And now for something completely different.

Anyone who's ever lived in the Northern Midwest is familiar with the "Hot Dish," or what strange other tribes call a "Casserole."  It's some good stuff, as comfort foods go.  It's easy to make, it's filling...and it's more bland than Mitt Romney eating a cucumber and white bread sandwich in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan.  So, in my own inimitable style, I decided to fire it up a bit with an American/ Indian/ Southwestern fusion vibe.

Southwestern Curried Tater Tot Hot Dish

Ingredients:

1 lb. ground beef

1 tsp. garlic salt

1 chopped white onion

3 tbsp bread crumbs

3 tbsp curry powder

1 tbsp rubbed sage

1 tsp cayenne (red) pepper

1 can condensed cream of mushroom soup

1/2 soup can milk

1 32-oz pkg Tater Tots


Preheat oven to 375.  Crumble beef and garlic salt into 9x 13 baking dish, add onion, sprinkle bread crumbs on top.  Combine the rest of the ingredients, mixing well, and pour over meat mixture.  Top with closely-spaced Tater Tots and bake for 1 hour.

Comfort with a kick...you betcha!

Another reason I'm writing in Sarah...

Daddy Bear explains what Mittens will have to do to get his vote:

But I’m not being asked to vote against Barack Obama, I’m being asked to vote for Mitt Romney, and he hasn’t earned my vote just because he was able to convince a majority of the registered Republicans who got off their asses and voted in the primaries that he was the least ugly elephant in the pen.

If Mr. Romney wants my vote, he’s going to have to address a lot of the concerns I have, including his stance on 2nd Amendment rights, what he will do to dismantle Obamacare, how he will lessen the intrusion of the government in our everyday lives, and how he will dismantle the overly aggressive security bureaucracy that Presidents Bush and Obama have built over the last decade. I want to see his detailed plan on how and what he is going to cut in order to save money, what he is going to do to encourage business development in this country (The right answer is to cut taxes and get the heck out of the way), and how he is going to reduce American engagement in every nook and cranny of the third world while still defending the country and its interests.

Mitt Romney signed an assault weapons ban and a government health care plan that was the model for Obamacare, and I want to hear how he has changed since then. I want more than sound bites. I want a public and explicit mea culpa, and I want to know how and why he came to see the error in his ways.

RTWT.  Daddy Bear has laid it out in very detailed and explicit terms, and I can agree to a point.  But even if Mittens does everything on DB's list, I'm still not voting for him.  Why?

Because he's a politician.  And, in case you haven't been paying attention for, like, all your freaking life... POLITICIANS LIE.  Romney can tell us all about his 'plans' and explain his 'mistakes' until Gabriel blows his horn--I won't believe a word of it.  This guy can't take a crap without consulting twelve strategists and a hundred exit polls.  His only principle is 'I wanna be President.'  Look at his record and tell me I'm wrong.

That's why I'm still going to #writeinSarah.  No, I don't think she'll win if I do so.  Even if she did, I doubt she could salvage this terminally corrupted system.  But at least I'll be able to say I voted for someone with proven, demonstrable principles.  That may not be what we'll end up with, but it's exactly what we need.

Here's my 'public comment.'

(NSFW--language)

The Real Cost of Freedom

Wow.  This puts it in perspective, to be sure.

When God breathed the first breath into mankind, he could have chosen to enslave the human race. Being the author of our lives, He could have given us no choice in who we worshipped, who we served or what we thought. He could have created a worshipping throng to proclaim His goodness all their days. Instead, He created a free people. He breathed the breath of life into a people that could choose to love Him - or not. He gave us freedom, from our first breath to our last. God himself is the author of liberty. And our liberty was purchased at a great price. Blood.

When God chose to give his children freedom, He knew we would not choose Him. He knew that we would be tempted by the world. He knew we would choose to gratify ourselves, serve ourselves and love ourselves. He gave us our freedom anyway. And then, he made a way for us to belong to Him in spite of our rebellion - blood. The blood of his son to be precise.

And, so it is. Freedom has always been won with blood. Never, has a single man been freed by the swipe of a pen or the clasp of a hand. Freedom has always been fought for, bled for and died for. From the beginning of time, our freedom has been purchased with blood - the highest of prices.

RTWT, and welcome Paratus Familia to my blogroll.  (HT to that SOB Wirecutter for a great find.)

"Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness."

Brigid just posted an excellent, in-depth analysis of that most famous American principle.  Go read now.

As to our neighbors, a right means that our actions should impose no harm or obligation on them, they are our actions for our lives. If your dream is to stay home and watch a brand new TV all day that is fine, but that that doesn't mean that I am obligated to buy it for you.

We have the right to liberty, to freedom. I do not personally believe that means that we are free from helping to reasonably support or maintain that which we use, our roads, our parks, our libraries, our schools. That does not mean we are free to shrug off responsibility for elderly parents or those children we bring into the world. But we have the right to expect that our efforts won't be wasted. We have the right not be forced by threat or law to give up our possessions or income or hand over our Second Amendment rights which protects the safety of that family or personal community we do provide for. We should not be forced to take the food off of our table, there from our own toil, to give to people who do not have the desire to produce, only to consume. Given with no measure of accountability that they will not come back to rob our table again.

Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. Or as John Locke defined it first, the right to property. Not the right to an object, but to the action and reward of producing and earning a product. Our founding fathers did not intend the issue of property to be a guarantee that all will have all they want, but only that if a man will own it if he earns it. It will be his to use, to keep or if he chooses, to give to another to help them in time of need.

 ...

 There are many of ways the country could be improved. But it can NOT be improved by changing the principals on which our country was founded. For no matter what bitter forfeit a change in government may bring, the loss of our fundamental rights, affirmed by our Constitution, should not be part of it.

The American Revolution was a revolution of greater note than the battles fought and the words penned. One of the most revolutionary outcomes of the formation of the United States was the subordination of government to moral law, moving away from societies in which the citizens life belonged to those that ruled, and the freedoms he had were only that which the rulers decided by whim he might have that day, or that week. The recognition of man's individual rights by the Constitution limited the force of the power and greed of the states, protecting its citizens from an unwanted collective.

The United States was one of the first moral societies in history, all previous governments viewing their citizens as a sacrificial means to the ends of others, and society as an end to itself. Our founding fathers had taken note. They recognized two threats to a man's possessions, to his rights. One threat is a criminal. The other is a government. The most laudable accomplishment of our government when it was formed was its ability to draw a distinction between those two, thereby not allowing the second to become a sanctioned version of the activities of the first.

Sadly, the people who really need to read this, won't bother.  They're too busy screaming for More Free Stuff.

Ann Barnhardt--now on Skype!

But STILL not on Facebook.  Here's the latest Warren Pollock interview with her accompanying post.  Emphasis in red is mine.

1. I stumbled on my words a bit and I just wanted to make clear what I was saying at the 1:43 mark. I am NOT being followed nor am I the least bit paranoid that I am being followed. If I am, I would like to apologize to whoever is "following" or "surveilling" me, because, yes, I am the single most BORING person on the face of the earth.

2. Warren hits it out of the park at the end when he drills in on the adolescent narcissism and self-absorption of Facebook. Dude, that's our culture in a nutshell: a society of people stunted into a perpetual adolescence, with its attendant ignorance, sense of entitlement, sense of invincibility and lack of fully-realized masculinity - manifested in cowardice. Facebook is a self-feeding derivative of that childishness.

3. The scripture reference is right in the heart of the Sermon on the Mount.

But let your speech be yea, yea: no, no: and that which is over and above these, is of evil.
--Matthew 5:37

Translation: CUT THE CRAP. Isn't this exactly the problem today? No one talks straight. No one lays it out. No one is honest and forthright. It's all just a steady stream of mincing, equivocating, politically correct, lying bullshit. Anything to be "liked", given a "thumbs up" or to generate cash flow. No one's "yes" means "yes", and no one's "no" means "no" anymore. People are pathologically incapable of answering the damn question. People are pathologically incapable of clarity for fear of "giving offense."

Well, except for me. And I guess that is why I have any degree of popularity, and why people find me interesting. People are so unused to seeing someone who is forthright that they are shocked by it. How incredibly sad.

4. People say to me, "But Ann, I only say private stuff on the "private message" side of Facebook, so no one else can see it. I never put anything personal on my wall. So my info is all totally private and secure."

And then Ann does a double face-palm, goes over and sits on the stairs and quietly sobs.

It's been said that "Political Correctness" will be the death of all of us(which is pretty obvious when you note that the first word of the term is 'political').  This is why.  The war of ideas used to be a straight fight.  Now it's guerilla warfare.  It's backstabbing and booby traps.  Everyone's skulking in the metaphorical shadows, scared to death that someone might not approve of their opinions or conclusions. 

This is the way of children. 

Adults have the responsibility of not only having beliefs and opinons, but knowing why they do, being able to defend them with reason and logic, and standing by them no matter how unpopular they may be.  As I've said before, to refuse to take a stand is a disgusting act of cowardice despised by both God and man.

If you hate me, tell me so.  Right to my face.  I'll respect you for it.  If you can explain why, my respect will increase.  If you can explain why using actual facts and logic?  Hey, I'll buy you a beer and might even rethink my worldview.  If you like me, tell me that, too--I'll cut you a lot of slack on the whole 'defending your opinion' thing.  ;)

Just be straight with me.

And yourself.

And everyone else.

Please.

Sometimes, the conspiracy ain't a theory.

There comes a point where you simply have to yield to truth and logic.

Once I put these facts all together, I went in to my closet and put on my wookie suit. Then I took the red pill, locked and loaded, and dove in to the rabbit hole trying to see how far it goes. On Friday I came screaming out of the other end flying at mach 3, pissed off, pissed on, and with my wookie suit in flames.

The tinfoil hat wearing, “the government is in bed with the gun-haters and using my tax dollars to take away my guns”, conspiracy theorists were right. These gun ban lobbyists are being paid with tax money and are operating in government positions all over the country to do the work of the anti-gun groups.

The Mayors Against Illegal Guns and the Brady Campaign’s operatives’ work to further gun control is financed on the public dime.

There will always be those who continue to ignore anything they can--whatever the logical gymnastics required--dismiss as a 'conspiracy theory.'  Of course, there are no such things as conspiracies...Julius Caesar was simply the victim of a random walk-by knifing.

Liberal "logic"

Just go here and look at the pretty pictures...

I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Cher gets a spanking

No, this isn't a leaked pervy video.  I really don't want to see or even imagine that chick naked unless she gains at least 50 pounds and finds the 'On' switch for her brain.

This is simply the incomparable AlfonZo Rachel verbally bitch-slapping yet another know-nothing Oppressive elitist.  Sit back and watch the fun! 

(Warning:  Language OK, but concepts discussed may be not-so-family-friendly.  Preview before you decide whether to let the kids watch this one.)



(HT iOTW)

Nothing new under the moon

Kids, I was Goth when Goth wasn't cool.  I'm amused that all you young whippersnappers buying your angst on Mommy's credit card at Goth In A Box Hot Topic think you've discovered something new and edgy.  Sorry, no you haven't.

Even an old fossil like me, as it turns out, was way behind the curve.