It's odd behavior for a filmmaker so adept at chronicling the black experience in this country. "Race is at the center of all of American history," Burns has said. Yes, it is. But there is more to the story than just black and white.Dear Cecilia Alvear,
-Cecilia Alvear, complaining in the post that Ken Burns shortchanges her peoples
Can't Jamie Gorelick find a way to earn a living without engaging in the lowest form of legalized influence-peddling on behalf of law-breaking telecoms . . . ?Dear Glenn Greenwald,
-Glenn Greenwald, upon discovering gambling at Rick's.
Rudolph W. Giuliani yesterday sought to persuade members of the National Rifle Association to look past his lengthy record of pushing for tougher gun control by saying that his views on this issue had been changed by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.Dude. Just. Wow. Dude. Wow. Wow. Wow.
The attacks on New York and the Pentagon put "a whole different emphasis on the things America needs to do to protect itself, and maybe even a renewed emphasis on the Second Amendment," Giuliani told the roughly 500 NRA members gathered at a Washington hotel.
Worst. Porn. Ever. Although to be fair, the tall dude in the leather vest is gets pretty into it.
Via C&L
I think I can speak for every Maryland voter when I say we did not vote for you to go to Washington just to condemn your own supporters.Dear Avedon Carol,
-Avedon Carol on her Democrats' Patreaphilia
The President says that what's important in a future President is that he "Be comfortable with [his] family. Work hard to make sure there is love in the White House." You know, I remember the days when there was lots of love in the White House, and surprisingly enough, the President's party wasn't especially pleased. He went on to say that he liked to "soak in the beauty and greatness of America." I find that the blood of virgins works just fine, but I do hear that beauty and greatness are good for eczema.
Via Froomkin.
I have a regular office, thankfully, in a satellite facility, but not so long ago I had some meetings over at the Death Star, and I popped down into Finance to grab some checks from the week's run. There I discovered Accounts Payable doing reenacting one of the tamer early vignettes from the Story of O at her desk. What are you doing? I asked.
Exercises, she said.
What do you mean, exercises? I replied.
I mean exercises exercises, she replied.
At your desk? I said, rather incredulous.
Obviously.
We, like many workplaces, now find ourselves bombarded by something called "wellness," which is corporateses for "don't eat so many Oreos, fatass." The basic premise, honed in the offices of Highmark and its peers, presented to our CFOs and HR managers, disseminated at staff meetings, soaked up by all the compliant Wagearner-Americans, is that the primary driver of higher rates is you, fatass, and if only you eat an apple a day and touch your chubby toes from time to time, you will see your copays drop like . . . Well, fine. They won't drop. But maybe you'll see increases of 15% annually instead of the going 25.
What really drives health care through the roof is a complex set of factors, but you, fatass, are less of one than you think. It's got more to do with government undercompensation of providers through Medicare and Medicaid and the expense of treating the uninsured, which hospitals and doctors recoup by overbilling commercial providers, who pass the increases to the companies that purchase their plans, plus profits, of course. Also, keeping your parents alive, fatasses, is expensive. You, your 500-calorie Starbucks snacks, your prehypertensive heart, and your diabetes affect the actuarial tables, sure, but less than the "Obesity Epidemic" screamers would like you to believe.
Anyway. Wellness. Whatever the origins of this interconnected series of scams, it bears as much relation to health as North Korean mass calisthenics. Not coincidentally, they bear as much relation to the ol' surveiller et punir as North Korean mass calisthenics as well. That's to say precious little relation in the former, and plenty in the latter.
Consider. A hard three-mile run burns half a Snickers. Two tough hours at the gym might net you a half a Big Mac. Sitting at your desk and reaching for the sky nets you shit. The best a rigorous desk-side workout will do is make you more hungry.
Why are you exercising at your desk, I asked Accounts Payable.
I don't know. They told me to.
Who told you to?
You know. Everyone.
Wouldn't you rather take a walk or something? Get out of the office.
I've got to watch my ebay bid, she replied.
The second week of September through the first week of November are the best time to be a cook. Late-summer brings good tomatoes, sure, and some are still around, as well as peppers and herbs and some greens, but fall brings the real harvest: the dark, bitter chicories; the squash and gourds; the root vegetables; the best apples and pears. It gets cooler and darker earlier, and suddenly the heat of a hot oven and all the burners going on the cooktop is pleasant in a kitchen with an open window. It's time again to start drinking full, robust red wines, eating smoked meats, roasting chickens. Here is a recipe for a savory, spicy risotto with acorn squash cooked in two different ways, one to emphasize its sweetness and the other its darker, autumnal notes.
Two-way acorn squash risotto with prosciutto
After a hot summer, early fall squashes are intense and sugary. In this recipe, the squash is prepared by two methods--roasting with spices and steaming over lemongrass--to bring out the two different characters of its flavor. The prosciutto is likewise served in two different ways: folded into the risotto raw, and fried for a little crunch on top.
2 acorn squash, not too large
2 1/2 cups of risotto
1/4 lb. of prosciutto di Parma
good chicken stock
dry white wine
1 large yellow onion
1 shallot
4-5 cloves of garlic
Parmigiano Reggiano
fresh thyme, parsley, tarragon, and celery leaves
lemon grass, fresh or dried
whole cumin, nutmeg, allspice, fennel seed, coriander, mustard seed, black peppercorns, and fleur du sel
powdered cayenne pepper
fine sea salt
white pepper
extra virgin olive oil
Preheat your oven to 375. Halve your two squashes and seed them. Using a mortar and pestle, prepare a rough-ground mixture of cumin, nutmeg, allspice, fennel seed, coriander, mustard seed, black peppercorns, and fleur du sel. Add a few pinches of powdered cayenne pepper also. There is no easy proportion to use for this. You have to trust your nose. The ideal blend should smell spicy, peppery, and a little bit sweet. Cumin, in particular, is extremely aromatic. You should be able to pick up distinct notes of every spice when you waft the ground mixture under your nose. Rub the two halves of one squash thoroughly with the spice mixture and with good olive oil, place in a baking dish with the exposed flesh facing upward, and then put in the oven. Cook until the flesh is very, very soft. You will eventually make a paste of it.
Put a pot of good chicken stock on a back burner to warm. To prepare for the risotto, finely dice one medium yellow onion, one shallot, and four or five cloves of garlic. Prepare a bouquet garni (tied whole sprigs of fresh herbs) of tarragon, thyme, parsley, and celery leaf. Reserve a cup of chicken broth mixed with dry white wine for deglazing. Cut a quarter pound of thinly-sliced prosciutto di Parma into small ribbons. Divide in half.
To prepare for the second style of squash, cut the flesh out of the reserved one and divide into cubes of approximately a half-inch. Lightly season with fine salt and white pepper. Put a steaming pot on a burner with a nice bunch of dried lemon-grass in the water. Bring slowly to a boil.
Heat extra virgin olive oil in a big pot. Add half of the prosciutto to fry it and to render out the fat. When it's dark and curling, remove to a plate lined with paper towels. Cover. Reserve.
Sweat out the onions, shallots, and garlic in the pot. When translucent, add the risotto. Scald it for a minute or so, turning constantly in the pan. Then deglaze with the wine-stock mixture. Add the bouquet garni. Add enough warm stock to cover the rice. Reduce to a high simmer, stirring constantly. There's a myth that you must stir risotto constantly throughout its whole cooking time. Not true. Just make sure to stir vigorously for a minute every time you add more liquid, which you should do as soon as the level of liquid drops below the top of the rice.
Meanwhile, remove your squash from the oven. Scrape out the flesh with a spoon, and mash into a lumpy paste. Reserve.
After about ten minutes of cooking the risotto, begin steaming your cubed squash. Only steam it for five-seven minutes. You don't want it to lose its texture. Barely cooked through is the ideal.
After fifteen or so minutes, fold the mashed squash into the risotto, stirring and adding more liquid to distribute evenly throughout. Its flavor, color, and aroma should be uniform in the rice. Also add the raw prosciutto at this point.
When the rice is cooked properly--creamy with just a hint of crunch left in it--, reduce the heat to low. Grate a healthy chunk of Parmigiano Reggiano over it and fold in. Add the steamed chunks of squash and fold in. Turn off the heat, stir, cover, and let stand for five minutes for the flavors to settle.
Serve in shallow bowls, garnished with raw olive oil, a little more parmesan, and the fried strips of prosciutto.
In this opinion piece by noted crazy man and rube Robert D. Kaplan, he seems to be saying that it's a bad thing if Asian nations engage in territorial disputes, for such lead to war, and it's a bad thing if Asian nations engage in détente and cooperation, for such things lead to . . . a decline in America's relative advantage in war.
One hardly has to read between the lines. The United States is and will foreseeably remain unassaiable militarily. Were we to cut our war spending in half tomorrow, we would still outspend any of our nearest competitors by an order of magnitude. Kaplan and those of his ilk are not, therefore, advocating a concerted effort to increase our relative strength and to restrain any military developments in friends and rivals out of any interest in the national defense. Quite clearly, the singular issue for Kaplan is compliance. No sane person could regret the advent of a peaceable, commercial, neighborly relationship between China and Japan--an Asian equivalent of the Franco-German reconciliation. But an insane person who sees in every boon for mankind a thorn in the paw of American hegemony might think differently.
Kaplan makes some other points, all of them equally nutty. In particular, he notes that a major reason for the creation of an African Command by the US military was to "keep an eye on China’s growing web of development projects across the sub-Saharan regions." This is nutty because China has made no secret--indeed, it's been remarkably open--about its plans and intentions in Africa. China is buying influence, one road and one dam at a time. It is openly, incrementally, and plainly pursuing a development agenda in hopes of securing advantageous trade arrangements with nations rich in natural resources, geographic importance, strategic influence, etc. There's nothing nefarious, underhanded, or secretive about this. This is the way that nations conduct their business. Unless the nation is the United States, which conducts its business by failing as an occupying colonial power.
Prior to the last presidential election, a lot of internet Donkles went all weak in the knees and strong in the crotch for Supreme Motherfucking Commander General Wesley Clark, for there is nothing a Donk loves so much as a military man. Now Clark, unsurprisingly, has opined that The Netroots and their flunkies ought to shut up and let the grown-ups hash it out. Needless to say, the collective netrootsian response is something like, "Grown-ups are dumb."
To the question, "Is there anything on earth more embarrassingly useless than MoveOn.org?"
Yes. The United States Senate.
There's poverty in looking at the Supreme Court and saying that it's drifted--or sprinted--rightward in the last few decades. The court has become more deferential and authoritarian (a redundancy, perhaps). I'm not certain if that's a matter of political ideology, precisely.
The court as currently composed is notable mostly for its lack of jurisprudential distinction. Scalia is brilliant and terrible, a man whose genuinely impressive intellect has festered in the service of mere bumptiousness. The locus of his judicial philosophy, such as it is, is not conservativism but towering egotism--scorn for those who do not measure up to his accomplishments. Since he is a Supreme Court Justice of the United States of America, this category includes everyone else in the world. He forsook dispassion for disdain. Thomas really is a laconic incompetent. John Roberts should be the top-billing junior partner at a Kansas City firm, too smart and roundly despised by his peers, casually racist over drinks before the back nine. The court's supposed liberals aren't especially liberal, and they're clearly adrift with no affirmative constitutional philosophy. Kennedy has every narrow-minded man's propensity for grandiosity. So what?
What a useless institution. Congress abdicates and the court defers. The King puts his cowboy boots on his desk and clicks a pen. Yawn.
Sinai, 1290 BCE - Aaron accused the Mosaic Faction of playing politics with the health of the Chosen People, and he warned of opposition if current conditions persisted.
Instead of posturing by claiming miraculous sustenance from Hashem, Aaron said, Moses should embrace fiscal and social responsibility and support a program that provides for reasonable increases in daily rations for Israelites without veering toward "total dependence on a fickle deity."
"What I'm describing here is a philosophical divide that exists in this dessert over the best approach to food and shelter," Aaron said. "Moses wants to put more power in the hands of Hashem by making us dependent on manna from heaven. His plan is an incremental step toward the goal of letting God provide."
"It means that Congress will not intervene in the foreseeable future," said Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, the Independent who has voted with the Republicans on war issues. "The fact that it didn’t get enough votes says that Congress doesn’t have the votes to stop this strategy of success from going forward."Had someone told me, say three or four years ago, that our strategy was a strategy of success, I could have saved myself a couple of hundreds of thousand of words.
-from The Times
Here is Benazir Bhutto being all like dudes I am goin back to Pakistan and it is going to be so fuckin tight and democratic and shit. I have always considered Madame Bhutto a sort of global-beats, world-café version of Winona Rider. For the record.
Crytpo-Leopoldian Niall Ferguson explains for the zillionth time that Candidate-for-Life Benito Giuliani is a crazy man, and that if the things he says come to pass under his presidency, the world will burn, the angels will weep, and the spheres of heaven shall topple and fall. Yes, yes, yes. All true. Fortunately it won't come to pass. Benito Giuliani will never become President. He is the Candidate-for-Life.
No politician says what he's really going to do. But most speak as if they're outling what they're really going to do. If the delivery is long on themes and short on specifics, that's more a matter of exigency than anything else. Benito Giuliani, however, does not intend to do anything in office. He doesn't intend to be in office. His capacity for planning does not extend to that eventuality. His ability to follow chains of action and causality are inadequate to the task. He is on the path of the tao. In every moment, there he is, in every moment. He is the human incarnation of the universal will to the now. Every aspect of his being is both temporary and extemporaneous. He is immune from contradiction and revision. He is one immense, priapic engine of becoming. He is the Candidate-for-Life.
Man. It's almost as if the Democrats are pretty sure they're going to take the White House in 2008. It's almost as if they think the president oughta have all those "vast new" powers.
I have so far failed to weigh in on the new Jesus, his fellaters and detractors. Let me just say this about that.
General David Petraeus is just one more Administration cum-junky, swallowing his pride because he hopes to get his in the end. He is neither the first nor the last. His much-lauded brilliance is mere coherence. His much-bruited honor is mere circumspection. His politeness is taken as point of moral character, but there are plenty of men, evil at heart, who say sir and ma'am. He got to where is he by spreading wide for his military and civilian superiors; he hopes to go farther, or at least further. The infamous MoveOn ad is a scandal not because it says too much but because it says to little. General Betray Us? A man on the make is incapable of betrayal.
The Fed cut key interest rates by a full half a point, because needless to say we do not want to have an economy in which people must actually be able to afford the things that they purchase. The invisible hand reaches into the invisible wallet and gives the kids an advance on their allowance. Whoopee. By coincidence, I had on NPR just long enough this morning to hear a fellow named "John Hope Bryant, founder of Operation Hope," ask rhetorically why we wouldn't want people who can make a rent payment to own a home. In other words, if a poor or working class family can pay, say, $700 a month in rent, why then should they not be eligible for a commensurate mortgage payment on a high-interest, no money down loan. This seems to me to be a colossal failure to pay attention to anything that has occured in the world for the last fifteen years, and I wonder: Do people really think this way? I say this as a first-time homeowner myself. A friend and I were chatting about it recently, and he, now on his second house, said, "Isn't it amazing how a hundred dollars becomes a thousand? Isn't it amazing how you used to say, 'Eh, it's only twenty-five dollars,' and now you say, 'Eh, it's only twenty-five hundred'?" I too think that everyone should be able to own their own piece, and yet I cringe at this suggestion that home ownership is a sort of basic right of citizenship. If you cannot make a down payment of 20% and fix your interest rate, then you shouldn't own a home. If your credit is insufficient to cover a catastrophic medical bill, a car wreck, a family emergency, etc., necessitating a missed mortgage payment (or more) in order to cover such unfortunate but inevitable expenses, then you shouldn't own a home. If your income is inadequate to cover you for a month or two in the event of a lost job, then you shouldn't own a home. It is not because you're a bad person, because you're inferior, or because you don't deserve it. It's because you can't afford it.
Hoary invocations of the American dream are no hedge against creditors. The truth is that people like John Hope Bryant, founder of Operation Hope, depend on the innumerate underclass for their own livelihoods. Lenders see that the Fed will bail them out in a jam, and they see that as an incentive to offer more loans to high-risk borrowers precisely because the poor bastards don't know they're being sold up the river. Bryant and the rest of the credit-counseling industry are the straight men in the con. It's a savage burn they're running, and folks well-protected by tenant laws find themselves boondoggled into a huge expenditure that they can ill afford.
Every article written about the Blackwater debacle in Iraq contains the following sentence nearly word for word:
The ministry has said that it would prosecute the participants in the shooting, but a law issued by the American occupation authority prior to the return of sovereignty to Iraq in 2004 grants American contractors, along with American military personnel, immunity from Iraqi prosecution.What's funny is that it turns out they're immune from American prosecution as well. Nice work if you can get it.
In State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America he voices all the anxieties a sensible person might feel about the current immigration system, along with a lot of other worries that seem apocalyptic about the future, nostalgic about the past, or misinformed about the present.In an otherwise fastidious and dry review, this sentence is perfect in pitch--quick, witty, a little bit arch, syntactically straightforward--and perfectly timed.
-Christopher Jencks reviewing Pat Buchanan
There are rumors about Condi Rice. "This parting must be
endured, Sappho. I go unwillingly," as the poet wrote. The article contains the usual, naïve, bemused observation that a lot of Republican officeholders who talk a long game about the general badness of queers while on the campaign trail are privately associated with plenty of gays. Let's ask our old pal Karl Marx what he thinks about that. What do you think, Karl?
"Well, IOZ, I think that maybe bourgeois class affinity trumps social distinctions. So what you see here isn't straight people being friends with gay people, but rich people being friends with each other. The ruling classes have always flattered and reinforced prejudice in public, on the other hand, precisely to keep the poor bastards from figuring out that they're not gay people and straight people, black and white, Judeo-Christian and Islamofascist, but rather they're all poor bastards. There are fewer rich jerks than there are poor bastards, but the rich jerks stick together better.
"What the hell does a rich gay guy care about whether or not some tacky fags in the Castro can or can't get married? He's goy a lawyer who can draw up all the necessary paperwork, put together a living will, take care of rights of attorney, and all the rest of that jazz. His Republican friends love his and Steve's house parties. He's on the board of trustees of the local opera company. Et cetera et cetera.
"Sure, there's still vocal homophobia, but it doesn't come from other rich people. He's been called a faggot in public, but that doesn't bother him because he's got a BMW 6-series and people who yell, 'Faggot!' in public drive used pickups with rusty wheel wells. They worry about layoffs and outsourcing; he worries about converting some of his portfolio to cash in order to maintain a little extra liquidity through the coming market correction."
Jim Henley stands accused of failing to understand that we are now ruled not by militaries, governments, police, corporations, etc., but by the "journalism-education-diplomatic-transnationalist complex." It puts me in mind of a story.
It was perhaps midnight. We sat in the Professor's (for he had no other name to us) tall, dusty office, lit dimly with gas lamps and bearing through its creaking shelves and piles of books an edge of slow decay, moral decadence, and internationalist sympathies. A record player spun Shostakovich backwards and out crooned a slim female voice singing the Internationale. A man in a felt fedora cried "Scoop, scoop!" into the corner phone booth. And I drank from a demitasse, for I always drink from a demitasse.
"What shall we do," I asked the Professor, "about the War on Terror?"
"Why, lose it of course," the great man replied in his familiar basso profundo, the voice of the very Devil himself I would say were I not personally familiar with the Devil's peroxide whine.
"Yes, yes," said Joe Wilson, also present, spinning a globe slowly and smoking a Cuban cigar laced with fragrant yellowcake. "But first, how are we going to kill the President? The President, man! The President!"
"With books," said the Professor. "With books and a system of academic tenure that is biasied in favor of liberal candidates."
"Will that work?" asked I, masturbating wildly to homosexual pornography while defecating on the chair that I had recently reupholstered with an American flag.
"If we involve the diplomats, it will," the Professor stated firmly.
"The diplomats!" The Reporter nearly fell from his perch by the phone. "Egad, man! You're playing with fire!"
"I can control them," said Wilson.
"But for the grace of Kofi Annan go we," said the Professor.
"Down with God," I said.
"Uh, Death to America?" offered a tentative Osama.
"Osama, you're out of your element," the Professor told him. "The world does not stop and start at your convenience, you miserable . . ."
