It’s May and it’s getting warmer here in the northeast. Tomorrow is Cinquo de Mayo, the only battle that the Mexican army won in their war with the French. It’s celebrated in the United States by many Mexican Americans as a source of pride. In Mexico, it is an official holiday in the State of Puebla where is is called called El Día de la Batalla de Puebla (English: The Day of the Battle of Puebla).
Naturally, food and drinks are part of the festivities. There are various filling for Quesadillas but essentially they are the Mexican version of the French crepe using a flour tortilla instead of a thin pancake. It can contain vegetables meat or sea food, especially shrimp, or not, but it always has cheese. Use your imagination, be creative.
Quesadillas
The way I make them is rather easy, using mostly store purchased ingredients:
Soft corn or flour tortillas, I like size about 8 inches diameter best. You can find them in various sizes in the refrigerated aisle of the grocery store near the packaged cheeses;
Shredded cheese: extra sharp cheddar, Monterey Jack, about 8 to 12 oz.;
Salsa, jarred or fresh, “heat” dependent on taste;
Refried beans;
Guacamole, store made; or fresh sliced avocado;
Jalapeño pepper slices, jarred;
Sour Cream;
Shredded or thinly sliced grilled chicken, beef, pork or shrimp.
You’ll need a grill pan or a 10″ large, heavy flat skillet, cooking spray or a small bowl of vegetable oil and a brush, a large spatula and a cookie sheet lined with aluminum foil and a dinner plate.
Preheat the oven to 200° F. Heat the skillet over medium heat, sprayed with vegetable oil. Place a tortilla on a dinner plate. Over half of the tortilla about a inch from the edge, spread some salsa, sprinkle with cheese, refried beans and shredded chicken/beef/pork/shrimp. If you like extra “heat”, add some jalapeño pepper slices. Fold in half. You can also cover one tortilla with fillings and top it with a second but it’s harder to flip.
Gently slide onto the skillet.
Let brown for 2 to 3 minutes until golden brown. Using the large spatula, flip, cooking 2 to 3 minutes, until golden brown. Adjust the heat if browning too fast or too slow. Place the finished quesadilla on the lined cookie sheet in the oven to keep warm. Repeat; making sure the pan is lightly oiled.
You can do to or three at a time, depending on the size of the tortilla and the skillet. If you have a grill top on your stove, you can do as many as will fit.
Cut quesadillas in half, thirds or quarters; serve with more salsa, refried beans, sliced jalapeños, sour cream, guacamole and avocado slices.
Margarita
This is the recipe I have used for years without complaints. I use 1800 Reposado Tequila, Rose’s Lime, Triple Sec, Kosher or course ground sea salt and fresh slices of lime. You’ll need either a shaker or a large glass filled with ice and a strainer and you’ll need lots of ice.
Ingredients:
6 oz tequila
4 oz triple sec
2 oz Rose’s® lime juice
Moisten them rim of a large glass with lime juice. Dip the glass into salt spread on a flat plate. Fill glass with ice.
In the shaker or other large glass filled with ice add tequila, Triple Sec and lime juice. If user a shaker, shake vigorously or mix with a stirrer in the glass. Pour through a strainer into the salt rimmed glass. Serve with extra lime slices.
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungoverwe’ve been bailed outwe’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
This Day in History
Deadly shootings at Kent State during the Vietnam War; Margaret Thatcher becomes Britain’s prime minister; Chicago’s Haymarket Riot; ‘Freedom Riders’ head South; Birth of the outfit behind the Oscars.
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
The speed of communications is wondrous to behold. It is also true that speed can multiply the distribution of information that we know to be untrue.
Wednesday night Donald Trump’s lawyer, former US Attorney and NYC Mayor, Rudolph Guiliani appeared with Fox News’ Sean Hannity spilling the beans on the $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels creating even greater legal headaches for Trump. In the typical long winded interview, Guiliani revealed that Trump repaid his private lawyer Michael Cohen after Trump’s continued public denial that he knew anything about the transaction to keep Ms. Daniels from telling her story.
“I’m giving you a fact that you don’t know,” Giuliani, the former New York mayor who recently joined the president’s legal team, told Fox News host Sean Hannity. “It’s not campaign money. No campaign finance violation. They funneled through a law firm and the president repaid it.”
That seemed to contradict Trump’s public statements on the payment, which has become a subject of a criminal investigation into Cohen, whose residences and office were raided by the FBI last month.
Speaking to reporters on Air Force One in early April, Trump replied, “No,” when asked, “Did you know about the $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels?” [..]
In his Fox interview, Giuliani went on to say that Trump “didn’t know about the specifics about it, as far as I know. But he did know about the general arrangements.” The former prosecutor and mayor indicated that Trump reimbursed Cohen through a series of payments of about $35,000, with some extra funds added to cover taxes and perhaps other services rendered. Reports indicated Cohen may have been paid as much as $460,000. [..]
“He was well-aware that at some point when I saw the opportunity, I was going to get this over with,” Giuliani told The Washington Post, adding that he discussed the issue with the president “probably 4 or 5 days ago.” The former U.S. attorney said he didn’t think he was at risk of being fired over his comments.
“No! No! No! I’’ not going to get fired,” Giuliani told the Post. “But if I do, I do. It wouldn’t be the first time it ever happened. But I don’t think so, no.”
Then Thursday morning, Guiliani doubled down on “Fox and Friends,” which Trump watches religiously, further complicating Trumps legal woes by stating that the payment to Ms. Daniels was to cover up the alleged affair in an effort to protect the Trump campaign.
“She was alleging — although there’s the contrary letter she signed that it never happened — that there was a one-time affair,” the president’s lawyer explained. “And I think when Cohen heard $130,000, he said, ‘My God, this is cheap. They come cheap. Let me get the thing signed up and signed off.’”
“Imagine if that came out on Oct. 15, 2016 in the middle of the last debate with Hillary Clinton,” Giuliani added. “Cohen didn’t even ask. Cohen made it go away. He did his job.”
Is as Guiliani claims this wasn’t a campaign contribution, how is this a legal problem for Trump? The Daily Beast‘s Lachlan Markay explains:
(I)n detailing the structure of the payments, Giuliani may have admitted that Trump fudged federal ethics paperwork—paperwork that his lawyers tried, unsuccessfully, to keep Trump from swearing was true and accurate.
By Giuliani’s account, Cohen’s payment to Daniels was effectively a loan, as he knew it would be repaid per the terms of his agreement with Trump. Giuliani insists that it was not a loan to the campaign, which would have amounted to an illegal contribution. Trump’s repayment was entirely a personal expense designed to avoid personal embarrassment, Giuliani explained. Hence, Cohen’s payment was in effect a loan to Trump personally, which Trump would later repay. [..]
“If [the] Cohen loan was not one to [the] campaign, then it was one to you, and you omitted it from your personal federal financial disclosures for the period,” noted Norm Eisen, a former White House ethics lawyer, in a tweet on Thursday. “That’s a crime under 18 USC 1001 & we have filed a criminal complaint with DOJ.” [..]
Under the Ethics in Government Act, most federal officeholders, including the president, must file annual reports that give a full accounting of their finances, including income, assets, and liabilities, among other information. The report that Trump filed last year disclosed no debts owed to either Cohen or Essential Consultants LLC, the company he used to make payments to Daniels.
“The parties involved in the transaction apparently took extreme measures to ensure that their identities would not be disclosed,” CREW wrote in its complaint to the Justice Department and the Office of Government Ethics. “These facts suggest President Trump’s failure to report the loan may have been done both knowingly and willfully.” [..]
In April, as Trump’s attorneys gathered information for a financial disclosure report covering 2016 and early 2017, those attorneys met with officials from the Office of Government Ethics. At that meeting, according to correspondence subsequently reported by the Associated Press, Trump’s attorneys requested that Trump be excused from legally certifying that the disclosure of his assets and liabilities was accurate and complete. OGE balked and required that he do so.
Trump assented, and certified that the the statements “made in this report are true, complete and correct to the best of my knowledge.”
Then to add insult to injury for Trump and his legal eagles, it was revealed that Cohen’s phones were wiretapped by the federal prosecutors prior to the raid on his office and residences early last month and one White House call was intercepted.
Former U.S. Attorney Chuck Rosenberg, now an NBC News analyst, says there’s a high bar for having a wiretap approved.
“The affidavits are typically highly detailed and carefully vetted by experienced lawyers,” he said. “In all cases the wiretap must be approved by a federal judge.”
Rosenberg said that wiretaps are usually approved for an investigation into a current crime and not solely for possible crimes that have been committed in the past.
“This is an exacting process where the government must demonstrate to a federal judge that there is an ongoing crime.”
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungoverwe’ve been bailed outwe’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
This Day in History
Philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli born; The U.S. Supreme Court rules racial covenants in real estate are unenforceable; Joe DiMaggio makes his baseball debut; Singers Pete Seeger and James Brown born.
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
I want to turn the clock back to when people lived in small villages and took care of each other.
When the Washington Redskins took their cheerleading squad to Costa Rica in 2013 for a calendar photo shoot, the first cause for concern among the cheerleaders came when Redskins officials collected their passports upon arrival at the resort, depriving them of their official identification.
For the photo shoot, at the adults-only Occidental Grand Papagayo resort on Culebra Bay, some of the cheerleaders said they were required to be topless, though the photographs used for the calendar would not show nudity. Others wore nothing but body paint. Given the resort’s secluded setting, such revealing poses would not have been a concern for the women — except that the Redskins had invited spectators.
A contingent of sponsors and FedExField suite holders — all men — were granted up-close access to the photo shoots.
One evening, at the end of a 14-hour day that included posing and dance practices, the squad’s director told nine of the 36 cheerleaders that their work was not done. They had a special assignment for the night. Some of the male sponsors had picked them to be personal escorts at a nightclub.
“So get back to your room and get ready,” the director told them. Several of them began to cry.
“They weren’t putting a gun to our heads, but it was mandatory for us to go,” one of the cheerleaders said. “We weren’t asked, we were told. Other girls were devastated because we knew exactly what she was doing.”
…
The Redskins’ weeklong trip to Costa Rica in 2013 — for which the cheerleaders were paid nothing beyond transportation costs, meals and lodging, the team said — provides a vivid illustration of how N.F.L. teams have used cheerleaders for far more than sideline dancers during games. Their treatment has come under intense scrutiny in recent weeks since two former N.F.L. cheerleaders filed discrimination complaints and described a hostile work environment in which they were often dangled as sex objects for the titillation of male fans away from the games.
While originally presented as a product of the Special Counsel’s Office by The New York Times there’s pretty general agreement now that the 49 (or 48, reports still vary) questions are instead the notes of Jay Sekulow and other members of Trump’s legal team following a meeting with Robert Mueller in March.
This is kind of important for a few reasons. First of all it means that they don’t necessarily reflect the direction of the investigation, especially from Mueller’s standpoint. Were one to attribute a certain level of prosecutorial savvy (or duplicity, take your pick) they would only indicate where he wanted Trump’s lawyers to focus, making all of those Red Cape/Bull Fighting and Magician metaphors highly appropriate. Certainly I didn’t find any earth shattering bombshells in the specifics as most of this information is common public knowledge.
There are known knowns, there are known unknowns, but we don’t know what we don’t know- at least all of it.
Another thing I think is worthy of note is at last the Media has noticed what I told you over a week ago, Mueller doesn’t have to extend Trump the courtesy of an interview, he can subpoena his testimony in front of any of his 3 Grand Juries. This was settled by a unanimous Supreme Court decision in United States v. Nixon and Jones v. Clinton.
“Oh, this could take years and cost millions of lives.”
Well, congratulations on your Animal House trivia but probably not so much. No District or Appellate Court is going to rule against precedent on this one and as long as Justice Kennedy is still kicking it’s hard to see how you get a favorable ruling out of the Supremes. I suppose Roberts could delay it a bit, Gorsuch should recuse himself but probably won’t because he’s an asshole.
And Mueller doesn’t need Trump’s testimony anyway, it’s a matter of public record in his twits and interviews- case closed.
The timing is somewhat significant as it explains the March Meltdown (firing of McCabe, opening the personal front against Mueller and Rosenstein, and the departure of John Dowd and, just today, Ty Cobb. Trump wants fixers not lawyers and he wants this to go away. Much has been made of the addition of Emmet Flood who worked for Clinton. Well, Bill lost that case.
Speaking of timing, the final item I wish to draw your attention to today is, given this is a deliberate leak from the Trump side, what are they hoping to accomplish?
The obvious answer is that it is a part of their ongoing campaign to delegitimize the Mueller probe, at least in the eyes of their racist, bigoted, misogynous Republican base and recent polling indicates some effectiveness. While it is only about 35% of the electorate it is a majority of those who vote in Republican primaries and thus a useful tool to keep Republican Congresspeople from voting for impeachment (note: Institutional Democrats are cowardly avoiding the issue, especially Nancy Pelosi, as is most of the D.C. Press Corpse, yeah, you read that right) even if Trump acts to remove Rosenstein and Mueller.
More interesting from a tactical standpoint is speculation they are playing a “delay the decay” game and it’s designed to prepare people for their refusal to consent to a courtesy interview.
Now from a legal standpoint this makes perfect sense because their Client lies roughly 6.5 times a day, every day, and has recently been limbering up to 9 or more, any one of which is a Perjury Conviction, cut and dried black letter law, if made under oath.
Certainly the recent disclosure that Trump’s Team’s terms are a limited question list, made available in advance, not under oath (though lying is still a crime), and a short 2 – 3 hour time frame (less than a typical Congressional hearing), encourages that interpretation.
Mueller isn’t going to settle for that, he has the whip hand, the facts, and the law. Trump’s Team is just banging the table.
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungoverwe’ve been bailed outwe’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
This Day in History
Nazi Germany’s capital Berlin falls in World War II; Artist Leonardo da Vinci dies; Civil War Gen. ‘Stonewall’ Jackson killed; Nelson Mandela claims victory in South Africa vote; Singer Bing Crosby born.
The open-ended queries appear to be an attempt to penetrate the president’s thinking, to get at the motivation behind some of his most combative Twitter posts and to examine his relationships with his family and his closest advisers. They deal chiefly with the president’s high-profile firings of the F.B.I. director and his first national security adviser, his treatment of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and a 2016 Trump Tower meeting between campaign officials and Russians offering dirt on Hillary Clinton.
But they also touch on the president’s businesses; any discussions with his longtime personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, about a Moscow real estate deal; whether the president knew of any attempt by Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to set up a back channel to Russia during the transition; any contacts he had with Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime adviser who claimed to have inside information about Democratic email hackings; and what happened during Mr. Trump’s 2013 trip to Moscow for the Miss Universe pageant. [..]
The questions provide the most detailed look yet inside Mr. Mueller’s investigation, which has been shrouded in secrecy since he was appointed nearly a year ago. The majority relate to possible obstruction of justice, demonstrating how an investigation into Russia’s election meddling grew to include an examination of the president’s conduct in office. Among them are queries on any discussions Mr. Trump had about his attempts to fire Mr. Mueller himself and what the president knew about possible pardon offers to Mr. Flynn. [..]
A few questions reveal that Mr. Mueller is still investigating possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia. In one of the more tantalizing inquiries, Mr. Mueller asks what Mr. Trump knew about campaign aides, including the former chairman Paul Manafort, seeking assistance from Moscow: “What knowledge did you have of any outreach by your campaign, including by Paul Manafort, to Russia about potential assistance to the campaign?” No such outreach has been revealed publicly. [..]
MSNBC host Rachel Maddow read through the list of questions at the start of her Monday program.
She also spoke with Michael Schmidt who broke the story for the Times
The list of questions can be read at the Times web site.
Former Obama White House ethics czar, Ambassador Norm Eisen thinks that should “frighten Trump.”
The trouble for Trump and his legal team is that the president will place himself in even greater legal jeopardy unless his answers to these questions are both innocent and true.
Many of the questions aim to shed light on the issue at the heart of the inquiry into the president’s possible obstruction of justice: whether he acted with corrupt intent. What were his motives in firing FBI Director James Comey, and were they pure or tainted by the wrongful desire to shield his associates or himself from liability? When Trump reportedly told Russian officials after he fired Comey, “I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off,” was he advocating neutral policy concerns or protecting himself from personal exposure? Was the aim of the president’s tweets and comments threatening Comey to intimidate a witness or simply editorial commentary? Trump will need to not only provide innocent explanations to all of these questions, but also address the pattern of his actions, which otherwise appears damning.
Other questions drive at the “collusion” issue by echoing Republican Senator Howard Baker’s famous question in the Watergate hearings: What did the president know and when did he know it? If there truly was no collusion, as the president incessantly claims, then this question should be a softball, particularly since Mueller has told the president the exact pitches that are coming. Here too, however, problems lie for Trump. The president will need to explain how it is possible that he did not know about any of the 70 or more contacts his associates had with Russians during and after the campaign; or that the president only learned last summer about the June 9, 2016, Trump Tower meeting that his campaign chair Paul Manafort, his son Donald Trump Jr., and his son-in-law Jared Kushner took with the Russians. Mueller’s questions show that the investigation of conspiracy and other offenses that could fall under the label of “collusion” is very much alive, no matter what House Republicans think. [..]
The president is, of course, not required to volunteer his testimony. The problem is that the choice is not his alone to make. Special Counsel Mueller may well do what Independent Counsel Ken Starr ultimately did and seek to compel Trump to testify before a grand jury. (President Clinton relented after the subpoena was served.) If that happens, the president could try to challenge it legally, but he will fail. Although courts have been sensitive to a sitting president’s need for special accommodations and deference when he is subjected to civil and criminal matters, they have rejected claims that the president is beyond the reach of the law.
Confronted with the compulsion to testify, or indeed, at any point, President Trump does have another option available—asserting his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Normally it is difficult for public officials to exercise this option. President Trump has taken an oath to take care that the laws are faithfully executed, and it is hard to see how refusing to answer a federal investigator’s questions is consistent with that oath. [..]
As an elected official, Trump must answer to that body and to voters, who will be left to draw negative inferences from the questions he declines to answer on self-incrimination grounds.
Former US attorney Chuck Rosenberg gave his impression of what answers Mueller expects with these questions.
The top Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff (D-CA) speaks with Rachel. He noted that money laundering does not appear to be a theme of the questions despite promising leads on that front.
In an MSNBC special report Friday night, she of the Trump Tower meeting, Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya reared her head in an interview with NBC correspondent Richard Engel recanting her earlier denials of Russian government ties. In recently discovered e-mails, it was revealed that Vetelnitskaya worked hand in glove with Russia’s chief legal office to thwart a Justice Department civil fraud case against a well-connected Russian firm. She admitted to Engel that she not just a private lawyer but a source of information for a top Kremlin official, Yuri Y. Chaika, the prosecutor general.
This investigation doen’t look like its going to end anytime soon.
It’s May and it’s getting warmer here in the northeast. Tomorrow is Cinquo de Mayo, the only battle that the Mexican army won in their war with the French. It’s celebrated in the United States by many Mexican Americans as a source of pride. In Mexico, it is an official holiday in the State of Puebla where is is called called El Día de la Batalla de Puebla (English: The Day of the Battle of Puebla). 
This is the recipe I have used for years without complaints. I use 1800 Reposado Tequila, Rose’s Lime, Triple Sec, Kosher or course ground sea salt and fresh slices of lime. You’ll need either a shaker or a large glass filled with ice and a strainer and you’ll need lots of ice.