Someone stop the bleeding...It's almost painful to watch sHrillary Clinton attempt to fight off the titanic surge of vapid infatuation that the democrat base has suddenly developed for Barry Hussein Obama, everyone's favorite foriegn agent and presidential contender. When Republicans go against their base, they at least nominate someone who is an acknowledged patriot and war hero. A known quantity whose life has been dedicated to the service of America's interests. Not so the democrats, nope, nosiree...when they decide to alienate half their electorate, they go full bore with an unknown quantity. They pick a possible foreign agent whose wife has never found a reason until recently to be proud of her country. Not that this should surprise anyone. The democrat base is almost uniformly ashamed of America and her history. Which explains of course the left's utter lack of regard for American History and also explains why most on the left have never read the Constitution. They can't be bothered with rules, facts or logic. Emotion and feelings are the only guide they need to govern. God spare us from the tender mercies of the "enlightened left."

This being America though and me being fortunate enough to live in a Red State, or as we like to call it, Legitimate America, I decided I needed a little insurance against a democrat presidency. I've been working a lot of overtime lately and I figured that the American firearms industry would be the best recipient of my hard earned dollar. I'm now the proud owner of a couple of Henry Rifles. Nice additions to my small arsenal. One for plinkin' and one for varmints. Either of them will make a handsome saddle carbine, just in case I happen to be on a trail ride and come across some supper on all fours...

Speaking of putting food on the table, it's that time of year, Lent, when all good Catholics abstain from meat on Fridays. That being the case and knowing that reader Terry Garcia is always looking for salmon recipes, I thought I'd offer this one up. I was looking to make a salmon casserole and found this recipe on the web. This casserole was so good there weren't any leftovers and it was quick and easy to make....

INGREDIENTS:
1/4 cup finely chopped green bell pepper
1/4 cup finely chopped onion
2 tablespoons butter
1 can (10 1/2 oz) condensed cream of celery soup, undiluted
1/2 cup milk
1 1/2 cups shredded Cheddar cheese
1 can (16 ounces) salmon, drained and flaked
4 ounces medium noodles, cooked
1/4 cup sliced black olives, optional
1 cup soft bread crumbs tossed with 1 tablespoon melted butter

PREPARATION:
In saucepan cook green pepper and onion in 2 tablespoons of butter until tender. Add soup and milk; heat until bubbly, stirring constantly. Add cheese; stir until melted. Stir in salmon, drained noodles and olives. Transfer mixture to a 1 1/2-quart casserole and top with buttered bread crumbs. Bake at 350° for 25 to 30 minutes.
Serves 4.

I served this up with salad and fresh bread....a damn fine Lenten meal if I say so myself...

Smilin' Paul Villa U.S. Senate 2010
cyber-Congressman, R-Reno
Proud Member of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy and 2 SUV Family

It took me a little while to get over the withdrawal of the best candidate of the current crop of Presidential hopefuls -- Mitt Romney would have been a stellar president. Since I cannot find it in my heart to betray America, it's people, or those that have given all to preserve and protect her, there is not a snowball's chance in hell I am going to sit out this election just because the best man didn't get the nomination. Furthermore, there will be no talk of supporting the wife of an impeached and disgraced former President and Arkansas governor, or the woefully inexperienced and panderer par excellance from Illinois. Conservatives, you're faced with the consequences of "failing to act" -- the 2006 elections didn't sink in well enough.

John McCain is the nominee of the Republican Party. Wow.

I admire Senator McCain, but he was not my choice. I don't agree with his positions on campaign finance reform, immigration, or his procrastination on making tax cuts permanent. He was, in fact, considered as a potential running mate for an incredible dork: the junior senator from Massachusetts I affectionately refer to as "Kerrie the Kommie".

All is not lost, however. I can find plenty of redeeming factors in a McCain campaign, and will vote for him come November. But, first, I must analyze why America is offered a choice that nearly abandons conservative ideals when those ideals are sorely needed.

America has seen the left wing and their idiotic stooges in the media vent their rage and hatred of this nation for the duration of the Bush administration. I struggle to recall a more feckless consortium of political operatives -- these liberals and their septic tank dwelling supporters. Not since the Vietnam era has America been exposed to the levels of intolerance, poison, and prejudice these "enlightened" liberals have demonstrated. Since none of their icons reach anything that compares to the respect and honor shown for the likes of Ronald Reagan, etc., the bitterness and anger that drips from these people is equal parts fascinating and comical. If you examine the utterly insane (and typical) action taken by the Berkeley city government -- regarding a Marine Corps recruiting station in that city -- you'll quickly come to realize why liberals and their ilk are not worth the gallons of fuel oil it would take to fuel an old freighter, send it to sea, and allow the Navy to run live fire drills on it. I smile broadly, imagining a most delightful scenario: most of the Bay Area's liberal/radical elite crammed into the rusted cargo holds, shouting their slogans and screed at the seagulls circling overhead. Meanwhile, a well trained, honest, devoted, and legitimate American naval officer plots the solution for a volley of torpedo shots that would all but vaporize that junker, sending it and the human waste cargo to the ocean's floor.

Of course, that wouldn't happen just as I fantasize . We would see to it all those liberal idiots had lifevests properly attached and nothing would be done until we've provided a thorough description on the feeding habits of great white sharks. We'd also allow the principle operatives of Code Pink and one other luminary liberal organization to man a fleet of rafts, ostensibly to pluck their comrades out of the raging waters and the jaws of hungry fish. Do you think those liberal twits would feel comfortable knowing the likes of Cindy Sheehan was tasked with a massive sea-based rescue mission?

Sure, they would. Just ask the people in Berkeley about the US Marine Corps. The Bay Area liberals/radicals certainly wouldn't want to see a contigent of US military vessels, crewed by highly trained and skilled US Marines, arrive to save them from being chomped and chewed into small bits of shark feces. Equally, those same liberal/radical gutter snipes don't believe our Navy has the skill or weaponry capable of turning a large ship into a pile of rusting scrap on the sea bed. Or, maybe they do. They just cannot find it in their deluded, demented hearts to admit those forces exist so they might live free to demonstrate just what intolerable piles of human dung they are.

You see, my fellow legitmate Americans, these are the people that support Democrats. They can't give you one example of why they "hate" President Bush, except that President Bush was not their "guy". They cannot give you one example of liberal failings without invoking a "free speech" right or trying to compare conservative principles to the Salem witch hunts. They cannot defend their deplorable record on race/class welfare dependency, public school education, or intrusive government bureaucracy, but they can find a way to sloganeer opposition to the defense of the United States from a massive collection of radical Muslims hellbent to kill every last one of them. What really sends liberals and their ilk into a frenzied state of delusion is the very real proposition that the reason most of those deranged Muslim terrorists want to blow up a building full of our school children is because Americans have been free to be whatever they wanted to be, including a liberal moron. Freedom comes with a price -- liberals cannot pay that price, but demand we subsidize the folly of their ideology in spite of mounting threats to the very freedom that allows their moronic mindset.

America is suffering through one of the worst Congressional sessions in history. The Speaker of the House, one Bay Area Democrat and world class idiot, sees fit to insult our troops as a matter of routine. Her counterpart in the Senate, a senile liar and sniveling fool from the storm sewers of Nevada, frequently uses his office to imply the US campaign against global terror is "lost". Where do these imbeciles get the nerve to make such utterly absurd pronouncements?

Can you say "liberal enclaves" five times, real fast?

This is why conservative and legitimate Americans need to ignore the galactically clueless and agenda driven media, the fringe left wing, and other such inanity long enough to get through this election cycle without forfeiting hard fought gains and victories in a long battle against terrorism the world over. If you think the American image is as bad as some of these left wing dungbirds would have you believe, just wait until another "moderate" nation falls into the hands of radical Islam. See who the world calls to either control or eliminate the threat. Unless a legitimate American is elected to the office of President and Commander-in-Chief, there will be no one the world can call to end the threat of wholesale murder and terror. If millions die in terror related nuclear detonations -- a very real and viable threat America must prosecute with extreme prejudice and precision -- because America decided to give another liberal shyster the chance to destroy this nation, we can acknowledge and accept responsibility for failing to act when we had the chance and moral obligation to act.

Let the liberals in Berkeley, San Francisco, where ever, wallow in their puddles of irrelevance and poison. Legitimate Americans should do everything in their power to see to it those communities are marginalized and stripped of tax payer funding for any public project. Let those people prove the righteousness of their cause and the effectiveness of their goverance. If we boycott those cities and take away subsidies they thrive on, we can see how these fringe idiots will overcome those losses -- proving the American way was never the right way for them to live. If you don't subscribe to that notion, then carefully explain -- to the next legitimate American you can find that will tolerate your stupidity long enough -- why the nation should pay for extravagent or token projects in those anti-American enclaves while hard working Americans are struggling to pay the ever increasing burden of federal income tax.

Legitimate Americans don't mind paying to help Californians recover from earthquakes or fires or foreign invasion. In fact, we'll send the best, brightest, and strongest in our midst to aid those efforts. Legitimate Americans will not send one penny to a Berkeley or San Francisco that insults the United States as a matter of political routine, then demands every benefit and privilege being a citizen of the United States entails.

As previously mentioned, freedom comes with a price -- Berkeley, etc., ain't on the donor list.

There was a time when your humble correspondent used to look forward to trips to the People’s Republik of Berkeley. Growing up in the Bay Area, it’s kind of hard to avoid. The city is a magnet for the detritus of humanity and as such it also lured those of us with a healthy curiosity about the human condition. That and there were always plenty of earnest leftwing shapely adorables running around who would do pretty much anything you liked if you lied to them and they thought you were a fellow traveler. You could also get a pretty good slice of pizza at Blondie’s or an even better hot dog at Top Dog back then. Since teenage boys almost always have either food or sex on their minds, Berkeley was a better place to be than say, Barstow. That said, judging from recent events in Berkeley it would appear that the human condition is lower than heretofore imagined. Having been exposed to angry leftists pretty much all of my life, I understand their need to vent and to engage in vituperative debate, devoid of facts or logic, with anyone who doesn’t completely agree with their statements or their agenda or who poses the slightest inconvenience to them. In this case, inconvenience might be characterized as forcing the individual leftist to actually think or to consider an opinion or activity divergent from their own. This is ironic considering the fondness among the faux sophisticates of the left for calling Conservatives, Nazis.

In reality it is the left that engages in Nazi-like tactics. Many of you are aware by now, the City of Berkeley has once again expressed through its elected representatives, its utter disdain for the United States of America. The City Council has passed a resolution calling the U.S. Marine recruiting station on Shattuck Ave. “unwelcome” and referring to the United States Marines therein as “intruders”. Protestors have chained themselves to the doors and otherwise obstructed the Marines inside from performing their job. That is to recruit tomorrow’s Marines today. Since subtlety is lost on the left, let’s examine some facts that your average commie-come-lately seems to forget. The current United States Military is an all-volunteer force. Young men and women who happen to believe in what America stands for and who think that we just might be on the right side of history are volunteering. They are volunteering to shoulder the burden of maintaining our precious freedoms in the face of an enemy as dedicated and insidious as any other we have faced in our collective history. They are volunteering to protect the very freedoms that the left abuses and mocks by its own actions. For you Marx-keteers out there, that means that no one is being drafted to go and fight in Iraq, those that do so, volunteer out of a sense of decency and honor and an acknowledgement that this is a necessary fight, and not one that we picked, but one that any legitimate American should be damned good and willing to finish.

By essentially closing down the business of the recruiting station, the left has, without due process, circumscribed the freedom of expression not only of the recruiters’ assigned to that particular station, but also of the potential recruits who might otherwise have found their way inside. What makes this farce even more absurd is that the left uses resolutions and actions of a duly elected town council to impinge on the work of legitimate Americans doing their duty to protect the rest of us. That would be the rest of us that actually live in reality and not the self-absorbed social construct that the left typically inhabits. Of course that same self-absorption allows radical leftwing town councils to issue resolutions relating to foreign policy that they are powerless to enforce but that make them feel good. As if they actually contributed something beyond the mindless slaughter of more trees towards a solution to a world crisis. It is this same self absorbed world view that allows petty tyrants on town councils to make the incredible determination that their resolutions supersede any constitutional consideration. This is how we end up with the infuriating spectacle of protestors shutting down a recruiting station and town councils voting to allow special parking permits for far left radical groups in front of the recruiting station.

Fortunately for legitimate Americans, there is a groundswell of outrage across the land at these latest displays of strong-arm tactics from the left. I can assure you my readers that I will never again willingly spend a dime in Berkeley. The next time I drive through it, I vow that it will be in a gas-guzzling SUV adorned with NRA and Right to Life bumper stickers. I’ll root for Stanford in next year’s Big Game and most importantly, I will pray everyday that the Big Marine in the sky will see fit to remake Berkeley as Sodom by the Bay, and treat it accordingly. Of course sometimes we are blessed enough to witness men and women acting as instruments of His will. I reckon a squad of Marines would be more than enough to stand down the mass of socialists in the Bay. Just keep the MREs and ammo coming. Now that would be entertaining, watching a squad of Marines defending their station against a mob of hippies. What would be even more entertaining would be to watch a wave of reinforcements coming to aid the Marines, and subsequently ridding us of the national suppurating abscess we call Berkeley.

Speaking of good sport, the Super Bowl is only hours away and it's been a month since I posted a recipe. It has become a Super Bowl tradition to attend the Pollack's annual Super Bowl Party and as usual I'll be supplying the meatballs. These are always a hit at the Pollack's parties and they sure as hell do make a fantastic sandwich. They're also great as leftovers with some egg noodles to sop up the Guiness gravy. I use Emeril Lagasse's garlic meatball recipe and substitute Guiness for amber beer. Using Guiness will necessitate adding milk to the gravy in order to tame the very bitter flavor you'll otherwise get with Guiness. Otherwise, you can play with this recipe endlessly and the meatballs always come out well, but you better love garlic....a lot...

1/2 pound ground veal
1/2 pound ground beef chuck
1/2 pound ground pork
1/2 cup finely chopped yellow onion
1/2 teaspoon finely chopped garlic
1/4 cup finely chopped green onions or scallions (green part only)
1 large egg
1/4 cup fine dried bread crumbs
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
3/4 teaspoon cayenne
16 small cloves garlic, peeled
1/4 cup bleached all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon Creole Seasoning (recipe follows)
1/4 cup vegetable oil
2 cups thinly sliced yellow onions
1 (12-ounce) bottle Abita amber beer or other amber beer
1 cup water

In a large mixing bowl, combine the ground meats, chopped yellow onion, chopped garlic, green onions, egg, bread crumbs, Worcestershire, 1 teaspoon of the salt, and 1/2 teaspoon of the cayenne. Mix well with your hands and form into 16 meatballs. Insert a garlic clove in the center of each meatball and pinch the meat around it. Combine the flour and Creole seasoning in a shallow plate. Roll the meatballs evenly in the flour mixture, tapping off any excess. Reserve any remaining flour.

In a large skillet, heat the oil over medium heat. Add the meatballs and brown evenly, using a spoon to turn them. Remove the meatballs from the pan and set aside. With a wooden spoon, scrape the bottom of the pan to loosen any brown bits. Stir in the reserved seasoned flour. Stir constantly for 3 to 4 minutes to make a dark brown roux. Add the sliced onions and season with the remaining 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon cayenne. Cook, stirring constantly, until the onions are slightly soft, about 2 minutes. Slowly pour in the beer and water and mix well. Bring to a boil and return the meatballs to the skillet. Reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer, uncovered, for about 1 hour, until the gravy is thick, turning and basting the meatballs with the pan gravy about every 15 minutes. Spoon the gravy over the meatballs and place a few on a white roll....man that's good game day eatin' and I guarantee it's not something your average PETA supporter is going to get within a mile of...

Smilin' Paul Villa U.S. Senate 2010
cyber-Congressman, R-Reno
Proud Member of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy and 2 SUV Family