Larry Motuz your thought has kits sort of...

Graphic by Favianna Rodriguez. I am a Fan.

Larry Motuz planting seeds.

This quote from me below was a response to an article by Fareed Zakaria entitled Democrats Need to Show They Can Be Trusted with Power. I decided my bit of subscription money is best spent now on Political Wire. Slut Inferno!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/06/24/democrats-need-show-they-can-be-trusted-with-power/

I will try again to say this in a way WAPO will not erase. 

I am a single parent who raised 3 children on my own. I am a Woman. I am a financial schmuck but through unbelievable determination I own my house outright. It is good not paying rent to anyone. I am 77 years old this year. I live in Philadelphia, Pennslyvania, USA, Earth, Universe and mind of God. Hat tip Thornton Wilder. 

I do what George Washington told me to do. I am non partisan. I vote in my own interests. 

Republicans want to insert an electronic stick in my vagina and show me pictures of my womb contents, without medical necess ity, if I need/want an abortion. I have three daughters.They want to reach into the family and tell how many children must be produced. Somehow I end up voting for Democrats no matter how fuzzy around the edges. Please note: I am a Roman Catholic. 

I need a break from my current occupation.

I am taking a break from being Cherry. I got my feelings hurt. I am not nearly as tough as I hope I am. Or claim to be. Truth in advertising. For now, I am BellaDonna. So do not let my disguise fool you, Cher. I am planning no other changes. 

Hot Dog!

July is National Hot Dog Month.

I am not a sports fan. I am often surrounded by sports fans who, on crucial game days, require sustenance that is easy to make and goes well with beer. Hot dogs are also called wieners and frankfurters. 

I serve Texas Weiners with this sauce and chopped onions. This sauce is HOT so exercise discretion. For a milder sauce, omit the Cayenne Pepper.

This recipe comes from a chef who posted on the old AOL Comfort Food Board named Big Saab Guy. He actually lives in Texas. It will dress about 2 dozen hot dogs. I give it to you as he gave it to the board. You can keep the Sauce and the Hot Dogs warm separately and the sports fanatics can assemble and eat at will. Give lots of napkins.

The sign on the right comes from Plainfield NJ. It hangs on one of the original Texas Weiner joints in business since 1924. The Texas Weiner was actually created by a Greek in Paterson NJ.

Texas Hot Dog Sauce

1 pound finely ground Beef
3 tablespoons Chili Powder
1 teaspoon Salt
1 teaspoon Cumin
1 teaspoon Cayenne Pepper
1/2 teaspoon Thyme
1 teaspoon White Vinegar
2 cups Water

Very thoroughly brown Beef and drain. You want the pieces to be as small as possible. Really work to break them up as you brown them.

Add the spices and mix well. Add the Water and simmer for one hour, uncovered, stirring often. It should be the consistency of something like tomato soup.

Stir in the Vinegar. Then serve as follows: put a thin smear of Yellow Mustard on both sides of an open hot dog roll, then insert the Hot Dog, then a layer of finely chopped Onion, then drizzle the top with about a tablespoon of the Sauce.

Happy Juneteenth!

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  Homage to Ben Shahn

  Annee Robson

  Scarborough Art Gallery

  
  
  
  

Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him. - Martin Luther King Jr. 

 

"Next time we may have to kill him." - John McGraw, suckerpuncher extraordinaire, on how to handle political protesters.

"I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters. " - Donald Trump.

Cartoon Art by Bill Day. Bill Day is a two-time winner of the RFK Journalism Award in Cartooning, and his cartoons are syndicated internationally by Cagle Cartoons. He is currently the editorial cartoonist for FloridaPolitics.com

I am a cute little old Italian lady. I am a lot cuter than John Suckerpunch McGraw or the Drumpfkopf. No one gives me a second thought, tapping around on my flowery cane.

No reason I cannot walk right up to a Trump supporter wearing a Trump button and smile and stick my tiny little Beltrame stiletto right into its balls or ass or thigh.

Stiletto is so sharp I would be doing someone else by the time it is felt it at all. No one would see it, so tiny and sharp. Designed for quiet assassination. They would not know until they saw the blood. Never mistake voluntarily peaceful for weak in this world.

Italians lived a long time under oppressive religious government and the mafia. We developed certain skills. Once the fascist woundings and killings have begun, all bets are off.

“Therefore the best fortress is to be found in the love of the people, for although you may have fortresses they will not save you if you are hated by the people.” - Machiavelli.

The Fascists chased my Nonno from Italy. Nobody is chasing me away. Want to play that game? Trust me, Italians do it better.

"You must know there are two ways of contesting, the one by the law, the other by force; the first method is proper to men, the second to beasts; but because the first is frequently not sufficient, it is necessary to have recourse to the second." - Machiavelli

Note to Myself

Trenton Terror

 Ten books everyone should read:

- 'The Dictator's Handbook' By: Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith - 'Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning' By: Timothy D. Snyder - 'On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century' By: Timothy D. Snyder - 'Our Time Is Now: Power, Purpose, and the Fight for a Fair America' By: Stacey Abrams - 'Surviving Autocracy' By: Masha Gessen - 'How Democracies Die' By: Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky - 'Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service' By: Carol D. Leonnig - 'Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right' By: Jane Mayer - '1984' By: George Orwell - 'The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together' By: Heather McGhee

Sign of the Month - Womb Nazis with Music

Womb Nazis prepared for the day's operations with signs, lunch, extra clothing, cheat sheets, etc. Yes, that is a pun and I committed it.

Photograph came from Every Saturday Morning. You can see more signs at the link.

The folks who carry the signs a woman has to walk past just going in for a pap smear, a prescription for contraception, or an abortion.

George Carlin: Why is it that most of the people who are against abortion are people you wouldn't want to fuck in the first place?

See Something? Say Something!

That is what our Government tells us to do to keep ourselves and fellow Citizens safe and secure. See Something? Say Something!

Rep. Carlos Gimenez from Florida heard a Thing - preplanned - was going down at the Capitol. And he just proceeded to the Capitol to try to invalidate the votes from my State. What is wrong with Republicans? Are they LARPing? Do they not know about videotape? In his hotel room?

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
― George Orwell, 1984

 

 

Sweet Honey in the Rose

The Old Design Shop provides the illustration from Flower Children, The Little Cousins of The Field and Garden by Elizabeth Gordon published in 1910. My title is a hat tip to Sweet Honey in Rock. One of their songs below.

June is Rose Month. I am off on a quest only a Mad Gardener and dedicated Foody would attempt. I am going to make this Rose Honey. My quest? Find a good source of unsprayed Pink Roses. I will make and taste this. I must.

This recipe comes from Gourmets for McGovern. I reproduce it verbatim. The Colophon reads "This cookbook has been peacefully and lovingly put together by volunteers for McGovern." I wrote the article at dkos. That article gave birth to this article. 

"According to The Pittsburgh Press Sept. 16, 1972: "Philadelphian Joan Cantor has written a cookbook 'Gourmets for McGovern,' to raise money for the senator's presidential campaign. The 46 page book contains such recipes as 'Mexican Drunken Chicken' and 'peaches poached in apricot sauce' -- all composed by local ladies. The national campaign headquarters has ordered 100,000 copies which it hopes to sell at $2 each." Printed on multi-colored cardstock and illustrated throughout with line drawings presumably done by the same "local ladies," the book includes Cantor's excellent recipe for Banana Cake re-blogged by Cooking with Kos May 31, 2015." - description Abe Books.

HONEY

from Kathy Weinerman

5 pounds Sugar

1-1/2 pints hot water (sic)

alum (about the size of a cherry)

20 red clover blossoms

12 white clover blossoms

8 pink roses

Melt sugar in the water. Add alum and boil 2 minutes. Remove pot from the flame and immediately add the petals of the blossoms and the roses and let stand 10 minutes. Strain and bottle. Try it, you'll like it!

 

Filth and Dirt - The Penis

I am getting entirely too serious of late. I think it is past time we had a little filth and dirt. If you want more filth and dirt, just click on the "Filth and Dirt" link in the LABELS in the left margin.

Feeling a little oppressed by our patriarchal culture? If you go to the luriddigs.com site, you will never see a man or his penis in the same way again.

I am not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing. I am not sure if it is an endearing, sad, funny or hot thing. I do warn you that it is an ADULT thing.

http://www.roadsideamerica.com/blog/souvenir-naughty-cactus-sighting/

http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/featured/10-most-suggestive-cacti-on-earth/11423

LOOSIES - Update - What say you DOJ?

It is the 8th anniversary of the choke hold death of Eric Garner. The DOJ has done nothing. Rand Paul has not forgotten. Nor have I.

I hate it when I get anywhere near to agreeing with Rand Paul. Guy always looks like he has been sleeping off a three day drunk in his car. Bear with me, please.

It is true that cigarette taxes are bad law as Rand Paul asserts. We disagree about why these taxes are bad law.

Cigarette taxes are bad law for ordinary folks - never mind "dangerous" for the police. Fuck the police. 

Eric Garner was a small business owner. A old school capitalist. He sold single cigarettes, called loosies in the 'Hood, for profit.

A pack of cigarettes is so expensive due to taxes. Your basic working person and everyday street person cannot afford a whole pack at one time or has to make one pack last a week. Sometimes you just have to have a cigarette. And there on the corner stood Eric Garner ready, willing and not all that able. Eric Garner was murdered for selling a cigarette. 

Taxes run government. The Suits decided to tax the shit out of cigarettes and thereby tax the shit out of addicts and working folks rather than tax the pusher Corpos and Wall Street. Naturally the nanny Progressives cheered. All that second hand smoke irritated their eyes, no doubt.

The working classes as a whole who smoke are being farmed for money to run government services just like Ferguson was being farmed for tax money to run government. Every man a profit center. 

I think there is plenty of blame to go around for the death of Eric Garner, right and left.

Selling loosies is not a capital offense. It is an interracial occupation in Philly. Whole damn murder was a matter of CLASS not race. This time. On second thought, it is a race and a class and a poverty thing.

CLICK ME !

"If Eric Garner had been selling naked credit default swaps instead of cigarettes – if in other words he'd set up a bookmaking operation in which passersby could bet on whether people made their home mortgage payments or companies paid off their bonds – the police by virtue of a federal law called the Commodity Futures Modernization Act would have been barred from even approaching him."
Matt Taibbi

I love it when the real world agrees with me. Agreement tells me I am sane. These days I need all the reassurance I can get.

Michigan makes up for its budget shortfall after cutting corporate taxes by taxing people who smoke and drink more! Chad Livengood reports:

Revenue from so-called sin taxes on tobacco, beer, wine and liquor totaled $290.5 million in the 2014 fiscal year, more than twice the $137.6 million net income taxes paid by Michigan businesses after receiving $768.8 million in refunds from tax credits, a Detroit News analysis of tax data shows.

Since Gov. Rick Snyder and lawmakers delivered sweeping tax relief for businesses in 2011, net business income taxes dropped 90 percent, depleting the state's main operating fund of $1.33 billion, according to state revenue data.

GOING TO THE MATTRESSES

Poster Art by Favianna Rodriguez

I despise the expression "the culture wars." The WAR this time is being waged on Gays and Women (oh so sexyfied Sexies who ought to just get with the program that sex is destiny).

The concept applied to women seems to mean the struggle for my pudenda. Beware! The Religious Right is powerful and rushing to stake out the wombs of American women for further operations or the prevention of same. Congress is now "pro life." Trumpolini is going to punish us. REDpublicans will save the Union by making women the slaves. Good luck.

The "WAR" rhetoric is meaningless and offensive. Here is why:

I do not do WAR. I am firm. Firm and that is all. There will be safe medical abortion and contraception for women. We will see to it.

NOW nurses were coming to house parties and teaching covens of women to do vacuum aspiration of  "late menses" and how to make the equipment to do menstrual extraction before Roe v. Wade.

We women were not waiting for any one's approval; the government was late. We would just do it again. Do you know how many of us are midwives, doctors and nurses now?

RU-486 which is quite safe will be smuggled from places where it is legal. Oooh, lookEEE!  Another "controlled dangerous substance." How much success has Big Gummint been having with the War on Drugs? And isn't there a common drug for ulcers that is a safe abortifacient?

Clergy organized to refer women to safe abortions when it was illegal. Women formed underground abortion cooperatives like JANE. We would do it again. It is easier to resist now. We learned a lot the last time we organized against rapists and for reproductive justice.

Get your noses out of women's private lives, all of you. Sexuality is private. It is not subject to governmental,  religious,  or public review.  If you want to join women in the sacred task of  raising a new generation, do so.  Ask us what we want. Do not be doing stuff to us. We have enough problems.

There was abortion available when it was illegal. My Mom knew somebody. There was a doctor in PA that did abortions as a matter of conscience. Women abort. That is what one in every four of us do. The problem was that lots of women died of sepsis and hemorrhage when abortion was illegal. 

We now report health statistics in a way undreamed of in 1962. We will know how many women bleed to death. Or die from sepsis. Or forced to carry a dead fetus to 'term.' We will know how many kids take substances like quinine or other substances to self abort like my Sister did.

The assassination of Dr. Tiller was a wake up call to the FBI, I hope. I think everybody gets it that the "pro life" are perverts and terrorists now. It was bound to happen. Just like Gandhi said.

I say "Let's you and him fight." SCOTUS has incentivized stalkers. All bets are off.

Let the pundits and MS Media maunder on gravely about "the culture WAR" and create mischief in the pursuit of fame, scholarship and toilet paper sales. Let evil legislatures practice medicine and family planning. Me, I will get the gang together. Rent the apartment. Buy the pasta. Find a new Mike. Molon Labe just like the Lady from Texas below said. 

Ted Cruz is officially running for President. I iz laffing.

I just have to say it. 

Ted Ooze is gay as a box of Robert Jeffress. Cruz Control is gay as a pair of crotchless chaps. This is not a bad thing really. Some of my best friends...etc.

I ask myself:
Could the Cruiser Cruz really be the "homo demon" sent to demolish the Black Woman and the Republican Party by Obama? 

I mean, my gaydar has to be as good as Pastor Doctor James David Manning's gaydar any day. I am here and I am Queer. What does he know about "homo demons" really?

NYC pastor: ‘Pervert’ Obama is ‘releasing white homo demons to scoop up all Black American men’

I would go on but, I am starting to feel guilty for noticing the fabulousness and then commenting on it. I know I am politically incorrect. I do not care. Ted Cruz is so gay that when he farts, crepe paper streams out of his anus.

by Taylor Marsh

Oh Teddy Cruiser Cruz, Homo White Demon of the Universe, you are so cute in such a perverse oily pukey way. Your Tea Party dialectic brings all the boys to the yard.

UPDATE: More Pastor Manning below. When you really think about it, Pastor Doctor James Manning is so gay.

"It is a character issue."

I look forward to the year and the day I can stop typing this:

Good Cops cover for Bad Cops. Therefore there are no Good Cops. 

I think this is a poem. Is this a title?

CRIB GIRL

I wrote this poem by accident on a social media thread. Maybe I am leaking? Ack!

I think this is a poem. Is this a title?
by Mary De Angelis

There is no problem.
You are the problem.
If there is a problem,

It is the same old problem.

Since it is the same old problem, 

There is no problem.
Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Run without Comment

 

Three Sisters - Corn, Squash and Beans

I have been a lazy but thinking gardener ever since I first read Ruth Stout's How to Have a Green Thumb without an Aching Back. Say the words "natural weed control" and I become interested. Add some Native American history to the mix and you have more of my attention and interest. The Three Sisters planting method is featured on the reverse of the US Sacajawea Native American dollar coin. The Three Sisters are Corn, Squash and Beans.

I went hunting in Google Land. It is amazing where a good graphic can lead you. I like things simple. Keep it simple, Sweetie is my motto.

I learned that this garden is simple to do. Except for the getting dirty and doing the digging part.

I cannot think of an activity that would be more fun for parents and children. My children loved digging in dirt and picking the flowers.

Making a Three Sisters Garden is an excellent teaching tool for science classes. There is an entire class lesson plan at the link.

Cultivating these companions in your school garden, a small patch near the building, a barrel, or even indoors, can inspire studies of Native American customs, nutrition, and folklore. As students dig in, investigations of plant growth and relationships will also flourish. - Creating a Three Sisters Garden

I learned a Three Sisters Garden is beautiful and became determined to put this planting into my own small backyard.