Tuesday, September 04, 2012
Saturday, September 01, 2012
Curmudgeonly & Skeptical presents Boned Jello
Curmudgeonly & Skeptical presents Boned Jello:
Blackened Ham Steak & Sweet Potato Salad
Lb Sweet Potato, Peeled, Cut into 1/2 Cubes
1 Cup Fresh Pineapple, Diced (I used canned chunks)
2 TBS Chopped Fresh Parsley
Cup Mayonnaise
2 TBS Plain Yogurt (I scooped the unmixed top off of peach Greek yogurt)
2 TBS Sugar
1 TSP Fresh Lime Juice
TSP Vanilla Extract
Salt & White Pepper to Taste
1 Center Cut Ham Steak (16-20 oz)
BLACKENING SPICE:
2 TSP Brown Sugar
1 TSP Paprika
TSP Cayenne
1 TSP Garlic Powder
1 TSP Black Pepper
1 TSP Dried Thyme
Preheat grill to high. Boil sweet potatoes in a pot of salted water until tender, 5-7 minutes. Drain, then rinse under cold water until cool. Combine with pineapple and parsley. Whisk mayonnaise, yogurt, sugar, lime juice, and vanilla together in a dish. Season with salt & white pepper; toss with the potato mixture to coat.
Combine blackening spices in a small bowl, then rub the mixture on both sides of the ham steak. Grill until the edges of the steak begin to curl; flip the steak and grill for 1-2 minutes longer. Serve with sweet potato salad.
Blackened Ham Steak & Sweet Potato Salad
Lb Sweet Potato, Peeled, Cut into 1/2 Cubes
1 Cup Fresh Pineapple, Diced (I used canned chunks)
2 TBS Chopped Fresh Parsley
Cup Mayonnaise
2 TBS Plain Yogurt (I scooped the unmixed top off of peach Greek yogurt)
2 TBS Sugar
1 TSP Fresh Lime Juice
TSP Vanilla Extract
Salt & White Pepper to Taste
1 Center Cut Ham Steak (16-20 oz)
BLACKENING SPICE:
2 TSP Brown Sugar
1 TSP Paprika
TSP Cayenne
1 TSP Garlic Powder
1 TSP Black Pepper
1 TSP Dried Thyme
Preheat grill to high. Boil sweet potatoes in a pot of salted water until tender, 5-7 minutes. Drain, then rinse under cold water until cool. Combine with pineapple and parsley. Whisk mayonnaise, yogurt, sugar, lime juice, and vanilla together in a dish. Season with salt & white pepper; toss with the potato mixture to coat.
Combine blackening spices in a small bowl, then rub the mixture on both sides of the ham steak. Grill until the edges of the steak begin to curl; flip the steak and grill for 1-2 minutes longer. Serve with sweet potato salad.
Newgeography.com | Economic, demographic, and political commentary about places
Newgeography.com | Economic, demographic, and political commentary about places
Much is said about class warfare in contemporary America, and there’s justifiable anger at the impoverishment of much of the middle and working classes. The Pew Research Center recently dubbed the 2000s a “lost decade” for middle-income earners — some 85% of Americans in that category feel it’s now more difficult to maintain their standard of living than at the beginning of the millennium, according to a Pew survey.
Blaming a disliked minority — rich business folks — has morphed into a predictable strategy for President Obama’s Democrats, stripped of incumbent success. But all the talk of “one percent” versus “the ninety nine percent” misses new splits developing within both the upper and middle classes.
There is no true solidarity among the rich since no one is yet threatening their status. The “one percent” are splitting their bets. In 2008 President Obama received more Wall Street money than any candidate in history, and he still relies on Wall Street bundlers for his sustenance. For all his class rhetoric, miscreant Wall Streeters, particularly big ones, have evaded big sanctions and the ignominy of jail time.
Obama enjoys great support from the financial interests that benefit from government debt and expansive public largesse. Well-connected people like Obama’s financial tsar on the GM bailout, Steven Rattner, who is also known as a vigorous defender of “too big to fail.”
The “patrician left” — a term that might have amused Marx — extends as well to Silicon Valley, where venture capitalists and techies have opened their wallets wider than ever before for the president. Microsoft and Google are two of Obama’s top three organizational sources of campaign contributions. Valley financiers are not always as selfless as they or their admirers imagine: Many have sought to feed at the Energy Department’s bounteous “green” energy trough and all face regulatory reviews by federal agencies.
The Republicans have turned increasingly to those patricians who depend on the more tangible economy. If you make your living from digging coal or exploring for oil wells, even if you don’t like him, Romney is you man. This saddles the GOP with the burden of being linked to one of America’s most hated interests: oil and gas companies. Almost as detested is the biggest source of Romney cash, large Wall Street banks. (In contrast, Democratic-leaning industries, such as Internet-related companies, enjoy relatively high public support.)
With the patriarchate divided, the real action in the emerging class war is taking place further down the economic food chain. This inconvenient reality is largely ignored by the left, which finds the idea of anyone this side of Bain Capital supporting Romney as little more than “false consciousness.”
Obama’s core middle-class support, and that of his party, comes from what might be best described as “the clerisy,” a 21st century version of France’s pre-revolution First Estate. This includes an ever-expanding class of minders — lawyers, teachers, university professors, the media and, most particularly, the relatively well paid legions of public sector workers — who inhabit Washington, academia, large non-profits and government centers across the country.
This largely well-heeled “middle class” still adores the president, and party theoreticians see it as the Democratic Party’s new base. Gallup surveys reveal Obama does best among “professionals” such as teachers, lawyers and educators. After retirees, educators and lawyers are the two biggest sources of campaign contributions for Obama by occupation. Obama’s largest source of funds among individual organizations is the University of California, Harvard is fifth and its wannabe cousin Stanford ranks ninth.
Like teachers, much of academia and the legal bar like expanding government since the tax spigot flows in the right direction: that is, into their mouths. Like the old clerical classes, who relied on tithes and the collection bowl, many in today’s clerisy lives somewhat high on the hog; nearly one in five federal workers earn over $100,000.
Essentially, the clerisy has become a new, mass privileged class who live a safer, more secure life compared to those trapped in the harsher, less cosseted private economy. As California Polytechnic economist Michael Marlow points out, public sector workers enjoy greater job stability, and salary and benefits as much as 21% higher than of private sector employees doing similar work.
On this year’s Labor Day, this is the new face of unionism. The percentage of private-sector workers in unions has dropped from 24% in 1973 to barely 7% today and in 2010, for the first time, the public sector accounted for an absolute majority of union members. “Labor” increasingly means not guys with overalls and lunch pails, but people whose paychecks are signed by taxpayers.
The GOP, for its part, now relies on another part of the middle class, what I would call the yeomanry. In many ways they represent the contemporary version of Jeffersonian farmers or the beneficiaries of President Lincoln’s Homestead Act. They are primarily small property owners who lack the girth and connections of the clerisy but resist joining the government-dependent poor. Particularly critical are small business owners, who Gallup identifies as “the least approving” of Obama among all the major occupation groups. Barely one in three likes the present administration.
The yeomanry diverge from the clerisy in other ways. They tend to live in the suburbs, a geography much detested by many leaders of the clerisy and, likely, the president himself. Yeomen families tend to be concentrated in those parts of the country that have more children and are more apt to seek solutions to social problems through private efforts. Philanthropy, church work and voluntarism — what you might call, appropriately enough, the Utah approach, after the state that leads in philanthropy.
The nature of their work also differentiates the clerisy from the yeomanry. The clerisy labors largely in offices and has no contact with actual production. Many yeomen, particularly in business services, depend on industry for their livelihoods either directly or indirectly. The clerisy’s stultifying, and often job-toxic regulations and “green” agenda may be one reason why people engaged in farming, fishing, forestry, transportation, manufacturing and construction overwhelmingly disapprove of the president’s policies, according to Gallup.
Obama supporters sometimes trace the loss of largely white working-class support — even to the somewhat less than simpatico patrician Romney — to “false consciousness.” A recent Daily Kos article, charmingly entitled “The Masses are Asses,” chose to wave the old bloody shirt of racism, arguing that whites “are the single largest, and most protected racial group in this country’s history.”
Ultimately this division — clerisy and their clients versus yeomanry — will decide the election. The patricians and the unions will finance this battle on both sides, spreading a predictable thread of half-truths and outright lies. The Democrats enjoy a tactical advantage. All President Obama needs is to gain a rough split among the vast group making around or above the national median income. He can count on overwhelming backing by the largely government dependent poor as well as most ethnic minorities, even the most entrepreneurial and successful.
Romney’s imperative will be to rouse the yeomanry by suggesting the clerisy, both by their sheer costliness and increasingly intrusive agenda, are crippling their family’s prospects for a better life. In these times of weak economic growth and growing income disparity, the Republicans delude themselves by claiming to ignore class warfare. They need to learn how instead to make it politically profitable for themselves.
Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and is a distinguished presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University, and contributing editor to the City Journal in New York. He is author of The City: A Global History. His newest book is The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050, released in February, 2010.
This piece originally appeared in Forbes.
Mitt Romney image from Bigstock.
The Unseen Class War That Could Decide The Presidential Election
by Joel Kotkin 08/29/2012
Blaming a disliked minority — rich business folks — has morphed into a predictable strategy for President Obama’s Democrats, stripped of incumbent success. But all the talk of “one percent” versus “the ninety nine percent” misses new splits developing within both the upper and middle classes.
There is no true solidarity among the rich since no one is yet threatening their status. The “one percent” are splitting their bets. In 2008 President Obama received more Wall Street money than any candidate in history, and he still relies on Wall Street bundlers for his sustenance. For all his class rhetoric, miscreant Wall Streeters, particularly big ones, have evaded big sanctions and the ignominy of jail time.
Obama enjoys great support from the financial interests that benefit from government debt and expansive public largesse. Well-connected people like Obama’s financial tsar on the GM bailout, Steven Rattner, who is also known as a vigorous defender of “too big to fail.”
The “patrician left” — a term that might have amused Marx — extends as well to Silicon Valley, where venture capitalists and techies have opened their wallets wider than ever before for the president. Microsoft and Google are two of Obama’s top three organizational sources of campaign contributions. Valley financiers are not always as selfless as they or their admirers imagine: Many have sought to feed at the Energy Department’s bounteous “green” energy trough and all face regulatory reviews by federal agencies.
The Republicans have turned increasingly to those patricians who depend on the more tangible economy. If you make your living from digging coal or exploring for oil wells, even if you don’t like him, Romney is you man. This saddles the GOP with the burden of being linked to one of America’s most hated interests: oil and gas companies. Almost as detested is the biggest source of Romney cash, large Wall Street banks. (In contrast, Democratic-leaning industries, such as Internet-related companies, enjoy relatively high public support.)
With the patriarchate divided, the real action in the emerging class war is taking place further down the economic food chain. This inconvenient reality is largely ignored by the left, which finds the idea of anyone this side of Bain Capital supporting Romney as little more than “false consciousness.”
Obama’s core middle-class support, and that of his party, comes from what might be best described as “the clerisy,” a 21st century version of France’s pre-revolution First Estate. This includes an ever-expanding class of minders — lawyers, teachers, university professors, the media and, most particularly, the relatively well paid legions of public sector workers — who inhabit Washington, academia, large non-profits and government centers across the country.
This largely well-heeled “middle class” still adores the president, and party theoreticians see it as the Democratic Party’s new base. Gallup surveys reveal Obama does best among “professionals” such as teachers, lawyers and educators. After retirees, educators and lawyers are the two biggest sources of campaign contributions for Obama by occupation. Obama’s largest source of funds among individual organizations is the University of California, Harvard is fifth and its wannabe cousin Stanford ranks ninth.
Like teachers, much of academia and the legal bar like expanding government since the tax spigot flows in the right direction: that is, into their mouths. Like the old clerical classes, who relied on tithes and the collection bowl, many in today’s clerisy lives somewhat high on the hog; nearly one in five federal workers earn over $100,000.
Essentially, the clerisy has become a new, mass privileged class who live a safer, more secure life compared to those trapped in the harsher, less cosseted private economy. As California Polytechnic economist Michael Marlow points out, public sector workers enjoy greater job stability, and salary and benefits as much as 21% higher than of private sector employees doing similar work.
On this year’s Labor Day, this is the new face of unionism. The percentage of private-sector workers in unions has dropped from 24% in 1973 to barely 7% today and in 2010, for the first time, the public sector accounted for an absolute majority of union members. “Labor” increasingly means not guys with overalls and lunch pails, but people whose paychecks are signed by taxpayers.
The GOP, for its part, now relies on another part of the middle class, what I would call the yeomanry. In many ways they represent the contemporary version of Jeffersonian farmers or the beneficiaries of President Lincoln’s Homestead Act. They are primarily small property owners who lack the girth and connections of the clerisy but resist joining the government-dependent poor. Particularly critical are small business owners, who Gallup identifies as “the least approving” of Obama among all the major occupation groups. Barely one in three likes the present administration.
The yeomanry diverge from the clerisy in other ways. They tend to live in the suburbs, a geography much detested by many leaders of the clerisy and, likely, the president himself. Yeomen families tend to be concentrated in those parts of the country that have more children and are more apt to seek solutions to social problems through private efforts. Philanthropy, church work and voluntarism — what you might call, appropriately enough, the Utah approach, after the state that leads in philanthropy.
The nature of their work also differentiates the clerisy from the yeomanry. The clerisy labors largely in offices and has no contact with actual production. Many yeomen, particularly in business services, depend on industry for their livelihoods either directly or indirectly. The clerisy’s stultifying, and often job-toxic regulations and “green” agenda may be one reason why people engaged in farming, fishing, forestry, transportation, manufacturing and construction overwhelmingly disapprove of the president’s policies, according to Gallup.
Obama supporters sometimes trace the loss of largely white working-class support — even to the somewhat less than simpatico patrician Romney — to “false consciousness.” A recent Daily Kos article, charmingly entitled “The Masses are Asses,” chose to wave the old bloody shirt of racism, arguing that whites “are the single largest, and most protected racial group in this country’s history.”
Ultimately this division — clerisy and their clients versus yeomanry — will decide the election. The patricians and the unions will finance this battle on both sides, spreading a predictable thread of half-truths and outright lies. The Democrats enjoy a tactical advantage. All President Obama needs is to gain a rough split among the vast group making around or above the national median income. He can count on overwhelming backing by the largely government dependent poor as well as most ethnic minorities, even the most entrepreneurial and successful.
Romney’s imperative will be to rouse the yeomanry by suggesting the clerisy, both by their sheer costliness and increasingly intrusive agenda, are crippling their family’s prospects for a better life. In these times of weak economic growth and growing income disparity, the Republicans delude themselves by claiming to ignore class warfare. They need to learn how instead to make it politically profitable for themselves.
Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and is a distinguished presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University, and contributing editor to the City Journal in New York. He is author of The City: A Global History. His newest book is The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050, released in February, 2010.
This piece originally appeared in Forbes.
Mitt Romney image from Bigstock.
What to Say. What to Do: Silent Cal Gives Mitt a Clue @ AMERICAN DIGEST
What to Say. What to Do: Silent Cal Gives Mitt a Clue @ AMERICAN DIGEST
"This country needs every ounce of its energy to restore itself. The costs of government are all assessed upon the people.
“This means that the farmer is doomed to provide a certain amount of money out of the sale of his produce, no matter how low the price, to pay his taxes. The manufacturer, the professional man, the clerk, must do the same from their income. The wage earner-often at a higher rate when compared to his earnings-makes his contribution, perhaps not directly but indirectly, in the advanced cost of everything he buys.
“The expenses of government reach everybody.
“Taxes take from everyone a part of his earnings and force everyone to work for a certain part of his time for the government.
“When we come to realize that the yearly expenses of the governments of this country-the stupendous sum of about $7.5 billion -- $700 million needed by the national government. And the remainder by local governments.
“Such a sum is difficult to comprehend. It represents all the pay of 5 million wage earners making $5 a day, working for 300 days in the year. If the government should add $100 million of expense, it should represent four days more work of these wage earners. These are some of the reasons why I want to cut down public expense.
“I want the people of America to be able to work less for the government and more for themselves.
“I want them to have the rewards of their own industry-this is the chief meaning of freedom.
“Until we can reestablish a condition under which the earnings of the people can be kept by the people, we are bound to suffer a very severe and distinct curtailment of our liberty.
“These results are not fanciful, they are not imaginary, they are grimlt actual, and real, reaching into every household in the land. They take from each home annually an average of over $300.00, and taxes must be paid. They are not a voluntary contribution to be met out of surplus earnings. They are a stern necessity. They come first.
“It is only out of what is left, after they are paid, that the necessities of food, clothing, and shelter can be provided and the comforts of home secured, or the yearnings of the soul for a broader and more abundant life gratified.
“When the government affects a new economy, it grants everybody a life pension with which to raise the standards of existence. It increases the value of everybody's property, raises the scale of everybody's wages.
“One of the greatest favors that can be bestowed on the American people is economy in government."
"This country needs every ounce of its energy to restore itself. The costs of government are all assessed upon the people.
“This means that the farmer is doomed to provide a certain amount of money out of the sale of his produce, no matter how low the price, to pay his taxes. The manufacturer, the professional man, the clerk, must do the same from their income. The wage earner-often at a higher rate when compared to his earnings-makes his contribution, perhaps not directly but indirectly, in the advanced cost of everything he buys.
“The expenses of government reach everybody.
“Taxes take from everyone a part of his earnings and force everyone to work for a certain part of his time for the government.
“When we come to realize that the yearly expenses of the governments of this country-the stupendous sum of about $7.5 billion -- $700 million needed by the national government. And the remainder by local governments.
“Such a sum is difficult to comprehend. It represents all the pay of 5 million wage earners making $5 a day, working for 300 days in the year. If the government should add $100 million of expense, it should represent four days more work of these wage earners. These are some of the reasons why I want to cut down public expense.
“I want the people of America to be able to work less for the government and more for themselves.
“I want them to have the rewards of their own industry-this is the chief meaning of freedom.
“Until we can reestablish a condition under which the earnings of the people can be kept by the people, we are bound to suffer a very severe and distinct curtailment of our liberty.
“These results are not fanciful, they are not imaginary, they are grimlt actual, and real, reaching into every household in the land. They take from each home annually an average of over $300.00, and taxes must be paid. They are not a voluntary contribution to be met out of surplus earnings. They are a stern necessity. They come first.
“It is only out of what is left, after they are paid, that the necessities of food, clothing, and shelter can be provided and the comforts of home secured, or the yearnings of the soul for a broader and more abundant life gratified.
“When the government affects a new economy, it grants everybody a life pension with which to raise the standards of existence. It increases the value of everybody's property, raises the scale of everybody's wages.
“One of the greatest favors that can be bestowed on the American people is economy in government."
Monday, August 27, 2012
Grouchy Old Cripple: Monday Pun 8-27-2012
Grouchy Old Cripple: Monday Pun 8-27-2012: I have a new party trick. I swallow two pieces of string and an hour
later they come out of my ass tied together.
I shit you knot.
humor knotty problem
later they come out of my ass tied together.
I shit you knot.
humor knotty problem
Grouchy Old Cripple: Monday Pun 8-27-2012
Grouchy Old Cripple: Monday Pun 8-27-2012: I have a new party trick. I swallow two pieces of string and an hour
later they come out of my ass tied together.
I shit you knot.
humor knotty problem
later they come out of my ass tied together.
I shit you knot.
humor knotty problem
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
How tall is 1 million dollars in 100 dollar bills
How tall is 1 million dollars in 100 dollar bills: How tall is 1 million dollars in 100 dollar bills?
A US dollar bill is reportedly .0043 inches thick. Assuming the same for a 100 dollar bill, a stack of 100 dollar bills totalling one million dollars would be 43 inches tall.
It takes 10,000 such bills to equal a million dollars. 10,000 X .0043 = 43 inches.
Interestingly, using these measurements, a billion dollars would be just over 3583 feet tall, and a trillion dollars would be just over 678.66 miles tall!
A US dollar bill is reportedly .0043 inches thick. Assuming the same for a 100 dollar bill, a stack of 100 dollar bills totalling one million dollars would be 43 inches tall.
It takes 10,000 such bills to equal a million dollars. 10,000 X .0043 = 43 inches.
Interestingly, using these measurements, a billion dollars would be just over 3583 feet tall, and a trillion dollars would be just over 678.66 miles tall!
Monday, August 13, 2012
Friday, August 10, 2012
FW: TV's Funny Men - jdr1228@gmail.com - Gmail
FW: TV's Funny Men - jdr1228@gmail.com - Gmail
The liberals are asking us to give Obama time.
We agree...and think 25 to life would be
appropriate.
--Jay Leno
America needs Obama-care like Nancy
Pelosi needs a Halloween mask.
--Jay Leno
Q: Have you heard about McDonald's'
new Obama Value Meal?
A: Order anything you like and the guy behind you
has to pay for it.
--Conan O'Brien
Q: What does Barack Obama call
lunch with a convicted felon?
A: A fund raiser.
--Jay Leno
Q: What's the difference between
Obama's cabinet and a penitentiary?
A: One is filled with tax evaders, blackmailers,
and threats to society. The other is for housing
prisoners.
--David Letterman
Q: If Nancy Pelosi and Obama were
on a boat in the middle of the ocean and it
started to sink, who would be saved?
A: America !
--Jimmy Fallon
Q: What's the difference between
Obama and his dog, Bo?
A: Bo has papers.
--Jimmy Kimmel
Q: What was the most positive result
of the "Cash for Clunkers" program?
A: It took 95% of the Obama bumper
stickers off the road.
--David Letterman
The liberals are asking us to give Obama time.
We agree...and think 25 to life would be
appropriate.
--Jay Leno
America needs Obama-care like Nancy
Pelosi needs a Halloween mask.
--Jay Leno
Q: Have you heard about McDonald's'
new Obama Value Meal?
A: Order anything you like and the guy behind you
has to pay for it.
--Conan O'Brien
Q: What does Barack Obama call
lunch with a convicted felon?
A: A fund raiser.
--Jay Leno
Q: What's the difference between
Obama's cabinet and a penitentiary?
A: One is filled with tax evaders, blackmailers,
and threats to society. The other is for housing
prisoners.
--David Letterman
Q: If Nancy Pelosi and Obama were
on a boat in the middle of the ocean and it
started to sink, who would be saved?
A: America !
--Jimmy Fallon
Q: What's the difference between
Obama and his dog, Bo?
A: Bo has papers.
--Jimmy Kimmel
Q: What was the most positive result
of the "Cash for Clunkers" program?
A: It took 95% of the Obama bumper
stickers off the road.
--David Letterman
Saturday, August 04, 2012
On Healing Wings
On Healing Wings: It is but the shadow of death:
the shadow of a serpent will not sting, nor the shadow of a sword kill.
It is a valley, deep indeed, and dark, and miry;
but valleys are often fruitful,
and so is death itself fruitful of comforts to God’s people.
It is a walk through it:
they shall not be lost in this valley,
but get safe to the mountain on the other side.
Matthew Henry (1662-1714),
the shadow of a serpent will not sting, nor the shadow of a sword kill.
It is a valley, deep indeed, and dark, and miry;
but valleys are often fruitful,
and so is death itself fruitful of comforts to God’s people.
It is a walk through it:
they shall not be lost in this valley,
but get safe to the mountain on the other side.
Matthew Henry (1662-1714),
Friday, August 03, 2012
Curmudgeonly & Skeptical presents Boned Jello
Curmudgeonly & Skeptical presents Boned Jello: Q: How many blondes does it take to change a diaper?
A: Ask Hugh Hefner
HUMOR
A: Ask Hugh Hefner
HUMOR
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