Thorne Webb Dreyer, Editor
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A Pot Pie for Foodie Friday
Seafood Pot Pie (inspired by Emeril – 12 January 2002)
I made this for Carolyn, Mom and Laureen tonight. They liked it, and I thank you, Monsieur Lagasse. His original recipe uses fresh lobster, a note for all our Maritime Family. Do not add any salt, as the seafood will have it.
I used canned crab as it cost only $2.39 for 6 ounces, while fresh Dungeness crab is currently $24.99 a pound.
2 tablespoons olive oil
A dozen crimini mushrooms, sliced
1 small yellow onion, minced
2 large cloves Italian garlic, sliced
1 teaspoon fresh-ground peppercorns
2 tablespoons bourbon (Jack Daniels is good)
2 tablespoons flour
Heat the oil on medium heat. When hot, add mushrooms and while you mince the onion, turn them golden brown. Add the onion, garlic, and pepper after the mushrooms are ready, about 5 minutes. When onion is transparent, remove pan from burner for a minute, add bourbon, and return pan to burner. Simmer gently until liquid is evaporated, then stir in flour thoroughly. Add:
1 cup vegetable broth (or any light kind you have – seafood, chicken; shellfish stock is great)
1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup heavy cream
Big dash chipotle chile powder
1 teaspoon dried thyme
Mix the flour in completely and allow the liquid to reduce and thicken, about 15 minutes.
2/3 cup green peas, fresh in Summer, frozen in Winter
Add the peas to the simmering liquid and stir until the peas are thawed completely. Remove from heat and cool as quickly as possible. One way is to pour the mixture into an oven-proof bowl and use an ice bath. It won’t take long.
3 6-ounce cans of crab meat (or 1 pound fresh)
2 tablespoons fresh chives, minced
More fresh-ground pepper to taste
Preheat oven to 400° F. When the mushroom-pea mix is cooled, add the above 4 ingredients, stirring well. Pour mixture into a 9-inch round soufflé dish, then cover with:
1 sheet frozen puff pastry, thawed (homemade, if you can)
I pressed it down onto the filling mix, crimped the edges a bit, then trimmed it into the circular shape of the dish.
1 egg, whisked
Use the egg to give the pastry a wash, then slice 3 two-inch slits into the pastry. Bake for about 25 or 30 minutes to make the pastry puffy golden brown, with bubbly filling.
Serve with your favourite salad.
Richard Jehn
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Go Fuck Yourself, John McCain
We couldn’t possibly think of any better words than Dick Cheney’s own to serve up to you, John McCain. Get a life, buddy.
John McCain’s War On Blogs
Published on Friday, December 15, 2006.
Source: Think Progress
John McCain has made clear that he doesn’t like the blogosphere.
Now he has introduced legislation that would treat blogs like Internet service providers and hold them responsible for all activity in the comments sections and user profiles.
Some highlights of the legislation:
– Commercial websites and personal blogs “would be required to report illegal images or videos posted by their users or pay fines of up to $300,000.”
– Internet service providers (ISPs) are already required to issue such reports, but under McCain’s legislation, bloggers with comment sections may face “even stiffer penalties” than ISPs.
— Social networking sites will be forced to take “effective measures” — such as deleting user profiles — to remove any website that is “associated” with a sex offender. Sites may include not only Facebook and MySpace, but also Amazon.com, which permits author profiles and personal lists, and blogs like DailyKos, which allows users to sign up for personal diaries.
Kevin Bankston of the Electronic Frontier Foundation notes that this proposal may be based more “on fear or political considerations rather than on the facts.” When he introduced his legislation to the Senate, McCain offered no evidence that children are being victimized by people who post comments on blogs.
McCain’s legislation could deal a serious blow to the blogosphere. Lacking resources to police their sites, many individual blogs may have to shut down open discussion.
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Sending Good Money After Bad
Or piling really shitty ideas on top of piss-poor ideas. Matt, over at Today in Iraq says it very well: A ‘moderate bloc’. Gotta love it. But you have to admit, it’s a nifty little strategery. For home consumption, casting Sadr as the Primary Obstacle to Victory creates the chance to win back some lost political ground by showing Decisive Action against a swarthy and evil looking fellow – always a winner with the Reptilian base. In Iraq, successful action against Sadr would remove a major nationalist player – someone who actually has the potential to unite both Shiites and Sunnis against the occupation; undermine Maliki and thereby strengthen our apparent choice for Saddam redux, Hakim; and, most importantly, mollify the Saudis who are freaking out over the so-called 80% solution of backing the Shiites against the Sunnis. Slick.
US lawmakers urge Iraq troop boost
by Jay Deshmukh Thu Dec 14, 5:31 AM ET
BAGHDAD (AFP) – Some of Washington’s most influential senators have added their voices to the heated debate on US strategy in Iraq with a call for the United States to send in more than 15,000 extra troops.
A congressional delegation including senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman were in the war-torn Iraqi capital Baghdad for meetings with US commanders and Iraqi officials to discuss a new way forward for the troubled mission.
The extent of the breakdown in law and order was underlined by the brazen daylight kidnapping of at least 20 Iraqi businessmen in downtown Baghdad by gunmen with military uniforms and jeeps of a type used by security forces.
In Washington, US President George W. Bush was holding a flurry of meetings with foreign policy and military experts against a backdrop of collapsing public support for the war and calls for a change in course.
Bush said he will not be rushed into a decision on a new strategy — which his spokesman says will be announced in January — but the lawmakers in McCain’s delegation to Baghdad had some more advice for him.
“The situation is very, very serious. It requires an injection of additional troops to control the situation and to allow the political process to proceed,” said McCain, Arizona’s influential Republican senator, a possible presidential candidate in 2008.
[snip]
Now, however, moves are afoot to sideline Sadr’s supporters in government.
In the past weeks Bush has met two senior Iraqi leaders in Washington — Shiite strongman Abdel Aziz Hakim and the country’s Sunni vice-president, Tareq al-Hashemi — in a bid to build a new ruling coalition.
On Wednesday, Bush spoke by telephone with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and Kurdish regional President Massud Barzani as part of these efforts to cement a “moderate bloc” behind the government, the White House said.
Read it here.
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A Message From Al Gore
Dear PDA Friend,
I’ve been incredibly gratified by the response to An Inconvenient Truth. I’m extremely proud of all the work the team put into the film and it feels like it came at a crucial time. But now comes the hard work. We have to take this message to Washington. And we can’t do it without you.
Yes, the new majority in Congress will be much more receptive on the importance of global warming. That’s the good news. But I know from personal that the only thing that will make Washington really take notice and do more than give lip service to the problem of global warming is the prospect of millions of committed citizens taking
action. It’s time to join together and make that happen. Can you help?
First, I’m asking folks to hold house parties {click here}, in thousands of homes across the nation, to show the film and spread the word. We’re doing the first wave on Saturday, December 16. Can you host a party? Or attend a party that one of your neighbors is hosting?
Second, I’m asking everybody, whether you attend a party or not, to sign a postcard {www.algore.com/cards.html} to your representatives, so that I can take a million postcards and messages to Washington in January and present them to the new Congress.
We have to build the political will to do what has to be done. Luckily, in America, political will is a renewable resource.
Thank you,
Al Gore
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The Latest in Government Doublespeak
Today is Foodie Friday (just the same as each week here). But we want to remind our readers that there is still a problem with hunger and poverty in Amerika, and an administration that would rather redefine the problem than do anything about it.
Senator Barbara Boxer recently sent out the following e-mail bulletin:
“The Department of Agriculture recently announced that it would remove the word ‘hunger’ from reports on the nation’s food supply. Instead, it announced that it would use ‘low food security’ or ‘very low food security’ in its reports … Officials at the Department of Agriculture report that the change in labels was not a plot to try to disguise or mask hunger in America. Instead, they claim that ‘hunger’ is too amorphous a phrase to describe, in their terms, “a potential consequence of food insecurity that, because of prolonged, involuntary lack of food, results in discomfort, illness, weakness or pain that goes beyond the usual uneasy sensation.”
However, I believe that most Americans are acutely aware of the meaning of ‘hunger,’ especially when used in official reports meant to describe peoples’ access to the food supply. As I said in my letter to Secretary Johanns, “Replacing ‘hunger’ with the phrase ‘low food security’ degrades the seriousness of the daily struggle with hunger facing millions of Americans and undermines the important work of food banks and homeless shelters in combating hunger.”
Last year, the total number of Americans without regular access to food actually decreased by 3 million, but 35 million still lacked adequate food supplies. Hunger is still a serious problem in our nation, and changing the name will not change this fact.
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Right Question Or Not?
Although it’s clever, it’s merely typical Beltway politics, too. Our right answer is that (1) it is George Bush’s mess and he should clean it up, but (2) the only viable way to start is to get the fuck out of Iraq.
Upon being asked for the umpteenth time why the Democrats don’t have a plan for Iraq, a Democratic leader — Rep. Charlie Rangel of New York — finally gave the right answer:
“I never understand that question, you have a President that’s in deep shit. He got us into the war, and all the reasons he gave have been proven invalid, and the whole electorate was so pissed off that they got rid of anyone they could have, and then they ask, ‘What is the Democrats’ solution?’”
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Humiliation, Not Poverty
A Matter of Pride: Why we can’t buy off the next Osama bin Laden.
by Peter Bergen and Michael Lind
While there are deep and divisive fissures across the political spectrum over how to combat terrorism, there is a surprising level of agreement as to its cause. “We fight against poverty because hope is an answer to terror,” George W. Bush told an audience in Mexico in 2002. “Today, billions of people live on the knife’s edge of survival, trapped in a struggle against ignorance, poverty, and disease. Their misery is a breeding ground for the hatred peddled by bin Laden and other merchants of death,” Howard Dean declared during his 2004 presidential run. Kim Dae Jung, the former dissident who became the president of South Korea and won the Nobel Peace Prize, agrees: “At the bottom of terrorism is poverty.” And the editors of the New York Times, arguing that reducing duties on exports from Pakistan can play a significant role in the war on terrorism, wrote in 2004, “Economics cannot be separated from national security. Young Pakistanis who can’t get jobs in factories that export to America sometimes go to training camps to learn how to kill Americans.”
This analysis, at its root, is an optimistic one. It holds out the prospect that widespread prosperity can be a universal solvent for political violence employed by stateless actors and states alike. Conflict, in this view, is not endemic to the human condition; it is simply a relic of primitive stages in social development, which can be corrected by enlightened policy. Liberals tend to prefer the idea of a global or regional “Marshall Plan,” while conservatives and libertarians claim that cutting subsidies and promoting free trade will produce development in poor countries. Despite their different prescriptions, many on the left and right agree that fighting world poverty is important in the fight against transnational terrorism since it removes the attractiveness of these revolutionary and utopian worldviews…
Read all of it here (registration required, and well worth it for this article).
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Just Another Predictable, Paranoic Non-Event
Alleged Liquid Bomb Plot Credibility Crumbles
Court clears Rauf of charges as much vaunted transatlantic airliner attack dissipates into another staged terror alert
Prison Planet | December 13, 2006
Paul Joseph Watson
The alleged ringleader of a much vaunted plot to blow up multiple transatlantic airliners using liquid explosives has been cleared of terrorism charges and of being a member of any terrorist group, rendering August’s terror scare another hyped creation of government scare mongering.
In every single major terror bust or terror alert we have proven the evidence to be flawed and the charges to be cooked up nonsense aimed at prolonging the illusion that terror cells are lurking around every corner waiting to cause mayhem. The geopolitical agenda of the U.S., Britain and Israel depends on the proliferation phony terror threats in order to continue the farcical war on terror and take more of our innate freedoms at home to stifle dissent against the plot for worldwide hegemony.
Read it here.
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No Shit, Sherlock
We see additional nefarious elements entering the DoD to bring all of the skills of the Iran Contra boys to bear.
Gates unlikely to rein in Pentagon on intelligence
Published on Thursday, December 14, 2006.
Source: Media Monarchy
Gates unlikely to rein in Pentagon on intelligenceFrom reuters: Robert Gates is unlikely to rein in the Pentagon’s controversial post-September 11 expansion into intelligence, despite concerns the U.S. military is ill-suited for espionage outside the battlefield, experts say.
But Gates, the former CIA director who will be sworn in as defense secretary on Monday, could help heal a rift between the Pentagon and civilian intelligence agencies caused by the confrontational tactics of his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld.
“You’re going to have a real change in tone at the top, and the watchword will be ‘practicality,”‘ said Robert Grenier, former director of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center.
Well-known for his zeal for cooperation, Gates will make good on a public pledge to support U.S. intelligence chief John Negroponte, whose 20-month-old office oversees 16 agencies, including several that are operated by the Defense Department.
“I anticipate generally smooth relations between military and civilian intelligence with Gates as secretary of defense,” said former CIA acting Director John McLaughlin…
“Since the Reagan administration, we’ve been at war a lot,” said Richard Kerr, a deputy director of central intelligence under Gates. “The nature of the requirements for defense has changed quite a bit. Quite realistically, they want to satisfy their own requirements.”
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Who IS In Denial?
Bush, Blair and Baker (or who is in denial?)
By Robert Thompson
Dec 14, 2006, 20:07
Even a worm can turn, as appears from the obvious willingness of Mr Blair to begin to understand the need for his Neocon masters to talk politely to both Iran and Syria if they wish to reach any kind of solution to the problems created in Iraq by their illegal and downright stupid war and invasion.
Mr Bush’s former speech-write, Mr David Frum, has spoken on BBC Radio to say that there is no necessary link between the ongoing crisis in the Holy Land and the other difficulties in the Near and Middle East, but his views are as straight as the corkscrew which presumably inspired him to invent the famous bent axis. We have to remember that this bent axis linked together strictly secular Syria, rigidly Shia Islamic Iran and Stalinist North Korea, and clearly pleased Mr Bush, whose misuse of words is notorious, as is his failure to understand even simple expressions couched in the English language.
Mr Bush, from what we saw and heard on our television sets, seems to have gone into a pathological state of denial as to the need at least to pay full attention to what we know as the Baker report and to its suggestions.
We are told that the result of the audience granted by Mr Bush on Thursday to his Scottish lackey is that Mr Blair will now go to the Near and Middle East notionally to restart the Palestine Peace Process, but it is extremely difficult to see what such a man can do. He has no credibility as an “honest broker”, since he has since the beginning been closely linked to the plotting of the invasion of Iraq, and he has always given support to successive Zionist governments, including the present one under the former Gauleiter of Jerusalem.
The only possibility of peace is for the Neocons to swallow their overweening pride and to speak directly to both the Iranian government, as invited several times by President Ahmadinejad, and to Syria, as also suggested by President Assad. Obviously, it will be necessary to ensure that enemy troops and settlers should leave the areas of Syria (and of the Lebanon) which they have seized and occupied, and that their nasty government should put an end to its breaches of all United Nations Resolutions.
Read it here.
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Getting It Straight About the Palestinian Position
The Recognition of Israel: The Contrived Stopper to Middle East Peace
By Dan Lieberman
Dec 14, 2006, 20:11
Israel’s needs and perspectives have guided peace proposals by western negotiators. The biased direction impedes Middle East peace. An example of this bias is British Prime Minister (PM) Tony Blair categorization of Hamas’ refusal to recognize Israel. The British PM emphasized his difficulties with Hamas’ position at his December 7 meeting with President George W. Bush.
“You cannot have a government that everyone can deal with – and you can then negotiate a peace with between Israel and Palestine – unless it is on the basis that everyone accepts the others’ right to exist. That is the difficulty. It is not a kind of technical point. It is absolutely at the heart of it.”
Tony Blair and other western leaders have refused to examine the historical record that prompted the remarks by Hamas leadership and have misled the public in their interpretations of Hamas’ stance.
It has been well known, but only recently revealed by the conventional media, that Israel’s maps, textbooks and declarations to its people show all of the West Bank as part of a “greater Israel.” Peace Now, an Israeli advocacy group has also revealed to all, what has been previously known by many, that 39% (only 39%) of Israel’s settlements in the West Bank have been constructed on privately held Palestinian lands. Add to these inciting reports, the Israeli occupation, the daily killings of Palestinians, destruction of their trees and crops, interference in their daily life and construction of the separation wall that strangles the Palestinian economy, and then have Tony Blair, who should know all of these particulars, ask himself the questions:
Why would Hamas recognize a nation that already claims Hamas’ lands? Wouldn’t Hamas feel that recognition of Israel would be a concession that Israel’s polices towards the Palestinians have been correct? Why would Hamas legitimize Israel’s policies?
Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh has not said ‘Hamas will not recognize Israel’s right to exist.” He has said that his “Hamas-led government will never recognize Israel and will continue to fight for the liberation of Jerusalem.” The more exact quote creates a different prospect for negotiations than Blair’s outlook proposes:
1. Although a Hamas-led government will not recognize Israel, if negotiations successfully proceed, the Hamas government could eventually be replaced by a Palestinian government that recognizes an Israel which addresses the legitimate grievances and rights of the Palestinian people.
2. Hamas will not recognize a government of Israel (not Israel’s right to exist) that it believes is unfairly constituted. Hamas might recognize an Israel state it considers a legal expression of all of its population, including its Palestinian minority, and which recognizes its obligations to the Palestinian people.
Read it here.
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