Manhatten to go with Pork Ribs

Manhatten, a simple to mix American cocktail. Two jiggers of bourbon whiskey, a jigger of sweet red vermouth, a couple of Marachino cherries, four dashes of Angostura bitters. Use a short glass, mix the booze in the glass, and add all the ice that will fit. Very smooth, and you don't want to mix a second one of these.
Goes good with pork ribs.

Pork Ribs, My recipe

Very yummy. Real pork ribs, as opposed to nice tender pork chops, need a bit more cooking than chops do. You want to braise ribs in liquid for an hour or two, and then brown them on the grill or in the fry pan if it isn't grilling weather.
Ribs can be cheap, I picked them up for $1.71 a pound for 1.75 pounds, enough for four. I made up my secret sauce, equal portions of brown sugar, soy sauce, whiskey, and mustard. I ran short of soy sauce, so I added some Worcestershire sauce. Equal parts, say like a quarter cup. Mix the secret sauce in a large mixing bowl, and then add the ribs to marinate for an hour or so.
After a good long marinade, put them in the oven at 375F for an hour and a half. Pour the marinade into the roasting pan so that the ribs are deeply immersed in the secret sauce. After and hour and a half the ribs will be tender.
To develop the flavor, brown them, either on the grill or in an iron fry pan on stove top. I did 5 minutes a side in he fry pan.
Very yummy, and I have left overs for tomorrow.

Upcountry Republican Shindig

The Grafton County Republicans threw their annual Lincoln Reagan Day dinner at the Indian Head "resort" last night. Indian Head is right up into Franconia Notch. It got started in the old days, even before skiing, when people just came up from the summer. It tried to compete with the Old Man of the Mountains with a observation tower and gave a view of a mountain ridge that looked like a humungous Indian staring up at the sky. It still has a nice banquet room with a fine view of the White Mountains.
Everyone was there. We had NH Republican state chairman Wayne McDonald. We had Grafton County Commissioner Omer Ahearn. We had Executive Councilor Ray Burton. We had two candidates for governor, Kevin Smith and Ovide Lamontagne. For the windup speaker we had Senator Kelly Ayotte. Kelly spoke at some length and spoke very well, much better than the politicians speak on TV.
Things got rolling when the bar opened at 5:30. Lots of meetings and greetings. By 7 PM everyone was sufficiently lubricated to sit down to eat dinner. Lots of good political talk. By 9:30 the speeches were all done and people started home. Fortunately it was a warm dry evening, better than other such affairs where we had to drive home in snow and sleet.

Norks in Orbit

The North Koreans have been milking the TV news for coverage of their upcoming rocket launch. If they launch and put a satellite into orbit, they will gain enormous amounts of respect. A rocket good enough to throw a satellite up is good enough to throw a nuke anywhere on earth. Say like into Washington DC.
Fox TV has been calling the North Koreans a nuclear state. That is an exaggeration. The Norks have run two tests, both of them fizzled. Yield was so small that observers waited to detect airborne radioactivity before announcing that a nuclear test had occured. Clearly the Norks haven't figured out how to make a fission bomb that really explodes. They have undoubtedly made some engineering changes to their bomb, but until they can run off a test with the same yield as leveled Hiroshima 65 years ago, they ain't a real nuclear power.
The Japanese and the South Koreans are seriously worried about a North Korea with missiles, and have threatened to shoot it down. This is a gutsy move. If they shoot and miss (fairly likely) they just look foolish and loose more face than if they just send nastygrams to the North Korean foreign ministry.

Does Obama have an Energy Policy?

T. Boone Pickens says "No".
Sorry Mr. Pickens, Obama does have an energy policy. I even know what it is. No drilling, no pipelines, no coal burners, electric cars, high priced gasoline.
In the same article Mr. Pickens admits that he lost his ass in wind power.

Buffeted by the Buffet Rule

Obama is talking up "the Buffet Rule" as his tax policy. Other than it hikes taxes for someone, little is known about it. NPR this morning made it sound like a hike in capitol gains tax. But no specifics. Democrats are talking it up as a "soak the rich" tax, but since there are no details, it is likely to wind up soaking everybody. "Pass it in order to see what's in it."
Far as I am concerned, we need to do some budget cuts BEFORE we do tax hikes.

Survival of the Furriest. Feline Darwinism

Somehow each house cat has its very own human to feed it, pet it, supply a warm dry home, let it in, and let it out. In return the cat occasionally deigns to purr. This is a better schtick than other domesticated animals get, the others have to work for a living or get served at table as food. Cats don't have to put up with any of that.
The other weird thing about cats. Flash photography of humans often leads to "red eye", where the camera sees the eye as bright red. In cats we get "green eye" instead. My digital camera has a red eye correction feature built in, but nothing for green eye.
The first thing (close association with humans) clearly has survival value. The second, green-eye, is not so obvious.