PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS: Read His Letter: Joe Biden Argued Against Impeachment Witnesses In 1999.
Archive for 2020
January 31, 2020
Good luck with that. The Greens who tried this in London got beaten. New Yorkers will probably toss them on the tracks ahead of an oncoming train.
RUTHIE BLUM: Trump’s game-changing speech of the century. “In a complete about-face from Obama – who made good on his campaign promise to woo the Islamic world and delivered a pandering address at Cairo University to a Muslim Brotherhood-heavy audience – ‘The Donald’ went to Israel. This turned out to be more than symbolic, as Trump proceeded to undertake a series of unprecedented moves that served what he saw, rightly, as mutually beneficial to America and Israel, and healthy for the world at large. . . . To describe this as a breath of fresh air following eight years of the polluted atmosphere created by the Obama administration would be a gross understatement.”
Side with civilization against the barbarians. This shouldn’t be hard, but for much of our political class — and even more of Europe’s — it goes against the grain.
Plus: “For the first time in his career, Abbas’s tantrums didn’t work. Team Trump responded to his snub by shrugging and treating him like the tiny fish in the miniature pond he actually is.”
AT AMAZON, save on Bras for Women.
I’M EXPECTING AN EARTH-SHATTERING KABOOM: NASA: Earth-Crossing Asteroid That Could Explode Mid-Air To Approach Tomorrow. But — spoiler — it’s not going to hit the Earth tomorrow. “According to CNEOS, 2020 BZ4 is not in danger of hitting Earth during its upcoming visit. This asteroid is expected to cross Earth’s path on Jan. 31 at 9:48 a.m. EST. During this time, the asteroid will be about 0.01452 astronomical units away from the planet’s center, which is equivalent to around 1.3 million miles. Its next near-Earth intersection is expected to happen on Jan. 13, 2021.”
OPEN THREAD: Make it march, we’re minus on minutes.
JIM TREACHER: CNN Calls Out U.S. Coronavirus Task Force for… Lack of Diversity? “Look, if it weren’t for the Wright Brothers, a couple of white guys, that virus would still be stuck all the way over in China. White people got us into this mess, and now we’re supposed to trust them to get us out of it?”
THIS IS WORSE, AND CHINA IS MORE FRAGILE TODAY: Why China can’t recover quickly from the coronavirus outbreak like it did with SARS.
21ST CENTURY HEADLINES: Bigelow Aerospace sets sights on free-flying station after passing on ISS commercial module.
WHY ARE DEMOCRATS SO EAGER TO WRECK THE GLOBAL ECONOMY? Or: Putin Puppet, Unmasked: Elizabeth Warren’s Fracking Ban Would Harm the Environment.
As Walter Russell Mead wrote in 2017:
If Trump were the Manchurian candidate that people keep wanting to believe that he is, here are some of the things he’d be doing:
Limiting fracking as much as he possibly could
Blocking oil and gas pipelines
Opening negotiations for major nuclear arms reductions
Cutting U.S. military spending
Trying to tamp down tensions with Russia’s ally Iran.
“Yep,” Glenn added in December. “You know who did do these things? Obama. You know who supports these things now? Democrats.”
After the Democratic presidential candidates’ apocalyptic-themed “climate change” town hall on CNN in September, Bryan Preston wrote, “If you like Venezuela, voting for any of them will bring you a whole lot of Venezuela. Thank you, CNN, just for letting these people talk. Do it again next week? Please?”
FORGET IT, SHE’S ROLLING: Pelosi Says Trump Can’t Be Acquitted Because the Senate Trial Isn’t a Trial, or Something.
MOLLIE HEMINGWAY: Top 8 Reasons Trump Already Won Impeachment.
I THOUGHT WE WERE PRETTY SURE ABOUT THIS: Whether we can contain coronavirus depends on whether it’s communicable before symptoms appear.
Related: Pilots Union Files Suit to Halt American Airlines Flights to China Amid Coronavirus Outbreak.
Also: Nigeria to Quarantine Chinese Returnees. Nigeria’s infectious-control disease game is strong. They did very well containing Ebola.
WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: We Made Pizza. We Made Robots. Why Not Robot Pizza?
BERNIE SANDERS PRAISED GEORGE WALLACE AS ‘SENSITIVE’ IN 1972:
Seven years after Martin Luther King, Jr. referred to George Wallace as “perhaps the most dangerous racist in America today,” a young Bernie Sanders praised the segregationist Alabama governor.
In an interview with the Brattleboro Reformer in 1972, Sanders, then 31, said Wallace “advocates some outrageous approaches to our problems, but at least he is sensitive to what people feel they need.”
Sanders, now a Vermont senator and 2020 Democrat, said, “What we need are more active politicians working for the people.”
The 1972 remarks surprised the interviewer at the time, who wrote that “even though [Sanders] has been labeled a ‘leftist radical’ by some persons, Sanders had some praise for [Wallace].”
To be fair, describing Wallace as “sensitive to what people feel they need” wasn’t the craziest thing that Sanders believed in 1972. And yet, as this Boston Globe headline from late last year notes, “Bernie Sanders hasn’t changed — and his supporters love that.”
VIA THE MAGIC OF FACEBOOK MEMORIES, a recipe from the late, lamented Karl Bock, better known in the blogosphere as “Chef Mojo.”
Bock Stew
3 pounds of beef chuck, cut into 1 inch cubes
¼ cup of vegetable oil
4 large, sweet onions, chopped
6-8 cloves of garlic, crushed & minced
1 stick of butter cut in half
¼ cup of flour
1 14 oz. can of small dice tomatoes
1 pound crimini mushrooms, quartered
1 T. sweet paprika
2 t. salt
2 t. fresh ground black pepper
1 t. dry thyme leaf
1 t. ancho chili powder
½ t. rubbed sage
2 bay leaves
3 12 oz. bottles of good quality beer
Pat the beef cubes dry with paper towels.
In a large dutch oven over medium high heat, brown the beef in batches with the vegetable oil. Get some good color on those cubes. Set the browned beef aside and pour out any oil in the pot.
Add half a stick of butter, the onions and garlic and reduce the heat to low. Scrape up the glaze as the onions sweat, and keep cooking until the onions are nice and caramelized. Should take around 20 to 30 minutes.
In another small pan over medium heat, melt the remaining butter, and when is starts to bubble, add the flour and whisk it in. Reduce heat to low and cook the roux until it turns a nice butternut brown. This should take about 30 minutes.
When the roux is finished, add it to the dutch oven. Return the beef and its juices to the dutch oven and add the mushrooms, herbs and spices. Stir all the ingredients together.
Slowly add the beer, stirring it in.
Preheat oven to 350°.
Turn up the heat to medium high and bring the pot to a boil while stirring. Reduce heat to a simmer. When the oven is ready, cover the dutch oven and put it in the oven for 2 hours.
Take the dutch oven out of the oven and put it back on a burner. Over medium low heat, reduce the liquid until it’s a nice sauce like consistency.
Serves 8 to 10 people.
This recipe pretty much screams for mashed potatoes, but I also like it with roasted potatoes. I’ve also added flat dumplings to the stew to great effect.
A note on the beer:
Use the same sort of beer you like to drink. This recipe works best with lagers and lighter ales. My favorite beer to use in this recipe is Shiner Bock, hence the recipe name. But use what you like with a mind to good quality beer.
And while we’re at it, here’s my recipe for Lamb and Guinness Stew.
And don’t forget the Insta-Chicken.
And it’s not my recipe, but this slow cooker salsa chicken is good on a cold night.
ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE: How To Bias Education Reporting. “Choice Media’s Bob Bowdon tells reporters how to infuse bias into their education reporting. For example, an inner-city charter school’s test data should be compared to state average, rather than to nearby district schools with similar students, he advises. Most readers won’t realize that state averages include more educated, affluent families, or that urban parents are evaluating local options. To make a state’s charter sector look bad, lump together schools that serve at-risk students with schools with mainstream students, Bowdon writes.”