Last week a few friends and some lefty bloggers I follow fell for a bogus article about Rush Limbaugh calling soldiers welfare queens who’ve gotten used to having everything handed to them. Hey, I fell for it too, because I’ve said again and again that at some point the Orcs* are going to turn against the troops, just as they’ve turned against teachers, police, firefighters, and everyone else on the public payroll.
But not yet. It’s too soon. Our boys and girls are still in Afghanistan. What happens after 2014, though, if Obama lives up to his promise to withdraw? Once the military goes into peacetime mode, how long before military wages, health care, benefits, and pensions become targets for the right?
*Orcs = right-wingers, racists, know-nothings, Christian dominionists, tea-baggers, survivalists, neo-Confederates, sovereign citizens, gun nuts … the whole lot of ’em.
That’s a 1952 Chevy sedan with a transplanted engine from a 2005 Chevy Trailblazer, a twin overhead-cam six with a modified intake and header pipes. I’m a sucker for interesting engineering, and love it when hot-rodders use unlikely engines in their projects. I mean, anybody can put a modern V-8 in an old car, but a six? Especially a six in an old car that originally was powered by a six? That’s just cool. The Blue Flame decal on the cam cover is an especially nice touch (the old Chevy overhead-valve sixes used the same decal, and now I want to put one on the engine in my own Trailblazer).
There were plenty of muscle cars and newer exotics at St. Gregory’s this year, but I didn’t take many photos of those. I get off on classics, odd-ball orphans like Nashes and Kaisers, microcars, hot rods, restomods, and … as above … things that are different. If you have the gearhead gene, be sure to look around my Flickr account for other car show photosets. There are several of them.
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It’s Sunday and I should be out riding the motorcycle, but there’s a pot of chili beans on the stove that needs watching. Uncle Art’s chili beans, that is, the best ever. Last week Donna picked up four fresh Hatch peppers. I scorched them over the grill to get the skins off, and last night she used them to make chiles rellenos.
She served the chiles rellenos with her own Spanish rice and fresh home-made tamales she bought from the tamale lady who sells them from her car in the Safeway parking lot. So you can see why I’m making a pot of chili beans the hard way today: I have some catching up to do.