Tonight Rachel and I are flying to Miami for the weekend. The plans have been in the works for some time, but it is just now dawning on me thattonight I’m going to Miami where, undoubtedly, it’s going to be sunny and hot. Yes, sometimes the obvious escapes me. Nonetheless, I’m excited. I’m excited because I’ve never been to Miami. I’m also excited because I like to read the Economist magazine, and I only buy copies when I fly.
It’s going to be a good time, Tater.
Let me borrow liberally and comment:
NEW YORK (AP) ― A sadistic gang of police impersonators abducted and tortured scores of East Coast cocaine traffickers, forcing them to hand over multimillion-dollar stashes by threatening to squeeze their testicles with pliers, authorities said Tuesday…
Since the spring of 2003, the gang injured about 100 people while committing 100 holdups targeting large-scale traffickers in New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Florida, investigators said.
The take: more than 1,650 pounds of cocaine worth $20 million and $4 million in cash.
They sound like an effective unit. If found guilty, maybe we should just hire them instead of wasting them while they serve time.
The scheme “was breathtaking in the scope of its crimes…
I’ll bet!
and in the danger it posed to our communities,” said U.S. Attorney Benton Campbell.
Let me get this straight, a band of criminals tracked down, captured and stole from a bunch of coke traffickers, and they’re posing a danger to the community?
The victims were handcuffed, bound with duct tape and subjected to various means of torture during interrogations, including “simulated drowning through repeated submerging of victims’ heads in water for extended periods of time,” the court papers said.
One victim told investigators that during a 2005 abduction, two of the defendants “applied a pair of pliers to the victim’s testicles and threatened to squeeze the pliers if the victim did not talk,” the papers added.
Once the information was extracted, the bandits would retrieve large stashes of cocaine and resell it on the streets of New York.
Well I guess this help prove the positive efficacy of torture.
In case you missed it, and judging by the concern received from you all, you did, Northern Virginia had an earthquake yesterday. The violent magnitude 2.0 earthquake…
I’ll just stop there.
The official epicenter is about 9 miles south of my office. I didn’t feel a thing.
Last night I read through some material from Reason Magazine. The article in particular was titled “The Coming Recession” and subtitled “Seven observers debate the (sorry) state of the economy” (not that there was any debate, but just an accumulation of 7 people’s views). One of those people, was Ron Paul. Ron Paul, if you are somehow not familiar, is the Texas Congressman who seems to best represent libertarian political views. That is great for him, and I suspect that I would like many of his policies if I took the time to read them. However, I probably won’t read them because he seems just a skosh too nutty and his legion of internet fanboys is nothing short of disturbing. Getting back to my point, as I read Paul’s part of the article, the only voice I could imagine as belonging to Ron Paul was that of Lou Holtz.
This past weekend I made my first foray into barbecue, or at least it was some kind of flame-based, low-temperature, long-time pig cooking. And it was good.
While what I did may not fit into classical definitions it was, I’ll say again, quite tasty. Basically I got a 4lb picnic ham (aka a pork shoulder, as in part of the pigs upper arm and ball-and-socket joint), which I cut into approximately equal chunks, leaving the skin in place. I then added a rub consisting of (mostly) equal parts salt, pepper, cayenne pepper, garlic powder and sugar. The seasoned pork then went into my grandma’s old cast iron dutch oven. Water was added to a depth of about 1 1/2 inches. Then it was covered with the lid askew and placed on my grill (in this case, a gas grill because it is what’s here) over low heat. Water was added occasionally. Some smoke chips were smoked. After about 4 hours those hunks of pork fell apart.
The recipe came from Rachel’s dad. He of course recommends using charcoal, which I swear I will get to eventually. He also provided a sauce recipe, which I will skip here because the pork was, as I believe good barbecue should be, so delicious and juicy that sauce couldn’t have made it any better.
I’m also looking forward to moving up to the 7lb. shoulder, as more pork is always better. I highly recommend this as a weekend project.
