November 21, 2009 archive

Open Thread

Whether you are going out to a family gathering, having the clan over or just a quiet dinner for two, Thanksgiving can be a daunting affair and for some more stressful than enjoyable. For the last 20 or more years I haven’t cooked Thanksgiving dinner. My daughter took over that task because I was usually working the night before and that night. Emergencies usually don’t take a holiday break, in fact they usually break out. This year is no different except that I only work per diem in a very small ER 5 minutes from my house. I still  do some of the shopping, pre-prep and desserts. Anyway, I digress.

 I am going to post a few of the healthy easy to make recipes for side dishes that are tasty (tested a few of them on my fussy food critics) and can be prepared ahead, easing some of that stress on the big day. I’m also going to give you the best instruction for a roast turkey that will be cooked through and NOT dry compliments of Alton Brown who makes cooking entertaining and educational. There are several web sites that I use and I found them well worth the free subscription. Epicurious is indispensable. The site also helps with wine selections.

 I do not stuff the turkey either. It takes less time and the turkey cooks more evenly.

 There one piece of equipment that is worth the investment and, if you’re a cook, will wonder how you ever lived without it, an oven thermometer with a probe and an alarm that tells you when the correct temperature has been reached. The one I have also gives the oven temperature. It’s not absolutely necessary but takes out the guessing if the meat is done.

 For those who are vegetarians, The NYT has quite a few recipes for Thanksgiving

Going Vegetarian for Thanksgiving

Epicurious also has suggestions for Thanksgiving Dinner under $80, in 60 minutes and on a diet

Thanksgiving Recipes, Menus, and Videos

SAY WHAT?

In Musashi-Murayama, ¥7 million was spent on an event publicizing Tokyo’s bid for the 2016 Olympics… about three weeks after the Games were awarded to Rio de Janeiro.

It was also revealed that the outfits worn by members of Tokyo’s 2016 bidding delegation cost a total of ¥14 million.

In an attempt to battle this nasty recession and fill empty seats, tickets on the Tokaido and Sanyo shinkansen lines were being offered at discounts of up to 28 percent.

In Okinawa, a pro wrestling circuit has announced it will spice up its product by adding comedy routines to all the grappling and head-stomping. We always found professional wrestling pretty comical anyways.

It doesn’t cease to amaze me that there are Obama apologist’s willing to cover anything that he, and his administration, does no matter how bad.  What does get me is when someone, in doing so, goes so far as to call into question that it takes a person who, and I quote, states:

It isn’t going to be to the liking of a severe civil liberties test.

A “severe liberties” test?

THAT is what this commenter thinks?  That our Constitution, and those who wish for it to be enforced, are calling for?  A “severe liberties” test?

(crossposted at Daily Kos)

Burning the Midnight Oil for Breaking the Silicon Cage

About a month ago, I asked, “ Monday, October 19, 2009

Can the Teaspoon Model stand up to Bloodsucker Streaming Sites?”

Now, on the occasion of the first small victory of the “Teaspoon Model” over PirateCorp (aka NewsCorp), I’m catching my breath and looking back at this process. Note that if you have tuned in just for the victories, you should scroll down to the section with “Victory” in the title.

Over the past month, its become clear that one of the biggest bases of support – not active support, but tacit complicity – lies within the NewsCorp media empire itself, on the MySpaceCDN servers owned by 20th Century Fox’s “Intellectual Properties” division.

There’s irony there, because the whole point is that these are by and large neither creations, productions, nor licensed works of any NewsCorp enterprise. They are, rather, bootlegs being illegally copied by uploaders, and then repeatedly extra-legally copied by NewsCorp when they stream the files on request.

I’m sure most of you have seen this. It’s a billboard sponsored by an as-yet unnamed businessman in Missouri. Perhaps you’ve seen some of the others highlighted in this diary at Orange too.

I find it incredibly offensive, but only because it’s coming from the WingNut faction. I figure if the government targeted in these public advertisements actually cared to enforce the law against sedition then they’ll do so before tomorrow morning. If not then it’s open season and somebody up there approves. I mean, it’s not like the feds don’t know who paid for it, whose company billboard it’s sitting on, and even who designed and printed it out and pasted it up. That’s what all this post 9-11 spying on Americans is all about, isn’t it? And the WingNuts love them some NSA spies rooting around in their email, business dealings, bank accounts and cell phone conversations. Or, they did when Shrubbie was POTUS, since he started it.

Which brings me to what is offensive here. It’s coming from those who served as tireless cheerleaders for wars of aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan, for the blanket abrogation of Constitutional and human rights here at home, for war crimes, the rendition and torture of prisoners of war in blatant violation of Geneva, for limitless government spying on innocent citizens and, finally, for the unaccountable billions and/or trillions printed to bail out Wall Street, the banking sector and even the Fed itself when the IMF began its long overdue audit of America’s books on The Day The Economy Fell. All the while unconcerned about trillions in deficit spending to support not just those illegal wars and the largest expansion of Big Brother in our history, championing Greed Gone Wild that brought this nation and the rest of the world to its knees.

Cross-posted at DKos

Tonight on PBS, Bill Moyers Journal will focus on the LBJ telephone and office tapes created during the escalation in Vietnam, in a program called “Hearing History”.

Bill Moyers considers a President’s decision to escalate troop levels in a military conflict. Through LBJ’s taped phone conversations and his own remembrances, Bill Moyers looks at Johnson’s deliberations as he stepped up America’s role in Vietnam.

President Lyndon Johnson’s taped conversations are a treasure-trove for both historians and current policy makers. On the JOURNAL, Bill Moyers explores the tapes to review Johnson’s deliberations as he stepped up America’s role in Vietnam. Some of the names on the tape, such as Robert F. Kennedy, will be familiar to Americans young and old – others less so.