Wednesday, December 15. 2010
Look, my dog can poop! Perfect gift if you don't want to go out to walk a real one on chilly mornings.
Venison Steaks with Apples, Pears and Crème Fraîche
Preparation time 5 minutes (that is, after you kill your deer), cooking time 15 minutes. Serves: 4
Ingredients
2 tbsp olive oil
4 Venison Steaks
2 small Royal Gala apples and one small bosc pear, peeled, cored and cut into 12 wedges each
2 Cup Beef Stock (COSTCO’s box is best)
5 tbsp crème fraîche
4 tbsp fresh parsley, finely chopped
2 tbsp pear, raspberry or red currant jam
Calvados
Put the oil in a small heavy-based frying pan over a high heat. Season the steaks well and place in the pan. Cook for 2-3 minutes on each side or until just cooked through and nicely browned. Set aside on a plate to rest for 5 minutes, covering with foil to keep warm.
Meanwhile, place the apple & pear wedges in the pan and cook for 1 minute on each side or until golden brown. Add the beef stock and cook for 5 minutes or until the sauce reduces by about two thirds and the apple is tender. Turn the heat down and add the jelly, stirring until it melts, then stir in the crème fraîche and parsley. Option: add a splash of Calvados to the sauce for a more complex flavor. Season to taste.
Cut the steaks into four or five diagonal slices and return to the pan, with any juices, to warm through.
Serve with mushroom wild rice or Cavolo Nero cabbage lightly steamed until tender.
From Totalitarianism and Education, at Brussels Journal:
I have heard a history teacher describe Stalinist Russia as a basically benevolent and prosperous society with a few minor problems. I have looked through a school library for a biography of Mao Zedong, only to find it populated exclusively by hagiographies written by 70s radicals. I have had philosophy teachers who have never heard of Friedrich Hayek. I have been told that dialectical materialism is an indisputable fact in which all historians believe. I have, as mentioned, read course plans which openly instruct teachers to fail students who affirm the existence of human nature or objective truth, and to give good grades to those who regard history as a political tool of the ruling classes. I have had textbooks on 20th century philosophy with dozens of pages devoted to mediocrities like Simone de Beavouir but not a single mention of Wittgenstein or Russell. I have had lessons on the Middle Ages that have consisted almost entirely of infantile urban legends. (Angels on the head of a pin, feudalism, etc.) I have heard of teachers who openly exhort their students to vote Socialist. I have been told that it is racist to pass moral judgment on female genital mutilation.
Make the Ten Commandments relevant.
Forgot to include The Complete Calvin and Hobbes to the book list yesterday. It's expensive but worth every penny.
Also, adding to blogroll:
Bernard Goldberg
Bookworm Room
Ricochet
Why does Maggie's get so political, when we never wanted to? Because the gummint keeps trying to play a larger role in our lives. We hate that. If they left us folks alone, we'd have a much more interesting site. It would be all food and hunting and fishing and guns and skiing and tennis raquets and books and the arts and music and history and gardening and God and stuff like that. Things that bring delight instead of exasperation.
 Readers know that we are fans of SureFire military and tactical flashlights. They are useful for blinding and illuminating a bad guy, or for illuminating a distant detail - or for finding a fox, beaver or owl at night.
The problem with them has been that the battery drain has been so fast that they were not useful for any regular flashlight use (for which they were not designed anyway - they were first designed to incapacitate and illuminate a human target).
They have now come out with a line of LED flashlights, some of which may not meet the same tactical specs but which have a longer battery life, and still should not be used in anybody's face unless you wish to disable them. A MagLite on steroids.
Also, Insty informs us that Amazon has deals on knives. Practical knives, not the fancy ones. Except when boarding a plane, a guy needs a knife in the pocket.
The intertubes seem to work just fine. I want no government hands stinking up my internet. I want it private. KERPEN: Silencing voices of Internet dissent.
Tuesday, December 14. 2010
This website, sponsored by Xerox, Let's Say Thanks, sends a free printed postcard to US military personnel stationed abroad. 
Our view tends to be that "bipartisans" and "moderates" are simply those who approve of slow socialism by mistaking goo-goo nursery school sentimentality for opinion and principles.
Stacy McCain gets it: The Fierce Fury of the Angry Mob of Impassioned Bipartisan Moderates. He begins:
Few things are more predictable than this: Whenever Republicans are on the upswing — whenever conservatives are on fire with enthusiasm, proclaiming their core principles and clearly on the winning side of important issues — the mainstream media will devote enormous coverage to an alleged groundswell of discontented moderates whose demands for “bipartisanship” and “civility” are accompanied by condemnation of “divisiveness” and complaints that “extremists” are ignoring the vast majority of independent “centrist” voters.
Bernie Goldberg proposes a monument to rich people in DC.
We need to add his site to our blogroll. Very smart, funny fellow.
(unless we all drive SUVs). Ace
“This broad definition of the economic activity subject to congressional regulation lacks logical limitation” and is unsupported by previous legal cases around the Commerce Clause of the Constitution.
Fed. Judge Hudson, here
 Muslim Suicide Bombers to go on Strike in Britain
It's about time.
Epstein: Obamacare is now on the ropes, legally. It's about the limits of the Commerce clause. He comments:
The government finds itself here in a real pickle. Virginia has drawn a clear line that accounts for all the existing cases, so that no precedent has to be overruled to strike down this legislation. On the other hand, to uphold it invites the government to force me to buy everything from exercise machines to bicycles, because there is always some good that the coercive use of state authority can advance. The ironic point is that this is not a commerce clause argument as such, for in my view any state statute would be subject to the same objection even though the state has plenary police powers.
Showdown nears on release of NYC teacher ratings
They grade students. Why not grade teachers? Oh, I see. It's about their ratings being published. They are our employees, so we should know how they're doing.
Money and politics: The O may raise $1 billion
The Boston Globe goes after SSI
The reason the seriously physically disabled aren't applying for disability these days is because they are all working now.
All Swedes are Jews now
What's the difference between massive immigration and invasion?
Reason: Why has the USDA been plumping up the food stamps program like a factory chicken?
They won't rest until every citizen is feeding on government cheese from the public trough.
WSJ: The Cancun crack-up
Jay Cost: Don't underestimate the Pres
How the O can win in 2012
FLOTUS on Deciding What Kids Eat: “We Can’t Just Leave It Up to the Parents”
Let's all live according to Scientific Socialist principles.
New Low in Support for Health Care Reform
WaPo: Memo to the left: Hands off Obama
"He's our only Hope."
Monday, December 13. 2010
My brunch at Petrossian yesterday was blini with Beluga, smoked Salmon Eggs Benedict, and Pear Tart, with a Bloody Mary first, and then some champagne. A fine day on the town with my in-laws who love my kids more than words can tell. Some pics - don't know who those guys are at the door in the rain, but they did not enter and were not properly dressed anyway.
Carnegie Hall has some exterior renovations going on.
They almost tore down Carnegie Hall in 1960:
A major question is, what are the effects of the Virginia federal district court ruling that the individual mandate within ObamaCare (officially titled PPACA) is unconstitutional?
For now, and even if the Virginia ruling is eventually sustained by the US Supreme Court, the effects are relatively minor. The ruling took a conservative stance on severance, allowing the rest of the law to stand. The impact of the individual mandate on the other parts of the PPACA, although arguably substantial, is actually weak.
However, revealed are, once again, several of the serious failings of the PPACA, which if implemented can mean far higher insurance premiums and, perhaps, the implosion of the private insurance industry – and individual choice -- in near the condition it is today.
The Ruling: Section 1501 of PPACA mandates that individuals purchase medical insurance or face penalties via the IRS. The Va federal judge finds this goes well beyond any previous extension of the Constitution by requiring a behavior that otherwise wouldn’t occur, commenting that the possible extensions of federal power would then be endless. Two other federal district courts did find this constitutional. Other challenges are in process of first hearing, most notably the one in Florida federal district court brought by 20 states and expected to get a favorable ruling, as well as appeals of preliminary judgments elsewhere. The Virginia judge did not grant an injunction on the individual mandate, as he expects the Supreme Court to deal with it before it becomes effective.
Severance: A severance clause in a law holds that if any part is found unlawful, the rest of the law will stand. This clause was removed from PPACA by its drafters. PPACA supporters and most lawyers didn’t think any of PPACA would be found unconstitutional. But, the Virginia judge took a conservative stance toward severance, “the time-honored rule to sever with circumspection…Accordingly, the Court will sever only Section 1501 and directly-dependent provisions which make specific reference to Section 1501.”
A pdf search of PPACA finds no other such key provisions. The Obama administration argued that many other provisions of PPACA are seriously impacted but although implicit in the crafting of PPACA such language is not in PPACA.
Continue reading "Virginia, Severance & Section 1501"
 Everybody's talking about Bedbug infestations these days. Somebody recently told me that they had their house checked for bedbugs, but the exterminator only found Carpet Bugs.
I thought Carpet Bugs were mythical.
Pic is Carpet Beetle and beetle larva.
CFA vs. MBA - or both?
This is not my personal dilemma, but I was chatting with somebody this weekend who was mulling it over. Her interests are more in the CFA area than in management areas.
At Pajamas, "A perfect reflection of America's character, Manhattan will be displaying many new skyscrapers in the coming years." The piece quotes The Fountainhead:
I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York’s skyline. Particularly when one can’t see the details. Just the shapes. The shapes and the thought that made them. The sky over New York and the will of man made visible. What other religion do we need? And then people tell me about pilgrimages to some dank pesthole in a jungle where they go to do homage to a crumbling temple, to a leering stone monster with a pot belly, created by some leprous savage. Is it beauty and genius they want to see? Do they seek a sense of the sublime? Let them come to New York, stand on the shore of the Hudson, look and kneel. When I see the city from my window — no, I don’t feel how small I am — but I feel that if a war came to threaten this, I would throw myself into space, over the city, and protect these buildings with my body.
Schwartz at Am. Thinker discusses. It's a funny piece. A quote:
What gives her the right to be happy, asks Wurzel? Palin, who is "not very thoughtful, not very bright," is so darned ordinary that she doesn't understand the horrors of American life. But Wurzel does, having first attracted attention with her New York Times bestseller chronicling the depravities visited upon her by the fruits of American exceptionalism. You see, Wurzel survived the horror of being raised on Manhattan's Upper West Side, the shame of enduring the nation's best private schools, the depravity of having parents who paid for summer camps and Harvard -- small wonder she plunged into "catatonic despair, masochism, and hysterical crying." Doesn't Palin know, Wurzel cries, that...America sucks? Karl Rove knows, Keith Olbermann and Kathleen Parker and Elliot Spitzer and Barack Obama know -- that's why they're smart.
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Ancient 
