There seems to be a concerted movement amongst the republican in name only commentators to get all warm and fuzzy over Obama and liberals as of late. For some the conversion has been a kind of October surprise, whereas others are evergreen. I devised a simple cocktail scale so that when you come across these authors you know how lightly to take their opinions.

No cocktail for you- these are the stubborn idealogues reliable die hards defenders of conservative principles, if not always the GOP.   The current king of the No Cocktail crowd is Stanley Kurtz, who has tirelessly explored Obama’s career and connections to ACORN, Fannie Mae, and William Ayers.  As I understand it he not only is uninvited to every press luncheon in the NYC - DC corridor, but he is forbidden from drinking cocktails altogether in a fatwah issued by King Obama.  Other notables include Thomas Sowell, John Derbyshire, Mark Steyn, Victor David Hanson and reliable GOP cheerleaders like Rush Limbaugh and Fox News.

One Cocktail.  These guys are pretty stalwart defenders of conservatism but often show restraint in order to maintain a higher profile and hopefully reach a larger audience.  Guys in this category are really helpful.  Ramesh Ponnuru will occasionally play cricket and share tea time with Fareed Zakaria, and Jonah Goldberg doesn’t write in the LA Times about drinking the blood of baby seals as we all know he does in private.  So they don’t give in too much ground.  Rich Lowry would have received a higher status on the cocktail scale had the Democratic party allowed Clinton to win since he was visibly pulling for her in the primary, but as it is he got bumped down.  Lowry’s three written manuscripts of the Clinton dynasty must now remain locked up in his hard drive until 2012.

Two Cocktails- Can’t we all get along?  These guys consider themselves principled conservatives, but only if conservatism were different or had a different name.  They are a lot like those girls who love a guy but feel that if they can train him not to pick his nose in public, or work such long hours and be more sensitive to their needs, he’d really be a catch.  Rod Dreher fits this mold perfectly.  The Consummate “Crunchy Conservative” wants a free market economy and supports traditional family values, and really digs home schooling, but golly gee, when those participants in a free market economy don’t want to provide government tax incentives for solar panel installation, well he just washes his hands of conservatives altogether and grabs his second cocktail.  David Frum, a former W speechwriter who must have had something to do with ‘compassionate conservatism’ has recently bumped up into this category with his dismissal of Sarah Palin (Kathleen Parker and George Will are here too).  Unfortunately for Frum because he wrote the “Axis of Evil” Speech his lifetime cocktail invitation quota is severely limited.

Three Cocktails - The turncoats- These are the Jumpin’ Jim Jeffords of the commentary world.  Christopher Buckley and Morton Kondracke are the current kings of the three cocktail land.  As with the New York Times editorial page, the three cocktail club wanted all of us Neaderthals to vote for a moderate republican like McCain and not any social conservatives.  Now that we’re stuck with McCain of course these guys twist the knife further and endorse Obama.  Membership is volatile here because you can only convert once, after which you must compete for space with the millions, and millions, of established liberal writers.  Good luck overstaying your welcome guys, you can bunk with Andrew Sullivan tonight.

Cocktail infinity - David Brooks.  He definitely gets the Nobel Prize for squishy Republicans.  A graduate of the Neville Chamberlain school of persuasion, there is no principle he won’t concede, no criticism too mild, and no illusory victory small enough for Mr. Brooks.  On the rare occasion Brooks criticized Barack Obama, he does so as if he feels obligated as the house goy of the NY Times, for example:

When you listen to his best speeches, you see a person who really could herald a new political era. But when you look into his actual policies, you often find a list of orthodox liberal programs that no centrist or moderate conservative would have any reason to support.
***
The question of the week is: Which camp is Barack Obama in?

You get the feeling that an Obama presidency and Pelosi-Reid legislature would at worst make Brooks sigh uncomfortably. Even this criticism was probably too much for Art Sulzberger, because one short week later Brooks states this:

God, Republicans are saps.
***
All I know for sure is that this (Obama) guy is no liberal goo-goo. Republicans keep calling him naïve. But naïve is the last word I’d use to describe Barack Obama. He’s the most effectively political creature we’ve seen in decades. Even Bill Clinton wasn’t smart enough to succeed in politics by pretending to renounce politics.

This was in the article supposedly critical of Obama. Brooks consistently saves his worst criticism for the GOP, and seems to have little interest in advancing any conservative principles through his writing. The trick Brooks must pull off is that he must occasionally write an article which may be construed as distinguishing him as a republican. These must be the hardest times in Brooks’ life. How does he do it? How does he, every three months or so, write an article that seems conservative enough to convince Republicans and conservatives that he is one of them, so he can spend the next three months writing glowingly about post-partisan Obama love, causing the GOP to pull their hair out constantly.

When Brooks first started at the NY Times, things weren’t so easy. For their first cocktail party, Maureen Down led him around the room wearing nothing but a spiked dog collar. Paul Krugman hid his glasses in the punchbowl, and Friedman incessantly lectured him on the importance of mixing metaphors. Over time David learned to distinguish between pomegranatinis and lycheetinis, and his pinky finger is constantly extended. Now his only punishment is he must constantly wear pink, but that is what you get when Mo Dowd picks out your wardrobe.

So, next time someone claims to have read some conservative touting the virtues of nationalized search engines or toilet paper quotas, ask your liberal friend about the writers ranking on the cocktail scale.

OKAY. How would you pronounce this as a child’s name : Le - a

Leah   ???? NO.
Lee - A???? NOPE.
Laya   ????  NO.
Lei    ????  Guess Again.
Are you resorting to tongue clicks yet??

It’s pronounced “Ledasha ” oh yes…you read it right.

When the mother was asked about the pronunciation of the name,
she said “the dash don’t be silent.”

I thought I’d post this for you guys since I’m sure you’ll get a huge laugh out of it

Happy New Year!

I’m going to interrupt the broadcast of the uninterrupted documentation of the perpetual decline of Western Civilization here at Logipundit to share this new recipe I basically came upon by accident. As we are currently impoverished, spaghetti is a pretty big staple at chez Broussard. My common recipe is simple:

1 lb. ground meat
12 oz. tomato paste
3 cups water
1 McCormick’s Thick and Zesty spaghetti sauce*
2 tbl oregano, 1 for meatballs, 1 for sauce
2 tbl basil, 1 for meatballs, 1 for sauce
2 cloves of garlic
1 tsp paprika for the meatballs
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 to 1 onion
1/2 lb cremini or button mushrooms.
1/4 cup parmesan

(*yes, I can replicate the McCormick’s flavor without it, but why should I? If you think I’m cheating, ask yourself if you ever been to a high end restaurant where they used canned mushrooms. I know I have.)

Brown the meatballs and onions, put everything in the slow cooker, go to sleep, wake up and voila!

Well, the other day we ran out of tomato paste, we only had one can. Fortunately, I had two aces up my sleeve. First, OSU honors graduate and soon to be grad student at MIT David Osher dropped off a bottle of Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon (Montes Alpha) to yours truly as a thank you gift. Second, I just picked up three bags of mushrooms at Whole Foods instead of the customary one. This is the new recipe.

1 lb. ground meat
6 oz. tomato paste****(key!)
1 McCormick’s Thick and Zesty spaghetti sauce
2 tbl oregano, 1 for meatballs, 1 for sauce
2 tbl basil, 1 for meatballs, 1 for sauce
2 cloves of garlic
1 tsp paprika for the meatballs
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 to 1 onion
1/2 lb cremini mushrooms
2 Giant portobello mushrooms
4 oz. Brown Beech mushrooms
1/4 cup Cabernet Sauvignon
Goat cheese to taste
(if you really want to hit a home run, throw about 2 oz. prosciutto in, but that’s optional)

Throw the mushrooms in the slow cooker and heat up while you brown your meatballs and onions. Let the mushrooms wilt a bit before putting the wine. Put your meatballs and onions in and put in your modest amount of tomato paste in with water. Throw your spices on top at the end. Bonus points for fresh oregano and basil in the sauce (I always used dried spices for meatballs, however). Also, I ran out of parmesan but happened to have goat cheese, this worked out perfectly.

The key was two things; I often use a lot of mushrooms but 12 oz. of tomato paste was overwhelming. Using half as much paste was pure addition by subtraction, the mushroom flavor was dominant. Instead of red, the sauce was a dark brown. Likewise, switching out the goat cheese for parmesan cut the sharpness out and allowed the mushrooms to shine. Beech mushrooms are optional but really match the wine perfectly. This could easily pass for a twenty dollar plate in a restaurant. Lastly, I didn’t use salt in this recipe, but the prosciutto is salty.

There it is, JohnnyB’s Serendipity Spaghetti Sauce. Gold level logimembers have access to thousands of recipes, and free financial advice. Just contact the editor with your CC# in the subject line and we’ll take care of the rest!

This story is making the rounds.

Money quote:

“It feels really good,” Jamison, of Pickensville, said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. “It’s a good accomplishment. I probably won’t ever kill anything else that big.”

Well…it appears that if Hillary becomes President, we’ll all have a place to go after all. A mere 20 light years away, a hop, skip, and a jump.

The cryptically named “The Spoof” has an article on the current Administration’s response.

Sister Earth-Financial Express

This from Reagan Gahagan, former Logipundit Contributor (sorry for the delay):

“My favorite April fool’s day prank was when I lived in Nashville and a local radio DJ announced that the Federal government had outlawed deer hunting and then took calls from pissed off rednecks all day long on the air. I thought that those people were going to kill someone!” Reagan Gahagan

“Here are 10 of the top April Fool’s Day pranks ever pulled off, as judged by the San Diego-based Museum of Hoaxes for their notoriety, absurdity, and number of people duped.

– In 1957, a BBC television show announced that thanks to a mild winter and the virtual elimination of the spaghetti weevil, Swiss farmers were enjoying a bumper spaghetti crop. Footage of Swiss farmers pulling strands of spaghetti from trees prompted a barrage of calls from people wanting to know how to grow their own spaghetti at home.

– In 1985, Sports Illustrated magazine published a story that a rookie baseball pitcher who could reportedly throw a ball at 270 kilometers per hour (168 miles per hour) was set to join the New York Mets. Finch was said to have mastered his skill — pitching significantly faster than anyone else has ever managed — in a Tibetan monastery. Mets fans’ celebrations were short-lived.

– Sweden in 1962 had only one television channel, which broadcast in black and white. The station’s technical expert appeared on the news to announce that thanks to a newly developed technology, viewers could convert their existing sets to receive color pictures by pulling a nylon stocking over the screen. In fact, they had to wait until 1970.

– In 1996, American fast-food chain Taco Bell announced that it had bought Philadelphia’s Liberty Bell, a historic symbol of American independence, from the federal government and was renaming it the Taco Liberty Bell.

Outraged citizens called to express their anger before Taco Bell revealed the hoax. Then-White House press secretary Mike McCurry was asked about the sale and said the Lincoln Memorial in Washington had also been sold and was to be renamed the Ford Lincoln Mercury Memorial after the automotive giant.

– In 1977, British newspaper The Guardian published a seven-page supplement for the 10th anniversary of San Serriffe, a small republic located in the Indian Ocean consisting of several semicolon-shaped islands. A series of articles described the geography and culture of the two main islands, named Upper Caisse and Lower Caisse.

– In 1992, US National Public Radio announced that
Richard Nixon was running for president again. His new campaign slogan was, “I didn’t do anything wrong, and I won’t do it again.” They even had clips of Nixon announcing his candidacy. Listeners flooded the show with calls expressing their outrage. Nixon’s voice actually turned out to be that of impersonator Rich Little.

– In 1998, a newsletter titled New Mexicans for Science and Reason carried an article that the state of Alabama had voted to change the value of pi from 3.14159 to the “Biblical value” of 3.0.

– Burger King, another American fast-food chain, published a full-page advertisement in USA Today in 1998 announcing the introduction of the “Left-Handed Whopper,” specially designed for the 32 million left-handed Americans. According to the advertisement, the new burger included the same ingredients as the original, but the condiments were rotated 180 degrees. The chain said it received thousands of requests for the new burger, as well as orders for the original “right-handed” version.

– Discover Magazine announced in 1995 that a highly respected biologist, Aprile Pazzo (Italian for April Fool), had discovered a new species in Antarctica: the hotheaded naked ice borer. The creatures were described as having bony plates on their heads that became burning hot, allowing the animals to bore through ice at high speed — a technique they used to hunt penguins.

– Noted British astronomer Patrick Moore announced on the radio in 1976 that at 9:47 am, a once-in-a-lifetime astronomical event, in which Pluto would pass behind Jupiter, would cause a gravitational alignment that would reduce the Earth’s gravity. Moore told listeners that if they jumped in the air at the exact moment of the planetary alignment, they would experience a floating sensation. Hundreds of people called in to report feeling the sensation.”

Enjoy. Happy Spring to everyone!

very funny !

Once all this snow melts our asses are in a sling!

Posted at 09:38 pm by Johnny B

	Posted by DC Offline @ 08/16/2006 09:50 PM PDT
	I’m trying to figure out what’s on the judge’s mind - the one that’s standing right behind the sheep’s posterior? Where was this picture taken? LOL

	Posted by Johnny @ 08/17/2006 03:47 AM PDT
	Hey E, this is at the Ohio state fair. The competition is the white faced ewes. I think the judge is checking the posture and ribs of the ewe here. He got behind 11 sheep and did this. This ewe was the winner. I’m sure the judge was thinking, “Who’s your daddy?”

	Posted by Scottie @ 08/17/2006 09:20 AM PDT
	pretty funny dude i’ll go with AIPAC !