Olympic Moment

Today's Olympic Moment Unplugged Must be Russian

What a bottle rocket

Tails of the Gun   When bottle rockets are banned only the Japanese will have bottle rockets.  And what a bottle rocket! Made by Japanese company Maruda, the RPG-7 PET Bottle Launcher is meant to be used only with 1.5L soda bottles that have been filled with water. To give you an idea of its potency, when shot at a 35º angle the toy can launch a bottle filled with 0.6L of water up to a distance of 35m (approx. 115ft). Currently it seems like the launcher is available only in Japan, but there are ways around that. Maruda is selling the RPG-7 for ¥28, 350 (~$361 USD). You can also order individual parts on Maruda’s website, including a cone warhead for the bottle. I like stuff like this.  The Second Amendment's intent was to give us recourse when government went rogue,  which according to Jefferson is inevitable and continually (ahem).  Given the technology, today's  citizenry  cannot hope to square off against the government's army on an equal basis, and must depend on fervor, commitment, guile, and ingenuity. This is the ingenuity part  I imagine this could be similarly juiced.

Pulling the plug most brutally

Police State Culture                    Cops Strip Search & "Forcibly" Pull Tampon Out of Mom While Kids Watch “ [...] The cop then placed Leila Tarantino in the back of the squad car, where she allegedly sat for two hours. When backup arrived, Tarantino was strip searched on the side of the road, where passing motorists could see everything. Then, in a gruesome twist, a female officer "forcibly removed" a tampon from Tarantino. Presumably, the cops were looking for drugs, but the lawsuit notes that a drug-sniffing dog was never called in, and cops never found any contraband or anything illegal.  The lawsuit does not name the cops involved but notes that there were five male officers and one female officer.  According to the court filing, cops released Tarantino with a citation. [Full]  Leila's scrapbook Ahem. ”

Petraeus? I don't think so.

2012                                               Let's Have No More Talk of Romney-Petraeous “ If we're going to play Washington's favorite parlor game, we might as well ask the inevitable question: Would Petraeus really run as a Republican? Testifying Tuesday before the Senate Armed Services Committee, he articulated policy positions on Don't Ask, Don't Tell and the Bagram detention facility that sounded like planks of the Democratic, not Republican, platform. That's just the beginning of his surprisingly liberal politics: Says "the time has come" to consider repealing don't ask, don't tell. Opposes sending Guantanamo detainees to the Bagram facility in Afghanistan. Supports closing the prison at Guantanamo. Opposes "enhanced interrogation" methods like waterboarding. Condemns Israel's behavior in the Palestinian conflict as undermining U.S. regional interests. Soft on drugs: Has made combating Afghanistan's massive opium trade a low priority. Soft on crime: Supports reconciling with Taliban leaders and backed Sunni militias in Iraq's Sunni Awakening. Worst of all, he's a big-government liberal: [The Atlantic] What?  Not enough? Have you ever seen him in the same room with David Hackett Souter? Did you know Petraeus's wife Holly works in the Obama administration as the assistant director for service member affairs at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the agency founded as a part of the Dodd-Frank Act. The genesis of the Drudge Report story about being picked by Romney was an Obama backer who said the president suggested Petraeus would be Romney's pick— and wasn't joking. So much for that one.  I hope. ”

Steyn mocks Thomas Friedman

Steyn mocks Thomas Friedman

Ingenuity and Enterprise Agonistes

WHAT GUMMINT DOES I have a lot of admiration for the ingenuity these kids exhibit here.  Oddly, when I saw this yesterday, I connected with them this way.  I had just tasted the pulled pork described below, and thought, if for a fleeting moment,  you know, this pork is so damned good that I could probably clean-up with a little stand.  But,  having had my own business, and also dealing over the years with the county getting various licenses just to sell hot dogs and beer at our community pool, I lost my ardor.  Unless they've changed and added zoning laws, in Houston I could just  set up a little stand in my front yard, and I like that idea.  The freedom of it all appeals to me. The fact is, if those kids (who likely live in Africa) later show entrepreneurial promise, it will be crushed by a local warlord or corrupt politician wanting a cut, and making the rules.  And that's pretty much happens here anymore, much of it under the guise of "public health and safety,"  but all of it to collect taxes and protect certain interests of certain constituencies. Left to our own devices, as we were 100 years ago, we would have this nation rocking again in no time.  Same with those kids— if they could get a government that encouraged individual enterprise, they'd be rich, and they'd be free.  We both face the same challenge.  Deciding who we have to kill, and having the gumption to do it.  I mean that in the good, figurative way, of course. They, probably not.

Indoor Pulled Pork

Indoor Pulled Pork I love pulled pork (doesn't everyone who can?), and  previously bragged on my slo-cookin' crock pot version.  As good as it was, there were taste sacrifices made in return for lazy.  There was no "bark," that crispy shell that adds so much to texture and flavor, and no smoke flavor (although liquid smoke* would work here as well).  I saw this recipe on  America's Home Kitchen, and when I bought the book I received A CD set of all the season's episodes.  This was a favorite watch (maybe 5 times); yesterday I pulled the trigger. As Chris Kimble says at the end of the video - you will never taste finer. Unplugged There are two steps that I messed up on, one was beneficial, the other maybe not. The recipe calls for a 5 pound boneless Boston butt.  When I went to slice it- well, it wasn't boneless.  No problem, I cut the bone section out and plopped it alongside the other.  What happened is this was maybe the most delicious part.  Before I took pictures me, Hucker and MoSup had picked it clean. After 2 hours of brining, and after I'd applied the wet and dry rubs, I emptied the brine container and found all the salt and sugar sitting in a lump.  The next time I'll dissolve in a quart of hot water before proceeding.  Did this have any effect?  I don't know. This takes more tending to than the crock pot version, but the smoky taste and bark make it well worth while.  BTW, the sauce is fabulous, although MoSup said it didn't need sauce. *I used to eschew liquid smoke as a chemical contrivance until I saw this video.  You can overdo it, but it definitely adds to certain flavors.

Anti-Romney Ad Is Blowing Up In The Obama's Face

When Guns Stopped A Massacre

Tails of the Gun   When Guns Stopped A Massacre “ On February 12, 2007, a lone gunman, Sulejman Talovic opened fire at the crowded Trolley Square shopping mall killing five bystanders. Armed with a shotgun with a pistol grip, a 38-caliber handgun with rubber grips, and a backpack full of ammunition, he set forth on his rampage through the Mall. But he did not get as far as he had hoped. He was stopped when off-duty police officer Kenneth Hammond of the Ogden City Police Department who was at Trolley Square having an early Valentine’s Day dinner with his pregnant wife. When they heard shots, she called 911 and he drew his weapon and confronted Talovic. He was joined by Sgt. Andrew Oblad of the Salt Lake City Police Department. They pinned down Talovic, stopping further deaths, until a SWAT team from the Salt Lake City Police Department killed him. Hammond, a man with a weapon, was credited with saving “countless lives.” In Aurora, Colorado, there were no armed bystanders and Holmes was unimpeded in his deadly rampage. Gun control advocates use the grizzly story of the Aurora movie theater to push their cause. But common sense tells us that it is easier to put guns into the hands of law-abiding citizens and to instruct them in their use than to keep them away from the insane or evil people who perpetrate these shootings. If the movie-goers in Aurora had one or two armed and trained men or women, the shooting would have gone the way of the Trolley Square massacre, not the bloodier outcome in Aurora. [When Guns Stopped A Massacre] Nothing I can add to this  boss. cuzzin ricky ”

Pelosi Hears Voices

Pelosi Lets It All Hang Out Hillary Rodham spoke with Eleanor Roosevelt, and now discredited crone Nancy Pelosi claims she's channeling the spirits of suffragists Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Alice Paul (Michelle Obama channels her personal shopper at Nieman Marcus). “He’s (Bush) saying something to the effect of we’re so glad to welcome you here, congratulations and I know you’ll probably have some different things to say about what is going on--which is correct. But, as he was saying this, he was fading and this other thing was happening to me." “My chair was getting crowded in," said Pelosi. "I swear this happened, never happened before, it never happened since. "My chair was getting crowded in and I couldn’t figure out what it was, it was like this," she said. "And then I realized Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Alice Paul, Sojourner Truth, you name it, they were all in that chair, they were," said Pelosi. "More than I named and I could hear them say: 'At last we have a seat at the table.' And then they were gone." I am not making this up.

K Street Republicans’ war on Palin

K Street Republicans’ war on Palin “ I’m getting sick of the rewriting of 2008 presidential campaign history as K Street Republicans continue to assault Sarah Palin in the fear that a similarly conservative Republican will rise to the top of the VP sweepstakes. It has been so fashionable in D.C. Republican circles to bash the Palin nomination as a mistake, ill-conceived or even disastrous, that even Dick Cheney has gotten into the act. These self-serving attempts to change history are nothing more than a smear campaign designed to influence the Romney VP pick by obscuring the truth that the choice of Sarah Palin to be the vice presidential nominee was truly inspired. Now, four years later, those very architects and apologists of “too big to fail” policies desperately seek to dissuade presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney from making a similarly bold conservative choice for vice president. Let’s hope Romney remembers history, because if he does, he will know that the choice of Palin was one of the few things the McCain campaign got right. It was McCain’s and President Bush’s abandonment of limited-government, free-market principles that were the ultimate culprit in bringing us four years of Obama — not Sarah Palin.  Read more at NetRightDaily.com: Also a reminder that McCain/Palin were beating Obama in the polls until the (oh so convenient for Obama) 9-18 plane crashed into Wall Street.  McCain suspended his campaign allowing the Dems to front  Obama as the architect of TARP, with McCain tagging along. Today the WSJ editorial  asks "Why Not Paul Ryan?"  Because Romney does not need a policy wonk. He needs Spiro Agnew. Someone who can, and will, put a voice to what everyone is thinking, or at least wondering- Barack Obama is a treasonous liar with so many holes in his (limited) resume  that the phrase Manchurian Candidate actually resonates.  ”