throw in whatever meat scraps from the previous night, for sure, and bacon is always acceptable. My grits have a nice pool of unsalted buttuh on top with a sprinkling of fresh-ground peppuh. I squeeze several drops of Frank’s Hot Sauce on top of each poached egg yolk, too. If I’m really hungry and piggy, I’ll add on ham-stuffed French toast where the stale French bread has been soaking in the egg/heavy cream mixture overnight in the fridge, with cinnamon apple slices on top and Vermont maple syrup. Sometimes I dust it with powdered sugar and grated orange rind.
I do all this for whatever meal and clean up as I go so I have the minimum left to mop up at the end, with a few things soaking in the sink. Someone Else here does whatever meal and it always seems to take half the day and the kitchen looks like a platoon of jarheads had grenade practice in it. Stuff is never rinsed off before just dumping it in the sink and then to the dishwasher, where the drying cycle bakes on the flotsam and jetsam; salad dressing and pasta are a royal PITA to deal with then. Throw in Princess in the kitchen and multiply all that by at least three or four. They’ll make a token cleanup effort at the end but guess who does the lion’s share? Better anyway, ’cause it gets done RIGHT!
But don’t get me stahted on the home/marriage front again.
Lynn, I’d love to know how you make hash from scratch.
I render my own lard from ground leaf suet (is a a meat grinder in Bob’s Prepper handbook?) and run it through a coffee filter. Delicious stuff.
A “Boston Market” TV dinner tray holds almost 16 oz, exactly; so if you pour it into that and cool and cut, you end up with 4 oz. squares.
½ lard and ½ butter makes the best pie crust imaginable.
We have had a bitterly cold winter here in the Land of Sugar so far. We got 4 or 5 inches of rain yesterday and the temperature never got above 60 F.
Whoa! Bitter cold is anything below 60 F? We have had what I would call a bitter cold fall (winter starts at 6:03 pm EST tomorrow), with many days below freezing. Oddly, we have had very little wind this fall, which is not usual. Berlin wind in winter was never more than 5 mph and often just 2 to 3 mph, and from 10 years of that, I found that it really is not cold until it gets below freezing. Most men in Berlin wore long underwear and layers on top in winter, and even standing for a train at 35 or 40 F does not feel all that cold when there is no wind. Get below freezing, and then you feel like going somewhere warm.
So even though we have not had much wind, temps have been below freezing a lot, which is my definition of bitter cold. 32 F here in Tiny Town at the moment; 33 in Lancanster, PA; 54 in Austin, TX at the moment. I’m tracking those with a weather bug in the Mint panel, because I have relatives in each place. Also have relatives in San Diego, which is where I would like to be at the moment. It is currently 64 and cloudy there with 2 mph wind.
jim`, presumably you were asking me about hash recipes. Just go to food.com and search for “beef hash”, or any recipe site.
I don’t usually make it the same way twice, but the basic ingredients are diced roast beef (I don’t really like corned beef), diced potatoes, diced onion, milk, and worcester sauce. Brown the potatoes and onion in butter, throw in the beef, pour in the milk, simmer uncovered until most of the liquid is gone, and add worcester sauce and other seasonings. That said, there’s a lot of ways to make it inedible, so find a couple recipes and try them. And, as noted, I usually just open a can because I’m much too lazy for all that dicing.
re suet and lard: lard is rendered pig fat and suet is rendered beef fat. I’m not sure about terms for goat, sheep, and other fats.
Agreed with Jim` on the lard for pie crusts and other uses; and though we have the Kitchen Aid food processor/stand mixer deal and it has the meat grinding attachment doo-hickey, I much prefer the hand/manual meat grinders that you bolt to the counter or a table. Worked OK for my mom, grandparents and probably back to medieval times.
Mr. SteveF’s hash recipe is the basic standard; some folks prefer varying ratios of spuds to the beef, and I also prefer roast to corned for this. Leftover chopped carrots and turnips work good and if beets are used, it becomes red-flannel hash. Saute it in a skillet with the lard or buttuh for a while and then flip it so it crusts up evenly, or alternatively pour two or three TB of milk or cream on it and let that crust the bottom nicely. In the late James Beard’s “American Cookery,” he also does not demur from saving time and energy by using the canned stuff; he just kicks it up a notch with more spuds or whatever. That cookbook has been my mainstay for over thirty years and is itself an education in the history of Murkan cooking.
@Mr. Chuck; I also had to laugh at Mr. Lynn’s definition of bittuh cold. 60? Peeps swan around buck nekkid up here. Seriously. They do. It was in the low teens today and manly locals were wearing their baggy shorts per usual.
Thursday-night f-ball tonight instead of Thursday and then three games tomorrow and one Monday night. The late one tomorrow oughta be good; Seahawks vs. Cardinals.
Hey, I can watch some f-ball during f-ball season; I’m otherwise reading history and listening to the radio!
No more IT gigs for ol’ OFD? Nothing by Feb 1? Then I will have in place by then another means of making money. Without much commuting, if any.
Turned the Ubuntu Studio (you check that out yet, Mr. Chuck?) over to its intended use and have since fixed the former CentOS box into a Mint 17.1 (Rebecca) web server, with Apache2, php, MySQL, etc. Next up: building web sites on my own hook and securing of same.
Steve, of course you’re right about the difference between lard and suet. I wonder how well the two will compare in a pastry crust? I used my own rendered lard last time (store bought, Armour, tastes awful!), and this batch is definitely suet.
I asked about hash because I wouldn’t mind making my own but all that dicing…
There’s got to a be a trick for that. Semi-freeze a cooked roast and run it through the 4 mm slicing blade in the Cuisinart? Then manually slice it in the opposite direction?
Do the same for raw potatoes?
Canned Hormel is fine with me.
I don’t use cookbooks much. I have _Joy of Cooking_, Mrs. Beeton’s, and _The Settlement Cookbook_, which I imagine is comparable to Beard. Those and a bunch of Indian cookbooks.
I hate to bring this up, because it might have caused duels and divorces. It could cause the next world war. However, the writer,Rick Mueller has decided to use Twitter to ask celebrities: “Super important question: where do you stand on the use of the Oxford Comma?”
I concur with the majority of the respondents. I support it.
More here: https://twitter.com/CelebrityOxford/favorites
A short time ago I watched the news conference regarding the assassination of the two NYPD Officers.
It is time to stand up and call a spade a fucking shovel. de Blasio has blood on his hands for this, along with Obama, Sharpton, Jackson, et. al.
There must be zero tolerance for anyone calling for cops to be shot. Sorry folks, you have stepped out of the bounds of the First Amendment. If there are any anti-cop protesters at the funeral for these two innocent officers, those protesters need to be arrested for sedition and hanged. In addition all members of the gang that this scumbag belongs to should hang. And just to round things out add the race-baiters cited above.
Keep your powder dry.
Suet is raw fat, hard and white – not rendered.
It comes from within the body cavity (yes, leaf fat).
It can be from beef or mutton, and I believe also from goat (which implies also antelope or venison, to whatever extent they have fat).
Fat, including suet, when rendered forms tallow – clean white if mutton, dirty yellow if beef.
Poultry fat, rendered, forms schmaltz – a lot like Barry Manilow.
I had a running battle with my first editor at O’Reilly, Robert Denn, about the serial comma, which was part of O’Reilly’s style manual. I have always preferred the British “x, y and z” to the American “x, y, and z” and argued forcefully in its favor. Robert sent me one short email, “I’d like to thank my parents, Ayn Rand and God.” to which I replied, “How the hell did you know who my parents were?”
http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2014/12/daniel-zimmerman/two-nypd-cops-executed-revenge-michael-brown-eric-garner/#more-343846
As always, check out the comments.
This is just another little event on the way to the coming chit-storm.
The smarter African-American leadership, way younger than Sharpless, Jackwagon, et. al., has been telling the young males to back way the hell off this “kill whitey” bullshit for a while now; their main argument is how stupid it is and suicidal. They have no love for whites, either, but they know shooting rubber bands at a tank, or hell, forget that, just the average schmucko white boy in the ‘burbs with his tricked-out AR is a disaster-in-waiting.
Don Armstrong, you’re right about suet, lard, and tallow. Brain cramps over here, duh.
DadCooks, you couldn’t be more wrong. There is a big problem with police bullying in this country, not only the unending string of questionable killings but the constant day-to-day aggression of the police against the “civilians”. Complaints to legislators does nothing, especially as practically every politician in office is a successful part of The System and has no interest in any real change. Judges do practically nothing, prosecutors from the local jerk to the Attorney General are not at all interested in limiting police power. Lawsuits hardly ever get off the ground, seldom win in court or are settled favorably, and are typically so costly to litigate that a brutalized “civilian” winds up with nothing after medical and legal bills. (The rapacious legal profession is another, and related problem, but let’s leave that for now.)
So what, exactly, do you suggest? Changing the system by the “approved” methods isn’t working. What’s left? “Civilians” just knuckling under to whatever the new ruling class wishes to dish out, and “unapproved” methods.
This doesn’t address Constitutional issues of suppressing and punishing speech, which is another argument against your recommendation. Honestly, these issues aren’t worth discussing. The US federal government and most state and local governments operate well outside the law constantly, and won’t be bound by this any more than they’re bound by any other inconvenient law or Constitutional provision.
A local Tex-Mex joint was opened by a high-end chef and a food writer. The chef had an amazing seafood place (Reef) in town. The writer had spent several years interviewing a who’s who of Tex-Mex food and getting recipes for a book on the history of Tex-Mex.
Their place (El Real in Houston) has excellent food. Their refried beans are amazingly silky – the trick is that they render their own lard from heirloom pigs and use it in the beans.
Joy of Cooking was originally published here in the Heartland, and I have known several people involved in various aspects of its publishing during the ’60’s and ’70’s. The artist friend from my first job in TV, who did freelance work for Bobbs Merrill, has a galley proof of a 1960’s version with Irma Rombauer’s notes scribbled throughout. Over the years, I have found that the older the cookbook, the more reliable it is. I have early editions of Joy, my grandmother’s Betty Crocker cookbook from the 1930’s or ’40’s, an old Pillsbury cookbook, and a couple dairy-released booklets that tell the correct way do desserts with all that nasty milkfat left in. Years ago, I even bought a pump that homogenizes butter into milk to make sure the fat content was high enough. I think I still have that around here somewhere.
Speaking of diets, which someone did the other day (Lynn, maybe?) and mentioned my tablespoon of olive oil trick to kill appetite, I should add — after some experience — that it is not like a pill. I have to take that olive oil after at least an hour of not eating anything good tasting. It does not work, if — for instance — you have tea time at 17:00 and then have the olive oil right afterwards. It cannot be associated with anything that is pleasant tasting. Otherwise, it does not kill the hunger.
If taken (and Seth Roberts notes this, although not prominently) when no other tastes interfere, the oil not only kills appetite, but — according to Roberts — it lowers the body set point for weight. Seems to work for me, if done right.
“Changing the system by the “approved” methods isn’t working. What’s left?”
As I have said many times here. The usual approved methods haven’t worked and won’t work anymore. The system is broken beyond any hope of repair now and requires dismantling and rebuilding. This will take many decades, well beyond the lifespans of most of us here.
All anyone need do is read enough history to know that empires rise and fall and ours is toppling, just like the Brits and Dutch and Spanish and Romans before us. Our grandchildren will see the major shifts taking place and who knows exactly how it will all shake out. But business-as-usual will be coming to an end; it is simply no longer sustainable, on multiple levels.
Chargers beat the 49’ers in OT, 38-35 in one of the craziest NFL games this correspondent has seen in quite a while.
Bobbs Merrill — now there’s a phrase I haven’t heard in a while! My _Joy_ is from ’75, _Settlement Cookbook_ from ’23, and _Mrs Beeton’s_ from 1890. I remember when they updated _Joy_ in the late 80s or 90s to be more “health conscious” and everyone had a chitling fit. Heh — how the pendulum swings back and forth over the years. Fat is becoming popular again!
I use filtered bacon grease for my frijoles refritos. I guess that’s lard, right? Anyway, they come out good. Plus, I use a pressure cooker, which every prepper oughtn’t be without.
If you guys like cooking, check out
http://www.cookingforengineers.com/forums/index.php
Tiny little forum, but a few regulars and tons of neat ideas.
“frijoles refritos”
Indeed. Bacon grease works good with those. I season them with various powdered/dried chili that Mrs. OFD picks up from the locals when she travels to NM, AZ and TX and then throw a little cheese on top, maybe some sour cream. A side of Mexican rice, and a platter of enchiladas, burritos or tacos, usually with shredded or ground beef, or chicken. Sometimes fish tacos. I also like to squeeze lime juice all over everything.
Besides my Jim Beard cookbook, I rely mainly on the Cooks Illustrated series and their magazines and website and emails. The guy who runs their empire lives here in VT some of the year and otherwise their HQ is in Brookline, MA. But I’d guess most of my cooking in recent years has been ad hoc, recipes from memory, and whatever I feel like trying or is on hand.
What’s kinda sad and troubling is that our son and DIL don’t/won’t cook and buy a lotta frozen chit and fast-food garbage and DIL has long been morbidly obese, easily outweighs me and she’s only 5’6″ or so, with arms and legs like tree trunks. Son is also overweight now. I’ve seen them scarf down whole platters of food at a sitting that would otherwise feed a family of four. Son’s late dad’s family was/is all fairly tall, but heavy and soft people, it ain’t muscle weight. Her dad is another short fat guy. So one wonders how long they’ll be around for their own kids, with increased risk of heart disease and diabetes. We’ve seen family pics of the bunch out in the NWT and Vancouver and they’re as fat as elephants.
My own family was/is all tall and heavy people but it’s solid bone and muscle; nobody’s fat; my little brother and I could easily go well past 300 and still not look overweight. (except of course in the various gummint and health tables currently in vogue, where of course we’re all morbidly obese). My recent former VA doc was showing me samples of meals I should be eating and I laughed in his face. “You expect me to get through the day on THAT???” You know, the 4-ounce portion of lean chicken or fish, a mound of broccoli and a few tablespoons of rice. For breakfast an apple and some unbuttered wheat toast. No way. No can do.
I probably do about 3k calories per day in my relatively sedentary life, except for hauling stuff around here a lot and outside yard work. If I was bugging out across the countryside in winter with a rifle and pack I’d need twice that, at least. And gallons of wottuh per day.
There is no love lost and they would gladly slit either Castro’s throat in the night.
All the angry refugees came here. The ones in other countries do not hold the same views about the Castros, just as the former East Germans will not accede to American visitors’ oft-repeated request to have them denounce the former East German government as evil and their lives in the East as nothing but misery. In fact, as I have mentioned here before, most East Germans I got to know, would gladly welcome a return of the old government and some of its ways. Of the Cubans I got to know in Berlin, none would have any trouble returning to Cuber, and all I met were motivated to leave Cuber by marriage. There are no jobs in Cuber for foreigners, so the only real choice of a future for mixed-country marriage couples was abroad.
But what the hell, we have our own secret police, and some of them are not above doing the same sorts of things to their own fellow citizens.
Precisely the point. Actually, as a teeneager, I opposed sanctions against Cuber from the outset. Jack Kennedy screws up royally, so we punish the Cubans for 53 years? No surprise that Cuber turned communist. Most of the traffic before Kennedy’s malfeasance was by notorious US communists, who had great hope for communism there.
And I do not subscribe to the American religion that communism is some kind of evil satan; it is merely an experiment in government as all others are. The ones that do not perform will eventually fail. Yeah, money for military power will prolong bad government’s life, but as Russia visibly demonstrated with their communist experiment: collectivism fails utterly to generate wealth–for anyone! including the state. Mistake of mistakes, the early anarchists of America looked towards communism as the answer to worker enslavement by unrelenting early 19th century capitalist industrial ogres. Oops, sorry, “owners”. With history to view, collectivist communism is of itself a dead-end. No need to get upset and nuke them; it falls apart of its own accord. No need for Hollywood Presidents to do a PR stunt and call for the demolition of the Berlin Wall, when they knew full-well that it was already crumbling apart. Terrifically good timing on getting that one in, Mr. Hollywood President.
Nothing will drive the Castros to obscurity faster than normalizing relations with the US. They cannot integrate Cuber into the world economy themselves; thus, their regression is assured. In fact, all we did was to insure for 53 years that the Castros preserved their hold over Cuban society. Most likely, IMO, is that Cuber will be handed over by the Castros to China. Most relevant for us would be for Cuber to join the US. That should have happened long, long ago. Cubans, more than most other immigrants, have been dynamic forces in US business and education. This is going to be exciting to watch. And hopefully, it improves the dreadful state of music in the US.
All anyone need do is read enough history to know that empires rise and fall and ours is toppling, just like the Brits and Dutch and Spanish and Romans before us.
We are running on momentum now. One cannot live inside the US and learn how detested the US is by people all over the world. Spend a few minutes with a foreigner who does not know where you are from, and listen to their views of the US and it is a real eye-opener. Hear that over and over, like I did, and one finally gets the idea. If they somehow find out where you are from (apparently, my accent speaking German was not identifiable as American by a lot of people — possibly because I had no problem pronouncing vowels like the British), then you will hear, “Oh, I don’t hate Americans; it’s your political leadership I don’t like.”
Well neither do I.
Eat breakfast like a King, lunch like a Prince, and supper like a pauper. Can a pauper afford a tablespoon of olive oil? I am going to try that after the new year. If anything, it should get my intestinal system good and greased up.
I cannot believe this nonsense in NYC. Either the cops will start shooting everyone in sight or else go out on strike. Can I predict that NYC will have a new mayor in 2015?
I keep a dozen cans frozen, which should extend their shelf life well into the 22nd century.
Isn’t that a lot of freezer space? Do you have a separate freezer in the basement?
the trick is that they render their own lard from heirloom pigs and use it in the beans
I don’t care, I am not keeping a pig in the house! Pigs are not heirlooms! Pigs are vicious. Never get falling down drunk around pigs, they will eat you.
That said, I love eating pigs. I was saddened today when the wife made me eat turkey bacon instead of the real thing.
The Cubans in Florida, all upset about normalized relations – man, how dense can you be? The only reason the Castro brothers managed to hang on to power for so long was the embargo. Had the US normalized relations 50 years ago, as should have been done, the Castro’s would have been gone within a few years.
It never made sense to embargo Cuba. With normal relations and being so close to the US, it would have become a thriving tourist destination, practically a US territory, and zero threat by the mid-1970’s, mid-1980’s at the latest. I never could figure out why the embargo was kept in place…
OFD, I hear you. Besides the three I mentioned, the only other cookbook I own is _The Best Recipe_ by that guy in Vermont. Now there is a study in outlandishly successful internet marketing. I’m not an MBA, nor ever aspire to be one, but I’d love to see a flowchart of all his inter-connected operations, esp. as they have developed over the years.
Join cookingforengineers, we can talk chili. Having lived in India and done a fair amount of Mexicano cooking, I know a bit more than the frito bandito.
Yeah, we have a large vertical freezer in the basement. Even after a Costco/Sams run, when it has a couple hundred pounds of meat, 40 or 50 pounds of butter, etc. there’s still plenty of vacant space, so I keep that filled with stuff like drugs as well as relatively high-value shelf-stable stuff like #10 cans of powdered eggs, etc. In effect, if I stick stuff like those eggs (nominal 10-year shelf life) in the freezer, their shelf life doesn’t start running until they come out.
SteveF, sorry if you think there is a lot of police bullying. If that is really what you think, then you are contributing to the problem. And yes, I have been stopped for “driving while white”.
I cannot believe that some of the others on this journal have not challenged the overstatement ” a lot of police bullying”.
The real facts cannot be found by doing a simple Google search. The liberal/marxist/communist/fascists have done a good job of taking over the Internet and the Lame Stream Media with intolerance and lies. It is okay for them to break the laws and spread hate speech.
Good cops, bad cops? Yes, just like there are good people and bad people.
My intolerance lies against the hypocrites who profess tolerance and chant “no justice, no peace”.
RBT, I am firmly in the x, y, and z camp, except when the “and” items must go together . The difference is not always so subtle as I was taught when writing procedures for nuclear submarines. A missing or misplaced comma can lead to that big tube of humans just being another piece of stuff on the bottom of the ocean.
re commas, I also go with “a, b, and c”, but I’m not fussy about it… except when it leads to loss of clarity or change of meaning. As DadCooks suggests, it’s possible for one comma to change the meaning of a sentence.
Basically, the English language is not a precision tool. We should keep it for day-to-day use but use a better language for anything requiring precise communication of meaning. I prefer Lojban for its unambiguous grammar, but am open to other suggestions. (Though I’ll point out that a hidden benefit of Lojban is that it’s so difficult to learn and use properly that very few people would be writing laws, computer documentation, and so on. The silence would be bliss.)
“I cannot believe that some of the others on this journal have not challenged the overstatement ” a lot of police bullying”.
I’d challenge it if I thought he was wrong, but he’s not. There has been a growing list of police abuses around the country ranging from the “driving while white” standard harassment through outright murder and everything in between, including countless assaults by SWAT teams on the wrong address or being utilized for misdemeanors, like growing organic carrots and overdue library books. I don’t follow or listen to the “liberal/marxist/communist/fascists” on this stuff; most of what I’ve seen over the past ten years has come from the right-hand end of the political spectrum and libertarians and also from current and former police officers themselves.
I agree that it’s another group with its share of bad apples, but they’re in a position of trust and lethal power over us and there is also that ‘blue wall of silence’ when one of them goes off the res and commits mayhem out here. Probably like anyplace else, 80% are just average schmoes just trying to get through their shift; ten percent are very good to outstanding, and the last ten percent are evil sons of bitches, some of whom have been caught stealing, dealing drugs, murdering people, or just turning into pseudo-Nazi bullies and thugs and accosting everyone who looks askance at them.
As you probably know (full disclosure) I was a police officer in another life in several Massachusetts jurisdictions, am a graduate of the MA State Police Academy, and prior to that was in both AF and Army military police. Guys in my age bracket will tell you that it’s not the same anymore and it’s gotten a LOT worse, in terms of the politics and brass, and with the shitty training, the main precept of which is to survive at all costs and be in fear of the hostile enemy citizens out here. So the default setting becomes the instant tasing, beating or death penalty for the slightest perceived infractions or disrespect. As I can attest, a lot of arrests are not for the actual offense but because the person is an asshole and not cooperative. Now it’s if the person is perceived as being the slightest bit resistant, all the way down to the pavement and thereafter.
They’re rapidly putting themselves in the position of being the enemy, regardless of one’s political beliefs or activities, or one’s race. And this will not end in a good way.
It is not rational, in a multicultural society that is still segregated in many areas, for white police to be the enforcers in black communities. And that is what you have in Ferguson.
I am with SteveF and OFD on this one, and I get the same story as them from my friends who were formerly police. Most have gone into security management working for large retail firms and businesses, making lots more money at that, than risking their lives on the streets.
But above and beyond is the whole concept of bad-ass “enforcer” that police in American society have taken on. It could not be more different in Germany. Police are investigators, a source of information, and when they walk in pairs around the city, a sign that all is well. Car chases are prohibited by law. Speeding fines come from cameras, or police standing by the side of the street. Police do not drive unmarked, tricked-out muscle cars, they drive tiny compacts that could not catch anyone in a chase if they wanted to, with a louder paint job than a Papa John’s delivery vehicle. They are there to help people, not pinch them for the slightest misstep and then strip and search all body cavities because, well, if you jaywalked, you probably smoke pot, steal from convenience stores, and stick drugs up your behind, so we’d better check. People never feared police, never said you’d better watch your step when they saw a cop, never turned another direction when they saw one, on the off-hand chance that a cop’s eagle eyes would catch them inadvertently misbehaving somehow. People in this country are trained practically as infants to warn the driver whenever they spot a cop. And there was zero motivation in Germany to do traffic stops or patrol parking meters just to raise revenue for some municipality. Boston was the worst I have witnessed, with cops giving out tickets to meters that were in the ‘danger’ zone, but still with 10 or 15 minutes before the meter expired.
I have mentioned here before that my stepson’s closest friend through Middle and High School was a black kid from the Boston inner city. I cannot tell you the number of times a story would come out where the two were in, or close to, Roxbury, and were stopped by police, just to find out what they were doing. Or rather what the black kid was doing. Stepson said he was totally ignored and only his buddy got heat and questions.
People in Germany feared the Ordungsamt, not the police. The Ordungsamt could fine you and haul you into court, but no one was bothered, or feared anything, from police.
Police are out-of-control in this country, and Ferguson proves it. There was no reason at all for Wilson to get out of his car and chase Brown, provoking a confrontation. Even if he thought he saw the stolen goods, that has to be positively verified for a court action against Brown, and what Brown did was not a felony. White cops patrolling black community with a history of racial tension between police and the community, and the cop escalates the situation to a killing over a misdemeanor?
And let’s take the case of if you are a Christian, which many here and in this country profess that both they — and their country — are: what is the guide for confrontation? Kill the bastard? Not from what I read. It is turn the other cheek and give them the offer to do it again. Now I do not call myself a Christian, precisely because I believe Emma Goldman is right in asserting that Christianity is possibly the worst thing that has happened to humanity, but it is hypocritical for a Christian to approve of Wilson getting out of his car and chasing Brown, starting the chain of events that resulted in death as the punishment for a misdemeanor. Either one is Christian or not. The rules here are plain.
How all this gets solved rationally at the current state of affairs, I do not know. Voting in elections is highly unlikely to change it. Protests are not going to do it. Burning down your own community is definitely not going to do it. Killing cops is certainly not the answer for anyone who calls themselves Christian. Like I say, there are better places in the world to be right now, to live a more stable, peaceful, and higher quality life. I was in one of them for a while.
Well, that’s no problem, anyway. The most recent cop-killer was Muslim. Don’t hold your breath waiting to hear that on the TV news, though; the news readers and commentators are too busy explaining how mobs chanting “Kill the police” does not lead to people killing police.
Good thing we don’t have a police problem in the United States. Remember, the police are the good guys, and anyone who says otherwise should be shot for insurrection.
That’s just one story out of countless that illustrates cops outta control; of course it can be taken to hyperbolic lengths by the usual suspect media on one side, and then blown off as ‘mistakes happen’ by the other side, which apparently still believes the myth that all cops and soldiers are heroes and ‘the policeman is your friend.’
True story: I was known as “Officer Friendly” on my nighttime city street beats, mostly foot patrol in the ‘hoods, ALONE, no or too-late backups. I’d previously been an incarnation of Buford Pusser in the sticks. So I’m familiar with both roles in the old cop world; now it’s way too many ‘roided-up gym rats who buddy together just like in gangs and it’s them against the criminal/terrorist world; civvies are in the way and could be lethal threats so why not just be hyper-aggressive and hostile all the time to everybody? Also, as before in the old days, LOTS of military vets gravitate to this line of work and the fire departments; they still dig that adrenaline rush and the feeling of power and the male-buddy environment.
Police are the good guys; all military people are heroes; and the State is here to help you. Say otherwise and you are courting sedition and treason and should at least be investigated if not locked up or shot out of hand.
What a country!
There was no reason at all for Wilson to get out of his car and chase Brown, provoking a confrontation.
Three autopsies disagree with you here. The young man was first shot in the officer’s cruiser as he grabbed for the officer’s gun after punching the officer. The gun went off in the cruiser twice, shooting the young man’s right hand.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/08/13/us/ferguson-missouri-town-under-siege-after-police-shooting.html?_r=0
How is the cop shooting the perp in the hand, a reason to get out of the car and start chasing the perp? It was not the other way around, in which case you might — as the cop — have a reason to give chase. Clearly a case of ‘you’re not going to mess with me and get away with it.’ And Brown didn’t.
How is the cop shooting the perp in the hand, a reason to get out of the car and start chasing the perp?
Huh? He assaulted a law officer. The cop didn’t just shoot him from the window for no reason. He reached in the car and went for the cop’s gun. This is what the GJ decided. He also strong arm robbed a store. The cop didn’t know that for sure, but he chased him for assaulting him. He should have used a truncheon instead of blasting him, but that’s todays cop training. I feared for my life…therefore blast away.
Autopsies and whatever; why do the cops even get so involved with these pissant misdemeanors and risk not only their own lives but everyone else’s in the immediate vicinity? Back in the day we would not have bothered hassling some street hood selling tax-free ciggies and might have bought some from him; not jump him with four guys and put a choke-hold on him. We would have told the kid in Jefferson to get outta the street and probably even have confronted him when he refused but we would have got out of the damn cruiser or been out of it in the first place to do so and could have taken him down without lethal force if necessary.
These were bullshit cop thuggery calls that escalated almost immediately and resulted in needless deaths. I don’t want our cops doing this shit, period. Go after actual felons and violent gangbangers and hard drug dealers and genuine terrorists, but no, that’s not the low-hanging fruit they love to beat down. Same way on the roads when they pull us over for an expired inspection sticker or cracked taillight but other guys are flying by at a buck-plus or driving a vehicle they couldn’t keep up with, let alone chase.
I’m old enough and experienced enough and have seen and heard enough by now to not accept the cops’ words for anything they report or describe anymore. They stop you in your vehicle and their default setting is trying to trip you up; they’ll lie to you; and their other default setting is lethal force if they feel they can’t control the situation anymore.
To just blindly accept that it’s OK for the State’s paid thugs to behave this way with us is to accept defeat, kneel in the street and take your beatings. Fine while they’re doing it in the inner cities all these years; how ’bout when they’re doing it, as they’ve begun doing now, in the ‘burbs and exurbs?
The young man in Ferguson did not just rob the store. He picked up the storekeeper (an Asian man about 150 pounds) and threw him into a merchandise rack. That is assault. Battery? Felony? There is a video on this if interested. It is very sad.
The cop sequence of events:
1. two young men walking down middle of main street in Ferguson
2. cop drives by and yells at them to get out of the street from his open window
3. young man punches cop through his open window
4. young man reaches through open window and tries to grab cop gun
5. gun goes off in holster
6. gun goes off in holster again, hitting young man in hand
7. young man jumps back away from cop car
8. cop jumps out of car and pulls gun
9. cop yells stop to young man who was facing him
10. young man runs at cop (I have heard the term “bum rush”)
11. cop shoots young man several times
12. young man dies
Horrible. Preventable by cop? Don’t know, I am not trained to handle assault by someone, especially someone 8 inches taller and 140 pounds more. Cop should have been in more alert mode though. He says that he did not know the young man had just robbed a store.
Preventable by young man? Sure in numerous ways.
1. don’t smoke pot until you lose your inhibitions
2. don’t attack storekeeper and steal merchandise
3. don’t walk down middle of main street
4. don’t hit cop in cop car
5. don’t try to take cop’s gun
6. don’t rush a cop who you just hit
BTW, I got last got pulled over by a Texas state trooper in 2008. Several times before that with a few resulting tickets. I apparently was driving 38 mph in a 30 mph in my parent’s town (his also). He let me off with a warning after I said I was sorry and not watching my speed. Unfortunately, he did have me dead to rights and could have given me a ticket.
I have never been arrested. No DUIs. No beating on cops. No this, no that.
I’ve got a brother that I have bailed out of several jails in Texas (2006 was the last time if I remember right). He has many DUIs. He has been arrested for fighting in bars. Etc, etc, etc. He does not have a driver’s license nor insurance for his beater cars. He is a mean drunk and likes to beat on cops. And his wife. And his kid. The cops beat back at least. He complains all the time about the unfairness of the world. Uh huh.
I guess that I need to check my privilege.
I am not ever going to agree that the events in Ferguson required what that cop did. I am not, and have never been, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth guy.
Brown picked up the shop clerk and threw him? That is a video I never saw.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkOfqIXkBRE
He bumped the guy out of his way while leaving the store. Even the testimony to the grand jury by the DA himself, maintained there was no felony committed in that store, only a potential misdemeanor under Missouri law.
Where the cop’s testimony fell completely apart is when he testified he was terrorized and frightened by Brown. If so, why leave the car for more terror and fright? No, this was an angry cop who was going to show somebody not to mess with him.
And he did.
Where the cop’s testimony fell completely apart is when he testified he was terrorized and frightened by Brown. If so, why leave the car for more terror and fright? No, this was an angry cop who was going to show somebody not to mess with him.
So what about the fact that Brown was first shot while in the cop car on top of Officer Wilson trying to grab his gun? Do we just ignore that?
If you punch a police officer can you just walk away? Do you think that Officer Wilson should have just driven away?
Can you bum rush a police officer and expect to not get shot? Should the Officer just have taken a beating from Brown?
Actions have consequences. Brown started down a bad path in life when he robbed the store. Attacking the police officer was a fatal decision on his part.
If so, why leave the car for more terror and fright?
Because that is the officer’s job?
Whoa! Bitter cold is anything below 60 F? We have had what I would call a bitter cold fall (winter starts at 6:03 pm EST tomorrow), with many days below freezing. Oddly, we have had very little wind this fall, which is not usual. Berlin wind in winter was never more than 5 mph and often just 2 to 3 mph, and from 10 years of that, I found that it really is not cold until it gets below freezing.
Here in the Land of Sugar, cold is anything below 70 F. We are forecast to be 72 F tomorrow.
Bitter cold is below 50 F (we have been down to 40 F several times already).
I do not even want to think about going below 32 F here. People here get crazy when it lasts for 24 hours. Or more.
And the global warming wackos are claiming that the world has significantly warned this year and will be the hottest year ever.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/no-standstill-in-global-warming-2014-will-be-worlds-hottest-year-ever-9901094.html
Yah, the shrieking of the warmingists is becoming annoying. Most of the science podcasts I listen to, from BBC and NPR, have become unlistenable because the hosts work in waaaaaaarming — or rather cliiiiimate chaaaaaaange — wherever they possibly can. (Tech podcasts are mostly still OK, but all else being equal I’d rather listen to the science shows.)
I don’t know whether the hosts and producers are uniformly True Believers or if they’ve received their marching orders from the people at the top. Probably the latter, as otherwise you’d think there’d be at least one dissenter.
It would be different if they were presenting evidence and causal chains — you know, science — in support of warming, a spike in animal die-offs, or whatever, but they don’t. They present waaarming — er, chaaaaaange — as a self-evident fact, they malign the honesty or intelligence of climate change deniers, they pitch doom-n-gloom scenarios, and they present evidence that either has already been disputed or which is given more importance than it deserves. (Eg, mentioning a big hurricane as the “most destructive ever” with the unstated implication that hurricanes are trending more powerful, but not mentioning that globally hurricanes have been on a downward trend and that Sandy was destructive because it hit an unprepared mega-urb, not because it was innately powerful.)
Waaaarming — er, chaaaange — is a religion, not science. People are not reasoned into religions and are not reasoned out of them. I propose that we deal with waaaaarmingists the way the species has traditionally dealt with annoying religions: death. We can burn the waaaaarmingists at the stake, in a bit of grim humor.
Yes, Global Warming has become an article of faith for the right-minded people, just like Diversity, Affirmative Action, and radical egalitarianism have in years past. You accept the whole package or are Beyond the Pale. And the really funny part about this is that they don’t see it, i.e., that it is a religion.
This whole AGW thing is Lysenkoism at its worst, and another example of the Left trying to hijack science in the interests of their political objectives. Not that the Right is blameless, either. They attack evolution, which is about as settled a science as it’s possible to be, in the interests of their religious/political objectives. I just wish all these assholes would keep their mitts off of science.
RE: Cookbooks
The Joy of Cooking has had several “anniversary editions” over the decades. Some better than others (some just plain horrible). The most recent version that is worth a damn is the 75th Anniversary edition. I’m not someone who owns a lot of cookbooks, but the Joy of Cooking was the first one I ever bought for myself.
If you like Mexican food (especially the more authentic stuff) then I recommend Authentic Mexican: Regional Cooking from the Heart of Mexico by Rick Bayless.
RE: Oxford Comma
I’ve always enjoyed this funny image about the Oxford comma:
http://richardgilbert.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/oxford-comma1.jpg
I did do some research a couple of years ago on the whole debate and the gist I got at the time was basically: Only use the Oxford comma when needed. That is, if the absence of an Oxford comma could potentially cause the sentence to be misinterpreted then use it. Otherwise, do not.
Personally, I use it all the time.
RE: Global Warming
OFD, we’ve been over this before. Global Warming is passé. It’s now called Climate Change. It’s broader term and so more stuff can be blamed on it.
Bitter cold to a Canadian is well below freezing. The thermostat in my home is set for 69F, which I consider comfortable room temperature.
I have the 4th edition TJOC, the first with Marion Rombauer Becker listed as co-author. It taught me the basics. Before the internet I used to get cookbooks out of the library and read them like travel guides/picture books. Now if I need an inspiring recipe I search online. I haven’t even looked at TJOC in decades.
“OFD, we’ve been over this before. Global Warming is passé. It’s now called Climate Change. It’s broader term and so more stuff can be blamed on it.”
My bad. Sorry. It’s just SO HARD to keep up with the lingo these days, doncha know. You are eminently correct; the new term leaves much more room for abuse. But my favorite term of theirs is “denier” which of course causes people to hearken back to the “Holocaust” and associate climate change deniers with wacky neo-Nazi cranks who deny it ever happened, etc., etc. Very clever. And meanwhile we’ve even heard some warmists call for the jailing and possible execution of “deniers.”
Our home thermostat is set to 62 during the day here and 55 at night. The woodstove takes the chill off all day and through the night if we keep it going; we turn the damper down all the way just before retiring for the night.
Bitter cold to us is when it’s single digits or below zero and the wind is howling at us from across the lake ice. Wakes your ass right up in the morning when you step out the back porch.
(and we’re pussies compared to the peeps who live through the winters in Alberta, Manitoba, Saska-Land, NWT and Alaska.)
Global Warming is passé. It’s now called Climate Change. It’s broader term and so more stuff can be blamed on it.
The official term is Climate Disruption now. Obola said so.
BTW, all my cold temperatures rose 20 F when I started taking blood thinners. Temperatures that used to not bother me at all are now bitterly cold. I have walked several times recently with heavy sweat pants, two or more shirts, and a hoodie while the wife is wearing shorts and an open hoodie.
My internal thermostat has always run hot. As a kid, I used to get up after my parents went to bed and turn down the thermostat a good 5 degrees because it was so hot it woke me up — and I had the register outlet in my room shut completely off. Germany was 7th heaven, because their heating systems shut down at 23:00 and do not turn back on until 05:00 — unless it is below freezing when it keeps the radiators just barely warm to the touch. And every German leaves their bedroom window cracked open a bit unless it is below freezing, in addition to airing out the house by opening up all windows each day for 10 or 20 minutes, no matter how cold outside. For most of my life, I have often sweat after a big meal, just from pumping blood to the stomach to digest it. These days, most gas stations around here are not close to other buildings, and winter windchill can make it nearly unbearable to stand waiting for the tank to fill. That is really the only time I feel cold.
On the Oxford comma — the Oxford books from which I taught ESOL, nowadays say exactly what Chad noted: do not use the comma if there can be no confusion. In fact, they teach not to use commas much at all, which I swear is a conspiracy by publishers to get more print onto the same number of pages. Just like eliminating two spaces between sentences and using just one. Comprehension studies done from the ’30’s through the ’50’s (I just do not trust anything later as being unbiased) have shown that the 2 spaces were immediately recognized as sentence separators, whereas periods are often not discerned at all. The art directors of the world took over the look of books and the printed page back in the ’70’s and they say a period and capital letter following is all that is needed to signal a sentence. Not true. The earlier studies showed it was white space that works on the brain; the dark ink being enhanced or destroyed by how the white space is used.
Anyway, I cannot find my favorite quote from Mark Twain about the comma (not the one about one man’s colon being another man’s comma), so here’s one that has nothing to do with commas:
“The covers of this book are too far apart.”
— Ambrose Bierce
And this from the TV section of The Times of London describing a program to air that night:
“By train, plane and sedan chair, Peter Ustinov retraces a journey made by Mark Twain a century ago. The highlights of his global tour include encounters with Nelson Mandela, an 800-year-old demigod and a dildo collector.”
The explanation accompanying that text relates: “[The mistake] supports the use of the Oxford comma, but only because it keeps Mandela from being a dildo collector. However, even the Oxford comma can’t keep him from being an 800-year-old demigod. There’s only so much a comma can do.”
Oh, about Ubuntu Studio — I did try it and KXStudio a few years back. They were so problematic in trying to get my needs to work, that I abandoned them and never went back. Not sure what they would be like today, but I am getting close to the stage of having enough experience to solve all but a couple of problems, and I am confident I can get those ironed out eventually. I am very happy with the looks and operational closeness of Mint Cinnamon to XP, which keeps me highly productive, but Mint clearly has development problems and I am sure cannot be as high-grade a product as what comes out of Red Hat. I do not have stability with Mint, and their updates introduce problems, then they fix those bugs by upgrading them away with even more updates that usually happen 2 or 3 days in a row.
I am going to be forced to something other than Debian, just because Cinelerra and Ardour will not decode files for editing because of the FFmpeg issue. As I noted before, libav is compiled into the Cinelerra and Ardour versions for Debian/Ubuntu, so merely installing FFmpeg does nothing to fix the problem.
Last Mint problem to fix: in /etc/samba/smb.conf, had to add the second line below the first one as it appeared in the file:
workgroup = WORKGROUP
name resolve order = bcast host
as I could not connect to the Windows machine with Samba after moving to the Linksys router supplied by the fiber people. Now how in the heck is a non-OS developer supposed to know that line was necessary?
Speaking of commas, Barbara and I have been watching Gilmore Girls, which is described as a DRAMa ComEDY. The construct dramedy sounds ugly to me, so I suggested to Barbara that it should be called a COMedy draMA, or comma.