Tweet ‘O The Eve
by digby
The crew of Apollo 8, 47 yrs ago: “Merry Christmas & God bless all of you—all of you on the good Earth. pic.twitter.com/yKblWLPPJu— Mark Kelly (@ShuttleCDRKelly) December 24, 2015
I hope you’ll consider dropping a little something into the kitty to help keep this blog going for another year.
Happy Hollandaise everyone.
Plenty presidential
by digby
VAN SUSTEREN: Donald, you’re likeable but I tell you, I sort of gasp when I hear you sort of making bathroom jokes about Secretary Clinton. Or anyone. And that’s why I wonder… should you get the nomination, are you going to change your language a bit and appear what I call more presidential?
TRUMP:”I think I’m presidential and I think I’ve done what I call presidential work. You know I built an incredible company. I’ve made great deals, I’ve had tremendous success.”
Meanwhile, George Will is very concerned:
“Conservatives’ highest priority now must be to prevent Trump from winning the Republican nomination in this, the GOP’s third epochal intraparty struggle in 104 years.”
Who did Will think was voting Republican all these years? People like Andrew Breitbart?
“Of course, Will might just be miffed that Trump recently said “I think I have a much higher IQ… You have these guys like George Will. He sits with the little spectacles. If he didn’t have the spectacles, you wouldn’t think he’s smart because he’s wrong so much.”
Yeah, these right-wingers are very concerned about Trump being “presidential.”
Maybe the only thing we need to know about Trump and his followers is that they are all suffering from arrested development. It really could be just that simple.
I hope you’ll consider dropping a little something into the kitty to help keep this blog going for another year.
Happy Hollandaise everyone.
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What a family
by digby
I hope your holiday goes better than this:
Happy Hollandaise everyone. I hope you’ll consider dropping a little something into the kitty to help keep this blog going for another year.
Last minute Christmas recipe
by digby
No, it’s not too late to make something wonderful for Christmas day. This chocolate croissant bread pudding is super simple and incredibly delicious. And you still have time to run out to the store and get what you need for tomorrow morning:
Ingredients
Chocolate Croissant Bread Pudding:
1 stick unsalted butter
1 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
5 large eggs, lightly beaten
2 1/2 cups heavy cream
12 croissants
3/4 cup bittersweet chocolate, roughly chopped small (You can also just get chocolate croissants and for get about adding the chocolate.)
Directions:
For the chocolate croissant bread pudding: Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
In a food processor, combine butter and sugar process until well blended. Add cinnamon, and vanilla, and pulse to combine.
While the processor is running crack 5 eggs into the mixture. Turn off the mixer and scrape down the sides. Add the heavy cream and pulse to combine.
Lightly butter a 9 by 13-inch baking dish. Break up the croissants into 1-inch pieces and layer in the pan. Scatter the bittersweet chocolate over the top, and gently mix to incorporate. Pour the egg mixture over the croissants; soak for 8 to 10 minutes. You will need to push croissants pieces down during this time to ensure even coverage by egg mixture.
Cover with foil and bake for 35 minutes. Remove foil and bake for additional 10 minutes to brown the top. The croissant bread pudding is done when the custard is set, but still soft. Allow to cool.
If you’re making this for dessert instead of breakfast you can make an easy sauce by allowing some kind of premium vanilla ice cream to melt and adding a little bourbon or rum. It’s delicious.
This really couldn’t be easier.
I hope you’ll consider dropping a little something into the kitty to help keep this blog going for another year.
Happy Hollandaise everyone.
The relentless march
by Gaius Publius
Just a reminder, now that we’re sending U.S. crude oil to other countries — so that other countries can count our carbon extraction against their emissions totals, to their climate blame and our financial gain — time does indeed march on.
As do global temperature increases. The valuable Greg Laden has the story:
Global Warming In November
The NASA GISS global temperature anomaly for November has been published. …
The huge uptick we saw during the last part of the current year is the result of global warming, which has been pushing temperatures up, and the current El Nino, which probably started to affect these measurements in late September. Over the next few months or so, El Nino proper will start to decline, but the surface temperatures will remain elevated by El Nino (there is a lag). After that, we should see monthly temperature readings being to drop, but the overall trend is likely to continue.
The graphic at the top of the page is the 12 month moving average from the NASA GISS data base, up through November. Notice that since the 1960s there has been a very steady upward trend, with some variation. Most of the big upward spikes you see are El Nino years, and the lower troughs are typically periods with one or more La Nina events. These variations reflect the interaction between surface (air and sea surface) and the ocean, mainly the Pacific.
2015 is currently the warmest year on record, and 2014 is the second warmest year. It is virtually impossible for 2015 to drop below warmest once December values are added in. Likely, the spread between warmest and second warmest year will increase.
Two small points about the graph. First, as Laden notes (my emphasis), “This is hundreds of a degree C anomaly, the standard number used to report, off of a baseline. The baseline in the case of NASA GISS is 1951-1980, which does not represent pre-industrial levels.” This means that on the Y-axis, the change in temperature from “0” is measured from temperatures in the 1960s, not the 1880s. If you look at the whole range expressed by the chart, you’re seeing a temperature change of about –0.4°C to about +0.8°C — a range of 1.2°C. Except for a few post-war decades, this is indeed a relentless march.
Second, Laden tells us that the big changes this year are partly due to the recent El Niño, something that comes and goes. The trend, however, won’t change:
The huge uptick we saw during the last part of the current year is the result of global warming, which has been pushing temperatures up, and the current El Nino, which probably started to affect these measurements in late September. Over the next few months or so, El Nino proper will start to decline, but the surface temperatures will remain elevated by El Nino (there is a lag). After that, we should see monthly temperature readings being to drop, but the overall [upward] trend is likely to continue.
The relentless march. Feeling lucky?
(A version of this piece appeared at Down With Tyranny. GP article archive here.)
GP
The American dispirit
by Tom Sullivan
The notion that “we’re all in this together” became popular during World War II as Americans on the home front sacrificed for the war effort. That snippet of information drifted in over the mental transom the other day, perhaps in reference to a video for students produced at the National WWII Museum in New Orleans. “We’re All in This Together!” debuted last month. It focuses on how American families and kids “scrapped” and saved dimes to buy war bonds.
As it turns out, there is a recent Monopoly edition based on the theme. Monopoly: America’s WWII: We’re All in This Together features key corner spaces common to all Monopoly versions: Jail, free parking, collect $200 and go to jail, McClatchy reported:
Most of the rest, though, has a WWII theme. The game pieces are an airplane, combat boots, helmet, radio, ship and Sherman tank. Spaces on the board and corresponding deed cards feature significant WWII events. Railroads are replaced with supply routes, and houses and hotels became camps and headquarters.
The “Chance” and “Community Chest” cards are replaced with cards for allies and home front.
Historian Stephen Ambrose described how the war changed the country:
World War II “strengthened us as a country,” said Ambrose. “We were much more committed to the idea of country, rather than region. People didn’t speak of themselves any more as being, ‘Well, I’m a rebel, I’m from Mississippi.’ ‘I’m a Yankee, I’m from Wisconsin.’ [It was], ‘I’m an American.’ That would always spring first to their lips.”
From the time when Japanese fighters dropped the first bombs, it was an American fight. And as the first troops were shipped off to battle, it became an American effort.
According to Ambrose, the widely acclaimed “American spirit” began in World War II. When there is a genuine threat to a democracy, “We’re all in this together, and we will fight it out together,” he said.
Seventy years, a Cold War, and a Great Recession later, the idea is out of fashion in the U.S. of A. Cold Warriors die hard. You say community; they hear communism.
I mentioned that fading American spirit over drinks with a friend last night. His parents are Korean. A similar community spirit swept Korea during the economic crisis of the late 1990s, he said. Millions of Koreans sacrificed family heirlooms to help the recovery effort:
It’s an extraordinary sight: South Koreans queuing for hours to donate their best-loved treasures in a gesture of support for their beleaguered economy.
Housewives gave up their wedding rings; athletes donated medals and trophies; many gave away gold “luck” keys, a traditional present on the opening of a new business or a 60th birthday.
The campaign has exceeded the organisers’ expectations, with people from all walks of life rallying around in a spirit of self-sacrifice. According to the organisers ten tons of gold were collected in the first two days of the campaign.
But perhaps the most extraordinary aspect of the campaign is not the sums involved, but the willingness of the Korean people to make personal sacrifices to help save their economy. The managing director of the IMF, Michel Camdessus, who has just completed a visit to Seoul, was clearly moved by the campaign, calling it “admirable”.
But of course, Mr. IMF would. The relative merits aside, the very idea is unthinkable in the United States today.
Former senator Gary Hart wrote in 2012 (perhaps not giving Bernie Sanders enough credit):
The communitarian instinct prevails in times of peril. Neighbors rally around individuals or families who suffer tragedy. A school bus monitor bullied by uncivilized students received hundreds of thousands in unsolicited donations. Television networks feature stories about those who are “making a difference.” The apparent theory behind “a thousand points of light” was that massive social ills could be solved by private charity. In the Western frontier even distant neighbors collected to care for the widow, repair a fire-damaged cabin, or round up a herd.
Even before the Depression-inspired social safety net, earlier Progressives (mostly young reform-minded Republicans) rallied the nation against predatory corporations and in support of those left out. Since no one has yet devised self-administering health and retirement programs, the size of government increased during and beyond the Franklin Roosevelt era. Predictably, individualist ideologues railed against “big government” but shied away from voting to eliminate the popular and necessary safety net. “Privatization” has been the most recent variation. And after our economy began to plateau following enactment of Great Society programs for the poor, anti-big government arguments found new support among individualists. The Big Government we were against was that part of government concerned with poverty. Both parties now compete for the middle class. There are no Robert Kennedys reminding us of the one-in-five children in poverty. Out of sight; out of mind.
There may be liberal media and political figures advocating socialism. If so, I don’t know who they are. But there are clearly voices and political figures on the right who want to do away with the institutions that make us a civilized society in the interest of rugged individualism. Concern for the poor is not socialism. Nor is the search for a fair health system available to all.
Then there is this from Shamus Khan, a sociologist at Columbia University. He writes to address rising inequality in the country:
As a worldview, there’s something seductive in imagining that what’s good for me is good for everyone. Realizing my own advantage, then, doesn’t only feel good; it’s the moral thing to do. But sadly there isn’t much evidence that greed is good.
This leaves us with two lessons. The first is that just as political alliances brought us out of our golden age, they can also return us to it. This will not be easy. The nation has often come together in response to shared threats, but a political project like this is tougher. Those who want the lion’s share of the national wealth will threaten to leave our shores. Let them. There are plenty of civic-minded members of the elite who recognize that absent major changes, our future is clear: more and more for the richest and a society where the mass of the citizenry idles. This is democracy in decline.
The second lesson is harder. We are not in this together. We need to get back to what made America great, when the many and not the few were winning. To do so we must stop conflating moral arguments with economic ones. Instead of operating under the fiction that we will all benefit from a proposed change in economic direction, let’s be honest. If a few of us are better off, then many are not. If many are better off, then the few will be constrained. Which world would you rather live in? To me the answer is obvious.
Representing the American “dispirit” and pushing back against “we’re all in this together” are of course the few. Cato Institute founder Ed Crane called the choice “between in-thistogether sheep and atomistic indi – vidualism” a false dichotomy, yet views any modulation of individualism of the Randian kind the equivalent of communism or fascism. Roger Pilon (also of Cato) writes, “We’re not all in this together, Mr. President. We want out of Obamacare – and out of so much else that has come to constitute the modern “economy-asphyxiating” welfare state.” American Enterprise’s Tyler Castle thinks that answer to an unraveling democracy is more community, an “actual, healthy society.” Just the self-organizing kind, and less of the icky, Big Government kind that rallied an entire economy to defeat fascism in World War II.
What’s a better representative of the American spirit: the “we’re all in this together” ethos that won WWII, or the philosophy of selfishness espoused by a philandering, Russian atheist who admired the audacity of an axe murderer for flouting convention and inviting the opprobrium of society?
*I hope we can keep this old blog going over the next year. If you would like to keep reading what we produce here, I hope you’ll consider dropping a little something into the kitty.
Happy Hollandaise everyone! — d
Is this a great country or what?
by digby
Actually, no, not at the moment. This is just awful:
Speaking to the Guardian, Mohammad Tariq Mahmood, who was travelling with his brother and nine of their children aged between eight and 19, said they had been given no explanation for the last minute cancellation, but he believed the reason was obvious: “It’s because of the attacks on America – they think every Muslim poses a threat.”
He said the children had been counting down the days to the trip for months, and were devastated not to be able to visit their cousins in southern California and go to Disneyland and Universal Studios, as planned.
Creasy believes a lack of information from US authorities is fuelling resentment within British Muslim communities.
“Online and offline discussions reverberate with the growing fear UK Muslims are being ‘trumped’ – that widespread condemnation of Donald Trump’s call for no Muslim to be allowed into America contrasts with what is going on in practice,” Creasy writes in an article for the Guardian. She said she was in contact with at least one other constituent who had had a similar experience.
This is obviously because we’re good and they’re evil. This man says he’s never been in any trouble with the law and neither has his American brother. And what they say bothers them the most is that there is simply no explanation.
They are also just out the £9,000 they paid for the trip apparently. Too bad, you’re out of luck. You’re a Muslim. Just eat the money and endure the humiliation. Oh, and by the way, while you’re at it, we’re going to need you to publicly express how much you side with us in this battle and are willing to take this humiliation simply because you happen to be a member of the Muslim faith. It’s the least you can do.
And once again, this is completely irrational. We have had a small handful of Islamic terrorist attacks since 9/11 which were perpetrated by alienated losers looking for a reason to shoot up or blow up a bunch of people — something that happens almost every day in this country. The idea that this particular problem in America has anything in particular to do with Muslim extremism and therefore requires that we ban Muslims from entering our precious country is daft. If it’s safety we’re looking for we’d be better off deporting angry white guys with gun collections.
On Monday a number of people commented on an amazing exchange between Mika Brzezinski and Rick Santorum on this subject in which Santorum was railing against the Muslim community for allegedly failing to properly criticize the terrorists in their midst. Brzezinski then asked the question no other talk show host I can remember ever asking one of these fellows:
You are telling Muslim Americans they all need to come out and talk about the tiny percentage of their community that has kind of, quite frankly, wreaked havoc. But yet, you look at the data of white men wreaking havoc on this country? Why aren’t white men coming forward? Why don’t you call on them to do that?
You won’t believe his answer:
I am actually doing a lot of things about that, trying to solve gun violence and that primarily focuses in on the family. If you look at the folks who are causing crime in America almost every single one of them, I think Chuck Colson pointed this out, eighty five to ninety percent of men in prison grew up without a father in the home. So you want to get at the real root problem here. You’ve got a breakdown of society based upon a breakdown of the family.
Isn’t that special? American non-Muslim violence is the result of bad parenting and the breakdown of the family and we need to get to the root problem and help these poor souls who kill people with guns so they can feel loved and secure. American Muslim violence is evil. I’m glad he cleared that up.
Maybe he’s right. Dylan Roof, the young white guy with the Nazi symbols on his Facebook page and a hatred for African Americans who shot nine people does seem to have grown up in a turbulent home. I don’t know about the Planned Parenthood shooter. Elliot Rodger the Santa Barbara killer, however, had a very stable loving family. Adam Lanza was very close to his mother and while it’s true his parents were divorced their situation seemed very much like many millions of divorced families.And interestingly, Syed Farook apparently came from a broken home with a violent father.
But if Santorum really believes this story about the family perhaps he should at least consider the idea that many of those young men in the middle east are drawn to extremism because members of their own families, their entire societies, have been torn apart by war. Imagine how that affects the hearts and minds of those who live there — and how they might turn to violence in response.
This issue makes me feel as if I’m losing my mind. The irrationality of it, the obvious bigotry, the inane arguments are intensely frustrating. We are working ourselves up into a frenzy over Islamic terrorism while living with terrible violence every day, violence which the right insists is perfectly natural and completely without solution. Meanwhile, we are talking about carpet bombing countries in the middle east, denying entry to British Muslim families and treating American muslims like second class citizens. What could go wrong?
None of the violence on any side is excusable for any reason. But there is little doubt in my mind that we could at least reduce some of the carnage if we stopped worshipping guns at home and demonizing Islam around the world. It certainly couldn’t hurt.
I plan to continue writing about this. I hope you’ll consider dropping a little something into the kitty to help keep this blog going for another year.
Happy Hollandaise everyone.
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“He would have an enormous schvahnstucka”
by digby
If you’ve been busy over the past few days you have mercifully missed the great “schlong” debate. But that’s all over now:
Trump has stumbled back into the turbulent waters of Yiddishkeit by saying that Hillary Clinton “got schlonged” in the previous election, and then insisting it was not the vulgar term for penis most believe it be.
“When I said Hillary got ‘schlonged’ ,” he tweeted, “that meant beaten badly.”
Of course, “shlong” (as it is spelled in standard Yiddish transcription) means nothing of the kind; it is not even a verb. The word means simply “snake,” which perhaps made it inevitable that its colloquial meaning of male genitalia would overtake its original definition.
As the journalist Jeff Sharlet wrote in response to Trump’s claims about the word, “Spent three years as editor of Pakn Treger, magazine of National Yiddish Book Center. Never heard schlong used to mean anything but dick.”
Arguing the other side, political analyst Jeff Greenfield wrote, “Trump is right on this. ‘I got schlonged’ is a commonplace NY way of saying: ‘I lost big time,’ w/out genital reference.”
The author says there is a similar sounding Yiddish phrase that Trump may have heard which has something to do with beating a chicken. (You can look it up.) But let’s face it: if Trump was saying that Clinton was “beaten badly” by Obama in 2008 the image he evoked was that she was beaten badly with a penis.
I’ll leave it to others to argue about what he really meant with all that but I did want to point one thing out since it seems to come up over and over again. The 2008 primary was not a rout, It was the closest primary campaign in history.
Not that this is particularly relevant to this year’s obviously. They start with a clean slate. But it is a fact that the last primary was very close. Who knows? Maybe it will be this time too.
*The annual fundraiser continues. If you feel like dropping a little something in the kitty it would be most appreciated.
Happy Hollandaise everyone.
They just trust him
by digby
I’ve been saying this for a while. Cruz has some of the most solid conservative bona fides in DC and the hardcores aren’t going to abandon him because the lamestream media says he’s being hypocritical and they sure aren’t going to take Marco “Gang of 8” Rubio’s word for it. Dave Weigel got some voters to talk about it:
Ninety minutes before Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) arrived at the civic center here, 60-year-old Dennis Gantt stood outside and seethed. He had watched the latest Republican presidential debate, then the follow-ups. And he’d watched Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) insult his intelligence.
“I’ve followed Cruz for a long time,” Gantt said. “When the ‘Gang of Eight’ was pushing the immigration bill, I knew he’d introduced that ‘citizenship’ amendment. Sometimes you’ve got to call their bluff, like he said. You play along with them, in the game — up to a point.”
Details of the complex 2013 immigration fight tumbled forth as Gantt defended Cruz. Randy Martin, also 60 and standing in line, overheard something about Fox News’s coverage of the Cruz-Rubio argument, and joined in.
“The one clip they’re not playing is the tape in 2010 of Rubio saying he wouldn’t back amnesty,” said Martin.
“Good point,” said Gantt. “Look, when I saw [Sen. Jeff] Sessions back him up, I knew Cruz was in the right.”
Days of political attacks from Rubio on Cruz’s immigration record had backfired with both men — neither of whom were fully committed to Cruz. Many here in a crowd of more than 1,300 said that Rubio had lost them by criticizing Cruz, and most could cite the conservative sources they used to assuage their doubts: Fox News, the Drudge Report, Breitbart News, Cruz’s own Facebook page.
*The annual fundraiser continues. I hope you’ll consider dropping a little something into the kitty to help keep this blog going for another year.
Happy Hollandaise everyone!
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Fergawdsakes Jeb!
by digby
Bush: Problem with Confederate flag is "what it began to represent later" https://t.co/omcMHZJGh8 pic.twitter.com/ZNsumWrl7i— Talking Points Memo (@TPM) December 23, 2015
There is something wrong with him. He doesn’t really want it. Nobody can be this clumsy.
*The annual fundraiser continues. I hope you’ll consider dropping a little something into the kitty to help keep this blog going for another year.
Happy Hollandaise everyone!
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