Live streaming of HCR conference showing amount of contributions to speakers by major industries -- as they are speaking.

Hope they took their Do-Doz

Harry Reid speaking at the Health Summit.  Only Obama is pretending to be awake -- and he's faking it.

My newest addiction...

Also, perhaps the world's messiest food.
Recipe and Text from The Recovering Vegetarian
/http://therecoveringvegetarian.wordpress.com/2009/07/12/sriracha-lime-boiled-peanuts/


Sriracha-Lime Boiled Peanuts

• 1lb raw peanuts, in shells
• 8oz soy sauce
• 1/4 cup lime juice
• 1/4 cup sriracha chili sauce (Feel free to increase this as much as you like)
• 1 inch knob of fresh ginger, peeled and sliced
• handful of fresh cilantro leaves
• 2Tbsp rice vinegar

As far as recipes go, this one is pretty darn simple. Grab the biggest pot you’ve got on hand and toss in your peanuts. Fill with water, add all your other ingredients. Bring to a boil, then turn it down to a gentle simmer. Keep an eye on your water level and periodically pop out a peanut, unshell and taste. Adjust the seasonings to suit your taste, enjoy the smell as you come to check on it. These are definitely the most fragrant peanuts I’ve ever made. You’ll know yours are done when the shells are pliable and the nuts inside are soft and flavorful. (Mine took about six hours?)
When they’re done, place a generous serving in a bowl and toss with red pepper flakes and another small handful of cilantro leaves. If you have any left over, some people drain theirs and store them in the refrigerator that way, I prefer to store them in some of the cooking liquid. They taste even better the next day that way!

Press the Meat

(email to Carol 2/14):
I didn't know that Rachel Maddow needed to be toned down.  I watched some of the show you referred to and frankly if I were her I would need to be toned down if I had to put up with these three right wing clowns on the show.  There was some congressman (R-IL?) who just mouthed a bunch of cliches,  David Brooks who does the same but with a "concerned" and "sincere" tone (for our own good, mind you) and that idiot Ford who sez he is a Dem (and sez he lives in NY) while being a total right winger who lives in Tenn for tax purposes --and still can't win an election.  It would be nice if Mr. Gregory asked questions that did not assume there was any legitimacy to this outrage over a civilian trial for KSM in NY rather than what it is -- a successfully orchestrated attack worthy of Rove-Cheney (hey -- it probably IS Rove-Cheney).  Even Bloomberg (Sp?) was fine with it until someone got to him.  (Schumer is a whore for Israel, so I won't even go there.  Although he does have some good qualities.)*  Rachel Maddow was very calm and -- fact based.  Yikes!  What a concept. Far more interesting was C Amanpour with Jane Mayer on her (C's) CNN show this morning in which she brought up the success of this backlash thing.  Mayer** said that Obama's team didn't immediately and/or effectively counter it and that part of this was that Rahm Emmanuel was not for civilian trials, party due to a deal he cut with Lindsay Graham, some quid pro quo thing.  

Sorry.  But I LIKE getting all worked up! -- kg

*OK, I know that sounds awful.  But I really think that pretty much all politicians are whores, it is just a matter of who they are whoring for and how pretty they are...

** "The Dark Side"   This book, along with Suskind's "One % Doctrine" contained a lot of information regarding interrogation techniques and the results before the MSM found itself unable to them ignore any longer. 

I guess I just need to remind myself that it is called "Meet the Press" -- not "Meet the Experts" or "Meet People Who Have Brains."  Although Cheney made appearances with Tim Russert (Cheney wouldn't go on the other shows back then).  So maybe Tim was the Press and Cheney was meeting him.  It is all so confusing!

I did catch Cheney on This Week with some guy named Karl doing the hosting.  I never heard of this Karl guy.  Have heard of Cheney, but thought he was in prison. 

From Ezra Klein -- WAPO

Primary sources

A reader got his hands on the note that Richard Shelby delivered to Harry Reid informing him of the blanket hold. You can read it here. Shocking stuff.

A pair of Canadian Honkers in the pasture this morning.

(These three were swimming online.  My old fashioned phone does not have a camera.)

Bipartisanship as cover for corporate giveaways....

How Bipartisanship Hurts the Country
by Cenk Uygur | February 3, 2010 - 12:16pm | permalink 

Excerpt:  

"Every one of these so-called compromises wound up helping corporate America. There was never a compromise that was against corporate interests and there never will be. You can use this as a measuring stick from now on. Whenever there is a bipartisan agreement in Congress from now on, look to see who benefits from it -- I guarantee you that ninety-nine out of one hundred times it will be corporate America.
And the Democrats are perfectly happy to do this because they take the same, if not more, amount of money from those same corporate lobbyists. Except they have the meddlesome problem of pretending to be for the people. Republicans are not burdened with this; everyone expects them to help the rich and the powerful. But the Democrats need cover, and they have the perfect excuse in the mantle of bipartisanship. What could they do, the Republicans made them do it! And aren't they so reasonable for compromising?"

Note the last paragraphs re: Chris Dodd and financial reform.

Howard Zinn

                                           August 24, 1922 – January 27, 2010

Ok, I know I'm supposed to think this guy is a nut, but I sure agree with him on this one..

Ron Paul last weekend at a Libertarian conference:
"There's been a coup, have you heard? It's the CIA coup. The CIA runs everything, they run the military. They're the ones who are over there lobbing missiles and bombs on countries. ... And of course the CIA is every bit as secretive as the Federal Reserve. ... And yet think of the harm they have done since they were established [after] World War II. They are a government unto themselves. They're in businesses, in drug businesses, they take out dictators ... We need to take out the CIA."

A Saturday Outing

If you think going to the movies from Stinson is an all day event, try it from Happy Camp.

 Saturday George, Casey & I went to Medford to see Avatar.  The noon show was sold out so we bought tickets for the 3:30 and repaired to the RoxyAnn winery for wine* tasting and cheese plate, then to Barnes and Noble. Barnes & Noble had a buy 2 get one free on paperbacks and I went away with a volume of Portrait of The Artist as an etc etc and The Dubliners in one volume; a collection of Emily Dickinson and a Willa Cather novel "My Antonia".  I've never read any Willa Cather so I considered that my free mystery book**.  And I have wanted the Joyce books.  Cool.   Great afternoon!  I liked Avatar, but did not love it.  WAAAY too long for a cliched and predictable plot.  But I loved the visuals and liked the way the 3-D was used to enhance rather than scream boo like the 3d movies we saw as kids. It is, as Casey's friend said, an "archetypical" story line (which amused my sister and me). You might want to see it as I don't think it is going to be worth so much on the small screen (you know, the one in your house).  Had a very nice dinner in Ashland.

* Our favorite was a Red Lily Tempranillo.  (The winery makes its own Tempranillo but it was sold out.  They didn't make very much.)  I'd never heard of this Spanish varietal have you?  

**But am now slogging my way through Claire Messud's "The Emperor's Children" --Have you read any of her novels?  I read an article (of hers) in the NY Review of Books on an Iranian woman activist who had been imprisoned; it was a good article.  But this book of fiction --I find her sentence structure exhausting -- precise (I think) , not convoluted, but certainly more complex than her (self absorbed rescue-seeking) characters deserve.

The Importance of Being Not-Bush

Among the Obama apologists, there are two (among other) pillars that are so not working for me at this point (if they ever did).  First is the he-did-not-really-promise-that argument, implying that what I see as failure to perform is really a matter of conflating his ideas with a conception that he might act upon any of them.  Closing Guantanamo, for example, was an idea; chiding him for not actually doing it is being naïve and – well – petulant. Since Obama did not actually say he would be a rabid crusader for Universal Health Care, it would be unfair to be disappointed that he (and his pit bull Rahm) instead orchestrated a giveaway to the insurance and pharmaceutical companies.  He didn’t say he would do the former and he didn’t promise not to do the latter. 

Second – well, at least he isn’t Bush.  The technical argument to that should be that Not-Being- Bush is setting the bar so low that a snake could crawl over it.  Unfortunately, the argument is now more like  - in what way is he Not-Bush?

My apologies to residents of halfway houses.

I think the FBI does their recruiting out of halfway houses.

FBI’s ‘cutting edge’ photo of

 bin Laden doctored from Spain

 lawmaker’s portrait

I didn't know that was an option...

Have finally gotten around to reading Nick Paumgarten's piece on Whole Foods CEO John Mackey (The New Yorker, Jan. 4 2010) and found this particularly telling:

"Before his [Mackey's] senior year, he was cut from the varsity basketball team, and he persuaded his parents to move so that he could switch schools and play."  

Are atheists supposed to hope there really IS a hell?

I'm not much on joining up, but couldn't resist this one.


Dear God: If you really exist please tell Pat Robertson to SHUT THE F**K UP

I hope the US is as efficient at getting aid to Haiti as it has been about overthrowing their governments. Oh and by the way Obama — New Orleans still needs help. Comments like this probably make JC at Balloon Juice tar me “FDL.” That would be an honor, John.

Mortgage meltdown.  Financial Collapse.  As I recall, the Savings and Loan Scandal in the late '80s was called just that -- a scandal.  Prison terms were served.  Complicit lawmakers were investigated and exposed.  Were those the good old days, or are these?  Depends on whether you are the screwer or the screwee.

My new label is certainly coming in handy.

Foul/Fail

Watching Mark McGwire trying to 'splain himself and doing a Glenn Beck sobbing routine.  Guess I need a new label for my blog.

How Bushian!

From WAPO:
John E. McLaughlin, a former deputy CIA director, will lead a review of missteps by U.S. intelligence agencies and assess proposals for correcting weaknesses in a system that did not respond to warnings about terrorism suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, said Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair


Goodman's take (from truthout)
President Obama, the CIA and the Master of the Cover-Up

Saturday 11 December 2010

by: Melvin A. Goodman, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

(excerpt)

In addition to being one of the ideological drivers for the CIA's policies of torture and abuse, secret prisons and extraordinary renditions, McLaughlin demonstrated early in his career that he was a company man willing to do what was necessary to advance his career. In the 1980s, when CIA Director William Casey and his Deputy Robert Gates were "cooking the books" on intelligence dealing with the Soviet Union, Central America and Southwest Asia, McLaughlin offered no dissent.