Thanks Sammie, and you can keep the shirt.

Although he announced his plans earlier this month, we were hoping against HOPE that he would change his mind. So it is with a heavy heart that I must report that the rumors are true - we are losing chef Sammie Kass; he’s moving to New York. To be with his new wife, Ms.NBC news hostess, Alex Wagner. She’s a former political activist and music-magazine editor, so she’s probably got a great future at Ms.NBC.

The foxy couple, in an unposed photo for Vogue

Here’s how Vogue described the power couple: 

“She’s a rising television-news star. He’s the consummate White House insider.”

Who knew we would one day live in a world where talking heads of 3rd rate cable networks would be considered a “television-news star” and Big Guy’s chef would be known as a “consummate White House insider.”

And while it was a blow when we lost our pie chef, Bill Yosses,

Hey, how would you like a job in the White House?

losing Sammie will be like losing a member of the family. So let’s spend a few moments to look back on Sam’s awesome accomplishments, beginning with his humble days back in Chicago as personal chef to the Wons when Lady M was a big shot Vice President for “Community Affairs” for the University of Chicago Hospitals and Big Guy was just the Jr. Senator from Illinois, on his way to being America’s Jr. President.

Apparently Tony Rezko threw Sammy in as part of the package deal on the Wons’ new house in Hyde Park which also included a spare lot and special pricing.

Tony: from a Friend with Benefits to a Friend with Convictions.

Meanwhile, Sammie was teaching Lady M everything she knows about nutrition:

Hi! My name is Sam Kass, and I taught MO how to eat her peas!

“Sam Kass has been a fixture at the executive mansion, serving up nutrition policy alongside meals for Obama, his wife, Michelle, and daughters Malia and Sasha. He was not only their personal chef but senior adviser for nutrition policy, giving him a seat at the table where administration officials hashed out everything from updated food labels,”

Because…bigger is better? No, wait, that’s not right.

“to new requirements for healthier school lunches.”

"I love this family and believe in everything the president and first lady are doing and this has been the greatest job of my life,”

“and I assume will be the greatest job of my life," Kass told the Journal.

Yeah, it don’t get no better than this.

"But I'm going to be with my wife. Once you're married you kind of need to be together."

Try to curb your enthusiasm there, cowboy.

“From constructing our Kitchen Garden,”

“to brewing our own Honey Brown Ale,”

Sam, Maid in America

“Sam has left an indelible mark on the White House,” President Barack Obama said Monday in a press release announcing the resignation, The Wall Street Journal is reporting.

Hey Big Guy, I’ve prepared something very special for you!

"And with the work he has done to inspire families and children across this country to lead healthier lives, Sam has made a real difference for our next generation," he added.

So thanks Sam, for all your hard work.

We’ll sure miss you!

“Thanks Sammie, and please keep the shirt as a token of our appreciation.”

Linked By: Thomas Lifson @ American Thinker, and Larwyn’s Linx on Doug Ross@Journal, and BlogsLucianneLoves, and Free Republic, Thanks!

Cross-Posted on RedState and Patriot Action Network

Greetings On Boxing Day; And the First Day of Kwanzaa

So; another Christmas goes in the record book. That means today is Boxing Day – the day originally designated to give your servants a small token of your appreciation.

Now days it’s just another excuse to go shopping to pick up stuff on sale that you don’t need, don’t really want and will eventually end up in the Goodwill or Salvation Army box.

So shop with abandon!

It’s also the first day of Kwanzaa, celebrated with abandon around here, along with all the other Winter Holidays.  Yesterday the Wons made their annual visit to the troops and issued their annual Christmas greetings to the nation.

They will be issuing their annual Kwanzaa greetings later today, and I suspect it will be similar to past messages such as this one, from 2010:

"Michelle and I extend our warmest thoughts and wishes to all those who are celebrating Kwanzaa this holiday season. Today is the first of a joyful seven-day celebration of African-American culture and heritage. The seven principles of Kwanzaa — Unity, Self-Determination, Collective Work and Responsibility, Cooperative Economics, Purpose, Creativity and Faith — are some of the very values that make us Americans."

Even though many, including Moonbattery pointed out at the time that those values make you more Synbionese than American as they are the same concepts symbolized by the seven deadly cobras in the flag of the socialist Symbionese Liberation Army:

Actually, these are the values that would make you not American, but Symbionese. They Kwanzaa was invented by 1960s black power radical Ron Everett, aka Maulana Karenga. Even in the swamps of hippie era radical politics, Karenga stood out as a particularly unsavory character. His United Slaves outfit murdered rival Black Panthers, and Karenga himself was convicted of torturing women, using vices and hot soldering irons among other implements. Kwanzaa was created explicitly to divide Americans by alienating blacks from the Christian holidays that unite us.

Anyway, did you notice that Lady M wore her usual holiday sparkle headband to greet the troops?

She wears it every year: here she is in 2012 on the phone with NORAD tracking Santa’s progress (note to self: a landline? To NORAD? Maybe it’s time to upgrade our technology.)

And really rockin’ the look again last year:

- when she turned 50, and refused to dress the part.

So I don’t think you should try to read anything into it, it just makes her feel festive - and young. And rich. Which is why she has so many old boxes she can afford to donate to the little people, in the original spirit of boxing day.

“Michelle and I extend our warmest thoughts and wishes to you!” – Obama Kwanzaa Greeting

Linked By: BlogsLucianneLoves, and Free Republic, Thanks!

Cross-Posted on RedState and Patriot Action Network

Heav'nly hosts sing Alleluia; Christ the Savior is born.

And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed…until such time as an angel appeared to  the false king named Barack and said unto him: “That’s right Barack…you didn’t build that yourself; somebody else made that happen.”

Behold his glory:

And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.  For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.  And this shall be a sign unto you; ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

 

 

 

Mannheim Steamroller: Stille Nacht

Merry Christmas from MOTUS, Raj and Little Mo to all of our friends and family here. You make it all worthwhile.

Linked By: BlogsLucianneLoves, and Free Republic, Thanks!

Cross-Posted on RedState and Patriot Action Network

Mele Kalikimaka 2014

 

The Won with Wee Won One, with friends and their Secret Service Army, on the Makapuu Point Lighthouse Trail; Taking the Road Less Traveled

 

And so we leave the year behind - by and large unexamined - to kick back and enjoy the Winter Holiday season Hawaiian style. Don’t think that the Wons don’t realize how many things they have to be grateful for this year:

• High fives all around for the falling gas prices that we get credit for despite having done everything in our power to prevent.
• Corks popping to celebrate the historic record number of (real) Americans no longer in the work force and therefore able to follow their bliss. And likewise we’ll celebrate the record number of soon-to-be (new) Americans arriving from south of the border to do the jobs that (real) Americans are no longer able to do because they’ve been set free to follow their bliss. 
• We’re also grateful that the Obamacare website didn’t crash again during this year’s enrollment, even if it was because so few people can afford to enroll due to the high cost of the plans and/or because they’ve been freed to follow their bliss.
• And we’re most especially thankful to the media for holding all the phony scandals at bay for another year and for helping us maintain the charade that the republican midterm win wasn’t real in any meaningful way.
• Oh, and we also want to thank the media for ensuring that “social justice,” whatever that is,  and race are once again the focal point of the “national conversation.”

Now, as has been my tradition for 6 long years, I have prepared a Christmas Winter Holiday greeting card for you from the Won’s in Hawaii. I have been sending it out each Christmas Eve since it was originally posted in 2009 to commemorate our first, historic, Presidential vacation on the alleged island of Barry’s birth. As the legend goes however, nobody – to this very day - knows exactly where our American messiah was really born.

As you’ll see, despite the rainy weather this year I still managed to squeeze in a little surf time before catching my flight out (commercial) this afternoon to celebrate Christmas with my family in flyover. 

So as we say in Hawaii: Mele Kalikimaka!

 

 

Linked By: Zilla of the Resistance, and Larwyn’s Linx on Doug Ross@Journal, and BlogsLucianneLoves, and Free Republic, Thanks!

Cross-Posted on RedState and Patriot Action Network

Icky and Hacky

Greetings from the formerly sunny island of Oahu! I haven’t needed my uva and uvb lenses much so far this year, as the little black cloud seems to be following us; the rain I mean.

And now I hear that Congress is releasing a report today that reveals our ex-IRS top official Lois Lerner specifically targeted tea party groups and misled the public about its secret political targeting program:

The Daily Caller has obtained an advance copy of a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee report set to be released Tuesday morning that definitively proves malicious intent by the IRS to improperly block conservative groups that an IRS adviser deemed “icky.” (That’s right. “Icky.”)

No, silly. Not that “Ickey”

I suppose, if you’re going to let the truth leak out, the day before Christmas Eve is a good time to do it. Butt why couldn’t the North Koreans have blocked these emails that we thought had been deep-sixed for-EVER, rather than a silly movie that would have bombed on its own? We just don’t seem to be able to cut a break around here lately.

So yikes! Let’s get back to talking about the injustice of the police assassinating innocent black men as soon as possible. Cue up the Rev and let’s just get this march a Movin’On.Org!

And with that I’m officially implementing my holiday rules: cute animals, music and recipes only.

Here’s my contribution on the cute animal and music front: if you have a short-hair, you may want to train him to do this:

And in the recipe department, I probably posted this before, butt it’s worth repeating – until I get that recipe E-book pulled together (special thanks to Janice the Elder and Mr. the Elder for the e-book templates). It’s everything you need this time of year: simple, cheap and universally loved. Although they apparently go by many different names around the country – “Hanky Pankies,” “Pitty Pats,” “Polish Mistakes,” I’ve always known them simply as “Susie’s Rye Toasts.” They are perfect for any holiday gathering (well, maybe not Hanukkah as they violate multiple kosher rules) be it the tree trimmers, the carolers, the post Midnight Mass revelers or just the hungry elves who are exhausted after all that decorating:

Susie’s Rye Toasts, aka Hanky Pankies and Polish Mistakes

Ingredients

1 lb. ground beef

1 lb. sausage (Bob Evans, mild or hot)

1 lb. Velveeta cheese-cubed

1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce

1 tsp. oregano

1 tsp. garlic salt

1 loaf cocktail rye (or pumpernickel) bread

Directions

Brown ground beef and sausage and drain. Add cheese, Worcestershire, oregano and garlic salt and heat until cheese is melted.

Spoon meat on to bread and spread to cover entire square.

Freeze for future hoards, or just pop under a broiler for 2-4 minutes. If you don’t feel like watching them like a hawk, bake at 350 degrees till hot – about 15 minutes. You can cut them in half on the diagonal to create the illusion of having more servings, butt if you do people will eat twice as many.

Susie’s Rye Toasts – on Pumpernickel

Now get out there and start cooking and counting your blessings!

Linked By: BlogsLucianneLoves, and Free Republic, Thanks!

Cross-Posted on RedState and Patriot Action Network

Mock We Much

The National Review thinks kids today are softer than cotton candy. They drew this conclusion based on the students’ and their institutions of higher learning reactions to the double non-indictment of two grand juries hundreds, if not thousands, of miles away from their campuses.

Requiring everything from grief therapists (University of California) to delayed final exams (Harvard, Occidental, Columbia), the kids just can’t seem to shake the trauma. And if that weren’t bad enough, now people are making fun of them as well.

Another Harvard Law student, writing on behalf of all of those Ivy Leaguers troubled by the goings-on in Ferguson and Staten Island, argued that students needed to have their exams delayed. He wrote that “opponents portrayed today’s law students as coddled millennials using traumatic events as an excuse for their inability to focus on a three-hour exam. In essence, law students were told to grow up and learn how to focus amid stress and anxiety — like ‘real’ lawyers must do.”

It’s probably vain emails like this that give people the idea that students are “coddled.” And “soft.” And even when she got a response to her asinine email – a one word response, “NO,” – she wouldn’t let it drop.

1-800-EFF-UTOO

She took to Facebook to complain that

“Professors and administration at Oberlin need to be held accountable for their words and actions and have a responsibility to their students,”stated the pompous young lady.

NRO ponders the complexities of these student demands:

It is difficult to say which would be worse: if the nation were really so populated by fragile twentysomething toddlers so mentally brittle and incurably neurotic that the deployment of a perfectly good verb could send them over the edge into some sort of 1980s concept-album psychic crisis or if instead (and as I expect) all this hysterical insistence upon their emotional vulnerability were  simply a passive-aggressive means of exercising control over what is said and thought, over how schools are administered, etc., with the people crying about “trigger alerts” acting simultaneously as hostages and hostage-takers.(snip)

Hands up! Don’t shoot!

As soon as you accept the premise that a person’s right to free speech (or a professor’s ability to conduct his class) is circumscribed by another person’s “right” not to be offended, then you have jettisoned principle entirely, and all that’s left is brute-force negotiation — a situation in which the partisans of liberty and humaneness always find themselves lamentably outnumbered.

The same people who are forever insisting that we need to have “an honest, open dialogue” about this, that, and the other are at the same time working tirelessly to ensure that we cannot have an open, honest dialogue about anything at all: no jokes about brutal and homicidal dictators, no open discussions of criminal law, no Adventures of Huckleberry Finn — not without a warning label. All of this is an invitation to mockery, assuming we have permission to mock from Dear Leader.

Let me assure you, we do not – have permission to mock that is. Nevertheless,

Mock We Much.

And remember kids: just because you refuse to grow up:

…doesn’t mean you won’t get your own pen and phone someday.

God bless us, every one.

Linked By: Larwyn’s Linx on Doug Ross@Journal, and BlogsLucianneLoves, and Free Republic, Thanks!

Cross-Posted on RedState and Patriot Action Network

One Weird Trick From Dr. Claus To Make Your Life Perfect this Christmas

In our golden age of charlatans, shills, and hucksters…

Oh look! Weasels!

…why is this even news? “Half of Dr. Oz’s medical advice is baseless or wrong.” I mean, he calls himself Dr. Oz for crying out loud.

I know: he’s a heart surgeon, with degrees from TWO Ivy League schools, ipso fatso, he must be smart. He was discovered by Oprah, thus given a platform on which to address the scientifically (and otherwise) illiterate American public, and the rest is history. Or at least history repeating itself. It’s an old story – medicine man shows up in town one day, set’s up his big tent, fills you with HOPE that his magic elixir will cure all your ills, and then, he just leaves you hanging there. Blowing in the wind.

That’s just what snake oil salesmen do. Especially Oprah’s snake oil salesmen.

“There ain't nothin' more powerful than the odor of mendacity...You can smell it.” – Big Daddy, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

If you have time for further entertainment, be sure to read the comment section in the article. You’ll find gems like these:

jaywiener: “Oprah Winfrey made Dr. Oz Famous. If he knows so much about losing weight, why is Oprah so fat?”

CindyMontgomery: “One thing that always gets me about Dr. Oz is how he says things like "Every overweight person I see in my practice has heart trouble." Well duh! The man is a heart surgeon! I'd bet every NON-overweight person he sees has heart trouble too. You know, because that's sort of why they're there.”

Butt now, Dr. Claus would like to help you finish your Christmas shopping with this one weird tip.

Linked By: Larwyn’s Linx on Doug Ross@Journal, and BlogsLucianneLoves, and Free Republic, Thanks!

Cross-Posted on RedState and Patriot Action Network

Year-Ending Presser…But I’m Not Done Yet!

We must have let the rest of the White House staff go on “Winter Holiday Break” early too, because as of this morning, still no transcript from yesterday’s presser.

I gotta run, I’ve got a flight to catch. See you next year.

Although there was this posted yesterday on the Big White site: DECLARACIONES DEL PRESIDENTE SOBRE CAMBIOS EN LA POLÍTICA CON CUBA. No English translation though because, as I just explained, a lot of people are already on holiday. I ran it through my special language pack however and it appears to be addressed to newly landed formerly illegal aliens. It explains how to get a Social Security number, a drivers license, food stamps, unemployment and ObamaCare. It also explains that first you have to join the Democratic Party and register to vote.

And Merry Christmas to you too, María José, Dreamer, studente, and futuro lídero.

So you’ll just have to rely on my synopsis of yesterday’s all-female, all print media presser, as I’m sure you were too busy to bother with it.

• Sony "made a mistake" in deciding to cancel the release of their (satirical) film about North Korea, The Interview. Saying “I wish they had spoken to me first. I would've told them ‘do not get into a pattern in which you're intimidated by these kinds of criminal attacks.’” And let me be clear, this is completely different from films like “The Innocence of Muslims” - that was responsible for the Benghazi massacre. Now THAT film, we approved of getting pulled from YouTube. And clearly the film maker deserved to be thrown in jail.
• We will respond to North Korea’s hacking “proportionally.” Chuck Krauthammer says that means we’ll launch a cyber attack against NoKo’s infrastructure and bring their 3-car trolley system to a halt.
• Q: “Big Guy, you won 2 historic national elections and managed to lose both houses of Congress. What are you going to do next?” A: “I’m going to visit Cuba! The Disneyland of Communist Utopias.”
• Race relations are better now than they were before Big Guy took office. Hopefully he’ll pass that news on to Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, who don’t seem to have gotten the memo.
• People have a tendency to “hype” the benefits to the US economy of the Keystone Pipeline; butt Big Guy’s going to make damn sure it doesn’t add to world-wide climate change before he approves it, i.e. it will be a cold day in Hell. Because we’d rather rely on Saudi Arabia, Russia and Venezuela for our energy. And because hauling crude via (Warren Buffet’s) railcars is way more eco-friendly.

Because hauling crude via railcar is way safer than an environmentally insensitive pipeline

Fireball following derailment and explosion of train carrying Bakken crude oil, on Dec. 30, 2013, outside Casselton, ND 

And finally, justifying his new, unilateral (remember when that used to be a bad thing?) Cuba policy, Barry told us:

“If you’ve done the same thing for 50 years and nothing’s changed you should try something different if you want a different outcome.”

Maybe he should send the same message to his own party, because after 50 years and trillions of dollars, the results of the Great Society’s War on Poverty are less than spectacular:

When President Lyndon Johnson announced his ‘Great Society’ plan to use the federal government to declare war on poverty in 1964, the poverty rate was around 14.7%. In 2012 the poverty rate was nearly unchanged at 15% (although today’s poor are materially better off than in 1964).

So after nearly 50 years and 20 TRILLION dollars spent in Johnson’s ‘Great Society’ war on poverty, the poverty rate has remained virtually unchanged while the illegitimacy rate in the black community has skyrocketed from 25% to over 70%.

It took the people enslaved by the Soviet Union some 70 years to break their chains of the tyranny of communism with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

We are 50 years and counting with the failed policies of big government liberalism as it pertains to poverty in general and the destructive dynamics in the black community in particular.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

The country is way past due for a course change.

Of course all that could change, since Big Guy’s not done yet. He’s still got 2 years, his pen and a phone.

Butt hey, listen to me getting all political on the Saturday before Christmas!

It’s the “holiday” season! We’ve landed in Hawaii, and it’s time to kick back for a couple of weeks! Let the partying begin!

We, too, will be taking a bit of a respite during the holidays: posts will be brief and recipes and adorable baby/ animal photos will always be welcome.

Now get out there with the millions of other Americans who forgot to do their shopping online and finish up your Christmas shopping. Only 4 more days!

Linked By: Larwyn’s Linx on Doug Ross@Journal, and BlogsLucianneLoves, and Free Republic, Thanks!

Cross-Posted on RedState and Patriot Action Network