Break New Ground....Build More Beds.....Get More Pots Growing

[Charlie]

et al., being in part, Standard Oil, General Motors...you know, those who had vested interest in Happy Motoring, not efficient and cheaper transport.

Good on ya. Well said.

Charlie

[Charlie]

To which attacks do you refer?

Charlie

[Billy Rose]

Or German Potato Pancakes

Ingredients:

1 kg raw potatoes 1 medium onion 1 or 2 eggs 3 to 4 tbsp flour salt oil

Preparation: Grate potatoes, not too finely, put them into a sieve and press the water out of them. Grate the onion very finely. Mix onion, potatoes and egg(s) together with some salt and the flour. Heat some oil in a frying pan. For each pancake, put about 3 tbsp of the mixture into the pan and form it into a flat pancake. Fry both sides until golden. Serve immediately, sprinkled with salt or sugar, together with applesauce.

--

[Billy Rose]

Any clue as to why the World Trade Center was attacked twice?

We don't care if we take out a city block of people, if we get the man we suspect.

Timothy McVeigh must be laughing in his grave.

Do you understand that we have been capable, for thirty years, of intercepting phone calls, foreign and domestic?

Who could hide from us?

[Billy Rose]

Forgot to mention, I never put potatoes into a sieve. Just grate and add onions, et al. Also I don't use apple sauce. I usually serve with schnitzel and red cabbage and / or saurekraute.

[FarmI]

Well the obesity statistics for my country are horrendous too. We were 2nd in the world right behind the US but when I checked just now we have dropped back to 6th in the world behind the US.

It would seem that being a nation of fatties doesn't make sense as being a reason why the US is fascinated with big vehicles. We have been almost as fat and didn't feel the need to have big cars to drag our lard arses around. Our cars are bigger than those driven round Europe but way smaller than those favoured by the US and that is despite the fact that our country is the size of the continental US with a population of less than 10% of that of the US, and thus have a limited number of towns at large distances from each other. The wonderful little "Smart" cars so beloved of the Parisians would not be much good here beyond the city limits (but what a great city car!)

Hey! Don't apologise or justify! If you notice something of concern about your country then you are entitled to say it (and I'd also add, that it is your duty, to do so. ""The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance"...John Curran). Your ability to feel able to say it and to expect to be treated with respect for your views is democracy in action.

It gives me the willies when some Americans criticise another American as being "unpatriotic" or "UnAmerican" for daring to be critical of their own country. The same thing applies here too as our idiot pollies have just discovered the "Un" comment and are using it. Thankfully they haven't been silly enough to run the "unpatriotic" line comment.

but when I compare us with other

Well, you do have a point about Bush. He does produce a huge cringe factor every time I see him on TV and I'm eternally grateful that he isn't Head of State or my country. And I used to think that the re-election of Reagan must have been the first and last time such a thing would happen.

[FarmI]

Ah! Good old Latkes. Is that what a hashbrown is supposed to be?

[FarmI]

I can't see that any of your post makes sense in terms of the size of the beasts driven in the US. Exactly the same things about post WWII social and industrial conditions could be said about my country (and it's the same size as the US if you snip off Alaska) but we don't have the huge vehicles of the US. We have less that 10% of the population of the US and have only ever had a few railways and have always had to drive.

Nothing at all, except that he was in fact black. That pushes buttons in your head but for me, it just says that his skin was black. Really black skin is such a novelty here (and he was that glorious, glossy, bluey looking black) that his colour came back to me as I wrote.

The non-knuckle draggers here are

I can understand that given your history. The danger of doing that is to try to bury things that need discussing for a wide variety of reasons. And if you don't how how the knuckle draggers think then their attitudes can't be addressed. I think silence is dangerous and smacks of censorship. Whether you like it or not, the ability to say what one want's within the bounds of the laws of sedition and defamation are still the hallmarks of democracy.

[FarmI]

I lust after a Citroen Pluriel which can be a sports car or a tiny truck with a flatbed or a sedan etc etc.......

[jangchub]

I disagree. Terrorists hate American's because we are decadent, slobs who are heathens and have no regard for Islam. The term Gihad is not a term used by the poor to indicate they are jealous.

Are you aware there are teenagers giving oral sex to one another on the school bus these days? If you did that when I was a kid you were tortured for the rest of your life being called BJ. The majority of Americans are Christians, and to radical Islam this is paramount to being godless. The guys who drove jumbo jets into the Twin Towers were not poor. Not by any stretch of the imagination. Either is Bin Laden poor. Rather, he is extremely wealthy.

So, this is how radical Islamists perceive us. I am not indicating this is actually HOW we are, but for the most part we're a pretty silly nation to other nations which has had the same cultural imprints for thousands of years. The U.S. have only existed for hundreds of years; the white folks, American Indians have been here and were murdered along with millions of buffalo. It's hopeless.

[jangchub]

All the attacks? Name the one in Oklahoma City for me. Name the race, and country of origin the criminal was from.

[Glenna Rose]

page to explore later. Thank you for posting it. It would certainly fulfill the variety of uses my poor cars are subjected to. :-)

Glenna

[Billy Rose]

I'm not really sure myself now. When I've had them in cafes, here in California, they seem like a plate of sauteed, cubed potatoes, loose cubed french fries (frites), is used as the base for a composition of different ingredients (sausage, cheese, onions) as in a rice dish. When I look for a recipe though, they are more like kartoffelpfannkuchen, latkes, or knishes? Makes a feller wonder.

I don't know if I've clarified the answer or confused the question.

Take care,

[Lilah Morgan]

Sauteed cubed potatoes? Sounds like what we called home fries at the cafe. Was primarily for breakfast. Potatoes cut into little cubes and sauteed with onions, bell peppers, and salt/pepper for extra taste/flavor.

[Charlie]

Along this line, it seems we have more unholy alliances being formed than I realized.

"The rapid capitalization and concentration of power within the agro-fuels industry is breathtaking. From 2004 to 2007, venture capital investment in agro-fuels increased eightfold. Private investment is swamping public research institutions, as evidenced by BP's recent award of half a billion dollars to the University of California. In open defiance of national anti-trust laws, giant oil, grain, auto and genetic engineering corporations are forming powerful partnerships: ADM with Monsanto, Chevron and Volkswagen, BP with DuPont and Toyota. These corporations are consolidating research, production, processing and distribution chains of our food and fuel system under one colossal, industrial roof."

Lookin' worser really faster, it is, Billy.

Charlie

[Charlie]

I overlooked the obvious in my suggestions to you.

What about raised beds with rock perimeters?

Charlie

[Billy Rose]

G'day again, we had our "peak oil" in the early 70's. Until then gas sold for 25 cents a gallon. So we had domestic producers who encouraged over consumption. Sort of like our food producers now.

The bothersome part is that the "fact" that he is black adds nothing to the anecdote and it hold the door open to the interpretation that people with dark skin have unrealistic self-images. I don't want to go through that door but I think you know what I mean. The media molds self-image in this country. Women see that on TV they are supposed to be young, thin, and defer to men. Black people see that they are supposed to be hip and street wise. Oh, and don't forget sing and dance. White, aging, pot bellied men are taken for granted, not a very high bar.

Racism and sexism are so ingrained into American consciousness that many well meaning American don't even recognize that valuing a white male over a woman or a minority is bigotry.

If I was black, I would want to get out of this country for a while and go to a country that is predominately black, where I wouldn't have to think about any perceived slight as race based. Here, everyday, if you you have dark skin, every day you have to weigh whether you are being treated the same as a light skinned person because, as numerous studies show, you're not. I forget the author's name but I remember an interview with a man from South Africa who was considered a very bright student. In Jamaica, he was considered a man with a future. In New York, he discovered he was a n***er. Welcome to the freakin' Twenty-First Century.

If you read Howard Zinn's book, "The People's History of the United States" you find that indentured European servants and slaves from Africa enter-acted easily and made a common front against the masters. Racism had to be inculcated to separate white slaves from making alliances with black slaves. Hopefully, within a couple of hundred years, if we survive our foolishness, we will be a mostly brown, almond eye'd people, and then we will have to find another way to distinguish ourselves into first and second class citizens.

No discussion is necessary. We have lived with this problem for four hundred years. We have freakin' talked this sucker to death. What we need is more interaction, so that we can see each others humanity instead of just the hue of the skin. We need more Bella Abzugs on TV (an opinionated, out-spoken, old lady in outlandish hats, and much, much more) to change our national, mental image of what a woman can be. What we need is for all the geezers and geezerettes of what ever hue, to get together for ribs, pizza, and beer. Oh yeah, bring you gay friends while your at it. We'll call it, "Pot Bellies for Humanity". (end of rant)

On the brighter side, you can content yourself with the knowledge that your days are getting longer now, while ours are getting shorter.

And the beat goes on.

Have a good one,

[Billy Rose]

Actually, Nixon, Regan, Bush are pretty representative of our leaders. The only exception "may" have been Franklin D. Roosevelt, who seeing that our gun boat diplomacy was over stretched started the "Good Neighbor Policy" but he may have lead us into WWII as well.

The best president we have had in a long time was Carter but he backed the Khmer Rouge's attempt to return to power after they were defeated by the Vietnamese and looked the other way when Indonesia overran Timor and killed 100,000 - 200,000 people. Sigh.

On a lighter note, I started planting the last section of my garden yesterday. More of an experiment, you might say. Not much sun. One corner will support tomatoes and I'll plant some of my excess in the rest just to see what survives and what doesn't.

The warmer days are reflected in the sudden surge in growth of the cucurbits. I was caught somewhat flat footed when I noticed that some of the corn is showing tassels. Any ideas about how to swell those ears up. They look like you could clean your ears with them.

Bees are still with me for the flowering of the cucumbers and melons. Whew!

[Charlie]

Patience, Billy, patience. The corn knows what to do. Just give it a drink when it needs it.

Charlie

[Billy Rose]

Here (Calif.) home fries are just fat (thick) French fries. Where be you?