05/04/2015 archive

Adapted from diary originally published on May 5, 2012, the 150th anniversary of defeat the French forces by the Mexican Army at the Battle of Puebla.

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:

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:

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.

By thanatokephaloides

One hundred and twenty-nine years ago today, history was made at the Haymarket Square in Chicago, Illinois.

This piece of history was so critically important to the lives of working men and women ever since that time that almost every nation on Earth, the United States of America alone excepted, celebrates its laboring population on the first of May.

I feel that we here on the Anti-Capitalist Meetup and related Groups here on Daily Kos need to remember what happened on that fateful May evening in 1886, and the heroes who sacrificed their lives so that their fellow workers might have access to reasonable working and living conditions.

For more on this important story, please join me below the fold.

NOTE: To my best knowledge, belief, and available information, all materials in this Diary not of my direct manufacture are in the Public Domain (USA), or other license terms tolerant of my use of the same (Wikipedia/Creative Commons).

“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”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Richard (RJ) Eskow: After Baltimore: Soul Searching in Another America

When asked about Baltimore last week, President Obama said this: “… if we think that we’re just gonna send the police to do the dirty work of containing the problems that arise (in our inner cities), without as a nation and as a society saying what can we do to change those communities … then we’re not gonna solve this problem.”

He added:

“We can’t just leave this to the police. I think there are police departments that have to do some soul searching. I think there are some communities that have to do some soul searching. But I think we, as a country, have to do some soul searching.”

The President is right. But how, exactly, does a nation go about searching its soul in times like these?

Perhaps it begins by reflecting on his own brilliant words from the 2004 Democratic Convention — the words that set him on the path to the White House. “There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America,” Barack Obama said that night, “there’s the United States of America.”

That summer evening seems so long ago now.

Robert Reich: Trans-Pacific Trickle-Down Economics

Have we learned nothing from thirty years of failed trickle-down economics?

By now we should know that when big corporations, Wall Street, and the wealthy get special goodies, the rest of us get shafted.

The Reagan and George W. Bush tax cuts of 1981, 2001, and 2003, respectively, were sold to America as ways to boost the economy and create jobs.

They ended up boosting the take-home pay of those at the top. Most Americans saw no gains.

In fact, the long stagnation of American wages began with Reaganomics. Wages rose a bit under Bill Clinton, and then started plummeting again under George W. Bush.

Trickle-down economics proved a cruel hoax. The new jobs created under Reagan and George W. Bush paid lousy wages, the old jobs paid even less, and we ended up with whopping federal budget deficits.

I have 3 articles for your perusal this morning!

First, when it is dark enough, you can see the stars:

Marilyn Mosby, Prosecutor in Freddie Gray Case, Takes a Stand and Calms a Troubled City

Shortly before she became the youngest top prosecutor in any major American city, Marilyn J. Mosby, a daughter and granddaughter of police officers, had tough words about how the nation’s criminal justice system had handled mistreatment of black men by the police.

“It’s been 78 days since Michael Brown was shot in the street by a police officer,” Ms. Mosby said in October at her alma mater, Tuskegee University in Alabama. “It’s been 101 days since Eric Garner was choked to death in New York by a police officer, and 54 days since the New York City medical examiner ruled that incident a homicide. Neither has resulted in an indictment.”

Friday morning, Ms. Mosby made clear that she intends to proceed at a different pace. Her stunning announcement that she would prosecute six officers in the death of Freddie Gray landed her squarely in the national spotlight, making her a heroine to those demanding better police treatment of black men, but drawing sharp criticism from critics who accuse her of pursuing a political agenda and who say she moved too quickly.

Jump!

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.

Click on images to enlarge

May 4 is the 124th day of the year (125th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 241 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1970, At Kent State University, 100 National Guardsmen fire their rifles into a group of students, killing four and wounding 11. This incident occurred in the aftermath of President Richard Nixon’s April 30 announcement that U.S. and South Vietnamese forces had been ordered to execute an “incursion” into Cambodia to destroy North Vietnamese bases there. In protest, a wave of demonstrations and disturbances erupted on college campuses across the country.

There were no warnings when the Guardsmen opened fire. 60 rounds were fire into the crowd of demonstrators. After an investigation, all the charges were dropped against the National Guard in 1974.

New audio from the day of the shootings has been released on a website dubbed KentState1970.org. The site also features images of the historic day’s tragic events.