Whoever nominated Ahmad Chalabi for prom king is getting pantsed.
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by Tim F| 51 Comments
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Whoever nominated Ahmad Chalabi for prom king is getting pantsed.
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4tehlulz
oh shi-
zmulls
Haven’t heard from Chalabi for a while. Think he’ll pop up before the November election? Or immediately after it….?
Tom in Texas
Well, beyond the tragedy of the Simpsons en espanol expiring under Chavez’ tyrannical grasp, there’s Armbinder’s purely speculative list of possible VP’s. I quote en toto:
I think Biden may be better suited for a cabinet post. I love Dodd for Veep, but don’t see a lot to gain from Daschle or Napolitano. Not that I have anything against them, but I think you aren’t doing much for a state advantage (AZ and SD remain highly unlikely, in my view). I think the Mountain West may be better delivered either through a Hispanic VP nod (though I’m not a huge Richardson guy) or a conservative gun rights Dem like Webb.
eponymous
Did a double take as I thought the sentence read “..Ahmad Chalabi for PORN king..”.
Now I have to get THAT image out of my mind…
Tom in Texas
O and because that glaring “D” by Chuck’s name is incorrect, I think Hagel does much for that same demo.
Jen
Let’s see just how open this thread is.
I am taking dinner to 18 Obama staffers at the local campaign office. (This was a service that was requested, I’m not like June Cleaver on speed or something.) Some of them are vegetarian. I am trying to decide between:
veggie chili, cornbread, & salad –or–
chipotle meatballs & rice with veggie quesadillas (more work, but a little different) –or–
something else which you guys will suggest.
Also, I saw Michelle Obama last night, and so did about 3,200 more people than her previous crowd record without Oprah. She was great. I know she’s had plenty of practice giving her speech, but it was good.
Brachiator
Chalabi, like a rash that won’t go away, is the gift that keeps on giving. There were a number of stories back in November 2007 that pointed out how the US was using him as a pro-Western power broker Chalabi profile or this Huffinton Post blog post, Gangsta Lean: The L.A. Times Would Have You Believe Ahmad Chalabi Was A Largely Reputable Person
A link to the original LA Times story may still be available here (Chalabi returns to prominence and power)
What’s even funnier is that the US is furiously looking for a Chalabi for Iran (Grooming the next Ahmad Chalabi):
This shit just never stops.
Zifnab
I’d hit that.
Buck
Definitely veggie chili and cornbread. To hell with the salad. Just double up on the cornbread.
Incertus
Jen,
I vote for the chili–easier to serve to a large group, and easier to make well for a large group. Individual things tend to fall apart in my experience.
Tom in Texas, I don’t get where all this South Carolina love is coming from in the McCain Veep race. That’s about as solid a state for the Republicans as exists. Why in the hell would McCain choose a running mate from there?
And on Obama’s side, Dodd is out because Connecticut has a Republican governor, and no way do you give up a Senate seat right now.
mellowjohn
re: dodd for vp.
personally, i’d much rather see him as majority leader.
Zifnab
That said, if Obama selects Tom Daschle as his running mate I will vote for him, but only after punching someone repeatedly in the nuts to work off my fury.
Biggest waste of space Senate Majority Leader in modern history. He went from middling, centrist pre-9/11 pussy to Bush Doormate post-9/11 pussy so fast it made my head spin. And the Republicans still made a point of running the poor schlub out of office for not kowtowing long and hard enough to President Codpiece.
joe
Second on the veggie chili.
Corn, even just frozen corn, gives each bite a nice little pop.
jake
Khalilzad doesn’t want to stack chairs, turn off the lights.
I’m not sure if this can be an official resignation announcement since he didn’t mention his family.
Jen
Chili it is! I will look for a good recipe.
There definitely has to be salad, though. I’m a mama, I try to integrate green into every meal, even though my kids are usually too smart for me. Once I made pizza with some grated broccoli, just the finest little wisps of broccoli on the sauce — you probably didn’t even know that you could grate broccoli, did you? — which I covered up with the cheese. It was foolproof. They found it, and rejected and denounced my pizza.
Pb
So some of them are vegetarian–what about the rest of them? All I’m saying is, if you go with the chili, stick some beef in some of it. Personally, though, I’d still vote for the quesadilla dish. As for side dishes, how about a potato salad?
Mary
Jen obviously raised no fools.
Krista
I’ve got a veggie chili recipe for you, Jen. Obviously, you’ll need to fiddle with the quantities, but most of this stuff is to taste anyway, so there are no hard and fast rules. Just adjust it all to taste, and you’ll be fine.
First of all, get yourself some Texturized Vegetable Protein (TVP). You can usually find it in the organic section of your regular grocery store. You’ll need to rehydrate it with some liquid. Water works, but for more flavour, try mushroom or vegetable broth.
In a big-ass pot, on medium or so, cook up some minced onions and garlic until it all softens. Throw in a can of chopped tomatoes and a can of tomato sauce. Add in some chili powder, some red pepper flakes, some chipotle seasoning, and a small amount of cocoa. Fling in your rehydrated TVP. Stir it all up. Then, taste it to see how the spices are working out for you.
Then, add in some canned black beans (drained and rinsed, of course), and some canned corn.
If it looks too liquidy, you can just fling another bit of dried TVP right into the pot (a little at a time, though — the stuff expands like a bugger once it’s rehydrated.) You want it to have a nice beefy texture, so feel free to fiddle with your ingredients until the texture’s right for you. Simmer it for awhile to let all the flavours come together. Taste it again and adjust what you need to adjust.
When you serve it, if you’ve got some shredded soy cheese and some fresh chopped cilantro to go on top of it, so much the better.
Krista
I just reread that and should add that you only want to rehydrate your TVP about a cupful at a time, add it in, and see how it’s looking in the chili. The way I had written it makes it look as though I was advising you to rehydrate the entire package and put it all in the chili at once. That’d be a bit excessive, and you’d wind up with enough chili for 180 staffers after having thinned it back out again.
For 18 people, I’d say about 6 cans of each canned ingredient should do fine. When I get home, I can look up the exact quantities of stuff and re-post it, if you don’t feel like winging it.
Darkness
Whoever gets the Dem VP nod better have a full camera prod in all the uncomfortably places checking for anything the least bit untoward in their past. Everything will come out, and sometimes the Dems just completely blow this background check. It makes my palms sweaty just worrying about it. Let’s hope they are delaying while armies of smarmy PIs are doing their work.
Jen
I have not heard of this, but will keep an open mind and look out for it. I hope they took the money they saved on not branding it with a yummy-sounding name and put it into product quality.
Rick Taylor
Via the left coaster, another scientist is warning the current goals for carbon emissions we aren’t meeting aren’t nearly stringent enough.
Pb
Jen,
Here’s the wiki page for it–it’s basically soy flour, processed sort of like how pasta is made.
Krista
Heh. That’s not the brand name. There are probably all kinds of different manufacturers of it, and they might put yummy-sounding names on it. But that’s what the basic product is. Bob’s Red Mill is one of the companies that has it, and I think they sell most everywhere.
It really does mimic the texture of ground beef once it’s rehydrated. Not being vegetarian, I sometimes rehydrate it in beef broth. That chili is good for those crazy-busy days when…oh shit…you’ve forgotten to defrost anything, as it really only takes about twenty minutes to make, tops, and you don’t need to prep anything in advance.
cbear
Wow, that sounds tasty.
File that under: some things are better left a mystery.
Punchy
I first read this as “punching myself….”. It’s actually much funnier that way. And painful.
jack-of-all-thumbs
OK, this is odd. A few minutes ago CNN had a red banner headline up about the death of a major al Queda figure from natural causes. I didn’t catch the name, but the assumption that I made was that he was our biggest catch – currently in U.S. custody (probably Guantanamo).
A few minutes later, the banner is gone, no story to replace it and no story anywhere else that I’ve found. Any ideas?
Jen
TPM sez, the link is borked tho, that HRC is trying to spin an upcoming estimated $1.5mil fundraising day with Elton Friggin John, as an “extraordinary” $2.5 mil day.
Or, as Obama calls it, “Thursday”.
Punchy
Unfuckingbelievable.
They need ammo, reinforcements, a nice bed, and some drones. We give them these.
And I’m SURE they’re calibrated for the Afghan language and mannerisms, right? And all that sand, dirt, and bomb dust won’t possibly affect all those fancy buttons, right?
Wow.
Tim F.
Terminator versus Predator? I would rent that.
Tom in Texas
Jack:
perhaps you mean this?
Not in Guantanamo, but he died this morning.
Buck
If I eat my salad can I still have two pieces of cornbread?
jack-of-all-thumbs
Thanks. I stand corrected.
Pb
jack-of-all-thumbs,
It’s nothing–just some guy named al-masri that we supposedly killed back in January, died perhaps from hepatitis instead. I don’t know why CNN wouldn’t want to trumpet that success…
cleek
Fark:
Jen
Well, sure, honey. I make mine kind of sweet. Some people like the not-sweet kind.
Darkness
Given the mysteries of hamburger from downed cattle wallowing in their own feces, that’s saying a lot.
Back before my soy intolerant days, we used a lot of this. You can find it with the Bob’s Red Mills flours which are quite common in most groceries now. The way we made it taste like hamburger in chili (again, not saying a lot) was to cut up lots of onion, add that to pan with generous amount of corn oil, and then stir in the dry TVP. Fry that until it just starts to brown. This works well because the onions give up just enough moisture to the tvp for this process. Add lots of chopped mushrooms and fry a little more (not much tho, as they are moisture-hungry) then add your tomatoes. I would cheat sometimes and add more mushroom stock as this has a real meaty flavor that will fool a non vege quite easily.
RSA
Have Irregardless or another veggie-friendly restaurant cater the meal? Assuming (a) laziness–which applies to me–and (b) it’s someone else’s money, which may not be the case.
Otherwise the chili sounds good. Too bad that the signature meals of NC tend to be so pork-centered.
cleek
or Monday April 21st, 1:00 – 1:01pm EST
Dennis - SGMM
Of course the troops need another useless, unproven and possibly counterproductive piece of tech. No point in simply training and equipping enough people to do the job now is there?
This whole thing is becoming way to reminiscent of the “mods n’ pods” theory of equipment during the time that MacNamara was SECDEF.
Jen
Oh, that’s cool, Cleek. I wonder if I can get a group of 4 together to be a person.
All right, I’m sold on the TVP. I get the Morningstar farms veggie sausage patties, which really are tasty, and sometimes the frozen fake ground beef. It sounds like the TVP might be the cheaper version of the fake ground beef.
cleek
instead of TVP, you could try Quorn. i sometimes throw some Quorn “crumbles” into sketti sauce if i don’t have any ground beef handy. it has a pretty nice meat-like texture and a decent (bland but not offensive) flavor.
cbear
That was kind of my point.
I do my best to avoid slaughterhouses, sausage factories, and delivery rooms. I guess I’m just too delicate for some things.
OriGuy
If McCain’s VP choice is Pawlenty, it will be because Minnesota is a swing state, but I bet some people in MN will vote for him to get him out of the statehouse.
joe
Oh, Zinfab, I don’t have…I don’t think the American people are comfortable with that. They haven’t reached a comfort level with nut punching. I’m deeply, deeply concerned that this lack of comfort could cause people to become uncomfortable.
Mewl, mewl, please don’t be mean to me.
DBrown
OK people – I have the perfect VP for Obama – muscle head Schwarzenegger’s Governor of California; he has board appeal, gets that big state’s votes, reaches out to moderate republicans, and best of all -HE CAN’T BECOME PRESIDENT! If someone off’s Obama, they get Pelosi!!! Obama will be able to travel without SS … bad shorthand, I mean secret service and be safe!
Napoleon
Are you talking about something that is like what goes by the Boca tradename? I can now find it in my grocery rehydrated (its a meat substitute). I think its much better.
Brachiator
Since not all the people are vegetarians, how about some chicken quesadillas as well? This way, you could build from the basic recipe, possibly saving some time, and easily make the menu a little more varied. Here is a site with a recipe for both traditional chicken and “healthy” chicken quesadillas (How to Make Chicken Quesadillas).
By the way, as a old chili-head, I find the notion of veggie chili to be an offense against nature. On the other hand, a little broccoli and carrots in a salad is a thing of beauty.
Buck
I can eat cornmeal dry out of the bag. When it comes to food I ain’t hard to please at all.
Krista
Oh crap — Jen! Cumin! I forgot to mention the cumin!
I’m terrible at memorizing recipes. Why don’t I just post the damn thing later?
Soylent Green
Jen,
People cooking for us vegheads often think if they just leave out the proteinaceous animal stuff, we’ll be happy. But we need protein too. So the artful use of TVP is to be commended, and kudos for asking.