My Senator Wasn’t Impressed With the Speech Yesterday, Either

It’s class warfare, and it’s the kind of language that you would expect from the leader of a third world country, not the President of the United States.

He won’t be apologizing.

Outsourcing Defense Components

What could possibly go wrong?

Last year, the U.S. Navy bought 59,000 microchips for use in everything from missiles to transponders and all of them turned out to be counterfeits from China.

Wired reports the chips weren’t only low-quality fakes, they had been made with a “back-door” and could have been remotely shut down at any time.

If left undiscovered the result could have rendered useless U.S. missiles and killed the signal from aircraft that tells everyone whether it’s friend or foe.

This sure as hell ain’t one of the things I was hoping to be proved right about.

Via Insta

UPDATE: Business Insider is a little sloppy with this, it seems to me. If you follow their link back to their source it says

In 2010, the U.S. military had a problem. It had bought over 59,000 microchips destined for installation in everything from missile defense systems to gadgets that tell friend from foe. The chips turned out to be counterfeits from China, but it could have been even worse. Instead of crappy Chinese fakes being put into Navy weapons systems, the chips could have been hacked, able to shut off a missile in the event of war or lie around just waiting to malfunction.

Now, I’m just sitting here in my boxers eating leftovers from last night, but it seems to me that the phrase “could have been hacked” in the original is quite clearly different than

Wired reports the chips weren’t only low-quality fakes, they had been made with a “back-door” and could have been remotely shut down at any time.

Mind you, I don’t have layers of editors and fact-checkers to help me on this, but to state that this had occurred is a pretty serious charge, to say the least, and deserves a little better effort on Business Insider’s part.

It is, of course, “completely insane” as Fausta said when we were talking about this today to source critical defense components from the country which is your biggest rival.

But that’s what happens when you have a government whose expansive nature drives domestic companies out of business.

Well, Obviously Because He Wasn’t A White Grandmother…

…dying of leukemia and wearing Depends

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) – CBS News has confirmed that authorities are looking into a shocking security breach that took place at John F. Kennedy International Airport last week.

Investigators say Olajide Oluwaseun Noibi, a Nigerian, boarded Virgin America Flight 415 to Los Angeles without a valid passport or identification, using an expired boarding pass for a flight the day before that belonged to someone else.

and it gets even better

Officials say Noibi got through security and was able to board the plane. No one noticed until the flight was airborne when a flight attendant realized Noibi was sitting in a seat that was supposed to be vacant.

He showed the attendant the expired boarding pass that was in someone else’s name and then showed him a University of Michigan identification card with his picture on it.

…Noibi was allowed to get off the plane when it landed in Los Angeles.

Days later, investigators say he went back to LAX and tried to board a Delta flight to Atlanta.

This time, he was searched and airport officials found 10 expired boarding passes in his bag , none of them in his name.

Remind me again why we’re giving TSA so much power?

News You Can Use

Things have been awfully dull since Anthony Weiner faded from view, but luckily today we got this intolerant rant from that noted Right-Wing Extremist Mark Halperin

Mark Halperin, editor-at-large for Time, called President Obama “a dick” on Thursday on a popular MSNBC morning show and then quickly apologized.

“I thought he was a dick yesterday,” Halperin, who also is a senior political analyst for MSNBC, said on Morning Joe, referring to the President’s conduct during his press conference.

In a possibly related development, my friend Tim coincidentally sent me this very morning a story which has perhaps the finest headline you will ever see from the BBC (I’m not sure if the article also references yesterday’s press conference)

‘Singing penis’ sets noise record for water insect

As The Man says, read the whole thing.

Yesterday’s Bumpersticker o’ the Day

GUNS kill people like SPOONS made Rosie O’ Donnell fat

Today’s perspective.

You CAN’T STOP The PONIES!!!!!!!!!!!!

F*CKING Ponies.
They aim to misbehave.

Hosta La Vista

I’m already dreading the commute home on Friday…millions of people heading down the Shore, the weather’s supposed to be great.

Ugh.

So You Work Your Ass Off and Give Half Your Hard Earned Dollars to the State

…and THEN they have the nerve to give you grief when you bitch a little?

…In the meantime, Adele isn’t pleased. Her first album, 19, released in 2008, sold 2.2 million copies by mid-July — and then the tax bill came due. Now she’s“mortified” to pay half her income in tax, and told Q Magazine:

I use the NHS, I can’t use public transport any more, doing what I do, I went to state school . . . ! Trains are always late, most state schools are s[***], and I’ve gotta give you like 4 million quid, are you ’avin a laugh? When I got my tax bill in from 19, I was ready to go ’n’ buy a gun and randomly open fire.

At only 23 and worth a rumored £6 million, the chanteuse could be forgiven her harsh words. Careening from award to award — her latest album, 21, became the first in 2011 to sell 2 million copies last week and tops the charts in 15 countries — she hasn’t had time to learn the diva deal that the political Left affords stars: Make your music, but don’t have any politics but ours. And predictably, the Guardian’s Rob Fitzpatrick attacked her for her heresy and joined in the cacophony on Twitter by calling her “as greedy as the most moat-friendly port-stained Tory grandee.”

“GREEDY” as a “PORT-STAINED…TORY”?

I hear Florida’s lovely, Adele. Almost as lovely as you and your incredible talent.

Piled Higher and Deeper

And stolen from the comments at HotAir.

Um…

‘The Noose Is Getting Tighter Around Gadhafi’s Neck’

…right.

Any minute now and the dude’ll be gone.

A Friday Dinner Where I Violate My #1 Rule

Well, my number #1 rule in the kitchen, that is.

The ShopRong had a crazy sale the other day: whole trimmed tenderloins for $4.99 a pound in the cryovac. How could I resist? Hell, if I had the freezer space I would have bought 20 of them, but since the Chief has dropped a few subtle hints about the amount of flesh I’m carrying (in the freezer) I figured I’d best demure.

Anyhoo, so I picked up this oh 4 1/2 lb tenderloin and I decided to make a Shat Ho Bryant as the fancy folks say (the Rule Violation occurs because I also was making a Rosti and sauteing some fresh veggies) so I de-cryovaced the tenderloin and cut off about a 2 1/2 lb thunk from the big end (I vacpacked and froze the rest) and schmeared it with a teaspoon or so of dijon

then I covered it with a mixture of salt, pepper, dried cilantro (1 tbl), chipotle powder (1/4 tsp) and thyme (1/2 tsp)

then seared it in an oven-safe pan in oh say 2 tbl of olive oil for a couple of minutes on each side until it got a nice little crust

then into the oven at 400 went the pan for 35-40 minutes (pull it when it hits 125 or so internally for medium-rare)

Now here’s where I got schtupid. When I was in Zurich last month I had Rosti, which seemed to be basically hashbrowns that you make while wearing lederhosen. So I decided to try my hand at them.

The rosti, not the lederhosen, that is.

Earlier in the day I boiled some white spuds (you want to use a gooey starchy spud, not a flaky baker type) and let them cool for a few hours. Then with my Brides able assistance I peeled them and grated them in the Cuisinart

in a skillet I put a couple of three tablespoons of butter and a couple tablespoons of crumbled bacon and let the flavors co-habitate over medium heat

then I added the spuds to the pan and pressed them down to make a cake, adding a touch more salt and pepper

I let it sizzle for about 10 minutes then got to the ‘flip it’ stage. As the rosti is somewhat crumbly there’s no graceful way to do it. The accepted method seems to be to put a dinner plate in the pan atop it upside down

and, er, turn the pan over

looks tasty. Then you put a little more butter in the pan and let it melt to cook the other side and then slide the rosti back in the pan for another 10 or 15 minutes.

In the meanwhile the Shat Ho was ready to come out of the oven. Look at this stove top. Crowded and crazy. The covered saute pan in the backround has the veggies in it: thin strips of yellow squash, zucchini and carrots that I was simmering in butter with a little chicken stock and thyme but I didn’t have a chance to take any pics of that. The pan I the back-left has some more chicken stock I was heating up for the gravy. I barely had time to drink while making this…

Anyhow, once the Ho comes out of the oven remove it to a platter and cover with foil for the 10 minutes or so before eating

pour off the excess oil from the pan the meat was in. Oh, a word of warning. A pan that just came out of a 400 degree oven will be very hot, especially its handle. So unless you want to go all Kung Fu on your hand make damn sure you remember the hot pads. Trust me on this.

so into this hot pan put another 2 tbl of butter and 1/4 cup of minced shallots and sizzle away

then add 1/2 cup of cognac and bring it to a boil to release all those tasty vittles that are stuck to the pan. Let that boil down a little then add a cup of stock, a tsp of thyme and a tbl of dried parsley and boil away, stirring and reducing in volume by at least 1/2

then slice the cow, drizzle with the sauce and plate with the rosti and veggies

turned out quite tasty, I must say. I liked the little zing that the chipotle added, and the rosti had a nice buttery crispiness. I’ll flavor it with more bacon next time.

Why I Love Jonah Goldberg: Part Eleventy

Besides the whole cuddly, conservative-with-a-heart, intellectual thing?

“Dune” references.

The backdrop for my favorite science-fiction novels, Frank Herbert’s “Dune” series, is something called the Butlerian Jihad. Some 10,000 years before the main events of the story take place, humanity rebelled against “thinking machines” — intelligent computers — controlling people’s lives. The revolution was sparked because a computer decided to kill, without the consent of any human authority, the baby of a woman named Jehanne Butler.

I bring this up because I’m wondering why we can’t have a Weberian Jihad.

Its namesake would be Jean Weber, a 105-pound, 95-year-old Florida woman whose daughter claims was forced by airport security to remove her adult diaper in compliance with a body search. Weber is dying of leukemia. She did not have another clean diaper for her trip…

(SWOON)

…And that’s what brought to mind “Dune’s” Butlerian Jihad. The holy war against machines was also a war against a mind-set. “The target of the jihad was a machine-attitude as much as the machines,” a character explains. “Humans had set those machines to usurp our sense of beauty, our necessary selfdom out of which we make living judgments.” In the aftermath, a new commandment was promulgated: “Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind.”

It seems the first commandment of the TSA is that every mind must be trained in the likeness of a machine. “Garbage in, garbage out,” is how computer programmers explain the way bad outputs are determined by bad inputs. Likewise, if TSA workers are programmed not to use common sense or discretion — surprise! — TSA workers won’t use common sense or discretion.

Why not? One reason is we’ve institutionalized an irrational phobia against anything smacking of racial or religious profiling. Once you’ve decided that disproportionate scrutiny of certain groups is verboten, you’ll have to hassle everyone equally.

Thus we’re told that a 95-year-old woman’s diaper is just as likely to be the front line in the war on terror as a 22-year-old Pakistani’s backpack.

We would have Wormsign the likes of which even God has never seen!!

But Jonah’s going to jail because he used “jihad” and “TSA” in a paragraph together, so I have to go bake some cookies with a file in them. BRB.

Sweet Little 95 Year Old Ladies, On Their Way Home to DIE

…are no match for TSA adult diaper inspectors, no siree Bob!

And don’t you dare start cryin’ at the indignities your momma’s sufferin’, there, daughter girl, or they’ll run YOU through security, too, whether you’re flyin’ or not.

TSA: Agents Justified in Making Woman Remove Diaper

(FORT WALTON BEACH, Fla.) – A woman says her 95-year-old mother was forced to remove her adult diaper during screening at Northwest Florida Regional Airport last weekend. TSA says its agents were just following procedure.

Jean Weber says her mother Lena, who is in a wheelchair, was asked to remove her Depends while TSA agents were patting her down. Lena was headed to Michigan to spend time with family during the final stages of her battle with leukemia.

“They came out and got me and said they couldn’t inspect her Depends, she’d have to remove them,” said Weber. “I had to go back across the lobby of the airport and go into the bathroom and take them off of her, and take her back through security again. They took shoes off, everything off again, and at that point I started to cry. My poor mom. I had no Depends, I just had to pull her slacks back up. I was distraught because I didn’t know if I was going to be able to see her again before she got settled back in her place up there.”

Weber says the agents took 45 minutes to screen her very weak mother.

“Then they took me to the glassed in area, my mom to the enclosed area. In the process I lost my gate pass, they said I couldn’t take my mother to the gate, and I was really sobbing at that point. I was so distraught. I said she’s really sick, she’s going home to die. I said for pete’s sake can you not show some empathy for this situation?” Weber added.

Weber says after she broke down in tears, TSA agents decided to screen her as well. She says she was not allowed to walk with her mother to the gate because during the screening process her pass got lost.

Weber says she is heading to Michigan soon to be with her dying mother.

The picture of her poor mother that accompanies the story is, as you can see, a frail, sweet, fluffy white-haired thing IN A WHEELCHAIR, who looks like two puffs of breath could tip her over.

Of course, Big Sis’s Storm Troopers would insist on inspecting a diaper ~ they’re consumate shit experts.

Onward Verdant Jersey!

Some random yard pics

These are purple

Although I must admit the electric blue the camera decided on is rather funky

I really have got to build a pergola of some type, as the grapes are being most bountiful

and when they emplumpify I have a nasty feeling they will snap the cheap wire trellis I have them on now

The squash are blooming as well

The deer are licking their chops.

Did I Move To DC When I Was Sleeping?

This is just too weird

HOLMDEL — A Democratic hopeful for Middletown Township Committee was arrested last Saturday for possessing crack cocaine after one of two women he was with at a motel complained that he was chasing her, police said.

An irate 24-year-old Middletown woman told police that Alexander DeSevo, 43, of West Front Street in Middletown, chased her from the Holmdel Motor Inn on Route 35, where he was renting two rooms that night, said Sgt. Eric Hoffman of the Holmdel Police Department.

…Hazlet police relayed the information to Holmdel police, who responded to the Holmdel Motor Inn. They found DeSevo in a room in possession of crack cocaine and drug paraphernalia, and in the company of a 21-year-old Keansburg woman, Hoffman said.

…DeSevo, who could not be reached for comment, secured the Democratic Party nomination for Middletown Township Committee in an uncontested election in April. He is a criminal defense attorney.

No Blood For Oil!

Unless, of course, there happens to be a Democratic President who wants to ensure Europe’s oil supply

(Reuters) – The loss of Libyan oil output since February represented a greater disruption to global oil supply than the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Richard Jones, the deputy head of the International Energy Agency, told Reuters Insider TV.

Jones, speaking in Reuters’ Paris bureau, said that the initial disruption to oil output in Libya happened at a “fortuitous” time for European oil refiners as many were closed for maintenance.

Then it’s all-righty-a-ok to have a little kinetic negotiation.

A Saturday Dinner

Well, not just any Saturday dinner but last Saturday, in fact. Not that last Saturday was anything special, mind you, but I thought it would be best to be clear.

Any hoo, the ShopRong had these Pamelas on sale for 99¢ a pound, four big honkers in the package that had to weigh a tad over a pound each; they really were more like Dollies than Pamelas actually.

I opened up a bottle of this

which is a reasonably priced Argentine Malbec: $11 for a 1.5 l bottle. Fairly good fruit, decent tannins and smooth-enough body for this price range.

And I discovered that somehow this had made it’s way into my bag at the store as well

So I had a basic idea of what I was going to do, but first I just had to trim the Pamelas down a bit, as when they are so ginormous, well, getting them done enough is always a bit of a concern. And as none of us are real fans of pollo tartare, well, it just seemed to be a good idea.

So I just trimmed off the dangly bits and evened them out a tad. Of course, this left me with the problem of what exactly to do with the trimmings…

Took a while to figure that one out.

I then very carefully butterflied the Pamelas

(and not my palm as well) and into the center placed some fresh basil

some swiss cheese

and some prosciutto

then closed them up and wrapped them entirely in a protective layer of bacon and toothpicked the beasts closed.

wash, rinse, repeat with the others (using up the entire pound of bacon…yes!)

and put them on indirect heat on the grill

for about an hour or so..during which time someone got bored and wandered off in search of greener pastures

While they were cooking I made some spicy mac-n-cheese using berbere and for something vaguely Vegetable-like I opened up a couple of cans of green beans (a, because I like them, and b, because as a general rule of thumb (and fully based on past disastrous experiences) I only try to make two components of any meal from scratch because I’m just not good enough on the timing of things (mostly because I tend to make stuff up as I go along) to coördinate that many elements in a meal).

God, I hope I closed all those parentheses.

Anyhoo, it turned out

pretty yum.

“If There Was a Rat in Your Drinking Water…”

“…wouldn’t you remove it?”

Yeah, but I wouldn’t reVIVE it.

He Might Be Best Remembered as “Columbo”

Peter Falk, TV’s rumpled Columbo, has died

LOS ANGELES – Peter Falk, the stage and movie actor who became identified as the squinty, rumpled detective in “Columbo,” which spanned 30 years in primetime television and established one of the most iconic characters in police work, has died. He was 83.

But he’ll always be my favorite big screen “Grampa”.

‘Night, Mr. Falk. Rest in peace.

Informative Friday Stuff Because We Live to Serve

Better to read this entertaining article than ever have to listen to him to do the research yourself.

Support the Tropes
Why is the World’s Greatest Orator such a dreadful rhetorician?

Not that anybody’s asking, but no, we didn’t watch President Obama’s speech last night announcing his latest recalibration of his Afghanistan policy to adapt to the changing conditions of the 2012 electoral battlefield. It’s been a long time since we found this president’s speeches worth staying home to see.

…So why in the world would Obama expect a call for “nation building at home” to resonate? Not only is nation building a discredited idea, but the implication is that the U.S. is a pathetic wreck of a country like Kosovo or Afghanistan or Iraq. Undeniably, America has its problems, but many of them are caused or aggravated by an obtrusive government. We don’t need to be “built,” just left alone to maintain and reinvigorate ourselves.

The answer appears to be that once again, the World’s Greatest Orator is taking his rhetorical cues from the Worst Writer in the English Language. Remember the “Sputnik moment,” the trope in Obama’s State of the Union Address that was supposed to inspire us to get excited about whatever boondoggles he’s pushing this year? Neither did we; we have to delve into our archives to be reminded of the details.

But we remembered who used that forgettable phrase first: Thomas Friedman of the New York Times. And Commentary’s Abe Greenwald reminds us that “nation building at home” is another of Friedman’s tropes. On Nov. 28, 2010, Reason’s Matt Welch noted that in Friedman’s column of that day, “the phrase ‘nation-building at home’ makes two appearances, ‘nation-building in America’ makes two more, and there’s a fifth ‘nation-building’ in there, presumably for collectors.”

Noting that Friedman had been beating that drum for 2½ years, Welch titled his post “Thomas L. Friedman: Nation-Building at Home Just as Crucial a Slogan Now as it Was 14 Columns Ago.” Make that 15. On March 23, Friedman wrote: “If the president is ready to take some big, hard, urgent, decisions, shouldn’t they be first about nation-building in America, not in Libya?”

Still, that’s only one column in almost seven months, vs. almost one every other month in the period before Welch noted it. And Friedman has not mentioned Sputnik in any column since we called him on that one after the State of the Union.

How can anyone take seriously Barack Obama’s status as the World’s Greatest Orator when he uses Friedmanisms that have become so Friedmanistic that even Friedman avoids them?

I don’t, but apparently somebody still does.

Or did.

Just Peachy ~ Another President With “Missing Spine” Syndrome

Now’s a terrific time to bugger out, wouldn’t you say?

Karzai surrounding himself with anti-US advisers

KABUL, Afghanistan – President Hamid Karzai is increasingly isolated and has surrounded himself with an inner circle of advisers who are urging him to move closer to Iran and Pakistan as the U.S. draws down its role in Afghanistan, several friends and aides tell The Associated Press.

Their advice is echoed in Karzai’s anti-West rhetoric, which has heightened both in his public speeches and in private. He met recently with Iran’s defense minister, and constantly cautions against trusting the U.S. to have Afghanistan’s best interests at heart.

Several of Karzai’s close friends and advisers now speak of a president whose doors have closed to all but one narrow faction and who refuses to listen to dissenting opinions. They say people allowed to see the president are vetted by an inner circle of religious conservatives who belong to a nonviolent wing of Hizb-i-Islami, a radical Islamic group whose relentless attacks on American soldiers forced the U.S. to withdraw from bases in northeastern Kunar and Nuristan provinces.

What? Was there, like, a run on these losers at CostCo or something?

There’s “Stupid”…

…and then there’s “Time”

Seriously, this piece in Time Magazine is either utter bullsh-t, or he is literally incapable of reading and understanding the words of the Constitution and other related laws. I was so stunned to read this drivel in Time Magazine that I then looked up who the hell Richard Stengel is, and apparently he is their Managing Editor! And by the time you are done reading this post you will be stunned with the cluelessness on display.

So strap yourself in, we’re going to have an old fashioned fisking. And it’s a long one, because this piece is one of the most clueless pieces I have ever read on the Constitution or the law generally.

It’s worth your “time” to read the whole thing.

The Alternative Is Unthinkable!

Oh my god, the horror of the idea that, why, I shudder to even type the words, the, the OUTRAGEOUS idea that perhaps, maybe, some wild Neanderthal wants to …cut spending?

(CNSNews.com) – Noted Tax Cheat and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told the House Small Business Committee on Wednesday that the Obama administration believes taxes on small business must increase so the administration does not have to “shrink the overall size of government programs.”

The administration’s plan to raise the tax rate on small businesses is part of its plan to raise taxes on all Americans who make more than $250,000 per year—including businesses that file taxes the same way individuals and families do.

I love this little bit as well

“And if we were to cut spending by that magnitude to do it, you’d be putting a huge additional burden on the economy, probably greater negative economic impact than that modest change in revenue,” said Noted Tax Cheat Geithner.

So this is the world they inhabit: Less debt is a huge additional burden. They want to spend their way out of debt.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: they are like alcoholics who think they can drink their way to sobriety.

And let’s all give a Swill Shout Out to Rep. Renee Ellmers (R.-N.C.).

She kicks Noted Tax Cheat Geithner’s butt.

Horrifying

The only word for it. The Douche-in-Chief at Fort Drum today utterly disgraced himself.

“First time I saw 10th Mountain Division, you guys were in southern Iraq. When I went back to visit Afghanistan, you guys were the first ones there. I had the great honor of seeing some of you because a comrade of yours, Jared Monti, was the first person who I was able to award the Medal of Honor to who actually came back and wasn’t receiving it posthumously.”

As we all know, SSG Sal Giunta, of the 173rd Airborne, was the first living recipient (2011) of the MOH who fought in Iraq/Afganistan.

SFC Jared Monti, 10th Mountain Division, was KIA in Afghanistan in 2006.

He was posthumously awarded the MOH by Obama in 2009

Dear God.

UPDATE: The Military Times gets a “flubs” dig in. And the comments are a treat.

Douche.

Speaking of Tender Feelings

…Australia’s got a boatload of poetry spewers, too.

Last weekend Ibrahim wrote: “YA ZIONIST DOGS THERE WILL BE A DAY VERY SOON THAT YOULL FIND NO SHELTR NOR A WALL TO HIND (sic) BEHIND AND WE WILL EAT YOUR FLESH AND SPIT IT TO OUR DOGS TO CHEW OFF.”

Kinda snappy, eh? Lucky damn thing for him he’s Muslim, or he’d be in jail for that talk.