Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Apparently Tim’s beer blkogging was a smashing success, because neither he nor I feel up to writing anything.
I didn’t do anything last night, but am unmotivated and just prepping for the playoffs. You all fill me in with what I am missing in the comments here, if you like.
This friday constitutes a big shout-out to one of my favorite NPR shows: Splendid Table with Lynn Rosetto Casper. With respect to knowing your shit she’s like the Magliozzi brothers (Car Talk), except that you can’t, or shouldn’t, eat motor oil. Via a guest who wrote a book about being a completely insufferable beer snob (my birthday’s in August), Lynn has this advice for pairing beer with food:
Think of ale as red wine and lager as white wine. In other words, when red meat or any dish that you would normally pair with red wine is on the menu, select an ale to serve with it. Conversely, if the main course is fish or poultry, try a lager.
Hoppiness in beer = acidity in wine. Anytime you would seek a wine with high acidity, such as with spicy or oily food, choose a beer with significant hoppiness or bitterness. The more acidic you would want the wine, the hoppier you will want the beer.
Complement or contrast. Try to match foods to beers with complementary characters, such as a robust stew with a full-bodied ale. Or try a contrasting flavor, such as a crisp, refreshing lager with a heavy cream soup.
Keep the beer sweeter than the dessert. Nothing kills the flavor of a beer like the overpowering sweetness of a dessert, so try to keep the sugar contents of both beer and dessert balanced. (An exception to this rule can be made for chocolate, which pairs well even with dry stout.)
I would add one thing to this list: if you’re thinking about making moules frites, a Belgian tradition that amounts to a big pot of mussels cooked with onions and white wine and paired with bottomless thick-cut french fries with mayonnaise and mustard, then you basically have one choice: Leffe gold.
By far the best of the inexpensive Belgian ales, or the cheapest of the great Belgian ales, in true Belgian bars in the continent Leffe is what you’ll find conveniently served in you choice of a liter or (for small children) a half-liter. The Leffe line only goes up from there, with a good trippel-style dark ale and a concoction they call Radieuse which I can only describe as sunlight in a bottle, but not in the thin wheat-beer way. Indulge your snobbery if you can find it.
For today’s non-beer alternative, I’ve made some effort to answer a commenter’s question of what wine to serve with Thai food. Search me, but with a little searching I came across this discussion thread which seemed helpful. The consensus seems to be Pinot Noir or a dry Riesling depending on what you’re serving, but beware of tannins. The spiciness of Thai will exaggerate tannins and turn your heritage Merlot into a bottom-shelf Mondavi. In fact, with spicy food I wouldn’t worry about the cost or quality as much because in my experience you won’t be able to tell.
This site gives some good advice about cooking Thai food when you’re serving wine. Another site has this to say:
Pad Thai and piquant Thai dishes–
Thai food’s generally light-bodied, but the flavors pack a wallop. And almost every dish combines sweet, sour, salty and hot elements. Chilled, slightly sweet Riesling, especially from Germany, can be fabulous; also look for dry Gewurztraminer or a fruit-packed Sauvignon Blanc, perhaps from New Zealand.
In fact, with truly spicy food you’re usually better off with a good, light (NOT lite) beer. Beer’s coolness and carbonation offset the spiciness in ways that a wine won’t, and the carbohydrates will absorb capscicins which make spicy food ‘hot.’ That relief from the food’s heat then gives you more of an opportunity to enjoy the beer.
*** Update ***
Not to queer Tim’s excellent Beer-Blogging (this is John writing, btw), but currently I am drinking more box wine. Black Box Wine, to be exact, and this Shiraz is pretty damned tasty. Very fruity smell, a bright first taste, and a deep, rich finish. I like it.
Of course I am drinking it because a glass of wine a night is good for your heart.
Friday Beer Blogging: A Match Made In MilwaukeePost + Comments (34)
Good for VA Tech:
Virginia Tech quarterback Marcus Vick was dismissed from the team Friday, the result of numerous legal transgressions and his unsportsmanlike conduct in the Toyota Gator Bowl.
University president Charles Steger announced the dismissal on the same day that coach Frank Beamer met with Vick and his mother in their Hampton Roads home, the school said. Beamer informed them of the decision during the meeting.
Vick, the younger brother of Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick, was suspended from school in 2004 for several legal problems. The junior came under new and intense scrutiny this week after replays showed he stomped on the left calf of Louisville All-American defensive end Elvis Dumervil during the Jan. 2 bowl.
The guy is just a total asshole, as anyone who has watched his on-field antics will tell you. He will probably get drafted by the Raiders in the first round.
Edward_ at Obsidian Wings, who seems to have assumed control of the website for the last two and a half days, has a recent post that distills one of the chief questions that everybody should be asking about Bush’s recent FISA troubles:
If the NSA spying idea is such a good one, now that everyone knows about it, why doesn’t Bush go to Congress and ask them to make it the law of the land? To insist he’s going to keep using it, as he has, without any oversight seems to confirm Naftali’s assertion that his motivation is to “win a conflict over executive power.”
Nobody should doubt at this point that the Bush Doctrine has less to do with militaristic imperialism than it does with a vastly expanded theory of executive power, a theory more or less spelled out by presidential aide John Yoo. You’ll recall that Yoo thinks that basically anything is legal as long as the president feels that it’s necessary. The president, in his view, is the law.
For his part Edward’s main error is to assume that there is a conflict. Right now there isn’t. The Bush doctrine has cemented itself in practice mostly without comment, thanks to a codependent relationship that Bush has shared with his own party’s Congress: he let them write whatever damn law they please (has he yet vetoed a single bill? no.) and they let him assert whatever powers make him happy. Oversight is for Democrats.
Regarding this kind of question it shouldn’t matter where you stand politically. Does this theory make you comfortable? Eventually Hillary will win the oval office, or any other Democrat for that matter. The slime machine isn’t particular. Whether or not you love our government today, eventually it will be staffed by people you hate. Do you want them to have the sort of powers that John Yoo claims for the Executive? Does the new idea of legislating by signing statement (and here) make you comfortable? Look back at those two Clinton years when Democrats controlled Congress, and answer honestly.
Via ISOU, this interesting tidbit in the “Duke” Cunningham case:
Sources familiar with the situation say Cunningham, a California Republican who pleaded guilty Nov. 28 to taking $2.4 million in bribes — including a yacht, a Rolls Royce and a 19th Century Louis-Philippe commode — from a defense contractor, wore a wire at some point during the short interval between the moment he began cooperating with the feds and the announcement of his guilty plea on Nov. 28.
The identity of those with whom the San Diego congressman met while wearing the wire remains unclear, and is the source of furious — and nervous — speculation by congressional Republicans.
Let the dirty bastards sweat.
An open thread so Paddy O’Shea can put his annoying damned threadkilling posts somewhere that won’t piss me off.
The DeLay/Abramoff/Cunningham/Ney/Culture of Corruption Pile-on/fall-out continues. First, the Opinion Journal:
This week’s plea agreement by “super-lobbyist” Jack Abramoff has Republicans either rushing to return his campaign contributions in an act of cosmetic distancing, accuse Democrats of being equally corrupt, or embrace some new “lobbying reform” that would further insulate Members of Congress from political accountability.
Here’s a better strategy: Banish the Abramoff crowd from polite Republican society, and start remembering why you were elected in the first place.
***It’s also notable how few Members of Congress so far have truly been implicated, beyond accepting entirely legal campaign contributions. The most culpable is Ohio’s Bob Ney, who has been cited in a “criminal information” for receiving trips and other favors in return for statements entered into the Congressional Record. Mr. Ney says that he too was duped, but there’s no question he was willing to tap dance on cue for Mr. Scanlon, and that alone is sleaze-by-willing-association. If the House Ethics Committee serves any useful purpose, sanctioning Mr. Ney ought to be it.
The bigger political target is former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, more of whose former aides may end up striking plea deals. This doesn’t implicate Mr. DeLay directly, but the cloud around him clearly isn’t going to dissipate even if he prevails (as he probably will) against his politicized Texas indictment by Ronnie Earle.
Next, the EJ Dionne:
It almost makes you feel sorry for Jack Abramoff.
Republicans once fell all over themselves to get his “moolah,” the term used famously by the disgraced superlobbyist, and to get his advice on dealing with that warm and cuddly entity known as “the lobbying community.”
Suddenly, Abramoff enters two plea bargains, and these former friends ask, in puzzled tones, “Jack Who ?”
Over the past few days, politicians — from President Bush and House Speaker Dennis Hastert on down — raced to return Abramoff contributions, or compassionately sent the moolah off to charity. There’s a scramble to treat him as a wildly defective gene in an otherwise healthy body politic, and to erase the past. But seeing the record of the past clearly is essential to fixing the future.
The WaPo News section has more:
An internal battle is underway among House Republicans to permanently replace Rep. Tom DeLay (Tex.) as majority leader and put in place a new leadership lineup that is better equipped to deal with the growing corruption scandal.
Acting Majority Leader Roy Blunt (Mo.) will ask House Republicans to make his temporary tenure permanent early next month if, as is likely, DeLay is unable to clear his name in the gathering corruption and campaign finance scandals, according to a member of the GOP leadership and several leadership aides.
The move would almost certainly touch off a GOP power struggle between Blunt, whose rise to power was heavily aided by DeLay and House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (Ill.), and House Education and the Workforce Committee Chairman John A. Boehner (Ohio), a former House leader who has been maneuvering for a comeback.
Finally, Ronnie Earle is widening the scope of his prosecution:
The Texas prosecutor who secured an indictment of Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) on money-laundering charges broadened the scope of his inquiry into election spending yesterday, demanding documents related to funds that passed through a nonprofit organization, the U.S. Family Network.
The group, which was founded in 1996 by DeLay’s then-chief of staff, Edwin A. Buckham, received $500,000 in 1999 from the National Republican Congressional Committee and used some of the money to finance radio ads attacking Democrats. The Federal Election Commission fined the party in 2004 for its role in the funding.
The prosecutor, Ronnie Earle, sent subpoenas yesterday to Buckham; the group’s former president, Christopher Geeslin; the NRCC; and the treasurer of DeLay’s leadership political action committee, Americans for a Republican Majority.
I have a feeling this is going to dominate a lot of news cycles.
*** Update ***
This piece (defense? jibberish? silliness?) yesterday from Peggy Noonan deserves a look, if you need a laugh:
The problem with government is that it is run by people, and people are flawed. They are not virtue machines. We are all of us, even the best of us, vulnerable to the call of the low: to greed, conceit, insensitivity, ruthlessness, the desire to show you’re in control, in charge, in command.
If the problem with government is that it is run by people and not, as James Madison put it, angels, the problem with big government is that it is run by a lot of people who are not angels. They can, together and in the aggregate, do much mischief. They can and inevitably will produce a great deal of injustice, corruption and heartlessness.
People in government–people in a huge, sprawling government–often get carried away. And they don’t always even mean to. But they are little tiny parts of a large and overwhelming thing. If government is a steamroller, and that is in good part how I see it, the individuals who work in it are the atoms in the steel. The force of forward motion carries them along. There is inevitably an unaccountability, and in time often an indifference about what the steamroller rolls over. All the busy little atoms are watching each other, competing with each other, winning one for their little cluster. And no one is looking out and being protective of what the steamroller is rolling over–traditions, shared beliefs, individual rights, old assumptions, whatever is being rolled over today.
This is essentially why conservatives of my generation and earlier generations don’t like big government.
It seems Peggy Noonan is channeling P.J. O’Rourke when he wrote that “the Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work and then they get elected and prove it.” Shorter Peggy Noonan- These scandals are inevitable, because big government made them do it.
