Somethin For The Big Game

Spicy Apricot Chicken Wings

Ingredients:



2 pounds chicken wings

1 cup (12 oz.) Apricot Preserves

2 tablespoons cider vinegar

1-2 teaspoons hot pepper sauce

1 teaspoon chili powder

1 clove garlic, minced

Directions:

Cut off and discard chicken wings tips. Cut each chicken wing in half at the joint. Place in plastic bag; set aside.

Combine preserves, vinegar, hot pepper sauce (2 teaspoons for extra hot sauce), chili powder and garlic. Pour 1/2 cup sauce in plastic bag with chicken; seal bag and marinate at least 1 hour or overnight. Refrigerate remaining sauce, to use for dipping when served.

Place chicken wings on preheated grill (reserve marinade). Cook for 25 to 30 minutes; brushing chicken with reserved marinade during cooking.

Discard marinade. Serve with remaining refrigerated sauce.

Yield: 8 to 10 servings

AND

Cowboy Caviar

1 (11 ounces) can corn, drained
2 (15 ounces) cans black-eyed peas, rinsed and drained
2 avocados
1 bunch green onions, chopped
1/2 cup fresh cilantro, chopped
4-5 roma tomatoes, diced
3 tablespoons red wine vinegar
2 teaspoons Tabasco sauce, to taste
1 teaspoon cracked black pepper, to taste
salt, to taste

1. Combine all ingredients except the avocado.
2. Allow to sit in the refrigerator for several hours, or overnight.
3. Peel and dice the avocados just before serving.
4. Add avocado to remaing ingredients and stir gently to combine.
5. Serve with tortilla chips.
6. Adjust amounts of any ingredients to your preferred taste

It'll Warm Your Innerds

If you really want to make this good, then add a big pat of butter to the top before sealin the foil.. When I fix this, the Mrs, is ALWAYS waitin in the kitchen and we just open the foil packet and pig out at the counter.. It dont even make it to the plate..

The worcestershire makes it a little "dark" for me, so I usually use Soy sauce in mine.. And I have a feelin that a splash of wine in this would be a good addition..



4
sheets (12x18-inches each) Reynolds Wrap® Everyday® Heavy Duty Aluminum Foil

1
pound boneless beef sirloin steak, 1/2-inch thick

1/2
teaspoon garlic powder

1/4
to 1/2 teaspoon pepper

4
medium red potatoes, cut in bite-size pieces

1
small red or green bell pepper, cut in strips

1
can (10 3/4 oz.) cream of mushroom soup, undiluted

1 1/2
tablespoons Worcestershire sauce


PREHEAT oven to 450°F or preheat grill to medium-high. Cut steak lengthwise in half and then crosswise into 1/8" thick strips. Sprinkle beef with garlic powder and pepper. Combine beef, potatoes, red pepper, soup and Worcestershire sauce.

CENTER one-fourth of mixture on each sheet of Reynolds Wrap Everyday Heavy Duty Aluminum Foil.

BRING up foil sides. Double fold top and ends to seal packet, leaving room for heat circulation inside. Repeat to make four packets.

BAKE 25 to 30 minutes on a cookie sheet in oven OR

GRILL 15 to 18 minutes in covered grill.

I Worry Myself Sometimes

Go check out this link: http://www.defensetech.org/archives/002975.html then come back and read the rest here.. I understand that MamaBear is a Sci-Fi Groupie !! She should get a kick out of this.. I wonder how long it will be before this is the Subject on Coast-To-Coast AM with Art and George ??

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Now just suppose that they do actually get this system up and runnin soon.. I have the PEEEEERFECT way to test it..

You know Ol Act-Mad in Iran has this idea that the 12th Dirtbag is gonna come back up out of that well and bring about Armagedon.. Well, suppose we take a portable one of these systems to Iran and set it up so that it makes it look like the 12th Dirtbag comes up out of the well and does somethin crazy that sends all those goofy-ass Idol Worshippers in Iran over the fuggin edge !! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Do ya'll remember the Miller Lite commercials that were on some years ago where they had celebs that kept takin masks off only to reveal another celeb underneath ?? Usin that approach, have Mo comin out of the well only to pull off a mask and then be somebody like Cindy Sheehan, or G.W. hisself, and have Yassar AraFlat or Osma kissin G.W.'s feet !!

Of coarse, my goofy Redneck ass, would have somebody like Jeff Foxworthy or Larry The Cable Guy comin out and sayin "WHAT ? You actually expected it to be MO ?" ..

SHEEEEE IT !! I could have some MAJOR fun with one of these thangs, folks !!

Can We Do This Again Next Year ??

Thru many trials and tribulations of the past year, we have arrived at a time to give Thanks for our Fortunes again..

Tho my worries have been many, my blessins have been plentiful, too.. Most of us only have to look as far as the FUNERALS in the paper to see how much better off we are than some.. My family has been lucky to only have lost one of us this year.. We lost my Dad's Brother this year.. But we were blessed that he was taken before he suffered too much.. He was missed this year, just as those that passed before were also missed..

But I havent heard of any of my family that spent the day in the hospital this year, but that is usual for us.. I also didnt have anyone of my family to go visit in the nursin home either.. Thats just a coupla reasons that I'm most grateful for this year..

I prepared a feast for at least 20 people, but I usually do that so that if I find someone that aint able to be with their family or dont have one, can come sit and give Thanks with us.. Again this year, like last, there was no one to find.. Even tho it was kinda sad not to have company, it is nice to know that everybody had someone to be with..

Ever since the Mrs. lost her Dad about 7 years ago, this day has always been sad for her.. But not this year.. Like me, her Dad did their cookin on Holidays and I have the last few years learned the thangs not to do that will bring back those memories that make her sad.. I didnt wear my apron this year, for one.. I have a big "K-BOB's" apron I usually wear and so did her Dad.. Last year she came in the kitchen and saw me with it on and it set her off.. And too, this year her son in North Carolina called several times for tips on cookin his dinner and she was happy for gettin to talk to him.. He is usually busy at the sports bar with buddies watchin the games.. And friends called and kept her busy and got her mind of it..

I've made many new friends this year, and few enemies.. I thank this may be a "first" !! But the year aint over yet.. snicker snicker But the fact that I have met some wonderful folks this year is the reason for that I'm sure, and I thank the best ones are the ones who come to visit me here.. I count you in my Blessins too..

My Daughter took her oath and became a member of the U.S. Navy Monday.. At least for the next 4 years I wont have to worry about her goin from one job to another without any goals or objectives.. But her decision didnt have any pushes from me.. Actually, I tried to talk her out of it.. I didnt try very hard, so I'm sure she see saw right thru it.. She had thought about it for a while and had learned all she could from the folks who are there now and seems real determined to give it her best shot.. We have even started our Inter-Service Rivalry.. I call her my Little Squid and she calls me her Big Zoomie !! And I'll support her with all I've got..

Hopefully, if The Good Lord is willin, I'll be able to come back here next year and count even more Blessins to ya'll..

All Systems "GO"

The COUNTDOWN has begun.. I took a long afternoon nap, and have had a big supper, and am soon gonna go out and have a mug of my brew and a ceegar, then I start my cookin and preparin for tomoro..

I'll toil till around midnite or shortly after and take another nap, then begin again about 4 or 5 A.M. .. I'll get my peach cobbler made tonite and the ham seasoned and in the pan and ready to put in the oven in the mornin, and I'll get my hens(2) marinated and soakin tonite and ready for the rotisierre in the mornin, and get the ingredients for my bread and rolls sifted and sorted and ready to put together to rise and bake in the mid-mornin.. Seems that the Mrs. promised her friends that I would make them some of my fresh rolls !! Wadnt that nice of her ?? And I'll make 2 skillets of cornbread and and get all the stuff chopped up for the dressin tonite too..

Well, I better get to that ceegar and get ready to start the process.. I'm gonna plug in the Christmas Lights on the outside of the house tonite too.. At least while I sit out there.. Lots of traffic on the streets tonite..

Maybe when I take a break later, I'll come back and give an update on how thangs are goin..

Happy Thanksgivin Folks..

I'm Gonna Boycott McCain

I dont care if it winds up bein McCain vs The Hildebeast, I'm still not gonna vote for John McCain !!

The GOP can come up with a better choice than him, or I'll vote for somebody else or just not vote.. In fact, I'd vote for Joe Lieberman before I'd vote for McCain.. The man has just pissed me off that much and that many times.. And donr give any of that "votin record" shit either.. He has been AGAINST many policies in public that he has voted FOR in Conference.. He has gathered support to kill many actions and at the last minute changed his mind after convincin others to oppose the measure..

Would you trust somebody that convinced others to jump off a buildin with em and then he changes his mind after seein their ass splattered all over the ground ?? Well, thats just what he has been doin..

I dont trust anybody like that, and I damn sure dont trust him.. He is just too much like a Dimmocrat for me to vote for.. He watches polls and looks at public swing to make his assessment on thangs, and a person that needs to do that dont deserve to be in charge of the Greatest Nation on Earth..

The person I'm gonna vote for is gonna have to have a RECORD of what they are for and what they are against, long before they get their name on the ballot.. Wishy-Washy and Maybe This and Maybe That just dont cut it..

And I dont see anybody in the Wings that appeals to me either.. But if somebody knows of one that has slipped by me, then let me know..

A MUST Read

Terror: Iran's Chief Export

From Somalia and al-Qaeda to Hamas and American Hizballah Cells
By Steve Schippert

One might ask: “Why should the average American bother reading yet another lengthy report on the threat posed by Iran?” Or, more to the point: “Why should I care? Why should I be concerned? Iran is in the Middle East and seems bent on Israel.”

The answer is because Iran’s Hizballah has active terrorist cells in the United States. This, coupled with Iran’s role as the Central Banker of International Terrorism, should compel the average American to take Iranian threats seriously – such as Ahmadinejad’s recent open Jihad ultimatum to Europe. Created by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and responsible for (among other attacks) the bombing of the US Marine Corps barracks in Beirut which killed nearly 300, Hizballah’s presence in the United States is well documented. While Iran openly states that the ‘Zionist Regime’ should be “wiped off the map” and pledges to do just that – as do Hamas and others – even Israel is referred to as the ‘Little Satan’ while America remains the ‘Great Satan.’



Read the rest here:

http://analysis.threatswatch.org/2006/11/terror-irans-chief-export/

comment: Some people just still dont comprehend the threat we face here in America.. And one day the EU is gonna get ANOTHER rude awakenin too !!

Its PAST time for talk and action is badly needed.. TODAY.. Just like with Iraq, we will diddle and daddle and put-off the job of neutralizin an enemy till they have dispersed their war fightin and killin potential to many locations.. I have NO DOUBTS that as soon as Iran gets enuff nukular material processed there, that they will export centrifuges to Somalia, that is if Al Q has transformed it into a terrorist stronghold.. But Somalia is not the only goal they are after.. A LARGE portion of Africa is on the project table for Al Q..

With plenty of oil production and uranium there, all they will need is food, and that will be the drivin factor in takin over the Breadbasket of the World, the U.S. ..

But with each passin day its only gonna get harder and costlier to do the inevitable.. They get stronger each day, and we wait.. They get bigger each day, and we wait.. They get more confident each day, and we wait.. But, there is such as thang as waitin too long !!

Its Embarrassin !!

I've been sittin here for over the last week WITH MY MOUTH HANGIN OPEN .. Not since Jimmah Cawtah have I seen such utter chaos and bumblin goin on by our Leaders..

Most people just take this as "chest beatin" and "pissin contests", but I have a different take on all this BULLSHIT..

Now, just imagine if we had another MAJOR ATTACK on our Homeland durin all this.. The (R)s have more-or-less already become submissive to the (D)s, and the (D)s are still as undecided on Security as they have been for the past 6 years.. Rumsfeld already has both feet out the door and only still likes gettin his ass out too to be completely gone and THAT is what he now has his mind on, and not what WOULD NEED to be done in such a case..

We are VULNERABLE, folks !! And I guess ya'll heard about the Dallas guy that was caught in Detroit with a bag full of cash and computer files full of WMD Plans !! And the fact that this guy was headed to Phoenix tells me that our next attack might just be on the West Coast, instead of the East..

In fact, the west is more Energy strapped than the east.. It wouldnt take too many oil refineries in the west gettin shut down to put them in dire straights.. We've also got a lot of our Defense Industry out in that part of the Country that has HUGE energy demands, not to mention that the Shippin Industry would be greatly impaired if their fuel supply was interrupted..

I dont know about ya'll, but I really dont have all that much confidence in the Homeland Security Dept. .. They have had too many people change jobs and too many people that are mostly worried about their money for me to thank that they would be up to the task of what would be needed should the SHTF..

WE. ARE. NOT. READY.. And that just aint right for it bein this long since 9-11-01 !!

And if you thank all I can do is take the LIBERAL approach and not do nothin but bitch about the situation, then you would be gravely wrong.. I'm gonna give ya'll an idea, and if you thank I'm right, then I want you to pass the idea along.. OK ??

I would like to see the National Guard numbers DOUBLED !! RECRUITED .. TRAINED.. SUPPLIED.. ARMED..

They caint be shipped to other countries, so they would be easy to recruit.. I feel that lots more people would like to do their DUTY, but just dont feel that Iraq is the place that they want to do it..

The number of Active Duty recruits has been down so there should be room for Guard recruits to get trainin as soon as they can be put into the system.. They go thru the same Basic as Regulars..

Supplyin em would be the biggest hurdle.. The (D)s are dead-set on robbin the Military for the money to install their Socialist Programs.. The American Public would just have to DEMAND that there not be any more Bridges To Nowhere and that ALL Pork Projects be put on hold..

There are enuff NEW weapons and weapons systems comin online now that the new stuff could be sent to The Stan and Iraq for the FRONT LINE Troops and the old stuff be sent home to the Guard and Reserves..

Durin Katrina and the aftermath, there were many times that some OFFICIAL was bitchin about all the Reserves bein in Iraq and blamed Bush for it.. Its been over a year now and I aint heard a whisper about em UPPIN the number of the Guard or Reserves yet !! Still thank they have YOUR best interests in mind ??

The Illegals are tryin to get more and LARGER protests organized and are plannin on havin more street riots this time and bein more violent than before.. Dont suppose that the (D)s bein elected to power is the reason, do you ?? Maybe they thank that if they just get a little louder and tear up a little more shit and attack a few more cops that they can twist the (D)s arms a little more and get that AMNESTY that the (D)s have been proposin and were campaignin on.. They wouldnt be able to strong-arm us if we had a bigger contingent of GUARD TROOPS to put in the streets with em.. Just a thought.. You be thankin bout it too.. But dont thank too long !! Time is precious here..

Meet Mark Steyn

U.S. must prove it's a staying power

November 12, 2006
BY MARK STEYN Sun-Times Columnist

On the radio a couple of weeks ago, Hugh Hewitt suggested to me the terrorists might try to pull a Spain on the U.S. elections. You'll recall (though evidently many Americans don't) that in 2004 hundreds of commuters were slaughtered in multiple train bombings in Madrid. The Spaniards responded with a huge street demonstration of supposed solidarity with the dead, all teary passivity and signs saying "Basta!" -- "Enough!" By which they meant not "enough!" of these murderers but "enough!" of the government of Prime Minister Aznar, and of Bush and Blair, and troops in Iraq. A couple of days later, they voted in a socialist government, which immediately withdrew Spanish forces from the Middle East. A profitable couple of hours' work for the jihad.
I said to Hugh I didn't think that would happen this time round. The enemy aren't a bunch of simpleton Pushtun yakherds, but relatively sophisticated at least in their understanding of us. We're all infidels, but not all infidels crack the same way. If they'd done a Spain -- blown up a bunch of subway cars in New York or vaporized the Empire State Building -- they'd have re-awoken the primal anger of September 2001. With another mound of corpses piled sky-high, the electorate would have stampeded into the Republican column and demanded the U.S. fly somewhere and bomb someone.

The jihad crowd know that. So instead they employed a craftier strategy. Their view of America is roughly that of the British historian Niall Ferguson -- that the Great Satan is the first superpower with ADHD. They reasoned that if you could subject Americans to the drip-drip-drip of remorseless water torture in the deserts of Mesopotamia -- a couple of deaths here, a market bombing there, cars burning, smoke over the city on the evening news, day after day after day, and ratcheted up a notch or two for the weeks before the election -- you could grind down enough of the electorate and persuade them to vote like Spaniards, without even realizing it. And it worked. You can rationalize what happened on Tuesday in the context of previous sixth-year elections -- 1986, 1958, 1938, yada yada -- but that's not how it was seen around the world, either in the chancelleries of Europe, where they're dancing conga lines, or in the caves of the Hindu Kush, where they would also be dancing conga lines if Mullah Omar hadn't made it a beheading offense. And, as if to confirm that Tuesday wasn't merely 1986 or 1938, the president responded to the results by firing the Cabinet officer most closely identified with the prosecution of the war and replacing him with a man associated with James Baker, Brent Scowcroft and the other "stability" fetishists of the unreal realpolitik crowd.

Whether or not Rumsfeld should have been tossed overboard long ago, he certainly shouldn't have been tossed on Wednesday morning. For one thing, it's a startlingly brazen confirmation of the politicization of the war, and a particularly unworthy one: It's difficult to conceive of any more public diminution of a noble cause than to make its leadership contingent on Lincoln Chafee's Senate seat. The president's firing of Rumsfeld was small and graceless.

Still, we are all Spaniards now. The incoming speaker says Iraq is not a war to be won but a problem to be solved. The incoming defense secretary belongs to a commission charged with doing just that. A nostalgic boomer columnist in the Boston Globe argues that honor requires the United States to "accept defeat," as it did in Vietnam. Didn't work out so swell for the natives, but to hell with them.

What does it mean when the world's hyperpower, responsible for 40 percent of the planet's military spending, decides that it cannot withstand a guerrilla war with historically low casualties against a ragbag of local insurgents and imported terrorists? You can call it "redeployment" or "exit strategy" or "peace with honor" but, by the time it's announced on al-Jazeera, you can pretty much bet that whatever official euphemism was agreed on back in Washington will have been lost in translation. Likewise, when it's announced on "Good Morning Pyongyang" and the Khartoum Network and, come to that, the BBC.

For the rest of the world, the Iraq war isn't about Iraq; it's about America, and American will. I'm told that deep in the bowels of the Pentagon there are strategists wargaming for the big showdown with China circa 2030/2040. Well, it's steady work, I guess. But, as things stand, by the time China's powerful enough to challenge the United States it won't need to. Meanwhile, the guys who are challenging us right now -- in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea and elsewhere -- are regarded by the American electorate like a reality show we're bored with. Sorry, we don't want to stick around to see if we win; we'd rather vote ourselves off the island.

Two weeks ago, you may remember, I reported on a meeting with the president, in which I'd asked him the following: "You say you need to be on the offense all the time and stay on the offense. Isn't the problem that the American people were solidly behind this when you went in and you toppled the Taliban, when you go in and you topple Saddam. But when it just seems to be a kind of thankless semi-colonial policing defensive operation with no end . . . I mean, where is the offense in this?"

On Tuesday, the national security vote evaporated, and, without it, what's left for the GOP? Congressional Republicans wound up running on the worst of all worlds -- big bloated porked-up entitlements-a-go-go government at home and a fainthearted tentative policing operation abroad. As it happens, my new book argues for the opposite: small lean efficient government at home and muscular assertiveness abroad. It does a superb job, if I do say so myself, of connecting war and foreign policy with the domestic issues. Of course, it doesn't have to be that superb if the GOP's incoherent inversion is the only alternative on offer.

As it is, we're in a very dark place right now. It has been a long time since America unambiguously won a war, and to choose to lose Iraq would be an act of such parochial self-indulgence that the American moment would not endure, and would not deserve to. Europe is becoming semi-Muslim, Third World basket-case states are going nuclear, and, for all that 40 percent of planetary military spending, America can't muster the will to take on pipsqueak enemies. We think we can just call off the game early, and go back home and watch TV.

It doesn't work like that. Whatever it started out as, Iraq is a test of American seriousness. And, if the Great Satan can't win in Vietnam or Iraq, where can it win? That's how China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Venezuela and a whole lot of others look at it. "These Colors Don't Run" is a fine T-shirt slogan, but in reality these colors have spent 40 years running from the jungles of Southeast Asia, the helicopters in the Persian desert, the streets of Mogadishu. ... To add the sands of Mesopotamia to the list will be an act of weakness from which America will never recover.

comment: I dont know what I can say to you about Mark Steyn that you havent already gotten from his writin above.. I thank I'm pretty safe in sayin that he makes a much better writer than he would have made a doctor !! Can you just imagine his "bedside manner" ?? "I'm sorry to tell you Mr. Smith, that you have terminal cancer and only have 6 months to live, but look on the bright side, now you dont have to worry about shoppin for a new car" !!

I'm also pretty sure that Steyn will never be accused of tryin to make friends out of everybody, but that he is tryin to maybe get people to thank of thangs that they may not have wanted to otherwise..

What he says sometimes hurts, but aint that what TRUTH sometimes does ?? TRUTH and REALITY can be bitter pills at times, but wouldnt it be better if we had less people that avoided it ?? But Steyn is one of those that tries to make it just that much harder to avoid or laugh-off the truth.. And I'm NOT LAUGHIN either !!

His site is now in the blogroll along with some others I have added.. He is featured on the NRO site as well as many others that have some good articles of the day.. And if you JUST HAVE to get news from the Left Side, Real Clear Politics is about as good a place as any.. So look over the new blog sites and enjoy and I'll have some more soon..

Just The Facts Ma'am: Hanson on Steyn

November 8, 2006
The New Appeasement
by Victor Davis Hanson
The New Criterion

A review of Mark Steyn’s America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It. (Regnery, 2006, 256 pp.)

The wider English-reading public discovered the genius of Mark Steyn after September 11, and for two reasons other than the fact that his amazing prolificacy did not come at the expense of quality.

First, he is funny in an understated way; indeed, he may be the most interesting satirist now writing in English. Consider a few quips from his latest volume about Westerners’ neurotic propensity to worry that we aren’t accommodating enough when we are already way beyond 1930s appeasement. “The corpulent snorer in the La-Z-Boy recliner may have a beautifully waxed Ferrari in the garage, but he hates having to take it out on the potholed roads. Still, it looks mighty nice in the driveway when he washes it;” “The U.S. military hands each jihadist his complimentary copy of the Koran as delicately as white-gloved butlers bringing His Lordship the Times of London.”

Second, in this time of crisis in the Western world, Steyn is singularly unwavering and unaffected both by criticism and the blandishments of triangulation. Read Steyn each week of this long war, and there is no chance whatsoever that one will be surprised by a syrupy retraction, disguised as a “change of heart” or a “crisis of confidence” — those well-known embarrassing moments when a pundit suddenly learns he’s off the Washington A-list gravy train, and desperately wishes to write anything to get back on it.

We live in an era when many of the neoconservatives — some who called for the removal of Saddam Hussein well before September 11 — have by now either recanted their support for the President, or concluded that the effort in Iraq was not very good because it has proven less than perfect.

Rarely mentioned, much less appreciated, is the low probability that another American president would have removed Saddam, or stayed around to secure Iraq, in the face of such criticism. In addition, many traditional conservatives supported the war, but, like liberal hawks, now have gravitated to the “It was my perfect three-year war, and your lousy three-year occupation” school of opportunistic hindsight.

Not Steyn. Like a handful of others — Christopher Hitchens, Charles Krauthammer, and the late Oriana Fallaci — he has never indulged in the usual litany of postbellum faultfinding: “Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld must resign”; “we must go into Iran or Syria or else I give up on the President”; “you put too few troops in Iraq to have allowed my brilliant ideas of reconstruction to work.”

Instead, day in and day out, on the op-ed pages of the British, Australian, Canadian, and American daily papers, Steyn has brought home the simple fact of this war: whatever mistakes we have made are not fatal if we keep our heads. As he puts it near the end of the book, the problem is not merely that we are only employing a fraction of our physical power: “This book isn’t an argument for more war, more bombing, or more killing, but for more will.”

In his multifaceted homage to American exceptionalism, Steyn focuses on three themes to underscore the critical, but lonely role of the United States: the demographic catastrophe in Europe, the ill-preparedness of liberal socialism to resist the horrific nature of our primordial enemies, and the dangerous wages of Western complacency and self-loathing.

For Steyn, Europe is already doomed — “too enfeebled to resist its remorseless transformation into Eurabia.” European women are having 1.4 children on average; Muslim immigrants 3.5 — and more still in their home countries of the Middle East. Not only will Europe increasingly mortgage its democracies to the popular will of unassimilated Islamic immigrants, but the European Union will find itself shrinking in comparison to the growing populations in Turkey, the Middle East, and across the Mediterranean: “By the next century, German will be spoken only at Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, and Goering’s Monday night poker game in Hell.” Don’t hold out any hope of greater fertility in the supposedly traditional societies of southern Europe amid Catholic Spain and Italy, or orthodox Greece: they are depopulating at rates even more rapidly than in liberal Scandinavia or Germany.

But why this demographic suicide — and why now?

It is not just due to the old twin banes of bounty and license, since wealthier North Americans are managing to increase their populations. Instead, statist economies in Europe stifle economic growth, and encourage an enervating prolonged adolescence, in which kids stay at home, unable to buy a home, marry, or raise three children without sacrificing their perceived good life.

In the post-Cold War era, as Steyn points out, the United States subsidizes continental defense, so money is freed for more liberal European entitlements. And in turn, an aging population is insidiously assured that the socialist nanny state, not children and grandchildren, will care for the growing number of sterile Euros in their dotage — with the help of plenty of unassimilated others (thus “Eutopia evolves into Eurabia”).

The obsession with the pampered life also arises check-by-jowl with militant secularism: if there is no God, no eternal soul, no hereafter predicated on conduct in the here and now, then the European present, in the most sensual sense — whether on the beaches of Rhodes or in the drug dens of Amsterdam — is all that matters. In this new religion of worshipping youth’s fleeting moments, such things as dirty diapers and 2 a.m. feeding simply get in the way of drink, drug, sloth, and firm flesh. And then in Steyn’s morality tale, poor complacent Europe at the millennium finally met its antithesis — a lean, fertile, zealous, deeply religious tribal folk, energized by Middle East petro-wealth, that interprets postmodern Western liberality as decadence and derides freely offered magnanimity as appeasement born out of our spiritual weakness.

Second, Steyn focuses on “the unsustainability of the advanced Western social-democratic states,” especially in light of their Islamic enemies. And he is fearless in reminding us of the nature of the terrorists. They are not the touchy multicultural “Other.” Nor are they merely “different,” much less victims of sexism, racism, and colonialism from an evil West according to the tenets of the “dull opiate of multiculturalism.” For the most part, radical Islam is fascistic, an all-inclusive hate-the-West club, mired in self-contradiction, pathological lying, and perennial victimization. It attracts the educated, the playboy, the wealthy, almost anyone from the Middle East who can’t figure out why the purity of Islam can’t quite produce iPods and skyscrapers — objects of desire that soon foster envy from, and self-hatred for, that very desire.

Where else other than in the writing of Mark Steyn might we be reminded that the inconvenient truth of Islamist savagery: row on row of the corpses of Russian children in Beslan; Mariam Farahat, the mother of three suicide murders, who jump-starts a political career from the grassroots Palestinian adulation of her martyred, Jew-killing sons: “She and her Hamas colleagues were elected because this is who the Palestinian people are, and this is what they believe.” And do we remember the even earlier gruesome murder of the Jordanian Prime Minister, whose still dying body was soon descended on by one of his Dracula-like terrorist assassins, eager to lick the blood oozing from his wounds? Critics would denigrate such anecdotes as sensationalism, but Steyn produces them on nearly every page to demonstrate their ubiquity, to show that something really has gone terribly wrong with the Islamic Middle East — and perhaps worse still in a West that keeps quiet about it all.

So Steyn’s third theme is this most privileged generation in the history of the West — and surely the least appreciative of what we inherited from others. We are suffering “civilization exhaustion.” It may not be that we are simply stupid in the lengths that we go to appease the Islamists, but rather that we are deathly afraid of them. Of course, our appeasement is not because we are weak — indeed, the economy and military of the United States are stronger than ever. Rather we are petrified that the use of massive force against such enemies will not only cost us blood and treasure, and perhaps a notch or two off the good life, but also will shatter all our easy falsities about who we are — refined children of the Enlightenment whose logic and largess surely can uplift misguided others who are only in need of our reason and tolerance.

Steyn is merciless to these self-appointed moralists, safe inside the citadel of Western freedom, economic propriety, and the United States military, who, from the very ramparts they damn, praise the enemy ramming the gates below. On Robert Fisk’s pathetic appeal to release his friend Daniel Pearl on grounds that beheading is counterproductive to the otherwise noble cause of Islamism in Afghanistan, Steyn notes:

Somehow the apologists keep missing the point: the story did get out. Pearl’s severed head is the message. That’s why they filmed the decapitation, released it on video, circulated it through the bazaars and madrassas and distributed it worldwide via the Internet. It was a huge hit. The message got out very effectively.

Steyn is not, however, all sarcasm and fury. In a concluding chapter, he outlines a multifaceted ten-point strategy of dealing with radical Islam, from embracing women’s rights in the Middle East to marginalizing the pernicious U.N., E.U., and other gutless transcontinental organizations that in their cowardice trash the United States because it politely defers to their impotence in a way that the Islamic fascists most certainly do not.

Steyn ends this welcome book with a clarion call to ignore cheap criticism and press on with the fight against barbarity, for our civilization itself is at stake, and no one but America can save it: “We have been shirking too long, and that’s unworthy of a great civilization. To see off the new Dark Ages will be tough and demanding. The alternative will be worse.”

Amen to that.

©2006 Victor Davis Hanson

comment: This summer Mark Steyn took Rush Limbaugh's place on the radio airwaves while Rush indulged in a short vacation.. This was my first time to hear Steyn, and he was definitely "on his game" !!

Normally, ferrin accents turn me off like a turd in a swimmin pool, but the words of Mark Steyn impressed me so much that I ignored the accent and concentrated on what he was sayin, and I loved what he was sayin !!

At the time, I thought Steyn was a fly-in, fly-out type that was just here to stir the masses ire and poke a stick in a few eyeballs and then be gone.. Well, it looks like Steyn plans on bein around a while and I plan on keepin an eye on him..

At this point, when support for savin our bacon is on a downward spiral(actually a nosedive) , I'll take all the help we can get, no matter what kinda fuggin accent they have !!

I take for granted that most of you that come here have access to these Big Dogs of Thought and read them already, so I dont put em in my blogroll.. I dont have many folks that go to my blogroll links, so I havent added all that many.. If ya'll want to see more of the sites I visit and read just say so.. I visit almost all my blogroll daily plus many many more..

Victor Davis Hanson and Mark Steyn both put the evidence out there for us and all we have to do is look at it.. So if you ever have the urge to get the info without my Redneck attitude thrown in, look these guys up.. And Steyn is a pure RIOT to listen to on the air !!

How Does It Feel, America ??

I dont care what anybody says, life as we have known it is gone and a new World Order is in the makin..

The U.S. has now entered into a DEFENSIVE POSTURE, and the rest of the West will soon follow.. America has now defered its OFFENSIVE ROLE in the War On Terror and now is gonna be a "reactionary" force and not a "pro-active" force..

Instead of huntin down the Arhabi and capturin or killin em wherever we find em, we will sit and wait for em to attack the Homeland again.. Just like we were doin before 9-11-01.. We have now officially returned to the 9-10-01 mentality !!

Before, it has been Iraq and Afghanistan that has been the dirtbag magnet, now it will be New York City, D.C., Philly, Baltimore, Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, Denver, San Diego, Seattle, and Kansas City..

I've heard that Sec. Rumsfeld has now resigned.. GOOD !! I thank him from the bottom of my heart for the superb job he has done and wish him all my best.. I say good becuase he is now the wrong man for the job of Sec. Defense.. Rummy is an Offensive Administrator and now we will need a Defensive Administrator.. I understand that Gates is the new man in the spot.. I dont like it one bit either !! I'd give my left nut to have Tommy Franks take the job.. He knows how to take orders and get the job done, and he also knows how to kick some hips when he needs to, too..

I thank that if there was a "speakin" fly on the wall in the Oval Office, that it would tell us that G.W. made a compromise with Pelosi that if Rummy stepped down and Gates got to replace him, that Pelosi wouldnt turn the dogs loose on G.W. !!

With the new House and at least a reduced power in the Senate if not a new Senate also, it is gonna be retreat on many levels.. Illegal immigration reform is gonna be an unspoken topic, as far as they can manage to keep it unspoken without a total revolt by the Masses.. The border fence will die with a dreadful moan from the populace.. Gun Ownwership Rights are gonna be on the agenda of the liberls before the paint dries on their new offices too.. Just like Chaleton Hesston said "out of my cold dead hand" !! I wonder how many people took that thought into consideration when they voted yesterday ??

And now to the subject that makes me sick to my stomach to even contemplate.. Our Troops are gonna be treated worse than a redheaded stepkid !! ANY kind of appropriations that come up for the military is gonna get shot down quicker than a lawyer on a bird hunt with VP Cheney !! Troop morale is gonna be lower than it was back in the day of Jimmah Cawtah and Desert 1 and the 444 Days in Iran.. Recruitin Goals and Re-Enlistments Goals are gonna go unmet.. Who would want to serve with Pelosi and Crew in control of their lives ?? Not me.. Not again !!

And here is the KICKER.. If we withdrew from Iraq and Afghanistan now, it wouldnt break my heart.. The way we will be dictated to by the House and Senate to fight the war now is not anythang I will be able to support.. The military is gonna have to carry-on on a shoestring budget, while domestic causes and gimme programs suck up every dollar the liberals can squeeze out of any bill that comes thru the legislature, and pork-barrel projects and higher taxes to pay for em will be the new drivin force that keeps the liberals burnin the midnite oil and makin em work long hours.. Shame they couldnt have put that much energy into the War On Terror or supportin our Troops !!

But I caint help but feel that thangs are gonna get bad for our country now.. How bad, and how soon is just gonna have to be seen.. Its now obvious to me that the majority of our countrymen have no urge for us to protect ourselves and are willin to persue their own personal goals to detriment of the rest of us.. The strong and economicaly secure county that G.W. has established in the past 6 years is gonna go on a slide downhill like we havent seen since the Great Depression.. The "markers" are all there and it dont take a lot of diggin to find em.. The fact that the boom has been on such a thin string, is a great testiment to the wonderful job that G.W. has done, but the thinness is now gettin thinner by the day.. This could become a very long and cold winter very easily.. By the end of the day Friday, it should be pretty clear what is gonna be in store for us for the next 2 years, and then maybe even longer.. But the drums beatin in the distance dont help me keep much hope alive.. I'll just have to wait and see what the new Speaker of the House, Custer, I mean Pelosi, has to say next !!

Anticipation

I tried to lay down and take a nap for a few minutes, but just couldnt get myself wound down enuff.. The pre-election jitters has me keyed-up tonite.. But it dont take a lot to get me feelin itchy tho.. I used to get like this before one of my Pee Wee Baseball games that I coached even..

I went to my VA Dr. and got some pills for it a few years ago and took em for a while, but quit em after a few months.. The damned thangs would kick me on my ass and I dont like to be like that when I sleep.. I still sleep with one eye open most of the time..

I'm kinda like the old guard dog that even when he is asleep, you can still see his ears move around at the slightest sound.. When Miss Minnie Pearl was still little, she slept in the bed with me and and when she heard somethin she would pick her head up and that would stir me awake.. I could tell by the direction she was lookin and listenin as to the whereabouts of her attention..

But I have a Parts Store a block west of me and they have a supply truck that delivers at nite.. They show up about midnite and unload and then the driver usually takes a nap till about 4, and he leaves the motor runnin, which aggravates me.. After he leaves, a supply truck delivers to the auto body shop across the street at about 5:00 or 5:30, and then they deliver to the GM dealership next door at about 6.. And the nurse behind me goes to work at 2:30 and her truck has loud pipes on it, and if she is ridin with somebody else, they just stop and honk till she comes out.. It seems that I dont ever get a full, undisturbed nites sleep anymore ..

I'm just worried about this election tho.. I dont want the (D)'s in the navigators seat.. That would be like givin a bunch of kids the keys to the car and handin em a bottle of Jack to drink while drivin around in rush hour traffic..

The victories in this war are too few and far between to piss off and pass up.. Any gains in ground we have gotten so far will be lost overnite and the incentive to make new gains will be gone..

I just hate to see my/our country go where its gonna go with the (D)'s in charge.. Its gonna make me feel like my mom is the town slut !! Thats also how a buddy of mine in the Service back in the 70's said he felt when he came back from Viet Nam..

I dont know how I'm gonna be able to handle it if our Troops come back from Iraq like that.. I just hope the "GOOD GUYS" win tomoro so that I'll never have to find out !!

My Old Vinyl

I did a little revertin into my past today.. I dug in the shop and pulled out an old turntable.. Brought it into the house and plugged it into my sound system and fired that mother up !!!

I took a trip back in time to when I used to sit and listen to my old LPs.. I started with my ballroom music, like Glen Miller and Tommy Dorsey, then went to dance hall with Bob Wills, Johnnie Lee Wills, Mickey Gilley, Gene Watson, and Mel Tillis.. From there I went to the Honky Tonk.. I got to listen to some Jerry Lee Lewis, Merle Travis, Bocephus, and Merle Haggard.. After that I put on some Juke Joint tunes.. Skynyrd, Ronnie Van Zant, and some other stuff mixed in..

I have a pretty good collection of LPs tho, and they cover a bunch of ground.. Today I got to listen to some music that I just dont get to hear anywhere on the radio anymore..

CDs are nice for their quality and ease of transition, but those old scratchy, skippin LPs are somethin to reflect on..

I remember when I lived in west Texas.. I had a neighbor that would buy all the whiskey and beer if I would just bring my music and player over to his house and play that stuff for him .. I thank he was born around 1918 and he just didnt appreciate the music that was around back in the late '70's and '80's.. But he appreciated mine !! How else can you explain lookin at an old man and seein him with a grin from ear-to-ear and tears runnin down his cheeks ?? His wife, Mrs. Ethel, would sit and slap her knee and holler right along with the rest of us, and yell, "PLAY IT AGAIN BILL" !! Mrs. Ethel was in the final stages of the ravages of breast cancer then, and to see at least one of her last "good" days was somethin I'll never forget.. Just glad I could be part of it and maybe help to bring it to her.. They will both be forever missed by me..

Old memories and old music seem to go hand-in-hand, dont they ?? Kinda like Mickey Gilley's song, "The Song That We First Made Love To".. Or maybe Gary Stewart's, "An Empty Glass" ?? Ever been sittin in a bar at closin time and heard that one ??

I dont like today's music, and I dont like a lot of today's musicians either.. The Dixie Chix are the first to come to mind.. I get tired of hearin the people singin today's songs that are so young that their voices havent finished changin yet.. They are supposed to be tellin life's story in music, and yet they aint even dry behind the ears and really dont have any life stories to tell, other than how they got beat up in Junior High or how the nanny punished em for pissin their clothes..

But as long as my old turntable holds out, I'll just keep playin the old stuff and rememberin old friends and old times and wish it could be like that again..

Any old music I can play to thank about ya'll and times past that you remember to music ?? Who and what do ya'll like to listen to ??

That Damn Time Change

Well, we set the clocks back the other day.. I know I'm supposed to also change the batteries in the smoke alarms, but with a wood stove that sets em off all the time, I took down the alarms last year..

But I have another ritual I perform when the time changes.. I get my guns out and strip and clean and oil em..

My house is drafty and we live here on a busy street that has a street sweeper that comes by fairly often and fogs dust into the house.. Its impossible to keep the dust out of this house, and my guns catch hell from it..

I dont keep my guns in a closet or cabinet either.. Bedside my bed, under the mattress, and beside the dresser, and behind the door.. They catch plenty of dust and time changes are about the limit to how long they can go between cleanins..

Time change is when I like to go shootin too.. I'll go check and see if my scope is still on target, altho I havent had to make an adjustment to it in about 10 years now, and that was when I was shootin at some quart oil cans at about 300 yards.. Not bad shootin with a .30 .30, if I say so myself.. I like to go shootin THEN clean em and put em back up.. Saves cleanin em and then shootin em then cleanin em again..

I had planned on goin shootin this weekend but looks like the weather is gonna go all to shit and rain and be cold.. Supposed to hover around 30 degrees and rain.. Rain ?? At 30 degrees ?? Hmmmmmmmmmmm ..

I usually go shootin at the farm which is just outside the City Limits.. There is a EMT/Bambalance Station just on the edge of town, and it never fails that when I go firin off the big gun, that some of the EMT's dont come down to see what all the noise is about.. My farm is open pasture and the back of it is lined with big oak trees that bounce the noise back toward the road and toward town.. I also shoot high powered cartridges too, so it does make a helluva racket !!

The Mrs. hates to go with me shootin but dont like me goin by myself.. I guess she is afraid I might get into trouble or somethin if I went by myself.. You reckon ?? So I give her warnin that I'm gonna shoot off a few rounds and she gets in the car and rolls the windows up and turns up the radio so that she wont jump out of her skin when I pull the trigger.. She still has to remind herself not to drank anythang while I'm shootin or she will spill it all over herself..

I used to like to do neat shit while shootin.. I would line up old washin machines or fridges and see how many I could get a bullet to go thru.. Or sit low and shoot off the tops of the tall grass or shoot thru the trunk of a small tree and see how many shots it took to cut the tree down.. There used to be a crow problem out there.. Like I said, USED TO BE..

But we'll have a nice weekend or some nice days again before long and I'll get to do my shootin and gun cleanin and then I'll wait for the time to change again..

Do ya'll have as hard a time as we do gettin used to the time change ?? It gets the Kids internal clock all screwed up !! She takes meds 3 times a day and the last one is right before bedtime at around 8:30.. She now wants to take her meds and go to bed at 7:30.. Hell, I can understand it and sympathize with her tho, cause I've been wakin up around 4 or 4:30 wantin my mornin cup of coffee !! I had a cup of coffee at around 5 this mornin and then went back to bed.. Speakin of bed, that where I need to be now.. G'nite..

I Take It Back !!

I said I was gonna put politics on hold till after the elections next week, BUT, I didnt know John Kerry was gonna open his mouth and change feet this week !!

Sorry, H. , but Kerry has just trumped your Black Bean Soup, but I promise that I'm gonna get it to you soon..

Now, on to that sorry excuse for a Senator, representin Military Troops from the State of Massechusetts.. Excuse me, but its the Junior Senator, not that OTHER sorry excuse..

But this is not entirely about Kerry tho.. Its also about all the flamin liberals out there that are supportin what he said.. What did he say, you ask ?? He more or less called OUR Military in Iraq, the equivelent of "NIGGERS" !! He has now gone from callin the Troops ravagers, rapists, mutilators, murderers, terrorists, organized criminals and thugs, to outright NIGGERS !! And the TV, Radio, Print Media, and Internet are full of others that support this Piece-of-Shit, and what he said !!

Even the Left, The Liberals, and the Moonbats ALL recognize what he said, and still believe what he said is right and TRUE.. NOBODY, except Kerry himself, are denyin what the intent of his words were, yet they still back him up..

Aint there enuff RESPECTABLE people in his state that are tired of his shit, to KICK HIS WORTHLESS ASS OUT OF OFFICE ?? I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that I thank the people of France are more America-Friendly, than the people of Mass. !! Its a good thang that I dont know anybody or have any friends there, cause there is no doubt in my mind that their e-mail box would be stuffed with HATE MAIL from me today.. And if the people of Minnesota elect Keith Ellison, they also can expect some "nasty-grams" from me too !!

And I noticed that Kerry has CUT and RUN back home now !! He'd better get used to stayin home a lot now, cause it aint gonna be safe for him to go out in public much anymore.. This may have been the LAST STRAW, and all I can say is, ITS ABOUT GOTDAM TIME !!