Mostly Cajun, All American and Opinionated

1494 - The first Mass in the New World is celebrated at La Isabela, Hispaniola. Nasty ol’ oppressors went on to eradicate the peaceful religions of the Native Americans that involved quaint customs like human sacrifice.

1838 - Samuel Morse first successfully tests the electrical telegraph.

1974 - In response to the 1973 energy crisis, daylight saving time commences nearly four months early in the United States.

2001 - In one of the closest Presidential elections in U.S. history, George W. Bush was finally declared the winner of the bitterly contested 2000 Presidential elections more then five weeks after the election due to the disputed Florida ballots. The Left whines for eight years. The Left whines about THIS for eight years.

The first REAL day of 2009. People walking around the office that I haven’t seen for at least a couple of weeks.

Talking about starting the process to get projects together for 2010.

Folks seem to be in pretty good humor, but then this bunch is always in pretty good humor.

We finally have clearing skies after a dreary drippy day. I had to do a 200-mile road trip today and I started out this morning pretty early for a Sunday and i’m just now getting back, and it’s finally time for the Name Game.

Today’s list is short. We don’t have the regular list from the Sunday paper. No hospitals listed there. I do, however, have the big ad from the Saturday paper where one hospital puts names and pictures from its maternity section. That’s a short list, though.

Anyway, here we go:

Rae L. & Kendrick A. have a new baby girl. they figure that extra capital letters will help her in the future, so the tag her with ShaRae LaDawn.

Lauren M. & Christopher J. show us that they know tryndeigh when the see it, and they name their baby girl Addisyn Lyn. Using a “y” instead of an “o” means they didn’t REALLY name their baby girl somebody else’s “son”.

Lori N & Bear (!) T. named their baby boy Malachi Evereonne Jesus. So, you tell me. The middle name. Do YOU read it and come up with “Everyone” or is it just me?

Christian W. & Larry R. spices up the handle on their new daughter, little A’Layah DeShae.

Quatina (!) & Terril A. give their baby three names, presenting us with little Queston Trez Charles.

Cheryl and Theophile D. present their baby girl, little Dream Marie.

Pamela & Brian D. show their new daughter, little Brynaisha Keymira.

Danette & Bryan M. pop trendi on us with their baby, little Brysley Kate.

Kristen & Darrell C. presnt their new daughter, little Rylanne Elise.

And that’s where we end it this week.

1847 - Samuel Colt sells his first revolver pistol to the United States government.

1863 - 4 wheeled roller skates patented by James Plimpton of New York. Anybody remember “skate keys”?

1885 - The first successful appendectomy is performed by William W. Grant on Mary Gartside. Before this, you just died. Slowly and painfully.

1925 - French psychologist Emil Coue’ brings his self-esteem therapy to US “Every day in every way I am getting better and better”. Yeah! “I’m getting better and better” while I’m letting my country slide down the tubes.

1951 - During Korean conflict, Chinese forces recapture Seoul. We take it back on March 14. Seoul has cahaged hands four times in less than a year. It went from a population of 1.2 million to 200,000 and was essentially leveled. Made post-Katrina New Orleans look like an urban paradise. Today? wow!

1958 - Sputnik 1 falls to Earth from its orbit. It went up October 4, 1957. That’s a whole four months.

1965 - United States President Lyndon B. Johnson proclaims his “Great Society” during his State of the Union address. If you want to see how great it is, look at the areas that receive the most government dollars.

1968 - Duck hunter accidentally shoots endangered whooping crane in Texas. Tastes like a fishier version of spotted owl.

1971 - Congressional Black Caucus organizes. Functions include acting outraged, protecting crooked politicians and demanding money to get themselves re-elected. They have succeeded mightily.

1989 - Second Gulf of Sidra incident: a pair of Libyan MiG-23 “Floggers” are shot down by a pair of US Navy F-14 Tomcats during an air-to-air confrontation.

2007 - The 110th United States Congress convenes, electing Nancy Pelosi as the first female Speaker of the House in U.S. history. And we’re entering a new period of growth and prosperity because of it.

Israel has launched into a ground offensive into Gaza.

Israeli Ground Forces Cross Border Into Gaza Strip

Saturday, January 03, 2009

DEVELOPING: Israeli ground forces began moving across the border into the northern Gaza Strip in an escalation late Saturday night of the weeklong offensive against Hamas.

Israeli defense officials told FOX News that 20 Hamas militants had been killed in the incursion so far.

Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement saying that the new offensive was the “second phase” of its battle to disable Hamas while pledging to protect Palestinian civilians. Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Israel’s campaign “won’t be easy and it won’t be short.”

Nope. The “easy” way would be to heed the voice of “world opinion” and just lay down and bare their throats to the Muslim extremist knives. Hamas has stated in public documents that one of their goals is the destruction of the nation of Israel and Jews. Hamas has control of Gaza. Hamas has used Gaza as a training base of terrorists. Hamas has launched indiscriminate rocket attacks at targets within Israel. Israel has a DUTY to its citizens to protect them. Therefore, Israel MUST go into Gaza, including a ground assault.

“We do not seek war but we will not abandon our citizens to the ongoing Hamas attacks,” Barak said in a televised address.

Pretty much the way I see it…

Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip had intensified Saturday evening, setting the stage for the incursion that comes despite international efforts to secure a cease-fire and avert a ground war between Israel and Hamas.

Israel launched the aerial campaign a week ago in a bid to halt weeks of intensifying Palestinian rocket fire from Gaza. The offensive has dealt a heavy blow to Hamas, but failed to halt the rocket fire.

Israel has caught quite a few of Hamas’ top people, but being a “top person” in Hamas isn’t necessarily a matter of superior education and management skills. You need to be a particularly vocal whack-job, and Hamas in specific and the Islamist movement in general is sufeit with mouthy whack-jobs.

No amount of “international efforts” is going to stop Hamas from doing exactly what they state is a goal of their organization: the destruction of Israel. If any of their “leaders” is foolish enough to acquiesce to “international efforts”, then there are plenty of radicals to step in and take up the torch. WE saw that with that homosexual sh*thead Yassir Arafat. When he softened his tone on the world stage, there were a herd of radicals ready to step in and actively and vocally “lead” the “Palestinians” in their continuing terror campaigns.

The aim of the ground offensive “is to make a dramatic change in the circumstances on the ground, whereby Israeli citizens on our side of the border will be able to resume living normally,” Israeli Welfare Minister Isaac Herzog told FOX News.

“Right now we’ve started a ground operation, which is aimed at preventing missile launchings against Israel from various sites in Gaza Strip,” Herzog said. “It may take time Hamas will try to show in their arrogant way that they are still around, and our aim is to protect our citizens like any normal society would do.”

No government worth its salt is going to do any less.

Into the night Saturday, heavy Israeli artillery fire hit east of Gaza City, in locations were Hamas fighters were deployed. The artillery shells were apparently intended to detonate Hamas explosive devices and mines planted along the border area before troops marched in.

Gun battles could be heard, as troops crossed the border into Gaza. Local TV networks broadcast images of troops marching single file. The troops were also backed by helicopter gunships.

Aside from our own folks, I cannot think of a more capable military on the planet than the Israelis. They have the technology. They have the training. And they have the motivation. I wouldn’t want to pick a fight with them.

But nobody ever accused Hamas of having common sense:

An SMS message sent by Hamas’ military wing, Izzedine al-Qassam, said that “the Zionists started approaching the trap which our fighters prepared for them.

Yeah, yeah, yeah… They’re gonna beat the Israeli fist bloody with their Hamas nose…

Hamas said it also broadcast a Hebrew message on Israeli military radio frequencies promising to kill and kidnap the Israeli soldiers.

“Be prepared for a unique surprise, you will be either killed or kidnapped and will suffer mental illness from the horrors we will show you,” the message said.

I have no doubt that the Israelis will see horrors as Hamas uses their typical tactic of hiding behind women and children as they fight. But that’s all Hamas has. There’s no way they could come close to winning the fight. All they can do is parade a willing international media through the blood of their own people and try to make Israel to be the aggressor.

. . .

From 2001 through May 2008, Hamas launched more than 3,000 Qassam rockets and 2,500 mortar attacks against Israeli targets, and on Friday, exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal said from Damascus that his group was prepared for an invasion and may attempt to abduct soldiers, as it has in the past.

This is in direct contravention of the Geneva Convention, but nobody seems to think that Hamas can even READ the thing, much less have a thought about applying it to their war.

And so the story goes. I hope that Israel does a particularly complete job of fighting their enemy.

1823 - Stephen F. Austin receives a grant of land in Texas from the government of Mexico. Clearly, Mexico would have benefitted from tighter immigration controls.

1834 - The government of Mexico imprisons Stephen F. Austin in Mexico City. This disturbs many Texans.

1924 - English explorer Howard Carter discovers the sarcophagus of Tutankhamen in the Valley of the Kings, near Luxor, Egypt, providing fodder for a great Steve Martin bit.

1925 - Benito Mussolini announces he is taking dictatorial powers over Italy. Twenty years later they’ll be hanging his naked carcass from a lamp-post. This is a suitable finish for many politicians.

1959 - Alaska is admitted as the 49th U.S. State.

1961 - The SL-1, a government-run reactor near Idaho Falls, Idaho, leaks radiation, killing three workers. These are the ONLY nuclear reactor fatalities in the US.

1977 - Apple Computer is incorporated. Two guys working out of a garage…

Big finance.

Big Three automakers

Now the steel industry.

And Newpapers.

Everybody is going to Washington and exclaiming that they’re oging under and if they don’t get some government help, that’ll be the end of life as we know it.

And Congress is buying it. Five hundred-odd fools who think that not only is government the answer, but they can haul unlimited and unimaginable amounts of money out of the public coffers to ‘rescue’ the failure du jour.

Am I like the only one in the universe wh thinks this is like needing to fill up a swimming pool and deciding that the way to do it is to fill a bucket at one end and walk around to the other end and dump it in?

(I want to see Big Oil get in line for a bailout myself. Why not?)

1492 - Reconquista: the emirate of Granada, the last Moorish stronghold in Spain, surrenders.

1890 - Record 19′2″ alligator shot in Louisiana by E A McIlhenny.

1905 - Russo-Japanese War: The Russian garrison surrenders at Port Arthur, China. “The Japanese mis-read the reasons for this event and get cocky. In forty years their perspective will be corrected.

1974 - President Richard Nixon signs a bill lowering the maximum U.S. speed limit to 55 MPH in order to conserve gasoline during an OPEC embargo. It is used as a form of revenue enhancement nationwide and develops a nation full of scoff-laws.

1999 - A brutal snowstorm smashes into the Midwestern United States, causing 14 inches (359 mm) of snow in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and 19 inches (487 mm) in Chicago, where temperatures plunge to -13°F (-25°C); 68 deaths are reported. Da*n global warming!

I’ve gleaned through the last year’s baby names and picked out thirty of the best. Why thirty? Because that’s what the poll code site limits me to.

So YOU get to look down the list and pick one for Name of the Year. I will post the winner in a week.

So I’m sitting in the office on the Algerian project several years ago. I’m the electrical power guy. We have another electrical engineer, the instrumentation and controls guy. He’s from Jamaica, and he sounds like it. He’s a chubby black guy, great sense of humor (a necessity on this job), intelligent (real engineer) and we’re talking about home cooking, he and I and the electrical & instrumentation superintendent, a southeast Texas Cajun/redneck. I bring up red beans and rice, and the Jamaican engineer says, “that sounds just like the “rice and peas” we ate at home.” And the superintendent says, “yeah, and my grandma used to make hoppin’ john with blackeyed peas”.

And that, folks, is a great truth of cooking. folks on the lower end of the economic scale the world around know that good healthy food comes easily if you have a legume (beans) and a starch (rice). You get to change or add an ingredient or two based on what’s common in your area.

Jamaican rice and peas recipes tend to have coconut milk or cream. That’s not a surprise since Jamaica is a tropical island and they have coconut trees growing all over the place. Pull back into the States, though, and our ingredients remain as simple and common as the rural south or the piney woods of Texas and you end up with onions like everybody grew and smoked pork, because almost every farm had a smokehouse and if you didn’t, the guy up the road did and you swapped some of what you did for some of what HE did.

Anyway, it’s New Year’s Day, and heritage calls. On this day the tradition here is a blackeyed pea dish and a cabbage dish, both of which are supposed to start the year with good fortune. Of course, we’ll also start the year with prodigious amounts of intestinal gas, but outside of pretentious social settings, that’s not a bad thing.

For the “cabbage” side of things, I’m having smothered cabbage and sausage. That’s a recipe I posted previously.

for the blackeyed peas, though, I felt like some hoppin’ John.

So here’s a recipe.

Let’s talk about recipes like this. This is a guideline from the days when mommas and grannies went into kitchens and cooked without recipes on the counter to go by. When we’re talking about these folks, they made meals out of what was there. There wasn’t any “honey, go to the grocery and get me some Romanian paprika. I’m out and the recipe says I need it” because in my grandma’s day, the grocery was a day’s ride into town. He spices and seasonings were things that could stand sitting on a shelf or that grew in her own garden. Major ingredients were things that kept without a lot of refrigeration, hence dried foods like beans and rice and smoked meats. Fresh meat was usually a chicken whose demise occurred the morning of serving, or chunks of a recently butchered hog or cow. You can make good meals with ingredients like this. They did.

Hoppin’ john

Ingredients:

• 2 cups dried black-eyed peas
• cold water to cook peas
• 1 pound lean slab bacon or 1 pound meaty ham hocks or half a pound of good smoked sausage or leftover ham. Bacon, sausage or ham should be cut up into smallish pieces. If you use a real ham hock, you can pull it out at the end of cooking, cool it and cur the the good stuff away from the bone and return it to the dish for serving.
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
• 4 or more cups water or chicken broth or a combination of both.
• 2 cups uncooked long-grain white rice
• optional garlic. Hey! I LIKE garlic. It’s good for you.
• Salt and black pepper to taste. Do yourself a favor and get a good pepper grinder and grind your black pepper fresh. it DOES make a difference.

Procedure:
Sort through the dried peas, looking for non-pea debris. Modern dried beans aren’t as prone as the stuff of bygone years, but still, a small pebble with NOT tenderize during the cooking of this dish and you don’t want to find it with a molar.

After you’ve picked the peas over, rinse them with a couple of rinses of cold water. Discard stuff that floats. Put peas and water the rest of the ingredients except the rice into a pot and bring it to a boil. Once boiling, drop the heat to a low simmer and cook for an hour or so. The beans should be plump and softish. If you didn’t do the “low simmer” thing and boiled instead, many of your peas will burst leaving you with a perfectly edible but slightly less visually appealing dish.

Drain the liquid from the peas into a measuring cup. return this to the peas along with enough more water (or chicken stock) to make up four cups. Add the rice. Return to boil and then turn back down to a simmer for 20-25 minutes. the rice should soak up all the excess liquid. This isn’t going to be a soup, folks.

When the rice is done, soft all the way through, the dish is done. Serve with hot sauce, salt and pepper and maybe some chopped green onions for your guests to add to their plates as needed.

And leftovers (if there are any) are great the next day.

1772 - The first traveler’s cheques, which can be used in 90 European cities, go on sale in London.

1804 - French rule ends in Haiti. Haiti becomes the first black republic and first independent country in the West Indies, and even today it remains a glistening paradise.

1888 - Birthday of John Cantius Garand, inventor of the U.S. Rifle, CALIBER .30, M1, commonly known by the name of its maker, the Garand., called by General George S. Patton “”In my opinion, the M1 Rifle is the greatest battle implement ever devised.” Oddly, JCG is Canadian. He passed away February 16, 1974.

1928 - 1st US air-conditioned office building opens in San Antonio, Texas. They need it.

1939 - William Hewlett and David Packard found Hewlett-Packard.

1959 - Fulgencio Batista, president of Cuba, is overthrown by Fidel Castro’s forces during the Cuban Revolution, and even today it remains a glistening paradise.

1983 - The ARPANET officially changes to using the Internet Protocol, creating the Internet. Algore smiles.

From the warped perspective of the keeper of this humble little blog:

January: Started off the year with a bunch of dimmocrat party politics. Who, from the vantage point of January 2008, could have seen us electing that empty-shirt stooge, Barack Hussein Obama? I honestly thought that Hillary would shred him. Remind me not to leave my present career for a position of political prognosticator. I was on the road a bit auditing some of my 26 compressor stations.

February: More presidential politics. I watched the republican party heading toward picking perhaps the weakest of its candidates. Because my current big project is not proceeding well, I dredge up an story from another project in Another visit to the brotherhood of shared misery….

March: AS Israelis are bombing Hamas targets in Gaza as I write this, in March I wrote of the plight of the little Israeli town of Sderot and a Hamas rocket hitting a school. Hillary is still going tooth and claw with Obama and I **REALLY** didn’t think she’d lose. And we had a lot of fun with Hillary’s story about dodging sniper fire in Bosnia.

April: I get a new laptop at work. A little blow-up shuts down one of my stations. I got the first of quite few links to the New York Times website. You get a post about more than you ever wanted to know about high voltage circuit breakers. And you get a recipe for spaghetti alla carbonara.

May: We looked at the disappearance of Lake Peigneur in one bad day in Louisiana. You get a recipe for pasta alla puttanesca (pasta, whorehouse-style). We look at a bit of the foolishness around ethanol fule. Hillary and Obama are still at it…

June: “Red is port, green is starboard“. We look at dimmocrat plans for Big Oil.

July: There’s a recipe for “baked ziti“. The demise of a copper thief in Britain starts a transatlantic discussion that lasts a couple of weeks. With gas at the $4 mark, a bright idea resurfaces. We find George Bush creating strippers. We look at the local employment picture.

August: Another dumba*s tries to steal copper. We do Hurricane Edouard. We look at some stupidity in education. And we do Hurricane Gustav.

September: We finish Hurricane Gustav and do some emergency work. We survive Hurricane Ike. A couple of reports come in about Hurricane Gustav shelters.

October: We reach a milestone in our big project at work. We learns some hurricane lessons. A rant on jobs and licensing appears. Here’s yet another deep swim into electrical power geekery.

November: More deep power geekery. The unthinkable happens. Boudreaux quits fishing. We get a recipe for that messhall classic, S.O.S. I discuss the auto bailout. I lose 7000 horsepower to a squirrel. A friend misses the Mumbai massacre by a week. Master Blogger Kim du Toit shuts down.

December: The job gives me some environmental training and you get a rant about it. We look at how “community organization” works in Zimbabwe. Louisiana elected a congressman of Vietnamese origin and ousts a crook at the same time. Illinois pushes Louisiana out of “most corrupt state” slot. I miss a day’s work with good reason. Israel fights back.

And that was the year from here…

To all my friends who come by and visit, I wish you a happy and prosperous New Year in spite of the current financial and political climate.