Foodie Friday

Sure, I cook like a fancy fag, but you know, there are times when I just want some spaghetti and meatballs. The key to a good tomato sauce is a balance of sweetness, acidity, and piquancy. The key to a good meatball is bread. Use whatever dried pasta you like. If it's late-summer tomato season, use fresh tomoes in the sauce, peeled, cored, and hand-crushed. Any other time of year, use canned whole tomatoes, either a good Italian import or the many fine, organic domestics now available, and crush them by hand as well.

Sauce

2 large cans (or 4-5 small) whole tomatoes, hand-crushed
1 large yellow onion, finely diced
5 cloves garlic, crushed with the flat edge of a knife and diced
1 carrot, peeled and grated
1 red bell pepper, finely diced
1-2 small chiles, chopped
fresh thyme
extra virgin olive oil
red wine vinegar
raw sugar
whole nutmeg
sea salt
black pepper

Heat the olive oil over high heat in a large, heavy pot with a tight-fitting lid. When it is very hot, add the onions, garlic, and bell peppers. Salt to encourage sweating. Reduce the heat to medium. Melt over a medium heat until soft (the onions will be transparent). Add the carrot and chiles. Cook for several minutes until they begin to give up their water as well. Add the tomatoes and stir together. When the sauce begins to bubble, throw in a handful of freshly cut thyme. Grate in a healthy bit of nutmeg. Let the herbs release their oil. Add about a tablespoon of vinegar, and a pinch of sugar. Stir well and taste. You should be able to taste sweetness and acidity simultaneously, with neither overpowering the other, and the heat from the chiles should not be evident when you first put the sauce in your mouth, but rather should leave a lingering heat on your tongue a moment after you've swallowed. Reduce heat to low and simmer covered for at least two hours.

Meatballs

1 lb semi-lean ground beef
1 lb ground pork
1/4 lb prosciutto, chopped to a fine dice
2 chicken livers, skin removed, finely diced
1/2 baguette or Italian stick
1 egg
sea salt
extra virgin olive oil

Turn the broiler in your oven on high. Slice the bread in half lengthwise. Place it in the oven--not too close to the flame, or else it will just burn. Toast the fuck out of that motherfucker. Remove. Using a food processor, grind it into fine (but not too fine) breadcrumbs.

In a large mixing bowl, mix the meat, bread crumbs, and egg with a generous portion of salt. Get into it. Mash it up good. Roll the mixture into balls--I usually go for an, uh, anatomical scaling, but some people are into really big ones. Whatever works. Heat some olive oil in a heavy-bottomed frying pan and brown the meatballs on two sides in batches. Remove them from the heat and add them to the tomato sauce where they should simmer for at least one hour.

Do Unto Others

So John Hagee is all like, "God caused the Holocaust, yo." And all the Progressives are like, "Oh no he di'in't." In fact, every time some Christian kook up and avers that the baby Jesus threw airplanes at the Twin Towers because he was mad about abortions, some good liberal rears onto his hind legs and whinnies that evil events do not bear the imprint of God. Now I do not believe in God or gods, but if I did, though I would be loathe to speculate on the direct causal relationship between American social policy and divine retribution, it seems to me that I would be forced, for the sake of maintaining some modicum of consistency, to admit that God permits evil in the world, even if he doesn't precisely cause it. Within the primitive religious community of a douche like Hagee, there remains an abiding conviction that God's omnipresence is actual, and that all events bear his imprint. The particular millennarian theology that says God caused the Holocaust to provide a political pretext for the return of Jews to Greater Israel in order to provoke the forces of the antichrist into the apocalyptic confrontation that will signify the opening of the end times and the coming of the Kingdom of Christ, the Risen Lord, may be a little too sci-fi for you and me, but when you think about it, it's hardly more offensive to suggest that God acted instrumentally in order to hasten the advent of heaven on earth than it is to suggest that the old bastard just sat on his ass and picked his nose while Hitler sent millions to the gas. Likewise, Liberals will hoot and holler about the conservative Pope and how he's personally killing African children by denying condoms to the continent (in collusion with our own dauphin) and how the Catholic Church is just a front for child molesters whose pseudo-committment to celibacy is even more sexually deviant than their pedophilia, yet let some fat televangelist utter one tiny Whore of Babylon in the direction of the Vatican, and suddenly everyone's knees are on the bench, hosanas in the air, etc. This is all to show the deranging influence of the moderate ecumenicalism that passes for religion on the American "left." No matter what it makes you look like a hypocrite and a fool.

Savage

Two recent Perrin posts grabbed me, and I have just a few things to add. The first is about Michael Savage, the radio host of the eponymous-pseudonymous Savage Nation radio program ("Warning, the Savage Nation contains adult themes, adult language . . . psychological nudity"), a sort of nightly Party Rally as filtered through the mind of Tristan Tzara, an exquisite corpse of nativist ressentiment, hyperbole, and plain insanity. Savage has one of the five largest listenerships on talk radio and a famous antipathy toward other rightwing bellowers, especially Limbaugh ("Mushmouth", "Loudbush") and Hannity ("The Leprechaun"), whom he presents--with total accuracy, notably--as small-brained GOP apparatchiks mouthing party-line slogans for the Republican Party's voting ünterclass. Savage, né Weiner, offends the fuck out of Democrats and other progressivisti, for he champions--loudly--a kind of American Front National line based on an oft-repeated, tripartite ideology of "Borders, Language, Culture." But Savage is no ideologue; he will turn on a dime and contradict what he was saying just a moment ago in order to goad a caller or make a point. He heaves and reminisces. He plays music. He muses on his childhood. He excoriates traitors. He laments a lost New York. He calls for the firebombing of Mecca.

He is, in other words, one of the most consumate performers of our time, far more convincing that the other right-wing yabblers, an Andy Kaufman of reactionary nationalism. Note: Savage was once a near beatnik, romped with Ginsburg, came out to San Francisco (now, "San Fran Sicko"). His radio personality is a construct, and the ease with which Liberals fall into their roles as comic foils to his, uh, Savagery is a testament to essential insecurity that underlies the non-left American Left.

That insecurity explains the trend that Dennis notes in the second post: antehumous eulogies to not-dead-yet-but-dying Conservativism. Americanus liberalus sees himself in Hegelian terms, although he doesn't usually know it, and sees a liberal social managerial welfare state as the final development in the organization of human society. He is in favor of Institutions, and is interested in Process, and believes in consensualist governance so long as the consensus reflects the views of, broadly speaking, the liberally-educated, lower-upper-class urban cosmopole. He views the underclass and "working class" base of the Democratic Party with bemused disdain, and feels it his duty to construct a society where such folks can be "educated." For, you know, the "knowledge-based economy." His political ideology is a tissue, easily torn, and so he bends to any suggestion that his opponents have dropped from the Zeitgeist like foam from a space shuttle. It may in fact be true that the GOP has reached a terminal point in its useful life, but even if that proves to be the case, a very near facsimile will soon arise. The management of the American people by the actual ruling class requires that someone always appeal to their sense of progress and fair play and someone else appeal to their fear of change and jealousy. We all get very worked up, and curiously, things remain largely the same.

Make It New

The failure of Mr. Bush to fully mobilize the most powerful innovation engine in the world--the U.S. economy--to produce a scalable alternative to oil has helped to fuel the rise of a collection of petro-authoritarian states--from Russia to Venezuela to Iran--that are reshaping global politics in their own image.

-The Friedman

Now I know that the President of the United States is no longer an executive in a divided organization whose duties and responsibilities are both described and circumscribed by the written charter, but rather a Pharaonic demigod with the power to raise the dead and call down the rains and direct the UFOs to build the pyramids and so forth. Nevertheless, the idea that one dude by grace of his elected office, however bloblike the powers of that office have grown, can kick-state this engine-enconomy like it's a fueled-up motorbike is pretty fanciful. Or, you know, retarded. But it is a minor learning disability indeed compared to the total, Terry-Shaivo mental incapacity that lies in comatose decrepitude all over the idea that "innovation" is going to produce "a scalable alternative to oil." Dudes and dudettes, I say unto you: there may be a day in some dim and distant future when miniature fusion reactors nuzzle next to our useless hearts, powering a world of flight and personal motoring compatable to the 20th Century in the so-called Developed World, but until then, there is no "alternative to oil." Carbon fuel is a singularly efficient concentration of caloric energy. It has an affinity for combustion. It is refinable and fungible. Its unique qualities define the made geography of our entire society. We aren't going to put hydrogen fuel cells into our cars and long-haul fleets and continue put-putting around, but Green! The "alternative to oil" is not a new substance at the filling station. The alternative to oil is the radical physical revision of the entire structure of our civilization. Flatten that, Tommy Boy.

Lebensraum

Full-bloodedness is an old coin that's gaining currency in the new American realm. Meaning: Politics may no longer be so much about race and gender as about heritage, core values and made-in-America. Just as we once had and still have a cultural divide in this country, we now have a patriot divide.

Who "gets" America? And who doesn't?

The answer has nothing to do with a flag lapel pin, which Mr. Obama donned for a campaign swing through West Virginia, or even military service, though that helps. It's also not about flagpoles in front yards or magnetic ribbons stuck on tailgates.

It's about blood equity, heritage and commitment to hard-won American values. And roots.

Some run deeper than others, and therein lies the truth of Mr. Fry's political sense. In a country that is rapidly changing demographically - and where new neighbors may have arrived last year, not last century - there is a very real sense that once-upon-a-time America is getting lost in the dash to diversity.

We love to boast that we are a nation of immigrants - and we are. But there's a different sense of America among those who trace their bloodlines back through generations of sacrifice.

Meanwhile, immigration trends have shifted drastically in the past 40 years, as growing percentages of Americans are foreign-born. In 1970, just 4.7 percent of the total population was foreign-born - 9.6 million people. By 2000, 11.1 percent, or 31.1 million individuals, were foreign-born, according to the Census.

Contributing to the growing unease among yesterday's Americans is the failure of the federal government to deal with the illegal immigration fiasco. It isn't necessarily racist or nativist to worry about what these new demographics mean to the larger American story.

-Kathleen Parker in Der Stürmer

Blood equity?

It's actually the "necessarily" in that last sentence that brings the grim smile to my lips. Quel caveat, eh? Obsession with the Joos the "foreign-born" out of concern for the cultural and racial heritage of the Aryan full-blooded American race is simultaneously faddish and passé. I'm the descendent of early-twentieth-century European immigrants, but the tendrils of generational intermarriage have added old Pennsylvania Scoth-Irish to the Italo-Germano-Ukraino genealogy as well. That hardly makes me a Daughter of the American Revolution, although I am related to one, but am I not--despite and quite against my will--an American? Are we gonna split hairs here? I once heard a fitting joke--Sherman Alexie, I think, told it at a reading. White guy sees an Indian walking past his house, and he thinks the Indian looks at him funny, so he says, "Hey, why don't you go back where you came from?" So the Indian came back that night and pitched a tent in the guy's backyard. All of human history, someone once said, is naught but the migration of tribes. I love the smell of inevitability in the morning.

Now Turn, and Vogue, and Turn, and Vogue

The law bars not only the exchange of sexually explicit images of children but also any attempt to convince another person that child pornography is available. The law covers offers that do not contain actual pornography and even offers in which no pictures exist.

Its pandering provision targets the person who "advertises, promotes, presents, distributes or solicits . . . any material or purported material in a manner that reflects the belief, or that is intended to cause another to believe," that it depicts children engaged in sexual activity.

The provision is needed, authorities said, because it is often difficult to prove that pornography on the Internet involved real children.

-The Post

Light of my life, fire of my loins! Every era must have its prohibitory fetishes, I suppose, and clearly kiddie porn is ours. The epidemiology of this endemic has always seemed to me to be a little suspect, and the moral distinction between raping a baby and filming a couple of sixteen-year-olds getting it on a necessary distinction that our moral crusaders uniformly refuse to make. What makes us so uncomfortable that we reach for the statute books is not so much children actually having sex, in any case, but the mere juxtaposition of children and sexuality, hence the ever-repeated (and now ratified) efforts to ban not only plain instances of exploitation, but also the mere suggestion, even if false, that kiddie porn, even if fake, exists. Well, there go my plans to retire on the proceeds of toddlerfisting.com.

I won't be making a new point by noting that so far as dangers to the children-who-are-our-future go, child-porn exploitation is fairly low on the list. Compare it to the more mundane and vastly more prevalent forms of verbal, psychological, and physical abuse that occur every day, every hour, in millions of American homes. The petty tyranny of family life is a misery no one wants to talk about. Is it worse to take pictures of a naked high school chick, or to make her pledge Vestal fealty to her daddy at a "Purity Ball" under the watchful eyes of a damnation-eager god? Perhaps neither one nor the other is worse in a meaningful sense, but you get my point. The lives of minors are a skein of coercion, and to pretend that the relatively rare intersection of childhood and pornography represents the most substantial danger to kids is lunatic. Children are beaten, abandoned, mocked, put down, poorly nourished. We can't teach half of them to read or do sums in their heads. We have an adoption system that operates with nothing less than a slave-auction economy. We have a foster care system that would make Kafka wince and call for rewrite. I could go on. The danger to children is not pornography, but childhood.

Under the Sun

Since I'm always harping on the apotheosis vs. aberration thing regarding the Liberal conviction that the US began torturing people and invading countries only under Bush, I'll pass along this related note by Pat Lang:

Nevertheless, it seems clear that there is not some sort of evolutionary development in the nature of war. There never was such a thing. War is war. It has always existed in many forms and usually simultaneously. The metaphor of generational development in warfare is essentially flawed. This image was created in the last decade or two to provide existing military leadership with a psychological crutch that enabled them to say that they had not been so woefully ignorant of history as to not know that irregular warfare had always been a major factor in conflict. No. The "4th Generation" label allowed the generals to tell each other that something new had appeared on the world scene - guerrilla war. They could not be expected to have anticipated this new thing, guerrilla war, could they?

Ecclesiastes. Etc.

Exordium and Terminus

John McCain:


Zager and Evans:

yo im jus tryin ta keep israel

Everyone is all like, President Bush went to the Middle East and said some dumb-ass shit. He went to Israel and said that the Jews would never again have to jump to their deaths like they did before the Romans just because the New Hitlers of Hamas and Iran and whomeverthefuck elese were building nukeyoular bombs, and he went to Saudi Arabia and scraped like a little bitch because gasoline prices were so high ("see, in other words, gas is expensive"), and then he went to one of the most exclusive enclaves in that entire portion of the world to deliver a speech about openness in government to a roomful of dictators, monarchs, and potentates. Commentators seem uniformly befuddled about this road show, and I suspect that is largely the point. The presidential caravan and its malaprop-strewn Grandiloquence 2008 World Tour serve the function of distracting from the actual pursuit of imperial projects, to which, let's face it, most of our bright bulbs already paid scanty attention. Watching, say, Fred Kaplan try to puzzle out what the hell the dauphin is doing making crazed speeches about peace in Israel and the territories without the slightest indication of a route from A to B to Z drives your neighborhood IOZ to mordant chuckles: the reason that there is no policy to match the two-state pablum is not that we are rudderless and clueless, but that we are in fact pursuing an actual policy, which is the precise opposite of what gee-dub is layin' out for y'all. And that holds true for all the rest of the prestodigitation as well. Oh well. The Americano, Mencken observed, has an extraordinary capacity for believing that which is palpably not true.

Only in America

“Something I need from dad is affirmation, being told I’m beautiful,” said Jordyn Wilson, 19, another daughter of Randy and Lisa. “If we don’t get it from home, we will go out to the culture and get it from them.”

-"Dancing the Night Away, With a Higher Purpose," The Times

What gets me: that an event epitomizing an entire genealogy of American sexual puritanism and Christian revivalism, a history with roots to the earliest New England settlements, overlaid with post-war American-dad paternalism, gussied up in the tradition of the American High School Prom, is conceived by its supporters and participants as existing somehow externally to "the culture."

A Barnum & Bailey World

This will be an interesting challenge. In the blogosphere we've been in the business of trying to elect more and better Democrats, by which we mean progressive. This raises the question: is more, without the better, a good idea?

The article asserts that the Democrats need to win much more in order to have a real working majority and there may be a chance this year to do it. But it still presents an interesting conundrum. What if you end up with a bigger majority of people with (D) after their names, but most of the new ones are conservative? It's not an unexpected outcome in a country that has, until recently, been very evenly divided.

-Digby

These are the sorts of quotidian imponderables that used to get you banned from DailyKos, but impending victory brings out cowardice more swiftly than defeat. Now that the Donk senses just how likely it is that the Party will acquire something like carte blanche in the executive and legislative branches, expectations must be managed; hopes must be tamped; intentions must be moderated. For years these internet Progressives have hidden the imperial complicity of their congresscreatures behind a scrim of proceduralism: ah, we're in the minority; oh, we don't have a 60-vote supermajority; ah, the house of Aires hasn't yet declined into the year of the Monkey when Mars is in retrograde. Now they see the backlighting is about to come on, and the whole backstage machinery is about to be laid bare. I predict that those "sweeping changes" Digs mentions in the course of chinsctraching will, in their failure, fall to the feet of such "conservative Democrats," and the last bulwark will be the weak contention that, having acquired control of the government of these United States, the Party must now enter a period of ideological consolidation, in order to purge those elements holding back the Revolution-in-Permanence. All these little Trotskys. I, for one, am well stocked with popcorn.