No, You Are Not

     United States junior Senator from Indiana Mike Braun is running for Governor.  Like just about everyone else, but okay, fine, he's a career politician, running for office is what he does.

     His ads proudly proclaim he's an "outsider!"

     Yesirree, the U. S. Senate, they're a bunch of....outsiders?

     If the Senate was like any other workplace, the day those ads started airing, Senator Braun would have arrived to find his historic Senatorial desk had been relocated to the steps outside the building.*  As it is, the Senators have got too much gravitas and not nearly enough endurance for the exertion, and the desks themselves are too precious for horseplay.  But stop tryin' to buffalo me, buster -- if a Senator is on the outside, there's no inside left.
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* Fond memories of working as a cable TV line tech, in telephone poles and in muddy ditches.  We all carried hammers, to bash in the hardware that held our stuff to the poles and reseat loose climbing pegs, and if your co-workers noticed you "choked up" on the hammer handle, why, they'd helpfully saw off the portion you didn't use.  And the next time you pulled that hammer out of your tool pouch and decided you needed more leverage without looking closely, it'd escape your grasp and plummet down.  If you were lucky, you'd only need to put in for a new hammer.  If you'd parked your truck too close to the pole, a fair-sized ball peen hammer leaves quite a dent in the hood -- or hole in the windshield.
     Yes, this is immature BS, bordering on hazing, but the Senate could probably use a little of it.  It'll keep you aware of your limitations.

Spanish Fried Rice

     I needed to make some brunch and a check of the larder turned up a couple of versions of microwaveable rice, a small can of mild green chilis, a little bacon and some of the most amazing eggs--

     The eggs rate their own paragraph.  I usually buy the house brand from the local supermarket.  They've nearly always got free range extra-large on the shelf, typically with brown shells, priced within fifty cents of the "factory" white eggs. They've got strong shells and good dark-yellow yolks, signs that the chickens are probably eating a healthy diet.  Tamara's more adventuresome.  She has a knack for arriving when the grocery has run out of their own brand and she's liable to pick up unusual kinds.  She bought the last batch of eggs, which are free-range, cage-free and possibly running their own little chicken civilization somewhere, red in beak and claw, a terror to weeds, bugs and millet.  The "extra large" batch was a little assorted in size, one red-brown and eleven in various shades of blue-green, the latter probably from Araucana chickens or a related breed.  The shells are sturdy and the yolks, well.  About those yolks: They are a deep red-orange, some of the darkest egg yolks I've ever seen.  The eggs scramble up sunset orange instead of sunny yellow, and they taste great.  (By the way, the color of a hen's earlobes often predict what color eggs she will lay, though I don't know how that works for Easter egger chickens.)

     I fried the bacon, set it on paper toweling to drain and poured off the grease before sauteing the already-microwaved Spanish rice and then pushing it to the sides, adding the can of chilis and cooking them down a little before stirring the whole thing together and adding some dried white onion, parsley and cilantro.*  Once I was happy with it, I pushed it back to the sides and scrambled three eggs in the middle over high heat, mixed it all together, turned the heat down and snipped in the bacon.

     I had chopped Havarti cheese on mine.  Tam had hers plain.  It was good stuff.
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* The usual warning applies: If you have never had cilantro, don't experiment in a meal.  Have a taste of the stuff by itself.  It tastes "soapy" to a significant percentage of people and pleasant to most others.  The difference is genetic.  It's not like olives; it's not an acquired taste.  It's either palatable to you or it isn't and that's not going to change.

Wikiwander

     You may be relieved to know that although he could make a strong case for the throne, the most-likely candidate to be King of Hawaii instead had a decent run in state politics as a Republican, though he hasn't held elective office for quite some time.

     I'm pretty sure there won't be a Royal restoration in that state any time soon.

All Chevron, No Rocker

     The Chevron case is looking to be the next former U. S. Supreme Court decision to feel the present Court's axe.  Woo-hoo, some folks are thrilled: it's the end of the regulatory state! 

     Maybe.  The general thrust and effect of Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council was to let the government's subject matter experts interpret the laws Congress passed and make regulations about those subjects on which they were experts.  The courts were generally expected to defer to their expertise, barring some grave injustice.  Pull 'em out, and what you've got left are the politicians in Congress (mostly lawyers) and sitting judges (all lawyers) interpreting the laws and regulations, and what the majority of them are experts in, other than Law and Schmoozing, is Golf, with a sideline in Press Conferences.  What they don't know about, say, the health effects of tetraethyl lead in gasoline would (and did) fill a jail.

     While leaded gasoline is unlikely to come back -- and my MGB didn't much mind the lack -- the end of Roe v. Wade may (or may not) have a similar effect.  Given that our present Congress can't even manage to keep the government funded for more than a few months at a time, even at the cost of failing to contain Russian aggression, I'm not entirely sure that they can be counted on to do any better a job regulating artificial intelligence, private space travel or food safety; I'd rather Congress addressed the big ideas and left the details to the people who think about that stuff all day long.

     The United States Supreme Court might not agree with me.  Pundits are saying they probably don't.  Then we'll run the experiment at full scale in the real world, and see how that works out.  What could go wrong?

     Ineptitude is not a virtue.

Fancy Brunch?

     No, it's not fancy.  But it's darned good.  I have always kept a little canned meat in the panty, and from early in the pandemic, I made a point of maintaining several cans of chicken, tuna, corned beef and Spam®  on the shelf.

     They last a long time, but not forever.  You have to rotate the stock.  I've got more Spam® than anything and I've been thinking about what it might go with.  "Breakfast hash" with potatoes, eggs and diced canned meat is always good, but this morning I realized I'm down to one (1) egg.

     What I did have -- and I've been pondering it for a while -- was a microwavable pouch of "Tasty Bite"* brand Bombay potatoes.  This is good old ordinary diced potatoes in a mildly-spicy tomato sauce, with interesting chickpeas for good measure. The flavor palette is somewhere not quite between regular (mild) chili and Cincinnati chili, and I thought it would play well with Spam®.

     I diced and browned the canned meat, with a dash of McCormick* curry powder so it could learn the role, microwaved the Bombay potatoes, and mixed them in the skillet, using a tablespoonful of water to rinse out the bag.

     It smelled wonderful.  I scooped some into a bowl and had a taste: even better!  I invited Tam to have some "experimental brunch," and she arrived in the kitchen wondering.
     "What's in it?"
     "Spam, potatoes, tomato sauce..."
     "Any beans?"
     Those green chickpeas are impossible to deny. "Some chickpeas."
     "I'll have a little."
     She took her bowl and wandered off.  I added more to my bowl, covered the skillet and followed her to the office.  "So, is that stuff any good?"
     "It's tasty!  Is there any more?"
     There was, and between us, we nearly polished it off.

     Next time, I might soak and rinse the canned meat or use the low-sodium version.  I might also scramble a couple of eggs and mix them in.  It's plenty good made as described -- and given that the usual microwave pouch and can of meat have "best by" dates a year or more in the future, it'll keep for a rainy day treat.

     If you want it hotter, you could try the Hot & Spicy Spam® variant, or use hot curry powder.  You can even serve it over rice, rice and potatoes being a pretty common encounter in Indian food.
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* Why the brand names?  Spam's sui generis.  India's a big place, and has an amazing variety of cuisines. Indian foods sold in the U. S. are often adjusted to American preferences.  "Curry powder" in particular is highly variable from one brand to another, and pretty much an invention mimicking the mix of spices a skilled Indian cook might choose.  So here are the specific kinds I used, and you may find something else that suits you better.

Supper For A Snowy Day

     There's a chuck roast simmering under all those vegetables.  It came out tender and flavorful.

Stop Giving Them Air

     Just because some highly mockable edgelord type says something mockably antithetical to the norms of a free society, or looks like an idiot, or -- as is so often the case -- both, this does not oblige you to make a big deal of mocking it, with a link back to their original brain-dropping.

     If it's something that has to be seen to be believed -- and snickered at for awfulness -- then do a quick screen capture, share it, laugh and move on.  Don't feed 'em links.  Don't feed their quiveringly-needy egos.  Not even if they send you a nice statue for your city park.

     P.S.: "Psyop?"  If you haven't read Sefton Delmer's accounts of his WW II propaganda-war efforts (accounts sadly limited by the Official Secrets Act), then don't try to tell me what is and isn't a "psyop."  But here's a hint: all those TV and online news/opinion hosts don't know, either.

Falling For The Heroic Narrative

     For some politicians, it's all kayfabe: facade.  After years of attacking John McCain, Arizona's Kari Lake made conciliatory remarks towards Meghan McCain, who's not having any of it.

     The contrast here is between someone who thinks it's "just politics" and someone who takes it seriously.

     We're constantly treated to the spectacle of Ivy League scholars in office and running for office who claim to be "just plain folks" and assure us of their disdain for "elites."  Yeah, no.  Most of 'em are the sons and daughters of millionaires, "self-made" successes who had only a little of the family money or an inside track at a top law firm to jump-start their careers.

     I was thinking about how reading Robert A. Heinlein novels made me a bit of a sucker for the rags-to-riches narrative when it occurred to me: with very few exceptions, even his plucky heroes are living pretty well or better.  Max in Starman Jones is dirt-poor, the Lermers in Farmer In The Sky aren't much better off, and from there it's a string of middle-class types (Rod Walker in Tunnel in the Sky, Johnny Rico of Starship Troopers, Don Harvey in Between Planets, all three kids in Rocket Ship Galileo) -- Podkayne and Clarke's parents are pillars of their community, Clifford Russell's father is some kind of retired diplomat/spy/polysci prof "married to his best student" and "Thorby" of Citizen Of The Galaxy is a misplaced gazillionaire.  None of them are frauds or fakes,* and I suppose J. Random "just folks" Politicians really do like barbecues, cheap beer and hanging out with the likes of you and me -- but not, perhaps, nearly as much as they let on.

     Those books were inspiring.  The politicians, not so much.  RAH was out to entertain you first and foremost and if he gave you some positive notions in the process, well and good, but it was a bonus.  Politics might be "show business for ugly people," but it's not supposed to be primarily entertainment.  The stakes are real.  The kayfabe isn't.

     We fall for it at our peril.
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* Okay, Max Jones kind of is, but he also kind of isn't, since he's the real deal when it comes to knowing his trade.

George Remus

     I was looking up some information on Cincinnati, Ohio's interesting Eden Park when I stumbled across George Remus: pharmacist, attorney, bootlegger.  You know those over-the-top films about the lurid adventures of organized criminals, double-crossing spouses and crooked law enforcement during Prohibition?  Here's the real deal.

     If you made up his life for a book, you'd be accused of straining credulity.

     P.S., Eden Park has a copy of Rome's Capitoline Wolf statue -- stolen in 2022, replaced in 2023.  The old one was a gift in 1931 from, of all people, Benito Mussolini.  The new one was funded by a group of Italian-Americans.  Heck of a place, that park.

General Advice

      Sometimes -- not every time, but sometimes -- the reason your life is a shitstorm is because everywhere you go, you sling shit.

The Big Melt

     Possibly the snow melt will begin today.  The forecast is calling for a high of 45˚F.  The snow and icicles I see out the window augurs skepticism, but it may happen.  If not today, tomorrow, when we're supposed to hit 56˚.

     Not sure what follows that, but at this point rivers of boiling mud wouldn't surprise me.

TMI

     In the course of looking up information about a piece of popular music, I followed one link to another to an article about the daughter of a couple of motion-picture actors, which included information about their personal lives that had long seemed likely -- and I found I didn't care.  They were married a long time, did a lot of charity work and were generally well-regarded both within their profession and by the wider world.

     Lurid details aside, they were kind to children and animals, apparently did not cheat on their taxes more than anyone else, raised several kids who managed, at least, to stay out of the headlines: why should I pry?  Both of them are dead now, anyway.

     Our appetite for gossip has increased along with the growth of the Internet, and our general urge to get ourselves good and irked runs all the way across the political and social spectrum.  Other than a boost in blood pressure and heart rate, what's the use of it?  I'm saving my outrage for genuine criminality and conspicuous rudeness.  I don't care if you're a holy roller or a flaming libertine, as long as you don't drive drunk and refrain from praying over people who don't want to be prayed over.

     We spend too much time poking at other people's sore spots, and then being offended when they complain.  How about cultivating the ability to let the other weirdos just be weird, and expecting them to do the same for you?  And trust me, if you're a human being, you're weird.  You might not see it, but somebody does.  It's better for everyone if they're not out to outlaw your weirdness, or warming up the tar and gathering feathers, and for you to refrain likewise.