Tonight’s Meal

Tonight’s meal by Chef William Sr. was pan-roasted chicken thighs marinated in a white wine and lemon juice sauce and seasoned with a Peruvian-style rub. It was served with a side of delicious red beans and rice, and helping of canned succotash well buttered — these are the Obama years after all.

Chef William says the trick is to roast the chicken skin side down for at least two hours and to make a deep cut along the bone so the bird parts are completely cooked.

The dessert by Chef Margaret was a vanilla banana cream pie covered with walnuts.

The wine was a Mirassou chardonnay courtesy of the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board. Yes it was perfect.

I’d Like To See the FBI Involved

I like to watch the British-produced police dramas on TV—shows you may not have heard of, Like Wire in the Blood, Taggart, A Touch of Frost, The Murdoch Mysteries… The plots are more interesting and intricate (and a lot less politically-correct) than the standard American-made police shows.

The foreign shows are hard to find sometimes; I gain access to most via Netflix. But in the end, they are all still mostly fiction with a little fact thrown in here and there.

When the old Bob Newhart Show was in Prime Time back in the 1970s, I asked my cousin, who is an Oxford-trained psychologist, just how accurately the show portrayed the life of a psychologist, since Newhart played a Chicago-based therapist in the popular sit-com.

“It’s not at all accurate,” he exclaimed in mock horror. “The guy never heals anyone!” So he then asked me if any police shows met with my approval, since I had been a cop for about 10 years at the time.

I had to think about that for a while. How police are portrayed in TV, movies, and books has always been a sore-spot with me. Most are fantasies in every sense of the word. After a short pause, I told him that the sit-com Barney Miller was the show that most closely resembled how cops interact with both colleagues and citizens—and of course, even that was almost pure make-believe.

Such is the makeup of the entertainment industry. Never forget that they deal in fiction; that is, the material they present is not true. I’ve touched on this subject before, but I feel we need to be reminded of this every once in a while—perhaps on a regular basis.

That came home to me while I watched a police-themed drama on TV recently wherein the standard intra-department animosity was depicted, with the FBI exercising authority over a municipal police department with their usual arrogance, and the local police cowering with their usual petulance.

Nothing could be further from the truth. We worked closely with the guys in the Philadelphia FBI office. We even went drinking with them a time or two after an assignment had been completed. They were cops just like us, only with a bigger budget. My men especially liked taking rides with them in their helicopter.

As far as jurisdictional squabbles were concerned, well, we were only too glad to turn over a case that appeared to be more a federal issue than one handled at the municipal level. Hey, it meant less work for us! But in every fictional murder mystery or police procedural, law enforcement departments are represented as self-centered, self-serving, self-interested, and in no way cooperative with their like-minded colleagues.

And by the way, the FBI has no “authority” over any municipal police department, unless the crime is a violation of a federal statute. And of course, they then take over, and the locals are usually more than happy to relinquish that part of their caseload.

(Excerpted from Good Writer’s Block)

Pennsylvania Surpassing Transylvania

Pennsylvanians may soon soon be boasting about how they have snatched the horror crown from Transylvania and the rest of Mitteleuropa.

The Netflix production “Hemlock Grove” debuts online April 19. It’s a 13-part series directed by Eli Roth and based on Brian McGreevy’s novel. It’s set in a Pennsylvania steel town but was filmed in Toronto.

Hopefully, it involves local residents chasing zombies down with deer rifles.

Pennsylvania Surpassing Transylvania

Pennsylvania Surpassing Transylvania

Inky Is No Pravda

Pravda was once one of the house organs of the communists who ruled the Soviet Union and hence became a punchline for jokes concerning the twisting of reality for the sake of propaganda.

The sobriquet “Pravda West” became used for American old-media institutions like  The Philadelphia Inquirer and The New York Times because they showed the same propensity regarding the reporting of matters involving liberal causes and the Democratic Party.

Well it looks like we can no longer use that phrase anymore. Check out this article from Pravda.ru: Americans never give up your guns.

The world has certainly turned upside down.

Off The Internet — Fiscal Cliff Survival Pack

Courtesy of Cathy Craddock

Just wanted to let you know that today I received  my Fiscal Cliff Survival Pack from the White House.
 
It contained

  • a parachute,
  • a ‘Obama Hope & Change’ bumper sticker,
  • a ‘Bush’s Fault’ poster,
  •  a ‘Blame Boehner’ poster,
  •  a “Tax the Rich’ poster,
  • an application for unemployment,
  • an application for food stamps,
  • a prayer rug,
  • a letter of assignation of debt to my grandchildren
  • and a machine to blow smoke up my a**.

 
All directions were in Spanish.

Corbett Must Not Be The GOP Nominee In ’14

By Bob Guzzardi

Ryan Shafik of Rockwood Strategies is one of the best political analysts in Pennsylvania.
 
He has analyzed Tom Corbett’s polling numbers and has determined that he is one of the “most unpopular Republican governors in America” and has much worse polling numbers than Rick Santorum did at this point in the year before his 2006 electoral defeat. Namely, Corbett is approved by 38 percent of Pennsylvanians and disapproved by 52 percent. As I have pointed, Republican Attorney General candidate, Dave Freed, underperformed every other Republican (and every other state wide candidate) in Pennsylvania.

The Republican base deserted Republican Freed/Corbett/Zimmerman and even voted Democrat to end 32 years of one party rule and Corbett’s perceived cover up of the Penn State cover up of the Sandusky serial child molestations. The Freed underperformance can be looked at as a proxy election for Tom Corbett 2014.

The polling numbers and the election results tell us that the Republicans need a new candidate.  

Election Numbers Republican Attorney General Candidate Dave Freed significantly Freed/Corbett underperformed every other Republican state wide candidate. Republican voters rejected Freed/Corbett and voted for the Democrat.

My view is that Republicans were aware that Dave Freed was a close associate of Tom Corbett and his Establishment donors and that Dave Freed as Attorney General would protect Corbett from claims of slow rolling the Sandusky investigation in exchange for 100s of 1000s of campaign contributions as well as sabotaging the LeRoy Zimmerman/Hershey Trust investigation. 

Republican Attorney General Candidate Dave Freed significantly Freed/Corbett underperformed every other Republican state wide candidate. Republican voters rejected Freed/Corbett and voted for the Democrat. Republican candidate for Treasurer did not run a highprofile campaign and, likely, represents the base line of the Republican statewide vote.

My view is that Republicans were aware that Dave Freed was a close associate of Tom Corbett and his establishment donors and that Dave Freed as Attorney General would protect Corbett from claims of slow rolling the Sandusky investigation in exchange for 100s of 1000s of campaign contributions as well as sabotaging the LeRoy Zimmerman/Hershey Trust investigation.  

Democrat   Kathleen Kane 3,125,557

Republican

Dave Freed’s 2,313,506.

Mitt Romney – 2,680,434;

Tom Smith – 2,509, 132;

John Maher Auditor – 2,548, 767:

Diana Irey Vaughan – 2,405, 654.

 

 

Church And State

Courtesy of Kate Rainey

DID YOU KNOW As you walk up the steps to the building which houses the U.S. Supreme Court you can see near the top of the building a row of the
world’s law givers and each one is facing one in the middle who is facing forward with a full frontal view … It is Moses
and he is holding the Ten Commandments!
 
DID YOU KNOW? As you enter the Supreme Court courtroom, the two huge oak doors have the Ten Commandments engraved on each lower portion of each door.

DID YOU KNOW? As you sit inside the courtroom, you can see the wall, right above where the Supreme Court Judges sit, a display of the Ten Commandments

DID YOU KNOW? There are Bible verses etched in stone all over the Federal Buildings and Monuments in Washington ,

D.C. DID YOU KNOW? James Madison, the fourth president, known as ‘ The Father of Our Constitution ‘ made the Following statement: ‘We have staked the whole of all our political Institutions upon the capacity of mankind for Self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to The Ten Commandments of God.’

DID YOU KNOW? Every session of Congress begins with a prayer
by a paid preacher, whose salary has been paid by thetaxpayer since 1777.

DID YOU KNOW? Fifty-two of the 55 founders of the Constitution were members of the established Orthodox churches in the colonies.

DID YOU KNOW? Thomas Jefferson worried that the Courts would overstep their authority and instead of Interpreting the law would begin making law an oligarchy: the rule of few over many. How then, have we gotten to the point that everything we have done for 220 years in this Country is now suddenly wrong and Unconstitutional? Lets put it around the world and let the world see and remember what this great country was Built on The Holy Bible and belief in GOD!