Sure, the Obama administration bears some responsibility for not reinstating the requirement for an acoustic cutoff switch for deep water oil rigs, but let us not forget that:

Dick Cheney’s secretive energy task force concluded that $500,000 for remote shutoff was simply too great a burden, and the former V.P. and his team didn’t want to force BP and other oil companies to spend the money.

Has anybody seen the MSM even mention this?

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Title: “Spoken from the Heart”

Author: Laura Bush

Rank: 5

Blurb: “With deft humor and a sharp eye, Laura Bush lifts the curtain on what really happens inside the White House, from presidential finances to the 175-year-old tradition of separate bedrooms for presidents and their wives to the antics of some White House guests and even a few members of Congress.”

Review: “And those little trollops. Getting drunk all the time, probably having with sex with who knows and sticking out there dirty little tongues. They all make me sick to my stomach!!!”

Customers Also Bought: “Raquel: Beyond the Cleavage,” by Raquel Welch

Footnote: Laura who?

Spoken from the Heart [Amazon]

Buy or Die [Stinque@Amazon kickback link]

Not to repeat myself, but this weekend’s recipe challenge is Fricassée De Poulet à L’Ancienne – chicken fricassee. And just one question – is anyone out there cooking along with me? Lurkers, whomever – anyone taking a crack at these recipes? You can buy Mastering the Art of French Cooking here.

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This weekend’s challenge is Fricassée De Poulet à L’Ancienne – chicken fricassee. And just one question – is anyone out there cooking along with me? Lurkers, whomever – anyone taking a crack at these recipes? You can buy Mastering the Art of French Cooking here.

Yield: For 4 to 6 people (I’m cutting the recipe in half)

Ingredients

• 2½ to 3 lbs. of cut-up frying chicken
• 1 thinly sliced onion, carrot, and celery stalk
• 4 Tb butter
• ½ tsp salt
• 1/8 tsp white pepper
• 3 Tb flour
• 3 cups boiling white chicken stock, white stock, or canned chicken bouillon
• 1 cup dry white wine or 2/3 cup dry white vermouth
• A small herb bouquet: 2 parsley sprigs, 1/3 bay leaf and 1/8 tsp thyme tied in washed cheesecloth

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As if you didn’t have enough to worry about:

CarShark’s a computer program that’ll let someone hack into a car’s onboard computer system to kill the brakes, disable the engine, blast music and otherwise wreak electronic havoc. It’s both clever and absolutely frightening. Here’s how it works.

A team of researchers led by professors at the University of Washington and USCD hacked the Controller Area Network (CAN) system installed on all new cars built in the United States to show how potentially vulnerable the system is. The CAN is supposed to allow onboard vehicle systems to communicate so problems are easier to diagnose, but the hands of these hackers it’s the open door to disabling a vehicle.

Suddenly that ’91 Civic DX doesn’t look so bad, eh?

CarShark Software Lets You Hack Into, Control, and Kill Any Car [Jalopnik]

God bless Pat Buchanan. He makes our jobs so much easier. You see, we’ve all known that if you scratch beneath the surface of your typical hysterical teabagger you get an angry white man or woman who’s furious that the browns tricked a bunch of young, white college kids into getting one of their own elected president.

But most of these teabaggers also know that the horrible injustice of “political correctness” means they can’t actually wear their racism on their sleeve and so they go to extraordinary measures to disguise their bigotry. Helps if you’ve got a Jewish niece to hide behind, for instance (Too bad the internets caught you smearing your niece as a “little jewess” and mocking her batmitzvah.)

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That chung-chung thing can really get on one’s nerves.

NBC Cancels ‘Law & Order’ [NYT]