Inspired by an article I read on WordPress.com titled “Kick Off 2012 with Project 365”, Story Wrangler Erica Johnson poses a challenge to WordPress.com bloggers, write a new piece everyday of 2012. Now for me that would be unlikely at best as I find it difficult to come up with fresh material and time on a monthly basis. I have only written 21 posts since I started this blog and spend a large amount of my time spreading my “left wing socialist propaganda” (as some of my friends from the right would call it) on Facebook and Twitter. So I am accepting that challenge in the sense that I will be posting at least one post per week on this blog. It will most likely (but not exclusively) be about politics. In order to come up with “fresh” material, I will also be writing about Sports, Entertainment and Cooking (I will share some of my favorite recipes). Today I kick things off with a little of each and I hope that you will offer feedback (leave comments, both good and bad) and help me build a stronger base of readers by taking three simple steps…Share, Re-tweet and Repeat.

Political News & Views

I will be focusing my attention this year on a few key issues, electing truly Progressive candidates running (Community, City, State and Federal) in 2012 and getting money out of politics. I will not support any candidate (this includes Barack Obama) for any office that accepts money from Corporations, Wall Street, Super PAC’s and any other place that I feel is dirty and corrupt. I have signed on to an amazing group, United Re:public . Our “Democracy” or should I say our government has been sold-off to the highest bidder and big money lobbyists are pulling the strings (Republicans & Democrats alike) on their puppets. The Supreme Court (SCOTUS) decision in the Citizens United case has opened up the floodgates like a “Black Friday” sale at Wal-Mart and the American people are being trampled under the foot of big money. Don’t kid yourself, every city, every town, every community is being negatively affected by this decision. We need to take back our government and the only way to do that is by a Constitutional Amendment that overturns this heinous ruling. There is a strong movement building across America, cities from Los Angeles to New York are putting forth resolutions to get money out of politics and we need to have these resolutions come from every corner of the country. This is NOT going to be easy, the people in power are not going to just roll over, they will hold on dearly tooth and nail. An old organizing adage is “Power is not given away, it is taken away” (I’m paraphrasing of course). So Join in and help spread the word to all!!!

Cooking

Red, hot, and spicy! Roasted red peppers and crushed red pepper give this sauce just the right kick. Just watch those die-hard “pasta-holics” dive into this one.

Cooking Time: 1 hr

Ingredients
  • 6 large red bell peppers, quartered
  • 3 tablespoons olive oil, divided
  • 1 tablespoon minced garlic
  • 1 (28-ounce) can crushed tomatoes
  • 1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
  • 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
  • 1/2 teaspoon sugar
Instructions
  1. Preheat the oven to 450°F. In a medium-sized bowl, toss together the bell peppers and 1 tablespoon of the olive oil until well coated. Place on a large rimmed baking sheet and roast for 25 to 30 minutes, or until tender. Place in the bowl of a food processor that has been fitted with its metal-cutting blade; purèe the peppers.
  2. In a large soup pot, heat the remaining 2 tablespoons olive oil over medium-low heat and sauté the garlic until golden.
  3. Add the remaining ingredients and bring to a boil, then add the purèed peppers. Reduce the heat to low and simmer for 30 minutes, allowing the flavors to “marry”.Makes about 6 cups.

*Recipe courtesy of Mr. Food

Sports

Well my Giants have made the playoffs with a sound thrashing of the Cowboys last week. So they ended the season by beating Rex Ryan and the Jets, then his twin brother Rob Ryan with the Cowboys, now we have to face Matt Ryan and the Falcons this week. If this keeps up and we win the Super Bowl, I want to see Tom Coughlin fight Buddy Ryan in a celebrity death match. As for the RR Fantasy League, I was able to go wire to wire for the win (Thanks mostly to Aaron Rodgers & Adrian Petersen). The final standings were…

  1. The Ronnagades
  2. Augusta Chillers
  3. Pawn Stars
  4. Canton Bulldogs
  5. The Rat Bastids

I hope that next year we can have more people and step it up to a head to head league.

So this is the first post in “Project 52“, I hope you like it. Next post I will try to bring in some entertainment notes. Remember Share, Re-Tweet, Repeat!!!