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Happy Thanksgiving! Anything else on the agenda, for skeptics and/or our non-American readers?
Thursday Morning Open Thread: Thanksgiving ChestnutsPost + Comments (159)
This post is in: Open Threads, #notintendedtobeafactualstatement
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Happy Thanksgiving! Anything else on the agenda, for skeptics and/or our non-American readers?
Thursday Morning Open Thread: Thanksgiving ChestnutsPost + Comments (159)
This post is in: Foreign Affairs, Republican Venality, War, Assholes
Graham says "kill every bastard" is a better ISIS approach then "bomb the shit out of them." https://t.co/chZPFsL3O8 pic.twitter.com/6zcmpV3VJY
— daveweigel (@daveweigel) November 23, 2015
Every so often, we’re reminded just how ugly a bullet we dodged in the 2008 election. Dave Weigel, in the Washington Post:
… This weekend, as candidates barnstormed in the first primary states, the fear of terrorism dominated the questions they got from voters. Republican Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey O. Graham of South Carolina courted those questions, making eight weekend stops on behalf of the latter’s presidential campaign. As they trekked from VFW hall to diner to VFW hall, the senators were really selling a new military commitment in Iraq and Syria — 10,000 U.S. soldiers bolstering an allied (mostly Arab) force and crushing the Islamic State…
“If you’re worried about going to the mall, you won’t worry if I’m president,” Graham said at a town hall in Manchester, N.H. “If you’re worried about your kids getting on the planes going home for Thanksgiving, you won’t worry if I’m president.”
…. Both McCain and Graham argued that colleagues such as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) are using the no-refugees issue as a smoke screen to distract from their skepticism about fighting the Islamic State on the ground. But keeping refugees out isn’t enough to keep the country safe, according to McCain and Graham — and voters still need to be sold on that.
Town hall by town hall, the two friends and colleagues were trying to move voters from a general sense that the Islamic State needed to be defeated to a certitude that U.S. troops needed to be on the ground. That was not happening yet. Trump could promise to “bomb the s—” out of the Islamic State and get an ovation for what Graham saw as a laughable half-measure…
People like the idea of dropping bombs from the sky to make the boogeymen go away. The idea of sending their kids and grandkids off to get killed or mutilated, not so much. You’d think this bias would be understandable at least to the bombs-from-the-sky guy who ended up in a Vietnamese prison camp, but noooo…
Late Night Antique Re-Runs Open Thread: The Bombsey TwinsPost + Comments (61)
This post is in: Food, Open Threads
It's a wonderful thing when your teenagers finally accept you are not going to get any cooler. pic.twitter.com/jl9HAzqPlp
— Bob Schooley (@Rschooley) November 25, 2015
When we go to our favorite Chinese restaurant, I usually order their Singapore style rice stick with no shrimp. Sometimes the waiter points out that the eggrolls my husband just ordered contain shrimp, and I’ll assure him that I’m not allergic — I just don’t like the taste of shrimp (so I don’t eat the eggrolls). But I never realized how complicated providing “allergy free” dishes from a restaurant kitchen could be until I read Neil Swidey’s Boston Globe article, “Why food allergy fakers need to stop“:
BEFORE WE GET INTO IT, let me make one thing clear. This intervention is not aimed at those with life-threatening food allergies or similarly grave medical conditions. I would never question people whose faces will balloon if they ingest trace amounts of shellfish. Or people who risk going into anaphylactic shock with a whiff of peanut dust. Or people whose ingestion of a smidge of gluten will send their bodies on an autoimmune witch hunt that over time will eat away at the lining of their small intestines and potentially lead to everything from infertility to cancer. Those problems are very real, and everyone who is afflicted with one or more of them has my sympathy.
I’m talking about the rest of you. Those of you who don’t eat garlic because you detest its smell or avoid cauliflower because it makes you fart or have gone gluten-free because you heard it worked wonders for Jennifer Aniston or Lady Gaga or Dave, your toned instructor from spin class.
When you settle into your seat at a restaurant, don’t be shy about telling your server your food preferences. By all means, ask if your dish can be prepared garlic-free or cauliflower-free or gluten-free. You’re paying good money, so you should get the meal that you want, not one that leaves you riding home in a foul mood and a plume of fetid air. The days of the imperious no-substitutions chef, telling you to take it or leave it, now seem as dated as a rerun of that Seinfeld “Soup Nazi” episode from 20 years ago.
But for the love of Julia Child and the sake of every other soul in the restaurant, particularly the underpaid line cooks sweating their way through another Saturday night shift, please, please stop describing your food preferences as an allergy. That is a very specific medical term, and invoking it triggers an elaborate, time-consuming protocol in any self-respecting kitchen. It shouldn’t be tossed around as liberally as the sea salt on the house-made (gluten-free) breadsticks…
This isn’t just my opinion. The physician-researcher who put gluten on the map in America and the parent-activist who led the crusade that transformed how seriously this country takes food allergies both admitted to me that they can’t believe how much things have gotten out of hand.
Open Thread: Food Allergies Versus Food PreferencesPost + Comments (151)
Real quick before the holiday, one last recipe: Peanut Butter Cup Pie.
Ingredients
1 cup chocolate graham crackers crumbs
8 ounces of unsalted butter
16 ounces of dark chocolate chips
2 cups of peanut butter (I prefer chunky, but if you like smooth that works too)
32 ounces of heavy whipping cream
Directions
Grease a 9 or 10 inch pie pan. Melt the butter and combine with the graham cracker crumbs. Cover the bottom and coat the sides with the graham cracker crumbs. Place in freezer. Place the dark chocolate chips in a medium sized mixing bowl. Divide the whip cream in half. Bring 16 ounces to a boil. Once it reaches a boil remove from heat and pour over the dark chocolate chips. Let stand for five minutes and then whisk until smooth to produce a dark chocolate ganache. Set aside at room temperature. Whip the heavy whipping cream into whipped cream. Set aside in the fridge. Clean whisk or mixer and attachments and whip the 2 cups of peanut butter until fluffy and smooth. Fold in 1/2 the whipped cream. Remove the pie pan from the freezer. Coat the bottom and sides with half the ganache and replace into the freezer for ten minutes. After ten minutes remove from the freezer and fill the pie with the whipped peanut butter/whipped cream filling. Place in the fridge for 20 minutes. Remove from fridge and pour the remainder of the ganache over the top of the filling smoothing it out until it is completely covered. Place back into the fridge and refrigerate for at least two hours. Once thoroughly chilled remove from the fridge, slice, and garnish with some of the remaining whipped cream for serving.
Enjoy!
This post is in: Domestic Politics, Open Threads
I recently bought a new birdfeeder that hangs on the window near my home office workspace via suction cups. So far, the birds have boycotted it, but I have a new squirrel-friend:
Shut up. She can’t help it. That’s how you’d look too if you were just noshing on your sunflower seeds and looked up to find T-Rex staring back at you. With a camera.
I’m not one of those people who begrudge squirrels seed from my birdfeeders. If anything, the squirrels are more entertaining than the birds — complicated acrobatics are required for the squirrel to get into that feeder.
The feeder is attached to the upper pane of the window, so the dogs frequently pass by without noticing the squirrel. But when they do, they carry on as if a horde of zombie mail carriers were attempting to crash through the wall.
I still haven’t worked out how I’m going to prevent those outbursts when I have a conference call scheduled. I may have to break down and get shades or curtains for that bare window just to hide the squirrels from the dogs.
*****
We are hosting 11 at our place tomorrow. Here’s the stuff I’m making:
– Turkey
– Gravy
– Dressing (or stuffing, as some call it)
– Mashed potatoes
– Cranberry relish
– Fried cabbage
– Corn soufflé
– Candied sweet potatoes
In addition to that, I’ve farmed out several side dishes to guests, including the obligatory green bean casserole and mac ‘n cheese. I’m also making a fall sangria (i.e., tossing apple slices and cranberries into my regular sangria) and serving several appetizers.
Friday morning, we’ll make a picnic basket of our leftovers and set out for the northern counties, where we’ll camp out, canoe and visit my old grandma and other relatives.
*****
The Thanksgiving before last, my husband, kid and I traveled up to have Thanksgiving with my mom and grandma at Mom’s little house in the woods. I was in charge of the turkey and dressing. About two hours before we were scheduled to eat, my brother called me and said he and his two kids were on their way — to surprise Mom.
They were supposed to be having Thanksgiving with his wife’s family, but my brother changed his mind on Thanksgiving Day. I’ve gotta admit, I was annoyed as hell, though I hid it well on the phone.
I’m not this woman, but when I undertake a herculean task like cooking Thanksgiving dinner, it’s important to me to do it right. Since we were cooking for just a handful of people, three completely unexpected guests threw a monkey-wrench into my plans, and I wasn’t even supposed to tell Mom, my fellow cook, about the last-minute 50% increase in mouths to feed.
I didn’t tell her, either. But I found my husband outside by the campfire and ranted to him about the imminent arrival of my inconsiderate shithead brother and his two picky eaters. Who does that, ferchrissake? (I asked, rhetorically.) A person who has never cooked an elaborate meal for other people, that’s who.
After I got all that off my chest and had a glass of chardonnay, my husband pointed out that my brother’s arrival would make Mom and Grandma happy, and that we really would be able to feed everyone one way or another. He didn’t say “quit being so inflexible and enjoy your family like you’re supposed to over the holidays” in so many words, but he conveyed that message in the nicest possible way, and I heard it.
And you know what? Everything turned out fine. Everyone got enough to eat. Mom was surprised and thrilled to have ALL of her grandchildren under one roof along with two of her three kids.
We didn’t know it at the time, but that was the last Thanksgiving we’d ever have with Mom. The ultimately fatal heart problem that would take her from us at age 68 would manifest two months later, and a month after that, she would be gone.
So I’m damn glad my brother did unexpectedly show up with his kids that Thanksgiving, even if it was inconsiderate to the cooks. And I’m going to try to keep that in mind as little annoyances arise over this holiday season, as they inevitably will.
None of that shit is important. The people you love are, even when they show up unexpectedly or express absurd opinions or turn the gravy boat over onto your white linen tablecloth.
Anyway, sorry to get all heavy on you in the middle of an open thread that started off innocuously enough about squirrels. Please feel free to relate your plans, detail your cooking strategy or discuss other topics!
by David Anderson| 88 Comments
This post is in: Crazification Factor, Election 2016, Bring On The Meteor, Clap Louder!, I Can't Believe We're Losing to These People
Just a quick comment on a recent Vox article:
But in a head-to-head matchup among Republican voters, Trump beats Rubio 57-43. That suggests that Trump’s ceiling, at least among Republicans, is far above his current 25 to 30 percent, and he may well benefit as weaker candidates drop out.
This actually makes sense given the current polling that we have seen in the Republican race. For most of the year, if you add up the combined polled support of Trump, Carson and Fiorina plus attribute some proportion of Ted Cruz’s vote as extraordinarily anti-Republican establishment vote, this faction is the dominant faction within the Republican primary electorate. The sum of Trump, Carson, Fiorina often is over 50% and usually closer to 60%. The favored Establishment candidates (Bush, Walker, Kasich, Christie, Rubio) have either dropped out, or combined can poll less then a quarter of the Republican primary electorate.
Primaries often see large swings as the differences between candidates are not stark. However it is easier for a person to switch support to a candidate who is running in the same cluster as the candidate that the person is switching support from, than for support to go to a candidate in a distant cluster. The anti-establishment lane in the GOP primary is bigger than the establishment, and one of the candidates can’t be pushed aside due to a lack of funds.
So when the question and answer space collapses to only a single establishment and a single non-establishment choice, people gravitate towards their closest option from their current preferred option. That means Trump is picking up all of his current support and the vast majority of the supporters of the other anti-establishment candidates while Rubio consolidates everyone else. And one faction right now is much bigger than the other.
Split the party in two and win with the bigger halfPost + Comments (88)
by DougJ| 51 Comments
This post is in: Our Failed Media Experiment, Our Failed Political Establishment
It’s been years since there were any real checks on Republican candidates’ ability to lie. Trump is just the first to take full advantage of the situation (via):
Politicians are quickly learning that they can say just about anything and get away with it. Along with vindication, apology and suffering, there now exists a fourth way forward for the politician spewing whoppers: Blame the backlash on media bias and walk away a hero.
[….]In all of these cases, the candidates doubled or tripled down when pestered by reporters and fact-checkers and insisted they’d been victimized by biased media.