Red Velvet Donuts

Donuts are the new cupcakes. I called it. I called it two years ago, and now, all those nay-sayers and pooh-pooh-ers, you can just eat my dust.

One of my favorite donut places - open 24 hours - is Spunky Dunkers in Palatine, IL.  It's like a time-warp in there, with plump ladies in white outfits making old-fashioned hand-cut sugary donuts fried up in beef lard - or some kind of lard, I don't care what kind of lard, as long as it's lard, it's flavorful and exceptionally bad for you.

I've yet to meet a donut I don't like in there. I have a particular fondness for some donuts more than others, but I'll display no prejudice against any of them. That's not the American way.

One wonders if there could be some type of connecting symbolism between donut and characteristic attribute of the larger universe? Could it be that each denizen within that fabulous bestiary in turn represents some virtue or quality of nature? Could it be there should exist some metrical donut fable, some liturgical formulation, some fantastic ritual allegory waiting to be explored here?

Or maybe I'm just display an unhealthy fetish. Homer Simpson-itis.

Spunky Dunkers has a nice variety that includes among my favored the coconut, the blueberry cake, the strawberry ice ring, the buttercrunch, and, when in season, the peanut butter and jelly donut, with it's make-your-teeth-hurt sugary jelly filling and peanut butter cream topping.

Ah, but now they have the new and particularly splendid red velvet donut with cream cheese topping.

Son of a bitch!

How good is it? Would I murder a small Western town in its sleep for a box of red velvet donuts with cream cheese topping?

Well, no.

Then again, I don't know. How many donuts would I get? If caught, is the death penalty death by red velvet donuts? Because, then, yeah, maybe. Probably. That's how good they are. That good.

See, that don't look right.

The thing is though, they do look not very appetizing. There's kind of a gruesome meat byproduct look to them. Not quite right. I don't know what they'd look like without the red food coloring, perhaps even worse. And honestly, it's just cocoa powder and sour cream that's making all the magic happen with the cake donut.

Ah, anyway... I've gotten distracted, and here I was going to write about all the silly distractions the politicians have been flashing in front of our eyes.

The upper class tax hike comes to mind. Back last August, when the Republicans created the fake debt ceiling crisis that cost the US of A a ghastly nick in its credit rating, and kept the unemployment rate up, Mitch Mcconnell realized that hostage-taking works. Problem is, the old reptile, running his pink pudgy fingers with the immaculately buffed nails over the knobs and levers of the parliamentary control panel, didn't seem to realize is that this particular behavior could be played by both sides. So now we got Democrats making noises about taking us all over the fiscal cliff if tax cuts for the rich are not ended.

Talk about a red herring! Like raising income tax on the rich is going to have any effect at all - either on the take-home of the rich, or a dent in the deficits. Because it won't. That's not where the rich make their monies. They make it on carried interest and capital gains - and, for long-term gain, they pay a miserable 15% tax penalty.

You know, there are at least four dumb - and I mean demonstrably, empirically dumb - ideas that get bandied about by the angry, flatulent white people: flat tax, term limits, third party, and balanced budget amendments. All of these ideas should be on a Jerry Springer episode entitled "Simplistic Quick Fix Solutions and the Simpletons Who Love Them".

But it is interesting how, for all the people who talk about a flat tax on income, very few wonder about the effects the essentially flat capital gains tax has had upon the economy for the past ten years. Or at least maybe connect income disparity with this flat tax.

Oh, wait. I just read they want to include a raise of the capital gains tax to 20%. Never mind.