56 responses to
“The birthday kids.”

1. 

   Deborah said on November 16th, 2009 at 10:55 am

   I’m a typog­ra­phy nerd. The biggest offense is kern­ing (the space between let­ters), it’s often way off which to me is dis­turb­ing. Some sign fab­ri­ca­tors think you can type some­thing on a com­puter, enlarge it 1,000% and call it day. It doesn’t work that way, the space between the let­ters needs to be manip­u­lated prop­erly.

2. 

   mark said on November 16th, 2009 at 11:01 am

   For the turkey-

   1. Brin­ing. It’s a must in my opin­ion.

   2. Best tip ever, if you don’t care about “pre­sent­ing” the bird at the table. The fun­da­men­tal, unavoid­able turkey prob­lem is the white meat is done 20 degrees ear­lier than the dark meat. This is often com­pounded by the white meat being on top, closer to the pri­mary heat source. So, when the ther­mome­ter says the breast is done (actu­ally 5-10 degrees before “done”), haul the bird out of the oven and grab your carv­ing knife. Start­ing at the breast bone, carve away the two breast lobes. This is sur­pris­ingly easy, with only an intact wish­bone pro­vid­ing resis­tance. You will end up with two beau­ti­ful, skin-clad breast lobes, which should be cov­ered with foil and allowed to rest before slic­ing.
   Cover the breast cav­ity with foil and put the rest of the bird back in the oven until the dark meat is done.

3. 

   moe99 said on November 16th, 2009 at 11:03 am

   Good tip mark. Now if I only was a good turkey slicer…

   btw here is some­one who wildly loves LaPalin’s book:
   http://​www​.medi​aite​.com/​o​n​l​i​n​e​/​g​o​i​n​g​-​r​o​g​u​e​-​r​e​v​i​e​w​-​b​y​-​j​o​h​n​-​z​i​egler/

4. 

   coozledad said on November 16th, 2009 at 11:10 am

   Lovely cake. I made some blond brown­ies dur­ing the down­pour last week and we scarfed the whole 8″x8″ cake pan full of them within about four hours. I also made a stack of gordi­tas rolled in black pep­per, chili pow­der and black salt.
   We ate them with black beans and roasted ser­ra­nos and a slaw made with olive oil, ume plum vine­gar and more grated ser­ra­nos.
   I don’t think I’ll ever buy pre­made tor­tillas again.

5. 

   mark said on November 16th, 2009 at 11:14 am

   moe-

   It really is easy. To build con­fi­dence, prac­tice with a chicken. Same anatomy or, as a Viet­namese friend would say “same-same, dif­fer­ent”.

   A bonus, slic­ing wise: You can then slice the breast lobes against the grain if you wish. This is eas­ier than slic­ing with the grain, pro­duces pretty uni­form slices, and each slice will have a strip of the skin (plus all the herbs , etc. that you spread under the skin before roast­ing) around about 40 per­cent of the perime­ter.

6. 

   brian stouder said on November 16th, 2009 at 11:26 am

   Pam saw such good deals on turkeys at the store two weeks ago that she bought two, and we did a full-up turkey din­ner with fresh mashed pota­toes and gravy (and so on) last week­end; sort of a full-dress hol­i­day rehearsal din­ner.

   And it was dad (aka, me) who made the first faux pas.

   A ques­tion for the house: You have your por­tion of turkey and pota­toes and green­beans and so on, and then the gravy boat sails your way.

   Do you:

   a) take the dip­per and put a crater in the mound of pota­toes, and then fill it with gravy (all in one motion, more or less)

   b) sim­ply dump gravy upon your pota­toe (Indi­ana spelling) mound, with­out any crater

   c) make a crater with your fork, and then (and only then) fill it with gravy

   d) b or c

   d) none of the above; skip the damned gravy!

   Well, I did “a” above, and was swiftly rep­ri­manded; Pam insists that the dip­per shouldn’t touch yer taters (words to live by, I sup­pose)

   Any­way, I see that Edward Wood­ward has passed away. Time to watch Breaker Morant again

7. 

   Pam said on November 16th, 2009 at 11:35 am

   Doesn’t an 8″ round layer cake fit on your square cake stand?

8. 

   jcburns said on November 16th, 2009 at 11:43 am

   Kern­ing is one of those great terms that emerged from the days of metal type (lit­er­ally chop­ping off cor­ners of a type block to make the let­ters fit together more snugly). Me, I can spend an enter­tain­ing morn­ing mak­ing the kern­ing on one line of type…just…perfect. That said, your cake looks espe­cially well, uh, kerned.

   Birth­day best wishes to the father daugh­ter duo.

9. 

   derwood said on November 16th, 2009 at 11:48 am

   Brian….create the crater with the dipper…as long as you haven’t licker the dip­per who cares.

   daron

10. 

    mark said on November 16th, 2009 at 11:56 am

    OK, Brian, I’ll help you out. At home, the answer is “a”, because it’s the least effort to achieve max­i­mum gravy to potato ratio, with­out risk of it run­ning into, say, brus­sel sprouts, or one of the very few other side dishes where gravy isn’t wel­comed with open arms and party hats. Plus, you’re the man of the house. You know the good­ness that is gravy and you will par­take as you see fit in your own home.

    When the lady of the house dis­agrees, you may, nonethe­less, choose “c” as the wiser, but more labor inten­sive method to max­i­mum gravy. How­ever, your bride’s objec­tion to “a” may be due to her con­cern that you are unaware of the private/public dis­tinc­tion in gravy eti­quette, and that you will embarass her in pub­lic at some future point. Demon­strat­ing a firm grasp of these rules may per­suade her to acqui­esce in the ladle/crater/lake method at home.

    Of course, if you are at home AND you per­son­ally made both the gravy and the pota­toes, then you are a wimp if you don’t use method “a” or, bet­ter yet, a soup bowl on the side full of pota­toes and gravy. Maybe even your own, pri­vate stash of gravy.

    In pub­lic, I’m afraid “b” is the only option, unless you are mor­bidly obese, when “d” is reluc­tantly allowed. If you choose “d” with­out a well-known his­tory of life threat­en­ing heart dis­ease, the men at the table won’t trust you. They may not say any­thing, but their thoughts won’t be kind.

    “B” allows you to have some gravy. Not nearly enough, but some. And your bride will win the admi­ra­tion of her peers for your good table man­ners and remark­able self-restraint. While there are many ben­e­fits to civ­i­liza­tion, men have lost the right to bathe in gravy when­ever and wher­ever they want.

11. 

    brian stouder said on November 16th, 2009 at 12:01 pm

    While there are many ben­e­fits to civ­i­liza­tion, men have lost the right to bathe in gravy when­ever and wher­ever they want.

    Absolutely true. Men who know which side their bread is but­tered on, and who want to earn some mar­i­tal gravy, must be attuned to ‘Potato-Correctness’

12. 

    Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on November 16th, 2009 at 12:02 pm

    “Goooood evening, Ohio!”

    Quick, name that quote! (Hint: state­ment made in Auburn Hills, Michi­gan)

13. 

    moe99 said on November 16th, 2009 at 12:06 pm

    It was in the prior thread, Jeff!

14. 

    LAMary said on November 16th, 2009 at 12:09 pm

    A Thanks­giv­ing sweet potato sug­ges­tion: peel and slice some sweet potatoes,slices about a quar­ter inch thick. Do the same with an equiv­a­lent amount of Granny Smith apples. Alter­nate slices in a bak­ing dish, as you would with scal­loped pota­toes. Dot with but­ter, and pour some cider over the whole thing, no so it’s swim­ming, but maybe three quar­ters of an inch deep. Cover it with foil and bake it at 325-350 for an hour. It’s sweet but not sickly like the marsh­mal­low sweet potato thing.

15. 

    4dbirds said on November 16th, 2009 at 12:10 pm

    Happy Birth­day to all. Agree with Mark on brin­ing. Best turkey ever. When I dis­cov­ered the cakes at Weg­mans, I stopped bak­ing them. They are heav­enly.

16. 

    4dbirds said on November 16th, 2009 at 12:12 pm

    LA Mary, I do my sweet pota­toes in a sim­i­lar fash­ion only with some added Grand Marnier.

17. 

    jeff borden said on November 16th, 2009 at 12:28 pm

    Here in Illi­nois, we are not scared of Islamic ter­ror­ists, despite what the wee men with R’s after their names claim. We are far more afraid of our polit­i­cal lead­ers, who pre­fer bribes, skim­ming, under-the-table pay­ments, etc. to truck bombs, but do about as much dam­age.

    Sto­ries in the Chicago papers quoted cit­i­zens of poor Thom­son, Ill. as thrilled at the prospect of hous­ing Gitmo detainees there as it would cre­ate about 3,000 jobs in a hard-hit area. And, trust me, Thom­son has much more in com­mon with Mis­souri than Illi­nois in terms of polit­i­cal per­sua­sion. These are the kinds of “real Amer­i­cans” *James Frey, ummm, excuse me, **Sarah Palin cited in her cam­paign stops and they are not afraid of the cave-dwellers.

    I guess get­ting the ter­ror­ists from Guan­tanamo makes up for los­ing the 2016 Olympics.

    *The author who com­pletey lied in his non-fiction book.
    ** The author who com­pletely lied in her non-fiction book.

18. 

    jeff borden said on November 16th, 2009 at 12:37 pm

    Here’s a bril­liant col­umn by Glenn Green­wald of Salon. This col­umn encap­su­lates pre­cisely what I’ve been argu­ing for years, namely, when we change the way we live, the way we act, the way we use our legal sys­tem and our mil­i­tary because we fear a ter­ror attack, the ter­ror­ists have won.

    See what you think and then pon­der why not a sin­gle promi­nent con­ser­v­a­tive has spo­ken up in favor of doing the right thing:

    By Glenn Green­wald
    This is lit­er­ally true: the Right’s reac­tion to yesterday’s announce­ment — we’re too afraid to allow tri­als and due process in our coun­try — is the text­book def­i­n­i­tion of “sur­ren­der­ing to ter­ror­ists.” It’s the same fear they’ve been spew­ing for years. As always, the Right’s tough-guy lead­ers wal­low in a com­bi­na­tion of piti­ful fear and cyn­i­cal manip­u­la­tion of the fear of their fol­low­ers. Indeed, it’s hard to find any group of peo­ple on the globe who exude this sort of weak­ness and fear more than the Amer­i­can Right.

    Peo­ple in cap­i­tals all over the world have hosted tri­als of high-level ter­ror­ist sus­pects using their nor­mal jus­tice sys­tem. They didn’t allow fear to drive them to build island-prisons or cre­ate spe­cial com­mis­sions to depart from their rules of jus­tice. Spain held an open trial in Madrid for the indi­vid­u­als accused of that country’s 2004 train bomb­ings. The British put those accused of per­pe­trat­ing the Lon­don sub­way bomb­ings on trial right in their nor­mal cour­t­house in Lon­don. Indone­sia gave pub­lic tri­als using stan­dard court pro­ce­dures to the indi­vid­u­als who bombed a night­club in Bali. India used a Mum­bai court­room to try the sole sur­viv­ing ter­ror­ist who par­tic­i­pated in the 2008 mas­sacre of hun­dreds of res­i­dents. In Argentina, the Israelis cap­tured Adolf Eich­mann, one of the most noto­ri­ous Nazi war crim­i­nals, and brought him to Jerusalem to stand trial for his crimes.

    It’s only America’s Right that is too scared of the Ter­ror­ists — or which exploits the fears of their fol­low­ers — to insist that no reg­u­lar tri­als can be held and that “the safety and secu­rity of the Amer­i­can peo­ple” mean that we can­not even have them in our coun­try to give them tri­als. As usual, it’s the weak­est and most fright­ened among us who rely on the most flam­boy­ant, the­atri­cal dis­plays of “strength” and “courage” to hide what they really are.

19. 

    Dorothy said on November 16th, 2009 at 12:53 pm

    Allow­ing a ladle to touch pota­toes when dis­pens­ing gravy infects said ladle with pota­toes, and there­fore all poten­tial gravy users might not appre­ci­ate get­ting pota­toes mixed in if they, for instance, want gravy only on their stuff­ing. Which is where most of the gravy goes in my fam­ily. Our fam­ily does not call it dress­ing – it’s stuff­ing. Dress­ing is what you do after you get a shower.

    I guess I’m not into the inter-personal rela­tion­ships of poten­tial turkeys I will be cook­ing, so I got my bird on Sat­ur­day for a whop­ping 29 cents a pound. She is just over 20 pounds. And I’ll make a turkey breast to go along with that one, since we’re serv­ing 14 for din­ner at my house and most of us like the white meat.

    Happy birth­day to Alan & Kate!

20. 

    adrianne said on November 16th, 2009 at 12:58 pm

    Love LA Mary’s sweet potato sug­ges­tion, will give it a whirl for our Thanks­giv­ing din­ner (hosted by my mom: she does turkey, I’ll do pies and sides).

    And happy Nov. 16th birth­day to my birth­day buds, Alan and Kate!

21. 

    brian stouder said on November 16th, 2009 at 1:06 pm

    Allow­ing a ladle to touch pota­toes when dis­pens­ing gravy infects said ladle with pota­toes, and there­fore all poten­tial gravy users might not appre­ci­ate get­ting pota­toes mixed in

    That is almost word-for-word what Pam said to me, in sten­to­rian tones!

    Jeff – pre­cisely. And want­ing to change the rules for Amer­i­can psy­chos that hap­pen to have a par­tic­u­lar racial or eth­nic lin­eage embla­zons a (harsh) bright back-lighting on these overblown, cyn­i­cal fears

22. 

    Connie said on November 16th, 2009 at 1:53 pm

    Add my dad to the birth­day list, he turns 78 today. For a man who had his first heart attack in his 30s (and the first ever bypass oper­a­tion per­formed in Grand Rapids) he is in pretty good shape, though he never expected to live this long. He recently got to spend some time with his first great grand child, and tells me the cor­ti­son injec­tion in his knees have greatly improved his life.

    Happy b’day to your crew Nancy, my guy seemed to sur­vive his 60th OK last week, even though I did fall asleep after work and miss the birth­day din­ner he was cook­ing for us.

23. 

    Connie said on November 16th, 2009 at 1:54 pm

    On the sub­ject of pota­toes and gravy: Use the potato serv­ing spoon to make that cen­tral gravy cav­ern, as part of serv­ing the pota­toes onto your plate.

24. 

    Jeff Borden said on November 16th, 2009 at 2:15 pm

    Brian,

    It’s always the guys who talk the loud­est about being “tough” who are the first to cry for mommy, isn’t it? Count Ghou­liani once fan­cied him­self the tough, bare-knuckled pros­e­cu­tor in the town that never sleeps. Now he’s a dainty lit­tle cow­ard wor­ried that one of the great­est cities in the world sim­ply can’t han­dle a ter­ror­ism trial.

    God, he’s dis­gust­ing. As much as I admired his per­for­mance in the hours and days after those planes hit the WTC –par­tic­u­larly com­pared with our national lead­ers– his con­stant exploita­tion of that hor­ri­ble day is beyond nau­se­at­ing. He’s made mil­lions, but he’s stopped mak­ing sense.

25. 

    MichaelG said on November 16th, 2009 at 2:24 pm

    Happy Birth­days Alan and Kate!!

    I gen­er­ally do a face plant by the time food is served. That takes care of the potato cav­ity.

26. 

    beb said on November 16th, 2009 at 3:03 pm

    From watch­ing lots of Food Net­work Chal­lenges I’ve learned that pro­fes­sional cake dec­o­ra­tor spend a lot of time chop­ping off cake that doesn’t fit their design, so in regards to your square cake stand, nancy I sug­gest get­ting two 9×12 pans and cut the lay­ers down to the 9×9 square form you want. Not only will this pro­duce a beau­ti­ful cake but think of all the “wasteage” you can squir­rel away for late night snack­ing!

    The con­cept of free range poul­try reminds me of a bit from “Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy where, at the Restau­rant at the End of Time, the cow comes out and rec­om­mends which cuts will be most tasty to eat.

    A his­tory of Thanks­giv­ing said that Turkeys were once breed so intensely for breast meat that they couldn’t stand up and farm­ers actu­ally had to breed them back to a leaner, more upright vari­ety. Per­son­ally I dis­like breast meat as too bland. Give me dark meat any time. So a free range turkey, while much smaller than a fac­tory grown vari­ety would have much more of the kind of meat I like.

    I was dis­ap­pointed that James Webb, who I thought was an army-tough Demo­c­rat, has come out whin­ing about civil­ian tri­als for the 9-11 ter­ror­ists. Actu­ally it worse than that, because he’s argu­ing that these ter­ror­ists deserve only mil­i­tary tri­als because they com­mit­ted acts of war against Amer­ica. But they’re not sol­diers. They’re not com­mit­ting acts of vio­lence from one nation-state against another. They are civil­ians com­mit­ting acts of vio­lence against other civil­ians. So it is pre­cisely civil­ian courts where the peo­ple should go to get jus­tice.

    This whole idea that there are a class of peo­ple called “enemy com­bat­ants” that can be impris­oned on the President’s say so and not treated to either the habis cor­pus of civial law or to the Geneva Con­ven­tions on the treat­ment of pris­on­ers of war is wrong and mon­s­ter­ous. What I see from what Webb is say­ing is the begin­nings of a per­manant mil­tary state replac­ing our nation of laws. Things we don’t like become crimes against our nation. The rule of law gets replaced by mil­i­tary expe­di­ency. And the idea that we, as civil­ians, can’t deal with bad peo­ple, but must leave it to te mil­i­tary is a very bad idea.

27. 

    Jeff Borden said on November 16th, 2009 at 3:23 pm

    Beb,

    I look to the U.K. for guid­ance in han­dling ter­ror­ism. Lord knows they dealt with plenty of it relat­ing to North­ern Ire­land includ­ing bomb­ings with large num­bers of casu­al­ties. They treat these events as law enforce­ment issues, not mil­i­tary issues. Solid police work. Good intel­li­gence sys­tems. Well-trained bar­ris­ters.

    Your ref­er­ence to “enemy com­bat­ants” reminds me that none of the great Tea Party activists had any trou­ble with a pres­i­dent giv­ing him­self the author­ity to declare any­one an “enemy com­bat­ant,” to deny habeas cor­pus, to tap wire and e-mail accounts with­out any judi­cial overview. But Pres­i­dent Obama seeks to do some­thing about the 48 mil­lion peo­ple with­out insur­ance and we’re on the road to becom­ing the USSR.

    What.a.bunch.of.morons.

28. 

    Mindy said on November 16th, 2009 at 3:38 pm

    Craft stores with cake dec­o­rat­ing sup­plies offer a selec­tion of Wilton pans priced so low that you won’t resent they’ll be gath­er­ing dust much of the year. Pick up a bot­tle of Cake Release while you’re there. The apple­sauce muffins I made yes­ter­day looked good enough to pho­to­graph since the pan was greased with Cake Release. They came out per­fectly browned and didn’t leave behind a crumb. If you’re not up for a trip to a craft store, Mei­jer has a cake dec­o­rat­ing sec­tion in the bake­ware aisle and will likely have pans to com­pli­ment your cake stand.

29. 

    Jean S said on November 16th, 2009 at 3:49 pm

    Kosher turkey! essen­tially pre-brined, and you don’t have to make space in your fridge for a big old pot of water. Also, google nora ephron + best turkey and you’ll get an absolutely foolproof–and ab fab–recipe. One flaw: It’s best with smaller turkeys (as in 14 lbs or so).

    I love the gravy dis­cus­sion. Good to know we can focus on the really impor­tant issues around here.

30. 

    Dorothy said on November 16th, 2009 at 4:27 pm

    Beb is right about trim­ming the cakes to the size you want them to be. My first job ever was in a bak­ery. They’d cut off sec­tions of the cake to get the sizes they needed for things like wed­ding cakes, kids’ birth­day cakes with tow­ers on them, etc. And at the risk of sound­ing like a low-life, what’s wrong with the dis­pos­able alu­minum pans you find at Kroger? They come in lots of sizes and I know they have square ones cuz I’ve bought them before.

31. 

    Dexter said on November 16th, 2009 at 4:28 pm

    Daugh­ter is get­ting mar­ried in a few weeks and yes­ter­day she, her mom, sis­ter and her man were vis­it­ing cater­ers to arrange for the cake. Shee-it…if I only had known you were such an expert cake-woman….

32. 

    mark said on November 16th, 2009 at 4:42 pm

    Turkey and gravy can only dis­tract me from the pol­i­tics for so long. “Fear” as the motive for oppos­ing a crim­i­nal trial for KSM lets you malign a big group of peo­ple all at once, but it doesn’t work very well. Just a few days before AG Holder announced that KSM and four oth­ers would be tried in NYC, he announced that the USS Cole bombers would face mil­i­tary tri­bunals. I sup­pose that Holder must fear them.

    “Due process” is a con­cept rather than a pre­cise recipe. Typ­i­cally, at a min­i­mum, it includes an oppor­tu­nity to present evi­dence on your own behalf, an impar­tial decision-maker, a right to appeal and sim­i­lar rules for those that are sim­i­larly sit­u­ated. So far as I know, the Cole bombers and KSM are sim­i­larly sit­u­ated, and I think the dif­fer­ent treat­ment is polit­i­cal not constitution-driven.

    We have to fig­ure out what treat­ment to afford “enemy com­bat­ants” because they are a real­ity. If we want to call it “civilian-on-civilian crime (I don’t), we can do that but we have to think through the con­se­quences. Roman Polan­ski awaits and is fight­ing extradition- that’s how we han­dle sus­pects of crim­i­nal charges who are found else­where. And most nations won’t coop­er­ate with us on extra­di­tion if the accused faces the death penalty. KSM was bagged and gagged and hus­tled off to Gitmo.

    In appre­hend­ing a sus­pect of a crime, we don’t use lethal force unless there is an imme­di­ate, real threat to the lives of oth­ers, we give Miranda warn­ings, etc. We lob mis­siles at sus­pected ter­ror­ists al of the time.

    In almost every state, US cit­i­zens can have their chil­dren taken away on “clear and con­vinc­ing evi­dence” not “proof beyond a rea­son­able doubt”, with­out a jury and with the con­sid­er­a­tion of some hearsay evi­dence. INS pro­ceed­ings use lower stan­dards to deport.

    If the Con­sti­tu­tion requires crim­i­nal tri­als, then it should require the same for the other, similarly-siuated detainees. If it doesn’t, I see no rea­son to offer them greater rights on an ad hoc basis.

33. 

    Jeff Borden said on November 16th, 2009 at 5:02 pm

    Mark,

    You are actu­ally mak­ing an argu­ment with a point to it. You can’t pos­si­ble be a con­ser­v­a­tive, LOL!

    If we want to parse legal def­i­n­i­tions, I’m with you. Why some of these creeps are going before a mil­i­tary tri­bunal and oth­ers before a fed­eral mag­is­trate is well worth dis­cussing. What the pow­ers of dis­cov­ery will be in the trial and what extent defense lawyers might have to sen­si­tive data is worth talk­ing about.

    What I am ref­er­enc­ing and what Glenn Green­wald was writ­ing about is the absolute pants-wetting, fear-mongering engaged in by our rightwing friends. These buf­foons help inflate the rep­u­ta­tions of these low-life ter­ror­ist hoods by mak­ing them out to be some kind of comic book super vil­lains. One of our Repub­li­can con­gress­crit­ters in Illi­nois is shriek­ing about how Chicago and Illi­nois will be endan­gered by these thugs if they are inside a state-of-the-art max­i­mum secu­rity prison. Do they have the abil­ity to turn into smoke and drift through the walls? C’mon! We’re bet­ter than this.

    Guan­tanomo is an open, ooz­ing wound in America’s rep­u­ta­tion. It is a prime recruit­ing tool for jihadists. It’s time to close it down. And it’s time to let the sun­shine of rea­son bear down on the sick, atavis­tic view­points of trogs like KSM, which is what this trial will do.

    I gotta admit, I am just amazed that so many rightwingers have such a low opinin of our coun­try and its legal sys­tem that they think a piece of shit like KSM can­not be tried suc­cess­fully. And that a for­mer pros­e­cut­ing attor­ney would be the lead cheer­leader for their think­ing.

34. 

    moe99 said on November 16th, 2009 at 5:12 pm

    There has not been a dec­la­ra­tion of war. With­out that there are no enemy com­bat­ants.

    The bomb­ing of the US Cole was a bomb­ing of a naval ves­sel. A crim­i­nal action against a US mil­i­tary tar­get. The World Trade Cen­ter and Flight 93 were not mil­i­tary. Hence the dif­fer­ence in tri­als.

35. 

    mark said on November 16th, 2009 at 5:12 pm

    On the fear issue, I’ll give you this much: Repub­li­cans have played up the dan­ger of incar­cer­a­tion in the US just to make it more dif­fi­cult for Obama to close the prison at Gitmo and keep his cam­paign promise.

36. 

    mark said on November 16th, 2009 at 5:13 pm

    moe-

    And the pen­ta­gon?

37. 

    jeff borden said on November 16th, 2009 at 5:22 pm

    Mark,

    Exactly so. And you have a point on the Pen­ta­gon, too.

    At base, I’m just tired of build­ing up the rep­u­ta­tions of a bunch of reli­gious fanat­ics who’d like to see the world as it was in 600 A.D. We’re talk­ing about a bunch of losers who live in caves, sup­ported by dona­tions from wealthy reli­gious Wahabi con­ser­v­a­tives (many, if not most, from our “ally” Saudi Ara­bia), most of them illit­er­ate and unschooled. Are they dan­ger­ous? Sure, but not to the extent we paint them.

38. 

    moe99 said on November 16th, 2009 at 5:43 pm

    mrak–I will con­cede you the Pen­ta­gon. Given that, why not have the civil tri­als, fol­lowed by a mil­i­tary tri­bunal? They were sep­a­rate crimes after all.

39. 

    crinoidgirl said on November 16th, 2009 at 6:52 pm

    Free­dom of speech, and the free­dom to dis­agree – a fifth grade boy in Arkansas refuses to say the Pledge of Alle­giance until gays and les­bians have equal rights:

    http://​tinyurl​.com/​y​c4pb8n (Arkansas Times arti­cle)

40. 

    Scout said on November 16th, 2009 at 6:55 pm

    Still chuck­ling at this line – “…Amish chicken oper­a­tions, and the only dif­fer­ences between them and Tyson’s are a) size; and b) the kid dump­ing the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals into the feed bin has a bowl hair­cut.”

    What I want to know is what’s going to be served at coo­zledad farm on Thanks­giv­ing.

    Oh, and Con­nie – your potato solu­tion was sim­ple and bril­liant. Now we know.

41. 

    moe99 said on November 16th, 2009 at 7:28 pm

    http://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​1​w​e​1​A​-​S​v​R​B​Y​&​a​m​p​;​f​e​a​t​u​r​e​=​p​l​a​y​e​r​_​e​m​bedded

    Sarah Palin on Oprah.

42. 

    Jeff Borden said on November 16th, 2009 at 7:32 pm

    Oprah. Now there’s a jour­nal­ist.

    What a suck-up inter­view. One pop cul­tural icon to the other. No won­der Our Lady of Wasilla wanted to start the tour there. Next up: Bar­bara Wal­ters, who will prob­a­bly offer just about the same level of ques­tion­ing.

43. 

    alex said on November 16th, 2009 at 7:33 pm

    I watched Giu­liani and some of the other gas­bags on the Sun­day talk shows doing their tired old hys­tri­on­ics and barely keep­ing a straight face. Had it been announced that the 9/11 ter­ror­ists would go before a tri­bunal I’m sure they’d be scream­ing about how it should be the other way.

    Great story crinoid­girl. If only more peo­ple were will­ing to stand up (or sit down). I think I’ll join that young feller in sol­i­dar­ity.

44. 

    Peter said on November 16th, 2009 at 7:34 pm

    I agree with you Scout – Connie’s solu­tion is supoib.

    Nancy, it gets cold here in Illi­nois as well – those Gitmo boys will do just fine here, thank you very much.

    I remem­ber kern­ing from my intern archi­tect days – Letraset had guides on how to “kern” your press on let­ters so they look type­set, and the early Kroy machines had an autok­ern func­tion.

45. 

    coozledad said on November 16th, 2009 at 7:50 pm

    Scout: It might be some sort of soymeat pas­try, with a side of roasted pota­toes. Usu­ally we have col­lards, but the cab­bage loop­ers got what the weather didn’t this year.
    Fat meat and greens would be a tra­di­tional south­ern hol­i­day meal, with a side of grits and maybe some Vir­ginia cured ham.Deep fried tofu with sesame oil and Maggi sauce is a pretty good fac­sim­ile of fat­back, and it’s good with turnip greens and malt or cider vine­gar. I haven’t been able to dupli­cate the crunchy/chewy outer der­mal layer of the hog with tofu, how­ever.
    Soy ham is ludi­crously expen­sive and over­sweet­ened, but I can make a Vir­ginia ham sub­sti­tute with it by slic­ing it into thin pieces, soak­ing it in pow­dered cayenne, left­over cof­fee and soy sauce, and then dri­ving every bit of mois­ture off it on a dry grid­dle until it’s the con­sis­tency of OSB board. It’s vir­tu­ally indis­tin­guish­able from the gen­uine arti­cle, except you won’t find any skip­pers in it.

46. 

    Jolene said on November 16th, 2009 at 8:20 pm

    I had no idea that there was such a com­plex rela­tion­ship between gravy con­sump­tion and per­cep­tions of man­li­ness. Hope that witty ver­sion of Mark will show up more often.

    Beb, I’m w/ you re Jim Webb, as I said in a pre­vi­ous thread. He is typ­i­cally an inde­pen­dent thinker. I hate to think that he is con­cerned enough about hang­ing onto his seat that he is argu­ing against U.S. tri­als for KSM and the oth­ers. His vic­tory mar­gin was nar­row (only about 6,000 votes), and he’d almost cer­tainly have lost if George Allen hadn’t turned into his own worst enemy. Of course, we have the recent Repub­li­can vic­tory in the Vir­ginia guber­na­to­r­ial elec­tion, but, still, it seems so out of char­ac­ter for him.

47. 

    Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on November 16th, 2009 at 8:44 pm

    I’m gonna have to start set­ting time aside on Mon­days to read the week­end back­log, but this wasn’t the Mon­day to start.

    We like sweet pota­toes for Thanks­giv­ing, brown sugar and but­ter sauce (some all­spice & cloves) in lieu of mini-marshmallows.

    Saw last twelve min­utes of Palin on Oprah . . . now THAT’S suck­i­tude. Sorry i spent the time, espe­cially with seven min­utes of com­mer­cial for about ten min­utes of show, two for upcom­ing pro­mos. Can’t see Sarah doing a talk show, TV or radio. But her and Nicole Wal­lace play­ing Horse, that i’d watch.

    Grim news for Michi­gan re their Cal­i­for­nia cousins: http://​down​loads​.pew​cen​teron​thes​tates​.org/​B​e​y​o​n​d​_​C​a​l​i​f​o​r​n​i​a​_​A​p​p​e​n​d​ix.pdf

48. 

    Jolene said on November 16th, 2009 at 8:44 pm

    On food, I have a cou­ple recipe sug­ges­tions. Here’s one for Cranberry-Lime Salsa, which, in addi­tion to cran­berry and lime also con­tains tequila and jalapeno. If you make this, def­i­nitely fol­low the “make one day ahead” instruc­tions, or per­haps even make it two days ahead, as those strong fla­vors need time to mel­low.

    The WaPo food blog­gers had a recent piece on soups to go w/ hol­i­day din­ners. There were sev­eral that sounded very good, includ­ing Sher­ried Pump­kin Apple Soup, But­ter­nut Squash Soup w/ Wal­nut Whiskey But­ter, and Apple and Ched­dar Soup w/ Roasted Apple Gar­nish, and more.

    And, of course, there’s the fab­u­lous Spicy Fall Stew Baked in a Pump­kin that I wrote about last year. (Brief ver­sion: Deli­cious, ours was pret­tier than this pic­ture, makes a great side dish or main dish w/ other sides for vegetarians/vegans, can use corn rather than hominy.) Another side dish that I’ve book­marked but haven’t tried yet is Mark Bittman’s Roasted Sweet Potato Salad w/ Black Beans and Chili Dress­ing. Looks fab­u­lous. I thought there was a video of him mak­ing it, but it doesn’t seem to be linked here.

49. 

    Jolene said on November 16th, 2009 at 8:59 pm

    Finally, that is one big-ass cake stand. Next time, I think you have to go for more lay­ers.

50. 

    Jolene said on November 16th, 2009 at 9:44 pm

    Whoops! Just remem­bered one more thing: HBO is show­ing a doc­u­men­tary called Ter­ror in Mum­bai nar­rated by Fareed Zakaria, one of my favorite TV talk­ing heads, on Thurs­day evening at 8 PM EST. He showed a cou­ple of clips on his CNN show yes­ter­day. Was both hor­ri­fy­ing and sad, as the guys who car­ried out the shoot­ings were barely more than boys. They were being directed by bad guys in Pakistan–talking to them by cell phone, no less, while they were killing peo­ple at the Taj Hotel and else­where.

    This case is rel­e­vant to the war vs. law enforce­ment issue as it was for­ward think­ing by the Indian intel­li­gence ser­vices that made it pos­si­ble to cap­ture those con­ver­sa­tions. Of course, it’d be still bet­ter if they’d had the intel­li­gence to stop the attack, but, pre­sum­ably, they are con­tin­u­ing this work–perhaps w/ bet­ter results to come. It can’t have been encour­ag­ing to the Pak­istani bad guys to get such clear evi­dence that their oper­a­tions had been, to some extent, com­pro­mised.

51. 

    beb said on November 16th, 2009 at 11:07 pm

    Mark @32: I’m with you on due process. The back­bone of being a Nation of Laws is the right to defend your­self in court, con­front wit­nesses and demand that the state either make a case of let a per­son free.

    I’m also with the USS Cole bombers. They were part of no national army so their arrest did not make them pris­on­ers of war (also there is no war – any­where!) They were arrested by the FBI, I believe, and should be tried in civil court.

    As a point of inter­est, the Cole was attacked in the last days of Clinton’s admin­is­tra­tion and was left to Bush to pros­e­cute. That we are now in the Obama admin­is­tra­tion, eight years later and only now talk­ing about try­ing these bombers is an embar­rass­ment.

    “Enemy Com­bat­ant” is a term and con­cept that did not exist before Bush the Younger wanted some means to avoid giv­ing habeas cor­pus to pepople he was tor­tur­ing. Since the term has no legal exis­tent the eas­i­est and best way to treat it is to declare – once again – that it doesn’t exist. Sadly, Obama has been seduced by the power to arrest any one for no crime and hold them indef­i­nitely with­out redress.

    I’ve long thought that the best way to deal with Gitmo was to just open it up to on-demand inspec­tions by the Red Cross, Red Cres­cent, Amnesty Inter­na­tional, etc. If the issue is that Gitmo is kind of not part of Amer­ica then act to make it 100% Amer­i­can.

52. 

    brian stouder said on November 17th, 2009 at 12:17 am

    Speak­ing of the attack on the Aegis Destroyer USS Cole, I can­not rec­om­mend highly enough the book The Loom­ing Tower, by Lawrence Wright.

    It is just a great book, and it has about it the ring of truth; the FBI’s inves­tiga­tive team picked up leads and so on there, and began expend­ing shoe leather match­ing things up with the ear­lier attacks on the US embassies at Dar es Salaam and other East African cities…and had a glim­mer of a chance of fol­low­ing the thread all the way to the 9/11 attack­ers, except that the CIA didn’t share what they knew with the FBI – since the FBI was all about pros­e­cu­tions and pub­lic tri­als and so on….

    which raises the one infi­nitely com­plex point that hangs over pub­lic tri­als in our civil courts for these multi­na­tional crim­i­nals. The CIA (and other ‘black’ intel­li­gence agen­cies) sim­ply do not oper­ate with a view toward pub­lic tri­als and the expo­sure of ways and means and sources.

    But indeed – that is sim­ply a chal­lenge we must shoul­der. Will future nihilists learn what things to avoid? Maybe they will – but “the good guys” aren’t stand­ing still; their sources and ways and means are always chang­ing, too.

    But indeed – the point that the crit­ics of a pub­lic trial could make – but haven’t really coher­ently made (at least that I’ve seen or heard) is the same old prob­lem we had in the late ’90′s, and in the run-up to Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001 – which is so well detailed in Wright’s book; insti­tu­tional coor­di­na­tion and coop­er­a­tion within the United States’ far-flung intel­li­gence gath­er­ing and law enforcement-criminal inves­tiga­tive oper­a­tions.

    Hope­fully our loom­ing trial bespeaks some behind-the-scenes arrange­ments and acco­mo­da­tions amongst (for exam­ple) the CIA and FBI, going for­ward.

53. 

    moe99 said on November 17th, 2009 at 12:36 am

    Holder’s speech announc­ing the pros­e­cu­tions:

    http://​www​.jus​tice​.gov/​a​g​/​s​p​e​e​c​h​e​s​/​2​0​0​9​/​a​g​-​s​p​e​e​c​h​-​0​9​1​1​1​3.html

    …In each case, my deci­sion as to whether to pro­ceed in fed­eral courts or mil­i­tary com­mis­sions was based on a pro­to­col that the Depart­ments of Jus­tice and Defense devel­oped and that was announced in July. Because many cases could be pros­e­cuted in either fed­eral courts or mil­i­tary com­mis­sions, that pro­to­col sets forth a num­ber of fac­tors – includ­ing the nature of the offense, the loca­tion in which the offense occurred, the iden­tity of the vic­tims, and the man­ner in which the case was inves­ti­gated – that must be con­sid­ered. In con­sul­ta­tion with the Sec­re­tary of Defense, I looked at all the rel­e­vant fac­tors and made case by case deci­sions for each detainee.

    It is impor­tant that we be able to use every forum pos­si­ble to hold ter­ror­ists account­able for their actions. Just as a sus­tained cam­paign against ter­ror­ism requires a com­bi­na­tion of intel­li­gence, law enforce­ment and mil­i­tary oper­a­tions, so must our legal efforts to bring ter­ror­ists to jus­tice involve both fed­eral courts and reformed mil­i­tary com­mis­sions. I want to thank the mem­bers of Con­gress, includ­ing Sen­a­tors Lind­say Gra­ham, Carl Levin and John McCain who worked so hard to strengthen our national secu­rity by help­ing us pass leg­is­la­tion to reform the mil­i­tary com­mis­sion sys­tem.

54. 

    crazycatlady said on November 17th, 2009 at 1:49 am

    I enjoy bak­ing cakes and dec­o­rat­ing them (or used to before carpel tun­nel), and I get my sup­plies at Jo-Ann Craft Store. I do Mex­i­can sugar skulls too and get pas­try bags for dec­o­rat­ing them there. They have spe­cialty bak­ing pans at rea­son­able prices. And with 40% off coupons, the pans are a steal! I get food color pastes, mini loaf paper cups, hol­i­day sprin­kles there. If they don’t have it, just get a Wilton cat­a­log. Easy!

55. 

    caliban said on November 17th, 2009 at 3:28 am

    And if physi­cians won’t tell the truth, we’re left with out and out liars like Tom Coburn. He thinks that if Obama sup­ports vets, it must be social­ism. Repub­li­cans vote against vet­er­ans of the obscene
    inva­sions and occu­pa­tions neo­cons make up in the first place. What in the world is wrong with these chicken-hawk bas­tards? And what in the world is wrong with any Amer­i­can voter that thinks this behav­ior is OK?

    When the pres­i­dent acts in the best inter­est of vets, how is it acept­able that some ass­hole that thinks hook­ers that obvi­ously have bet­ter ideas about social jus­tice and fam­ily val­ues take a back seat to Sen­a­tor Vit­ter? Where’s his moral jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for putting holds on Preaid­wb­tial nom­i­na­tions? He com­ported with hook­ers. It’s not like an alle­ga­tion, it’s a fact. And this sleaze­ball is hold­ing up a Pres­i­den­tial appoint­ment of some­body unques­tion­ably qual­i­fied?

    Look you morons. Scalia only believes in the Con­sti­tu­tion he made up in his own twisted mind. Perps are guilty, and absolute proof of inno­cence doesn’t mean we can’t fry some­body. That is what this guy said. I say that makes him a psy­chopath. Explain to me how I’m wrong. And how W wasn’t a happy idiot, and how he wasn’t a whole lot worse when he thought it was funny doing his lit­tle imi­ta­tion. He thought it was just as funny blow­ing up inno­cent Iraqis and miss­ing Sadam by miles, and not car­ing, because a dead Iraqi is like a dead Indian.

    Neo­cons are like a post-industrial joke now. Palin is the anit-neo neo­con. Those peo­ple thought they were intel­lec­tu­als. They were bum­rushed by idiots. The future for Repub­li­cans is crys­tal­lized in a sin­gle phrase: Keep your gov­ern­ment hands off my Medicare. And there is prob­a­bly no way to deal with stu­pid­ity that entrenched.

    I’m an absolute believer in the stu­pidiy of Ameer­i­cans. Lf Ameer­i­cans want to believe the Health Insur­ance and Drug Com­pany peo­ple havtheir best inter­ests at heart, you folks are looney tunes. When Bush was pres­i­dent, he made a deal with Phaarma where they could charge what­ever they wanted to and the gov­ern­ment would have to just eat it. So that make sense to any­body but a Bush toady? Mope

    There’s a Pres­i­dent try­ing to fix an inor­di­nate mess. Gay rights? Gay mar­riage? Are we kid­ding? There are a lot of things more impor­tant to a lot of peo­ple. I am so sick of back­bit­ing on sin­gle issues.

    What I really mean, somebody’s sex­ual pref­er­ence isn’t par­tic­u­larly impor­tant to me. What this has to do with Patrick McGoohan, I haven’t a clue. Not even remotely.

56. 

    Sue said on November 17th, 2009 at 9:21 am

    Cal­iban! Where have you been?