Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

I didn’t have alien invasion on my 2023 BINGO card.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

Consistently wrong since 2002

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Infrastructure week. at last.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

“Squeaker” McCarthy

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

You cannot shame the shameless.

You are here: Home / Politics / Domestic Politics / Yes, We Have No Bananas (Open Thread)

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47Comments

  2. 2.

    Betty Cracker

    @schrodinger’s cat: I love curry, but sadly, my husband does not, so I almost never have it at home. Banana flower curry sounds intriguing, but mine are more likely to end up in a daiquiri or loaf of bread. RE: coconut palms, not in my yard. We should grow some!

  6. 6.

    Xantar

    Vietnamese have been known to slice those up very thinly and roast or fry them. Yes, even before they have bloomed into actual fruit. Pretty reasonable topping for salads.

  10. 10.

    NotMax

    Bananas Foster

    ¼ cup butter
    1 cup brown sugar
    ½ teaspoon cinnamon*
    ¼ cup banana liqueur (optional)
    4 bananas, sliced in half lengthwise, then halved
    ¼ cup dark rum**
    Ice cream (vanilla for the classic preparation)

    Combine the butter, sugar, and cinnamon in pan. Place over low heat and cook, stirring, until the sugar dissolves. Stir in the banana liqueur, then place the bananas in the pan. Turn once to coat with the dissolved sugar mixture. When the banana sections soften and begin to brown, carefully and slowly add the rum. Continue to cook the sauce until the rum is hot, then tip the pan slightly to ignite the rum. When the flames subside, remove the pan from heat, lift the bananas out of the pan and place pieces over each portion of ice cream. Spoon the warm sauce over the top and serve.

    *for a little more zing, add some ground nutmeg or allspice.

    **light rum may be substituted, but whisk in a dollop of molasses or maple syrup to get the darker shade.

  12. 12.

    Tommy

    @TG Chicago:

    The student who learned a hard lesson in proper lubrication had to be rescued by 22 firemen—who drove in on five firetrucks flanked by a number of paramedics—and who did not need any tools or implements to free the man. They just used the “pull out” method.

    Talk about an overwhelming response. If I ever need help I want to be in that town!

  14. 14.

    dmsilev

    @Tommy: I’m guessing it was more along the lines of “Hey, guess what some stupid tourist has done! It’s a slow morning, let’s all go take a look.”

  19. 19.

    the Conster

    Reason No. 3,672 why I love Boston:

    Acting like a tourist and taking pictures at lunch hour, I was taking the picture of a sculptural bas relief on the Common depicting the landing of the Mayflower, commemorating the founding in 1630 of the city of Boston. A half naked (shirtless and shoeless and very very tan) older gentleman (whom I suspected was homeless) sitting smoking mentions that there’s an inscription on the back. I knew it, but took another look at it, and one of the inscriptions is from John Winthrop about being the city on the hill. The man gets up and knowing every word of the inscription starts telling me that Reagan took the meaning of that and subverted it, and that’s been the problem with this country for the last 34 years. Turns out he’s a gadfly autodidact who prints pamphlets, campaigns for local politicians including Liz (Warren), calls Scott Brown Scott Brownshirt, and thinks that this president has been disrespected unlike any politician in his lifetime, and HATES Wall Street banks because they’re criminals, which is what his pamphlets are all about. He says that Republicans are all John Birchers now, and he sits there like a spider and waits for tourists from red states to enter his trap. We talked for an hour and a half.

  20. 20.

    rikyrah

    The Boomerang Kids Won’t Leave

    By Adam Davidson, New York Times Magazine – June 23, 2014

    Annie Kasinecz has two different ways of explaining why, at age 27, she still lives with her mom. In the first version — the optimistic one — she says that she is doing the sensible thing by living rent-free as she plans her next career move. After graduating from Loyola University Chicago, Kasinecz struggled to support herself in the midst of the recession, working a series of unsatisfying jobs — selling ads at the soon-to-be bankrupt Sun-Times, bagging groceries at Whole Foods, bartending — in order to pay down her student loans. But she inevitably grew frustrated with each job and found herself stuck in one financial mess after another. Now that she’s back in her high-school bedroom, perhaps she can finally focus on her long-term goals.

    But in the second version — the bleaker one — Kasinecz admits that she fears that her mom’s house in Downers Grove, Ill., half an hour west of the city, has become a crutch. She has been living in that old bedroom for four years and is nowhere closer to figuring out what she’s going to do with her career. “Everyone tells me to just pick something,” she says, “but I don’t know what to pick.”

    One in five people in their 20s and early 30s is currently living with his or her parents. And 60 percent of all young adults receive financial support from them. That’s a significant increase from a generation ago, when only one in 10 young adults moved back home and few received financial support. The common explanation for the shift is that people born in the late 1980s and early 1990s came of age amid several unfortunate and overlapping economic trends. Those who graduated college as the housing market and financial system were imploding faced the highest debt burden of any graduating class in history. Nearly 45 percent of 25-year-olds, for instance, have outstanding loans, with an average debt above $20,000. (Kasinecz still has about $60,000 to go.) And more than half of recent college graduates are unemployed or underemployed, meaning they make substandard wages in jobs that don’t require a college degree. According to Lisa B. Kahn, an economist at Yale University, the negative impact of graduating into a recession never fully disappears. Even 20 years later, the people who graduated into the recession of the early ’80s were making substantially less money than people lucky enough to have graduated a few years afterward, when the economy was booming.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/22/magazine/its-official-the-boomerang-kids-wont-leave.html

  21. 21.

    Paul in KY

    @Amir Khalid: Ones that eat bananas, I guess. Florida, I think, would get insects from down South where bananas would naturally grow. I lived in Florida for 3 years & I can tell you it is a bug’s paradise.

    Don’t look too closely at the grass.

  27. 27.

    Tommy

    @the Conster: I’ve only been to Boston once. I was staying at the Marriott on the harbor. I recall getting into a cab and saying take me downtown. I got dropped off at Faneuil Hall. Wow.

    I walked a few blocks from there and had a beer and some oysters. The bartender told me George Washington troops came in. He then told me there was a Freedom Trail. Right outside. Go look.

  28. 28.

    Cassidy

    Made a nice little stew today of black beans and rice, baked chicken, plantains, corn, and sweet potatoes. Finished it off with some Goya Sofrito. If I weren’t at work it would have accompanied a margarita.

  30. 30.

    Botsplainer

    @rikyrah:

    I graduated straight into the Reagan recession (defined as his entire term, and included everybody that wasn’t in either finance or inheritance). In some ways, I never feel caught up, and even when times are relatively flush, live out to every last dollar as I distrust savings institutions.

    “Morning in America”, my fucking ass. That lie was built on the S&L bubble.

  31. 31.

    the Conster

    @Tommy:

    Every so often on a nice day like today I put my tourist hat on and actually poke around. As many times I’ve been past the State House for instance, I never noticed the big statue of JFK kind of tucked away but quite visible if you’re looking. I poked down some alleys on Beacon Hill to see into the private gardens. Also all of the statues and plaques and graves, for everyone from Kahlil Gibran to the ducklings from Make Way for Ducklings. And yes, the Freedom Trail is at your feet, and actually free. Next week I’ll explore more of the waterfront and the North End.

    ETA: You were at the Union Oyster House.

    “In 1775, Capen’s silk and dry goods store became headquarters for Ebenezer Hancock, the first paymaster of the Continental Army. There is no reason to doubt that Washington himself was familiar with its surroundings. At the very spot where diners today enjoy their favorite New England specialties, Federal troops received their “war wages” in the official pay-station. During the revolution the Adams, Hancock, and Quincy wives, as well as their neighbors, often sat in their stalls of the Capen House sewing and mending clothes for the colonists.”

  32. 32.

    Morzer

    @Tommy:

    Next time you come, get yourself over to Somerville and climb up to the Prospect Hill Monument. Great views of the city and an interesting bit of history when you look at the flag.

  33. 33.

    Betty Cracker

    @the Conster: I lived in the North End for awhile — an apartment building in an alley off Hanover. It was a great place to live back then (20 years ago).

  34. 34.

    the Conster

    @Betty Cracker:

    Ah, Betty you should see the place now. Where the SE Expwy used to be – that horrid rusting green eyesore with the dead zone underneath, is the Rose Kennedy Greenway and arguably now the shiny new center of Boston. The North End doesn’t feel like it’s out past the highway anymore – it’s completely accessible without feeling like you might die in oncoming traffic because you didn’t notice one of the lights change.

  35. 35.

    Schlemizel

    @rikyrah:
    The boomerang kids CAN”T leave. The Masters Of the Universe won’t give them jobs that pay well enough to get out of the house. This of course has deep repercussions in falling home prices, continued weakness in constructions and general death of the middle class life style. But when the MOtU have the last dime I am sure they will be happy to share.

  37. 37.

    PurpleGirl

    @gene108: Banana leaves are also used for making paper. There is a foundation (forgot it’s name) that at one time only wanted to accept applications that were printed on this banana paper. I tried to source it and couldn’t find a source or priace (the foundation did not recommend where to get it) and I called them and got permission to use the recycled printer paper from Staples.

  38. 38.

    WaterGirl

    @gene108: My birthday dinner at a restaurant last night was served on a banana leaf*.

    * banana leaf, on a plate. does that count?

  39. 39.

    StringOnAStick

    @rikyrah: I resemble that history. I got my MS in hydrogeology in 1987, you know, the last huge stock market decline before the one in 2000. Top of my class in undergad and grad school, years of experience with the USGS at a time when that usually meant you’d end up with a career position with them, but no, they were RIFing when I graduated. I managed a few years in consulting engineering gigs before the real estate collapse in CA in the early 1990’s took out most of those firms either partially or entirely. Anything associated with development work was over, and the usual fall-back jobs weren’t there (oil and gas collapsed in 1982, right before I got my undergrad). Between my degrees I was stuck in my home town, ground zero for the oil shale implosion; I couldn’t even get a job as a waitress because I only had experience as a hydrogeologist.

    Long story short, we have this myth in the US that it is all up to us as individuals to make a successful career of life, but if you happen to graduate as the economy is heading south then the chances of you’re doing well are much, much slimmer. Ask anyone who graduated or tried to start a business in 1929, 1987, and now 2007. The effects linger for a long time. I ended up getting a dental hygiene degree in 2008 and though a part of me would love to go back to the groundwater work I used to do, no one is going to hire someone who hasn’t worked in the field since the mid-1990’s and who is on the downside of 55. These kids who are stuck not working in what they graduated in fall farther and farther down the pile with each passing year after they’ve graduated and not had any relevant career experience; eventually it becomes insurmountable.

  40. 40.

    Mnemosyne

    @rikyrah:

    I managed to graduate during TWO recessions: 1992 and 2003. I didn’t have to go back to living with my parents, but only because they were willing to give me financial support to avoid it.

  43. 43.

    Ruckus

    @StringOnAStick:
    Tell me about it.
    Started a small retail store in early 2006 at the ripe young age of 55. An abrupt end was achieved as almost everyone stopped buying anything they couldn’t eat starting in Dec 2007. Couldn’t move in with parents, both are gone. A good friend let me live at his house for a year. This among other reasons is why my last 20 yrs has been, what’s the word? Oh yes, I’ve got it now, crap. And no, having so many others in the same sinking boat doesn’t make it better. But you already know that.

  44. 44.

    tybee

    our bananas got kilt back to the ground in that 36 hour event of below freezing temps back in january. dunno if we’ll get fruit this year.
    something i never knew until we grew bananas was that it can take 5 or 6 months from the time the bloom stalk appears until the fruit ripens.

  45. 45.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Damn, I am jealous Betty. Nothing better than a fresh plantain from a Mexican market. Except for maybe a fresh pineapple from a Mexican market. One from home???? Jealous, just jealous.

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