01/26/2014 archive

There's been a common theme lately of calling for a new OWS. I would be overjoyed if all of these calls were in fact calls for a new OWS. But they aren't. I want to make clear that this isn't necessarily an attack on people making these calls. They make them for different reasons, and those reasons are often reasons I agree with. But, they are in fact calls for a completely different movement, one that bears little if any resemblance to OWS. I'm going to go through the common refrains of what “the movement” needs and my responses to them. Let me say first that I think that people really mean that they want another successful and visible social movement when they say they want another OWS they really . I'm completely on board with that, I want another movement with the energy of Occupy. The problem is that the things that made OWS successful are exactly the things people are calling to change.

Larry Wilmore recognizes outstanding achievement in breaking down racial barriers that nobody was asked to break.

Adapted from the archives at The Stars Hollow Gazette

It’s the big game, the grand finale to the all the American version of football, Super Bowl XLVIII which will determine the NFL champion. This year it’s  the American Football Conference (AFC) champion Denver Broncos and the National Football Conference (NFC) champion Seattle Seahawks who will meet in a week at MetLife Stadium at the Meadowlands Sports Complex in East Rutherford, New Jersey.

But, you know all that. The big thing is what to feed those exuberant fans gathered around the TV. I have some new recipes and some old favorites.

For the new:

Bacon-Wrapped Pig Wings

To quote epicurious, where these recipes are from, “Who says pigs can’t fly? Take a few boneless pork chops, add some bacon and a little creativity, and Pig Wings are on the menu!”

If cooking indoors, start in a “slow” oven  235°F for 90 minutes, or until the bacon is cooked. Finish under the broiler to crisp the bacon.

Salt-and-Pepper Shrimp with Blue Cheese and Celery

This shrimp recipe is a close seafood version of Buffalo Chicken Wings. I reduced the salt to two teaspoons with excellent results and the blue cheese dip can be made two days ahead which enhances the flavor.

Garlic Roasted Potato Skins served with Onion and Spinach Dip.

Save the scooped out flesh for other uses. Potato skins can be scooped out and spread with garlic paste, but not baked, 1 day ahead and chilled, loosely covered with foil. Bring them to room temperature before baking.

Pretzel Bites with Quick Cheddar Dip

For a quick recipe, you can buy frozen pretzels in the snack section of the supermarket. Just cut them into bite size nuggets before cooking.

Meatball Sliders

You can substitute your favorite ready made meatballs and sauce but, trust me, if you have time, this recipe is well worth making from “scratch.”

Crispy Baked Chicken Wings

For the health conscious, baking yields really crispy wings without the mess and time watching. For the less healthy conscious these are our past favorites:

Buffalo Chicken Wings and Blue Cheese Dip and Spicy Laquered Chicken Wings

Peanut Butter and Chocolate Cheesecake Brownies

Heavens forbid we should forget desert. Nummm

If you aren’t watching the game, eat your heart out.

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

January 26 is the 26th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 339 days remaining until the end of the year (340 in leap years).

On this day in 1788, Captain Arthur Phillip guides a fleet of 11 British ships carrying convicts to the colony of New South Wales, effectively founding Australia. After overcoming a period of hardship, the fledgling colony began to celebrate the anniversary of this date with great fanfare.

Australia Day (previously known as Anniversary Day, Foundation Day, and ANA Day) is the official national day of Australia. Celebrated annually on 26 January, the date commemorates the arrival of the First Fleet at Sydney Cove in 1788 and the proclamation at that time of British sovereignty over the eastern seaboard of New Holland.

Although it was not known as Australia Day until over a century later, records of celebrations on 26 January date back to 1808, with the first official celebration of the formation of New South Wales held in 1818. It is presently an official public holiday in every state and territory of Australia and is marked by inductions into the Order of Australia and presentations of the Australian of the Year awards, along with an address from the governor-general and prime minister.

The date is controversial to some Australians, particularly those of Indigenous heritage, leading to the use of alternate names, such as Invasion Day and Survival Day. Proposals have been made to change the date of Australia Day, but these have failed to gain widespread public support.

Arrival of the First Fleet

On 13 May 1787, a fleet of 11 ships, which came to be known as the First Fleet, was sent by the British Admiralty from England to Australia. Under the command of Captain Arthur Phillip, the fleet sought to establish a penal colony at Botany Bay on the coast of New South Wales, which had been explored and claimed by Captain James Cook in 1770. The settlement was seen as necessary because of the loss of the colonies in North America. The Fleet arrived between 18 and 20 January 1788, but it was immediately apparent that Botany Bay was unsuitable.

On 21 January, Philip and a few officers travelled to Port Jackson, 12 kilometres to the north, to see if it would be a better location for a settlement. They stayed there until 23 January; Philip named the site of their landing Sydney Cove, after the Home Secretary, Thomas Townshend, 1st Viscount Sydney. They also had some contact with the local aborigines.

They returned to Botany Bay on the evening of 23 January, when Philip gave orders to move the fleet to Sydney Cove the next morning, 24 January. That day, there was a huge gale blowing, making it impossible to leave Botany Bay, so they decided to wait till the next day, 25 January. However, during 24 January, they spotted the ships Astrolabe and Boussole, flying the French flag, at the entrance to Botany Bay; they were having as much trouble getting into the bay as the First Fleet was having getting out.

On 25 January, the gale was still blowing; the fleet tried to leave Botany Bay, but only the HMS Supply made it out, carrying Arthur Philip, Philip Gidley King, some marines and about 40 convicts; they anchored in Sydney Cove in the afternoon.

On 26 January, early in the morning, Philip along with a few dozen marines, officers and oarsmen, rowed ashore and took possession of the land in the name of King George III. The remainder of the ship’s company and the convicts watched from onboard the Supply.

Meanwhile, back at Botany Bay, Captain John Hunter of the HMS Sirius made contact with the French ships, and he and the commander, Captain de Clonard, exchanged greetings. Clonard advised Hunter that the fleet commander was Jean-Francois de Galaup, comte de La Perouse. The Sirius successfully cleared Botany Bay, but the other ships were in great difficulty. The Charlotte was blown dangerously close to rocks; the Friendship and the Prince of Wales became entangled, both ship losing booms or sails; the Charlotte and the Friendship actually collided; and the Lady Penrhyn nearly ran aground. Despite these difficulties, all the remaining ships finally managed to clear Botany Bay and sail to Sydney Cove on 26 January. The last ship anchored there at about 3 pm.

Note that the formal establishment of the Colony of New South Wales did not occur on 26 January, as is commonly assumed. That did not occur until 7 February 1788, when the formal proclamation of the colony and of Arthur Phillip’s governorship were read out. The vesting of all land in the reigning monarch George III also dates from 7 February 1788.

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

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The Sunday Talking Heads:

This Week with George Stephanopolis: The guests on this Sunday’s “This Week” are: White House press secretary Jay Carney; and House Counterterrorism and Intelligence Sub-Committee Chair Rep. Peter King (R-NY).

The roundtable guests are ABC News’ Cokie Roberts; Yahoo News national political columnist Matt Bai; CNN “Crossfire” co-host Van Jones; Patriot Voices chair and former Sen. Rick Santorum; and Fox News anchor Greta Van Susteren.

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Mr. Schieffer’s guests are Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX); Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY); House Homeland Security Committee, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX); members of the U.S. Olympic delegation, Billie Jean King and Brian Boitano.

Joining him for a panel discussion on the upcoming State of the Union address are Peggy Noonan of the Wall Street Journal; Bob Woodward of the Washington Post; Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard; and President Obama’s former Chief of Staff and CBS News Contributor Bill Daley.

Meet the Press with David Gregory: The guests on MTP are: Sen. Rand Paul (K-KY); former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff; Jesselyn Radack, one of Snowden’s legal advisors and also National Security and Human Rights Director of the Government Accountability Project; tennis legend Billie Jean King; and Assistant Majority Leader Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL).

Guests st the roundtable are Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez (D-CA); former FCC Chairman, now President and CEO of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, Michael Powell; Republican Strategist Mike Murphy; New York Times Washington Bureau Chief Carolyn Ryan; and NBC’s Chuck Todd.

State of the Union with Candy Crowley: Ms Crowley has an exclusive interview with Sergey Ivanovich Kislyak, Russia’s Ambassador to the US to discuss the Sochi Olympics. Her other guests are White House Senior Advisor Dan Pfeiffer; Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY); House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) and Deputy Majority Whip Tom Cole (R-OK).

Philippines and Rebels Agree on Peace Accord to End Insurgency

 

By FLOYD WHALEY

The Philippine government and the country’s largest Muslim insurgency group negotiated the final details of a peace accord on Saturday that many hope will end more than 40 years of violence that has killed tens of thousands of people and helped nurture Islamic extremism in Southeast Asia.

The agreement will create an autonomous Muslim-dominated region in the restive south of the predominantly Christian country, handing much of the responsibility for security there to local authorities as well as a large share of revenues from the region’s wealth of natural resources. The militants have agreed to disarm, with many expected to join Philippine security forces.

Also in Economic Populist: Orwell’s Catastrophic Gradualism and 0.1% Apologetic

Private health insurance is an entirely unnecessary economic institution, whether a health care system is organized around public, co-operative, sole proprietary, private partnership, corporate not-for-profit or corporate for-profit provision of the health care services themselves. Therefore, the profits associated with private health insurance are a legacy rent extracted by private health insurers, protected by the backward-looking nature of our economic institutions, and the least justifiable of the institutional overheads that we pile on top of the necessary costs of providing health insurance.

The purpose of an economic subsystem is to provide material support to the social system that contains it. We are social animals sharing a common humanity, and making the quality of access to medical care for different members of our society depend upon the size of income flows and wealth balances they can tap into betrays a fundamentally perverse set of priorities. Before our society allocates resources to production of luxuries for a wealthy few, or even the production of luxuries for an adequately well-off many, it should allocate resources to meet the Basic Needs of all.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) quite deliberately attempted to solve as few of the institutional problems as feasible among the many that we in the US face in ensuring access to, provision of, and quality of our basic need of medical care, while still hoping to possibly delay or stave off the collapse of our system for financing health care services that was already in progress by 2009.

Therefore, even if the ACA succeeds in staving off that collapse, we are left with a health care system that needs further reform. And if the ACA merely succeeds in delaying that collapse, then that simply increases the urgency and necessity of solving additional institutional problems.

Thus the fundamental issue that the ACA faces. The fundamental issue is not the functioning of the web site for signing up for coverage. It is not the deliberate monkey-wrenching of our already thoroughly corrupted political system as a side-show to try to game the new system for maximum short-term profits (even at the risk of returning system of finance of health to its path of ongoing collapse). It is that even if the ACA “succeeds”, it succeeds in such in a reform with such limited ambitions that it inevitably requires much more to be done.

Host of MSNBC’s “Up.” Steve Kornacki discusses what we have learned this week with his guest.

Tell us what you have learned this week.