So, the only sitcom worth watching on TeeVee (My Name is Earl) is being cancelled. I gathered that show was still popular.

And ABC is remaking V.

Seems more like a fiat to me (pun intended).

I told you I’d start more recipe blogging.

This is a post about making your own barbecue sauce. This is a recipe that started based on a concoction my brother in law J-Lo (who has been featured here before) discovered. It has since gone through several iterations. This is the current version which will no doubt change as it does often. Fire up your smoker (optional but if you’re cooking some food on it, may as well cook the sauce there too). Phase one:

8 pieces of thick cut bacon
1 large onion, finely chopped
8 teaspoons minced garlic
5 tablespoons chili powder
1 – 2 chopped cayenne peppers. Note that these can be fresh or dried. I grow my own and the plants produce a lot. So, I hang the excess peppers from a string and let them dry out in the garage. They’ll keep for a very long time.

In a skillet, fry up your bacon. Eat bacon for breakfast because if you’re smoking some meat, you probably started early. Retain the bacon fat. You can substitute a stick of butter for bacon fat but why would you? Unless you’re a vegetarian. But if you’re a vegetarian, I imagine your need for barbecue sauce is low. To the bacon fat, add the onion, garlic, and peppers. Cook until the onions become tender. Add chili powder and stir. Cook for a few minutes longer. Remove from heat and allow to cool. You’re only going to allow this to cool because getting hot stuff on you can burn. After you’re satisfied that you won’t burn yourself, pour the mixture into a food processor. Hit frappe and allow it to run until the mixture is mostly liquefied.

Transfer the liquid to a large pot and put it on the stove. To the mixture, stir in the following:

4 cups ketchup
1 cup yellow mustard
1 cup apple cider vinegar
2/3 cup Worcestershire sauce
1/2 cup lemon juice
1/2 cup dark molasses
1/2 cup honey
2 cups brown sugar
2 tablespoons of ginger powder
1/4 cup Soy sauce
ground black pepper to taste (I like mine peppery)
Kosher salt to taste

Bring mixture to a gentle boil and reduce heat. After a few minutes on reduced heat, transfer to your smoker. And let it cook all day. I said the smoker was optional. If you do not plan on using one or don’t have one, no worries. Just keep cooking it on the stove. If you do not use a smoker, I recommend adding a bit of Liquid Smoke to add some smoky flavor. And keep it on your stove on low for an hour or so.

I like mine a bit spicy so I’ll also add some hot sauce on occasion.

You can use the sauce on any thing you’d put barbecue sauce on. Once the sauce cools, I transfer my sauce to a large and clean ketchup bottle and keep it in the fridge. It will keep for several months.

In MA, a man is pulled over. He’s reportedly violating several of MA’s onerous gun laws. And the press and police focus on the fact he owns 30,000 rounds of ammunition. Well, people are stockpiling. But Todd Jarrett would call him a piker.

All guns are always loaded:

Samuel Benally Jr. was at an apartment on West Tacoma Street when he said guns should be kept unloaded because people could point them at their heads, said Sierra Vista police Sgt. Brett Mitchell.

Benally then demonstrated by putting his own 9mm Ruger, which he believed to be unloaded, to his head and firing it, Mitchell said.

23 years ago today, a provision that was slipped into the Firearms Owners Protection Act banned the transfer of new machine guns to civilians.

Update: Perspective on the bill from David Hardy.

Howard Nemerov: Violence Policy Center admits defeat?

The National Shooting Sports Foundation’s Bill Brassard writes about the gun blogs:

Mr Jonsson interviewed media experts who confirmed that indeed the bloggers are a significant part of the current sea change in information distribution and consumption. His experience at the NRA show mirrors what NSSF has seen in recent years at the SHOT Show, where the number of bloggers has increased yearly and where NSSF, recognizing their value, provides them with press privileges identical to outdoor and mainstream media.

Gun bloggers were out in such force at the NRA convention that they rivaled mainstream media in attendance, causing Jonsson to observe, “Experts say that ratio at a major national news event featuring a panoply of GOP stars — including John McCain and Mitt Romney — presents a stunning affirmation of the rise of a mix of both partisan and fiercely independent and sometimes downright cranky “New Media,” marking its growing power to not only cover breaking news, but set the tone for political policy — and, in the case of Second Amendment rights, even the direction of the NRA itself.”

Scott Bach: Support Plummets for Restrictions on Gun Rights

And their stock prices are rising too!

Robb Allen on Josh Sugramann:

Yet even with all your organization, all the cash from your sugar daddies, even with the media printing your press releases like they were actual news, you still can’t get any traction with the most left leaning administration in this nations history.

Something you don’t see every day: A cowboy chatting with bicycle cops.

A post on how AR15.com helped change NRA. Joe DeBergalis was elected. He had support from blogs and AR15.com. Partially because he made himself available to forum guys and bloggers. He posted comments at both.

The AR15.com post doesn’t mention that their other endorsement of George Kollitides came in just about last place (supposedly. I’ve not confirmed that yet – but will). Kollitides was not exactly well-received by the a lot of the gun bloggers. Mostly because he didn’t interview, engage anyone, and his entire ‘campaign’ was a puff piece in an NRA magazine. And, surely now, his ties to Chrysler would be a detriment.

Booth babes.

Some festivities with pics.

Thoughts from TP.

Two shot at anti-violence rally. It was in a park too. Wonder if carry was prohibited at that park?

David Hardy on NRA membership:

The new president announced, among other things, that membership was increasing by 100,000 a month, and that over 10,000 new members had signed up during the convention.

Forgetting a magazine in your bag in AZ.

That’s awesome. But can she do this:

I think these people are on drugs:

The Parker/Heller cases were a devastating defeat for gun rights ideologies [in part because those decisions affirmed that a wide range of gun control regulation is both constitutional and permissible and because they refused to adopt a strict scrutiny standard for future regulations].

Ya know, they do, however, sound a bit like some pro-gunnies who like to say Heller accomplished nothing.

Losing your firearms license for not shooting enough?

In PA:

Two judges pleaded guilty on Thursday to accepting more than $2.6 million from a private youth detention center in Pennsylvania in return for giving hundreds of youths and teenagers long sentences.

Tree. Rope. Some assembly required.

Gun free zone follies:

As I have noted before, “gun free” zones are an exercise in fantasy. To some, a place without guns sounds like a great place to live. Unfortunately, others think they sound like a great place to plunder.

Americanized/Modernized Polish wz. 88 Tantal AK-74 5.45×39mm Tactical Rifle/Carbine. So that’s what TAPCO stands for. Err, wait.

Convention gun pics.

That’s how some in the press are referring to Mitt Romney with respect to his relationship to NRA. Mitt Romney has spoken at the last two conventions. He hurriedly joined the NRA on the presidential campaign trail and has tried to pick up the gun vote. Trouble is that Romney’s record on guns isn’t good. As governor, he never saw a gun control bill he didn’t like and he signed into law the state’s ban on weapons that look like assault rifles. No thanks.

Via David.

A journal of practical shooting and three-gun goodness. Here’s a review of the Tactical Solutions 22LR AR Upper.

The Christian Science Monitor is istorically anti-gun and not bashful lying about gun issues. There was that time they told us, for instance, that Obama’s views on guns lined up with yours and that time they lied about Florida’s gun laws and that time they advocated the gun industry create it’s own licensing and registration system. In fact, here’s a whole list of mentions of their anti-gun hackery on this blog. The list is long.

Anyway, I was a bit odd to see they were at the NRA convention. And writing about gun bloggers:

But here’s the real news: In the press box, bloggers outnumbered national reporters by a good margin. And officially, nearly 50 bloggers — compared to 100 mainstream print journalists — were accredited by the NRA press office to attend the 138th annual convention.

Excellent. But, really, there is no need for the press to show up? They’ll take dictation from the Brady Campaign or just reprint their documents as news items.

Who’s a sad clown:

“If you compare the pro-gun activity in the blogosphere versus the pro-gun-control activity, the scales have just tipped tremendously in their favor,” says Josh Sugarmann, founder of the Violence Policy Center in Washington, which advocates for more gun control in the US. “There’s much more engagement, more involvement, and they clearly have more free time than people on our side of the issue do.”

And you know what’s amazing? We do it on our own time. Josh Sugarmann is a reasonably well paid shill for an anti-gun group. And the only results from his efforts I see are a Huffington blog and google searches passed off as studies. What’s even more amazing is if you look at the list of goofs the VPC has made, you have to wonder how the press can lend them any credibility. I mean, assuming they don’t have an agenda.

It seems that Reasoned Discourse^tm could be in play.

Update: Comments are showing up now. Blog software approval.

Be sure of your target and what’s behind it: Memphis Police tell myEyewitnessNews.com that 11 year-old Deontay Smith, the little boy who was shot while playing basketball with his friends, was hit by stray bullets from a makeshift firing range.

Guy uses handgun to defend self. Guy was within 1,000 feet of a school, which is a violation of some stupid law that shouldn’t exist. Word was that he would be charged with that made-up crime. Turns out, the District Attorney knows that this is not the proper application of the “Gun-Free” School Zone law. Good.

Pants-wetting from the Violence Policy Center.

Ammo Shortage Doesn’t Add Up. Actually, I think it is that people are stockpiling.