Endorsements

First the question that everyone (who still bothers to stop by once in awhile) is asking is:

Is Erik's Rants and Recipes defunct?

Well, not officially. There are still some plans afoot, but there are just other projects that are more important.

In the meanwhile the question has come up as to endorsements for the Presidential race.

We are not yet making any. McCain lost just about all of his points with his health care proposal. If he picks Mormon Mitt as his running mate, we will go back to our Stop the Mormon stance and WILL endorse Obama, who we otherwise detest (if things get really bad we might even vote for old Obama - egads!). So, until McCain has selected his running mate, we will stand silently and watch.

Either way my prediction is that everyone will be shocked: it is possible to have a president who is worse than Bush, and we have an almost sure-fire probability of that happening.

Slow Food

I am in support of the aims of Slow Food, in general. I certainly don't agree with every point of the Slow Food movement, and I find myself chuckling at how the neo-Cons (or, better, psuedo-cons) have such a vehement dislike of anything like Slow Food (for them, free market fetishism is all about choice, provided that you make the correct choices, which seem to always favor the banal) and the Slow Food people tie themselves in knots trying to prove that they are not really some sort of Conservative rebirth.

Anyway, I just finished reading Carlo Petrini's Slow Food, and it definitely merits some thought. Part of me thinks, when reading this, "yes! This is the direction that Authoritarianism needs to move in for the 21st Century!" and part of me thinks that there is a crucial element missing, and both threads of thought are correct.

Now, I have a bit of a bias in this matter: I am a long-time fan of European-style big government. The problems of bad government are generally ones of the misuse of the thing, not the thing itself. And, even more than big government, I like the European-style institutions that are not quite governmental, although they generally get some of their financial support from the government, and they don't quite have legislative authority, and they certainly aren't elected, yet they have Authority. Slow Food fits in that category, and, even with its various philosophical lacunae, it does very good work for our culture.

Election Promise

Once again it is time for the Keilholtz Pledge:

If you elect me to be the President of the United States, it will be the last presidential election you ever have to worry about again.

Meanwhile, it is time for a Hollywood-style hysterical election pledge: if Barack Osama wins, I refuse to live in the state of Illinois. That will be it. No more. Not even if you gave me a Frank Lloyd Wright prairie-style house in Oak Park. I mean it. Try me. Offer me the house! See my iron-will, my steely resolve. I can resist any temptation I have never met!

Meanwhile, I have to brave heat, traffic, and nearly $5 a gallon gas to go get the girls in the East Bay.

Bye.