Goodbye Noble Warrior, Defender of The Constitution and Arcane Senatorial Procedure

From The Charleston Gazette:

Robert Carlyle Byrd, the longest-serving member of Congress in United States history, who spent much of his career as a conservative Democrat and ended it by fiercely opposing the war in Iraq and questioning the state's powerful coal industry, died Monday. He was 92.

RIP Senator

Sadly, there is this stain on his legacy:

	"I shall never fight in the armed forces with a Negro by my side... Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds."
	— Robert C. Byrd, in a letter to Sen. Theodore Bilbo (D-MS), 1944

The Senator could fiddle around outside the Senate cloakroom too:

Hoilocaust

More Oil Gushing Into Gulf After Problem With Cap

"The current worst-case estimate of what's spewing into the Gulf is about 2.5 million gallons a day.




 Update: Oil from spill pushes ashore from Florida Panhandle to Mississippi

Nicole Kesterson, of Gulf Shores, Ala., takes a photo of the oil in the surf at the Gulf Shores public beach in Gulf Shores, Ala., Thursday, June 24, 2010. Oil from the Deepwater Horizon disaster continues to wash ashore along the Alabama and Florida coast. 



Yet More Emetic News:
Judge who overruled drilling moratorium has extensive oil-stock holdings

Martin Feldman, the U.S. District Court judge who issued an injunction against enforcement of Barack Obama's proposed deep-water drilling moratorium this week, was heavily invested in the oil and gas industry last year, according to his 2009 financial disclosure.

Environmental crisis on planet Glox

From This Modern World by the always provocative Tom Tomorrow:

Canned Critter Confusion Causes Controversy: Is it a horny hog?

 Canned Critter Confusion Causes Controversy: Is it a horny hog?

Update: Below is victoid's preferred can of "meat", thankfully not available anywhere, but last spotted at the Floyd, Virginia General Store.

Hoilocaust- Why Don't We Have a Real Energy Plan for the Future?

Watch a projectile vomit inducing video HERE  for a clue.

Elected Officials Bought Off by the Oil and Gas Lobby (a partial list- plenty of Democratic legislators have also sold their votes to Big Oil):

- Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) has taken $363,950
- Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA) has taken more than $200,000
- Gov. Haley Barbour (R-MS) has taken $1.8 million
- Rudy Giuliani (R-NY) has taken $609,358
- Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) has taken $385,500
- Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) has taken $1,448,380
- Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) has taken $426,989
- Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) has taken $16.7 million
- The 2008 McCain/Palin campaign took $2.4 million

Check Out How Much BP has been spending:
- In 2009, BP’s Lobby spent $16 million
- In the first quarter of 2010, BP’s Lobby spent $3.5 million

The entire Oil & Gas Lobby:
- In 2009, the entire Oil & Gas Lobby spent $174 MILLION

 Kill, baby, kill!

Jimmie Rodgers - Daddy and Home

The Yodelin' Brakeman offers up a plaintive paean to Daddies.
A nice Fathers Day musical sentiment.

BP Chained and Pilloried By Obama Thugs

Poor, poor Tony Hayward. Why oh why was this righteous and principled stalwart of energy freedom subjected to such unjustified public humiliation by those Socialistic Islamofascist Commie blackmailing mobsters who have seized the White House?

LIMBAUGH: Joe Barton apologized to BP executives on behalf of himself, the American people, for the shakedown. … The United States government may as well be a branch of organized crime the way that it is being conducted and the way it’s doing business, and the way it’s looking out for itself and no one else. … Organized crime. It’s the closest thing I can think to analogize what’s happening here. And even these guys that are being shaken down, they’re paying protection money, and it isn’t enough. ..It isn’t enough.

And with no one but Sir Pure-of-Heart Joe Barton to defend BP's honor! Oh the injustice!

(THIS LINK , from artiste extraordinaire Lori Field, has a litany of groveling apologies that Cong. Barton wishes to make. Click on the text of each apology to display the next one.)

But wait--there's more! Here's a wire service photo of  Mr. Hayward being questioned by Democratic members of The House Energy and Commerce Committee:

And that degrading treatment was just a prelude to the jackbooted thuggery that no upstanding corporate prince should ever be subjected to. Hog Roast's hidden camera captured this behind-the-scenes intimidation of Saint Anthony in the basement of The White House itself! Only Dick Cheney has the constitutional authority to conduct this type of interrogation. The Usurper-in-Chief has stained the mantle of The Dark Lord himself with this shameful display of hubris. Watch it if you dare!

Elvis Presley's Doctor Claims He Died of Chronic Constipation

Update: Wilvis also provides this nugget from Elvis history:

This just in from Roaster Will Lashley, whose pursuit of truth in service to The King is without peer:

 

                  A photo of Elvis (center) with his doctor Nick Nichopoulos (back) taken shortly before his death.

From the "news report" linked above:

According to Dr. Nick, the autopsy revealed that Presley’s colon was 5 to 6 inches in diameter (whereas the normal width is 2 to 3 inches) and instead of being the standard 4 to 5 feet long, his colon was 8 to 9 feet in length.

“The constipation upset him quite a bit because Elvis thought that he could handle almost anything, he thought he was really a man’s man and he wasn’t going to let something like this … he thought that this was a sign of weakness and he wasn’t going to be weak,” Nichopoulos said. “And it’s not the kind of thing you table talk. Back in the ‘60s and ‘70s you didn’t talk about constipation much, you didn’t hear people complaining about it, or saying what they did or how much trouble they had with it.”

“He would get embarrassed, he’d have accidents onstage. He’d have to change clothes and come back because of the way we were trying to treat his constipation”...

“Usually you pass it all in two or three days, but at the autopsy we found stool in his colon which had been there for four or five months because of the poor motility of the bowel.” 


Maybe that's what E meant by a Hunka Hunka Burnin' Love....

Stop the Flow

(Click on image to enlarge)

Lunch Box Revue

 Did anyone have any of these lunchboxes?
I especially like the Orbital Food Container.
If you say you had the Mickey Mouse, youza lyin' MoFo!

I'm old enough to have had a Davy Crockett lunch box, and I think I also had a Clutch Cargo...
but THIS?? This is an abomination! Child abuse!

BP Finally Embraces Accountability

But not, doncha know, for themselves.

Jump Back--I Wanna Kiss Myself

JB on Soul Train with Damita Jo workin' it to Super Bad

Dogs Sniff Out Prostate Cancer

Promising details here.

Hmmm...maybe letting Mousse (our Bichon pup) sniff my butt isn't such a bad idea.
Good boy Moussie!

Michael Pollan Breaks Out the Good Stuff

This guy don't mess around with the message. The growing "food movement" isn't about mastication, digestion and elimination. It is a diverse group of organizations and individuals which recognize that the consolidation and corporatization of our food and agricultural sectors over the past fifty or more years is poisoning our environment and killing us.

In the June 10 New York Review of Books, the formidable Pollan gives us a taste (sorry!) of some of the most recent literature from the front lines, and continues his crusade to transform the way we grow, buy and eat our flora and fauna.

Some choice items from the review:

Americans spend a smaller percentage of their income on food than any people in history—slightly less than 10 percent—and a smaller amount of their time preparing it: a mere thirty-one minutes a day on average, including clean-up.

Beginning in the late 1980s, a series of food safety scandals opened people’s eyes to the way their food was being produced... mad cow disease...The 1993 deaths of four children in Washington State who had eaten hamburgers from Jack in the Box contaminated with E.coli... the shortsighted practice of routinely administering antibiotics to food animals, not to treat disease but simply to speed their growth and allow them to withstand the filthy and stressful conditions in which they live. 

...the food system consumes about a fifth of the total American use of fossil fuel energy.

...the American diet of highly processed food laced with added fats and sugars is responsible for the epidemic of chronic diseases that threatens to bankrupt the health care system. The Centers for Disease Control estimates that fully three quarters of US health care spending goes to treat chronic diseases, most of which are preventable and linked to diet: heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, and at least a third of all cancers.

Significant social and political costs have resulted from fast food and convenience foods, grazing and snacking instead of sitting down for leisurely meals, watching television during mealtimes instead of conversing—40 percent of Americans watch television during meals...

There is a lot more food for thought (sorry again!) in these pages. I give it four snaps!

BTW: If you haven't read his opus The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, I urge you to do so. It is one of the most gripping and revelatory works of literature I have ever read (sorry Mr. Dickens- it just is).

If this subject grabs your gut (okay, I'm done apologizing) La Vida Locavore is a good one stop shopping blog for food movement related topics. 

 Paul Revere and the Raiders weigh in (Someone please stop me) on the subject:

Hoilocaust

I'm sure the effects of the spill are still "very, very modest"- unless you are a pelican.

Or a fisherman. Or a fish .  Or a beach community anywhere from Texas to Cape Hatteras, NC                           

"Every fish and invertebrate contacting the oil is probably dying. I have no doubt about that," said Prosanta Chakrabarty, a Louisiana State University fish biologist.

Butch Kagan and the Uncrossed Legs

UNUSUAL: Most women, including Sen. Amy Klobuchar, cross their legs when sitting, but not Kagan. (Hyungwon Kang - Reuters)

The venerable and oh so very liberal Washington Post, exhibiting yet again its editorial integrity and unimpeachable devotion to substantive discussion of issues, senses something may be amiss with the Supreme Court nominee...hmmm...I wonder what it could be?

This candid photo of Solicitor General Kagan unearthed by your humble blogger may offer a subtle clue:  
(Click on image to enlarge)

Why Are We Here?

                                                                         Meatwad

This is not an ontological, existential question. Nor is it meant to indicate a quest for the meaning of human existence. The "Why" is a set-up for a self-serving explanation of our existence in the blogosphere (the "Here"). The "We" is me, Nils and anyone else who can type into a comment box, to join in discussion of whatever spills across the pages of this space- politics, religion, the human condition; the past, present and future; food, music, art, culture high and low, the Earth and its biosphere--like I said, whatevah!

We chose Hog Roast as the name of this blog, because many of us have shared the experience of those Memorial Day weekend cavalcades of porcine frenzy in the valley of the Shenandoah: the pungent smells of burnt pork flesh, stale Rebel Yell on the breath, sweaty flesh slathered with cowpie-infused mud; vomit and bonfires; screams of joy, pain and despair- all mingling in a miasma of primordial proto-life, oozing purposefully toward. . .what, exactly?

To my mind, the essence of Hog Roast is the multitude of fireside powwows, a collective discourse fueled by hedonism and gluttony, but ignited by uninhibited free discussion that can only burn in an environment of the security of friendship and mutual respect. The base academic level of these symposia would undoubtedly cause Socrates to spew uncontrollably, but the brain scrapings produced are no less meaningful to those engaged.

To bastardize the words of Honest Abe, it is altogether fitting and proper that the debut of this blog occurs on Memorial Day 2010, the weekend of Hog Roast itself. This day is also the 20th anniversary of the conception of our boy, Jeremy during a Roast beset by a cataclysmic deluge. Aided by a bottle or two of premium spirits and a firm resolve to avoid the inundation, Robin and I set upon the path to unforeseen parenthood. (If the van is a rockin', don't come a knockin'!)

Ignite the bonfire!