This and that

If I can get my self settled enough to put my mind to writing there will be more today (some pictures to scan, and some to just fiddle, some Chain links, and whatever else comes to mind).

But right now, just a little food porn and perhaps a bit of natter.

I need more flour. Today I intend to make danish. The real thing, a cross between pastry, and bread. I need to go start the dough, and mangle the butter.

Tuesday I made curry. I cheated. I didn't call a Nepalese friend to get the, rough, ratios for making curry myself, but rather used a package. S&B, which is nice. Comes as a paste, in three levels: Mild, Mild-hot, and Hot. I also used the simmer masala sauce from TJs. The TJs stuff was a bit zippier than the mix of mild, and mild hot I used.

So, an onion and a a chicken breast, sauted in butter (maybe 1 1/2ts) until the onions were clear, lentils and a package of the mild sauce with vegetables (a misunderstanding on both my part, and that of the shopkeeper, I was buying two packets of the mild, and he pointed out the larger one, which wasn't the plain curry paste, but rather a made sauce, with carrots and potato) as well as a section and a half of the mild hot. To this add about 1 1/2 cps cooked lentils. Simmer, with the lid on.

I am moderate for heat. Maia and Alexa are both less tolerant of it. I am told the mix was just right. Me, I wanted a tad more zing. I may have to start setting a separate dish aside for myself and add more to it. Sigh.

To a jar of the simmer sauce add baby squash and asparagus stems.

Make Saffron rice.

In the meantime I was trying some pseudo na'an. The book with the recipe has an annoying habit. His instructions for water are vague. More vague than my descriptions here. Instead of saying, "About 1 cup" he says "Water to add." In the description of method he says things like, "Add water until the dough is loose, but not sloppy", or, "Add water until the dough is just elastic." This is only semi-useful as the nature of the dough changes as the flour hydrates. It ended up that I used too much water and had to add almost half again the flour (which meant more salt, happily he calls for a lot of yeast, so I was all right on that front).

Took two lumps of the dough and to one added cumin seed (not enough) and to the other, chopped cilantro.

Rolled them out, let them rest for five minutes or so and tossed them into a hot skillet. It mostly worked. I think the dough was too dry, the stovetop method only so-so. The bubbles were too small. Next time I'll set the oven to 450, make the dough a little, "sloppier" and toss the pieces onto the bread stone. We'll see if that works better.

When the first piece of na'an comes out of the skillet, add the asparagus tips.

When the third piece comes out, serve.

On the upside, I took some to a potluck last night and everyone thought they were na'an, so maybe I am too picky.

Friday last I had to head to L.A. for drill. The drive south was nasty. The San Luis Obispo area has been, largely, spared the heavy rains of climes, both more northern and southern. As I entered Santa Barbara County, the rain came down in sheets, visibility was a little as 100 meters in places. I grabbed a bite to eat at Pea Soup Andersen's until the weather abated some.

Spent the evening singing silly songs with a friend (Tom Lehrer, Flanders and Swann, etc.) and schmoozing. Saturday was the usual drill related stuff. As well as a description of how State plans to re-organize the guard. It's ambitious. Not as well thought out as I might like, but it paints an interesting picture.
One year in six is to be scheduled for deployment. If a unit doesn't deploy, the members can be snagged to join a unit which is. For two years out of six the drill schedule goes to about three days a month, and three weeks a year (ramping up for the deployment).

A whole lot of shuffling people and units, some of which is not well thought out. An infantry unit is an infantry unit, but signal units vary, so too does MI. One can't treat them as interchangeable parts.

Sat. Night spent with friends.

Sunday my semi-annual Russian test, the usual drill sorts of stuff, and then back to the place I hang my hat in L.A. where a friend dropped in and we made ableskivers, and talked fruit trees and home-security.

Monday picked up some things from Maia's folk's place, took a look at the mules and headed home. This trip was better, for weather, but worse for traffic (I didn't get out of town until about 1530). In Camarillo I stopped for food. Took some pictures of a Red-tail sitting on a lamp-post and killed time until the traffic eased up.

Which meant fog through Santa Barbara, and my picking Maia up at school (she is in what the students call, "dead week" just before finals, everyone working with groups to get projects done, or coming in to use the library to finish up term papers. So, unlike finals, this is the second busiest week of the term, with crazy parking and more stupid walkers).

Chain Links

A week, or so's, worth of referrals and comments.

Bankruptcy, after eight years of trying the Credit Card lobby has gotten it's wet-dream anti-bankruptcy legislation passed. Rivka, at Welcome To The New Economy does a better job than I could of using the LA Times series as a platform for discussing the problem in concrete terms.

Me, I keep seeing parallels to the Reserve Clause, where the owners in Baseball said they needed to be able to hold the players as indentured servants because if the players could ask what they were worth the owners would overspend, trying to buy them, and go out of business.

Frek Clark points out Moral Bankruptcy that, among other things, the Senate wouldn't agree to making more than 30 percent, annual interest illegal.

Is "evil" too strong a word? Consider another failed amendment to the bill. The title of this AP report (via Dr. Alterman) puts it plainly: "Senate refuses to limit interest rates at 30%."

Orrin Hatch (that paragon of looking out for the little guy) argued that putting a limit (even one so high as 30 percent) would interfere with States' Rights, by preventing them from having a lower cap. This is why so many credit cards are from South Dakota.

An example (which Fred quotes) of the way the business of credit cards is being run, In Cleveland, a municipal court judge tossed out a case that Discover Bank brought against one of its cardholders after examining the woman's credit card bill.

According to court papers, Ruth M. Owens, a 53-year-old disabled woman, paid the company $3,492 over six years on a $1,963 debt only to find that late fees and finance charges had more than doubled the size of her remaining balance to $5,564. ...

Yep. She paid them almost twice what she was lent, and they were trying to bill her for another 5,500 dollars. In this case the judge tossed it out. In another a judge didn't, because the person admitted to borrowing the money.

The Decembrist talks about a related issue Tax Codes As I was writing this I started to look into Refund Anticipation Loans, which I knew were not a good thing, but I didn't know the half of it. According to the National Consumer Law Center, 12.15 million taxpayers took these 7-14 day loans in 2003, paying effective interest rates that ranged from 70% to over 700%. Half of the people who took these loans were recipients of the Earned Income Tax Credit. Almost 80% had household incomes below $35,000. A majority didn't realize it was a loan. Tax preparation fees combined with RAL fees average about $250. When you consider the big deal that was made about a $600 child credit, you can see how much is lost through this scam.

H&R Block, et al, don't even have the fig leaf the credit card companies have, because these are zero risk loans, the refund is signed over to the company before the check gets cut.

His bigger point is that the tax code has been screwed, by making those at the bottom subject to the most difficult figuring, making it more needful for them to pay someone else to figure their taxes.


With the US pulling out of the Optional Protocol to the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, we see how things have turned. We wrote this, back in '63. We lobbied like hell to get it agreed to, and now we don't like it. Why? because it has been used as it was intended, to protect a nations citizens. It has been used to overturn death sentences, because we denied the accused the chance to speak with consular officials. I suspect there is more to it than that. You see all we need to do, if what we want is to preserve the option of serving non-citizens with capital charges, is to let them speak with their consular representatives.

No, me I think it's to prevent the people we charge with terrorism from being able to do that, or at least from being able to appeal the sentence. But I'm getting cynical on that subject, the moreso when I see things like Unintended Consequences [NYT] where we find that the relaxing of the definition of torture means we are sending people to places where any reasonable person would say they were going to be subjected to torturous treatment.

No one disputes that for ex-convicts like Mr. Auguste, 28, who completed a 10-month jail sentence for the attempted sale of cocaine, deportation to Haiti is a grim prospect. Under Haitian policy, federal and immigration courts have found, deportees with a criminal record are placed in indefinite preventive detention, without food, water or toilets, in cells so crowded that they cannot lie down; prisoners are subjected to police beatings, and sometimes are burned with cigarettes, choked, hooded and given electric shocks. Some have died in custody.

But is that tantamount to torture under the law? The answers have varied in the last four years. The Third Circuit panel, while likening the conditions to "a slave ship," ruled in January that indefinite detention in Haiti did not constitute torture because Haitian officials intended the detention to prevent crime, not specifically to inflict severe pain and suffering amounting to torture.

bellatrys has a nice piece on safety versus risk/freedom versus protection or, losing all sense of proportion Over the Water where she looks at how Britain is dealing with things.

I happen to find lots of this amusing,Sleeper cells in a wry sort of way, because one of the truths of the Cold War is being proven true about the conflict with Al Queda... (I have no idea why this was in the sports section). The reason I find it amusing is because I have been saying (to Maia's annoyance when I yell at some fathead on the radio) there are no sleeper cells. My basis for this is the Cold War. After the Kremlin archives were opened, after the Stasi's files were released (well dragged out into the cold light of day) after all was said and done the boys at Langley had to admit something. All the money we spent trying to find the Soviet's sleeper cells, was pointless. They were laughing themselves sick because there wasn't a single one. Not one. Not in more than 40 years of the Cold War.

To close (and this was probably too long) I offer this piece on Moral Virtue, vs. Moral Values An extract In the recent past, we have heard a lot of talk about "moral values". It's clear that in many cases, the term "moral value" was used as a way of judging others, as a way of sizing people up to see if they measured up to a certain standard. Instead, we might choose to think about "moral virtues". As such, a contemplation of virtue calls us not to judge others, but to examine ourselves. This examination is crucial to the future direction of the GLBT community. To establish credibility, to integrate ourselves into society, we must be disciples of virtue....

It might be argued: "Why should we embrace a life of virtues and morals? The Ultra-Right--the self-proclaimed defenders of American Values and American Morals--don't!" This is, in the end, a childish argument. When we advance such an argument, we risk becoming like the very people we are fight against: intolerant, inflexible, and self-serving."

Those mean spirited liberals (again)

I had a few things I forgot to put in the last one. These are all, pretty much of a piece, and they relate to the way the right gets away with the O'Reilly's, the Coulters, Savages, Brooks, Limbaughs, Hannities, Malkins etc..

When you call them on it, they will say this is the work of just a few people. On the flip-side they see a Ward Churchill, and they tar all-liberals with the brush of his silliness. More amazing, they will have the same people who are castigating the Churchills praising someone else who makes the same point (that the way we have been behaving was instigatory, and we ought to have expected such an attack as we got on That Tuesday)

Thomas Woods Follow the subsequent links and see all the outrage at what woods said. The arguments are the same. The only difference is the politics of the speaker.

More recently we have the Lefkow murders. It turns out the killer wasn't a right wing fanatic, but rather a man who seems to have been unhinged, and blames part of his present troubles on the ruling Lefkow made against him.

On the other hand, the right-wing noisebox has been more than vocal in saying things which are terroristic about it. Spouting that these killings, "may be a blessing in disguise. Our country is grappling with judges who do not understand that there is a war, and issues about "torture", rights for enemy combatants and etc, these new threats may wake them up because for the first time in these judges lives, they are vulnerable and threaten. Survival is no longer an academic thing. Make a dumb ruling that undermines the police and military ability to fight criminals and terrorists have personal consequences.
17 posted on 03/05/2005 4:53:40 PM PST by Fee...

They know who the left wing judges, reporters and university professors are.

It is simply a matter of each individuals 'activist' choosing a suitable target and then taking action.
5 posted on 03/05/2005 4:42:23 PM PST by BenLurkin"

Ah, you say, these are just freaks at the fringes.

What then of this, by Hal Turner "With the federal judiciary in the spotlight over the Lefkow killings, it seems to me that much of the efforts of pro-whites to criticize Judge Lefkow were. . . . . . . misplaced. As such, I believe it is time to put the judges named above into the arena of public scrutiny.

Let them experience rousing public debate which they cannot control. Let them feel the pressure of public scorn which they cannot control. Let them see it and hear it at their courthouse, at their private homes, in their social circles and, of course, here on the internet.

Clearly the federal judiciary is not nearly as thick-skinned as they would have us believe. Given the Lefkow situation, federal judges are whining for more protection even though there is not one shred of evidence indicating the Lefkow killings are even related to the Judge's court docket!

In terms of public relations, - whether one is "for" or "against" - it is always best to "strike while the iron is hot." Given the media spectacle, public awareness, frayed nerves and serious concern over the Lefkow situation, the timing is perfect right now to stoke the fire of public opinion against these other Judges.

Needed immediately is: Home addresses of the aforementioned Judges. Background and Biographical info. Photos. Voting records, property ownership records. Info about any skeletons in their closets: alcoholism, drug use, homosexuality/lesbianism, race-mixed families . . . .You know, the whole nine yards. The full monty.(thanks to Orcinus for showing me this... he has a stronger stomach than I).

That looks like a threat to me. Was it some dark corner of the internet which hosted it? No, it was on Fox News, with Geraldo Rivera.

Ok, that's still a private enterprise.

But Rep. Gibbons of Nevada is a public figure, and a few weeks ago he said "I say we tell those liberal, tree-hugging, Birkenstock-wearing, hippie, tie-dyed liberals to go make their movies and their music and whine somewhere else," he told the crowd, according to the Elko Daily Free Press.

He then said it was "too damn bad we didn't buy them a ticket" to become human shields in Iraq.

His comments came a week after he apologized for calling those who oppose corporate donations for President Bush's inaugural parties "communists."

Thats a congressman. Bad enough, if he had said it all by himself, but he didn't. He stole it. It was plagiarised from a speech written by Alabama State Auditor Beth Chapman. I wish it stopped there, but the reason it's so easy to know who wrote this little gem of wit is that she was making enough money, travelling around and making that statement since Groundhog Day, 2003 that she felt the need to register a copyright on it. Yep, for two years another elected official has been travelling around saying liberal ought to be dead, no, that we ought to export them to someplace and kill them (think about it... the idea is we buy them a ticket to be human shields, and then we drop bombs on them) and she is being paid for it.

That speaks to a trend, one which is wide, and sadly deep, going back years.

So, when they whine about the Churchills, and the Jordans, use the Gibbons, and the Norquists, the Abramoffs, the Coulters, the Dobsons. Point out that these people are given not brickbats, but plaudits. They get the ear of the President, and the op-ed pages of the NYT, and the Wall Street Journal. They are given access to the living rooms of America. Who, were it not for the high-dudgeon they affected, would have known of the words of Ward Churchill?

Who can avoid the ranks of the Coulters, the Savages, the Limbaughs?

Food

Danish is proceeding apace.

This is the first time I've really needed the rolling pin Maia bought me for Christmas. There are times I think she buys/makes me kitchen equipment for the same reason men buy lingerie.

If the recipe is right, I ought to have about 20 of them coming out of the oven ca. 1100.

Anyone who wants to come over for breakfast, just let me know.

Since this seems to be much easier than one might think, I may take a stab at pastry sometime soon. I think a freezer might be a good idea first, otherwise I'll have to plan an entire dinner around it.

Hrmn...

Escargots bourguignonne, in pastry cups, rolled lamb en croute (a wonderful bit of optical food, leg of lamb is butterflied by the butcher, so the shin sticks out. Into the roast one places a potato, or two, which has been cored, and filled with a carrot, so the image, when it's carved is as though the bone has been sliced, as well as the meat One can use the bone to make stock; or a demi glace to sauce the meat), and then napoleons for desert.

Dry white with the soup the snails, some Amarone with the roast, more of the white with the salad and a TBA with the cheese, after the napoleons. I'd probably add asparagus, and some slivered tomatoes on the side. For salad, a variation on an endive salad from Mon Grenier. Pecans, mustard vinaigrette,slivered belgian endive on a bed of butter lettuce. For Maia I will leave off the blue cheese, for the rest of us I might make it with stilton.

Right now I hear the timer beeping, so I have to go and roll it out again, fold it in thirds and put it back in the fridge for another hour. I think when that is done I'll make some somen and drink some sake.

See you in the morning.

Wildmon wants your input

The American Family Association has a push poll, asking if PBS should get public monies.

They, perforce, are agin' it.

Go here and take a moment to share your views, whatever they be.

If you give them a valid e-mail address, they will keep you informed of the things which interest them. They are very good about giving the e-mail address of the people they have form letters for.

If you don't want to give your actuall state, 20500 is in Virginia.