Kid Cuisine. Utah-stylie.

Her ultimate creation - a breakfast dish she dubbed “SPAM-tastic Sunnydogs” - recently earned her the title of SPAM’s “National Kid Chef of the Year.”

Coombs said in September, before winning the Utah State Fair contest that propelled her to the national competition, she spent an entire day experimenting in the kitchen with her father, Nathan - a longtime SPAM lover.

They tried a few different combinations, but ultimately decided on a breakfast corn dog, made with chunks of SPAM that have been dipped in an apple-cinnamon pancake batter. The sunnydogs are cooked until golden and dipped in maple syrup, applesauce or honey.

“I thought no one else would think of corn dogs,” she said. “And after I tried it, I thought it was pretty good. Even people who don’t like SPAM would like these.”

*shudder*

I prefer Lobster Thermidor a Crevette with a mornay sauce served in a Provencale manner with shallots and aubergines garnished with truffle pate, brandy and with a fried egg on top and spam.

On Tuesday, January 31, 2006 at 8:30 p.m., the Western New York Coalition for Progress will host a State of the Union watch party at JP Bullfeathers Restaurant, located at 1010 Elmwood Avenue in Buffalo. Admission is free, but donations to help defray the cost of food will be graciously accepted.

Article II, Section 3 of the United States Constitution holds that the President, “shall from time to time give to the Congress information of the state of the union and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.” President Bush’s State of the Union speech will set forth his opinions on the economic, social, and political health of the nation, as well as lay out his policy objectives for the upcoming year.

Attendees will watch President Bush’s speech, as well as the Democratic response as a group, after which we will host an informal discussion about the address’ content.

In addition, we plan to play a game of “State of the Union Bingo”, where participants can compete for prizes if enough words or phrases on their bingo cards match up with what President Bush says.

I bought the prizes. Don’t come just for the prizes.

Empathy.

(Warning. Link goes to freeperland).

PoliticsWNY is reporting the following:

Breaking News First: I have an incredible story that I will publish because my military sources are 100%: “VP Cheny is stepping down for health reasons. He will be replaced by Senator Frist.” I am attempting to get further confirmation, Stay tuned ###

UPDATE:

Sources: “The announcement will be tomorrow or very soon in TN.” Stay tuned ###

Discuss.

I’m struck by how much freedom and liberty people are willing to sacrifice at the altar of freedom and liberty.

But while we joke (carefully - don’t do it over the phone) abstractly about fear itself no longer being the only thing we fear, actual bad things are happening in Iraq to actual people. And this time, there are faces and voices that are shocking Americans out of one dark corner of their complacency.

Bob Woodruff, ABC WNT co-anchor, and his cameraman were severely injured by a roadside bomb while riding in a lightly armored Iraqi army vehicle in a country that has been occupied by the United States since May 2003. Julie Carroll, a freelance journalist with the Christian Science Monitor has been seen pleading for her life on grainy videotapes, and our super-manly nation, which - God forbid - would never, ever negotiate with terrorists, actually did the precise thing that Carroll’s captors demanded, yet she is not yet released.

Osama bin Laden - our generation’s Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo wrapped up in one bearded millionaire madman - remains at large, and his latest release on al Jazeera records dropped a couple weeks back. His number 2, al-Zawahiri, dropped his own single a couple of days ago. The title of that single was “Your Drone Missed, Motherfuckers.”

We also know that the agency charged with our protection in the event of a natural or man-made disaster can’t do it’s job. (See Katrina) And isn’t it fascinating how there haven’t been any threat-level color-code movements since Bush won re-election, yet there were many throughout 2004? Strange, that. Conspiracy-minded folk might think that the Department of Homeland Security’s color-coded threat thing was being used for political ends. (And, just for the record, I will forever be troubled by the Orwellian name given to that agency. Why on Earth couldn’t we have opted for a name that democracies give that agency - Department (or Ministry) of Internal Affairs? Why the totalitarian jingoism of “homeland/fatherland/motherland”?)

Iran has (or will imminently have) the bomb and it’s also got a madman who thinks Israel needs to be wiped off the map controlling the button.

North Korea has the bomb, and we all know how even-keeled Kim Jong-il can be.

Iraqis still get blown up in their thousands.

It’s a Hamas administration in Palestinian territories. Suicide bombing gone mainstream.

While we were told that the spike in gas prices was due to supply and demand, Exxon somehow miraculously had a record 4Q 2005, and broke all records for corporate profits in the history of the US with an astonishing $36 billion profit last year - larger than the GDP of just about every country in the world. If what the oil companies were telling us was true, their profits wouldn’t have spiked much at all.

There’s my state of the union, bitches. I’m in a pissy mood about the state of politics in this country, about the graft, cheating, unfair deception, erosion of liberty, and diminution of America’s reputation around the world. These things do matter. Arrogance and lawlessness must be replaced with competence and the rule of law. And to my Bush-worshipping friends, please have the courtesy to admit that you’d be furious about all of this shit, too, if the current President had a “D” at the end of his name.

The New Hampshire primary is 24 months away.

Coppola received the local IP’s endorsement between mouthfuls of spaghetti parm at Chef’s. Republican Chris Jacobs, a member of the Buffalo School Board, is running as a Republican, and the Conservative endorsement is pending.

Antoine Thompson, to his credit, has dropped out of the race for the February special election, but will remain a candidate for the September primary; when Coppola is elected (let’s face it - its a predominately Democratic district) he will serve out the balance of Mayor Brown’s term; i.e., about 8 months. That entire time will essentially be a primary race against Thompson.

The Alito vote will, indeed, go to the full Senate for consideration. A cloture vote (to end debate on the nomination) passed.

President Bush will get his second nominee to the Court.

This is the insult added to the injury of Kerry’s 2004 loss.

The jurisprudential landscape may forever be altered, and my concern at this juncture in American history is that individual liberty and privacy rights will be sacrificed for almost seemingly endless executive branch authority. N.B: I’m not accusing anyone of pushing this policy, and I’m not saying the court will knee-jerkedly do the President’s bidding. I’m saying I have concern about it. About what?

The authority to kidnap and torture whenever it deems necessary; the authority to wage “preemptive” war (pre-war) without legislative or public vote, debate, or approval; the ability to regulate and legislate abortions, even in cases of rape or incest; the ability to roll back other 14th Amendment jurisprudence that helped mid-20th century courts do what elected officials didn’t had the morality or testicles to do legislatively. Like end segregation. Like ensure equal treatment of women and minorities.

A court that ignores the very nature of our common law heritage - a heritage that doesn’t slavishly follow codification, but interprets law and, Chief Justice Marshall said in Marbury v. Madison in 1803, “It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is”.

When Ruth Bader Ginsburg was up for nomination, she didn’t have to be coy or hide her views on civil rights. She was able to be forthcoming, because she was for civil liberty; not for the preeminence of the state over civil liberties. Think about why Alito and Roberts wouldn’t answer a straight question about their views.

But ultimately, hope and pray that neither you nor anyone you love ever comes to rely on a right you take for granted today, which may be revoked tomorrow in the name of conservative judicial activism.

But until that sort of shit happens, people will continue to be apathetic and thank God that Bush won’t take away their SUVs or some such idiot black helicopter nonsense.

And for the rest of us, we need a laugh. If you don’t already own it, please for the love of God go out and buy David Cross’ album “Shut up you Fucking Baby” and listen to it. And if you’re a cheap bastard, email or IM me and maybe I’ll make you a copy.

Tom Reynolds makes a nice living (with bennies) off the taxpayers’ dime; about $176,000.

But that doesn’t mean he can’t live like a millionaire.

More than $180,000 in lodging, golf and food expenses at the famed Pebble Beach golf resort in California.

More than $75,000 for beach resorts in Florida, most of it for expenses at the exclusive Ocean Reef Club in the Keys. Reynolds is not a member but has been a guest, Brady said.

More than $23,400 for stays at Las Vegas resorts, including Caesars Palace, the Bellagio and the MGM Grand. The cost included $875 for a helicopter tour.

Must be nice, right? But why? Why does a Republican congressman from suburban/exurban Western New York need to fundraise so aggressively in such wonderfully exotic locales? Pebble Beach, Florida, and Las Vegas are not, last time I checked, in New York’s 26th Congressional District.

“Donors aren’t going to show up for the same old chicken dinner at a restaurant in Washington,” said Brady, Reynolds’ former chief of staff, who now works for him as director of strategic communications at the National Republican Congressional Committee. “We’ve had to become more creative to come up with events that donors want to attend.”

It’s all about the fun. And the access. The access is nice, too.

Reynolds has been especially successful. So far in the 2005-2006 election cycle, he has taken in $1.2 million and spent $820,516, or about 68 percent.

Anything wrong with that?

The fundraising trips are legal. In fact, party leaders encourage both Republicans and Democrats who want to get chairmanships and leadership jobs to raise money to help others get elected to Congress.

But the trips also underscore how lawmakers are able to use campaign committees to pay for posh travel. And none of the campaign finance reform proposals unveiled by lawmakers so far would eliminate this perk.

Reynolds’ annual fundraisers include golfing along the northern California coast; fishing in Key Largo, Fla.; and staying at some of Las Vegas’ most celebrated casinos.

“Luxury resorts, fancy meals, exclusive golf resorts and junkets — all on someone else’s dime,” said Connor Williams, spokesman for Campaign for a Cleaner Congress, a liberal group that is critical of corporate lobbying. “When a lot of western New Yorkers are facing tough times, Tom Reynolds is letting influence peddlers show him one heck of a good time.”

I have one request of Mr. Reynolds.

If you’re going to spend hundreds of thousands of your PAC’s dollars to wine and dine a bunch of lobbyists, maybe just once drag their sorry asses to your own district, and drop a couple hundred thou in the fightin’ 26th.

In contrast, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., raised $251,555 for her leadership committee, PAC to the Future, and spent a little more than that by dipping into cash she had raised previously, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

WNYMedia.net taped my call-in to Professor Hardwick’s show. (WMA).

And here’s a link to my “website of the week”: Craig’s North Coast

Senators Kennedy and Kerry will be leading an effort to filibuster the vote on Alito’s nomination.

It was suggested to me in an email that Kerry will be kicking off the filibuster by reading, verbatim, from his prenuptial agreement with Teresa Heinz-Kerry….

…and that the reading should be good for at least a week.

UPDATE: Lots of discussion, so bumped to the top for convenience.

Albany instituted “tax free weeks” and proved that sometimes tax-cutting can be good for business. Because when you pack the Galleria during tax-free weeks, it has the effect of producing income for the patronized businesses - and if they profit, they pay tax on that. They pay their people - maybe even overtime - and they get taxed on that, so everybody kind of wins.

Anyhow, Pataki has been promising to abolish the tax on some clothing for years now, and in fact the law was supposed to be in effect by now, but it was suspended after 9/11 because the State was worried that revenue would plunge in the aftermath. How can you be “for” something, if it takes you five years to implement the bloody thing?

The state has a $2 billion surplus. Seems to me getting rid of that sales tax on clothes - a sales tax on essential items, not luxuries, is overdue.

Between Monday and Sunday, February fifth, the state will lift its four-percent tax on sales of clothing and footwear costing less than $110 per item. Many counties and cities also suspend their local sales tax for the week, which has been repeated in early September in previous years.

Under a law passed last year by legislators in Albany, statewide tax-free weeks may become history on April first — the deadline for a state budget. On April first, the state’s four-percent tax on clothing purchases is scheduled to be permanently eliminated.

But Governor Pataki’s is proposing to keep the state’s four-percent tax in place and go back to having two tax-free weeks a year, with the minimum for exempted items raising to $250.

Why? There is no sales tax on most essential food in your grocery store. (Check it out). So, why is there sales tax on essential clothing at your department store? It’s the most regressive aspect of this regressive taxation policy. Someone ask Paul Tokasz that.

And, now on a tangent, I know that lots of national chains won’t come to the Buffalo area because they perceive the whole damn place to be old, shrinking, dying, and poor, but we get loads of Canadians who come our way for our lower sales taxes, and some stores that just don’t exist in Canada. Oftentimes, given the current rate of exchange, items cost less here than they do there. So it boggles my mind that, say, Brooks Brothers or Nordstroms or even H&M couldn’t find room to grow in the Buffalo or Niagara area - not just for us locals, but for Ontario shoppers, as well.

You go to the movies, then you blog about it.

Jen saw Brokeback Mountain and gives it one “Meh”.

Marc from WNYMedia.net saw Underworld: Evolution and was unable to suspend disbelief for that hour and a half:

And damn it, if your gonna create a cool new toy like UV bullets, fucking use them properly in the movie please!! That’s all I have to say..

While my wife and daughter watched “Hoodwinked”, an animated take on the Little Red Riding Hood story (I was so not interested in that. Sue me. No point Anne Hathaway being in it if it’s animated. ‘Kay?) I got a ticket for “Matador” with Pierce Brosnan.

Now, I’m a huge Bond fan, and Brosnan is done with that role, and he’s generally played the suave, sophisticated sort in Remington Steele, Bond, and Thomas Crown. Not so in Matador. In fact, he plays his character with smarm.

I had no clue what the movie was about going in. The poster had what appeared to be a rifle sight on it, and Brosnan was in it, so I just guessed that it’d be ok. My wife told me he was a retired hit man or something. That’s all I knew.

There’s more to it than that, and it was a really interesting film. I’d describe it almost as a “reluctant buddy movie” but it was darkly hilarious and had a bit of a morality tale to it. Very well done, and very funny and touching.

Problem was, the audience was fricking dead and didn’t laugh at some pretty good, pretty obvious jokes. So that sucked.

But I’d recommend the film.

Who knew it was online? I love that kind of stuff. I started being a bit of a grammar/spelling/punctuation stickler when I was forced to have those topics taught to me over several Saturdays back in about 8th or 9th grade. It’s a curse, but avoiding the splitting of infinitives and ending sentences with prepositions is a pretty benign one.

But what’s cool about this stylebook is that it has that loveable Brit snark:

Lake District
Mere, as in Windermere, means lake. The only lake in the district with Lake in its title is Bassenthwaite Lake.

Mortuary
is where our dead lie. “Morgue” belongs across the Atlantic.

Ongoing
a nasty, unnecessary word.

Political correctness
use your sense. Much PC terminology is ludicrous - “herstory” for “history”, for example. Pensioners remain pensioners, not senior citizens. But the crippled have become disabled people or indeed people with disabilities; those we used to refer as mentally handicapped are now more usually people with learning disabilities. Fires are dealt with by firefighters. Ambulances are driven by ambulance crews or paramedics. Rubbish is taken by refuse collectors etc etc. In the second and subsequent references to a woman, it is better to use the accepted titles - “Miss, Mrs” - if known, rather than “Ms”. But “Ms” is acceptable if the title isn’t known, or if the woman in question has made known her desire to be so titled.

Click the link. There are loads more.

HT Outside Counsel.

Last week, I posted a couple of things about Top Gear - the most popular and best car show you’ve never seen. Discovery Channel owns the US rights and has, for the most part, squandered a wonderful opportunity. To date.

They’re working on an American version, but IMHO, if Clarkson isn’t in it, it’s gonna suck. (Read his car reviews at the Times [of London]).

Imagine American Idol without Cowell.

Well, here’s a fine howdy do. Last night I was channel-surfing and Discovery Science Channel aired a Brit episode of Top Gear. Well, not a clean Brit ep - it was amended a bit for the US audience (someday TV bigwigs will just air shit and let us figure out the lingo for ourselves. If you can’t figure out from the context of the video that a boot is a trunk, a bonnet is a hood, a saloon is a sedan, and that petrol is gasoline, then you’re probably not gonna bother watching this show anyhow).

But I digress.

I have the show DVRed now, so hopefully there will be more loaded up on the hard drive as the month progresses.

And, just so you know:

A 4-cylinder 2.0L Mitsubishi Evo VIII can keep up and even handles better than a 12-cylinder Lamborghini Murcielago; (here’s the video):

The Stig drove the Evo around the test track almost as fast as a Ferrari;

Jaguar, like Birmingham, is making a great comeback;

A Citroen Berlingo is a cooler car that is more versatile than most minivans;

It is decidedly impossible to kill a Toyota Hilux pickup truck. It will not drown, it will not be destroyed by falling, having a camper land on it, or by wrecking ball, and it will not even be stopped by fire.

If you like cars even a little bit, look for Top Gear.

From Creative Buffalo:

Grand Opening of Chateau Buffalo
Work by Val Dunne
Friday February 3, 2006 7-10

Chateau Buffalo
1209 Hertel Avenue
www.chateaubuffalo.com

Enough Buffalo-bashing. Watch Triumph walk through Quebec City.

Via KT and Craig, I find this Canadian blogger’s reaction to Harper’s Conservatives’ victory in last week’s Canadian general election.

Setting aside the insinuation that Harper’s CP is as conservative as George W. Bush (we could only wish), and setting aside the patent cheap shot at our fair City, it’s a dumb statement.

First off, Buffalo doesn’t deserve cheap, thoughtless insults from the likes of this guy. I’ve had many friends - bloggers and non-bloggers - wax almost poetic about their love for our oft-maligned City and region. They don’t deserve it, either. I mean, Buffalo isn’t the Oktoberfest capital of the US or anything, but we do have Albright-Knox and Shea’s.

But factually, our region itself actually happens to be controlled almost exclusively by members of our Democratic Party. So, if you live in a Buffalo suburb, you’ve probably got a Dem Town Supervisor/Mayor, and a Dem County Legislator. So, if he actually was bummed about conservatives running things where he lives, he could do a lot worse than WNY.

But I think it was probably just a cheap shot at Buffalo. Too bad for him that he’d do that.

UPDATE: The author of that post comments on Craig’s site and says he didn’t mean it as an insult - that he could easily have substituted any American border town, but chose Buffalo out of proximity.

Fair enough. But Buffalo has become a punch line to too many jokes. So he can forgive us being suspicious and touchy.

We already know they (for definition of “they”, insert yours here) won’t listen to liberal bloggers or Democratic Senators. We know they won’t listen to public opinion. We know they won’t listen to their longstanding allies and friends around the world - the ones they denigrate and insult as, e.g., “Old Europe.”

So, will they listen to one of their own? A conservative like Andrew Sullivan?

The U.S., under this president, now allows soldiers to kidnap the wives, girlfriends and even children of suspected insurgents in order to flush out the enemy. We saw some of this at Abu Ghraib, where relatives of alleged terrorists and insurgents were raped, abused and photographed to get them to lean on people outside the jail, or to blackmail them once they had left

He goes on:

I’m reminded of Fred Barnes’ description of president Bush’s leadership methods in his new book. All he cares about, Fred assures us, are the results, not the means. Fred thinks that’s a good thing. When torture, illegal wire-tapping, kidnapping, rape and murder of defenseless prisoners are the means, I beg to differ.

Here’s a link to his earlier post.

I know folks like PJ and maybe Hank will post a comment that insinuates that criticizing Bush’s torture policy is tantamount to treason, or, barring that, just shilling for the Islamofascists.

But think about this.

When you were a kid coming up - and someone (let’s say, for the sake of argument, a German University student with a “Atomkraft, nein Danke” sticker on the back of his moped wearing a Che t-shirt) suggested that the US tortured people and used blackmail and terror to get information from people, you’d have: 1. Clocked him in the mouth; or, 2. Argued vehemently that the US would never do such a thing.

But now it’s come out that we do. For real. And I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if you sink to antidemocratic, illegal methods to protect your democracy….[I’ll let you finish that sentence].

And, BTW - the first person who says that Sullivan is just a self-loathing gay man or some other such drooling drivel gets a cookie.

“We’re starting phase one of developing a housing co-op,” said Eric Walker of PUSH Buffalo. PUSH stands for People United for Sustainable Housing.

This is how people can take their neighborhoods back.

“This house cleanup is the first step in demonstrating that we, as West Side residents, can be part of the physical transformation of our neighborhood,” Walker said. “We’re trying to get people from the community to show that direct investment in neighborhoods is the way to go.”

PUSH member Aaron Bartley said the message is that residents can start making changes in their neighborhoods.

“Today’s nothing complicated,” Bartley said. “We’re just getting the junk out. Our goal is by summer to have it rehabbed so the co-op can start.”

I put this story on my “relevance” scale, and it didn’t tip.

I’m politically unpersuaded with Antoine Thompson’s college-era NYNEX debts. The child support judgment is significantly more troubling, but the guy’s been in public office for a while, and now this comes bubbling up? What’s next? He farts in the tub?

Are you listening to Hardwick’s show? WBEN 930-AM 10-12.

Artvoice’s website looks much, much better now.

They have this “Geek Meet” thing scheduled for the Town Ballroom on the 26th, and IIRC, I emailed them about what the hell it’s supposed to be, but I still don’t know.

Bye-bye tightly controlled “nominating conventions“.

Hello primaries.

A federal judge yesterday struck down the system that has given state political party leaders a stranglehold over the way top trial judges across New York State have been elected for decades.

In a decision that could have a lasting impact on the judicial selection process across the state, the judge, John Gleeson of the United States District Court in Brooklyn, found the system unconstitutional and ordered it halted immediately.

Judge Gleeson barred the State Board of Elections and Republican and Democratic Party officials from the practice of selecting candidates for State Supreme Court justice at sharply controlled nominating conventions that some critics said effectively robbed voters of their say in who made it to the bench. He ordered that they instead hold primaries until state lawmakers pass legislation setting up a new system.

No system of judge-selection is perfect. But the way the system exists today, it’s tantamount to patronage. This ruling is at the trial-court level, so there will inevitably be an appeal. If we’re to elect judges, however, the system should be open and the election should be based on ideas and ideals - not whom the candidate knows.

“The highly unusual processes by which that extremely important office is filled perpetuate that control and deprive the voters of any meaningful role,” the judge wrote in the decision. “The result is an opaque, and undemocratic selection procedure that violates the rights of the voters and the rights of candidates who lack the backing of local party leaders.”

This is a big deal. Assuming the ruling is upheld, we’ll either have real primaries, or else the legislature in Albany will have to come up with some sort of alternate method. Given that Albany can’t figure out with what to replace lever voting machines, you oughtn’t hold your breath.