wayweird

What the hell is wagyu steak?

Does that mean the steer’s tail is still wagging at you when it’s butchered?

Never mind, I’ll Google it.

Oh! Here it is. I was just curious because Obama and the gang celebrated the passage of his gargantuan stimulus plan by throwing a black tie cocktail party at the White House, including a gourmet meal that featured $100 a pound Japanese wagyu steak.

So here’s the scoop…

The ultimate in beef is commonly known as Kobe. Kobe is a district in Japan where insanely expensive meat is produced. Kobe beef comes from Wagyu cattle - just like French Champagne comes from pinot noir and chardonnay grapes.

By the way, Wagyu is pronounced “Wah-gyu,” or sometimes “Way-gyu”.

Wagyu beef is exquisitely tender, with soft fat that can all but melt at human body temperature, which means it will literally melt in your mouth. The texture is meant to be similar to foie gras, which was once outlawed here in Chicago because of the allegedly brutal methods used attain this delicacy.

Wagyu Beef - It’s What’s for Obama

But all you P.E.T.A. people can relax. Waygu cattle are pampered not tortured. Hell, they live way better than most humans. Their diet is augmented with sake and beer. They even get regular massages to soften their meat and enhance the marbling of their fat.

With such delicate intramuscular fat, steaks must be briefly seared to leave the interior just barely cooked. Any more than a few moments over heat and Wagyu steaks are wasted.

Yep, only the best for the Messiah and his pals.  Yet, he wants to lecture others about fiscal responsibility? Just the other day Obama lashed out at Wall Street executives for claiming billions of dollars in bonuses while their stricken institutions asked taxpayers for support.

“Part of what we’re going to need is for the folks on Wall Street who are asking for help to show some restraint,” he said. “There will be time for them to make profits, and there will be time for them to get bonuses. Now is not that time.”

Well how about this pal?

Part of what we the people of the United States are going to need is for the folks in Washington who are spending our tax money to show some restraint. There will be a time to chow down on Wagyu steaks, and there will a time for them to drink vodka martinis. Now is not the time.

And don’t try to slip a provision into your “stimulus” package that will dish out Wagyu steak vouchers along with the $650 million for digital TV coupons just so you can say, “Well, everybody had some.”

Why?

Obama and his Democrat cronies have all the muscle they need to ram that $819 billion “stimulus” package down our throats. The House of Representatives approved the package Wednesday, dealing the new administration a legislative victory.

The final vote was 244-188. All Republicans who were present voted against the bill. They were joined in their opposition by 11 Democrats. So it seems that that the Republicans have achieved bipartisan opposition to the bill.

But back to the main question - Why is Obama so intent on having the Republicans join him in support of:

• $650 million for digital TV coupons
• $600 million for new cars for the federal government. (at $30, 000 each, that’s 20,000 new cars)
• $6 billion for colleges/universities - many which have billion dollar endowments.
• $50 million in funding for the National Endowment of the Arts. (Do we need more “Piss on Christ” paintings?)
• $200 million for the National Mall, including $21 million for sod. (How’s that going to improve the economy?)
• Funding programs that already have large, unexpended balances. For example, the bill provides $1 billion for Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) - a program that already has $16 billion on hand. States also are sitting on some $9 billion in unused highway funds.

If his package is going to save the day, you’d think that he’d want the Democrats to take full credit. If this package was really going to work you’d think he’d want to have all the glory.

But no. He doesn’t want to take full ownership of this travesty. He wants bipartisan support because he knows that this package will not stimulate anything but a lot of anger and disappointment when the American people finally wake up. He wants bipartisan support because he wants to share the blame. He wants bipartisan support because he wants to undercut Republican opposition in the next election.

Congratulations to the House GOP. Here’s hoping that the Senate GOP follows their lead. The bill will probably pass anyway, but it’ll be a bill that no Republican voted for, and that’s good.

“Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age…Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties…“

Winston Churchill - June 18, 1940

Ever wonder how it would feel to experience Jedi training? You’ve seen Luke Sky Walker attempt to counter a drone’s painful rays while blinded by his flight helmet’s blast visor. You’ve seen Yoda use his telekinetic powers to lift an X-Wing fighter mired in a swamp. Yoda and Luke can even see a little way into the future when the situation isn’t too murky or unstable. All these guys had to do was tap into the Force and they could perform all sorts of wondrous feats.

Can regular people like you and me ever do the same?

The Institute of Noetic Sciences will give you the opportunity to test your potential to become a Jedi knight and put you through some training. Well, OK they don’t exactly put it those terms, but they’ve got a couple neat little psi games on their Research and Education page that allow you to test, score, and even develop your intuitive abilities.

You can visit the “Halls of Healing” where you can play three games that test the roles of intention, attention and intuition in “distant healing”.  If psychic healing is not your forte then go straight to “The Garden of Dreams” which is actually an array of free online psi tests, embedded within an adventure-type game, which enables you to test and explore your psi abilities. The game will track your performance and there’s even a Hall of Fame where you can compare you’re ability against other players.

One game/test has you moving your cursor (magic wand) around the screen and when you feel that it’s near an invisible fairy you’re supposed to click the mouse and you see how close your wand was to the fairy. The closer your wand was to the fairy the higher your score.

I found that if I closed my eyes and led with my feelings I scored higher.

I realize that these games are not the most macho scenarios ever concocted, but hey you’re there to see if you qualify as a Jedi. Go visit the site and surrender to the Force.

“Hey, whatcha you guys watching,” inquired Dad of my brother Frank and me.

It was Thanksgiving Day, 1975, and after stuffing ourselves with turkey, dressing, Brussel Sprouts and all the other T-Day delicacies we had settled down in front of the T.V. to fart away the afternoon and take in the St. Louis Cardinal-Buffalo Bill football game.

“We’re watching O.J. go in from the 3 yard line to put those damn Bills ahead 12-7,” I reported as I removed myself from his easy chair.

“Good! I hope they bury those bastards,” he grunted as he sunk into the seat of honor.

“Why are you rooting against an NFC team, Dad? They’re a gutsy bunch. I like the Cards myself.”

“No true Bears fan can ever cheer for the Cardinals.”

“Oh yeah? Why is that?

“Jesus! Read your history books, son! Don’t you know that the Bears and the Cardinals have been at each others throats since the Cards were playing at Comiskey Park?”

“What are you talking about? Why were the St Louis Cardinals playing on the South Side of Chicago?”

“Didn’t you know that Chicago had two professional football teams until 1959?”

“Now, you’re pulling my leg again. Just like the time you told us you piloted the plane that dropped the bomb on Nagasaki!”

“Nah! This is the truth. Go to the library and look it up if you don’t believe me. You should hate the Cardinals even more than the Packers. They cost the Bears a championship or two.”

So I did, and his story checked out again. My old man knew a lot of good stuff.

Anyway, the Bills went on to thrash the Cardinals 32-14 in that Thanksgiving game, but I never could work up the animosity towards the red birds that my dad said a good Bears fan should feel. They were just too far removed from my times and my Chicago for me to do that.

In fact, I’m pulling for the Cardinals to win this Super Bowl. NFC all the way, Baby! Besides they’re really from Chicago.

P.S. It’s even funnier to learn that the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Cardinals were once one team. Yep, they merged in 1944 because of personnel shortages caused by World II. They were known as the “Card-Pitt”, or derisively as the “Carpets”.

Yeah, it’s true. Look it up.

What a conflicted mess.

“Hey Tom! Bring me a can of beer out of the refrigerator,” commanded my father as he watched the Cubs lose another one on the black and white TV.

“I’m only 8 years old. I shouldn’t be touching this stuff. It’s against the law ya know,” as I handed him the can and the can opener.

“Nah, you’re in the clear as long as you don’t drink it. Consider yourself lucky that you don’t have to run down to the tavern and bring it home in a bucket,” said Dad as he punched a small hole in the top of the Schlitz can.

“Whadaya mean bring it home in a bucket?”

“When I was your age I had to run down to the corner tavern and carry the beer back home to Grandpa in a bucket,” he explained as he punched a bigger hole across from the small hole.

“Why’d you do that Dad? Didn’t it slosh out of the bucket? How come you just didn’t go get some cans of beer?”

“Because beer didn’t come in cans back then, and even when the beer cans came out Gramps still liked it from fresh from the tap. And the buckets had a cover on them so the beer didn’t spill out,” Dad answered as he handed the can opener back to me and took his first refreshing swig.

My dad was always telling me and my siblings how primitive things were back when he was growing up and sometimes I had a hard time believing him. But this explanation checks out.  My father was a child of the roaring ‘20’s in Chicago. Although Prohibition in the U.S. was in effect from 1920 to 1933, my dad would have been ten years old when beer was legal again. Back in those days no one had any qualms about sending kids to fetch the suds.

In fact before Prohibition that means of delivery seems to have been quite common. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, fresh beer was carried from the local pub to one’s home by means of a small-galvanized pail. Rumor has it that when the beer sloshed around the pail, it created a rumbling sound as the CO2 escaped through the lid, thus the term “growler” was coined.

Before World War II, city kids used to bring covered buckets of draft beer from a local bar or brewery to workers at lunchtime or to their parents at dinnertime, a practice called “rushing the growler.”

So the Old Man wasn’t kidding me after all. Beer cans weren’t always with us. Do you know what?

The “official” birthday of the beer can is January 24, 1935. That’s the day cans of Krueger’s Finest Beer and Krueger’s Cream Ale first went on sale in Richmond, VA. Life just keeps on getting better and easier every year.

Happy Birthday Beer Can! What would we do without you?

 One hundred thirty years ago today, King Cetewayo and 20,000 Zulu warriors annihilated a the better part of a well trained British infantry regiment armed with state of the art weaponry at Isandlwana, South Africa.  Only fifty enlisted men and five officers managed to escape.

Cetewayo

Complacent in their technological superiority, the British military leaders under-estimated the spear wielding Zulus. Therefore they suffered a disaster even more stupendous than the one visited upon the 7^th U.S. Cavalry in North America only three years previously.

Isandlwana

What lessons can we draw from this moment in history? There are many, but two general principles stand out:

1. Vigilance and fighting spirit are necessary to make superior weaponry an advantage.
2. Courage, flexibility, and innovation can overcome a superior force that is not ready to fight - and sometimes even trump those that are prepared.

B Company, 2nd Battalion, 24^th Regiment of Foot proved this at Rorke’s Drift  just a day after the larger British force at Isandlwana was crushed. This group of one hundred and thirty-nine British soldiers successfully defended their garrison against an intense assault by four to five thousand Zulu warriors.

As long as I’m strolling down memory lane I might as well clue you in on a great tourist attraction that I had the pleasure of visiting whilst stationed in Germany towards the end of the Cold War. Rosenburg Castle overlooking the town of Riedenburg was where I saw my first ever falconry flight demonstration.  According to Riedenburg’s Tourist Bureau the show is still in town - twice a day from March to October.

If you’ve been to Renaissance Faires or even Medieval Times here in the States you just might be shaking your head right now and thinking that you’ve been there and done that. All I can tell you is that anything you’ve seen of falconry in those venues is a pale shadow of what Riedenburg has to offer.

First, although Renaissance Faires and Medieval Times go all out to get the feel of those savage days of yesteryear they just can’t pull it off the same way an authentic German castle does. They can’t because they’re fake and Reidenburg is real.

Second, the location on that hilltop in Germany is breathtaking. You can’t beat Riedenburg for atmosphere. On a clear day with sunshine and blue skies you’ll feel like you’re next door to heaven. On days when the black thunder clouds come rolling in the experience is awesome…even though they cut the show short. I’ve been through both situations. The video clip below shows Prunn Castle which is 5 miles to the east of Rosenberg. Check out the hills and the river valley. This is where Medieval Times really happened. Sure as heck beats a field in Wisconsin.

Third, the falconry demonstrations I’ve seen since my days in Germany have been good. The falconers have put in a lot of work with their raptors. The birds are well trained, and they’re a wonder to see. In the States you’ll see Peregrine Falcons, Harris Hawks, and Kestrels, but at Rosenberg Castle you’ll see these raptors and more. They have the big birds of prey there - Condors, Golden Eagles and Buzzards. I think there was a even vulture up there as well.

When we were visiting, people could walk right up to the birds on their perches and get a real good look at them before the demonstation. That vulture type bird even hopped around in the court yard and chased the kids around until a handler stepped in to save the day.

The next clip is not from Riedenburg, but it captures the feel and atmosphere you’ll find there.

The falconers at Riedenburg put on a show I know I’ll never forget. They started out with smallest raptors and worked they’re way up to the largest. Once a bird was done with its routine the handlers just let it fly around the hilltop. By the time the show was over, the sky surrounding the castle was filled with these airborne hunters. Picture the flying monkey scene from the Wizard of  Oz.

So don’t think you’ve seen it all. If you’re ever in Bavaria and have a chance to take in the falconry show at Riedenburg, jump on it. It’ll be well worth doing.

Back in the olden days, during the Cold War, the Army made sure its officers and senior NCOs were not only well schooled in U.S. doctrine and tactics, we had to know the way the Soviet Army planned to fight as well.

I remember taking a test that required me to sketch out the exact location of every armored vehicle in a Soviet Motorized Rifle Regiment’s attack formation. Man, I had that stuff down cold. I couldn’t do it today to save my life, but back at Ft Benning, Ga. in 1982 I could read those Red Army formations just like Brian Urlacher reads the Detroit Lion’s offensive formations now.  

Some of the instructors at the Infantry School liked to set the mood for these “Know the Enemy” classes with music from the Red Army Chorus. I stumbled across these video clips the other day. Boy, they sure triggered some memories.

This first one is the one we heard the most. It’s called “Off We Go” (although only the most studious amongst us knew the title at the time) and was created by the Red Army Chorus in 1945. That was their big year you know

 The Soviet Army tune that came in second at our infantry school classes was “Katjusa”.

Now for some reason, “Kalinka” did not make it to Ft Benning when I was there, which is rather surprising seeing how popular it has become in American culture. You hear the organists play it at baseball and hockey games all the time. Yul Brynner sang it in the movie Taras Bulba as well. Go figure.

While we’re discussing the subject, you might as well check out another version of “Kalinka”. I think that the guys in the audience would agree that these performers are much easier on the eyes than the singer in the last clip.

Anyway, thanks to the Red Army Choir for perking up the curriculum and helping us remember their maneuver arms doctrine. Those were some of the liveliest classes we had at the U.S. Army Infantry School.

On this day in 1929, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was born.

And in the words of Forrest Gump, “That’s all I have to say about that.”

Let the rest of the world write the obvious blog posts. Instead let’s take a look at what the U.S. Senate was doing in Washington, D.C. on the very same day baby Martin was fighting his way into the world.

Our Senate ratified the Kellogg-Briand Pact eighty years ago today with a vote of 85-1. This pact, named after the United States Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg and French foreign minister Aristide Briand (the two fellows that drafted the pact), was an international treaty “providing for the renunciation of war as an instrument of national policy.”

 Kellogg

Sixty-one nations ultimately signed the pact including Japan, Italy and Germany. Obviously, it failed in its intent.  Two years later Japan invaded Manchuria, four years after that Italy invaded Abyssinia, and in 1939 Germany jumped on Poland with both feet. But the pact gets an “A” for effort - it was a nice try at settling international disputes peacefully.

Briand

Today the Kellogg-Briand Pact remains a binding treaty under international law, and in the United States, it remains in force as federal law (see U.S. Const. art. VI). Even though this treaty did not achieve its immediate aim of eliminating world war it is still important because it serves as a legal basis for the concept of “crimes against peace”. A few Nazi and Japanese leaders went to the gallows because of such crimes and Kellogg-Briand helped send them there.

On a side note - although the Senate approved the treaty so overwhelmingly, it did add a reservation that the treaty must not infringe upon America’s right of self defense and that the United States was not obliged to enforce the treaty by taking action against those who violated it. Back in those days our Senate looked out for U.S. interests first and foremost.

I have to wonder how today’s Senate would approach Kellogg-Briand. The stance some of these “statesmen” have taken in regards to the Kyoto Treaty is rather worrisome. Who are they looking out for?

How about that Sheriff Greg Barlett of Morgan County, Alabama? There’s a real entrepreneur for you. He pocketed $212,000 over the course of three years by feeding inmates in his jail skimpy portions, and it was all legal.

Seems he was able to profit from a Depression-era state law that allows sheriffs to keep any money they can make by feeding inmates for less than what they receive in state funding. Bartlett said he reported the profit as income on his tax returns. So you see it was all good - and above board.

He merely got nailed for starving the prisoners, not making a profit. The inmates were really lucky that Bartlett wasn’t going by laws from the Reconstruction Era. Back in those days private parties could lease prisoners from the state or county. Reminds me of Scarlett O’Hara’s lumber mill from Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind.

Sure, Scarlett O’Hara is a fictional character, but her story is based on actual events. While writing the novel, Margaret Mitchell drew upon her encyclopedic knowledge of the Civil War.

Anyway, Scarlett was not happy with the productivity of her lumber mill, so she hired a hard charging Irishman, Johnnie Gallegher, to replace the old manager. She also lowered her overhead by firing her workforce of ten freed blacks and replaced them with five leased convicts.

In the movie her new foreman confidently declares, “And if you just give Johnnie Gallegher a free hand you’ll get what you want out of them.”

He lived up to his promise. In his first week he accomplished more with those five convicts than the manager before had done with twice as many men. It turns out that a “free hand” meant selling most of their rations to line his pockets, but as far as Scarlett was concerned, increased production was all that mattered. After all, those “men had no business getting to be convicts. If they broke laws, and got caught, then they deserved what they got.”

At least Sheriff Bartlett’s inmates got pancakes with maple syrup, peanut butter sandwiches, and collard greens with turnips. All Johnnie Gallegher’s convicts got was a steady diet of black-eyed peas (without bacon or ham) and corn pone. They had to work in shackles and got regular beatings as well.

What a difference a century and a half makes. Nevertheless Barlett and Gallegher are kindred entrepreneurial spirits.

Meet Johnnie Gallagher at the 6:48 minute mark in the video clip below: