"Known as chai, this form of tea is unique to the Asian subcontinent. To make it properly, you must take a battered, blackened, greasy aluminum pan; add contaminated water, two or three tablespoons of insect-infested sugar, raw, unpasteurized milk, and black, perfumed tea; then boil it all up into a sweet white drink that will either cure whatever ails travelers to these parts or, more likely, leave you with Q fever, cholera, and assorted parasites. In these parts, tea cannot be refused when offered, which it always is. I discreetly gulped down an antibiotic capsule I had learned to always keep secreted in my pocket for just such social occasions."
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Not my cup of chai
Some years ago my mother, who had taken to drinking tea in the afternoon, offered me a cup of chai . I had never heard of chai but I took to drinking it on occasion during the 90’s as espresso shops and carts became prevalent (even in Stinson Beach). The machine-made chai was much better than my mom’s which, as I recall, was a sort of teabag variety. Neither preparation matches the chai described by Eric Margolis in his “War at the Top of the World”:
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Make mine a double
“According to reports, President Bush may be drinking again,” David Letterman said in a late-night monologue. “And I thought, "Well, why not? He's got everybody else drinking.”
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Some Questions:
Since over 300 billion dollars has been given to--excuse me, infused into--our banks with the intention of freeing up credit, why don't the banks lend the Top Three the 25 billion they want?
Why is Hilary dithering over the nomination for Secretary of State and when will
Obama cut her off?? If she can't negotiate this, what good is she?
If it walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, then I call it a duck. Why does this not apply to Joe Lieberman?
Why is Hilary dithering over the nomination for Secretary of State and when will
Obama cut her off?? If she can't negotiate this, what good is she?
If it walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, then I call it a duck. Why does this not apply to Joe Lieberman?
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Saturday, November 08, 2008
Washington Post via Daily Kos
Obama Positions Himself to Quickly Reverse Bush Actions on Environmental, Social Issues
By Ceci Connolly and R. Jeffrey Smith Washington Post Staff Writers Sunday, November 9, 2008
Transition advisers to President-elect Barack Obama have compiled a list of about 200 Bush administration actions and executive orders that could be swiftly undone to reverse the president on climate change, stem cell research, reproductive rights and other issues, according to congressional Democrats, campaign aides and experts working with the transition team.
A team of four dozen advisers, working for months in virtual solitude, set out to identify regulatory and policy changes Obama could implement soon after his inauguration. The team is now consulting with liberal advocacy groups, Capitol Hill staffers and potential agency chiefs to prioritize those they regard as the most onerous or ideologically offensive, said a top transition official who was not permitted to speak on the record about the inner workings of the transition.
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
Friday, October 31, 2008
To the Wire...
OK. Obama's vote on FISA was cowardly and dishonest; ditto on the $700 Billion Giveaway to Goldman Sachs et al; and his remarks regarding Israel are cookie cutter bullshit.
Barack Obama is not a Liberal. Liberal has been camping out in the Tribal Area Closet, soon to be joined by Maverick, and will probably not come out in my lifetime. As Mike Malloy says, Obama is a Corporate Democrat. And not only is that the best we can do right now, it is a lot given the rapacious appetite of the Republican Party for power and money. (How did the Rebubs let this happen?? Why weren't they grooming someone, anyone? But that is another story.)
I like Obama less than I want to-- but more than I should.
Conventional wisdom has the candidates running for the center after the primaries, but here we have McCain running to a McCarthy evoking right (Obama conflated with terrorists and socialists, the tax-and-spend refrain which no longer terrifies anyone after 8 years of Bush, a whack job religious zealot as his VP pick) whereas Obama isn't running anywhere. Mr. Obama is Mr. Cool, sitting in the shade sipping a cold one and watching the train wreck, projecting not-mean, not-threatening and not-ready-to-explode to a nervous white population sick of the fear infused twittering of the Republican right.
And he surprises me.
"The history in Colombia right now is that labor leaders have been targeted for assassination on a fairly consistent basis and there have not been prosecutions."
--Barack Obama, Hofstra presidential debate, October 15, 2008.
I thought out loud -- 'It's about time!"
His FDR-esque vision of the jobs and infrastructure equation in the face of a Republican opposition that views as socialism any non-war non-bail-out-Wall-Street spending makes perfect sense now (as it did back then). And though his health plans are, well, imperfect I think (if I squint and hope real hard) I can see the possibility of an end run around the insurance companies in there.
So. I am not over-wrought ( over-hyphenated, yes) but -- I am apprehensive.
First of all, WE (may I?) HAVE TO WIN THIS ELECTION BY MORE VOTES THAN THE REPUBLICAN MACHINE CAN STEAL. Remember 2000? 2004? Well apparently the Democrats haven't -- or just don't want to address it. So the same vote rigging and count manipulation procedures are still in force -- on steroids. (See Bradblog and keep the valium close.)
Then,we have to get rid of the Republican Fellow Travelers who have spent the last two years oiling the neocon agenda through Congress while stifling any Democratic dissent. Yes, this would be Pelosi and Reid. Pelosi is a joke -- recall her assertion that she would not oppose impeachment if anyone could show her that Bush did anything illegal. This woman is the worst kind of politician and has to go. As for Reid, he only seems to wake up long enough to kiss ass (Lieberman’s will do).
But most of all – So long as there is money to be made, Rove, Cheney et al are not about to fade quietly. And it isn't going to be land deals and a blue dress this time. Keep your eyes open -- if it is far out enough to be called a conspiracy theory, you are probably on the right track. Obama is not going to lay out his game plan on this one. But I hope it is a good one.
Barack Obama is not a Liberal. Liberal has been camping out in the Tribal Area Closet, soon to be joined by Maverick, and will probably not come out in my lifetime. As Mike Malloy says, Obama is a Corporate Democrat. And not only is that the best we can do right now, it is a lot given the rapacious appetite of the Republican Party for power and money. (How did the Rebubs let this happen?? Why weren't they grooming someone, anyone? But that is another story.)
I like Obama less than I want to-- but more than I should.
Conventional wisdom has the candidates running for the center after the primaries, but here we have McCain running to a McCarthy evoking right (Obama conflated with terrorists and socialists, the tax-and-spend refrain which no longer terrifies anyone after 8 years of Bush, a whack job religious zealot as his VP pick) whereas Obama isn't running anywhere. Mr. Obama is Mr. Cool, sitting in the shade sipping a cold one and watching the train wreck, projecting not-mean, not-threatening and not-ready-to-explode to a nervous white population sick of the fear infused twittering of the Republican right.
And he surprises me.
Example, this during a (air quotes) debate (end air quotes):
"The history in Colombia right now is that labor leaders have been targeted for assassination on a fairly consistent basis and there have not been prosecutions."
--Barack Obama, Hofstra presidential debate, October 15, 2008.
I thought out loud -- 'It's about time!"
His FDR-esque vision of the jobs and infrastructure equation in the face of a Republican opposition that views as socialism any non-war non-bail-out-Wall-Street spending makes perfect sense now (as it did back then). And though his health plans are, well, imperfect I think (if I squint and hope real hard) I can see the possibility of an end run around the insurance companies in there.
So. I am not over-wrought ( over-hyphenated, yes) but -- I am apprehensive.
First of all, WE (may I?) HAVE TO WIN THIS ELECTION BY MORE VOTES THAN THE REPUBLICAN MACHINE CAN STEAL. Remember 2000? 2004? Well apparently the Democrats haven't -- or just don't want to address it. So the same vote rigging and count manipulation procedures are still in force -- on steroids. (See Bradblog and keep the valium close.)
Then,we have to get rid of the Republican Fellow Travelers who have spent the last two years oiling the neocon agenda through Congress while stifling any Democratic dissent. Yes, this would be Pelosi and Reid. Pelosi is a joke -- recall her assertion that she would not oppose impeachment if anyone could show her that Bush did anything illegal. This woman is the worst kind of politician and has to go. As for Reid, he only seems to wake up long enough to kiss ass (Lieberman’s will do).
But most of all – So long as there is money to be made, Rove, Cheney et al are not about to fade quietly. And it isn't going to be land deals and a blue dress this time. Keep your eyes open -- if it is far out enough to be called a conspiracy theory, you are probably on the right track. Obama is not going to lay out his game plan on this one. But I hope it is a good one.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Friday, October 10, 2008
And this...
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/matthew-norman/matthew-norman-the-peculiar-tragedy-of-this-flawed-hero-john-mccain-956553.html
Independent.co.uk
Matthew Norman: The peculiar tragedy of this flawed hero, John McCain
This bulbous oblong of coiled rage came across as an appalling old waxwork
Friday, 10 October 2008
For one whose single rhetorical flourish is the gratingly incessant appellation "My friends", John McCain has very few left. The roll call shrinks by the day as his bamboozled campaign grows nastier, and if the decline maintains its trajectory this year's Friends of McCain Thanksgiving Dinner in Arizona will be held, in homage to his naval career, in a solo canoe. By then, even the Clintons will have baled out because, barring a malevolent miracle, Barack Obama will be President-Elect, and Senator McCain's value to them as Oval Office seat-warmer until 2012 will have gone the way of Lehman Brothers. Even his wife, Cindy, can barely tolerate his presence, judging by the body language at the end of Tuesday's debate in St Louis. As they gingerly embraced, you sensed her wondering whether seven houses will provide a sufficient cordon sanitaire from each other's company come 5 November.
This debate was a riot of paradox, being at once both turgid and captivating, meaningless and hugely significant. As an aural event, it was tedious. Obama was much the more lucid, especially on healthcare and foreign policy regarding Pakistan, but McCain held his own on the economy (or about as well as any candidate advocating $300bn in tax breaks for large corporations and their CEOs could expect to do at this point in US fiscal history).
It was visually that this debate really mattered and, while it is too soon to divine public reaction from the polls, one suspects it went a fair way to securing Obama the White House in the absence of monstrous scandal: Barack and Britney caught in flagrante delicto at an Osama bin Laden fundraiser perhaps; Michelle giving OJ Simpson the Black Power salute on visiting day at the penitentiary; Russia unilaterally reviving the Warsaw Pact; or the detonation of a radioactive device on Pennsylvania Avenue.
McCain looked simply dreadful. Sallow, fatigued, hunched, tentative and miserable, this bulbous oblong of coiled rage came across as what the Prince of Wales knows as an appalling old waxwork. The clinching image, I think, was the rear overhead shot, as he made staccato movements across the stage that highlighted the large circle of hairlessness on his head. No bald man has won a general election in Britain or the US in the television age (Dwight Eisenhower was the last Anglo-American alopecian victor back in 1956) and this one is now a very long shot to buck the trend.
So much for this one, and on to "that one"... the most memorable moment of the debate season thus far. Flailing about idiotically in the quest to portray Obama as the Bush-Cheney cheerleader in contrast to his maverick self, Senator McCain mentioned an energy bill that emerged from the White House. "You know who voted for it? You might never know," he said, and then, without turning to face Obama, he flipped an arm in the younger man's direction. "That one," he added, lest any doubt remain.
We could argue until Doomsday whether "that one" was a rung or two down the offensiveness ladder from "uppity". My feeling is that it falls into that vast category of Things White People Don't Think Are Remotely Racist But Wouldn't Say In A Million Years About Other White People. Certainly, you can't imagine McCain using it of Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden.
But racism, while still a small, nagging threat to Obama's chances, is a red herring here. What was so revealing about "that one" was that it crystallised the uncontainable disdain that is annihilating McCain's reputation. It isn't undermining his candidacy, because the economic mayhem and his volatile reaction to it has already done that. Yet his inability to show Obama common courtesy is unveiling him to a previously admiring electorate as a mean-spirited, cantankerous old git. If the repeated use of "old" appears ageist, so be it. Everything about McCain's dismissive attitude to Obama is geriatric. In fact he is only 72, which these days is anything but old. My father is McCain's senior by a year or two, and could pass for his son. I have friends in their mid-80s whom I think of as contemporaries because there is nothing remotely retrograde about their perspective on life.
For all his energy, on the other hand, McCain could pass for 92 because he radiates the sourness of the crotchety Meldrovian grump, slumped in a high-backed, plastic chair snarling "dunno they're born" whenever a middle-aged politician appears on the telly. Everything about his debate demeanour bespeaks a man struggling mightily to subjugate his rage that, after all he gave up in the Hanoi Hilton – his freedom, health and, as seems increasingly evident, a portion of his sanity – this smartarse liberal from Chicago swans along, not yet out of his congressional diapers, to steal the prize to which he believes his sacrifice entitles him.
So while Obama vaguely but empathetically seeks to assuage the terrors of Americans about their financial future, McCain seeks sanctuary in the distant past. He unleashes the increasingly gruesome Sarah Palin, Alaska's very own Cretina D'Evil, to raise Obama's extremely tenuous links to William Ayers, a Weatherman four decades ago, and the only people listening are the rednecks at her rallies whose shouts of "Terrorist!" and "Kill him!" she is content to let pass without rebuke. McCain's flirtation with revisiting Tony Rezko, the bent Chicago property developer from whom Obama bought a chunk of land in a deal he long ago called "boneheaded", seems set to become a full-blown affair, meanwhile, and it can't be long before his surrogates dredge up the Rev Jeremiah Wright.
Like many failing generals, McCain is waging not the present war but the last one in which Field-Marshal Rove defeated John Kerry. He wants to shrink a truly Goliathan election into another Lilliputian one, a tactic as misconceived as making the race about mature and dependable character when it is so obvious that the only grown-up in the room is Obama.
What made McCain look so weak and hopeless on Tuesday wasn't just the combination of pallor, jerkiness, the tonsure and the contrast between how, when not speaking, Obama sat with commanding tranquillity, whereas McCain paced anxiously in the background like someone in a hurry who cannot remember where he parked the car. It was the image he projected of a man weighed down and constricted by the sense that the campaign he is fighting is unworthy of him, but unable to change his tune because there's nothing left to sing except "For God's sake don't trust this terrorist-consorting, America-hating naif."
It is the tragic hero's traditional fate to be brought down by a central flaw he cannot see in himself. The peculiar tragedy of McCain, a hero himself as his pandering to veterans ever reminds us, is that he well knows he is squandering his long-husbanded capital of personal decency with the sort of wild profligacy that created the economic catastrophe that should cost him the election. His entire sense of purpose and self-worth is founded on a romantic notion, bred in the bone of this son and grandson of admirals, of noble service to his country. This loss of his honour may prove more excruciating than losing the White House to a man that a year ago John McCain would never have dreamt of dismissing, with such vinegary condescension, as "That One".
Independent.co.uk
Matthew Norman: The peculiar tragedy of this flawed hero, John McCain
This bulbous oblong of coiled rage came across as an appalling old waxwork
Friday, 10 October 2008
For one whose single rhetorical flourish is the gratingly incessant appellation "My friends", John McCain has very few left. The roll call shrinks by the day as his bamboozled campaign grows nastier, and if the decline maintains its trajectory this year's Friends of McCain Thanksgiving Dinner in Arizona will be held, in homage to his naval career, in a solo canoe. By then, even the Clintons will have baled out because, barring a malevolent miracle, Barack Obama will be President-Elect, and Senator McCain's value to them as Oval Office seat-warmer until 2012 will have gone the way of Lehman Brothers. Even his wife, Cindy, can barely tolerate his presence, judging by the body language at the end of Tuesday's debate in St Louis. As they gingerly embraced, you sensed her wondering whether seven houses will provide a sufficient cordon sanitaire from each other's company come 5 November.
This debate was a riot of paradox, being at once both turgid and captivating, meaningless and hugely significant. As an aural event, it was tedious. Obama was much the more lucid, especially on healthcare and foreign policy regarding Pakistan, but McCain held his own on the economy (or about as well as any candidate advocating $300bn in tax breaks for large corporations and their CEOs could expect to do at this point in US fiscal history).
It was visually that this debate really mattered and, while it is too soon to divine public reaction from the polls, one suspects it went a fair way to securing Obama the White House in the absence of monstrous scandal: Barack and Britney caught in flagrante delicto at an Osama bin Laden fundraiser perhaps; Michelle giving OJ Simpson the Black Power salute on visiting day at the penitentiary; Russia unilaterally reviving the Warsaw Pact; or the detonation of a radioactive device on Pennsylvania Avenue.
McCain looked simply dreadful. Sallow, fatigued, hunched, tentative and miserable, this bulbous oblong of coiled rage came across as what the Prince of Wales knows as an appalling old waxwork. The clinching image, I think, was the rear overhead shot, as he made staccato movements across the stage that highlighted the large circle of hairlessness on his head. No bald man has won a general election in Britain or the US in the television age (Dwight Eisenhower was the last Anglo-American alopecian victor back in 1956) and this one is now a very long shot to buck the trend.
So much for this one, and on to "that one"... the most memorable moment of the debate season thus far. Flailing about idiotically in the quest to portray Obama as the Bush-Cheney cheerleader in contrast to his maverick self, Senator McCain mentioned an energy bill that emerged from the White House. "You know who voted for it? You might never know," he said, and then, without turning to face Obama, he flipped an arm in the younger man's direction. "That one," he added, lest any doubt remain.
We could argue until Doomsday whether "that one" was a rung or two down the offensiveness ladder from "uppity". My feeling is that it falls into that vast category of Things White People Don't Think Are Remotely Racist But Wouldn't Say In A Million Years About Other White People. Certainly, you can't imagine McCain using it of Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden.
But racism, while still a small, nagging threat to Obama's chances, is a red herring here. What was so revealing about "that one" was that it crystallised the uncontainable disdain that is annihilating McCain's reputation. It isn't undermining his candidacy, because the economic mayhem and his volatile reaction to it has already done that. Yet his inability to show Obama common courtesy is unveiling him to a previously admiring electorate as a mean-spirited, cantankerous old git. If the repeated use of "old" appears ageist, so be it. Everything about McCain's dismissive attitude to Obama is geriatric. In fact he is only 72, which these days is anything but old. My father is McCain's senior by a year or two, and could pass for his son. I have friends in their mid-80s whom I think of as contemporaries because there is nothing remotely retrograde about their perspective on life.
For all his energy, on the other hand, McCain could pass for 92 because he radiates the sourness of the crotchety Meldrovian grump, slumped in a high-backed, plastic chair snarling "dunno they're born" whenever a middle-aged politician appears on the telly. Everything about his debate demeanour bespeaks a man struggling mightily to subjugate his rage that, after all he gave up in the Hanoi Hilton – his freedom, health and, as seems increasingly evident, a portion of his sanity – this smartarse liberal from Chicago swans along, not yet out of his congressional diapers, to steal the prize to which he believes his sacrifice entitles him.
So while Obama vaguely but empathetically seeks to assuage the terrors of Americans about their financial future, McCain seeks sanctuary in the distant past. He unleashes the increasingly gruesome Sarah Palin, Alaska's very own Cretina D'Evil, to raise Obama's extremely tenuous links to William Ayers, a Weatherman four decades ago, and the only people listening are the rednecks at her rallies whose shouts of "Terrorist!" and "Kill him!" she is content to let pass without rebuke. McCain's flirtation with revisiting Tony Rezko, the bent Chicago property developer from whom Obama bought a chunk of land in a deal he long ago called "boneheaded", seems set to become a full-blown affair, meanwhile, and it can't be long before his surrogates dredge up the Rev Jeremiah Wright.
Like many failing generals, McCain is waging not the present war but the last one in which Field-Marshal Rove defeated John Kerry. He wants to shrink a truly Goliathan election into another Lilliputian one, a tactic as misconceived as making the race about mature and dependable character when it is so obvious that the only grown-up in the room is Obama.
What made McCain look so weak and hopeless on Tuesday wasn't just the combination of pallor, jerkiness, the tonsure and the contrast between how, when not speaking, Obama sat with commanding tranquillity, whereas McCain paced anxiously in the background like someone in a hurry who cannot remember where he parked the car. It was the image he projected of a man weighed down and constricted by the sense that the campaign he is fighting is unworthy of him, but unable to change his tune because there's nothing left to sing except "For God's sake don't trust this terrorist-consorting, America-hating naif."
It is the tragic hero's traditional fate to be brought down by a central flaw he cannot see in himself. The peculiar tragedy of McCain, a hero himself as his pandering to veterans ever reminds us, is that he well knows he is squandering his long-husbanded capital of personal decency with the sort of wild profligacy that created the economic catastrophe that should cost him the election. His entire sense of purpose and self-worth is founded on a romantic notion, bred in the bone of this son and grandson of admirals, of noble service to his country. This loss of his honour may prove more excruciating than losing the White House to a man that a year ago John McCain would never have dreamt of dismissing, with such vinegary condescension, as "That One".
Read this...
Make-Believe Maverick
A closer look at the life and career of John McCain reveals a disturbing record of recklessness and dishonesty
By TIM DICKINSONPosted Oct 16, 2008 7:00 PM
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/coverstory/make_believe_maverick_the_real_john_mccain
A closer look at the life and career of John McCain reveals a disturbing record of recklessness and dishonesty
By TIM DICKINSONPosted Oct 16, 2008 7:00 PM
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/coverstory/make_believe_maverick_the_real_john_mccain
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Wine Train
On our way up to Happy Camp, Chris and I stopped in Napa for lunch on the Wine Train (thanks Geoff!).
No Bail Out for him...
September 23, 2008
CEO murdered by mob of sacked Indian workers
Corporate India is in shock after a mob of sacked workers bludgeoned to death the chief executive who had dismissed them from a factory in a suburb of Delhi.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Chelsea and Shane Happy Camp 2008
My niece Chelsea’s wedding at Happy Camp, August 23, 2008. Not wanting to be late, I arrived at Happy Camp on the 29th (of July) and the food was so good I stayed until the 7th (of September).
Monday, July 07, 2008
I think this is a joke, but who knows these days..
The First-Ever Vagina Spa
http://radaronline.com/exclusives/2008/07/the-firstever-vagina-spa.php
The First-Ever Vagina Spa
http://radaronline.com/exclusives/2008/07/the-firstever-vagina-spa.php
Friday, July 04, 2008
Monday, June 30, 2008
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