My bil sent me the last great run by a Bronco. It was in 1994.

Sorry Denver fans but this is funny.

For those of you who don’t live in the US, this is the infamous chase, by the police, of OJ Simpson in his Bronco, after he allegedly (nudge nudge wink wink) murdered his wife.

Exhibit A: Detoilet

My sister sent me this article about Detoilet, a city that was once one of the richest cities in the country and was called the Paris of the Midwest. It’s worth a read, but the meat is in this one paragraph.

Detroit is what Democrats do. The last Republican elected mayor of Detroit took office during the Eisenhower administration. The decay of Detroit is not the inevitable outcome of the decline of the automotive industry: The automotive industry is thriving in the United States — but not in Detroit. It isn’t white flight: The black middle class has left Detroit as fast as it can. The model of Detroit politics is startlingly familiar in its fundamentals, distinguished only by its degree of advancement: Advance the interests of public-sector unions and politically connected business cronies, expand the relative size of the public sector remorselessly — and when opposed, cry “Racism!” When people vote with their feet, cry “Racism!” When the budget just won’t balance, cry “Racism!” Never mind that the current mayor of Detroit is the first non–African American to hold that job since the 1970s, or that, as one Detroit News columnist put it, “black nationalism . . . is now the dominant ideology of the [city] council” — somewhere, there must be a somebody else to blame, preferably: aged, portly, white, male, and Republican. No less a fool than Ed Schultz blamed the straits of this exemplar of Democratic single-party rule on “a lot of Republican policies.” Melissa Harris-Perry, “America’s leading public intellectual,” blames Detroit’s problems on its conservatism and small government, oblivious to the fact that Detroit maintains twice as many city employees per resident as do larger cities such as Fort Worth and Indianapolis, and three times as many as liberal San Jose.

“a lot of Republican policies”? When was the last time Republicans ran Detoilet? “Racism”? All the woes in Detoilet were caused by black rule. It’s been run by blacks since 1974 when Coleman Young, the city’s first black mayor was elected and he proved that a black Dimocrat could be just as corrupt as a white Dimocrat. Want more?

The result of all that municipal “investment”? For children newborn through age 18, Detroit sees 120 deaths per 100,000 each year — a rate 26 percent higher than second-place child-killer Philadelphia.

Give Philadelphia time. It has pretty much the same policies with pretty much the same results. Look at Gary Indiana and Camden New Jersey. Same shit.

We just had Senator Tom Harkin, a Dimocrat, return from Cuba who said that Cuba has a better healthcare system than we do and one of the numbers he cited was the infant mortality rate. He also said that Cubans live longer than we do. Detoilet is one reason we have a higher infant mortality rate than Cuba. Another reason is that we define a fetus as viable earlier in pregnancy than most of the rest of the world. In many cases what they would define as a miscarriage we would define as a premature birth and try to save the baby and if we couldn’t that baby would be considered an infant death rather than as a miscarriage. Apples to oranges. But that’s a topic for another post.

Another thing, if you took blacks out of the infant mortality rate and life expectancy rate, our numbers would be a lot higher than they are. Just look at the black mortality rates in Dimocrat run cities. They don’t even have to be run by blacks. St. Louis is not run by blacks, but I remember in at least one year, it was the murder capital of the country.

Racism! Racism! Racism!

Nope. It’s progressivism that is to blame. Dimocrats should be ashamed at what they have done to blacks in this country. They have kept them poor, uneducated, and dependent upon gummint. They have done what Jim Crow laws couldn’t do. They broke up the black family. The black illegitimacy rate in this country is over 70%. That means that the majority of black children are raised by poor and uneducated single mothers. If the KKK had tried to figger out a way to do this, they couldn’t have done a better job than today’s Dimocrat Party. After all, the KKK was the terrorist wing of the Dimocrat Party. They didn’t need the white sheets. All it took were progressive policies. And we’re the racists?

Another group who should be ashamed of themselves are the black useful idiots like the members of the Congressional Black Caucus including “civil rights icon” John Lewis of Atlanta, who have been selling their people down the river by supporting these “enlightened social policies”. You don’t solve poverty by giving poor people money with no strings attached.

Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. We have been fighting a War On Poverty since 1967. We have been giving poor people money with no strings attached ever since then. Poverty was 15% when we started Lyndon Johnson’s Great Fucking Society. We have given poor people trillions of dollars since then. Poverty is still 15%, but liberals progressives rat bastard commies want to continue the same thing. In fact, they want more of it. Obummercare is the result and it may be the final nail in our coffin.

But I digress (as I so often do)

That’s nearly two and a half times the rate in Los Angeles, which isn’t exactly a leafy suburban paradise. Every time our progressive friends come to us with another idea for transferring wealth from the productive economy to them and their friends, they scold us: “Think of the children!” But those who resist their efforts to do to the country at large what they have done to Detroit are thinking of the children.

Ah yes. It’s for the children. You wanna think of “the children”? Stop these people from having children they cannot afford to raise. Stop all the unwed baby mamas having children by multiple sperm donors. But we can’t do that. That’s racism!

Since my sister and her husband came down from Columbia South Carolina to watch the Super Bowl and since they gave up watching it on their 60 inch TV, I decided to make cannelloni. Many readers have demanded that I post the recipe. It takes a long time (about three hours for one person) to make and uses a lot of dishes. Usually, when you get cannelloni in a restaurant, it has either a white sauce or a red sauce. The first time I ever tasted cannelloni, it had both sauces so that’s what I use. Also, the recipe that my sister found, uses both a white and a red sauce. Unfortunately, it called for veal and beef. The first cannelloni I ever tasted used chicken and beef, so that’s what I use. I also make my pasta from scratch. You can get manicotti shells and stuff them but homemade pasta is best.

Pasta

2 1/4 cups sifted flour
3 eggs
4 tablespoons water 2 tablespoons salad oil
More flour

Place the 2 1/4 cups four in a mixing bowl. Add eggs, salad oil, and water and mix them together. Turn the dough out on a floured surface and knead the dough for about five minutes. It should be very stiff. Cover with a towel and let stand for 30 minutes. Now, you can do one of two things. You can use a pasta maker or you can roll it out on a floured surface. Don’t make the pasta until the filling, the red sauce, and the white sauce are ready.

I tried to use my pasta machine yesterday, and I had a hard time, so I went retro and rolled it out with a rolling pin. It’s not hard to do and you can still roll it thin. The thinner the better.

Roll the pasta out (do it in batches) as thin as you can and divide it into 4 inch squares. Drop them into boiling water.

I like my pasta al dente so I only cook for about two minutes.

Spread the pasta on damp paper towels and cover them with damp paper towels. You will need 28 squares.

What I do is use a plate. Put a damp paper towel on it. Put three squares on it, cover with a paper towel, put three more squares on, cover with a paper towel, and so on.

Meat stuffing

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium onion chopped
1 pound boneless veal cubed
1 pound chicken breast cubed
1 cup dry white wine
3 egg yokes
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
Freshly ground black pepper (to taste)
1/4 cup chopped spinach
1/2 cup mornay sauce (recipe below)
1 clove garlic minced
7 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese

Heat olive oil in a large skillet. Add onion. When onion is clear, add garlic. Add veal and chicken and brown on all sides on medium heat. Add white wine, cover, and simmer for an hour.

Be careful that all of the wine doesn’t cook away. That’s what I did yesterday. Hey, I haven’t made this in over ten years so I was rusty. If it looks like that will happen add more wine or reduce the cooking time. We just want to make sure that the chicken and veal are cooked all the way through and that there is some liquid left. Remember the first rule of cooking with wine: Do not use a wine that you wouldn’t drink yourself. None of this “cooking wine” bullshit. This allows you to have a glass of wine while you’re cooking. I used a Stone Hill Vidal Blanc, but a Pinot Grigio or a Sauvignon Blanc would do as well. I wouldn’t use a Chardonnay for this.

Put the contents of the saucepan, a little at a time into a food processor (if you don’t have one use a blender. I did that once) and blend until smooth. When all the meat is blended, transfer to a mixing bowl and add the egg yolks, salt, pepper, 3 tablespoons of the Parmesan cheese, spinach, 3 tablespoons of the Parmesan cheese, and 1/2 cup of the mornay sauce. Mix ingredients together thoroughly.

Mornay Sauce

4 tablespoons butter
4 tablespoons flour
3 cups milk
3/4 teaspoons salt
3/4 cup grated Swiss cheese

Heat the butter in a saucepan. When melted, blend in the flour and cook slowly for two minutes to create a roux. Add milk and stir until the sauce comes to a boil. Remove it from the heat and add salt and cheese stirring with a whisk until smooth.

Red sauce.

1/4 cup olive oil
3/4 cup finely chopped onion
2 8 ounce cans tomato sauce
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1/4 cup dry red wine (remember my rule on wine)
1 teaspoon basil
1 teaspoon thyme
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 clove garlic

Heat oil in a saucepan. Add onion and saute until clear. Add the rest of the ingredients and bring to a boil. Then simmer for about a half hour, stirring several times until sauce has thickened slightly.

Now, we’re ready to assemble. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place three tablespoons of meat stuffing on one of the pasta squares until there is a center strip of stuffing down the square. Roll up and place the tube, seam side down into a large greased or buttered (I use Pam) baking dish (the one I use is 9×15) If the tubes are the right size, you should be able to put two tubes side by side. You can push the tubes really close together. Pour the remaining mornay sauce over the cannelloni spreading evenly. Then, spoon the tomato sauce over the top. Sprinkle the remaining Parmesan cheese on top. Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes or until the sauce is bubbly.

It’s a lot of work, but it’s worth it. I made a tossed salad and I served a 1998 Mocca Gata Barbaresco from my cellar (alas, I think it’s my last one) with it, and it was the perfect wine. Another alas, I think it was my last bottle of it. I didn’t do a very good job on the dish yesterday (like I said, I was rusty, but both my sister and her husband had seconds. And, there is enough left over for me to get another meal out of it. My sister also made an apple pie for dessert. She makes the best apple pie in the world. Leftover cannelloni and leftover apple pie. Yummy! We also had gooey butter cake for breakfast.

Back in St. Louis, my football parties were legend. My friend Alixe, commented about them on a FB post today. She hated football but she loved to come to my football parties, because back then, I was a really good cook.

When my sister still lived in California, and I went for Christmas and stayed until New Years, on New Years Day, we would make cannelloni. The first time we did it, one of my cousins, who used to live in the Bay Area, would come to dinner on New Years Day. He had never had cannelloni before. He asked what it was and we told him pasta stuffed with veal and chicken with a white and a red sauce. He very politely put one tube on his plate. By the end of the meal, he was scraping the sauce out of the baking dish with a spoon. The next year, he asked if we were making cannelloni again, and it became a tradition. Sherry (who is a much better cook than I am) and I would cook and my mom would do the dishes. Like I said, it takes a lot of dishes and pots and pans.

If any of you make it, let me know how it turns out.

…Defense wins championships. We had the number one offense with the
Broncos, playing the number one defense with the Seahawks. We saw who won. Peyton Manning did not look like a Hall of Fame Quarterback yesterday and the Broncos did not look like a Super Bowl team.

This was why I was a bit perturbed a few years ago when the Falcons traded up to get Julio Jones in the draft. Back then, I felt that the Falcons needed more help on defense than they did on offense. For the last three years, they have been unable to stop the run. Unfortunately, they have not been all that good drafting on defense. Case in point, defensive tackle Peria Jerry, their number one pick a few years ago. He hasn’t made the impact a number one pick should make. They finally addressed the defense by using their first two picks in the 2013 draft on cornerbacks. Alas, they thought defensive end John Abraham was done and they cut him. WTF? He was their best defensive lineman in 2012. All he did was make all pro with the Cardinals in 2013. The Falcons sure could have used him this year as well as Brent Grimes on defense and Todd McClure and Tyson Clabo, starters on the offensive line in 2012, whom they cut. They signed Matt Ryan to a large contract but decided not to sign two of the guys who could have protected him. The offensive line sucked this year (as well as the defensive line) and Ryan got sacked a lot. Going from ten yards away from the Superbowl in 2012 to 4-12 in 2013. They’re thinking of trading up in the draft to pick Clowney, but not sure if that would be a good pick since he has this bad habit of taking off on plays during games. The Falcons need someone who will play hard every play, yannow, like the Seahawk defenders did yesterday.

This video is all over the intertubes. We need it to go viral.

Questions abound.

1. How did this story reach the air?
2. How many people are gonna get fired at this TV station for allowing this story to air?
3. Of those fired, how many of them will be audited by the IRS?
4. How many people in this video voted for Jug Hussein Ears Downgrade? If they did, they got exactly what they voted for. Good and hard!
5. How many of these workers will vote for a Dimocrat who will promise to “fix” Obummercare? After all, Obummercare’s failures were caused by Republicans. That’s what the Dims are gonna say, and the uninformed voters will believe them. Somehow it will all be Bush’s fault. Or Ted Cruz. He’ll be a good whipping boy.

The voters are gonna be pissed when the employer mandate kicks in, which has been conveniently, and illegally I might add, postponed until after the 2014 midterms. Funny how that works. I’m still predicting that of the six red state Dimocrat senators running for reelection, three will be reelected. It will be a combination of the Stupid Party finding rotten candidates like Todd Akin, and uninformed voters falling for the line that their Dimocrat senator, who voted for Obummercare, will vote to repeal or “fix” it. Of course they’ll be lying, but there will be enough suckers to fall for their bullshit. Look at Oblunder, the worst president in my lifetime, in the most anemic recovery from a recession in my lifetime, somehow getting reelected. Yes, you can fool some of the people all of the time. That’s how Oblamebush managed to win another term.

Then, things will be so bad that Thunder Rodent Thighs will come riding to the rescue and campaign in 2016 on fixing Obummercare and you know what the fix will be? Single payer gummint run healthcare. If you think Obummercare is bad, wait until you see what single payer, Hillarycare 2.0, will do. It will continue the destruction of the best healthcare in the world started by Horrible Harry, exSpeaker Blinky, Obumbler, and the rest of the Dimocrats who gave us this train wreck. .

The sad thing is, the rubes will believe her.

Ric emailed me that he has a condition that prevents him from retiring now. It’s called… (more…)

Let’s have a little of Judas Priest with the retired K.K. Downing’s replacement on the black Gibson Les Paul. I think he’s better than Downing and has more stage presence as well. I also notice he plays more lead than Downing did, at least on the selections from this concert I saw on Palladia.

Beautiful!

Let’s take a break from cold weather and pretend it’s summertime at the beach. (more…)