Butter a metal loaf pan. Mix 1 1/3 cups of coarse yellow cornmeal, 1 cup of flour, 1/3 cup of sugar, 2 teaspoons baking powder, and a pinch of salt in a large bowl.

In a separate bowl, combine 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons buttermilk, 9 tablespoons melted butter, and one beaten extra-large egg. Add this to the dry ingredients. Stir with a wooden spoon until well blended. Let it sit for 15 minutes.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Pour the batter into the loaf pan. Bake about 40 minutes. Let it rest in the pan for 5 minutes then remove from the pan and let it cool on a rack.

Tags: recipes & food by Jessica Alfreds
No Comments »

I recently returned from a four-day road-trip (with my nephew Noah and his parents, traveling separately) to some of the Civil War battlefields. It’s a pilgrimage I’ve made more than once over the years, a way of embracing both nature and history. (Those blood-drenched meadows look terrific in the spring.) Done right, it can almost feel like time-travel.

Confederate cemetery at Appomattox

[Read more →]

Tags: education, ends & odd, race & culture, terror & war, travel & foreign lands by Jeff Scheuer
No Comments »

In the most recent issue of Action Comics, the fictional superhero character Superman, who flies around in a blue leotard with red underwear on the outside and a big red cape, renounces his US citizenship.

The key scene takes place in “The Incident,” a short story in Action Comics #900 written by David S. Goyer with art by Miguel Sepulveda. In it, Superman consults with the President’s national security advisor, who is incensed that Superman appeared in Tehran to non-violently support the protesters demonstrating against the Iranian regime, no doubt an analogue for the recent real-life protests in the Middle East. However, since Superman is viewed as an American icon in the DC Universe as well as our own, the Iranian government has construed his actions as the will of the American President, and indeed, an act of war.

Superman is going to finally take a real stand. At the UN.

Superman made his first appearance in the first issue of Action Comics in 1938. Since that time, the United States government has rounded up and jailed people because of their Japanese heritage, dropped atomic bombs on Japan, knowingly infected Guatemalans with STDs to study their effects, fought against the civil rights of its own black citizens, entered the Vietnam war based on the “Gulf of Tonkin” lie, used chemical warfare against the Vietnamese, provided millions of dollars to Middle Eastern dictators in the name of “stability,” and fought a “war on drugs” that allows government agents to break into peoples’ homes and is directly causing the deaths of tens of thousands of people all over the world every year. Our current president has engaged the United States in yet another war in the Middle East, and claims to have the power to kill US citizens without a trial. And that’s just off the top of my head. [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, politics & government by Ricky Sprague
8 Comments »

Tags: politics & government, travel & foreign lands by Alexander Thorburn Hoffman
No Comments »

So what else happened Wednesday? Believe it or not, there was a tiny smudge of good news revealed at another of the historical firsts that are coming so fast and furious that the day’s incidence of historical firsts is itself a historical first. This first was the first ever press conference by the Federal Reserve. Sure, you’ve seen Ben Bernanke on the news before squawking about this or that but this was the first time the Fed apparatus has ever had a presser just like Barack Obama or Orly Taitz where it is convened for the communication of specific info with questions attending. This might seem to be a rather threadbare “first” until you understand that the Chairman of the Federal Reserve and even the dozens of lesser figures who make monetary decisions have a power to influence markets that, believe me, they often wish they did not. The business press is always rumbling with the seismic analysis of Bernanke’s footsteps. How does he look? Chipper? Dour? Conscious? Did he get the thai chicken or a steak? Is he out shopping for new suits? Custom? Please god, tell me he’s not buying off the rack!

Fortunes are made and lost by the labors of the business paparazzi because Bernanke’s whims make dollars worth more, or less. Overnight. Like Midas, he turns things to gold. And also kills. [Read more →]

Tags: money, politics & government by Ken Watson
No Comments »

Economics has long been referred to as the “dismal science” because, well, most people find it all so dry. Some creative economists over at George Mason University and elsewhere are challenging that view and having a little fun making rap videos full of economic lessons. I’ve linked the most recent installment below.

Granted, if you’re completely clueless of the arguments they’re making, a lot won’t make sense, but they’re fun to watch regardless.

Fight of the Century: Keynes vs Hayek (Rd 2)

Tags: art & entertainment, politics & government by Jay Baldwin
3 Comments »

Last Snow, Eric Van Lustbader’s new political thriller, picks up right where First Daughter left off.  Edward Carson is now the President.  First daughter, Alli, is recovering from her kidnapping ordeal, and Jack McClure is still talking to his dead daughter. The President is in Russia, negotiating an arms deal, when an important administration ally turns up dead. President Carson is counting on Jack to untangle a web of lies and keep Alli safe — which would be easier if he had some idea who was after them. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, Lisa Reads by Lisa Hura
No Comments »

The racist loons infesting the Republicans and the Republic have truly achieved a frightening prominence. Consider these impolite and impolitic questions they are raining upon our beloved President:

First they demand a Full Name… FULL! With the middle, any suffixes, prefixes, titles, assignments, hyphenations… the full boat. The date of birth, place of birth and social security number. This the President must supply without fail. This may not seem too audacious but just you wait.

Then they demand a listing of all relations, living and deceased and their citizenship status. Stepfathers and mothers are as requisit as those who actually contributed a chromosome. The President’s well known herd of half brothers and sisters left by his father across every land and nation you could name is attacked, obviously and maliciously with this outrageous inquisition.

Then these freaks go from deranged to depraved with the following demands: [Read more →]

Tags: politics & government, race & culture by Ken Watson
2 Comments »

I was in Washington, D.C. recently on a family vacation. At the Smithsonian American History Museum we saw a display of large model ships. A black woman was pointing out the cargo hold in one of the ships to her daughter, telling her about how slaves were transported in the ships and how terribly human beings treated fellow human beings. Next to them, not five feet away, and without any apparent awareness of the Gulag or a wall people risked being shot to climb over, an ignorantly hip white boy-man of about 19 was wearing this shirt.

Tags: fashion & clothing, politics & government by Scott Stein
No Comments »

The other night, I caught the last hour of a movie masterpiece on TV: Sidney Lumet’s 12 Angry Men. It is an inspiring film to watch, in and of itself, and it is full of that 1950′s mixture of sinewy intellect and bongo-driven, twelve-tonal avant-gardeness. It is a film that simultaneously, as much of the art of that period did, praises and condemns the register of human action and tendency. 

But the old stream-of-consciousness kicked in when I again saw Lee J. Cobb, the disgruntled father who wants a young man to hang as a result of his own feelings against his own rebellious son. Seeing Cobb made me think of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, in which he played the first Willy Loman. [Read more →]

Tags: artistic unknowns by Chris Matarazzo, creative writing by Chris Matarazzo
No Comments »

A few months ago, I got pretty high and mighty about other people calling my son a dog. I was a little offended that another woman had the audacity to compare my child to her puppy. And now, I am heading out to buy him a child harness. Also known as a leash. Yes, dear reader, I’m buying my child a leash. Karma can be a real bitch, no?. [Read more →]

Tags: animals, family & parenting by Nancy DeGregorio
1 Comment »

I have been waiting for this week for months. On Thursday, my friend John L. and I will be traveling to New York City and meeting my buddy Johnny to see Buffalo Tom play at the Bowery Ballroom. Then on Friday I will be seeing them in Philly with my buddy Dennis Doc. This is my favorite band of all time and I will be seeing them twice with some of my closest friends. The nostalgia is kicking in so hard that I might not bring my cell phone and bring a disposable camera to get a genuine 90’s feel. And to kick things off, last night Cailin and I ordered take-out food from the Colonial Diner – which was the ultimate late night after party destination in South Jersey for me from 1992-2007. [Read more →]

Tags: Marty digs, music by Marty O'Connor
No Comments »

The owners and players that make up the National Football League only need to do one thing to keep the fans from completely deserting them. They need to keep talking. It’s a very simple concept, really. It’s obvious that major differences remain between the two sides, and I still have not examined their positions closely enough to form a real opinion, as far as on whose side I am. It is clear to me, though, that as long as they keep talking, I can believe that there will be a normal NFL season this fall. What is clear to me must not be clear to them, though. On Wednesday, the two sides announced that talks would be adjourning until May 16th. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
No Comments »

What’s the Hillary Special at Popeye’s? Two large thighs, two small breasts and a left wing. If that doesn’t take you back, brother, you were never there. Yes, the grizzled Secretary of State now enamored of Assad Jr as a “reformer” as well as the spontaneous human combustion of anonymous goatherds in Afghanistan (and Pakistan, too!) was once far more true to the politics of her loopy commencement address at Wellesley that received a Stalin-esque ovation from that crowd lasting seven minutes. The crowning glory of her political career (before she was elected to shit) was to be Hillarycare; a massive overhaul and expansion of Medicare/Medicaid that would inundate medical delivery systems as we knew them in the barbaric days of 1993, leaving that segment of our economy socialized in all but name. Sound familiar? But Hillary became the Centrist once a certain Senator from Illinois maneuvered into that sliver of atmosphere existing between her Left and the outright commies. Hillary had sought total control through the doctors: the practice of medicine outside the embrace of Hillarycare was to be a criminal offense. Obama stole a march by making criminals out of any patients escaping, however fitfully, the smothering grasp of Obamacare. Of such distinctions are great careers made. [Read more →]

Tags: ends & odd, politics & government, trusted media & news by Ken Watson
No Comments »

I’m not going to review the film. That’s been done and done and done.

And it’s true, the movie is just ok. The characters are one dimensional. The script is overly didactic. The cinematography made-for-TVish.

Instead I’m going to share my reaction to the film, my emotional reaction: frankly, it depressed me. Not because of my disappointment in the film’s quality, or because of the film’s all-too-real dystopian setting.

No, it depressed me because, unlike most movies wherein one must rely on the suspension of disbelief to accept the hero’s actions, this movie portrays heroes acting in ways many of us could achieve. It depressed me because I haven’t started a successful business; therefore, I haven’t benefited society as much as maybe I could have. It depressed me because I haven’t honored or appreciated as I should those entrepreneurs who have.

The bottomline message of Atlas Shrugged part 1 is that if you want to help the poor, start a business; create wealth; create jobs. If you haven’t done this, it might depress you; but don’t assuage your depression by supporting government redistribution schemes. Do it by encouraging and supporting entrepreneurs and small business owners–and thank them for their service just as you do those men and women in our armed forces. They deserve it.

Tags: art & entertainment, movies, politics & government by Jay Baldwin
No Comments »

10. A gift certificate to Scepters R Us

9. The latest CD from Prince

8. Gold bricks

7. An English-American dictionary

6. An athletic cup to protect the crown jewels

5. The illusion that their family still has some power

4. A nightie from Queen Victoria’s Secret

3. A sobriety test for the future Princess Kate’s personal driver

2. Something to read on the throne

1. Nothing (what could you possibly get them that they don’t already have?)
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

Tags: advice, Bob Sullivan's top ten everything, ends & odd, travel & foreign lands by Bob Sullivan
No Comments »

As we come to the end of Holy Week, a week where Christ-related news stories involved church bombings, sex abuse by clerics and protecting hate speech by Christian fundamentalists – with breaks devoted to ads for Easter candy and holiday sales events – it’s good to remember the biggest news story of all …

He is risen …
Christ is risen, indeed …

[Read more →]

Tags: religion & philosophy by Jeff McDonald
No Comments »

Tags: environment & nature, politics & government by Alexander Thorburn Hoffman
No Comments »

If you attend youth sporting events, you’ll see a familiar sight: A red-faced parent or coach shaking his head, frustrated, after a child competitor fell short. “She knows all the [insert things that one can know about sports],” the befuddled adult says. “But if only she’d listen!” [Read more →]

Tags: sports, virtual children by Scott Warnock by Scott Warnock
4 Comments »

Aren’t Hall and Oates gay? I think so though perhaps not with each other. By acclamation Hall is just out of Oates’ league. But whatever the domestic situation these two men’s men have written passionately about women for decades. This one is from ’73 and we all remember many others. Was homophobia so rampant back then that only Freddy Mercury could openly flaunt his glory in denim chaps? Maybe. Maybe Sarah Smile was really Sammy Slim. Or maybe it is that everyone with a serious claim to humanity pretty instinctively imbues all things valuable, fragile, volatile and tragic with a female animating force. Ships get the treatment. Hurricanes did for years until some pansy somewhere decided either women were being insulted or men were being slighted and gave us Hurricanes Andrew and Gustav but it fools none but the  foolish. We have Mother Earth and the naked Muses. Those in the habit of cursing or coaxing their cars almost always see them as female. America, of course, is the Big She; the land of milk and honey to a starving globe. The mother. The teacher. The sister. The whore. And baby, she’s gone. [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, politics & government by Ken Watson
No Comments »

Corrag by Susan Fletcher is historical fiction that does something I love: it takes an historical event and looks at it from a new angle, through the eyes of a new character. The story is based on the 1692 Massacre of Glencoe, where supporters of King William were responsible for the deaths of 78 members of the MacDonald clan, killed because of their delay in pledging allegiance to the new king. Corrag is an English witch who had lived among them, imprisoned in the aftermath of the massacre, and sentenced to be burned alive at the stake. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, Lisa Reads by Lisa Hura
No Comments »

Helping Outstanding Pupils Educationally. No one could object to that, could they? This beast is not exactly a milestone in the history of the acronym but it contains much that is typical and objectionable in anything that goes by sentimental initials. The HOPE is famous around here, enjoying an existence as a sacred cow nearly as holy at the State level as, say, Social Security is at the Fed. It is a program (or scheme) to fund college education for Georgia students. Financed completely by lottery revenue, it was the reason the lottery was ever able to be born in this bible-belt state. Hardly anyone can remember now that there was serious opposition both moral, religious and practical when the firecracker Democrat Zell Miller rode his idea into the Governor’s Mansion in ’91 and today nearly every Georgian is touched someway by HOPE.

It seems like a fantasy now but believe it or not, in days of yore, if someone running for office proposed a new multi-billion dollar entitlement program some objection was sometimes made to the cost. Just how will this be paid for? As the gentleman said, the path to victory in any election is to not tax you and not tax me but to tax that fellow behind the tree. Miller did an end run around this dilemma. HOPE would not touch Georgia tax revenues, not a dime. Instead the State would go into a business that was otherwise illegal, basically the numbers racket. [Read more →]

Tags: money, politics & government by Ken Watson
No Comments »

One of my favorite songs of the past decade or so is “Star Witness” by Neko Case.

And you know what one of the most overlooked qualities of this great, amazing song is?

The drums.

John Convertino from Calexico bring its. Nothing showy but he’s got the right touch — warm, understated cymbals. Deft use of bundle sticks, a tasteful command of the kick drum. The works!

(Click image below for the YouTube version.)

[Read more →]

Tags: Michael Cade's audio files by Michael Cade
2 Comments »

In an unkinder and less gentle age we might entertain ourselves with a good old fashioned octopus fight or a wrasslin’ match between siamese twins. Not between two pairs of twins mind you, but two conjoined bodies grabbing and spiraling around one another trying to get on top when, really, there is no top. If this wholesome spectacle isn’t a violation of federal civil rights codes it probably runs afoul of your local blue laws so instead let us examine closely the grunting, morbid struggle between Romney and Obama.

Mitt and Barack are, of course, joined at the healthcare. Once this was a happier state of affairs for the son of Michigan Mormons than it was for the grandson of Hawaiian commies. [Read more →]

Tags: health & medical, politics & government by Ken Watson
No Comments »

Last weekend, the pay cable channel Starz ran the three “Toy Story” films back-to-back. Watching them one after the other provided roughly the same experience as when you’re forced to sit through an hours-long corporate meeting at which a compelling, entertaining, but ultimately hollow speaker hectors you about how much more you could be doing to help the corporation succeed. And then telling you that, for your efforts, you should expect nothing more than the personal satisfaction of knowing you’d helped the CEO make an extra $20 million. Oh, and you’re supposed to find the entire proceeding poignant.

The “Toy Story” trilogy is a perfect encapsulation of anxiety in the post-modern world. Corporate anxiety. The films promote groupthink, and the acceptance of the purveyors of mass entertainment and consumables as benevolent entities never to be questioned. In a world in which new technology is giving consumers more control over how they consume their entertainment, the big corporations want you to remember who it was who gave you your Woody.
[Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, trusted media & news by Ricky Sprague
1 Comment »

What women want is simple; hearth and home, a modest but consistent social position with its income, in short a nest to safely raise her children and a benevolent protector. Where does it say that? The Book of Mormon? Well, it might, but more remarkably these are the assertions of that reliably Liberal outlet, Politico. What “women” are these? Of course this is a specifically electoral look at the fairer, but still pretty unfair, sex. They say both Republicans and Democrats have missed the boat but it is the Democrats who made the bigger splash because they traditionally claim the “women’s vote” by some margin. Occasionally it is not much, but they do rely on it. There is division even here though. While claiming “women” at large, the Democrats have not done well with “married women”. They have made this up however with wildly positive ratings among single women, single mothers, black women, latinas and, with some obvious overlap, poor women. That should surprise no one as it should surprise no one that this “study” flogged so prominently by allegedly neutral Politico powerfully over-samples, gee, exactly those subsets. [Read more →]

Tags: family & parenting, politics & government by Ken Watson
No Comments »

It is highly possible that there are numerous reasons why my friends and acquaintances are glad that they are not me. So it goes. But I remember one time, in high school, when a good buddy of mine came right out and said it: “Dude, I’m so glad I am not you.”

It seems he had heard me discussing a piece of music with another musician friend. We had been tearing a song into pieces, trying to figure out what was going on with the time-signatures.

“I think I am insulted,” I responded to my candid pal.  “Why, besides the obvious stuff, do you not want to be me?” [Read more →]

Tags: artistic unknowns by Chris Matarazzo, religion & philosophy by Chris Matarazzo
2 Comments »

“Work,” Noël Coward once said, “is so much more fun than fun.”

Thomas Aquinas would have agreed. “Agere sequitur esse,” he declared. Action follows from being. You are as you do.

I also agree, especially now that I have returned to work (last week, I started a part-time, presumably temporary gig at the Philadelphia Inquirer). [Read more →]

Tags: all work, that's what he said, by Frank Wilson by Frank Wilson
No Comments »

Drawings from the Gulag begins unexpectedly, with a headshot of a proud homo-sovieticus from one of the USSR’s eastern minorities. Wearing thick soviet spectacles and a soviet suit, and with impeccable posture, this man gazes at you, the reader, with firm resolve. Here is a stalwart Comrade-of-the-Month, whose portrait would be placed at the entrance to a massive factory complex in some industrial soviet city. Forget bonuses and a salary raise — true glory was to be found in constructing the socialist future.

The man is Danzig Baldaev, and to his colleagues he really did appear to be a loyal soviet citizen. Born in 1925, he worked for decades in the soviet prison service- no place for the squeamish, that’s for certain. And yet flip to the first illustration in the book, a drawing of a crowd of proud revolutionaries titled ‘Inception of the Gulag’ and in the top right hand corner there is an inscription that reads: ‘Dedicated to the 70^th anniversary of the giant of Russian literature, A.I. Solzhenitsyn.  11^th November 1988’. A strange thing for a career penal officer to write, no? [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, books & writing by Daniel Kalder
2 Comments »

Four spending/taxing proposals came before the House last week. The Ryan plan, the RSC (Republican Study Committee) plan, the Obama plan and the most colorfully named, People’s Budget presented by the CPC, the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Friday the Capitol saw a robust display of car chases, explosions and kung fu fighting that signified nearly nothing. Paul Ryan was the star of this show if you do not count the background figure of the President. Mr. Ryan exploded into his dreamy-eyed prominence with his budget plan which, as he loves to announce first off, ignores entitlements in large measure and in any case will not have any reduction of any sort on benefits for those 55 or over. It is refreshing if depressing that Ryan states right out the reason for the double-nickel. It is political. As the man says, and no one can deny, that demographic just won’t stand for any cuts and won’t sit still for them either. This truism, held by all sensible folks, explains the heat and passion demonstrated on the floor by Ryan and all the paunchy suits one would recognize as the Republican leadership during a twisted bit of stagecraft surrounding this weighty vote. [Read more →]

Tags: money, politics & government by Ken Watson
1 Comment »