Continuing the cooking theme … The above picture is not meat – it’s seitan and it’s probably pretty delicious. Jenn (my wife) was vegetarian for 12 years (since age 18). She’d never in her life had Buffalo wings. About 4 years ago she got pregnant and decided to try them. We ate wings 2 times [...]

Molasses, in fact, isn’t very slow. At least not compared to my preconceived ideas about it, having heard the idiom “slow as molasses” all my life. I first had occasion to cook with molasses about a year ago. I was making my first from-scratch BBQ sauce, a delicious Memphis-sweet concoction with liquid smoke, brown sugar [...]

Taiwanese animations are the future of all mainstream news. The folks at NextMedia have distilled US TV news, newspaper commentary, blogs, and twitter feeds on the Wisconsin standoff into an easily digestible two minute animation. As far as the legislative standoff is concerned, this is a foregone conclusion. Polls do not support the AWOL Wisconsin Senators. The Wisconsin State Assembly passed the Walker Budget Repair Bill after beating back a filibuster and the Senators will have to return sometime or be recalled. The protesters in Madison will have to go back to work or be fired. The Republicans have the votes and Walker has the will. Done deal. I think it is all Kabuki Theater in Wisconsin from this point.

Digby at Hullabaloo who expends almost 800 words to explain why Jon Stewart is not funny and a traitor to the cause

In Madison, Wiscosnsin – the public sector unions have organized protests at the steps of the capitol to exercise their Democratic right to shut down the Democratic legislative process and subvert the Democratically expressed wishes of the Wisconsin electorate, in order to be sure that the union money flow to the Democratic Party is not interrupted.

First, let’s understand what we’re talking about here. Wisconsin is running a budget deficit because of the fiscal crisis and Republicans are looking to public sector employees to make up the difference. From WSJ: Mr. Walker’s bill would close a projected $3.6 billion shortfall by forcing public employees to pay 5.8% of their salary toward [...]

I’m going there for the week starting tomorrow. So I won’t be posting. Behave yourselves.

Since mw invited me to guest post on my own blog, because he apparently found a news item about the Tea Party I hadn’t, I thought I’d take him up on his thoughtful offer. I guess I’ll finally find out what it feels like to be him. First, about the Tea Party stuff, great news. [...]

Last week, in the Republican controlled House of Representatives, with Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner supporting the continued funding of the unneeded engine, it was finally defeated. Credit to President Obama, Defense Secretary Robert Gates for reaching out to Republican legislators and the new crop of Tea Party supported freshman Republican representatives who stood up to their own leadership.

President Obama is not going to get re-elected if he continues to treat American voters like they are complete idiots. He cannot tell us that a spending increase is really a spending cut, and that a massive new entitlement program will save money when it will actually cost money and expect to maintain any credibility.

He needs to outflank the Republicans on fiscal responsibility by supporting the bipartisan recommendations of the deficit commission he sponsored. If he puts the full weight of the Presidency behind the Simpson-Bowles Plan and pushes it to a floor debate, the American people would put their electoral weight behind him.

What seemed likely last fall is now a virtual certainty – the Republicans will retake the Senate majority in 2012. The only way to retain our happily divided government and avoid a rerun of One Party Republican Rule in 2013, will be to re-elect Barack Obama.

They won. From Bloomberg: Hosni Mubarak stepped down as president of Egypt and handed power to the military, bowing to the demands of protesters who have occupied central Cairo for the past 18 days demanding an end to his 30-year rule. “Mubarak has decided to relinquish the office of the presidency,” said Vice President Omar [...]

We’re not too far removed from the last open thread and certainly we’ve exhausted all our beer talk (although a pint of Mirror Pond on cask at the Horsebrass would be nice), but a weekly open thread was promised so here’s a topic: Death is among us – Judgement is near (see 1:19 in the [...]

The liberal blog Open Left suddenly announced today that they’ll stop posting content because… we have gradually run out of money to maintain operations. It is a difficult decision, but we kept going for as long as we could. But… The site will not disappear, and all published content will remain online {…} Wait…what? Open [...]

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