Well someone had to be number 1 BigJ! I have stayed away from that area. I had no reason to go, and didn’t want to intrude on others misfortune, but I had no idea Shoreacres was hit so hard. First home I ever toured, when I got my Real estate license, was in Shore Acres. BigJ, I have a question. If people wanted to help down there, what could they do?
Thanks for the thought, AW. I should have known you would want to help. You didn’t get your name through inaction!
There is nothing to do. Most of the homes are major construction sites, so it is very dangerous for non-professionals. Many of the residents are older and retired but the local community is taking care of them.
Best thing to do is volunteer at your local church or community center. That’s what has happened here and it works.
BigJ, that’s just the American spirit. We all have it. I used to get so frustrated at Hillary Clinton’s garbage, ” It takes a Village”. In times of trouble, Americans always step up. Look at 911 and how New York pulled together. There is an Assistant Ministies help center and shop across the street on Huffmeister. I think I’ll check it out…….. yes, take your advice, don’t get a big head haha
Now I am completely verklempt! I thought the Messiah would heal the world. Flowers would grow where none had before, and love would fill the air. Not so. Obama gets his picture burned in Tehran.
I saw a news report the other night about a family in Shoreacres. Their house had survived Ike and repairs had been made. This weekend their house burned down.
This is hilarious. CBS has some nouvelle cuisine cheffette from Tribeca, ground zero for the excrutiatingly hip in NYC, and the challenge is to make a recession-busting family meal for 35 dollars !
The commenters are slaying the video, CBS and all associated with this milestone in clueless stupidity. Go here to see it.
This is interesting, I snipped it from my Broker’s news letter;
Citigroup to Sell Smith Barney
Glass Steagall was created in the 1930’s to separate brokerage firms from commercial banks. This was a necessary consequence of the corruption of the 1920’s stock markets. It worked then, and we felt it worked now. Sandy Weill and his associates were successful in being able to buy off the Democratic Party while Clinton was President, bought off Clinton too, and got the Congress to go along with the repeal.
With some heavy contributions to New York’s senior senator Chuck (I love a camera) Schumer, the deal was cut and Glass Steagall was repealed. Thus were sown the seeds of our present financial crisis, and the formation of banks that were deemed too big to fail, and therefore had to be saved during the financial meltdown that occurred last year.
That house is at the end of my street, just across the bayou. Alarms and sirens were going nuts the other night and I was cursing because they woke me up.
Next morning, SU and I went for a walk and saw the house.
ROURKE: ‘BUSH WAS IN THE WRONG PLACE AT THE WRONG TIME’
Actor MICKEY ROURKE sympathises with U.S. President GEORGE W. BUSH - insisting he doesn’t know how any politician could have successfully navigated America after the 9/11 attacks on New York.
I usually see the repeal of Glass-Steagall described as a top secret, nefarious plot by Phil Gramm to single-handedly take over the world financial markets or some other nonsense. It’s good to see some other folks get the blame.
The City of Clearwater FL has a sign ordinance that is 22 pages long. Herb Quintero has a mural painted on the side of his building. Although mural has no words, the bureaucrats insist that it must be taken down because they think it’s an billboard, and the property owner didn’t beg the city for it’s permission to paint his own damn building. (Can you tell whose side I’m on?) );
Facing a daily fine, the owner covered up the mural with the First Amendment.
Meanwhile, the city’s legal department is looking to see what, if anything, it can do about the First Amendment banner.
#13 bob (& bigj)
There are prolly other businesses in town that have something similar, except with scantily-clad wimmins. Judging by his shirt in #15, he prolly is a little to right-leaning and forgot to “grease the skids” in the local city council.
Good for this guy in Florida. I hope the national embarrassment causes the city to back off, and those idiots at city hall loose their lucrative elected positions. Lawyers love to win at all costs, ( forgive me, those who post here and are the exception), so this guy has a battle before him. We should start a fund.
The bean/no bean chili poll is tied with 12 votes each? Are there a bunch of people from Cincinnati who make that execreble skyline “chili” lurking here?
It seems to me that chili and religious opinions share a common aspect: Most folks have their favorite recipe, and frequently consider it to be exclusively authentic.
While working in Cincinnati my colleague spent the morning telling me how good the “chili” from the Skyline shop would be when we went there for lunch. Having never heard of them, you can imagine my surprise when I was served a small bowl of spaghetti, topped with a sweet meat sauce and a mound of cheese. (One of their secret spices is cinnamon.)
I politely remarked that they might be able to sell the stuff in Texas, as long as they didn’t call it chili.
#8 texpat
Maybe the chefette should talk to Larry Brownsberger in Kansas City. He’s building a thriving business supplying cheap meat to the locals. He sell you enough meat to feed a family of four for about $2 a meal.
People can argue about lightweight subjects like religion all they want, but there is no argument about beans in chili. In my world, the IAF sends airborne missiles into all places that put beans in their chili.
And if it wasn’t for the fact the fine citizens of Cincinnatti provided critical support for the Texians against Mexico, well, we’d just have to nuke the place.
Enter the citizens of Cincinnati, Ohio. While aid for Texas came from all over the United States, Europe and, indeed, Mexico, itself, the support provided by the citizens of Cincinnati was especially note worthy. Sidney Sherman, a Cincinnati resident at the time, organized a company of volunteers, just across the Ohio River in Newport, Kentucky, to travel to Texas and fight for Texas Independence. The arms, money and supplies for the Newport Volunteers were provided by contributions from the people of Cincinnati and surrounding communities. The cream of Cincinnati society feted the volunteers with parties and socials and had a special flag created for them to march under. This self-same flag later became known as the San Jacinto Battle Flag and presently hangs in the Senate chamber of the Texas State Capitol.
In mid November of 1835, at a meeting held in Cincinnati to try to find a suitable way to aid the Texian cause, the idea was agreed upon to commission the manufacture of two pieces of artillery to be donated to the Texian Army. It should be note that Mr. Nicholas Clopper who presided over that meeting was the brother-in-law of David G. Burnet, future president of the Republic of Texas. Clopper’s son, Andrew, later served as a courier for President Burnet, during the San Jacinto campaign. Ties between the United States and Texas were numerous and strong.
Remember the Y2K scare? Now it’s Y2K9. Here’s how I found out. This morning at exactly nine minutes after two am I woke up with this revelation. At exactly nine minutes after two am or two pm (could be either or) on Two-Nine-Two Thousand and Nine something wierd is going to happen.
This is the year 2009. That’s the “Y”. Next month is February, the second month of the year and the first number of the year. Thus the “2″ in Y2. 2K is referencing the number 2,000 and “K9″ is a reference to dogs and the 9 in the current year. So, my premise is: The exact time and date of this event is going to occur: 2:09 am or pm on 2/09/2009.
Those are the only times in history that this time and date lines up, so it has to be the moment in time that Y2K9 will occur. So mark your calendars, get your affairs in order and I really don’t know what else to tell you.
Here’s the possibilities as I see them as to what will happen at that exact time in history:
1. All computers with pictures of dogs used as screen savers will lock up. Cell phones with dog pictures will also be unusable.
2. Dogs all over the world will start barking for exactly two or nine minutes at exactly that date and time.
3. The second Coming of Christ will occur, although this may be a stretch.
4. People owning dog kennels, pet sitters and doggie day care centers will swarm Washington DC for bailout money.
5. Congress will vote to give 5 Billion $ to fight Y2K9 with no oversite needed.
6. It will become unlawful and politically incorrect to use the term “doggone it”.
7. Robert will complete this list at exactly tem minutes after ten on 10/10/2010.
/ have a 2:09pm appointment with the shrink today….. Wish me luck!
#13 - One thing I noticed was that the mural was under a pretty wide overhang, something that “billboards” and other advertisements aren’t. This is obviously not advertising.
People have been looking for the Twin Sister cannons from Cincinnatti for the last 172 years. If you were to discover them, let’s just say it would beat winning the lottery.
Chilly but gorgeous good morning all. At the 6 pm news the dewpoint was 8 degrees, amazing; at 10 pm it was 13, which ’splains our delicately sparkling, tiny, frosty lace on everything this morning. Low of 21 on the anemometer pole, 25 under a leafless red oak at 6, the coldest we’ve had here in years. Vulnerable flowerbeds and potted plants covered with old sheets seem to have survived unhurt. Thin crinkles of ice formed at the edges of the mares’ water buckets in the barn, not enough to cover the surface. Hammer not needed there today.
Called the kin in Madison last night (had to catch the electrons before they slowed down too much). They are 8″ ahead of last year’s record (100″+) snowfall, maybe 4″ coming the next day or two, and faint promise of +30 on Saturday. They haven’t seen 32 in a long time. Today’s high -4. The weather service pronounced before Christmas that the rip-roaring snowfall and cold up to then wasn’t necessarily going to continue, it sometimes happend early in winter and things could moderate later so do not despair. Umm, the weather service just repeated the optimistic mantra this week when the deepfreeze is getting deeper. Happy we don’t live there any more.
Speaking as #7 in a family of twelve children, if my mother had to “limit” herself to $35 per meal to feed us, there would’ve been no shoes in our house! Nor clothes. Nor school supplies…
Clueless twits.
But then, we don’t live in New York. Where the cost of living is commonly confused with an IQ level.
The Greensburg Salem School District issued a statement on Tuesday saying there was “no evidence of inappropriate activity on school grounds or during the school day other than the violation of the (school’s) electronic devices policy.”
The school district said it only became aware of the arrest of the students on Monday and will continue to work cooperatively with police, as well as continue to enforce its electronic devices policy and educate students on the dangers of inappropriate use of electronic devices.
Police said the girls are being charged with manufacturing, disseminating or possessing child pornography while the boys face charges of possession.
It all started when the school confiscated one of the kid’s phones. No problem there… But what do they think gave them the authority to search through the contents of the phone as if it might contain contraband?
My wife serves beans on the side, and then adds them to her bowl of chili–not a death penalty infraction, but we do keep a close eye on her at all times. Her fourth generation Texan credentials check out just fine, too. Some Yankee must have gotten to her along the way.
Obama’s nominee for Treasury Secretary has divulged that he failed to pay the taxes he owed the Federal government for at least a few years early in this decade. Could one part of his reasons for failure to pay be that the tax code is too complex?
The annual report of the national taxpayer advocate at the IRS makes the case that the Federal government could issue an economic stimulus of almost $200 billion for free by simplifying the tax code so that people no longer have to pay others to calculate their tax bills.
Noteworthy numbers:
1. Americans spend about 7.6 billion hours annually in efforts to comply with the tax code. This does not take into account additional time spent responding to IRS queries and audits. This is the rough equivalent of 3.8 million FTE’s (full-time equivalents) doing nothing but “tax stuff”.
2. Costs of compliance are estimated at $193 billion annually. This is approximately 14% of total income tax receipts.
Since the beginning of 2001, there have been more than 3,250 changes to the tax code, an average of more than one a day, including more than 500 changes in 2008 alone. There are two daily newsletters that report on the field of taxation.
3. The Code has grown so long and complex that it has become challenging even to figure out how long it is.
4. Individual taxpayers find the return preparation process so overwhelming that more than 80 percent pay transaction fees to help them file their returns. About 60 percent pay preparers to do the job, and another 22 percent purchase tax software to help them perform the calculations themselves.
5. There are at least 11 different incentives to help people fund education for their family members (Section 529 plan, a Coverdell Education Savings Account, and the Hope and Lifetime Learning Credits, inter alia) and at least 16 different incentives for retirement savings (a traditional IRA, a Roth IRA, a Section 401(k) plan, a Section 403(b) plan, and a SARSEP, inter alia).
The National Taxpayer Advocate continues to view tax simplification as essential and urges the new administration and the new Congress to make it a priority. In doing so, she recommends that emphasis be given to six core principles:
1. The tax system should not “entrap” taxpayers.
2. The tax laws should be simple enough so that most taxpayers can prepare their own returns without professional help, simple enough so that taxpayers can compute their tax liabilities on a single form, and simple enough so that IRS telephone assistors can fully and accurately answer taxpayers’ questions.
3. The tax laws should anticipate the largest areas of noncompliance and minimize the opportunities for such noncompliance.
4. The tax laws should provide some choices, but not too many choices.
5. Where the tax laws provide for refundable credits, they should be designed in a way that is administrable; and
6. The tax system should incorporate a periodic review of the tax code – in short, a sanity check.
Not me. She’s never been the same since she lived in Aruba with all those Dutchmen, but then again, it might have been the living in Libya and hanging out in Rome every weekend.
I feel our cause with illegal immigration is lost. I come to that conclusion as I see more and more business advertisements in Espanol (Spanish). The businesses wouldn’t put that much effort or money if there was even the slightest indication that that segment of consumers were leaving.
Reply to No. 45: “That said however I have made a fake chili using ground turkey and black beans. High protein and no grease. With no grease it can’t be real.”
All you have done is “PC”ed (or “gringo”ed it up for the white man’s taste buds) that chili. Without the grease (aka fat) chili will lose its flavor during the cooking cycle. You could always spoon the grease off. As far as black beans go, that’s over glorifying it. It should always be pinto beans. I don’t think it causes any less “passing of wind”.
Black beans are some east or west coast nancy-boy’s effort to seem “authentic” somehow. There’s really only three beans worth a hoot: Pinto, Red Kidney, and Navy.
53 hamous
Hey, I simply ate my lifetime allotment long prior to death. Same goes for pinto beans and peas & carrots. I’m getting real close to end on cauliflower, too.
Growing up in the Chicagoland area I had always thought beans were part of chili. Kidney beans in particular. The ward (place of congregation) I attend for church here has a chili cook off every year. That’s when I encountered the anti-bean folks for the first time in my life. of course, havinf families from all over the country there are many different types of chilis made for the contest. Usually the spiciest chili wins.
The Republican Study Committee plan contains a series of growth-oriented measures that would reduce taxes and cut spending.
According to the RSC press release, “The RSC’s Economic Recovery and Middle-Class Relief Act is based on three main themes: 1) Support Families through Tax Relief; 2) Economic Relief for American Businesses and Entreprenuers; and 3) Save Future Generations from a Crushing Debt Burden.”
Yup, yup, yup. That’s the way to do it.
The plan includes a 5% across the board income tax cut for individuals and families, an increase in the child tax credit from $1,000 to $5,000 and makes the 15% capital gains tax rate permanent.
Also in the proposal are measures for business, including cutting the top corporate tax rate from 35% to 25%, making the research and development tax credit permanent and indexing the capital gains tax for inflation.
The conservative plan rejects the “trillion dollar spending spree” that Democrats including President-elect Barack Obama are offering to stimulate the economy.
My local market/deli here makes eggplant rollotini that is out of this world.
How could you make babaganoush without eggplant ?
Just so there is no misunderstanding, no one loves pinto beans more than me.
I am spiritually and intellectually allegiant to the epicureal origins of pure chili as memorialized by Lydia Mendoza and the Chili Queens of San Antonio who, when not providing sustenance to the men in the plazas, were adept at arranging brief encounters of amorous affection for modest donations, of course.
#31 Texpat, Not at all costs. In the first place, he wouldn’t be working for me unless there was a valid reason. If I spill hot coffee on me, it’s my fault. If I have no case, I want him to tell me so, and not try to win the darned thing at the expense of another. Of course I want to win, but not at all costs. I don’t want him to have to lie, buy the judge, rig the jury, etc.
Luv2 The SCHIP program covers medical expenses for all illegal children. The crooks in government are concerned with 1. keeping office 2. lining their pockets with power or money 3. muddling through until they retire with their lucrative retirement. I look for Obamaramadingdong to bulldoze the fence.
The Intelligence Squared Debate last night in Manhattan had Bjorn Lomborg, Philip Stott and Peter Huber facing off international whackjobs Oliver Tickell, L. Hunter Lovins and Adam Werbach in an Oxford style debate on the motion:
Major reductions in carbon emissions are not worth the money.
Audience Vote Before the Debate
For: 16%
Against: 49%
Undecided: 35%
Audience Vote After the Debate
For: 42%
Against: 48%
Undecided: 10%
Obviously, those who came with their minds already made up didn’t change. But most of the large segment of undecideds switched to For and the Against faction actually went down by a hair.
Remember, this is in the hottest of hotbeds of liberalism, Manhattan.
I’ll post the transcript and NPR Podcast on the front page as soon as it is available.
I’m from illinois and we put beans in the chili. Not only do we put beans, but some sugar. I’ve had no one refuse to eat my chili, here in the hot bed of burn your mouth, no bean chili, aficionados.
Did you read the first comment ? I almost fell out of my chair. She must live down there with Big Jolly. From commenter chiffonade:
OKAY, if you insist.
I sure hope that Baba ganouj tastes better than it looks.
I like eggplant. Most PROFESSIONAL CHEFS like myself, who know how to properly prepare it, usually like it. But, it has to look good as well.
If I served that to my boyfriend “Big Bear” he would probably throw me out of the trailer house, even though I just bought him a $85.00 bottle of 50-year old balsamic vinegar. He likes it on his baba ganouch and on his gnocchi (he has lost most of his teeth, so he has to have soft food to eat . . . that’s what happens when you use meth). He even puts balsamic vinegar in his beer!
If you are interested to help in the area, and there is still allot of help needed, please visit ikeassist.org.
They are helping to organize relief work in the area and have teams from all over going into the communities, often time working home by home to help the local residents.
I have personally served with this group and they have done an outstanding job.
#78 Texpat I’m not going to argue with you. Personal experience has placed me with lawyers twice in my life. I’m not going into details, because it’s personal. Both times opposing lawyers lied, and in the first case, which was extreme…. I am sure I had recourse, just was young and didn’t pursue it. So, I have 100% experience to back up what I say.
btw - for those of you in Houston, a very good place to buy Middle Eastern foods is Phoenicia on Westheimer around Kirkwood or Dairy Ashford. They have all kinds of ethnic stuff from that area. Their baba ghanoush and hummus are most tasty and yummy.
#33 BJ, HAL was slow to post my mostly weather-related comment because the low temps mentioned shocked him so and slowed down his electrons to the point he needed some hot coffee to thaw them out. /Grin/
#84 adee
I don’t know about that. HAL is from the late 1940’s/early 1950’s and built using vacuum tubes. He throws off enough heat to melt the glaciers in Greenland.
Texpat, all I can tell you is that myself and another investigator left a very large lawfirm because of the corruption - lying to clients. The son of one of those partners has been mentioned on LST because his son was under indictment. I swore I’d never work for another law firm ever.
Because PhilM is constantly on the troll looking for stories about rogue police officers, which he then touts as “proof” that the majority of cops are bullying bureaucrats, here is a small sampling of the stories about hero cops.
Now, not to be outdone in the quest for negative stories about a particular profession, here just a few of the numerous stories about rogue teachers/professors. And I’m not even including the ones about our favorite professor who is a terrorist, Bill Ayres.
#89 shannon
It’s suburbia, dude. The grocery store is on the south side of Westheimer and they have a small deli on the north side. My favorite lunch place in town for almost 20 years.
#92 bigj
They’re a bunch of pseudo-intellectual, proto-libertarian, stoners whining about how The Man with the power of the two-party duopoly and the violence inherent in the system is going around and all oppressing them and stuff.
If you need a laugh today, then this should do it!
A child was asked to write a book report on the entire Bible. This is amazing and brought tears of laughter to my eyes. I wonder how often we take for granted that children understand what we are teaching???
Through the eyes of a child: The Children’s Bible in a Nutshell
In the beginning, which occurred near the start, there was nothing but God, darkness, and some gas. The Bible says, ‘The Lord thy God is one, but I think He must be a lot older than that.
Anyway, God said, ‘Give me a light!’ and someone did.
Then God made the world.
He split the Adam and made Eve. Adam and Eve were naked, but they weren’t embarrassed because mirrors hadn’t been invented yet.
Adam and Eve disobeyed God by eating one bad apple, so they were driven from the Garden of Eden…..Not sure what they were driven in though, because they didn’t have cars.
Adam and Eve had a son, Cain, who hated his brother as long as he was Abel.
Pretty soon all of the early people died off, except for Methuselah, who lived to be like a million or something.
One of the next important people was Noah, who was a good guy, but one of his kids was kind of a Ham. Noah built a large boat and put his family and some animals on it. He asked some other people to join him, but they said they would have to take a rain check.
After Noah came Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Jacob was more famous than his brother, Esau, because Esau sold Jacob his birthmark in exchange for some pot roast. Jacob had a son named Joseph who wore a really loud sports coat.
Another important Bible guy is Moses, whose real name was Charlton Heston. Moses led the Israel Lights out of Egypt and away from the evil Pharaoh after God sent ten plagues on Pharaoh’s people. These plagues included frogs, mice, lice, bowels, and no cable.
God fed the Israel Lights every day with manicotti. Then he gave them His Top Ten Commandments. These include: don’t lie, cheat, smoke, dance, or covet your neighbor’s stuff.
Oh, yeah, I just thought of one more: Humor thy father and thy mother.
One of Moses’ best helpers was Joshua who was the first Bible guy to use spies. Joshua fought the battle of Geritol and the fence fell over on the town.
After Joshua came David. He got to be king by killing a giant with a slingshot. He had a son named Solomon who had about 300 wives and 500 porcupines. My teacher says he was wise, but that doesn’t sound very wise to me.
After Solomon there were a bunch of major league prophets. One of these was Jonah, who was swallowed by a big whale and then barfed up on the shore.
There were also some minor league prophets, but I guess we don’t have to worry about them.
After the Old Testament came the New Testament. Jesus is the star of The New. He was born in Bethlehem in a barn. (I wish I had been born in a barn too, because my mom is always saying to me, ‘Close the door! Were you born in a barn?’ It would be nice to say, ‘As a matter of fact, I was.’)
During His life, Jesus had many arguments with sinners like the Pharisees and the Democrats.
Jesus also had twelve opossums.
The worst one was Judas Asparagus. Judas was so evil that they named a terrible vegetable after him.
Jesus was a great man. He healed many leopards and even preached to some Germans on the Mount.
But the Democrats and all those guys put Jesus on trial before Pontius the Pilot. Pilot didn’t stick up for Jesus. He just washed his hands instead.
Anyways, Jesus died for our sins, then came back to life again. He went up to Heaven but will be back at the end of the Aluminum. His return is foretold in the book of Revolution.
Robin: “Boy! That was our closest call ever! I have to admit that I was pretty scared!”
Batman: “I wasn’t scared in the least.”
Robin: “Not at all?”
Batman: “Haven’t you noticed how we always escape the vicious ensnarements of our enemies?”
Robin: “Yeah, because we’re smarter than they are!”
Batman: “I like to think it’s because our hearts are pure.”
Or this one:
“Gosh, Batman, you’re right!”
Bruce: “Don’t dip your oar in this sordid sea, Dick. You might be besmirched.”
Or…
Batman: “That’s one trouble with dual identities, Robin. Dual responsibilities.”
(I think some political pundits should remember that one!)
And finally,
Robin: “Where’d you get a live fish, Batman?”
Batman: “The true crimefighter always carries everything he needs in his utility belt, Robin.”
So many more…it’s been fun tripping down memory lane. Except for that recurring pain when I faceplant myself…
Here’s an article from Odessa America online. It’s an online newspaper that covers local events in Odessa, TX.
Cooper’s stated intent was to show how authorities will cut corners to make drug cases. Specifically, Cooper apparently chose Odessa for two reasons. First of all, he used to work here as a narc. Secondly, the former cop said he was hired by Odessan Raymond Madden, who is trying to prove that his daughter, Yolanda Madden, was set up when she was arrested and convicted of selling drugs. Cooper wanted to demonstrate how flimsy evidence can be used to conduct drug investigations.
So were Christmas trees brought into court and sold as hemp plants to the sitting judge/jury that convicted Yolanda? I don’t see the connection as to the intent of Raymond Madden and Cooper’s execution of a fake pot house.
The false lead came in the form of an anonymous letter informing authorities that marijuana was being grown in an Odessa residence. Drug agents took the bait and obtained a search warrant for the house, only to be videotaped once they entered the residence as they discovered they had been scammed.
Any guesses who wrote that letter or at least involved in writing it? I have one; but I’d like to know yours first. And “RawStory” failed to report this letter. They made it sound as if the police made up the whole suspicion that there may be Ron Paul’s favored protected plant growing in the pseudo home.
A point was made. It does seem sort of scary that an anonymous tip, with no eye-witness verification of any sort, could be used to get a search warrant. Police did say officers checked out the house to verify details that were mentioned in the anonymous letter. But, in theory, any law-abiding person could be set up in the same manner and find the cops barging into his or her home with little or no probable cause.
This I can agree with. Texans should not forget that anomynous tips can result in everybody’s child being rmoved from their homes and families and held indefinitely as far as the DOJ is concerned.
I think what Cooper did was show carelessness on the part of LEOs and the judiciary. That in and of itself should be addressed but there’s nothing beyond that. No gestapo cops in Odessa. You may sleep well.
If you unplug the altimeter, the plane won’t crash. If you take out the bulb from the oil pressure warning light, the engine won’t seize up. If you take the battery out of the smoke alarm, the house won’t burn down. If you ignore the fact that more than 45% of Medicare funding has come from general revenues for over two consecutive years and don’t debate it, the program must be solvent.
Robin: “When we put the fake jewels in Miss Starr’s safe and take the real ones out, we could be nailed as crooks.”
Batman: “That’s a chance we have to take, Robin. In our well ordered society, protection of private property is essential.”
Robin: “Yes, you’re right, Batman. That’s the keystone to all law and order.”
Dick Grayson: “I thought Lima was the capital of Equador.”
Bruce Wayne: “As you can see, I was right. It’s the capital of Peru.”
Aunt Harriet: “Oh, I just love this game of capitals. It’s just so educational!”
Bruce: “Not only that, if we don’t know all about our friends to the south, how can we can carry out our good neighbor policy?”
I’m sorry, some of these are just too good, especially when taken in current times…
I have been disagreeing with Simple about making generalizations when it comes to industries, companies, corporations and scientific experts. I do not think it is any more fair to do the same to the legal profession or law enforcement.
If I have had business dealings with two people from Indiana in my life and both of them lied to me and stole my money, would it be fair for me to say, “All people from Indiana are dishonest thieves” ?
I’ve had the pleasure and displeasure of meeting and interacting with excellent and terrible attorneys in my life. I don’t believe they are any less ethical than any other serious professional group in the US. They fall across the spectrum from barely competent and stupid to brilliant and remarkable, just like most every other demographic of human beings in this country.
Batman: “Ma Parker’s girl is more dangerous than her three boys.”
Robin: “Her legs sort of reminded me of Catwoman’s.”
Batman: “You’re growing up, Robin. Remember, in crime-fighting always keep your sights raised.”
I’m really busy, but I had to go look at the Joint Operating Environment 2008 US Joint Command report cited by the El Paso Times and linked up by Instapundit. If you read the relevant pages, it’s not nearly as hysterical as the reporter made it out to be. The MSM once again stretching the truth to the breaking point.
#91 BJ, I also think Phil_M would enjoy (and like me) is probably already aware of the reverse “sting.” But unlike Phil, I have relatively few complaints against LEOs in general. (In fact, I have a great deal of respect for the vast majority of individual LEOs, even the one that was operating the speed trap that got me yesterday.)
My major beef is with the toleration of sloppy execution by their management, and the utter disrespect of the Constitution that is far too common, particularly in the persecution of the insane war on drugs.
#96 WB The link between parasites politicians and the war on drug is disgusting. I don’t know how the elected politicians of either party can sleep with themselves while knowing what an expensive and deadly failure the WoD” has been, and refusing to even talk about more effective alternatives to the endless violence, death and destruction of individual rights that IS THEIR War On Drugs.
I hold the jerks in both halves of the two party duopoly directly responsible for their nefarious incompetence and the deaths that have resulted from it. I have more descriptive terms for them, but they’d likely make HAL blue screen.
btw, I’m not a stoner, and neither are the former drug warriors and criminal justice professionals that comprise LEAP
#115 bob
Please don’t take offense at my post above; none was intended. My intent was to ridicule the goobers posting comments there.
I also don’t know how the politicians can sleep at night knowing how much damage they’ve caused this country from a wide variety of their actions, not just the WoD.
texpat, it may be cold up there, but be glad you aren’t here right now. Cedar Fever is rampant….and even got me for the first time in years. Thanks be to God for Claritin.
Another btw, I’ve submitted some of my published writing to LEAP in response to their request for volunteers to create bios for their many speakers who travel the country attempting to counteract the government propaganda paid for by our money.
Darren I just posted that for a little fun. I don’t have anything against most police. Seeing as I was trained in the Air Force as an SP it would be a little strange. It was more for fun since I know how Phil gets excited about LEO talk.
But you are correct I think it did point out some carelessness that should be addressed. A tip should not allow someone to get a warrant by itself. I would like to see the warrant and what they used as their evidence, plus the judge that signed off on it.
Robin, looking at Batgirl: “You know something, Batman?”
Batman: “What’s that, Robin?”
Robin: “She looks very pretty when she’s asleep.”
Batman: “I thought you might eventually notice that. That single statement indicates to me the first oncoming thrust of manhood, old chum.”
But you are correct I think it did point out some carelessness that should be addressed. A tip should not allow someone to get a warrant by itself. I would like to see the warrant and what they used as their evidence, plus the judge that signed off on it.
Good points.
I’ll modify to say, “Phil can rest well.” And ask Phil to answer my inquiries.
As for beans in chili—- Been cooking competition chili for years and there ain’t NO BEANS in an honest to God bowl of red. Lessin’ you’re from Californey or New York City, “GET A ROPE”.
Q. Paul, why do Hell’s Angels wear leather?
A. Paul Lynde: Because chiffon wrinkles too easily.
Q. According to Ann Landers, what are two things you should never do in bed?
A. Paul Lynde: Point and laugh [while wearing a clown suit with a couple of gay bears singing showtunes?]
No ketchup on hotdogs! My son does that but he was born in Texas, so I have to take that into account. I don’t put that beanless concoction some people call chili on hot dogs either for the record. I’m a mustard and sauerkraut kinda guy.
The only suitable accoutrements for chili are plain saltines, diced onions, and maybe some shredded cheddar cheese. You’ll note that none of these is a legume or a hot dog.
Ketchup on a hot dog is ok for kids. They outgrow it.
What happens to all the money raised by the Shoreacres PD speed trap on Hwy 146? Should be enough to rebuild most of the town.
Slow your ass down! The speed limit is 60 mph right there! That is a major intersection and I’ve seen the results of crashes from people that didn’t slow down!
/going back to reading the city budget that says we get 27% of our operating revenue from that intersection.
I’ve had the pleasure and displeasure of meeting and interacting with excellent and terrible attorneys in my life. I don’t believe they are any less ethical than any other serious professional group in the US
You’ve got to be kidding me! Aren’t 90% of our politicians, lawyers?
I spent two years living in exile in Cincinnati. Their chili parlors were a good case for a truth in advertising lawsuit. The cinnamon was so strong it would burn your tonsils out. There may be a connection between their chili parlors and the fact the twin sisters haven’t been found.
I have tried to find the most perfect chili and having traveled a lot the closest I ever came was a bar in the restored warehouse district just outside of downtown Dallas (of all places). Wish I could remember the name. My mother used to make a mean bowl of chili that included pinto beans.
Pinto beans are good in chili, with bbq or as a side dish to most beef entre meals.
Navy beans are good when cooked with a ham hock. Also makes a good soup.
Kidney beans are good if you boil the pi$$ out of them and throw them out to the hogs. I don’t know how many times I have had chili served that contained kidney beans. Not fit for human consumption.
Gannett is planning to furlough people for a week to keep from laying people off. Another lying corporation that denies the citizens of the right to truthful, uncensored reporting of the news could be in danger like some other members of the MSM. Of course they have a lot of favors coming from the new King. So a bailout may be in order.
Texpat #111, I too have known some great attorneys. This particular law firm had 26 attorney’s on staff, and handled legal and financial matters for many high profile people. At the end of 7 months, myself and the other investigator just plain felt dirty. On of the other investigators had already quit. When that many attorneys at a law firm are willing to go along to get along, then there is a problem within the profession. I do have to keep in mind this was 23 years ago.
But with the son of one of the partners, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.
We all know manure runs downhill. I suffer no illusions pertaining to legal practitioners and understand well the bad seed in their field can wreak enormous havoc beyond the damage of most other corrupt professionals.
But I do reject out of hand the assertion all attorneys are somehow fundamentally corrupt by the very nature of their chosen field. Attorneys make up the majority of politicians for a number of reasons and therefore stand in the limelight of the media. When our government performs as badly as it has recently, of course politicians are going to justifiably bear the brunt of the blame. The fact the majority have a law license doesn’t, by any logical measure, mean that all lawyers are fools, incompetents or crooks.
That sort of logic works like this:
All bank robbers carry guns.
The percentage of gun ownership in Indiana is 66%.
Therefore two-thirds of all Indianans are bank robbers.
Texpat, the thing I guess I noticed most about the attorney’s I’ve associated with was that there was a mentality of win at any cost (the client was willing to pay). I’ve know some exceptional attorneys - Peter Riga and Rusty Hardin come to mind.
wagonburner on January 14th, 2009 at 1:30 pm btw - for those of you in Houston, a very good place to buy Middle Eastern foods is Phoenicia on Westheimer around Kirkwood or Dairy Ashford. They have all kinds of ethnic stuff from that area. Their baba ghanoush and hummus are most tasty and yummy.
Guess who did the structural steel drawings for that building.
I met Peter Riga a long time ago and what I know about him is that he is exceptional. I also used to enjoy the op-ed pieces he wrote for the Chronicle.
I’d like to meet Rusty just so I could say, “Screw You, Rusty !”, like Anna Nicole did.
We all know manure runs downhill. I suffer no illusions pertaining to legal practitioners and understand well the bad seed in their field can wreak enormous havoc beyond the damage of most other corrupt professionals.
I met one of those lawyers who’s ethics are of the type made to look bad by the bad seeds.
A little old lady camein to see him about writing a will. He charged her a $50 consulting fee, and she paid him in cash.
After she left he unfolded the bills and realized that instead of giving him five ten dollar bills, she’d given him four tens and a hundred. so he did the ethical thing.
OK, I’ve been to chili cook-offs and I know that they NEVER use beans. That said, if it don’t have beans, it ain’t chili! I’ve only been in this great state for 27 years but I have a whole bunch of folks that were born and raised here that tell me my chili is the best they’ve ever had. This is not BS because they always come back for more. Of course I serve it with Dave’s world famous corn bread and hand cut, sharp chedder.The meat is round steak or deer and ground sausage. I use pinto, kidney and black beans. BTW; I never saw anyone put Ketchup on a hot dog until I moved here. Unless you are less than 10 years old the ONLY thing that you put Ketchup on is something that you can’t eat otherwise.
—– Ducks and gets the He!! outta Dodge!
tedtam, I love eggplant battered with corn meal and fried in P’nut oil. Yum-Yum. I’ve not had it lately,….maybe I’ll be on the LQQk-out for one. My Baby Girl loves yeller squash fried with onions, I cook it almost every time she’s home. She’s starting her last full semester @ A&M next week, I think. In the summer She’ll intern and have one or two classes then graduate in Mid August. YES!! I shore am tarred of writing those checks.
Thanks Squawk, I don’t do Sketty either, I used to make it for the young-uns years ago because it was so easy, of course I used store bought’n sauce. Sorry tedtam. ;=)
A piece of french bread with which to wipe my bowl
Good for the body, good for the soul
It’s a little like religion and a lot like sex
You should never know when you’re gonna get it next
It could be it’s that sausage or those pretty pink shrimp
Or that popcorn rice that makes me blow up like a blimp
Maybe it’s that voodoo from marie laveau
But I will play for gumbo
Hey I will play for gumbo
Which raises another of life’s most important questions:
This one is way too easy, there is no such a thing as Gumbo without Okree! NO ONE can argue that one. BTW; I make a killer Gumbo, I’ve been known to shuck a 54 QT ice chest full of crawdads, left over from our block party, to get a pint of meat to make Gumbo. I toss it in the freezer until I can find fresh Okree and add a pound of 32 count shrimp and a pound of crab meat. Yum Yum!
In case you haven’t heard, a good resource would be luke. I’m guessing that he and unmentionable are whining in their beers tonight. Er, maybe whining in their wine in the latter’s case.
#184 BigJolly, did he “Get R Done”?! I heard him talking about it but I didn’t know the outcome. If he did, that is a LOONG way from his lone “YEA” vote last time!
The heck they can’t! Okra has no place, period, in a hen/sausage/tasso gumbo. None, nada, zip, zilch.
If you know what you are doing, you are allowed to put okra in ’seafood’ gumbo, be it shrimp, crawfish or oyster gumbo.
Mostly, it belongs in OKRA GUMBO, otherwise known as gumbo of the Gods. But you have to know what you are doing or all you will end up with is slime worthy of the ice machine.
I like saltine crackers on the side with my chili because my grandfather used to order me chili at the cafe in Bellville when I was a little boy and that is the way they served it.
My favorite, though, is hot, fresh cornbread, preferably my own.
If you bunch of yahoos can’t distinguish between pasta sauce (they call it gravy up here) and genuine Texas chili, then you have the palates of mules or goats or both.
“The heck they can’t! Okra has no place, period, in a hen/sausage/tasso gumbo. None, nada, zip, zilch.”
OK I’ve never seen or had Gumbo without seafood of some kind, I have seen folks add chicken etc but I don’t, I do use sausage though.
“But you have to know what you are doing or all you will end up with is slime worthy of the ice machine.”
I don’t understand this part, all you have to do is brown the okra slightly in P’nut oil then use the oil to brown the rue and it comes out perfect, BUTT you do have to know how to cook at least a little bit…..SIGH
‘Bout corn bread, I used to go to Boston Market before they went out of business and they had real good corn bread EXCEPT that they put sugar in it!! I complained ever time and they looked at me like I was from another planet. YES, they’re gone now.
I don’t., at all. I see it as an incremental step. The middle of the roaders such as luke are painting this as a desperate attempt by the Repubs. Not at all. 70+% of Texas voters see Voter ID as a good thing. And Dan didn’t do anything to embarrass conservatives, in fact, he let Tommy Williams of the Woodlands get the glory.
Change can happen and be positive. Maybe next time he can force them to vote on appraisal caps but no one can say he didn’t have an impact today.
Cornbread is made of the same grain they use to fatten cattle and hogs in the feedlot. Only difference is they don’t give the cattle and hogs egg with it.
“Trust me, them boys in middle LA aren’t making pots of shrimp gumbo.”
They might be like the folks in west Alabama, (along the river) and whatever they can shoot/trap winds up in the gumbo. Nutria maybe? or Coon, Possum.
Also my gumbo is not about shrimp as much as crawdads.
Trust me, them boys in middle LA aren’t making pots of shrimp gumbo.
I noticed that you conveniently selected middle LA. C’mon w/me to Baldwin or Weeks Island to name a few, they make lot’s of pots of shrimp gumbo, blue crab gumbo.
Okra in gumbo depends on the who makes it and growing season.
Soda crackers in chili? Nope, they’re only good for sardines. I had to look up “tasso”. Never heard of such a thing, but it sounds good.
Texpat / Shannon - I was in Krogers on 20th and Yale the other day and had a craving for duck so I when down the frozen fowl aisle. Found the duck and what do you suppose was right next to it? A capon! Haven’t seen capon since I left Florida. I started to buy one until I looked at the price. I wasn’t about to pay $28 for a nutless chicken.
#207 - Yeah, the Matamoros Meat Market down the street does have bull nuts. Dat’s where I draw the line. Love menudo. I’ve even ate tripas (before mad cow) but I ain’t eatin’ nuts. Have you ever had capon? Much more flavor than your standard chicken.
Yup i have had capon and much of the same faire you described. Shoot there ain’t nuttin wrong with mountain oysters and chicken fritters. but then again you are talking to a guy that likes gator and snake.
LOL Hammie I draw the line at sushi. I am a believer in the kill it and grill it method of consumption. If ti looks and smells like cut bait i ain’t eating it in normal circumstamces.
Mmmm, I love rabbit and dumplings! Gator, snake. All tasty. I can pretty much eat anything. If I ever had to get real frugal I know I wouldn’t go hungry. I had chicken gizzards for dinner last night!
The ACLU has taken up the case of the Complete Angler versus the City of Clearwater. The St. Petersburg Times is reporting that there is now a whole website about the case at http://www.keepthefish.com
Feel free to leave a comment... and oh, if you want a pic to show with your comment, go get a gravatar!
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Well someone had to be number 1 BigJ! I have stayed away from that area. I had no reason to go, and didn’t want to intrude on others misfortune, but I had no idea Shoreacres was hit so hard. First home I ever toured, when I got my Real estate license, was in Shore Acres. BigJ, I have a question. If people wanted to help down there, what could they do?
Thanks for the thought, AW. I should have known you would want to help. You didn’t get your name through inaction!
There is nothing to do. Most of the homes are major construction sites, so it is very dangerous for non-professionals. Many of the residents are older and retired but the local community is taking care of them.
Best thing to do is volunteer at your local church or community center. That’s what has happened here and it works.
BigJ, that’s just the American spirit. We all have it. I used to get so frustrated at Hillary Clinton’s garbage, ” It takes a Village”. In times of trouble, Americans always step up. Look at 911 and how New York pulled together. There is an Assistant Ministies help center and shop across the street on Huffmeister. I think I’ll check it out…….. yes, take your advice, don’t get a big head haha
The SCHIP is back. The taxes are broken out, so you can check that. It looks like anything to do with tobacco is going to get hit super hard.
http://michellemalkin.com/
Now I am completely verklempt! I thought the Messiah would heal the world. Flowers would grow where none had before, and love would fill the air. Not so. Obama gets his picture burned in Tehran.
http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/slideshow/photo//090113/ids_photos_wl/r1645453159.jpg/
BJ
You’re lucky you haven’t been annexed by the City of Houston. What would Shoreacreites do if they had to get rid of all their yard art ?
I saw a news report the other night about a family in Shoreacres. Their house had survived Ike and repairs had been made. This weekend their house burned down.
This is hilarious. CBS has some nouvelle cuisine cheffette from Tribeca, ground zero for the excrutiatingly hip in NYC, and the challenge is to make a recession-busting family meal for 35 dollars !
The commenters are slaying the video, CBS and all associated with this milestone in clueless stupidity. Go here to see it.
HT: Instapundit
This is interesting, I snipped it from my Broker’s news letter;
#7 Hammie,
That house is at the end of my street, just across the bayou. Alarms and sirens were going nuts the other night and I was cursing because they woke me up.
Next morning, SU and I went for a walk and saw the house.
/not gonna cuss next time a siren wakes me up
Who’d have thunk it;
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/79536/Rourke-Bush-was-in-the-wrong-place-at-the-wrong-time
#10 BJ
Really sorry for your neighbors.
#9 SDave
I usually see the repeal of Glass-Steagall described as a top secret, nefarious plot by Phil Gramm to single-handedly take over the world financial markets or some other nonsense. It’s good to see some other folks get the blame.
Art or Advertisement?
The City of Clearwater FL has a sign ordinance that is 22 pages long. Herb Quintero has a mural painted on the side of his building. Although mural has no words, the bureaucrats insist that it must be taken down because they think it’s an billboard, and the property owner didn’t beg the city for it’s permission to paint his own damn building. (Can you tell whose side I’m on?) );
Facing a daily fine, the owner covered up the mural with the First Amendment.
I’m sure they’ll think of something.
bob42,
Here is the offending mural:
Ridiculous.
And here is what he is covering it with:
#13 bob (& bigj)
There are prolly other businesses in town that have something similar, except with scantily-clad wimmins. Judging by his shirt in #15, he prolly is a little to right-leaning and forgot to “grease the skids” in the local city council.
Good for this guy in Florida. I hope the national embarrassment causes the city to back off, and those idiots at city hall loose their lucrative elected positions. Lawyers love to win at all costs, ( forgive me, those who post here and are the exception), so this guy has a battle before him. We should start a fund.
The bean/no bean chili poll is tied with 12 votes each? Are there a bunch of people from Cincinnati who make that execreble skyline “chili” lurking here?
Yeah, I can’t believe that poll either, wb. Beans in chili? You gotta be kidding me!
It seems to me that chili and religious opinions share a common aspect: Most folks have their favorite recipe, and frequently consider it to be exclusively authentic.
While working in Cincinnati my colleague spent the morning telling me how good the “chili” from the Skyline shop would be when we went there for lunch. Having never heard of them, you can imagine my surprise when I was served a small bowl of spaghetti, topped with a sweet meat sauce and a mound of cheese. (One of their secret spices is cinnamon.)
I politely remarked that they might be able to sell the stuff in Texas, as long as they didn’t call it chili.
#8 texpat
Maybe the chefette should talk to Larry Brownsberger in Kansas City. He’s building a thriving business supplying cheap meat to the locals. He sell you enough meat to feed a family of four for about $2 a meal.
I bet it would make good chili, too.
Beans in chili? What an outrage!!!
bob42
People can argue about lightweight subjects like religion all they want, but there is no argument about beans in chili. In my world, the IAF sends airborne missiles into all places that put beans in their chili.
And if it wasn’t for the fact the fine citizens of Cincinnatti provided critical support for the Texians against Mexico, well, we’d just have to nuke the place.
Remember the Y2K scare? Now it’s Y2K9. Here’s how I found out. This morning at exactly nine minutes after two am I woke up with this revelation. At exactly nine minutes after two am or two pm (could be either or) on Two-Nine-Two Thousand and Nine something wierd is going to happen.
This is the year 2009. That’s the “Y”. Next month is February, the second month of the year and the first number of the year. Thus the “2″ in Y2. 2K is referencing the number 2,000 and “K9″ is a reference to dogs and the 9 in the current year. So, my premise is: The exact time and date of this event is going to occur: 2:09 am or pm on 2/09/2009.
Those are the only times in history that this time and date lines up, so it has to be the moment in time that Y2K9 will occur. So mark your calendars, get your affairs in order and I really don’t know what else to tell you.
Here’s the possibilities as I see them as to what will happen at that exact time in history:
1. All computers with pictures of dogs used as screen savers will lock up. Cell phones with dog pictures will also be unusable.
2. Dogs all over the world will start barking for exactly two or nine minutes at exactly that date and time.
3. The second Coming of Christ will occur, although this may be a stretch.
4. People owning dog kennels, pet sitters and doggie day care centers will swarm Washington DC for bailout money.
5. Congress will vote to give 5 Billion $ to fight Y2K9 with no oversite needed.
6. It will become unlawful and politically incorrect to use the term “doggone it”.
7. Robert will complete this list at exactly tem minutes after ten on 10/10/2010.
/ have a 2:09pm appointment with the shrink today….. Wish me luck!
*flawed poll alert*
I like Chili either way………………….no third choice is discriminatory!!!!
RE: my#25 - as long as someone else is cooking it!
If I’m the cook it’s NO beans
#25 kf
commie pinko.
#13 - One thing I noticed was that the mural was under a pretty wide overhang, something that “billboards” and other advertisements aren’t. This is obviously not advertising.
#23 cont’d.
People have been looking for the Twin Sister cannons from Cincinnatti for the last 172 years. If you were to discover them, let’s just say it would beat winning the lottery.
Chilly but gorgeous good morning all. At the 6 pm news the dewpoint was 8 degrees, amazing; at 10 pm it was 13, which ’splains our delicately sparkling, tiny, frosty lace on everything this morning. Low of 21 on the anemometer pole, 25 under a leafless red oak at 6, the coldest we’ve had here in years. Vulnerable flowerbeds and potted plants covered with old sheets seem to have survived unhurt. Thin crinkles of ice formed at the edges of the mares’ water buckets in the barn, not enough to cover the surface. Hammer not needed there today.
Called the kin in Madison last night (had to catch the electrons before they slowed down too much). They are 8″ ahead of last year’s record (100″+) snowfall, maybe 4″ coming the next day or two, and faint promise of +30 on Saturday. They haven’t seen 32 in a long time. Today’s high -4. The weather service pronounced before Christmas that the rip-roaring snowfall and cold up to then wasn’t necessarily going to continue, it sometimes happend early in winter and things could moderate later so do not despair. Umm, the weather service just repeated the optimistic mantra this week when the deepfreeze is getting deeper. Happy we don’t live there any more.
#17 AW
So you wouldn’t want the lawyer working for you to be a winner ?
#8
Speaking as #7 in a family of twelve children, if my mother had to “limit” herself to $35 per meal to feed us, there would’ve been no shoes in our house! Nor clothes. Nor school supplies…
Clueless twits.
But then, we don’t live in New York. Where the cost of living is commonly confused with an IQ level.
Ha! HAL is picking on Adee today!
All of these kids could be labeled as sexual offenders for life.
It all started when the school confiscated one of the kid’s phones. No problem there… But what do they think gave them the authority to search through the contents of the phone as if it might contain contraband?
Read HERE
24 malcom
I called my dog at the house and he was unaware of the situation. He said he appreciates the “heads up”.
The only reason they put beans in chili is for a filler, to feed more people.
My wife serves beans on the side, and then adds them to her bowl of chili–not a death penalty infraction, but we do keep a close eye on her at all times. Her fourth generation Texan credentials check out just fine, too. Some Yankee must have gotten to her along the way.
It seems we are all terrorists in Maryland!
Obama’s nominee for Treasury Secretary has divulged that he failed to pay the taxes he owed the Federal government for at least a few years early in this decade. Could one part of his reasons for failure to pay be that the tax code is too complex?
The annual report of the national taxpayer advocate at the IRS makes the case that the Federal government could issue an economic stimulus of almost $200 billion for free by simplifying the tax code so that people no longer have to pay others to calculate their tax bills.
Noteworthy numbers:
1. Americans spend about 7.6 billion hours annually in efforts to comply with the tax code. This does not take into account additional time spent responding to IRS queries and audits. This is the rough equivalent of 3.8 million FTE’s (full-time equivalents) doing nothing but “tax stuff”.
2. Costs of compliance are estimated at $193 billion annually. This is approximately 14% of total income tax receipts.
Since the beginning of 2001, there have been more than 3,250 changes to the tax code, an average of more than one a day, including more than 500 changes in 2008 alone. There are two daily newsletters that report on the field of taxation.
3. The Code has grown so long and complex that it has become challenging even to figure out how long it is.
4. Individual taxpayers find the return preparation process so overwhelming that more than 80 percent pay transaction fees to help them file their returns. About 60 percent pay preparers to do the job, and another 22 percent purchase tax software to help them perform the calculations themselves.
5. There are at least 11 different incentives to help people fund education for their family members (Section 529 plan, a Coverdell Education Savings Account, and the Hope and Lifetime Learning Credits, inter alia) and at least 16 different incentives for retirement savings (a traditional IRA, a Roth IRA, a Section 401(k) plan, a Section 403(b) plan, and a SARSEP, inter alia).
The National Taxpayer Advocate continues to view tax simplification as essential and urges the new administration and the new Congress to make it a priority. In doing so, she recommends that emphasis be given to six core principles:
1. The tax system should not “entrap” taxpayers.
2. The tax laws should be simple enough so that most taxpayers can prepare their own returns without professional help, simple enough so that taxpayers can compute their tax liabilities on a single form, and simple enough so that IRS telephone assistors can fully and accurately answer taxpayers’ questions.
3. The tax laws should anticipate the largest areas of noncompliance and minimize the opportunities for such noncompliance.
4. The tax laws should provide some choices, but not too many choices.
5. Where the tax laws provide for refundable credits, they should be designed in a way that is administrable; and
6. The tax system should incorporate a periodic review of the tax code – in short, a sanity check.
#27 - That Meester KatfishSKI to you SUH!
snikker
OR………..KatfishOVIC if you prefer………..
#39 tedtam
Don’t let Phil_M find out. It just might send him into an apoplectic fit.
#38 shannon
Maybe in-laws to the north and east?
Real chili does not have beans.
That said however I have made a fake chili using ground turkey and black beans. High protein and no grease. With no grease it can’t be real.
Shannon
Please call your dog and have him vote in the poll here. The thing has obviously been rigged like an ACORN-run, Southside Chicago voting booth.
#44 WB
Not me. She’s never been the same since she lived in Aruba with all those Dutchmen, but then again, it might have been the living in Libya and hanging out in Rome every weekend.
Here’s another one for Phil’s files.
Now, this is not good news…
I feel our cause with illegal immigration is lost. I come to that conclusion as I see more and more business advertisements in Espanol (Spanish). The businesses wouldn’t put that much effort or money if there was even the slightest indication that that segment of consumers were leaving.
Texas must SECEDE.
From Mexico? I thought we already did that?
#34 bob
Apparently, there’s a term for what those kids were doing - “sexting“.
Sez the man what don’t like chicken fried steak!
Reply to No. 45: “That said however I have made a fake chili using ground turkey and black beans. High protein and no grease. With no grease it can’t be real.”
All you have done is “PC”ed (or “gringo”ed it up for the white man’s taste buds) that chili. Without the grease (aka fat) chili will lose its flavor during the cooking cycle. You could always spoon the grease off. As far as black beans go, that’s over glorifying it. It should always be pinto beans. I don’t think it causes any less “passing of wind”.
Black beans are some east or west coast nancy-boy’s effort to seem “authentic” somehow. There’s really only three beans worth a hoot: Pinto, Red Kidney, and Navy.
53 hamous
Hey, I simply ate my lifetime allotment long prior to death. Same goes for pinto beans and peas & carrots. I’m getting real close to end on cauliflower, too.
55 WB
Harrumph! Black beans with jalapeno slices–nectar of the Gods.
Eggplant–which has the nutritional value of a cedar fence post—has also permanently dropped off my menu. Enough already!!!!
texpat -
You need to come back down here and rescue Shannon. He’s slipping away fast; there’s not much time.
#58 Shannon
Obviously, you have never had a fried eggplant sandwich, either alone or in sandwich form. If you ain’t doin’ it right, don’t knock it!
At Christmas, we’ve always made fried eggplant to go along with the lasagna and Italian sausage. Some years, only half of it makes it to the table!
Seen on the Web: I used to hate eggplant, but if you cook it with peanut butter it is not so bad.
Growing up in the Chicagoland area I had always thought beans were part of chili. Kidney beans in particular. The ward (place of congregation) I attend for church here has a chili cook off every year. That’s when I encountered the anti-bean folks for the first time in my life. of course, havinf families from all over the country there are many different types of chilis made for the contest. Usually the spiciest chili wins.
Go Texas!!!
Republican stimulus plan from the House
Yup, yup, yup. That’s the way to do it.
Article.
I typed the link out long hand. I’m practicing professors. Can I go to the restroom now? I’m listening and doing my work!!!
cont…
Meesa likes ‘dis.
Too many Yankees watching Blazing Saddles.
My local market/deli here makes eggplant rollotini that is out of this world.
How could you make babaganoush without eggplant ?
Just so there is no misunderstanding, no one loves pinto beans more than me.
I am spiritually and intellectually allegiant to the epicureal origins of pure chili as memorialized by Lydia Mendoza and the Chili Queens of San Antonio who, when not providing sustenance to the men in the plazas, were adept at arranging brief encounters of amorous affection for modest donations, of course.
Eggplant Sandwich.
My brain almost didn’t survive that assault.
#31 Texpat, Not at all costs. In the first place, he wouldn’t be working for me unless there was a valid reason. If I spill hot coffee on me, it’s my fault. If I have no case, I want him to tell me so, and not try to win the darned thing at the expense of another. Of course I want to win, but not at all costs. I don’t want him to have to lie, buy the judge, rig the jury, etc.
#67 Shannon
Fine. That leaves more for me! Yummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!
Luv2 The SCHIP program covers medical expenses for all illegal children. The crooks in government are concerned with 1. keeping office 2. lining their pockets with power or money 3. muddling through until they retire with their lucrative retirement. I look for Obamaramadingdong to bulldoze the fence.
This is very good news:
The Intelligence Squared Debate last night in Manhattan had Bjorn Lomborg, Philip Stott and Peter Huber facing off international whackjobs Oliver Tickell, L. Hunter Lovins and Adam Werbach in an Oxford style debate on the motion:
Major reductions in carbon emissions are not worth the money.
Audience Vote Before the Debate
For: 16%
Against: 49%
Undecided: 35%
Audience Vote After the Debate
For: 42%
Against: 48%
Undecided: 10%
Obviously, those who came with their minds already made up didn’t change. But most of the large segment of undecideds switched to For and the Against faction actually went down by a hair.
Remember, this is in the hottest of hotbeds of liberalism, Manhattan.
I’ll post the transcript and NPR Podcast on the front page as soon as it is available.
66 texpat
Here ya go.
I’m from illinois and we put beans in the chili. Not only do we put beans, but some sugar. I’ve had no one refuse to eat my chili, here in the hot bed of burn your mouth, no bean chili, aficionados.
#72 Shannon
Did you read the first comment ? I almost fell out of my chair. She must live down there with Big Jolly. From commenter chiffonade:
Beans is good. Any kind of beans.
But please do not put them in the chili.
If you are interested to help in the area, and there is still allot of help needed, please visit ikeassist.org.
They are helping to organize relief work in the area and have teams from all over going into the communities, often time working home by home to help the local residents.
I have personally served with this group and they have done an outstanding job.
What ShaNaNa has failed to mention to yall is he likely puts jalepenos of P-Nut buttah fer goodness sakes!
(but he’ll never need Metamucil!)
#68 AW
Correct me if I’m wrong, but you seem to imply that these are the common tactics of all attorneys. (referencing your #17)
If I am correct, what factual evidence do base this on ?
74 texpat
Pretty funny. Did you see “Big Bear’s response??? LOL
Looks like a great site. Check out the tahini discussion.
#76 JORoberts
RE: IkeAssist.Org
Here is the IkeAssist.Org webpage at Clear Creek Community Church website. Plenty of info and contact information there for those interested and able.
#78 Texpat I’m not going to argue with you. Personal experience has placed me with lawyers twice in my life. I’m not going into details, because it’s personal. Both times opposing lawyers lied, and in the first case, which was extreme…. I am sure I had recourse, just was young and didn’t pursue it. So, I have 100% experience to back up what I say.
MMMMMmmmmm………. Baba ghanoush
It’s almost as good as hummus. (I guess I need to add the noble chickpea/garbanzo bean to my list of acceptable legumes above)
btw - for those of you in Houston, a very good place to buy Middle Eastern foods is Phoenicia on Westheimer around Kirkwood or Dairy Ashford. They have all kinds of ethnic stuff from that area. Their baba ghanoush and hummus are most tasty and yummy.
#33 BJ, HAL was slow to post my mostly weather-related comment because the low temps mentioned shocked him so and slowed down his electrons to the point he needed some hot coffee to thaw them out. /Grin/
#84 adee
I don’t know about that. HAL is from the late 1940’s/early 1950’s and built using vacuum tubes. He throws off enough heat to melt the glaciers in Greenland.
Texpat, all I can tell you is that myself and another investigator left a very large lawfirm because of the corruption - lying to clients. The son of one of those partners has been mentioned on LST because his son was under indictment. I swore I’d never work for another law firm ever.
PHIL_M if you are out there, I thought you might enjoy this. Hope its not old news here….
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Raw_footage_from_KopBusters_first_sting_1207.html
Because PhilM is constantly on the troll looking for stories about rogue police officers, which he then touts as “proof” that the majority of cops are bullying bureaucrats, here is a small sampling of the stories about hero cops.
http://www.collegiatetimes.com/stories/2008/04/25/local_police_officer_honored_for_heroism
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2194/is_3_71/ai_85047921
http://www.rochdaleobserver.co.uk/news/s/345/345237_hostage_saved_by_police_hero.html
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-169685083.html
http://www.rilin.state.ri.us/leg_press/1998/bravecop.html
http://www.spotlightnews.net/news/story.php?story_id=121917256267641300
http://www.dot.gov/affairs/fra0603.htm
http://www.northcountrygazette.org/2008/05/30/state_police_honors/
Now, not to be outdone in the quest for negative stories about a particular profession, here just a few of the numerous stories about rogue teachers/professors. And I’m not even including the ones about our favorite professor who is a terrorist, Bill Ayres.
http://badgerherald.com/news/2006/04/10/regents_dismiss_felo.php
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1582827/posts
http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?articleID=20080930_12_EDMO538138
http://www.conservapedia.com/Professor_values
http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/local&id=6053566
http://www.jacksonvillecriminalattorneyblog.com/2008/11/florida_teachers_and_sex_crimes.html
http://crime.about.com/b/2008/03/27/3-tampa-teachers-arrested-in-2-weeks.htm
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2008/04/south_brunswick_high_teacher_a.html
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,199530,00.html
http://educationwonk.blogspot.com/2005/01/another-california-teacher-arrested.html
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/6208834.html
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/6208834.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28640217/
http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/story/104846
http://www.citynews.ca/news/news_8618.aspx
http://www.theweeklyvice.com/2009/01/jared-bays-whitehall-teacher-and-coach.html
http://www.blueridgenow.com/article/20080711/NEWS/598102728
83 WB
Westheimer and Kirkwood?? I’ll go check them out–after I pick up my gang uniform from the cleaners and my AK from the gun shop.
Way to go dcgilr!!!
#87 Broc
While I’m sure that Phil_M will enjoy that one, it really is more of a bob42 link. After all, it involves the war on drugs and jackbooted thugs.
The comments from broc’s link are rich.
dcgirl must have a special arrangement with HAL.
#89 shannon
It’s suburbia, dude. The grocery store is on the south side of Westheimer and they have a small deli on the north side. My favorite lunch place in town for almost 20 years.
Chicken Shawarma
Hummus
Turkish/Lebanese/Armenian beer
Heaven.
Re beans in your chili:
A special salute to tedtam as well…
A fart it is a pleasant thing,
It gives the belly ease,
It warms the bed in winter,
And suffocates the fleas.
A fart can be quiet,
A fart can be loud,
Some leave a powerful,
Poisonous cloud…
A fart can be short,
Or a fart can be long,
Some farts have been known
To sound like a song….
A fart can create
A most curious medley,
A fart can be harmless,
Or silent , and deadly.
A fart might not smell,
While others are vile,
A fart may pass quickly,
Or linger a while……
A fart can occur
In a number of places,
And leave everyone there,
With strange looks on their faces.
From wide-open prairie,
To small elevators,
A fart will find all of
Us sooner or later.
But farts are all bad,
Is simply not true-
We must never forget….
Sweet old farts like you!
#92 bigj
They’re a bunch of pseudo-intellectual, proto-libertarian, stoners whining about how The Man with the power of the two-party duopoly and the violence inherent in the system is going around and all oppressing them and stuff.
It really harshes their mellow. Dude.
If you need a laugh today, then this should do it!
A child was asked to write a book report on the entire Bible. This is amazing and brought tears of laughter to my eyes. I wonder how often we take for granted that children understand what we are teaching???
Through the eyes of a child: The Children’s Bible in a Nutshell
In the beginning, which occurred near the start, there was nothing but God, darkness, and some gas. The Bible says, ‘The Lord thy God is one, but I think He must be a lot older than that.
Anyway, God said, ‘Give me a light!’ and someone did.
Then God made the world.
He split the Adam and made Eve. Adam and Eve were naked, but they weren’t embarrassed because mirrors hadn’t been invented yet.
Adam and Eve disobeyed God by eating one bad apple, so they were driven from the Garden of Eden…..Not sure what they were driven in though, because they didn’t have cars.
Adam and Eve had a son, Cain, who hated his brother as long as he was Abel.
Pretty soon all of the early people died off, except for Methuselah, who lived to be like a million or something.
One of the next important people was Noah, who was a good guy, but one of his kids was kind of a Ham. Noah built a large boat and put his family and some animals on it. He asked some other people to join him, but they said they would have to take a rain check.
After Noah came Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Jacob was more famous than his brother, Esau, because Esau sold Jacob his birthmark in exchange for some pot roast. Jacob had a son named Joseph who wore a really loud sports coat.
Another important Bible guy is Moses, whose real name was Charlton Heston. Moses led the Israel Lights out of Egypt and away from the evil Pharaoh after God sent ten plagues on Pharaoh’s people. These plagues included frogs, mice, lice, bowels, and no cable.
God fed the Israel Lights every day with manicotti. Then he gave them His Top Ten Commandments. These include: don’t lie, cheat, smoke, dance, or covet your neighbor’s stuff.
Oh, yeah, I just thought of one more: Humor thy father and thy mother.
One of Moses’ best helpers was Joshua who was the first Bible guy to use spies. Joshua fought the battle of Geritol and the fence fell over on the town.
After Joshua came David. He got to be king by killing a giant with a slingshot. He had a son named Solomon who had about 300 wives and 500 porcupines. My teacher says he was wise, but that doesn’t sound very wise to me.
After Solomon there were a bunch of major league prophets. One of these was Jonah, who was swallowed by a big whale and then barfed up on the shore.
There were also some minor league prophets, but I guess we don’t have to worry about them.
After the Old Testament came the New Testament. Jesus is the star of The New. He was born in Bethlehem in a barn. (I wish I had been born in a barn too, because my mom is always saying to me, ‘Close the door! Were you born in a barn?’ It would be nice to say, ‘As a matter of fact, I was.’)
During His life, Jesus had many arguments with sinners like the Pharisees and the Democrats.
Jesus also had twelve opossums.
The worst one was Judas Asparagus. Judas was so evil that they named a terrible vegetable after him.
Jesus was a great man. He healed many leopards and even preached to some Germans on the Mount.
But the Democrats and all those guys put Jesus on trial before Pontius the Pilot. Pilot didn’t stick up for Jesus. He just washed his hands instead.
Anyways, Jesus died for our sins, then came back to life again. He went up to Heaven but will be back at the end of the Aluminum. His return is foretold in the book of Revolution.
Too good not to share…..
wagonburner sings about hummus
Good Hummus is better than baba ganoush.
Go to Zamani to get some good hummus, cheap spices, and good basmati rice that doesn’t cost a million dollars.
Chili? No beans.
#25 ROFL you beat me to it! I was gonna tweak Squawk again!
These take me back….I especially like:
Or this one:
Or…
(I think some political pundits should remember that one!)
And finally,
So many more…it’s been fun tripping down memory lane. Except for that recurring pain when I faceplant myself…
Shhh Shannon - it’s supposed to be a secret!
#98 shannon
Now you’ve gone and outed my alter ego.
That was hilarious.
At least the beans-in-chili philistines are starting to fall behind now.
Oh, tedtam!!!!
Broc RE:Dirty cops in Odessa;
Here’s an article from Odessa America online. It’s an online newspaper that covers local events in Odessa, TX.
So were Christmas trees brought into court and sold as hemp plants to the sitting judge/jury that convicted Yolanda? I don’t see the connection as to the intent of Raymond Madden and Cooper’s execution of a fake pot house.
Any guesses who wrote that letter or at least involved in writing it? I have one; but I’d like to know yours first. And “RawStory” failed to report this letter. They made it sound as if the police made up the whole suspicion that there may be Ron Paul’s favored protected plant growing in the pseudo home.
This I can agree with. Texans should not forget that anomynous tips can result in everybody’s child being rmoved from their homes and families and held indefinitely as far as the DOJ is concerned.
I think what Cooper did was show carelessness on the part of LEOs and the judiciary. That in and of itself should be addressed but there’s nothing beyond that. No gestapo cops in Odessa. You may sleep well.
Article.
Here’s a link to access to both Odessa America’s articles regarding Kop Busters.
Link.
Shannon 104;
Hey, it means “Richard”, OK.
If you unplug the altimeter, the plane won’t crash. If you take out the bulb from the oil pressure warning light, the engine won’t seize up. If you take the battery out of the smoke alarm, the house won’t burn down. If you ignore the fact that more than 45% of Medicare funding has come from general revenues for over two consecutive years and don’t debate it, the program must be solvent.
#97 Malcom that was OUTSTANDING!!!!!!!!!!!!
Except when the gubmint wants it…
ROFL!
I’m sorry, some of these are just too good, especially when taken in current times…
AW and Big45Iron
I have been disagreeing with Simple about making generalizations when it comes to industries, companies, corporations and scientific experts. I do not think it is any more fair to do the same to the legal profession or law enforcement.
If I have had business dealings with two people from Indiana in my life and both of them lied to me and stole my money, would it be fair for me to say, “All people from Indiana are dishonest thieves” ?
I’ve had the pleasure and displeasure of meeting and interacting with excellent and terrible attorneys in my life. I don’t believe they are any less ethical than any other serious professional group in the US. They fall across the spectrum from barely competent and stupid to brilliant and remarkable, just like most every other demographic of human beings in this country.
/smirk
And finally, a word of true wisdom from that corny old show:
Now, I must exercise some of the self-control and get back to work. /groans
#107 wagonburner
I’m really busy, but I had to go look at the Joint Operating Environment 2008 US Joint Command report cited by the El Paso Times and linked up by Instapundit. If you read the relevant pages, it’s not nearly as hysterical as the reporter made it out to be. The MSM once again stretching the truth to the breaking point.
#91 BJ, I also think Phil_M would enjoy (and like me) is probably already aware of the reverse “sting.” But unlike Phil, I have relatively few complaints against LEOs in general. (In fact, I have a great deal of respect for the vast majority of individual LEOs, even the one that was operating the speed trap that got me yesterday.)
My major beef is with the toleration of sloppy execution by their management, and the utter disrespect of the Constitution that is far too common, particularly in the persecution of the insane war on drugs.
#96 WB The link between
parasitespoliticians and the war on drug is disgusting. I don’t know how the elected politicians of either party can sleep with themselves while knowing what an expensive and deadly failure the WoD” has been, and refusing to even talk about more effective alternatives to the endless violence, death and destruction of individual rights that IS THEIR War On Drugs.I hold the jerks in both halves of the two party duopoly directly responsible for their nefarious incompetence and the deaths that have resulted from it. I have more descriptive terms for them, but they’d likely make HAL blue screen.
btw, I’m not a stoner, and neither are the former drug warriors and criminal justice professionals that comprise LEAP
Y’all should check ‘um out.
Question for Big Jolly.
What happens to all the money raised by the Shoreacres PD speed trap on Hwy 146? Should be enough to rebuild most of the town.
/heading back over the Hartman Bridge.
#115 bob
Please don’t take offense at my post above; none was intended. My intent was to ridicule the goobers posting comments there.
I also don’t know how the politicians can sleep at night knowing how much damage they’ve caused this country from a wide variety of their actions, not just the WoD.
btw - Your “LEAP” link’s broken.
#116 Hogfan
They’re still raising money to get the gators and snakes out of Big Jolly’s pool.
texpat, it may be cold up there, but be glad you aren’t here right now. Cedar Fever is rampant….and even got me for the first time in years. Thanks be to God for Claritin.
#117 No offense taken, WB.
Here’s a working link to LEAP
Another btw, I’ve submitted some of my published writing to LEAP in response to their request for volunteers to create bios for their many speakers who travel the country attempting to counteract the government propaganda paid for by our money.
#105 Darren10
Darren I just posted that for a little fun. I don’t have anything against most police. Seeing as I was trained in the Air Force as an SP it would be a little strange. It was more for fun since I know how Phil gets excited about LEO talk.
But you are correct I think it did point out some carelessness that should be addressed. A tip should not allow someone to get a warrant by itself. I would like to see the warrant and what they used as their evidence, plus the judge that signed off on it.
Robin, looking at Batgirl: “You know something, Batman?”
Batman: “What’s that, Robin?”
Robin: “She looks very pretty when she’s asleep.”
Batman: “I thought you might eventually notice that. That single statement indicates to me the first oncoming thrust of manhood, old chum.”
wtf is wrong with you people?
Chili just ain’t chili without RANCH STYLE BEANS
philistine
Broc 121;
Good points.
I’ll modify to say, “Phil can rest well.” And ask Phil to answer my inquiries.
As for beans in chili—- Been cooking competition chili for years and there ain’t NO BEANS in an honest to God bowl of red. Lessin’ you’re from Californey or New York City, “GET A ROPE”.
All you beany weenies can celebrate in July during National Baked Bean Month.
Chili w/ out beans is not chili at all. It’s hot dog sauce.
Here’s one especially for tedtam - nostalgia and Catholic (the blog is anyway)
Remember the Hollywood Squares?
Q. Paul, why do Hell’s Angels wear leather?
A. Paul Lynde: Because chiffon wrinkles too easily.
Q. According to Ann Landers, what are two things you should never do in bed?
A. Paul Lynde: Point and laugh [while wearing a clown suit with a couple of gay bears singing showtunes?]
#127 dude
Mustard is hot dog sauce. Chili is the ambrosia that can cure all ills, unless there are beans in it.
btw - do you also put ketchup on your hot dogs?
127
Spoken like a true Ohioan.
No ketchup on hotdogs! My son does that but he was born in Texas, so I have to take that into account. I don’t put that beanless concoction some people call chili on hot dogs either for the record. I’m a mustard and sauerkraut kinda guy.
Yeah well, Ohio went for Obama, too.
Revoke that man’s (dude’s?) Texas Citizenship!
texpat says
Aw, hell yeah! Have you ever met anyone from Indiana?! And people from Ohio are even worse!
The only suitable accoutrements for chili are plain saltines, diced onions, and maybe some shredded cheddar cheese. You’ll note that none of these is a legume or a hot dog.
Ketchup on a hot dog is ok for kids. They outgrow it.
Ouch. If it had been up to Harris County, Texas would have too.
I’ll have you know I’m an honest thief. I do have standard you know.
134 BJ
And we won’t even discuss the Michiganders!!!!!
#116 Hogfan says
Slow your ass down! The speed limit is 60 mph right there! That is a major intersection and I’ve seen the results of crashes from people that didn’t slow down!
/going back to reading the city budget that says we get 27% of our operating revenue from that intersection.
You’ve got to be kidding me! Aren’t 90% of our politicians, lawyers?
I spent two years living in exile in Cincinnati. Their chili parlors were a good case for a truth in advertising lawsuit. The cinnamon was so strong it would burn your tonsils out. There may be a connection between their chili parlors and the fact the twin sisters haven’t been found.
I have tried to find the most perfect chili and having traveled a lot the closest I ever came was a bar in the restored warehouse district just outside of downtown Dallas (of all places). Wish I could remember the name. My mother used to make a mean bowl of chili that included pinto beans.
Pinto beans are good in chili, with bbq or as a side dish to most beef entre meals.
Navy beans are good when cooked with a ham hock. Also makes a good soup.
Kidney beans are good if you boil the pi$$ out of them and throw them out to the hogs. I don’t know how many times I have had chili served that contained kidney beans. Not fit for human consumption.
I know someone who will put ketchup on ANYTHING. Uggh…
Gannett is planning to furlough people for a week to keep from laying people off. Another lying corporation that denies the citizens of the right to truthful, uncensored reporting of the news could be in danger like some other members of the MSM. Of course they have a lot of favors coming from the new King. So a bailout may be in order.
#127 - I’m sad to say mah Bama Belle shares your EXACT sentiment regarding ‘hot dog sauce’/////////////////
*hangs head in shame*
And what the HECK is wrong with Ketchup?
I bet I don’t put ketchup on near as many things as Shannon puts jalepenos on………
HUH?
Hal mus be a yankee too………………………we’re DOOMED ah tell ya!
Mr. Fish,
I don’t know what Squawk did but when HAL started moderating Adee this morning, I knew we were all in trouble.
#140 AW
There are 1,117,000 practicing attorneys in the USA. Some very small fraction of that figure serve in elected offices. So your point is ?
Texpat #111, I too have known some great attorneys. This particular law firm had 26 attorney’s on staff, and handled legal and financial matters for many high profile people. At the end of 7 months, myself and the other investigator just plain felt dirty. On of the other investigators had already quit. When that many attorneys at a law firm are willing to go along to get along, then there is a problem within the profession. I do have to keep in mind this was 23 years ago.
But with the son of one of the partners, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.
Big45Iron
We all know manure runs downhill. I suffer no illusions pertaining to legal practitioners and understand well the bad seed in their field can wreak enormous havoc beyond the damage of most other corrupt professionals.
But I do reject out of hand the assertion all attorneys are somehow fundamentally corrupt by the very nature of their chosen field. Attorneys make up the majority of politicians for a number of reasons and therefore stand in the limelight of the media. When our government performs as badly as it has recently, of course politicians are going to justifiably bear the brunt of the blame. The fact the majority have a law license doesn’t, by any logical measure, mean that all lawyers are fools, incompetents or crooks.
That sort of logic works like this:
All bank robbers carry guns.
The percentage of gun ownership in Indiana is 66%.
Therefore two-thirds of all Indianans are bank robbers.
Our military warns Mexico could collapse.
http://www.elpasotimes.com/newupdated/ci_11444354
#150 AW
See my #114.
I’m posting this on the front page tomorrow.
AW says
Awesome! We’ll have the NAU so much quicker now!
#152 BJ
Chili powder and Tequila might get alot cheaper if we just go in and take over Mexico.
#146 bigj
It’s a plot to bias the poll to the “bean-in-chili” philistines.
For the record, if you are looking for a new lens for your slr, the Tokina 11-16mm f2.8
Rocks!
Just sayin’.
Outta here! SU just called and I get an extra date night this week!
Texpat, I don’t know about that, but 2/3 of all Indianan bank robbers are lawyers!!
Texpat, the thing I guess I noticed most about the attorney’s I’ve associated with was that there was a mentality of win at any cost (the client was willing to pay). I’ve know some exceptional attorneys - Peter Riga and Rusty Hardin come to mind.
Guess who did the structural steel drawings for that building.
Things about government control just don’t get better than this.http://www.businessandmedia.org/articles/2009/20090114131340.aspx
#158 Big
I met Peter Riga a long time ago and what I know about him is that he is exceptional. I also used to enjoy the op-ed pieces he wrote for the Chronicle.
I’d like to meet Rusty just so I could say, “Screw You, Rusty !”, like Anna Nicole did.
There are twice as many toxic waste treatment plants in New Jersey as there are lawyers in Rhode Island.
It’s because New Nersey got first choice.
Ouch Sarge. That was just mean.
I met one of those lawyers who’s ethics are of the type made to look bad by the bad seeds.
A little old lady camein to see him about writing a will. He charged her a $50 consulting fee, and she paid him in cash.
After she left he unfolded the bills and realized that instead of giving him five ten dollar bills, she’d given him four tens and a hundred. so he did the ethical thing.
He told his partner and split it with him.
#162 Sarge
There are twice as many illegal toxic waste
treatment plantsdumps in New Jersey as there are lawyers in Rhode Island.A slight correction there.
BTW;
I thought baba ganoush was Danny Thomas’ uncle on the TC show—
Ok—where’s Simple?
He can get his revenmge.
I misspelled TV—
OK, I’ve been to chili cook-offs and I know that they NEVER use beans. That said, if it don’t have beans, it ain’t chili! I’ve only been in this great state for 27 years but I have a whole bunch of folks that were born and raised here that tell me my chili is the best they’ve ever had. This is not BS because they always come back for more. Of course I serve it with Dave’s world famous corn bread and hand cut, sharp chedder.The meat is round steak or deer and ground sausage. I use pinto, kidney and black beans. BTW; I never saw anyone put Ketchup on a hot dog until I moved here. Unless you are less than 10 years old the ONLY thing that you put Ketchup on is something that you can’t eat otherwise.
—– Ducks and gets the He!! outta Dodge!
Texpat, some of the banter between Peter Riga and Father Neuhaus would get interesting - particularly since Peter used to be Father Riga.
And Peter has not always been kind to other attorneys. I’ve seen several articles from him regarding how lawyers bring it on themselves, like this.
Peter Riga and Rusty Hardin have both handled matters for my family. I never had a problem with the conduct of either.
I got yer back Dave.
True, True
BRING ON THE CHILI WITH BEANS
I kicked a kid out of the mess hall at Camp Geiger (Camp LeJeune, NC) for putting ketchup on his ice cream.
Chili without beans is a courtesy to women folk.
Or spaghetti sauce………… and ah I hates spaghetti.
Texpat prolly likes crackers in his “chili” too. And nuttin goes better with chili and beans than corn bread or camp biscuits.
“Pass me the Ritz crackers for my spaghetti sauce.”
Ain’t that right, Texpat?
Currently the “no beans” are ahead by only 10 votes and I’ve not had a chance to hang a chad.
Would anyone like to buy my vote?
tedtam, I love eggplant battered with corn meal and fried in P’nut oil. Yum-Yum. I’ve not had it lately,….maybe I’ll be on the LQQk-out for one. My Baby Girl loves yeller squash fried with onions, I cook it almost every time she’s home. She’s starting her last full semester @ A&M next week, I think. In the summer She’ll intern and have one or two classes then graduate in Mid August. YES!! I shore am tarred of writing those checks.
Now Bob42 would I stoop so low as to buy votes? I am shocked, nay appalled that you would invite such underhanded malfeasance on my part.
/How much?
Thanks Squawk, I don’t do Sketty either, I used to make it for the young-uns years ago because it was so easy, of course I used store bought’n sauce. Sorry tedtam. ;=)
B45
I have to concur with you on one thing.
I have done a lot of work for Law Firms and Attorneys in the past. Never again. Almost all of them left me with a bad feeling for Lawyers.
#179 Squawk, The bidding starts here.
Which raises another of life’s most important questions:
Does REAL gumbo include okra?
bob42
Two pieces of bad news for you:
1. Kerry Howley was denied entry into Burma (Myanmar) because the government thinks she is a threat to their sovereignty.
2. She’s still in love with Will Wilkinson at Cato.org.
So, is anyone going to mention Dan’s success on revising the “blocker” bill today?
Bob42 says;
This one is way too easy, there is no such a thing as Gumbo without Okree! NO ONE can argue that one. BTW; I make a killer Gumbo, I’ve been known to shuck a 54 QT ice chest full of crawdads, left over from our block party, to get a pint of meat to make Gumbo. I toss it in the freezer until I can find fresh Okree and add a pound of 32 count shrimp and a pound of crab meat. Yum Yum!
In case you haven’t heard, a good resource would be luke. I’m guessing that he and unmentionable are whining in their beers tonight. Er, maybe whining in their wine in the latter’s case.
#184 BigJolly, did he “Get R Done”?! I heard him talking about it but I didn’t know the outcome. If he did, that is a LOONG way from his lone “YEA” vote last time!
SuperDoesn’tKnowJackAboutGumboDave says
The heck they can’t! Okra has no place, period, in a hen/sausage/tasso gumbo. None, nada, zip, zilch.
If you know what you are doing, you are allowed to put okra in ’seafood’ gumbo, be it shrimp, crawfish or oyster gumbo.
Mostly, it belongs in OKRA GUMBO, otherwise known as gumbo of the Gods. But you have to know what you are doing or all you will end up with is slime worthy of the ice machine.
Can’t argue???? You kidding me?
Squawk
I like saltine crackers on the side with my chili because my grandfather used to order me chili at the cafe in Bellville when I was a little boy and that is the way they served it.
My favorite, though, is hot, fresh cornbread, preferably my own.
If you bunch of yahoos can’t distinguish between pasta sauce (they call it gravy up here) and genuine Texas chili, then you have the palates of mules or goats or both.
#186 BigJolly, ALRIGHT!!!!!
This is the next RINO that we need to load up the ole “600 Nitro Express” for! ;=)
texpat says
You don’t put sugar in that do you?
#191 BJ
Never, ever and only one egg.
texpat,
Just checking. There’s been some weird stuff going on in here today.
BJ
RE: Dan Patrick
I think LAE may have a point about choosing voter ID instead of property appraisal caps as the issue to hang the majority issue onto.
BigJolly says;
OK I’ve never seen or had Gumbo without seafood of some kind, I have seen folks add chicken etc but I don’t, I do use sausage though.
I don’t understand this part, all you have to do is brown the okra slightly in P’nut oil then use the oil to brown the rue and it comes out perfect, BUTT you do have to know how to cook at least a little bit…..SIGH
#183 Texpat, I’ll take the bad news about Kerry Howley in stride. After all, no matter how bad reality seems, a guy can still dream.
#185 Super Dave, I’m afraid I have some bad news for you. I’ve been in Louisiana for a few days and enjoyed gumbo twice. Not a trace of okra.
The claims Texas may lay on authentic chili are equaled by Louisiana’s on gumbo.
‘Bout corn bread, I used to go to Boston Market before they went out of business and they had real good corn bread EXCEPT that they put sugar in it!! I complained ever time and they looked at me like I was from another planet. YES, they’re gone now.
#196 bob42
Here’s a nice photo of Kerry. Nice legs.
Bu the way, she used to work and report from Burma before she went to work for Reason and that is how they knew who she was.
I don’t., at all. I see it as an incremental step. The middle of the roaders such as luke are painting this as a desperate attempt by the Repubs. Not at all. 70+% of Texas voters see Voter ID as a good thing. And Dan didn’t do anything to embarrass conservatives, in fact, he let Tommy Williams of the Woodlands get the glory.
Change can happen and be positive. Maybe next time he can force them to vote on appraisal caps but no one can say he didn’t have an impact today.
Cornbread is made of the same grain they use to fatten cattle and hogs in the feedlot. Only difference is they don’t give the cattle and hogs egg with it.
SuperKnowsGumboDave says
LOL, how many people you think would know that????
SuperDave,
I’m in shock that you haven’t had hen/sausage/tasso gumbo. Dude, that is gumbo! You must’ve had way too many shrimp over in Alabama.
Trust me, them boys in middle LA aren’t making pots of shrimp gumbo.
“Trust me, them boys in middle LA aren’t making pots of shrimp gumbo.”
They might be like the folks in west Alabama, (along the river) and whatever they can shoot/trap winds up in the gumbo. Nutria maybe? or Coon, Possum.
Also my gumbo is not about shrimp as much as crawdads.
I noticed that you conveniently selected middle LA. C’mon w/me to Baldwin or Weeks Island to name a few, they make lot’s of pots of shrimp gumbo, blue crab gumbo.
Okra in gumbo depends on the who makes it and growing season.
/slackers
Nytol My favorite Sienfeld just started “The Hamptons” ;=)
Soda crackers in chili? Nope, they’re only good for sardines. I had to look up “tasso”. Never heard of such a thing, but it sounds good.
Texpat / Shannon - I was in Krogers on 20th and Yale the other day and had a craving for duck so I when down the frozen fowl aisle. Found the duck and what do you suppose was right next to it? A capon! Haven’t seen capon since I left Florida. I started to buy one until I looked at the price. I wasn’t about to pay $28 for a nutless chicken.
I’m sure you could find you some fritters somewhere. You do live in the barrio don’t ya?
All right a new controversy.
#207 - Yeah, the Matamoros Meat Market down the street does have bull nuts. Dat’s where I draw the line. Love menudo. I’ve even ate tripas (before mad cow) but I ain’t eatin’ nuts. Have you ever had capon? Much more flavor than your standard chicken.
Yup i have had capon and much of the same faire you described. Shoot there ain’t nuttin wrong with mountain oysters and chicken fritters. but then again you are talking to a guy that likes gator and snake.
LOL Hammie I draw the line at sushi. I am a believer in the kill it and grill it method of consumption. If ti looks and smells like cut bait i ain’t eating it in normal circumstamces.
Oh and rabbit. Man I cannot stand rabbit.
Mmmm, I love rabbit and dumplings! Gator, snake. All tasty. I can pretty much eat anything. If I ever had to get real frugal I know I wouldn’t go hungry. I had chicken gizzards for dinner last night!
test
The ACLU has taken up the case of the Complete Angler versus the City of Clearwater. The St. Petersburg Times is reporting that there is now a whole website about the case at http://www.keepthefish.com