Cogitamus

Life in the USA - A Photo Album

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Father Christmas at the North Pole.  Well, at the Arctic Ocean, anyway -- close enough.  If that isn't one fab Santa outfit, I don't know what is.  I bet even Tim Gunn would approve!  Merry Christmas, everyone!

DHS and Walmart: A Match Made in Heaven

In a perfect melding of the Keystone Kops Meet O'Brien, Janet Napolitano is coming to a Walmart near you.  Her video, urging "If You See Something, Say Something," is rolling out at W emporia all across the country:

The message will be continuously looped on TV monitors at the 588 Walmarts in the U.S.  One can only imagine the hilarity that will ensue when one gun-buying customer doesn't like the looks of another.  But then maybe Napolitano doesn't really know the People of Walmart that well, after all.

"Report suspicious activity to your local police or sheriff.  If you need help, ask a Walmart manager for assistance.”  Ah, yes, ask a manager for assistance!  Next time you get in a tug-of-war with another customer over the last Game Boy in the store, just report that sucker to management for "suspicious activity."

Not On Your Life, Hon

In many ways the charm of living in Charm City is that, at heart, it's a small town.  You get to see politics up close and personal.  You get to see neighborhood battles in action, and to understand how those battles affect the local economy and the local zeitgeist.  

And sometimes, you get to see a tempest in a honpot.

The way Southerners use "y'all," and Pittsburghers use "yoons" and "yins," and lots of other people around the country use their own spicy local locutions, Baltimoreans use "hon."  Not only a waitress but a meter maid and a plumber and a teacher and a nurse and an oyster-shucker at Faidley's and even a cop will often end their address to you with the familiar term of endearment, whether they're endeared to you or not.  They might be pleading, they might be pontificating, they might be greeting, they might be scheming, they might be smiling, they might be looking daggers.  But wherever you go, you will hear yourself called "hon."

Many of us find it charming, and there was even a campaign years ago to have "Welcome to Baltimore, Hon" be the official city motto.  Whatever you think of the little word, it's part of our patrimony.

Enter Denise Whiting.

Espionage Act: How the Government Can Engage in Serious Aggression Against the People of the United States by Naomi Wolf

Ballgame just brought this column by Naomi Wolf to our attention in another thread, but I think it deserves its own post.  Excerpt (bolds mine):

. . . These two Senators, and the rest of the Congressional and White House leadership who are coming forward in support of this appalling development, are cynically counting on Americans' ignorance of their own history -- an ignorance that is stoked and manipulated by those who wish to strip rights and freedoms from the American people. They are manipulatively counting on Americans to have no knowledge or memory of the dark history of the Espionage Act -- a history that should alert us all at once to the fact that this Act has only ever been used -- was designed deliberately to be used -- specifically and viciously to silence people like you and me.

The Espionage Act was crafted in 1917 -- because President Woodrow Wilson wanted a war and, faced with the troublesome First Amendment, wished to criminalize speech critical of his war. In the run-up to World War One, there were many ordinary citizens -- educators, journalists, publishers, civil rights leaders, union activists -- who were speaking out against US involvement in the war. The Espionage Act was used to round these citizens by the thousands for the newly minted 'crime' of their exercising their First Amendment Rights. A movie producer who showed British cruelty in a film about the Revolutionary War (since the British were our allies in World War I) got a ten-year sentence under the Espionage act in 1917, and the film was seized; poet E.E. Cummings spent three and a half months in a military detention camp under the Espionage Act for the 'crime' of saying that he did not hate Germans. Esteemed Judge Learned Hand wrote that the wording of the Espionage Act was so vague that it would threaten the American tradition of freedom itself. Many were held in prison for weeks in brutal conditions without due process; some, in Connecticut -- Lieberman's home state -- were severely beaten while they were held in prison. The arrests and beatings were widely publicized and had a profound effect, terrorizing those who would otherwise speak out.

. . . I call on all American citizens to rise up and insist on repeal of the Espionage Act immediately. We have little time to waste. The Assange assault is theater of a particularly deadly kind, and America will not recover from the use of the Espionage Act as a cudgel to threaten journalists, editors and news outlets with. I call on major funders of Feinstein's and Lieberman's campaigns to put their donations in escrow accounts and notify the staffers of those Senators that the funds willonly be released if they drop their traitorous invocation of the Espionage Act. I call on all Americans to understand once for all: this is not about Julian Assange. This, my fellow citizens, is about you . . . .

Welcome to Your Police State - Grand Central NYC

Uh. Does anyone know why the TSA is performing random bag searches at the Grand Central Terminal subway hub?
posted by @metalia from Twitter for iPhone 23 hours 38 mins ago

Here's the URL.

UPDATE:  Well, this has been going since April.  But I guess since so few people give a shit, as you'll see from the chipper comments in the article, it barely caused a ripple.  Oh, well.  The horse left the barn long ago.

David Rector, Still Alive, For Now

It's been almost three months since I wrote about my friend David Rector, and since then little has changed.  The judge threw Roz a bone by allowing her to care for David for a few months, with all kinds of hand-tying restrictions applied.  Roz did succeed, after jumping through more hoops than you would have the patience to read about, in taking David to a movie.  The nursing home tried to prevent that, too, at the last minute, even after receiving the reams of required documentation.  David chose the movie himself (though the hired guns don't, of course, acknowledge that he can choose anything for himself).  He's an Anne Hathaway fan, so he chose her latest film.

I'll copy and paste one of Roz's recent updates after the jump.  I only remind folks that this fate is potentially that of any of us, no matter how carefully we plan or how much we'd rather not think about it.

Scabies, Lice, Ringworm, MRSA, Fungal Infections, Hepatitis?

Gloved: TSA spreading infection? Latex coverings 'have been in crotches, armpits, touching people who may be ill'

TSA Groin-Searches Menstruating Woman

TSA Blog: Scabies at Boston Logan

FlyerTalk.com

Any other oubreaks?  Who knows?  No word yet on whether public health people and other medical professionals care about this.

(And yes, you have the "right" to ask an agent to change into clean gloves:  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, has issued this statement: "If you are traveling and are going to be searched, you can request that the TSA agent change his or her gloves."  Good luck with that.  Nah, that won't get you further harassed.)

TSA Harasses Woman, Forces Her to Miss Flight Over Breast-Milk

. . . After begging him to figure it out, they finally let me through. I called and complained to TSA and was instructed to travel with the TSA breast milk rules printed out and present them whenever there is a problem.

As my items come through security this time, I notice immediately that I was dealing with the same people from the week before. The woman tells me right away that my milk might have to go through the x-ray, and then I tell her I printed the rules. I go to grab the rules on top of my bag and she freaks out and pushes my arm away. Another guy comes over and calls for “back up” and they put in me back in the glass cage. Standing 50 ft away are the same manager and supervisor I had dealt with the previous week.

They will stall for 20 minutes before coming over to me.

Meanwhile, one of the guys comes over to me and tells me “to be quiet if I know what’s good for me.” At the end of this portion I have been locked up for just under 10 minutes. The whole ordeal takes just under 1 hour.

. . . In this segment, the TSA manager tells me I can leave security, redistribute the milk into half full containers (his completely made-up rule) and go through security all over again if I want to avoid x-rays on the milk.

With tears continuing to stream down my face, I did that.

I also missed my flight playing along with his ridiculous game. Curiously, my second screening video (another 20 minutes) has been erased . . . .

By Stacey Armato.  Read the whole thing here.

UPDATE:  Watch the video, which is now all over the web.  They make her wait over 40 minutes in the glass prison booth, then close the security line so no other passengers come through, then take her out and search her.  What can we conclude but that they do this so no one else can witness them harassing her?

Oh, well . . .

Well, I've been saying it from the beginning.  But what the hell.

Next step for scanners trains, bus, metro, says Napolitano

By Jordy Yager - 11/23/10 02:09 PM ET

FIVE WORDS

FIVE WORDS:

Philip Zimbardo.

Stanford Prison Experiment.

Welcome to Baltimore, Hon

 
When people from other parts of the country ask me what Baltimore is like, I always refer to John Waters movies.  "It's just like that," I say.  "His movies aren't fiction; they're real.  That's Baltimore."

I've always reveled in my adopted city's wonderful wackiness, its eccentricities, its characters.  And hoo-boy, are there characters.  (One of them, Divine, lived in my house, long before I moved to Baltimore; I still use the original tub in which his divinity bathed.)

Our Fair City's charms are so inspiring, apparently, that Second City has come to town to check them out.  The fruits of the troupe's labors will be on display from December 30th to February 20th.  I, for one, can't wait to see what they come up with.

Jambalaya

I haven't been back to New Orleans since Katrina. I haven't had the heart. Now with the British Petroleum Spill, Cheney's Chernobyl, showing its full force and exposing all the lies about the size and scope of the spill, I imagine that it will be a very long time. Aaron Neville is a long time friend and sometime employer. He can't go home. Aaron has asthma and the mold and rot that still is there would kill him. I won't go until he can. From what I've seen so far what rebuilding that has been done is along the lines of the Epcot Center "NEWORLEENSLAND" version of what was a vibrant and vital place.

Here's the way I do the famous dish Jambalaya.  There are as many versions as there are cooks.  The basics of this version are what you would be having at the legendary Tipitina's.  But first, more music.

Memorial Day - Triple Chocolate Ice Cream

Memorial Day is a quiet day for me.  Too many ghosts. 

So I think it's best to simply move on to things more delicious.  Since I live in Fort Stinking Desert, California where it is routinely seven degrees hotter than the southern reaches of hell, homemade ice cream is not a whim or luxury.  Even a ten minute drive when it's topping one hundred fifteen will destroy the best store bought ice cream.  Also, made at home, it's not injected with air to make it fluffy, there's no high fructose corn syrup, or anything you don't put in there yourself.

That's more better to my thinking.  Far more better.

But, I digress.

Where Have You Been All My Life Pea Soup

Yesterday I made one of those recipes that makes me feel stupid for not having invented it or even heard of. I'm not a practical cook. My repertoire of go-tos is very small. Pesto pea soup is going in that mental file. It's easy, cheap, healthy, and delicious. The recipe is so simple I hardly need to write anything. It's exactly what you think it will be: carrot, onion and celery are simmered in stock until tender, add a pound or two of frozen peas and simmer a few more minutes until it seems done, then blend the hell out of it. 

 I used one onion, one carrot, and one rib of celery, plus 2 lbs of frozen peas, and a quart of chicken stock (the final product had a thick texture, about the consistency of heavy cream). To this I added a quarter cup of basil pesto. The recipe calls for using more pesto to garnish the soup when you eat it, but I found the pesto I stirred in to be almost more than enough. The sweetness of the basil and peas needs to be tempered with a little salt. I prefer to leave fine-tuning like that to the diner, so keep a salt shaker handy when you sit down to eat this.

Sacré Bleu! (in more ways than one)

Apparently in the waning days of the Worst-Administration-in-the-History-of-the-Country, our erstwhile fearless leader dealt yet another gastronomic blow to our cultured friends in France and, as it turns out, to us as well.  He slapped a 300% tariff on Roquefort cheese.  Yes, of course, we could technically still buy it -- if we can find anyone who still wants to sell it -- so I guess we can't say he took away any of our rights this time (that's a first).  But unless you're rich, you're probably not going to want to pay $30 or $40 a pound for the stuff, yummy as it is.

Some stores are already planning farewell parties for the luscious fromage.  And Minnesota Democrat James Oberstar, bless his heart, has been trying to get the Obama administration to reverse the Bush ruling.  But late-breaking news says that, for now at least, imposition of the tariff has been put on hold until April 23rd.  Which means there's still time to urge our Congressional reps and President Obama to let us have our cheese!

Great Depression Cooking with Clara

She's the newest hot babe on the internet (and though this has nothing to do with anything, observant women out there will notice that even at age 93, Clara's skin is beautiful and looks years younger -- that's from not frying herself in the sun!). 

Her grandson started taping her two years ago, when she was 91, just for the family, but then posted the videos on YouTube.  She's become a sensation.  CBS did this charming story on her recently; sample video below.  (I confess that, being the daughter of a Depression-era mother, I grew up with this kind of cooking, and still practice it today.)

The Importance of the Small Gesture

Good things come in small packages, as the saying goes.  And in this case, the small package is a weekly Happy Hour at the White House, even if the mood is sometimes less than happy.  Amy Bernstein has written about the importance of the small gesture in this engaging and thought-provoking op-ed.

How to Survive the Apocalypse

Well, as ever, leave it to the Brits.  Nobody else writes with such deadpan humor.  I still have tears running down my face from reading this.  Give this woman a Pulitzer (or whatever it is Brits give to newspaper people who write good stuff):

What if the doomsayers are right ... what if society, as we know it, really is about to collapse? Do you have what it takes to make it in a world without electricity and running water? Tanya Gold offers an essential survival guide.

(H/T to Bill in Balto)

Finally, a Story to Gladden Sir C's Heart

This is our distant -- though not so distant, as it turns out -- relative, the pen-tailed tree shrew.  The little tyke likes to drink.  And has evolved through the millenia to have a near-constant low level of alcohol in its blood.  Obviously, say scientists, this adaptation confers on it some evolutionary advantage.

But it is not the only animal species to enjoy the bibulous life.  Nay, seven species of small mammals drink fermented palm nectar on a regular basis.  They do not, however, get loaded.  Once again, it seems, we have something to learn from our furred and feathered friends. 

You can still be a foodie during Earth Hour

My town did not appear to be hip to the whole Earth Hour concept, so I totally skipped it.  With  temperatures dipping below 30 at night still, it wasn't very tempting.  Via Slashfood, Food bloggers weren't about to take the night off from eating well

If Holiday Greetings Were EULAS

Thanks to Ed Foster of The Gripe Line Weblog, I bring you this missive from Mark Mailloux (and here's the definition of EULA):

With the holidays fast approaching and EULAs pretty much a fact of life, please accept -- with no obligation, implied or implicit, on behalf of the wisher or wishee -- my best wishes for an environmentally-conscious, socially-responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice, practiced within the traditions and/or within the religious or secular belief(s) of your choice and with respect for the traditions and/or religious or secular beliefs of others or for their choice to not practice traditions and/or religious or secular beliefs at all; and for a fiscally-successful, personally-fulfilling, medically-uncomplicated recognition of the onset of what is generally accepted as the new Gregorian calendar year, but with due respect for calendars of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great*, and without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, sexual orientation, political affiliation, or choice of computer operating system of the wisher.

Battle of the Alt-burgers: Turkey 2.0

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Ezra Klein makes turkey burgers; invitations pour in from Iron Chef, Naked Chef, and Nigella.

At our house, we adapt Queen Martha's instructions and make them like this:

6 slices whole-wheat sandwich bread
1 pound lean ground turkey (7 percent fat)
1/2 cup reduced-fat sour cream
4 tablespoons prepared mango chutney, preferably Major Grey's, finely chopped
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon chili powder
Coarse salt
French baguette--enough for four 6" long sections
Arugula
1 ripe tomato sliced about 1/4" thick
Mayonnaise
Curry powder to taste

In a medium bowl, tear 2 slices bread into small pieces (I dice them finely with a sharp knife). Add turkey, sour cream, 3 tablespoons chutney, 1 tablespoon mustard, chili powder, and 1 teaspoon coarse salt. Blend well and shape into 4 firmly packed 5-inch round patties.

Grill on barbecue, about 4 minutes per side, or until cooked through; alternatively, heat broiler with rack set 4 inches from heat. Place burgers on a rimmed baking sheet; broil until firm and cooked through, 4 to 5 minutes per side. You can also grill the tomato slices--the flavor is wonderful.

Place mayonnaise in a small bowl, add a pinch or two of curry powder, and blend well; in another bowl, stir together 1 tablespoon each chutney and mustard. Slice baguette sections horizontally and toast very lightly. Top each baguette with some arugula, a burger, and a tomato slice; serve the curried mayonnaise and chutney-mustard alongside burgers.

Serves four.

Also at litbrit .