Rethinking the Escape

I've considered the UK a potential alternative to staying in the states after the meltdown but with some of the latest developments in 'big brother' I might have to rethink that whole scenario. The thought of spy drones circling over the Cotswold's or the Peaks just doesn't seem proper.

Police in the UK are planning to use unmanned spy drones, controversially deployed in Afghanistan, for the ­"routine" monitoring of antisocial motorists, ­protesters, agricultural thieves and fly-tippers,¹ in a significant expansion of covert state surveillance.
The arms manufacturer BAE Systems, which produces a range of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for war zones, is adapting the military-style planes for a consortium of government agencies led by Kent police.
....Five other police forces have signed up to the scheme, which is considered a pilot preceding the countrywide adoption of the technology for "surveillance, monitoring and evidence gathering". The partnership's stated mission is to introduce drones "into the routine work of the police, border authorities and other government agencies" across the UK.

¹British slang for people who illegally dump trash anywhere other than an authorized landfill.

It's National Pie Day

I made the classic lemon meringue with Eagle Brand sweetened condensed milk. It's one of my favorites. I do increase the eggs to three yolks and three whites though. I also sometimes take a little of the meringue and mix it into the lemon egg mixture just to lighten it a bit. Regardless it is great pie and very easy to whip up.

It's always a tough choice when it comes to pie. Libby's Famous Pumpkin pie is also hard to beat.

I am also a sucker for a great apple pie.

What's your favorite pie?

Pulling Life Support?

 Not good news:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi just told reporters that she does not believe she has enough votes in the House to pass the Senate health care reform bill as-is—at least not yet. “I don’t see the votes for it at this time,” Pelosi said. “The members have been very clear in our caucus about the fact that they didn’t like it before it had the Nebraska provision and some of the other provisions that are unpalatable to them.”
“In every meeting that we have had, there would be nothing to give me any thought that that bill could pass right now the way that it is,” she said. “There isn’t a market right now for proceeding with the full bill unless some big changes are made.”

Since Madam Pelosi has been the only person in Washington to regularly deliver the votes, you can asssume that the rest of the agenda is in serious danger. The two big ones climate change and financial regulation are surely going to be tough in the current atmosphere. Unless something changes, in a big way, the Dems in Congress are going to spend the rest of their time this year running for cover and moving to the right and all because they are misreading the election results in Massachusetts. It was about a failure to lead effectively and not about the so called 'overreach'. People wanted what was promised...it's as simple as that.

I am serious when I say I don't want to hear the word 'bipartisanship' uttered anymore. The GOP is going to say no to anything and everything that is offered unless it lowering taxes on the rich and screwing the middle class. They might approve another war or two but that is about all you can expect. So far, their campaign of saying NO to everything is working for them and I am sure they see no reason to change after Mass.

NO Good For You

Here I go talking about 'Franken foods' again. Since about a billion pounds of potato and corn chips are about to be consumed on Super Bowl day I figured it would be a good time to remind everyone that the simple fact is that about 75 percent of all processed foods in this country contain some GM ingredients. I will almost guarantee that that chip you dip during the game is at least partially GM unless it is organic. No matter how hard you try you are going to get some GM food in your diet in the U.S. It's in just about everything.

New research shows that when GM corn is fed to mice and pigs they show organ and blood abnormalities, as well as immune dysfunction. Scientists have discovered reproductive problems in pigs and cows with GM food in their diets.  There is a reason one of the main rules in Michael Pollan's new book Food Rules is 'Don't eat anything advertised on TV'. and I still try and live by the rule 'If your grandmother wouldn't recognize it as food, it probably isn't.'

Since there are no laws requiring GM labeling it's tough to know what's has GM ingredients and what doesn't?  The most prevalent GM crops are corn, soy, cottonseed and canola. You definitely want to look for organic food that contain those ingredients. By definition, an organic food or crop cannot be genetically modified or contain GM ingredients. It is not just the 'Big 4' though. Things that you might pick up in the store such as sugar, zucchini or yellow squash have a good chance of being GM as well.

Like I said, you are not going to be able to avoid 100% of the GM stuff, it's just too prevalent, but you can reduce the amount you eat by growing your own food and shopping wisely. The Institute for Responsible Technology has compiled an excellent Non-GMO Shopping Guide that you can download for free.

SCOTUS Changes the Game

The Supreme Court has opened the corporate money floodgates for the next election:

In a ruling that radically reshapes campaign-finance law, the Supreme Court has struck down a key provision of the McCain-Feingold measure that bars corporations and unions from pouring money into political ads.

Can you imagine the difficulty of a small reform focused candidate going against the kind of money that corporations will be able to drive into a campaign. While it is still early I am tempted to believe Russ Feingold when he says this will take us back to age of robber barons. Corporate money will be able to silence any voice that runs counter to the interests of big business. We are so screwed.

The Way Ahead is Forward Not Backward

It is very much a waste of time to try and say this in any other way so let's just say I agree with every word quoted here from Jon Walker at FDL:

Let me put this as simply as possible. Democrats control everything in Washington right now. They control the White House. They have a huge margins in the House and in the Senate. Democrats have larger margins in both chambers than any party has had for decades. They have zero excuses for failing to deliver. Americans will not find some nonsense about having only 59 Senate seats as an acceptable excuse for failing to accomplish anything. If Democrats think they can win in 2010 by running against Republican obstructionism, they will lose badly. Not only will Democrats lose badly if they adopt this strategy, but they will be laughed at. Republicans never had 59 Senate seats, and that did not stop them from passing the legislation they wanted. Trying to explain to the American people how, despite controlling everything, Democrats cannot do anything, because a mean minority of 41 Republican senators won’t let them, is a message that will go over like a lead balloon. If you try to use that excuse, people will think elected Democrats are liars, wimps, idiots, or an ineffectual combination of all three.

Absolutely!  Let's quit fighting with the people that agree with us on 80-90% of  pretty much the entire progressive agenda and focus our effort and our aggression on the Republicans and push ever so much harder at moving the agenda forward. 

That Went Well

Been busy all morning with doctor, groceries etc. so I am just now getting around to seeing the circular firing squad that is the Democratic party point their fingers at everybody about the 'disturbance' in Massachusetts yesterday. I've already said all I am going to say and that is shame on you  Massachusetts.
If there is anything at all to say about yesterday that is positive it might be that this better wake up the White House and get them seriously thinking about finding some other job for good ole Rahm. The only other positive thing to not is that Holy Joe isn't the 60th vote anymore.

The reality is that this should not change the dynamics of the Congress all that much. With Joe in the mix we really never had the vaunted 'filibuster proof' majority anyway and the Dems still control all three parts of the government. Now they just have to figure out how to actually govern. The GOP never had this much control and they still managed to get their agenda driven through(wars, tax cuts for the rich, etc.).

Let's get with the program.

Massachusetts Voters

If Massachusetts voters think punishing the Democrats, for whatever reason, by not voting tomorrow in the special election for Ted Kennedy's seat thereby enabling the victory of a Republican who has vowed  to halt any chance at health care reform and is a big supporter of Wall Street then they need to think again. It is nothing more than cutting off your nose to spite your face. Turning this seat over to the GOP will be a tragedy for Massachusetts and the nation. Please get out and vote for Martha Coakley. Ted Kennedy spent his life fighting against the likes of Brown and for the American people and to see his seat given to a shit like Brown would be the greatest insult to the Kennedy legacy one could imagine.

Cheerful Thoughts from Joe

Joe Bageant:

Still, there are always those citizens who will not settle for simply voting based on what they have been fed. They detect the odor of swill, but cannot quite name the ingredients. So they feel they must test democracy, exercise their uncontrolled “freedom of choice” as fully as possible through activism. So they turn to one of the two controlling political parties to put them to work. After all, anyone who doesn’t is considered a kook. Right?
In a marvelous bit of Mobius strip logic, the activists end up working toward the success of some minute difference in national policy that serves the purposes of the established power cartels. The main difference is in the degree of profitability for the corporate state. More profit or a helluva lot more profit. In the end, the activists find themselves working for the election of someone who, by the very nature of being selected as a candidate by the system, has been vetted by his or her own elite peers as one who will — ta ta! — preserve the system from change.

Haiti's Story

Truthout has thoughtfully provided Noam Chomsky's history of Haiti from his book Year 501.

It's quite a story.

h/t Digby 

You Know You Shouldn't Laugh

Susie Madrak over at Suburban Guerrilla has a list of Little Golden Books that didn't make it. I am shamelessly copying some of it because it is hilarious. Some of it is not 'PC" but still funny. Thanks Susie for a good laugh. I picked a few of my favorites but the whole list is a must read.

Little Golden Books that didn’t make it….
1. You Are Different and That’s Bad

8. Curious George and the High-Voltage Fence

13. Grandpa Gets a Casket

14. The Magic World Inside the Abandoned Refrigerator

17. Strangers Have the Best Candy

21. Pop! Goes The Hamster…And Other Great Microwave Games

26. Why Can’t Mr. Fork and Ms. Electrical Outlet Be Friends?

Best Seafood Choices

The Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch  has updated their recommendations on seafood to eat and avoid. They also have a 60-page report on the state of the oceans (PDF). From their research, the best seafood choices as of October 2009 are as follows:

Albacore Tuna (Troll or pole-caught)
Mussels (farmed)
Oysters (farmed)
Pacific sardines (wild-caught)
Pink shrimp (wild caught from Oregon)
Salmon (wild-caught from Alaska)
Spot Prawns (wild-caught from British Columbia)
Rainbow Trout (farmed)

Remember it is not just the species but it's geographic source and whether it is farmed or wild caught that is important in making a choice. 

H/T Jill at La Vida Locavore

High Fructose Corn Syrup Again

There seems to be a new series of ads for HFCS showing up on TV. I have railed about HFCS here before and am not going to do it again. I will merely say, once again, the body preferentially metabolizes fructose into fat and not energy and that can go a long way into understanding why we keep getting fatter and fatter in this country. Recently Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food) had some additional advice for us.

"Avoid foods you see advertised on television.," Michael Pollan warns.

Food marketers are ingenious at turning criticisms of their products -- and rules like these -- into new ways to sell slightly different versions of the same processed foods: They simply reformulate (to be low-fat, have no HFCS or transfats, or to contain fewer ingredients) and then boast about their implied healthfulness, whether the boast is meaningful or not. The best way to escape these marketing ploys is to tune out the marketing itself, by refusing to buy heavily promoted foods. Only the biggest food manufacturers can afford to advertise their products on television: More than two thirds of food advertising is spent promoting processed foods (and alcohol), so if you avoid products with big ad budgets, you'll automatically be avoiding edible foodlike substances. As for the 5 percent of food ads that promote whole foods (the prune or walnut growers or the beef ranchers), common sense will, one hopes, keep you from tarring them with the same brush -- these are the exceptions that prove the rule.

Now back to HFCS. If there is no other reason to avoid it then look at it as a 'marker' for bad food. You find it in over-processed 'cheap' foods and if a product has HFCS in it then it is probably a bad food or at least a food someone felt justified in 'cutting corners' with. Read labels and don't buy food with HFCS where sugar would normally be used. A good example is in jams and jellies. A few days ago I was looking for some preserves to use a glaze for a fruit tart. Since I wasn't going to use it directly on my toast if figured I would save a few cents and buy Smucker's to cook with. You would think a company that makes a big deal out of it's fresh from the farm and family traditions would be ok. NOT! The first ingredient was HFCS. I reached for the imported Bonne Maman instead. There we go... sugar, fruit and pectin. Yes it is more expensive but it is made just like I make my own preserves. It is also the best on the shelves in taste and what I use for direct toast application anyway.

Poison Chickens

There is a two part interview with Michael Greger.M.D. over at Huffpo that I encourage everyone to read concerning the risk we all face as a result of factory farming. The article blames E. coli and salmonella on factory farms. Here is just a sample from it;

When medical researchers at the University of Minnesota took more than 1,000 food samples from multiple retail markets, they found evidence of fecal contamination in 69% of the pork and beef and 92% of the poultry samples. Nine out of ten chicken carcasses in the store may be contaminated with fecal matter. And half of the poultry samples were contaminated with the UTI-causing E. coli bacteria.

And what are you having for dinner......

Monsanto's GM Corn Safety Is In Question

I haven't read the study but it calls into question the long term safety of consuming GM corn. Rats consuming the corn show kidney, liver and spleen damage. Knowing that a huge percentage of the corn consumed in the U.S. nowadays is GM one might give pause before eating any corn that is not organic or certified non GM.

Haiti In Shambles

Haiti is in ruin after a 7.0 earthquake centered near Port-au-Prince. A great deal of the capital city is destroyed and probably thousands are dead. U.N. headquarters is said to be destroyed as is the Presidential Palace. The pictures coming out of one of the poorest countries in the world are devastating. Enigma4ever at Watergatesummer has done a yeoman's job of gathering reports, pictures and links. I can imagine the ultimate death toll is going to be horrific.

Miep Gies, Who Helped Hide Anne Frank, Dies at 100

If you are ever in Amsterdam the Anne Frank Museum is a must. You can only get a sense of what the Frank family must have gone through and the effort it must have been for people like Miep Gies to sacrifice already limited food and supplies, not to mention the personal danger during the war to protect them by being there.
The Guardian:

The office secretary who defied the Nazi occupiers of the Netherlands to help hide Anne Frank and her family for two years has died, the Anne Frank Museum announced today.

Miep Gies, who was 100, saved the teenager's diary. Her website reported that she died on Monday after a brief illness. Maatje Mostar, an Anne Frank museum spokeswoman, confirmed the report but gave no further details.

Gies was the last survivor of the few non-Jews who supplied food, books and company at the secret annexe, above an Amsterdam canal warehouse, where Anne, her parents, her sister and four other Jews hid for 25 months during the second world war.

Have A Burger With That Soda

I was just thinking... maybe the ammonia in the burger will counteract the E.Coli in the soda and everything will be fine.

Nearly half of the 90 beverages from soda fountain machines in one area in Virginia tested positive for coliform bacteria -- which could indicate possible fecal contamination, according to a study published in the January issue of International Journal of Food Microbiology.

Officials at the United States Department of Agriculture endorsed the company’s ammonia treatment, and have said it destroys E. coli “to an undetectable level.” They decided it was so effective that in 2007, when the department began routine testing of meat used in hamburger sold to the general public, they exempted Beef Products.
With the U.S.D.A.’s stamp of approval, the company’s processed beef has become a mainstay in America’s hamburgers. McDonald’s, Burger King and other fast-food giants use it as a component in ground beef, as do grocery chains. The federal school lunch program used an estimated 5.5 million pounds of the processed beef last year alone.

 Just another reason not to eat ground beef or drink fountain sodas.

Same Old Lizards

Joe Bageant has a go at the Tea Party. It isn't pretty but it is sad.

Presently surfacing from the frothing drek we call our political system is a thing called the Tea Party. Whether advertised as such or not, the Tea Party is viewed by millions as an emerging third party, or the functional equivalent of one. In some dark recess of the American consciousness -- hard to tell which one because it's all darkness and recession -- millions have figured out that nobody is getting what they want or need from Congress, except the corporations that own Congress. Actually, dedicated voters on the far right are getting exactly what they have voted for -- a police state -- but do not recognize it yet. No matter. Millions are unhappy and one way or another, think a third party, or the threat of one at least, offers a solution. And how could you go wrong with a brand evoking hallowed images from Ms. Jenkins fourth grade history class of the Boston Tea Party?
The Tea Party is the latest neoconservative end run around the possibility of a real third party emerging to threaten the status quo. To be honest, it's a brilliant political move, absorbing any energies that might have propelled a real third party. And, in true neocon fashion, it capitalizes on the working class' inchoate anger at the ongoing screwjob they've been getting from both parties for thirty years. The one escalated by Clinton's NAFTA, institutionalized as corporate theft by G.W. Bush, and polished to a high sheen by Obama's bailouts, as he brings home the bacon for those Wall Street syndicates running the economy.

Our Food Is Not the Safest

Your hear it constantly from all the mouthpieces that shill for the big agriculture crowd. "The U.S. has the world's safest and most abundant food supply". While there may be a lot of it, it isn't the safest by a long shot. Finally there has been some study and the published statistics show that America's food supply is NOT the safest. I guess there is some good news and that is that Canada's worse off that we are. 

The U.S. has one of the safest food supplies in the world, but the report card is mixed, reports CBS News Correspondent Bill Whitaker. Every year 33 percent of Canadians get sick from what they eat. In the U.S., it's 25 percent. But in England it's only 2 percent and in France just 1 percent. In both places food is grown more locally and on a smaller scale than in North America. [emphasis mine]

While I didn't have my statistician hat on while working over there it was obvious to a cook that the food supply was intrinsically safer. You could often look the actual producer/farmer in the eye while you shopped. The food was likely produced within just a few miles of where you were buying it. It was fresh and you could touch it and smell it before you bought it. If it wasn't properly handled and made you ill then you could look the vendor in the eye the next week and let him or her know. Every time I am able to go to Europe (mostly England) I revel in the markets. Local butchers, farmers and grocers that respect the relationship with their customers and take the relationship seriously. I so miss that here in the U.S.

h/t Jill at La Vida Locavore

It's Not That Bad

Krugman talks about the great conservative/GOP bugaboo today. We constantly here from the right about the disaster of social democracy and how the EU is a prime example of what happens when you have higher taxes, universal healthcare and a wider social safety net.

Paul Krugman:

Strange to say, however, what everyone knows isn’t true. Europe has its economic troubles; who doesn’t? But the story you hear all the time — of a stagnant economy in which high taxes and generous social benefits have undermined incentives, stalling growth and innovation — bears little resemblance to the surprisingly positive facts. The real lesson from Europe is actually the opposite of what conservatives claim: Europe is an economic success, and that success shows that social democracy works.

Update: Steven Benen has more

Health Insurance As Slavery

Glenn W. Smith has an interesting and thought provoking post over at FDL today.

[snip]

Just one of the bizarre ironies of the current debate is the libertarian view that universal health care threatens our freedom. If libertarian-minded Americans would open their eyes, they’d see that just the opposite is true. How many Americans remain in dead-end jobs for the health benefits, however meager they might be? How many entrepreneurs never launch their independent initiatives because they can’t risk the loss of health care?

[snip]
Food, shelter, clothing etc. are things we can provide for ourselves for the most part. Health care and health insurance are not. The staggering cost of health care today in the U.S. requires we have insurance or be independently wealthy. One bit of bad luck in the health arena and without insurance you and or your family is bankrupt. Like Glenn says...we remain tied to a job we don't like because of health insurance and the security it provides. Some of us are lucky to have jobs or careers we love and health insurance but there are many of us who don't or hesitate to strike out on our own for fear of what even a minor health emergency might do to us.
This really needs to change. We are not a free country as long this situation exists.

Maybe Above Freezing

We may actually get above freezing today. It almost made it yesterday when it hit 30F at about 4pm. Getting a little cabin crazy but it is just too damn cold to go for a walk. I'm not good with cold or a wimp...whatever.

In a fit of boredom I made soft pretzels yesterday afternoon and they wound up being dinner along with a couple of glasses of 3 Buck Chuck. It's not like there wasn't plenty of actual food in the house including some very good Navy beans in the fridge but two of these pretzels and anything else to eat was out of the question. Everybody stay warm. Maybe make some pretzels.

Nutty Memory

For some reason I have been thinking about roasted nuts this morning. Specifically, the old time roasted nut counter at the five and dime store. For most of my teen years I had a paper route and every afternoon and Sunday mornings I would ride my bicycle downtown to the Roanoke Herald offices and pick up my load of about 130 papers. It was a small paper and all the daily papers would fit in my big front basket and the two 'saddlebag' baskets on my big old JC Higgins bike. Sundays would require two trips usually, as the paper normally doubled in size. Here is where the nuts come in. Just a few doors down from the newspaper office was McCrory's five and dime and when I had an extra quarter or two I would stop in and go to the nut counter. I loved the nut counter. Big glass bins, a little greasy and salty, filled with freshly roasted nuts. I can still remember the smell of those nuts. When I think back on it they might have actually deep fried the nuts but regardless, the smell of the just cooked cashews, peanuts, pecans and the rest was heavenly. I would hand over my quarter or half dollar and the lady behind the counter would let me select which nuts would go onto the scale until they added up to the purchased weight. Always some cashews(still my favorite nut) and some pecans and then maybe a filbert or two and some peanuts. She would then pour them into a little bag and I would stuff the still warm nuts into my pocket and head down to pick up my papers.

There were usually six or seven of us paper boys there at the same time to pick up our work and we would all head across the street to the covered parking area of the Ford car dealer to roll and rubber band our papers before setting out to deliver. A tightly rolled and banded paper was necessary for the pinpoint accuracy required to deliver the paper against the front door with a satisfying bang when sailing past the house on your bike and I might add that it was the mark of a well seasoned paper boy to never miss. Besides having to face the customer on Saturday when you made your weekly collections (45 cents for a whole week of papers) and hear complaints about lost papers, pride made you stop your bike and the rhythm of the delivery to retrieve badly thrown papers and that was a bad thing.

Anyhow back to the nuts, depending on how much money I had to spend and the resulting quantity of nuts determined how I would ration the nuts so that they would last through the whole delivery which took about 2 hours. It was always sad to realize that you had eaten all the nuts before you had tossed the last paper and still had to face the long ride home without. I can still remember the effort to grab a nut out of the bag in your pocket when sailing down the street on a heavily loaded bike and popping it in your mouth before you had to grab a paper for the next house and how you relished those spots on your route where you could skip a few doors before having to throw. Just enough time for a nut.

I don't know of anyplace, anymore, where you can get nuts that way and it makes me a little sad to think about it. I don't even think there are five and dimes anymore and that is a bit sad too. There was never anything quite like the smell when you walked into a real five and dime. The smells from the lunch counter, nut shop, perfume and who knows what else all slammed together in a cacophony of life.

The Big 75 for Elvis

Today would have been Elvis Presley's 75th birthday. Needless to say Madam has gone back to bed to watch Elvis movies for a while. I asked if she wanted a fried peanut butter and banana sandwich for breakfast but she declined. Maybe for lunch. If you haven't tried it, it's pretty tasty but definitely not diet food.

Happy Birthday Elvis - wherever you are.

The picture is the statue of Elvis at the Tennessee Welcome Center in Memphis.

Not Much, But Enough

Well, its 1030a and it has warmed to a balmy 18F. We didn't get but maybe an inch of snow but it was just enough to coat the roads and it was just warm enough to melt just a bit and then the bottom fell out of the thermometer and we got into mid teens last night and everything is now as slick as snake snot. We aren't expected to see above freezing until Monday afternoon. I'm going to have to venture out and get a prescription filled but CVS is only 2 miles away so I should be ok.
Everybody stay warm and make a big pot of soup....fresh yeast rolls would be nice as well.

Winter Wonderland?

It has begun to snow in the Northern burbs of Atlanta. About 35 degrees but surfaces and the ground is still cold enough for it to stick.
In honor of the 'winter weather' I have a pot of Navy beans in the oven in my grandmother's bean pot. It's funny, every time I get out the pot to make beans, all kinds of different memories jump out. Sometimes it is something about cooking with her and the fabulous smells and wonderful but simple food that used to come out of that kitchen or wondering how many batches of beans have actually been cooked in that pot. I'm pretty sure the pot was one she 'went to housekeeping' with in the 20's and beans were at least weekly fare as far as I can remember. My guess would be between 4000 and 5000 pots of beans in the nearly 100 years that pot has been in service. However, this time it was about my Dad who, when Navy beans were on the menu, used to almost always talk about having Navy beans while in the Pacific during WWII and how the only way they could make them edible was to load them up with ketchup which they referred to as 'red lead' after the red priming paint they used on the ships. I haven't thought about that in years and years.
Anyhow, a nice pot of beans is on the way and buttermilk cornbread won't be far away either. There won't be any 'red lead' but there is a good possibility of some Sriracha sauce. I fell in love with this hot sauce a few years ago and have a real tendency to overdo it and it really lights up a bowl of beans.

BTW I did make the French lentils with cashews dal last night for dinner and served it over Nishiki rice. It was excellent and definitely a recipe to have in the bag of tricks.

Not A Long List

On MSNBC's "Hardball" last night, Chris Matthews asked leading GOP strategist Todd Harris about what Republicans have done for the United States over the last 20 years. It didn't go well.
The only thing he could come up with was "kept the county safe". Matthews then mentioned the tiny, tiny little fact that the worst terrorist attack in our nations history occurred on the GOP watch.

Can you think of anything that the GOP has done for the country in the last 20 years? I mena besides starting 2 disastrous wars and giving the rich a tax break.

h/t Steve Benen

Non Human Persons

Ever since I read the work of Dr. Lilly and Leo Szilard I have felt that we were doing dolphins and whales a great disservice by considering them just animals or just smart animals. Scientists are coming to realize this as well...

Dolphins have been declared the world’s second most intelligent creatures after humans, with scientists suggesting they are so bright that they should be treated as “non-human persons”.
Studies into dolphin behaviour have highlighted how similar their communications are to those of humans and that they are brighter than chimpanzees. These have been backed up by anatomical research showing that dolphin brains have many key features associated with high intelligence.
The researchers argue that their work shows it is morally unacceptable to keep such intelligent animals in amusement parks or to kill them for food or by accident when fishing. Some 300,000 whales, dolphins and porpoises die in this way each year.

Dal for Dinner

If you are not familiar with the word 'dal' or you think it just means any number of wonderful spicy Indian lentil dishes then your understanding is incomplete. I love bean and lentils and 'dal' is a generic term for probably millions of variations on spicy bean or lentil dishes. Mark Bitten has shared 5 great sounding recipes for 'dal' in his minimalist column today in the New York Times. While I haven't tried any of these yet they all sound great...especially the one "French Lentils with Cashews" and there is a very strong chance it will be on the dinner menu for tonight.
My one comment on the recipes is that he says to use butter or oil and I think all of the recipes should use 'ghee' or at least clarified butter. It is simple to make and brings a wonderful taste to such dishes. I will substitute it for the butter in all of the recipes when I try them and I think all of them would be the better for it. Ghee brings a rich 'nutty' taste to Indian food and really adds a whole new dimension of flavor.

Here is the recipe for the French Lentils with Cashews:

French Lentils With Cashews
2 tablespoons butter or peanut(here is where I would use 'ghee'/clarified butter instead)
1 large yellow onion, chopped
1 tablespoon curry powder or garam masala
1/4 cup tomato paste
1 cup chopped cashews
1/2 cup dried French green (Le Puy) lentils, washed and picked over
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup yogurt for garnish
1/4 cup chopped parsley for garnish.
1. Put butter in a large pot over medium heat until it is melted and foamy (or shimmering if using oil). Add onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until soft and golden, about 5 minutes. Stir in spice blend and keep stirring for a few seconds, until it becomes fragrant. Add tomato paste and cook, stirring frequently, until it darkens, another couple of minutes.
2. Add cashews and stir to coat them in onion mixture. Cook and stir just long enough for them to warm a bit. Add lentils and enough water to cover by about an inch.
3. Bring to a boil, then turn heat down to medium-low so mixture bubbles gently. Cook, stirring until beans are soft, 20 to 30 minutes; add more water as needed to keep everything moist. When lentils are cooked to desired tenderness and mixture has thickened, stir in some salt and pepper, then taste and adjust seasoning. Serve, garnished with a dollop of yogurt and a little parsley.

If you have never made or used clarified butter here is how to make it. It only takes about 5 minutes and this recipe makes about a cup and a half. It keeps in the fridge for weeks and you can use it intead of butter for sauteing and such. It works great for frying eggs and omelets as well as pancakes, latkes and such.

2 sticks (1/2 pound) unsalted butter, cut into pieces

Place the butter in a heavy saucepan and melt slowly over low heat. I usually wait until I see it sputter a bit from the water in the butter boiling off and I can see the milk solids settling on the bottom of the pot. I wait until most of the 'sputtering' stops (5 minutes tops) and remove the pan from the heat and let it stand for 5 minutes.

Skim the foam from the top, and slowly pour the clear butterfat into a container leaving all of the milk solids in the bottom of the pan. The milk solids go into the trash.

Clarified butter has a much higher smoke point than butter. It allows you to cook meats and fish at a higher temperature than you can with regular butter, making it perfect for pan-frying. Clarifying the butter lets you remove the milk solids that cause butter to burn quickly.

Ghee is basically just clarified butter that has been cooked a bit longer and in which the milk solids have caramelized. To make ghee just keep heating the clarified butter over low heat until the milk solids have darkened a bit (not burned) and you begin to smell the nutty aroma that comes from the caramelized milk. It takes about 20 more minutes to make a ghee. It will keep longer than clarified butter because absolutely all of the water has been boiled off. Ghee is indispensable in Indian cooking and a lot of Mediterranean dishes as well.

Time for Pizza

I have talked about homemade pizza before but I don't think I really covered the subject as well
as I should have. With this unseasonably cold weather a fresh homemade pizza right from the oven
is just the ticket. (the dough is rising as I type) The original post made enough dough for a single 12-14 inch pizza. This is the same basic dough but the recipe makes enough for 4 pizzas. The great thing about this simple
dough is that you can make it ahead as much as two days and keep it refrigerated or you can even
freeze it for a month and just let it thaw for 24 hours in the fridge.

Basic Pizza Dough
This is the classic Neapolitan pizza dough. It is a fairly low yeast dough that doesn't rise
quickly but it has a nice texture and is very easy to work with. I've tried a bunch of variations
for pizza dough but this is the one I always come back to.

    5 cups all purpose flour
    1 Tablespoon sugar or honey
    2 teaspoons salt (or 3 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt)
    1 package of instant yeast or highly active yeast
    2 Tablespoons olive oil
    1 3/4 to 2 cups room-temperature water (when it is humid use the lesser amount and when it is
      dry use more). Depending on the quality of your water you might want to use filtered water 
     or bottled water. If there is a lot of chlorine in your water it will retard the yeast.

Combine all of the ingredients in a large mixing bowl and mix well with a wooden spoon or mix in
an electric mixer. After everything is mixed well set the dough aside to rest(autolyse) for 15
minutes. After the rest turn the dough out on a floured surface and knead for 3 or 4 minutes and
if you have to add more water or flour so that you get a dough that is wetter and stickier than
your typical bread dough. Keep your hands well floured and work with your fingertips to keep too
much dough from sticking to your hands. Kneading a 'slack' dough takes a little practice and
don't worry if it seems to stick to everything...just use a scraper or other flat tool(spatula)
to scrape it up and keep going. We aren't going to knead this as much as we would a bread dough
as we don't have to build the gluten structure as strongly.

Divide the dough into 4 equal pieces. Place each one into an oiled 1 quart zip bag. I just put a
few drops of olive oil in the bag and squish it around a bit. We are just trying to make sure we
can get the sticky dough out of the bag later.

Now you have enough dough for 4 12- 14 inch pizzas. Depending on how many pizzas you are going to
make in the next day or two you will want to throw the extra bags in the freezer where they will
stay for at least a month with no harm.  The day before you intend to bake them, move the frozen
bags of dough to the refrigerator to thaw.
The dough that you are going to use now or tomorrow needs to go into the fridge until two hours
before you are ready to use them. Just remember to take them out and let them warm to room
temperature a couple of hours before you are ready to bake.
When working with yeast doughs time is your best friend. The longer and slower the rise or
fermentation the better the flavor. This dough would actually prefer to be made the day ahead and
spend the night in the fridge but if you don't have that kind of time it is no big deal. As long
as this dough has a couple of hours fermentation it will be fine. Ideally, you want the dough to
double in size but most of the leavening in pizza making comes in the oven so even an hour rise
will still produce a nice crust.

Now let's talk about sauce. You can buy sauce but I really prefer to make make my own. If you
already have a favorite sauce, by all means go right ahead and use it. The quick little sauce
recipe below is simple and easy and the ingredients are always on hand(at least in my house).
There is also no reason in the world why you can't use anything else for topping the pizza. Pesto
is good or even a nice salsa or BBQ sauce....whatever. I won't tell the pizza police if you
won't.

Quick pizza sauce

    1 28oz can crushed tomatoes
    2 tsp dried basil
    2 tsp dried oregano
     1 tsp kosher or sea salt (this depends a little on the amount of salt in the tomatoes)
    1 TBsp garlic powder or 4 or 5 cloves of crushed garlic
    2 TBsp red wine or balsamic vinegar
    red pepper flakes to taste
Note: if you want an interesting taste substitute Herbes de Provence for the basil and oregano

Don't get hung up on the recipe though if all you have is whole canned tomatoes...use your
fingers to break them up. All you have is tomato sauce? Use it. Of course you can always use
fresh tomatoes and herbs and when they are in season. I do.

Round or square, thick or thin
If you are going for round pizzas then all you have to do is stretch and work the dough slowly
into a big circle. You can do this with a rolling pin or you can gently stretch it into a circle.
This usually takes a couple of steps since working the dough strengthens the gluten and it has to
relax somewhat before you can get it stretched fully. I start by gently pressing the dough on a
flat surface with my fingers until I have a circle about five inches across. I let the dough rest
for a few minutes and then I just hold it up by the edge and slowly turn the dough letting the
weight of the rest of the dough pull it down to stretch it out. When it starts to resist I let it
rest again for a few minutes before stretching a little more. I like my pizza very thin but you
can stop anywhere in the process to suit your own tastes as to thickness.

If you are going to make a big square pizza then the rolling pin is the answer. You can make a
really big rectangular pie by combining two of the dough balls.

I always cook my pizza on a baking stone and I always use parchment paper under the dough...it
makes life a lot simpler. I spread the dough right on the parchment then use a peel to slip the
whole thing onto the stone. If you don't have a stone then the back of a baking pan works fine as
well. Transferring a sticky pizza dough from the prep surface to the oven without parchment can
result in a disaster, especially if the pizza is piled high with toppings. I have learned the
hard way that the investment in parchment is well worth it. Trust me on this.
I like to let my dough rest for 10 - 15 minutes before I top it as it gives a little more rise in
the oven.

Like I said I use a stone and a 450 degree oven and I like the results. Professional pizza ovens
usually run to 600 or 700 degrees and you aren't going to get there with a home oven. I cook my
pie on the lowest shelf of the oven as it allows the crust to cook properly before the toppings
are burnt to a crisp. I also make sure my oven and stone have pre heated completely before I
slide in the pie.
As for toppings I am of the simple is better school. A little tomato sauce, a little cheese maybe
some shaved onions and or some sauteed mushrooms. There are no rules but I think piling on a
bunch of stuff hides the essential flavors of the crust and tomatoes. In the summer when I have
fresh tomatoes I will just spread thin slices over the crust and add some dried basil and
oregano, a dash of garlic and red pepper flakes and it makes a fine pie. Like I said there are no
rules. I also really like a simple tomato and cheese pie piled with baby arugula or spinach when
it just comes out of the oven. Nice contrast of textures and flavors.

Brit Hume is Such an Ass

Brit Hume managed to insult all of us Buddhists over the weekend by suggesting that Tiger Woods should abandon his Buddhism and turn to Christianity if he wanted to recover from his transgressions.

Since it is FOX News I am not expecting an apology but if it was any other religion that was so insulted we would be hearing much more hue and cry.

It is quite obvious Brit has no knowledge of Buddhism but interestingly in his ignorance he is somewhat correct. Since the whole idea of 'sin' is a foreign concept in Buddhism it is true that Buddhism doesn't offer the same kind of "redemption and forgiveness" as does Christianity. We do, however, offer the Eightfold Path and the Four Noble Truths that helps us understand the reasons and solutions for such destructive behavior. Seeing as how Buddhists have been applying the precepts and practices taught by the Buddha for 25 centuries quite successfully we can comfortably tell Brit to go away until he has fully grasped the Three Pure Precepts;
I like them expressed as taught by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, founder of the San Francisco Zen Center

With purity of heart, I vow to refrain from ignorance.
With purity of heart, I vow to reveal beginner's mind.
With purity of heart, I vow to live, and be lived, for the benefit of all beings.

Then again there is always the other side of the coin as expressed by Elephant Journal  who vows vengeance.

Little does Brit realize that not only are we Buddhists temperamentally unable to forgive, our various secret ninja societies will hunt him down and unforgive him until he cries out in the dark for his mother.

Stupid Panic

There is still wall to wall panic over the Christmas 'Fruit of the Loom' bomber and it is getting really tiring. The thing is all the excitement about full body scanners which are being implemented in Amsterdam and other places(the U.S. supposedly has a couple of hundred on order with more planned) is tilting at windmills. There is a good possibility that even a full body scan would not have detected the explosive secreted away in the bomber's underwear. Reports are suggesting they are not effective and would not have had any impact on the Christmas day event over Detroit.

Tests by scientists in the team at Qinetiq, which Mr Wallace advised before he became an MP in 2005, showed the millimetre-wave scanners picked up shrapnel and heavy wax and metal, but plastic, chemicals and liquids were missed.

If a material is low density, such as powder, liquid or thin plastic – as well as the passenger's clothing – the millimetre waves pass through and the object is not shown on screen. High- density material such as metal knives, guns and dense plastic such as C4 explosive reflect the millimetre waves and leave an image of the object.

Balmy Atlanta

Not! Not a record cold but cold enough. Dropped to 20F this morning at sunrise and not expected to get above freezing at all today. Forecast is for 15F tonight. This officially ends the gardening season as even the radishes have given up. I don't expect anything to survive this cold snap. Almost time to start the plants for next year's garden though so I can get some dirt underneath my fingernails pretty soon. 

Had to break down and put the bird bath heater in place last night. The birds are flocking to the only liquid water this morning and are lining up to get a drink. It is nice when they seem to appreciate your efforts.  It is non stop at the bird feeders this morning as well and the suet is mobbed by bluebirds and woodpeckers.

I have been doing all my new year chores like straightening the basement and cleaning up my office a bit. Sorted through all the old tax records and pulled all the stuff more than 7 years old. Now it just needs to be shredded. Madam even pulled out all the collected Food and Wine magazines and recycled them yesterday. I did manage to convince her to keep all my Cook's Illustrated and Saveur back issues as I have them from the first issue of both. She did organize them by date and file them properly.

We both spent a while yesterday cutting toilet paper cores in half and paper towel cores into the same size. I'll fill them with potting soil and use them to start plants instead of buying expensive peat pots. We have been saving them since last summer as have friends. It is amazing how much toilet paper you go through in 6 months!

It's Here

Happy New Year everyone. No lists of the best or worst just a wish that the next decade will be better than the last and that we all get a chance to welcome 2020. No New Year's resolutions to break so I'm good.

Watch Your Soy Milk

I don't use soy milk as I am a cow juice guy but I have a lot of friends that do. If you use soy milk and especially the Silk brand you should be aware of something that you might not have noticed. Dean Foods the owner of Silk has pulled a typical big ag dirty trick.

Until early 2009, Silk brand soy milk was made using organic soybeans. But earlier this year, Dean Foods (owner of the Silk brand) quietly switched to conventional soybeans, which are often grown with pesticides. But they kept the same UPC barcodes on their products, and they kept the product label virtually the same, only replacing the word "organic" with "natural" in a way that was barely noticeable. They also kept the price the same, charging consumers "organic" prices for a product that was now suddenly made with conventionally-grown soybeans.

Many retailers and consumers never noticed the bait-and-switch tactic, so they kept buying Silk, thinking it was still organic. The shift on the product label from "organic" to "natural" wasn't well understood by consumers, either. Many consumers continue to think that the term "natural" is basically the same as "organic," when in fact they are almost opposites. The term "natural" is entirely unregulated, and almost anything can be claimed to be "natural" even when it's sprayed with pesticides or treated with other chemicals.

Positive News on TASER Use

Finally we are starting to see some sanity evolve in the use of  TASERS by police. The 9th Circuit issued what looks like a landmark ruling on the use of TASERS. The unbridled use of these weapons is getting worse everyday and for less and less of a reason.

A federal appeals court on Monday issued one of the most comprehensive rulings yet limiting police use of Tasers against low-level offenders who seem to pose little threat and may be mentally ill.

In a case out of San Diego County, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals criticized an officer who, without warning, shot an emotionally troubled man with a Taser when he was unarmed, yards away, and neither fleeing nor advancing on the officer.

[...]

As lawsuits have proliferated against police and Taser International, which manufactures the weapons, the nation's appellate courts have been trying to define what constitutes appropriate Taser use.

The San Diego County case is the latest ruling to address the issue.

A three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit affirmed the trial judge's ruling on Monday, concluding that the level of force used by the officer was excessive.

McPherson could have waited for backup or tried to talk the man down, the judges said. If Bryan was mentally ill, as the officer contended, then there was even more reason to use "less intrusive means," the judges said.

"Officer McPherson's desire to quickly and decisively end an unusual and tense situation is understandable," Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw wrote for the court. "His chosen method for doing so violated Bryan's constitutional right to be free from excessive force."

Some lawyers called it a landmark decision.

Eugene Iredale, a San Diego lawyer who argued the case, said it was one of the clearest and most complete statements yet from an appellate court about the limits of Taser use.

He said after Monday's decision that courts will consider all circumstances, including whether someone poses a threat, has committed a serious crime or is mentally troubled.

"In an era where everybody understands 'don't tase me, bro,' courts are going to look more closely at the use of Tasers, and they're going to try to deter the promiscuous oversue of that tool," he said.

[...]

"Certainly the officer should be able to articulate the reason the force (was used), and a mere resistance to comply may not be enough," said Sheriff John McGinness.

The sooner police understand that they can use a TASER under very strict rules and not just to make their jobs easier the better off we will be. Police have a tough job but taking the easy way out with such a dangerous device is not the answer. It's a brutal weapon and it kills. This is going to battled around in the courts for a while yet but at least we are seeing some movement in the right direction.

Reasons To Have A Suet Feeder in Winter

Here are just a few of the reasons to keep a suet feeder filled in the wintertime. What you don't see here are Red Bellied, Downy, and Red Headed woodpeckers who come regularly. At times there are as many as 6 or 7 Eastern Bluebirds waiting to feed. The little Hairy woodpecker is a constant visitor between bluebird swarms. As usual you can click on the image to make it full screen.

2010 Might be Better

In my Internet wanderings this morning it appears that the Democrats may actually have a better 2010 than I previously thought. If they can avoid their typical attack of political timidity and insane 'hunt for bipartisan love' that normally affects them in election years then the GOP is going to make it a good year judging from the insanity that was spewed this weekend. It was full of weirdly twisted logic, fractured history and outright lies and is a sure indication that the Republicans are suffering from a serious lack of ideas and organization and very much 'not ready for prime time'. Here is just some of the seriously strange stuff that came out of GOP pie holes...
According to Mary Matalin. Shrub inherited 9/11 from Bill Clinton and the employment numbers actually improved in his first year. The first assertion is insane and the second is an outright lie.
Good old political has been Newt Gingrich was on fire this weekend and was in his usual excellent crap slinging form. Among other things he insisted that President Obama has refused to work with the Republicans this year and what's more the GOP should respond with a 'positive alternative vision' which would be to run on repealing health care reform. That's a sure winner if I ever saw one.
Mitch McConnell, not to be outdone by a has been like Newt, insisted that the GOP was right to oppose President Obama on every issue and especially health care reform which meant that they were being bipartisan. You figure it out.
Last but not least, Jim DeMint declared health care reform unconstitutional but won't commit to filing a lawsuit against it.

If the Repubs think running on a platform of repealing health reform, even the seriously flawed reform that is likely to come out of reconciliation, then they are more deluded than I thought. People want constructive ideas and want positive change. If the Dems can do more in the next 12 months  with respect to enacting progressive legislation then they will continue to hold sway.

Avatar Is Worth a View

Madam and I went to see Avatar yesterday but just the 2D version as I refused to pay $11.50 for a matinee 3D seat. If you are a SciFi geek like me it is way cool. Pretty standard and predictable plot but the visuals and imagination involved in making the flick are not to be believed. I definitely got absorbed into the fantasy world of Pandora and the characterizations of its inhabitants. The movie was perfect for a tree hugging SciFi geek like me and even Madam thought it was worth seeing. There is definitely a liberal, tree hugging message underlying the movie so I can understand why the wing nuts are going crazy over it.

Lightning is Your Real Enemy

With latest failed attempt at blowing up an airplane covering all the news and creating the usual hysteria in the bedwetting crowd all I can say is I am glad I am no longer in the weekly get on the airplane crowd. It was bad enough before with the shoes and liquid craziness but they are going to go to even more extremes since the Christmas day episode. The funny/weird thing is that none of the crotch grabbers getting their shorts all twisted up over this latest failed attempt stop and actually analyze the reality of what the 'threat' really is around air travel.  Take a deep breath folks and get a grip.

Nate Silver does the numbers on terrorist attacks.

Over the past decade, there have been, by my count, six attempted terrorist incidents on board a commercial airliner than landed in or departed from the United States: the four planes that were hijacked on 9/11, the shoe bomber incident in December 2001, and the NWA flight 253 incident on Christmas…

Over the past decade, according to BTS [the Bureau of Transportation Statistics], there have been 99,320,309 commercial airline departures that either originated or landed within the United States. Dividing by six, we get one terrorist incident per 16,553,385 departures.

These departures flew a collective 69,415,786,000 miles. That means there has been one terrorist incident per 11,569,297,667 miles flown. This distance is equivalent to 1,459,664 trips around the diameter of the Earth, 24,218 round trips to the Moon, or two round trips to Neptune…

There were a total of 674 passengers, not counting crew or the terrorists themselves, on the flights on which these incidents occurred. By contrast, there have been 7,015,630,000 passenger enplanements over the past decade. Therefore, the odds of being on given departure which is the subject of a terrorist incident have been 1 in 10,408,947 over the past decade. By contrast, the odds of being struck by lightning in a given year are about 1 in 500,000. This means that you could board 20 flights per year and still be less likely to be the subject of an attempted terrorist attack than to be struck by lightning.

h/t to Anne Laurie at Balloon Juice.

Boxing Day

I hope everyone had a nice Christmas and that Santa was kind. Madam and I had a nice afternoon with minimonk and her gaggle of hounds. Mr. minimonk was still trying to shake a bad cold but did a great job on some very nice rib eye's in spite of it.  Nice meal and shared time with plenty of dog petting. Today is Boxing Day when the contents of the alms box are distributed by the nobles to their serfs.  Cold day here in Atlanta and still very damp from all the rain so not much going on outdoors. I imagine Madam will fly into de-decorating with a vengeance so I will probably get pulled into the effort.
If you are traveling do so with care as roads in lots of the country are bad news. If you are going by plane expect some increased hassles due to the terrorist attempt in Detroit.
If you are not traveling try not to clean up all the Christmas goodies in one day.

OK it's Officially The Christmas Season

The big double batch of Chex Party Mix (Nut&Bolts in my family) is in the big Tupperware container so we can declare it 'officially Christmas'. I usually do a lot more baking for the holidays but it just didn't happen this year but the 'Party Mix' is a must have. Mine is always 'kicked up' a notch since I increase the seasoning and butter by about 50% and also add a wee bit of cayenne pepper.
We are going to Minimonks for Christmas Day (she is on duty for Christmas Eve) and rumor has it that we are going to have steak on the grill. There was talk of going to see Avatar as well but the first showing is not until 3pm on Christmas Day so that will just have to wait for another day. Now if the 'frog strangling' rain predicted for tonight and tomorrow morning will clear out of the way in time we are go for Christmas.

All you guys have a Merry Christmas and a safe one to boot. Careful about how much brandy gets into the egg nog and all that.

Down the Bunny Hole

Well the Senate passed its version of health care reform. Its a very bad bill on balance but all I can say is that there is a chance it canned be improved in reconciliation. Let's hope so. Until we do know what is in a bill that the President signs I can't get too excited. My gut feeling is that the millions the lobbyists from the the private health care industry spent did the job and we got a pig in a poke. I am disappointed that there is no real competition for private health insurance created and I think this is going to add to the strength and entrenchment of for profit health care. A lot of people are going to find paying for crap insurance a real irritant...especially yours truly. Once the reconciliation is complete and the President signs something we'll get a chance to see how far into Wonderland we have been taken by the pawns of big insurance and big Pharma.

In A Nutshell

Frederick at MCCS1997 is back and with a new look. He posted this cartoon this morning linking from PZMyers. It was so 'on point' that I had to shamelessly copy it. Welcome back Frederick...missed your contributions to the dialogue.

As PZMyers says ' Isn’t this what the global warming debate is actually all about?'

Who Did I Vote For?

There is a 'must read' today at Huff Po by Drew Westen, the political psychologist/neuroscientist, that is probably going to get a lot of people cranky today but it is the most accurate assessment I have seen to date on what has happened to 'Change We Can Believe In'.

This is a brutal, but accurate, assessment of the Obama presidency so far. It's a bit long but if you are like me you will have some 'Ah ha' moments and recognize some of what you have been thinking for the last few months but couldn't put into words. The article in annoying because it is spot on.

Somehow the president has managed to turn a base of new and progressive voters he himself energized like no one else could in 2008 into the likely stay-at-home voters of 2010, souring an entire generation of young people to the political process. It isn't hard for them to see that the winners seem to be the same no matter who the voters select (Wall Street, big oil, big Pharma, the insurance industry). In fact, the president's leadership style, combined with the Democratic Congress's penchant for making its sausage in public and producing new and usually more tasteless recipes every day, has had a very high toll far from the left: smack in the center of the political spectrum.

What's costing the president and courting danger for Democrats in 2010 isn't a question of left or right, because the president has accomplished the remarkable feat of both demoralizing the base and completely turning off voters in the center. If this were an ideological issue, that would not be the case. He would be holding either the middle or the left, not losing both.

What's costing the president are three things: a laissez faire style of leadership that appears weak and removed to everyday Americans, a failure to articulate and defend any coherent ideological position on virtually anything, and a widespread perception that he cares more about special interests like bank, credit card, oil and coal, and health and pharmaceutical companies than he does about the people they are shafting.

The problem is not that his record is being distorted. It's that all three have more than a grain of truth. And I say this not as one of those pesky "leftists." I say this as someone who has spent much of the last three years studying what moves voters in the middle, the Undecideds who will hear whichever side speaks to them with moral clarity.

I guess the big question is...What can we do to change it and can we?

Here's to Carl Sagan

A stunning image has been captured by the newest camera on the Hubble telescope and released by NASA.  The photo is the deepest ever taken of space.  In the image, thousands of galaxies dot the blackness in an almost incomprehensibly enormous cluster.  Some of the galaxies, each containing billions of stars and planets, are nearly as old as the Big Bang itself. Click on it to embiggen.

Since today is also the winter solstice Donna has a photo of a Tutulemma: Solar Eclipse Analemma that is seriously cool.

Happy Winter Solstice

Today marks the winter solstice, the shortest day and the longest night of the year. The precise moment of the winter solstice is 12:47 p.m. EST, according to the U.S. Naval Observatory . At that moment the Earth's axial tilt puts it the farthest from the sun.
In the Northern Hemisphere, the winter solstice occurs when the sun is directly over the Tropic of Capricorn, which is located at the latitude of 23.5 degrees south of the equator.

Happy first day of winter and all that stuff. Bryan at Why Now? also reminds us to put out the turnips as it is also Hogswatch.

updated to correct the spelling of Hogswatch. 

Stupid

I just spent the entire afternoon struggling to get a new comment system running because Steve at YDD said that he had received an email from Haloscan saying that they were to start charging 10 bucks a month starting Jan 2. I can't afford that so I decided to shift over to Disqus because it reportedly could import my old comments.

I just read the actual info on the  Echo site (the new brand for Haloscan) and it is only 12 bucks a year. I can afford that.

Anyhow....system is back to normal so ignore all that crap about Haloscan off and stuff. Everything should be back to the way it was.

Sheesh a wasted afternoon.

Disqus Comments Are Up and Running

Ok the new commenting system is up and running. The access is a little different and I have the ability to add facebook and some other things like twitter to the mix right now you either have to log in as quest and type in your stuff or create an ID on Disqus or use an OpenID or yahoo log in. I wasn't successful importing any of the old comments yet but I am still working on it. We'll see.

Let me know if this is going to work or would you rather see the blogger native comments.

Testing Disgus comments

Testing the Disqus commenting system

test

test

Haloscan Comments Off

I have turned off the Haloscan comment system. I think I have enabled the Blogger system but we will see when I post this.

Update: Still trying.

Comment Hell?

According to Steve over at YDD the Haloscan commenting system will be discontinued on Boxing Day.

Haloscan has powered the comments on this blog almost since its inception in 2004.

Although I haven't received one yet, apparently emails are going out announcing the cancellation of the service and the impending loss of all comments unless you either a) download them for posterity; or b) upgrade to Echo, Haloscan's subscription-based successor. I really appreciate the notification in a prompt and timely manner.

Well, that's not happening. I really don't get enough comments to justify what a pay service demands($10/month), which would be something like charging me 50 cents a comment. Even though Haloscan was the only game in town back in 2004, that's not the case anymore: in addition to Blogger's native comment system, there's also Intense Debate, Disqus, and I'm sure plenty of other free services that will work for this tiny little blog. My big concern is losing all the great input from you guys since the beginning....yeah even you David!

So, at some point in the very near future, commenting on this blog will change. I'm looking at Disqus as it appears that they have some method of rescuing the old comments from Haloscan and it seems like a pretty robust system and it is free (for now). Meanwhile, Haloscan lets users export comments in something called CAIF (Common Announcement Interchange Format) and I have done this for all 8,000 comments made on the site since the beginning up until yesterday.

So if you come in here in the next couple of days and it is totally fried and comments don't work or they do and are completely different then you know why. The first step will be to disable Haloscan and revert to the native Blogger I guess but until I get into the conversion I really don't know. I know just enough about HTML to be dangerous so who knows what will happen.

No Snow --Thank Goodness

Thank goodness the snow is well north of us here in Atlanta. I just talked to my Mom in far Western Virginia (Narrows) and they already have a foot and a half and it is still coming down hard.

Madam and I have a dinner party for some friends tonight and snow would have been a real pain. I don't care to cook all day and have no one show up. We are just a little cold and damp from all of the rain yesterday.
The menu for tonight is butterflied and rolled pork loin stuffed with a saute of leeks and fennel. Roasted butternut squash with honey and cumin, haricot vert, fresh rolls and a French apple tart for dessert. California (Fetzer) Gewurztraminer is the wine selected. Should be nice for a cold fall night.

Oh! the recipe for the pork loin can be found here... it's from Ina Garten.

Honey Roasted Nuts

It is another miserable rainy and cold day here in Atlanta. Nothing to do but cook something. It's the season for parties and snacks and other treats. One of my favorite things is nuts of all kinds and I especially like honey roasted nuts(plain or spicy) and they are very nice for the festive season. Here is the basic method for putting a little honey glaze on nuts. You can leave off the spice and do them plain or add the spice of your choice.

Honey Roasted Nuts (with or without spices)

Ingredients

1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/4 cup honey
1 pound unsalted roasted mixed nuts (about 4 cups)
You can use mixed nuts or all one nut like pecans, walnuts or almonds but I like mixtures. A really nice mix is 1 cup whole cashews, 1 cup whole almonds, 1 cup whole pecan halves, 1 cup hazelnuts but mix whatever you like...I avoid using peanuts but you can if you want.

Directions

Preheat the oven to 325°. Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment. Lightly spray the pan with cooking spray. In a large bowl, combine the sugar with the salt and set aside for later. In another large bowl mix the honey( with the spices if using). Add the nuts and stir to coat. You can heat the honey in the microwave for 20 - 30 seconds to make it a little easier to mix. When all the nuts are nicely coated spread them in a single layer on the baking sheet and bake for 10 -15 minutes. (If you are using raw nuts then another 10 - 15 minutes might be needed to completely roast the nuts. I normally just used roasted but unsalted nuts.) Remove from the oven and let the nuts cool slightly and then toss them with the sugar-salt mixture to coat. Discard the parchment and spread the nuts out on the baking sheet to finish cooling. Once cool you they are ready but you can store them in a tightly sealed container for a week at least.

If you want to make a spicy nut mixture then add 3/4 tsp of cayenne pepper to the honey. Other options would be 1 tsp chili powder, 1 tsp ground cumin or even a tsp of smoked paprika. Whatever you like but cayenne is usually my go to for spicy nuts.

If you want to make these nuts extra crunchy then use a coarse sugar like turbinado (like Sugar in the Raw) and kosher salt.

Saving Ourselves

There is a very worthwhile diary over on the Orange Beast worth reading. No One Is Going to Save You Fools. I highly recommend it. It's by a QRC or Qualitative Research Consultant and explains very clearly why we progressives are being left behind in the current political arena. An eye opener.

No More Whipsawing

I have to decided to pull over to the side of the road and wait out the health care battle. I'll wait until there is actual bill before I do anymore reading or worrying about it. We'll be extremely lucky if anything happens before Christmas since the GOP has decided to pull out the 'delay at all costs' plan. Today Tom Coburn of Oklahoma put the brakes on the Senate by insisting that all amendments be read in full. Many of these amendments are very long and it will take days to get through them all...meanwhile the normal Senate agenda was to consider DoD spending today and get things in place before funding runs out on Friday...ain't going to happen. The Senate is broken and the minority is doing everything they can to befuddle the process. Add in jerks like Lieberman and Nelson and you have a classic 'clusterfuck'.

Right now I am leaning toward passing whatever shitty bill finds its way out of the morass as the cost and effort and even the possibility of starting over is impossible. The last major effort at health care reform was under Clinton and we just can't afford to wait that long to move forward, however small. We take what we can get out of this embarrassment and hope to improve it as we go down the road. If what the progressives who are calling for 'Kill Bill" say will happen comes to pass then there will be that much more pressure on government to do something to fix it and that much less credibility on the part of insurance companies and pharma.

I am not happy but the whipsawing and confusion are just draining. It is better to wait until we actually have a bill to measure and understand before we go insane.

Update: Marcy Wheeler(Emtpywheel) has a post at FDL discussing the downside of passing the Senate bill as it now stands with respect to enforcing 'Corporate Feudalism' and it is worthy of a read.

Facebook Security

If you are a Facebook user you should know that Facebook will automatically index all of your info on Google (as of today) which allows everyone to view it. To change this option, go to Settings---> Privacy Settings---> Search---> then UNCLICK the box that says "Allow Indexing".
Facebook has kept this one quiet.

Insurance Wins

It looks like the public option and the medicare buy in are dead meat in a cave to Joe Lieberman. Not that surprising since our political system is broken, especially in the Senate. Don't forget that the big insurance and pharmaceutical companies own us and will continue to do so it seems. I just find it odd that one ass hole can hamstring an entire country and out of spite to boot.

High Fructose Corn Syrup Is Still Bad News

Don't expect to read this in American papers.

Scientists have proved for the first time that a cheap form of sugar used in thousands of food products and soft drinks can damage human metabolism and is fuelling the obesity crisis.

Fructose, a sweetener derived from corn, can cause dangerous growths of fat cells around vital organs and is able to trigger the early stages of diabetes and heart disease.

It has increasingly been used as a substitute for more expensive types of sugar in yoghurts, cakes, salad dressing and cereals. Even some fruit drinks that sound healthy contain fructose.

Experts believe that the sweetener — which is found naturally in small quantities in fruit — could be a factor in the emergence of diabetes among children. This week, a new report is expected to claim that about one in 10 children in England will be obese by 2015.

Previous studies of the potentially adverse impact of fructose have focused on rats, but the first experiment involving humans has now revealed serious health concerns.

Over 10 weeks, 16 volunteers on a strictly controlled diet, including high levels of fructose, produced new fat cells around their heart, liver and other digestive organs. They also showed signs of food-processing abnormalities linked to diabetes and heart disease. Another group of volunteers on the same diet, but with glucose sugar replacing fructose, did not have these problems.

People in both groups put on a similar amount of weight. However, researchers at the University of California who conducted the trial, said the levels of weight gain among the fructose consumers would be greater over the long term.

Fructose bypasses the digestive process that breaks down other forms of sugar. It arrives intact in the liver where it causes a variety of abnormal reactions, including the disruption of mechanisms that instruct the body whether to burn or store fat.

“This is the first evidence we have that fructose increases diabetes and heart disease independently from causing simple weight gain,” said Kimber Stanhope, a molecular biologist who led the study. “We didn’t see any of these changes in the people eating glucose.”

H/t Susie

Not A Good Monday

After a really nasty weekend of rain and cold and fog, Monday is shaping up to be a real pisser!

So far this morning it seems that the Climate talks in Copenhagen are in the shits with developing countries pulling the plug on negotiations with the big boys. Doesn't look good for any substantive progress.

The HCR process in the Senate has gone from bad to worse as Smokin' Joe continues is campaign to piss on anything progressive and punish all the damn liberals who wouldn't kiss is slippers in the last election.

Frankly speaking, I am beginning to believe that Gregg Levine is correct about the Senate health care reform. If what we wind up with after the Senate gets through is what it looks like now then we had just better forget the whole thing and walk away. What is developing as this country's effort at fixing our health care woes is a lot like 'burning down the village to lose the rats'.

The Definition of Screwed in Just Two Sentences

While I am not sure I agree with everything in Matt Taibbi's latest Rolling Stone piece I will agree with him on at least one point without hesitation and that is his two sentence assessment of what is wrong with the Obama administration that we have seen so far.

The point is that an economic team made up exclusively of callous millionaire-assholes has absolutely zero interest in reforming the gamed system that made them rich in the first place.

(snip)

There’s no other way to say it: Barack Obama, a once-in-a-generation political talent whose graceful conquest of America’s racial dragons en route to the White House inspired the entire world, has for some reason allowed his presidency to be hijacked by sniveling, low-rent shitheads.

I think the last sentence pretty much distills what is making me crazy about our government.

As long as our elected Senators and Congresspersons are on the take from big corporations and depend on the big pay days from them for staying on easy street the rest of us are screwed. There is absolutely no chance that they are going to give up their cushy positions by ignoring the corporations and big money folks and enacting legislation that benefits the rest of us schmucks when such legislation is going to take even a penny from their patrons. Ain't going to happen.

Potato Latke or Kartoffelpuffer

Happy Hanukkah!


Since its the beginning of Hanukkah I thought it would be fun to share a recipe for one of the traditional dishes of the season. Most Jewish cooks call these latke but if you are German(or have spent any time there) you might know them as kartoffelpuffer or potato pancake. If you have made them before using 'traditional' recipes then there is a good chance you have found them to be just a little on the heavy and slimy side. Traditional recipes just grate the potatoes and onion mix in some flour and egg and fry. While I have nothing against the 'traditional' latke I like them just a little lighter and have found that mixing the grated potato and onion with mashed potatoes produces a lighter and tastier product. Instead of grating all the potatoes I take half the potatoes and boil and mash them before adding them to the shredded potatoes. This is also a good way to use left over mashed potatoes.

You'll need:

3 lbs. Yukon Gold or Idaho(russet) potatoes (about 5-6 medium potatoes)
1 large onion
2 large eggs, well beaten
2-3 Tablespoons flour (or matzoh meal for a very traditional latke)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper


Peel all of the potatoes. If you keep the peeled potatoes covered in a bowl of water it will keep them from discoloring. Take half the potatoes and cut them into one inch cubes and boil them in salted water for about 20 minutes or until they are tender and you can insert a knife into them without resistance. Drain and pass through a food mill, ricer or take them for a spin in the food processor or use a hand masher. Set aside.

Note: if you just really don't want to go the mashed potato route and want to be more 'traditional' then you can grate all of the potatoes. You'll get better texture in the finished product if you grate a third to a half of the potatoes on the small grate side and the balance on the the large grate side.

Using a box grater shred the onion on the small grate side and the potato on the large grate side. I usually do this on the tea towel (cotton towel not terry cloth) that I will use for squeezing. After everything is grated use your hands to mix the onion and potato together as this will keep the potato from discoloring. Fold up the ends of the cloth and with the potato and onion in the center twist and squeeze as much liquid as possible from onion-potato mixture. Now put everything in a big bowl and mix it thoroughly.

Note: Rinse out the tea towel with cold water just as soon as you get the potatoes and onions out and into a bowl. The starch from the potatoes will discolor it very quickly if you don't.

Using damp hands form into palm-sized patties that are about 1/2 to 3/4 inches thick and set aside on waxed paper or parchment. Once you have all the patties made(you are looking for about 10) you can start frying in a large skillet in at least a 1/4 inch of corn or peanut oil (a 1/2
inch of corn oil is actually better). Traditionally, olive oil is used but I don't recommend it. If your oil is the right temperature the latke will need to cook for about 5 minutes on the first side. If they are more than slightly brown after a minute or two of cooking, your oil is too hot. After 5 minutes peek at one of the latke by lifting up the edge with your spatula, they should be a nice deep brown, if they are flip with a spatula and fork and cook on the other side for about 2 more minutes, or until dark golden brown. You want to make sure they are a nice dark brown as the sugars in the potatoes and onions will have carmelized and produced a full deep flavor. Too little browning and you have a bland latke. Not good.

Drain thoroughly on paper towels. Serve immediately with applesauce, salt, and/or sour cream.

You should get about 10 latkes from this recipe.


A few cooking notes/tips:
Use at least 1/4-1/2 inch of oil in your skillet and shoot for a temperature of about 300°F to 320°F but no hotter. Normally you fry at 350 - 375°F but that is too hot for this recipe as the latke will brown on the outside before the middle is cooked.

Really, really squeeze the shredded potatoes and onions. If you don't get as much water as you possibly can out of them you will get slimy latkes for sure.

These are really only good fresh from the frying pan. If you have to make them ahead leave them at room temperature for as much as 3-4 hours covered with paper towels(or a tea towel) and then reheat them in the oven(350°F) until they crisp back up.

The Right Wing Noise Machine Versus Climate Change

Interesting article at Think Progress on how the right wing noise machine and energy company funded 'think tanks' whipped up the latest frenzy on the hacked emails in preparation for the Copenhagen conference.

Cajun Style Red Beans

Jim DeRosa has asked me for the method/recipe for my version of Cajun style red beans which, in NOLA is always served on Monday and always over white rice.

Let me begin by saying that if you are not in New Orleans or Louisiana then finding the proper ingredients for 'real' red beans is going to be tough. Finding good andouille sausage and tasso ham or pickled pork is probably going to be impossible. Since I am in Atlanta I have to make do with what I have and can get locally so while this recipe is very good and very close, it is not real Cajun red beans only a fine substitute. You can order the real deal from Louisiana at Cajunsausage.com and it is the real deal and very good.

You'll need:
1 pound small red beans (about 2 cups), rinsed and checked for stones and bad beans, soaked overnight in salted water.
4 slices smoked bacon , chopped fine(substitutes for the tasso ham)
The Cajun trinity which is:
1 cup chopped onion (about 1 medium onion)
1/2 cup green bell pepper, chopped fine ( 1 small pepper) (I also like poblano peppers for this dish as well and it brings a small amount of heat to the party)
1/2 cup celery , chopped fine

3 cloves garlic , minced
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon paprika ( I use the sweet)
1 teaspoon fresh thyme ( you can use dry but back off to 1/2 tsp)
1 bay leaf
2 cups low-sodium chicken broth
4 cups water and maybe a little more
1 Tsp red wine vinegar

8 ounces andouille sausage cut into 1/4-inch slices( I cut sausage in half and then in 1/4 inch bits as you want the sausage about the same size as the beans) (Whole Foods makes it in house and they also carry Wellshire Farm which is not too bad. You can order it online from Jacob's)


First the beans. The day before you are ready to cook the beans you need to soak them. A lot of people use kidney beans for their red beans but you should use the small red bean. I can get them at Kroger(house brand) and they are packaged by Goya as well. They are labeled small red bean(Frijoles Rojos Pequenos). Kidney beans don't work as they get too pasty and not creamy.
Soak the beans overnight(at least 8 hours) in 2 1/2 quarts of water and two Tbsp of Kosher salt. Adding salt to water helps the beans keep their skins intact during cooking and it also gets the salt into the bean where it belongs. After the soak you need to drain and rinse them well.

In a large pot (Dutch oven) cook the bacon pieces until it is brown and then add the trinity (peppers, celery and onion) and cook for about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for another minute. Add all of the seasoning and herbs, the chicken stock, water and beans. Bring to a nice simmer and cover. Cook over low heat for about an hour and a half. Add the sausage bits and the vinegar(they use pickled pork in real Cajun red beans and the vinegar brings a little acid to the party and brightens the flavor. I use the Whole Foods andouille which is raw so I brown it before I add it to the beans. If your is fully cooked then you can just add it now. Cook with the sausage in it for another 30 or 45 minutes or until the sauce thickens and the beans are nice and creamy but not broken up. You might have to add a little more water as you go if the beans get too dry or thick...use your judgement but I don't like my beans too watery. I like to be able to just barely see the beans in the pot which means only about a 1/4 inch of liquid above the beans. You can overcook beans! You don't want them mushy.

Serve over white or brown rice or just by itself as a soup. It's good over fresh cornbread as well. If you want to be a real Cajun then a few dashes of Tabasco is in order as well.

Note: If you do have access to Tasso ham then use it instead of the bacon. If you just can't get andouille sausage then kielbasa can substitute but....

Update: I added a half hour to the first phase of cooking based on my experience yesterday with my pot of beans. It all depends on how old your beans are and how long you soak them. You just have to use your own judgment and how you like your beans. I like mine with a little texture and not too much liquid.