Fish Fear Me

Wok The Heck

I was going to do some BBQ chicken breasts yesterday, but found a wok that I didn't know we had and decided to do some stir fry instead. I would have preferred broccoli instead of peas, but since the grocery store in town is closed on Sunday this time of year I had to make do with what I had. I sort of winged it.

Staging is everything with wok cooking:

Closer By Committee

I love to follow the Twins, yet I know I will never be the most in-depth analyst when it comes to what they will or will not do. Once in while though, I get a few things right:

Twins manager Ron Gardenhire said before today's game that he will begin the season with a closer-by-committee plan until further notice.

---- But that could change if the front office trades for a closer.

--- And it could change if they decide to approach Francisco Liriano one more time about closing.

A trade is the only realistic way that we won't see closer-by-committee for the next couple of months, at least. I don't think that Liriano has the mental toughness to be a day after day closer. I'd like to see him settle in as a solid fifth starter or as middle relief, but I think the pressure of the closer role would turn him into a basket case within a month. I also don't see any relievers who are obvious replacements for Nathan at this point. Gardenhire and pitching coach Rick Anderson are just going to have to deal with it.

If the starting rotation steps up and provides consistent quality starts then the committee plan will be okay. If not, it will be one hell of a mess.

Human Achievement Hour

Don't forget to celebrate Human Achievement Hour tonight at 8:30 p.m. local time. That's when you turn on all of your exterior lights to let your neighbors know that you recognize all of the progress that harnessing different forms of energy has given mankind. The use of energy to perform work that used to be done by manual labor has vastly improved our lives. We live longer, better, and freer because of it. So much so, that some of us have allowed themselves to forget just how brutal and awful most of human history has been, and still is in too many parts of the world.

HAH(hah!) is the retort of the climate change skeptics to Earth Hour, which not coincidentally is the same time tonight. Earth Hour is one of those little symbolic gestures that rich people can afford to make if they feel guilty about their success and don't really want to do anything substantial to truly help the real poor of the world. This sums up my sentiments pretty well:

Once upon a time we knew enough to curse the darkness. In the aeons long climb from the muck, we have only had the ability to hold back the dark for a bit over a century. Now millions yearn to embrace it and, should they yearn long enough and hard enough, the darkness will embrace them and hold them for much longer than a brief hour of preening and self-regard.

Yep. Embrace the light.

Open

I haven't seen any ships steam by on the horizon just yet, but the ports on the North Shore are free of ice and the big lake is open for business:

The Canadian Navigator came into port this morning and will follow the John D. Leitch (she came in Tuesday morning) loading iron ore pellets at the CN Dock in West Duluth.

Some cool pics at that first link and lots of info on the big ships that navigate the Great Lakes. Back home, I think the flood waters need to recede some before the barge traffic will resume on the Upper Mississippi. I searched for when the first group is expected into St. Paul, but couldn't find anything yet. Another sign of spring.

Easing Out Of Flood Season

It's going to be a cool start to a long weekend up north. The low tonight is slated to be around 10° F up there, but it should warm up right after that. That cold Canadian air is meeting more and more resistance.

Around the rest of the state, rivers have crested or will in the next day or so. We have had a warmer and drier March than any I can remember and that has made this flood season much easier than expected. This March has seen no snow other than a few flurries and little rain. The lack of drama is much appreciated around here and it should help communities downstream as well. Another week or so though, and Mother Nature can feel free to turn the spigot back on and help things green up before fire season. There's always something, isn't there?

The milder spring also bodes well for the opener at the new Twins open air ballpark. That's still two weeks off and anything can happen around here in April, but the trend so far is positive. We'll see some chilly temps for the first few weeks and maybe even some snow. Though nobody is looking at the opener with the trepidation that I expected this year. Um, this year.

Raw Meat

Slip of the lip, or slip of the mask?

"Let me remind you this has been going on for years. We are bringing it to a halt. The harsh fact of the matter is when you’re going to pass legislation that will cover 300[million] American people in different ways it takes a long time to do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people."

Well, I'll go with slip of the lip and choose to be amused. Be prepared though, for every nanny with a cause to walk through the door that has been opened wider with health care reform. What the hell, I'll jump on the bandwagon too. Since I don't drink soda or eat much candy, I'll be all for taxing the shit out of those. And my BMI is right in the proper range, so let's tax the shit out of people who are too fat or too skinny. The latter isn't healthy either you know.

What else? Ooh, I know...do you realize how many people are injured playing organized sports each year? Yep, tax, tax, tax. And then there's...

Not So Sudden Death

I'm fairly agnostic on this change to the NFL postseason rules:

The NFL owners voted to change an element in the overtime rule, giving the team that loses the coin toss at the start of overtime to get a possession if the coin-toss winning team scores a field goal with the first possession.

The proposal passed 28-4. As it is written, the rules change applies just for the postseason, but the owners also decided to discuss adopting the changes for the regular season at their next meeting, in May in Dallas.

Had the change taken place last year, the Vikings would have had a chance to counter the winning New Orleans field goal in the NFC Championship game earlier this year, but I have no sour grapes about that and it appears that the Vikings don't either, since they were one of four teams to vote against it. That was the rule and it could have worked for or against either team. I would have been content to leave the old rule in place, but I'm okay with trying the new one out. My only quibble is that the regular season and postseason rule should be the same and at this point the new one only applies to postseason.

The new rule:

• Both teams must have the opportunity to possess the ball once during the extra period, unless the team that receives the opening kickoff scores a touchdown on its initial possession, in which case it is the winner.

• If the team that possesses the ball first scores a field goal on its initial possession, the other team shall have the opportunity to possess the ball. If [that team] scores a touchdown on its possession, it is the winner. If the score is tied after [both teams have a] possession, the team next scoring by any method shall be the winner.

• If the score is tied at the end of a 15-minute overtime period, or if [the overtime period's] initial possession has not ended, another overtime period will begin, and play will continue until a score is made, regardless of how many 15-minute periods are necessary.

So Where's The Video?

Protesters supposedly shouted racial epithets at several black congressmen on Saturday. So with all of the cameras there, how come we have yet to see one video clip of the incident? Not one media story that I've seen about it has actually shown any evidence. If someone has a link to video that does show it, please let me know. At this point though, it appears to me that the whole thing was manufactured to libel good and decent people who were simply exercising their right to make their voices heard in Washington.

We have a high tolerance for heated rhetoric in this country and that's a good thing. But false accusations of racism are something else. They damage the credibility of those who are fighting real racists and they wound and harden the hearts of those who are falsely accused. It's an ugly and divisive tactic and it's dangerous to the fabric of our society.

It's also part of the general contempt that some on the left feel toward a huge chunk of the American public. They are blatant about it in the epithets that they hurl at those attending Tea Party protests and I think they're going to keep at it. Somehow they have gotten it into their heads that insulting and brow-beating the general public is the path to holding onto power. We'll see how that goes in November.

I'd Flinch, And I'm Not Ashamed To Admit It

A warning up front, all of these are loud and have NSFW language.

Mr. Bingley posted a YouTube clip that sent me on a cool, but rather unproductive, clip chase of low-flying jets this afternoon. Here's the first one I saw(No claims from me on aircraft or location authenticity). Like I said, likely NSFW:

I would have flinched too.

I've read that instead of dropping bombs in Afghanistan, if there's a risk of civilian casualties, then a "show of force" from air support should be used. This has been derided in some quarters, but I wouldn't want to be taken by surprise by what's shown here. "Show of force" indeed(Again, language warning):

Sham...Shame

The final insult this weekend was the sham Executive Order announcement that gave several Democrat holdouts the cover they needed, or so they think, to vote for the health care takeover. Executive Orders and signing statements can nibble around the edges or fill a vacuum left in legislation, but they can't override the plain language of a statute. The courts will rule that way or we really will finally have an imperial presidency. Bart Stupak and friends must know this, but they went along with it anyway:

It was especially fitting that the final votes were acquired with a giant wink and a good deal of political cowardice on the part of Bart Stupak and his gang. They know the executive order is an unenforceable fraud, and they know the pro-life movement knows it’s a fraud. But they did it anyway. Just as the Democrats know the CBO score is a fiction, and they know that fiscally concerned voters know it’s a fiction. But they did it anyway.

The cherry on the top of this whole disingenuous mess.

Now we'll see how things work through the Senate. Pelosi ultimately rejected the Demon Pass solution, to her credit, and we'll find out what parliamentary games Reid has up his sleeve. We still don't know what we are dealing with in its final form. As it stands now though, it seems to me that there are so many loopholes and subsidies that the clear language of the Hyde Amendment will be easily circumvented and federal money will be paying for abortions directly and through subsidies. Why else reject the strengthened language? The court rulings making that clear haven't been written yet, but they're coming.

For the record, I am reluctantly pro-choice, but vehemently opposed to federal funding of elective abortion. My opinion is that elective abortion is a grave sin. Under the US Constitution though, I do think I do not have the right to make that decision for another sovereign person. A government that has that power could also insist it has the power to force you to do all sorts of other things, like buy health insurance you neither want nor need, for example.