œ-1 Cup Chopped Chinese Long Beans (also called sitao or green noodle beans)
Œ-œ Cup Okra (use the very smallest pods)
1 Pound Firm White Fleshed Fish (tilapia or cod)
Preparation:
Wash your rice well prior to cooking. Cut the cabbage into 1/2" cubes or larger. Steam or boil the cabbage until half to three-quarters cooked. This also applies to the Chinese long beans if they are being used. Parboiling the cabbage separately helps to prevent it from overpowering this stews more delicate flavors. Fill a large non-reactive (enamel or stainless steel) stewpot with 1-2 quarts of water and place over medium heat. Cut the pork into 1/2" cubes and add to the water. Leave lots of fat on the pork to give the stew extra body. Simmer the meat until tender. Remove the half-cooked cabbage and rinse under cold water to stop the cooking process. About this time, begin cooking the rice.
Once the pork is tender start adding the other ingredients. Add the cubed daikon first as it takes the longest to cook. Then stir in the chopped kang kong (or substitute baby bok choy). Cut the tomatoes into wedges and add them to the stew. Add the parboiled green cabbage and the long beans if they are being used. If you are including the fish, cut it into chunks and add it now. If desired, peel and devein the prawns or just wash them and add them whole to the stew. If you are including the okra, wash it and add it to the pot.
Stir in the soup mix and reduce the heat to low for another five minutes. Taste for sourness and adjust with extra liquid as needed (the packet calls for about ten cups or two liters of water). Be sure not to overcook the soup as the seafood will suffer. I like this stuff so sour that it curls your toes, but that's just me. Serve with the cooked rice. You may put the soup over the rice or serve the rice on the side to be eaten with alternate spoonfuls of the soup. It is a matter of taste. Personally, I find it much better to serve the two separately. It is important to have the mild flavor of the rice so it offsets the strong taste of the soup.
Notes: This soup does not store well over long periods. The souring agents will safely preserve this dish for a week or two, but the salt content tends to turn the ingredients mushy. For individuals or small parties, cut the recipe by half or one third and add the soup mix slowly to achieve the desired taste. Once you have had the dish properly made, you will begin to crave it every few weeks or so. There are always one or two packets of the mix around my house. I prefer the Mama Sita brand over Knorr due to it having less MSG.
This soup can also be made with only the pork and green cabbage. Although rather simple, it is still very satisfying and quite a bit easier to prepare. Use any or all of the ingredients as it suits your purpose. This is a classic Philippine dish.
Post # 1: Memphis Style Dry Rub Herb and Spice Barbecue Seasoning
Submitted by Zenster
Post # 2: Charlotte Russe Easy Cream Torte
Submitted by trailing wife
Recipe Note:
Charlotte Russe is a dessert invented by the French chef Marie Antoine Carême (1784-1833), who named it in honor of his Russian employer Czar Alexander I. It is a cold dessert of bavarian cream set in a mold lined with ladyfingers. [1] One etymology of the word charlotte suggests it is a corruption of the Old English word charlyt meaning "a dish of custard." There is a lot of doubt surrounding the origins of the name "charlotte." Meat dishes that were known as charlets were popular in the 15th century. Other historians say that this sweet dish took its name from Queen Charlotte (1744-1818), wife of George III. [2]
Recipe Note:
Parathas, roti and chapatis are all variations on a single traditional Indian flatbread recipe. Made from flour, water and ghee or oil, they are the soul of simplicity. The secret to making the very lightest breads happens during their cooking. As they toast on the griddle, they will begin to bubble up inside. Quickly press down on the center of this bubble to reconnect the dough and force other areas of the bread to begin expanding. This ensures a light and airy final product. Look for parathas, roti or chapatis at your local Indian food center. They are usually available in regular and whole-wheat versions. In Punjabi cuisine parathas can contain any of a wide variety of fillings baked inside the bread.
o Thick cut pork chops, as many as you want.
o A Weber "mini" grill; their smallest kettle grill
o Charcoal
o Lots of hickory chips, soaked
Start the coals, add enough hickory to get a really thick plume of smoke. Put the chops on the grill. You don't want the grill too hot; the chops have to have time to take on the smoke flavor.
Did this about five years ago and I can still taste them. It was like eating the best, meatiest bacon in the world.
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
09/28/2006 11:55 Comments ||
Top||
#11
1300 calories per day! Do you do exercise also? What is the maintenance plan?
Right now I'm not doing much in the way of organized exercise. I've been getting more active (stairs at work; coming up with excuses to head up and down the stairs at home more than I need to), and am going to try doing some "real" exercise program soon. Exercising "earns" you points, so you get to eat more if you're more active.
Once you hit your goal weight, you get an extra few points a week, until your weight stabilizes. Then you have to stay within a 10lb range.
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
09/28/2006 12:01 Comments ||
Top||
#12
For those of you who are interested in trying Seafarious's recipe, I strongly urge you to look for the San Danielle brand of prosciutto. I sampled it at this year's Fancy Food Show and it was, quite simply, the finest I've ever had in my entire life. The balance of moisture and salt was absolutely perfect and the meat was so tender that the overall result was like velvet. This is a product that is well worth looking for. I cannot recommend it strongly enough.
Most Americans who have had Italian prosciutto will have tasted Prosciutto de Parma. While domestic producers are finally coming on line, the imported product is usually superior. Parma is also famed for the manufacture and aging of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. The legendary silkiness of Prosciutto de Parma is attributed to the fact that this region's hogs are fed whey left over from the cheese-making process. The recipe for making prosciutto dates back to ancient Rome and is thousands of years old. Try it draped over chilled slices of cantaloupe or spiraled with sliced mozzarella cheese and cut into coins. But be sure to taste a paper-thin slice of it all by itself. And for goodness sake, please do not remove the fat from it. This is where over half the flavor resides.
Special Note: For all of you food and cooking enthusiasts out there, please consider attending the Fancy Foods show mentioned above. It is held in San Francisco, Chicago and New York during each given year and is the showcase for new and exciting foods and products from around the culinary world. By registering early you can avoid the full admission price of $60.00 and pay only $30.00 instead. This is huge bargain for the opportunity to taste some of the worlds finest foods. At the last show there were representatives sampling Cornish blue cheeses from Britain that were light-years beyond most of the blues Ive ever had. The year before featured a balsamic vinegar sampling bar, complete with tasting notes as they set out four year-old to forty year-old vinegars. One company features organic vodkas and gins that are unrivalled for smoothness. I could go on for hours.
Heres a word of advice if you want to attend the show. The first time I went, I avoided eating breakfast in order to retain capacity for what I was about to encounter. Within forty-five minutes I was reduced to avoiding all hard cheeses and chocolates just so I could continue tasting the soft cheeses, meats and other innovative foods. This year, I did not eat dinner the night before and managed to keep going for almost two hours before tasting fatigue set in. Even if you show up when the doors open, you will be hard pressed to tour all of the booths in a single day. Try and reserve two days in order to appreciate the entire show. Be sure to park nearby as they only allow you to take a single bag out of the event. As your bag fills with taste treats youll need to stash them in your car. Technically, no samples may be removed from the show, but a topside camouflage layer of manufacturers literature will see you trotting off with endless goodies for all the folks at home. I ended up with two sacks brimful of loot this year.
#15
Mike N -- here you go, a complete Ramadan dinner with directions:
Easy pork recipe? How about an easy dinner to go with it? Here you go
Roast pork tenderloin with Raspberry Chipotle Sauce
Fluffy rice
Brocolli with garlic and curry
Hormel sales whole pork tenderloins. They are usually packaged in pairs. Each is about 1½ - 2 inches thick. Most grocery stores have them.
The next thing you need is a Roasted Raspberry Chipotle Sauce. Lots of brands, but by far, the best is from Fischer & Wieser from Fredericksburg, Texas. (Its sold nationally, even on Amazon)
Preheat oven to temperature 325 degrees. While preheating, baste pork roast lightly with a good virgin olive oil and some salt and pepper. Line a shallow roasting pan (any pan, really, that will go into the oven) with foil (easier to clean, dont you know?).
Place the roast(s) in the pan and pop it into the oven. These small, tender roasts only need to cook about 25 30 minutes. I usually just cook these about 30 minutes cause they are so small, and thats enough time. You dont want the pork over done.
During the last 5 10 minutes of cooking, baste with the Raspberry Chipotle Sauce.
When done, let stand a few minutes, to absorb the moisture. Slice into medallions about ½ inches thick. Serve on plates, swirling additional Raspberry Chipotle Sauce on top and around the pork medallions. Serve extra sauce, if you like.
Your vegetable to continue our easy to do Ramadan dinner:
This is good with a good jasmine rice (any rice will do), and some green vegetable (cant get easier then a frozen one). I really like broccoli with this.
Broccoli is good and easy. Cook frozen broccoli to package directions (use the flowerets ones, they are better) or steam fresh brocdoli. Melt together a little butter, minced garlic (you can use the kind in a jar!) lemon juice and some curry powder in the microwave (20 seconds) and stir well. When broccoli is done, drain any water, then salt and pepper, and stir in the butter mixture.
2 TBspoons butter
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1/8 to ¼ curry powder (you know your taste)
Cooking rice never fail method for fluffy rice.
If you like, sauté some chopped onions in 2-3 TBspoons butter. When kinda translucent, add one cup of rice, then kinda stir it some, mixing the rice and onions. (Onions are optional) Add salt and pepper to taste.
To 1 and ¾ cups of water, add about teaspoon of olive oil and a teaspoon of vinegar. Campaign vinegar is good, if you happen to have it handy. (Thats the one I usually use in all recipes that call for vinegar.) However, any vinegar you have will do.
I sometimes add mushrooms or thinly sliced almonds or both. Or they can be added to left over rice for the next meal!
Add water mixture to rice, bring to a boil, stirring sometimes, then cover pot so there is a good seal, turn heat to just below medium and cook about 18 minutes. Remove from heat.
Now, heres the trick to the fluffy rice. Remove the lid and lay a dishcloth (thin is better) covering the pot, and return lid to create a good seal. The rice will just sit there, till you are ready to serve. And voila fluffy rice! The dishcloth absorbs the extra moisture, and the rice doesnt stick together.
And the little extra Raspberry Chipotle Sauce, kinda gets mixed up with the rice while eating, and you got some good eating.
Your simple Ramadan dinner?
Bake a pork roast
Cook some rice
Cook some broccoli
Thats it!
Order of battle:
Start cooking the onions and rice
Get pork tenderloin in oven
Cook the brocolli and melt the butter mixture
Oh, and a good pinot noir is always good with pork, and you can have that little smirk on your face as you drink some wine with your Ramadan dinner. Course, drinking it while cooking, only adds an extra delight to the Ramadan Dinner!
Nice easy-fix recipe there, Sherry. I'm really glad you made sure to note how the pork tenderloin must rest for several minutes once it is taken off of the heat. This is essential when preparing all substantial cuts of meat, from thick chops on up.
During the cooking process, heat drives moisture out of the meat's tissue. Once you are done cooking, allowing the finished product to "rest" gives it a chance to reabsorb these released liquids. This improves the flavor, texture and ease of carving the main course. If any of you've ever tried to carve a turkey straight from the oven only to have it tear and shed under the knife, this is why.
A final bit of advice. Most of us here were raised with the admonition to always cook any cut of pork, even a chop, for at least twenty minutes. Such advice no longer applies. This precaution was meant to eliminate the trichinosis parasite. Improved ranching methods and enforced hygiene standards have eliminated almost entirely any danger of trichinosis from commercially produced pork. In the span of 1983 to 1989, there were a total of 30 cases reported in the United States. Compare that with some 400 documented cases in 1950 alone and you get an idea of the vast improvement that has taken place. Currently, the majority of trichinosis cases revolve around uninspected sources such as home raised hogs or game animals like wild boar or bear.
So, be sure to cook your pork to medium rare. A little pink in the very center means you will have flavorful, tender vittles that will be light years from the other shoe leather white meat we all used to eat.
As to that single malt, sinful as it sounds, try adding a wee shot to your raspberry chipotle sauce. Any good bourbon or whiskey will do. It adds a mellow slightly caramel sugar note to the whole magilla.
Intended or not, the release of the Senate report, around the fifth anniversary of 9/11, has been read as definitive proof that the Iraq war stands alone, that the terrors that came America's way on 9/11 had nothing to do with the origins of the war. Few will read this report; fewer still will ask why a virtually incomprehensible Arab-Islamic world that has eluded us for so long now yields its secrets to a congressional committee. On the face of it, and on the narrowest of grounds, the report maintains that the link between the war on terror and the invasion of Iraq cannot stand in a Western court of inquiry.
But this brutal drawn-out struggle between American power and the furies of the Arab-Islamic world was never a Western war. Our enemies were full of cunning and expert at dissimulation, hunkering down when needed. No one in the coffeehouses of the Arab world (let alone in the safe houses of the terrorists) would be led astray by that distinction between "secular" and "religious" movements emphasized by the Senate Intelligence Committee. They live in a world where the enemies of order move with remarkable ease from outward religious piety to the most secular of appearances. It is no mystery to them that Saddam, once the most secular of despots, fell back on religious symbols after the first Gulf War, added Allahu Akbar (God is great) to Iraq's flag, and launched a mosque-building campaign whose remnants--half-finished mosques all over Baghdad--now stand mute.
The declassified portions of the NIE are not particularly profound in the reading of Islamism. Their sociologese is of a piece with a big body of writing on Islamist movements--that the resentments of these movements arise out of "anger, humiliation and a sense of powerlessness" in the face of the West. I dare guess that were Ayman al-Zawahiri to make his way through this report, he would marvel at the naïveté of those who set out to read him and his fellow warriors of the faith. Ayoob al-Masri (Zarqawi's successor in Iraq) would not find himself and his phobias and his will to power in this "infidel document." These warriors have a utopia--an Islamic world ruled by their own merciless brand of the faith. With or without Iraq, the work of "cleansing" Islam's world would continue to rage on.
It was inevitable that the Arabs would regard this American project in Iraq through the prism of their own experience. We upended an order of power in Baghdad, dominated as it had been by the Sunni Arabs; and we emancipated the Shiite stepchildren of the Arab world, as well as the Kurds. Our innocence was astounding. We sinned against the order of the universe, but called on the region to celebrate, to bless our work. More to the point, we set the Shia on their own course. We did for them what they could not have done on their own. For our part, we were ambivalent about the coming of age of the Shia. We had battled radical Shiism in Iran and in Lebanon in the 1980s. The symbols of Shiism we associated with political violence--radical mullahs, martyrology, suicide bombers. True, in the interim, we had had a war--undeclared, but still a war--with Sunni jihadists. But there lingered in us an aversion to radical Shiism, an understandable residue of the campaign that Ayatollah Khomeini had waged against American power in the '80s. We were susceptible as well to the representations made to us by rulers in the Sunni-ruled states about the dangers of radical Shiism.
It is idle to debate whether Iraq is in a state of civil war. The semantics are tendentious, and in the end irrelevant. There is mayhem, to be sure, but Iraq has arrived at a rough balance of terror. The Sunni Arabs now know, as they had never before, that their tyranny is broken for good. And the most recent reports from Anbar province speak of a determination of the Sunni tribes to be done with the Arab jihadists.
It is not a rhetorical flourish to say that the burden of rescuing Iraq lies with its leaders. No script had America staying indefinitely, fighting Iraq's wars, securing Iraq's peace. I would take exception to this. We stayed in Western Europe 50 years and are still in Japan indefinitely to prevent their wars or fight them if necessary. The argument to be made might be that doing so induces adolescent weakness and dependence, but that is entirely different. The best we can do for Iraq is grant it time to develop the military and political capabilities that would secure it against insurgencies at home and subversion from across its borders. But the Iraqis should not be lulled into complacency, for the same political process is more likely to place limits on this commitment in Iraq.
For their part, the Iranians will press on: The spectacle of power they display is illusory. It is a broken society over which the mullahs rule. A society that throws on the scene a leader of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's derangement is not an orderly land; foreigners may not be able to overthrow that regime, but countries can atrophy as their leaders--armed, here, by an oil windfall of uncertain duration--strut on the world stage. Iran's is a deeper culture than Iraq's, possessed of a keen sense of Persia's primacy in the region around it. What Iranians make of their own history will not wait on the kind of society that will emerge in Iraq. On the margins, a scholarly tradition in Najaf given to moderation could be a boon to the clerics of Iran. But the Iranians will not know deliverance from the sterility of their world if Iraq were to fail. Their schadenfreude over an American debacle in Iraq will have to be brief. A raging fire next door to them would not be pretty. And, crafty players, the Iranians know what so many in America who guess at such matters do not: that Iraq is an unwieldy land, that the Arab-Persian divide in culture, language and temperament is not easy to bridge.
A terrible price would be paid were we to opt for a hasty and unseemly withdrawal from Iraq. This is a region with a keen eye for the weakness of strangers. The heated debate about the origins of our drive into Iraq would surely pale by comparison to the debate that would erupt--here and elsewhere--were we to give in to despair and cast the Iraqis adrift.
A Clinton-Clinton 2008 ticket is constitutionally possible. By Scott E. Gant and Bruce G. Peabody
WASHINGTON, D.C., AND MADISON, N.J. Americans are nostalgic for the 1990s. They long for a time when terrorism was perceived as a problem confined to foreign lands and when the stock market's rise seemed unstoppable. And, it turns out, many of them miss former President Bill Clinton. In a recent poll conducted for CNN, respondents favored Mr. Clinton over President Bush on a variety of issues, including policy areas traditionally viewed as GOP strongholds. By a wide margin, those surveyed indicated that Clinton did a better job managing the economy and handling foreign affairs and taxes.
Clinton's resurgent popularity, and Democrats' difficulties in taking over the White House in recent years, might counsel a bold strategy for 2008. Whoever is selected as the Democratic nominee for the next presidential race should consider William Jefferson Clinton as a candidate for vice president.
While the political advisability of such a move is subject to legitimate debate, the legal issues are more straightforward. The only serious question about the constitutionality of Clinton assuming the vice presidency relates to the interplay of the Constitution's 12th and 22nd Amendments.
The 12th Amendment specified that 'no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of president shall be eligible to that of vice president of the United States...'
The 12th Amendment was ratified following the election of 1800, which produced sustained electoral uncertainty after Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, Jefferson's designated vice president, received the same number of electoral votes. The election was sent to the House of Representatives, which took 36 ballots to select Jefferson. The 12th Amendment thereafter required that electoral votes be cast separately for president and vice president, and specified that "no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of president shall be eligible to that of vice president of the United States."
The 22nd Amendment bars individuals from being 'elected to the office of the president more than twice.'
A century and a half later, the states ratified the 22nd Amendment, largely as a response to Franklin Delano Roosevelt's four electoral victories. The amendment bars individuals from being "elected to the office of the president more than twice."
The amendment does not preclude a former president from again assuming the presidency by means other than election, including succession from the vice presidency.
The 22nd Amendment is often described as prohibiting an already twice-elected president, such as Clinton, from again serving as president. But the text of the amendment suggests otherwise. In preventing individuals from being elected to the presidency more than twice, the amendment does not preclude a former president from again assuming the presidency by means other than election, including succession from the vice presidency. If this view is correct, then Clinton is not "constitutionally ineligible to the office of president," and is not barred by the 12th Amendment from being elected vice president.
Clinton's public approval at the time he stepped down from the White House was remarkably high given the voter "fatigue" that normally accompanies a second-term president. Now, nearly six years later, his popularity appears considerable and is seemingly increasing.
Of course, Clinton's spouse, Sen. Hillary Clinton, is viewed as a leading Democratic candidate for president. She would surely have reservations about putting her husband on the 2008 ticket. But Bill Clinton might help energize the Democratic base and defuse arguments that Mrs. Clinton is too liberal.
In the event that Senator Clinton elects not to run in 2008, perhaps an alternate Democratic nominee will have enough self-confidence to consider sharing the stage with the charismatic Bill Clinton in the hopes of recapturing the White House. As for Clinton himself, although there are many reasons why he might decline an invitation to run for vice president, the thrill of another campaign and the lure of a return to the West Wing might be too tempting to resist.
Scott Gant is a partner with Boies, Schiller & Flexner in Washington. Bruce Peabody is an assistant professor of political science at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Madison, N.J.
#1
"Bill Clinton is charismatic and kind of cute"
by Scotty Grant and Brucie Peabody (really hungry gay boys staining each others clothes)
Get off the floor boys, it time to shampoo the rug.
#2
I don't get it? The 12th amendment says no one ineligible for the office of president can run for VP. Slick Willie is not eligible to run for president due to the 22nd amendment, therefore he can't run for VP either. Lefty wetdream.
#6
Americans are nostalgic for the 1990s. They long for a time when terrorism was perceived as a problem confined to foreign lands and when the stock market's rise seemed unstoppable. And, it turns out, many of them miss former President Bill Clinton.
Yes. He'll make everything all better!
Can two guys work a circle jerk? Looks like these two are trying to prove it can be done.
From behind the benign façade and the tranquilizing smile, the real Bill Clinton emerged Sunday during Chris Wallace's interview on Fox News Channel. There he was on live television, the man those who have worked for him have come to know the angry, sarcastic, snarling, self-righteous, bombastic bully, roused to a fever pitch. The truer the accusation, the greater the feigned indignation.
Clinton jabbed his finger in Wallace's face, poking his knee, and invading the commentator's space.
But beyond noting the ex-president's non-presidential style, it is important to answer his distortions and misrepresentations. His self-justifications constitute a mangling of the truth which only someone who once quibbled about what the "definition of is' is" could perform.
Clinton told Wallace, "There is not a living soul in the world who thought that Osama bin Laden had anything to do with Black Hawk Down." Nobody said there was. The point of citing Somalia in the run up to 9/11 is that bin Laden told Fortune Magazine in a 1999 interview that the precipitous American pullout after Black Hawk Down convinced him that Americans would not stand up to armed resistance.
Clinton said conservatives "were all trying to get me to withdraw from Somalia in 1993 the next day" after the attack which killed American soldiers. But the real question was whether Clinton would honor the military's request to be allowed to stay and avenge the attack, a request he denied.
The debate was not between immediate withdrawal and a six-month delay. (Then-first lady, now-Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) favored the first option, by the way). The fight was over whether to attack or pull out eventually without any major offensive operations.
The president told Wallace, "I authorized the CIA to get groups together to try to kill bin Laden." But actually, the 9-11 Commission was clear that the plan to kidnap Osama was derailed by Sandy Berger and George Tenet because Clinton had not yet made a finding authorizing his assassination. They were fearful that Osama would die in the kidnapping and the U.S. would be blamed for using assassination as an instrument of policy.
Clinton claims "the CIA and the FBI refused to certify that bin Laden was responsible [for the Cole bombing] while I was there." But he could replace or direct his employees as he felt. His helplessness was, as usual, self-imposed.
Why didn't the CIA and FBI realize the extent of bin Laden's involvement in terrorism? Because Clinton never took the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center sufficiently seriously. He never visited the site and his only public comment was to caution against "over-reaction."
In his pre-9/11 memoirs, George Stephanopoulos confirms that he and others on the staff saw it as a "failed bombing" and noted that it was far from topic A at the White House. Rather than the full-court press that the first terror attack on American soil deserved, Clinton let the investigation be handled by the FBI on location in New York without making it the national emergency it actually was.
In my frequent phone and personal conversations with both Clintons in 1993, there was never a mention, not one, of the World Trade Center attack. It was never a subject of presidential focus.
Failure to grasp the import of the 1993 attack led to a delay in fingering bin Laden and understanding his danger. This, in turn, led to our failure to seize him when Sudan evicted him and also to our failure to carry through with the plot to kidnap him. And, it was responsible for the failure to "certify" him as the culprit until very late in the Clinton administration.
The former president says, "I worked hard to try to kill him." If so, why did he notify Pakistan of our cruise-missile strike in time for them to warn Osama and allow him to escape? Why did he refuse to allow us to fire cruise missiles to kill bin Laden when we had the best chance, by far, in 1999?
The answer to the first question incompetence; to the second he was paralyzed by fear of civilian casualties and by accusations that he was wagging the dog. The 9/11 Commission report also attributes the 1999 failure to the fear that we would be labeled trigger-happy having just bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade by mistake.
President Clinton assumes that criticism of his failure to kill bin Laden is a "nice little conservative hit job on me." But he has it backwards. It is not because people are right-wingers that they criticize him over the failure to prevent 9/11. It was his failure to catch bin Laden that drove them to the right wing.
The ex-president is fully justified in laying eight months of the blame for the failure to kill or catch bin Laden at the doorstep of George W. Bush. But he should candidly acknowledge that eight years of blame fall on him.
One also has to wonder when the volcanic rage beneath the surface of this would-be statesman will cool. When will the chip on his shoulder finally disappear? When will he feel sufficiently secure in his own legacy and his own skin not to boil over repeatedly in private and occasionally even in public?
#4
The 9/11 Commission report also attributes the 1999 failure to the fear that we would be labeled trigger-happy having just bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade by mistake.
Didn't somebody here at the Burg post about it not being a mistake?
#5
Eight years of Clintonism "justified" Leftism-Socialism once, before, and forever, ergo 9-11 and the global Lefty push to suborn America under OWG, voluntarily = forcibly. All Americans are now in a War, the proverbial " Final Struggle/Conflict" where America has to rule the world whether Americans want to or not, becuz iff we don't Amer's enemies will destroy us. Our only choices are to be defeated and destroyed by either "Power Salute", "We have to kill you becuz God says we have to", In-Your-Face Radical Islam, i.e. GOD-BASED SOCIALISTS; versus the Shadowy, THEY-WHOM-MUST-NOT-BE-NAMED-BUT-MUST-BE-OBEYED, "PCorrrectness = PDeniability Forever" CLAPPING-HANDS-WID-NO FACES-ON-THE-BALCONY, COMMIE SECULAR SOCIALISTS.
Frontpage Interviews guest today is Burt Prelutsky, a weekly columnist for WorldNetDaily.com. He has been a humor columnist for the Los Angeles Times and a movie critic for Los Angeles Magazine. As a freelancer, he has written for the New York Times, TV Guide, Modern Maturity, Emmy, Holiday, American Film, and Sports Illustrated. He has also written for several television series, including Dragnet, McMillan and Wife, M*A*S*H, Dr. Quinn, and Diagnosis Murder.
His most recent book Conservatives Are From Mars, Liberals Are From San Francisco is available from WorldNetDaily's online store.
FP: Burt Prelutsky, thank you for joining us at Frontpage Interview.
Prelutsky: It's a pleasure and a privilege.
FP: So what inspired you to put these collection of essays together?
Prelutsky: Actually, I was approached by Joseph Farah at WND.com, one of the sites that posts my essays. I had self-published a collection a few years back, but it was the hardest thing I ever did and I swore I'd never do it again. Fortunately, Cumberland House was amenable to doing the heavy lifting this time around.)
FP: Tell us about your days on the Left. What attracted you to the Left and why did you stay there as long as you did?
Prelutsky: I was first generation American. Both my parents were Russian Jewish immigrants. In a home such as ours, being a Democrat was as natural as having boiled chicken on Friday night. My parents and relatives thought that FDR walked--or, rather, rolled on water. Then when he died and his successor, Harry Truman, recognized the state of Israel, the die was cast. So I grew up voting for Democrats every four years, but waking up the next day and hating myself. I mean, I actually voted for people like Mondale, Carter and Dukakis. Mea culpa. Old habits, especially those bred in the bone, are hard to break.
FP: Expand a little for us on why being Russian Jewish immigrants meant that being Democrats was as natural as having boiled chicken on Friday night. Why do you think many Jews in general are attracted to the Democratic Party and to liberalism? In todays context it clearly doesnt make any sense, since it is the Republican Party and the Right that truly supports Israeli security, no?
Prelutsky: Traditionally, Jews are leftists. The only question is how far left; some are Communists, some are Socialists or Progressives, while most have found a home in the far left wing of the Democratic Party. Israel is not a high priority for a great many Jews, who are secular in their values, and whose religious identity takes the form of voting the straight left-wing ticket. A lot of Jews are quite content to ignore the fact that Israel is a western democracy, an ally of America, and surrounded by the vilest people on the face of the earth. Instead, many American Jews side with those who advocate suicide bombings of school buses and pizza parlors, who treat their women as chattel, who would never even consider the separation of state and religion, who oppose democracy, and who devalue education, free speech, and a sense of humor.
FP: Can you share with us some of the events that occurred that made you question your presence within the Left and what ultimately motivated you to leave it?
Prelutsky: I came to realize that, in spite of all the jokes about his napping during cabinet meetings, Ronald Reagan, who inherited 20% inflation and a 10% unemployment rate from Carter, and not only turned the economy around, but was influential in bringing the Cold War to a successful conclusion, accomplished more while he was sleeping than the Democrats did when they were wide awake. Or whatever passes for their being wide awake.
A secondary matter took place in the boardroom of the Writers Guild. I had been a member of the Board for four years when the lawyers for Robert Mapplethorpe came to us requesting $5,000 for his defense fund. It seems he and a gallery owner had been arrested on charges of pornography charges. Mapplethorpe, for those too young to remember, was a photographer whose artistic vision required that eight and nine year old children be stripped down for his camera. Because he then put frames around his sleazy product, we were supposed to accept that he was an artiste. In the boardroom that night, I not only argued against providing the money, I also voiced objection to the NEA, which had long subsidized his career.
The pornographic nature of his work aside, I said that in a country with 260 million people, anyone who couldn't earn a living with his art didn't deserve to live on the largesse of the American taxpayer; what he required wasn't a federal hand-out, it was vocational guidance. It wasn't simply that I was out-voted 18-1 that evening, but that it was so apparent that my fellow board members had simply tuned me out. It was obviously enough, so far as they were concerned, that I was aligning myself with Sen. Jesse Helms to make me wrong and even possibly insane. It hit me that liberals are so snug in their cocoon of self-righteousness that, once they've determined which is the left side of any issue, they are impervious to even hearing the other side.
FP: So tell us a bit about your intellectual journey after you left the Left. Did you lose your community as so many former leftists have? Were you banished by many friends?
Prelutsky: I did have a falling out with some of my former acquaintances. In a way, though, I could sympathize with them. After all, they must have felt blind-sided. So far as they knew, I was a liberal, the same as them, and suddenly, as if in a sci-fi movie, I had joined the pod people on the Right. With some friends, we went on pretty much as before, while shying away from political matters in our conversations. It is not easy, I have found, to disagree agreeably, especially if you think the future of western civilization is at very real risk.
FP: Why do you think the radical Left has reached out in solidarity to our Islamist enemy today?
Prelutsky: I think that those on the Left feel special about themselves when they find themselves standing up for those they regard as the underdog. The underdog can be criminals in America or the Muslims in the Middle East. Be it Tookie Williams, a Palestinian suicide bomber, or a convicted pedophile, by aligning themselves with those that most normal Americans despise, they get to regard themselves as existing on a higher moral plain. They pledge allegiance to George Soros and they send money to the ACLU. Which would be bad enough, but what makes it even worse is that so many of these unrepentant numbskulls of the 60s have wound up in the media, academe, and on the bench, and thus have power and influence far out of sync with their actual numbers. What's more, they are the parents, grandparents and professors, God help us, of the current generation.
FP: So what do you make of the War on Terror in general and the war in Iraq in particular?
Prelutsky: I think both wars must be waged more fiercely. We are at war with those who call us the Great Satan, an attempt at creating a smokescreen behind which the true Islamic Satanists can hide. Pat Buchanan, in his infinite wisdom, says we should do nothing about Iran because, according to him, they won't have nuclear capability for ten more years. On what he bases this belief, he doesn't say. But if even he believes it is an inevitability, wouldn't it make more sense to do something about it before 2016 rolls around?
As for Iraq, I said even before the invasion, which was based on intelligence which politicians on the right and the left all believed, it didn't much matter to me if Saddam Hussein did or didn't have weapons of mass destruction. What we knew was that he had had them and he had used them. Playing hide-the-soap with the U.N. investigators was all a big flim-flam. If he didn't have the weapons, so much the better; it meant he couldn't use them against coalition troops. So far as I was concerned, Hussein had murdered and tortured hundreds of thousands of people, he had invaded his neighbors in a move to control the world's oil supply, he had lobbed missiles into Israel, and he had ignored the conditions of the 1991 armistice; I saw no good reason to allow him to stay in place, manipulating the corrupt U.N. through his sweetheart oil deals with France, Russia, and Germany.
What I always say to those opposed to our invading Iraq is that they should cast their minds back to the 1930s and that they regard Hussein as der fuhrer. In '36, Hitler did not seem like a major threat to the world. Now let us, for the sake of argument, create a scenario in which Hitler did not annex Czechoslovakia or the Sudetenland and did not go on to invade Poland. Would these same people say that so long as Hitler only killed and tortured German Jews, gypsies, Socialists, Catholics, cripples, the retarded, and those opposed to Nazism, the world should not have interceded?
FP: In terms of the Muslims rage against the Pope and the cartoonists etc., why do you think the Left doesnt stand up in defense of free speech, which is supposedly its big value? And what do you think of the Muslim reaction to the Pope?
Prelutsky: The Left is as anti-American as the jihadists. More specifically, liberals hate Bush, Christians, and Conservatives. If only liberals had the vote, in an election between Bush and Castro or Bush and Chavez, the Communist dictators would win.
The Muslim reaction to the Pope's words was utterly predictable. The jihadists will go berserk over anything, and those on the Left will support their lunacy, up to and including the vandalizing of churches and the killing of a nun. Those on the Left are anti-religion except if it happens to be Islam. They say they are for free speech, for the separation of church and state, for free elections, for women's rights, for democracy, etc., etc., but they see no contradiction in their support of the PLO and other terrorist organizations that are attempting to annihilate Israel. Liberals, such as Stephen Spielberg, love to deal in moral equivalency, insisting, for instance, that there was no real difference between the Arabs massacring the Olympic athletes at Munich, and Israel's tracking down and executing the killers.
The problem with the Left in America isn't merely that they are wrong on every major issue, but that, in spite of the fact that very few of us identify ourselves as liberals, they have influence far out of proportion to their actual numbers. This is because, like a cancer, they've infected the courts, journalism, and the Groves of Academe. They're a cancer with a political agenda.
FP: Is the strength of the Left growing and dwindling? As a former leftist, what is your advice on the best way to fight the Lefts influence?
Prelutsky: I take it you mean growing or dwindling. But I suppose it could grow in one area and dwindle in another. I think the Left is losing numbers (at least based on the election results of the recent past), but I don't think it is losing influence...for the reasons I gave in my previous response.
I think the best way to fight them is to beat them in every election possible. (I suppose shooting them down like mad dogs is out of the question. Pity.) Eventually, one assumes, if liberals continue to lose elections, their pet judges will stop being appointed to the Supreme Court. As liberal newspapers, such as the L.A. Times, continue to lose subscribers and advertising, and as more and more people stop depending on the liberal rags and network news for information and opinion, the Left will inevitably see its influence drain away.
It does continue to astonish and disturb me that, in spite of having the shrill and idiotic likes of Kennedy, Dean, Gore, Kerry, Clinton, Pelosi, Jesse Jackson, Jimmy Carter, Michael Moore, Al Franken, Charles Schumer, Barbara Boxer, Robert Byrd, James Carville, George Soros, etc., etc., beating the drums for the Left that the Democratic party hasn't yet gone the way of the Whigs and the dodo bird.
FP: Burt Prelutsky, thank you for joining us.
Prelutsky: As my old friend Groucho Marx was wont to say, I didn't know you were coming apart. But, seriously, thank you for giving me this opportunity to reach all the really smart people who get their daily minimum dose of the truth at Frontpagemag.com.
#1
I've enjoyed reading Prelutsky's columns in townhall.com for a couple years now. I especially liked the one where he described his conversion from leftism when he finally overcame the cognitive dissonance caused by contemplating how his family of Russian-emigre Jews could be so enamored of Communism.
#1
This is much simpler than it would appear. Socialism purports to be an alternative economic system. Islam a religous system. Both agree that a population needs submission for these systems to thrive. Therefor Socialism is being brought into ISLAM as the rational economic system for a Religion that has no economics. The two systems accomodate one another in an alliance of convenience. The result is subversion of the population to the carved up loot that will be shared by the mullahs and the communist leadership.
Islam is the perfect match for socialism, because each allows a elitist group of the few to enjoy the largess of hegemony over the many.
There is no mystery about these two, they are two sides of the same coin.
#3
While I comment on this at my website, I should point out that the author sounds a bit whiny: He conflates leftists and communists with those actually calling for reforms in the Middle east, angling for some indirect, and undeserved, glory for the former. Look for this as a set-up to say: SEE! The West created Islamic terrorism!
When I'm fighting a bear or a tiger, I'll be happy for the help of a wolf to take the immediate threat down, but only in fairy tales would the wolf, after the battle, act like a true friend.
Both socialism and Islamicism hope to topple the West (sorry, socialists, but your ideology is NOT truly a Western one) and feed, vulture-like on the corpse of our civilization. As long as their actions are synergistic towards this goal, there is an unwary truce. This isn't a conspiracy, but rather a marriage of convenience.
But each believes that when the West falls they will be able to subdue the other and have the corpse all to themself.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
09/28/2006 17:13 Comments ||
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#5
In the food chain - Islam will kill liberalism in the same way that a parasite kills its host; it sucks the blood out of it. Liberalism won't beat Islam, it will join it - either by being intimidated into dhimmi status or by converting. The only real question is whether or not those of us who aren't imagining that their is nothing to kill or die for will wrest control of our government and demand that we fight to maintain our freedoms.
We're accustomed to associating hatred of Jews with the ridiculed Neanderthal Right of those in sheets and jackboots. But this new venom, at least in its Western form, is mostly a leftwing, and often an academic, enterprise. It's also far more insidious, given the left's moral pretensions and its influence in the prestigious media and universities. We see the unfortunate results in frequent anti-Israeli demonstrations on campuses that conflate Israel with Nazis, while the media have published fraudulent pictures and slanted events in southern Lebanon.
The result is that the world's politicians and media are talking seriously with those who not merely want back the West Bank, but rather want an end to Israel altogether and everyone inside it.
Devotion to any religion (except for maybe Islam) is seen by the left as a threat to their ultimate goal of the transnational collectivist state. It took very little for the generation-old bigotry towards devout Christians that exists on campus and in the infotainment industry to be nudged into being anti-semitism as well. In a sense, it's just a different flavor of a poison that's been here for decades.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
09/28/2006 17:35 Comments ||
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No one has caused that much harm to Pakistan as much general Musharraf has caused it. He is irresponsible, self-centered, tunnel vision, thankless person who cannot see beyond his nose. He has always preferred personal interest over interest of Pakistan.
Latest example is his irresponsible statement about charging former Deputy Secretary of State Mr. Richard Armitage about bombing Pakistan back to stone-age after 9/11. Mr. Armitage categorically denied that he made or conveyed any such remarks to general Musharraf.
General Musharraf made these irresponsible remarks only to make millions of dollars out of his book sale at the cost of Pakistan.
Does this man deserve to be the commander in chief of the armed forces of Pakistan or President of Pakistan?
Certainly not. He has been a problem child, problem soldier, problem subordinate, problem commander in chief and problem (illegitimate) President of Pakistan.
He has given enough of bad name to armed forces of Pakistan. He is an individual and armed forces of Pakistan are definitely not responsible for his acts. However, since October 12, 1999, all the actions he has taken for his personal interests have been discredited armed forces of Pakistan.
There have been so many good commanders in chiefs who had the opportunity to break the law and illegally take over the country, but they showed professionalism and did not break the law. Fresh examples are generals Aslam Beg and Jehangir Karamat. Civilian institutions were in very vulnerable position both in General Aslam Beg and General Jehangir Karamats times, but they tried to subside their personal interest in the larger interest of Pakistan, but general Musharraf preferred personal interest over the interest of the country and illegally took over the reigns of the government.
He has already laid the foundation of division of Pakistan into 3 pieces. Aside from the American think tanks map, general Musharraf has practically brought Pakistan to the brink where it can break into Balochistan, Waziristan and the remainder of Pakistan.
General Musharraf is the citizen of Pakistan. His status is best described by the constitution of Pakistan.
Under the article 6 of the constitution of Pakistan, general Musharraf committed the crime of high treason. Being a powerful man, because of the shield of his power, he is a fugitive who is wanted under the charges of high treason.
Therefore, it is the responsibility of the armed forces of Pakistan to arrest general Musharraf and try him under article 6 of the constitution of Pakistan.
General Musharrafs arrest will rehabilitate and restore the respect of the armed forces of Pakistan in the minds and hearts of common Pakistanis. They will uphold the rule of law and create an example for future adventurers like general Musharraf.
It is matter of survival for Pakistan to stop people like general Musharraf from violation of the laws of the country.
General Musharrafs presence at the national scene is not only defaming armed forces of Pakistan, he is practically undermining rule of law
Posted by: john ||
09/28/2006 07:10 ||
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Link ||
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#1
Sounds like some wheels are turning in Pakistan. Question is, who's steering?
#4
Jeebus, this ups the ante for Perv coming home. Don't know how big a circulation the "Pakistan Weekly" gets, but this sounds, oh how do I put this, awfully WESTERN. Who wrote this?
While I completely abhor Perv and his lack of progress on clamping down on the internal jihadis Pakistan has (not to mention the madrassahs), I don't really know if the alternative is better...allow elections and get al Qaeda in charge. A nation, run by jihadis (after a "democratic election", a'la Palestine) with Nukes is NOT what we need.
Posted by: BA ||
09/28/2006 9:39 Comments ||
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There were two defining moments in the war with Hizbullah. One was the fact that Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz was surprised to learn that there was a war to be fought. Indeed a day or two earlier he was booking hotel accommodations for a family summer vacation.
The other defining point was Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's observation that the war would facilitate his plan to withdraw from most of Judea and Samaria and expel the Jews living there. Many of those inhabitants were at that moment on the front line of the war.
The current criticisms of the government are unprecedented, but so are the blunders and misconceptions that precipitated them. The government failed utterly in its oversight of the strategy of the IDF command. With its experience of Israel's continued inability to overcome the short-range Kassam rockets in the South, it nevertheless acquiesced, with evident equanimity, in Halutz's decision to send the air force alone to crush Hizbullah's similar Katyushas from Lebanon.
It is amazing that the IDF command acted as if it were unaware that the Katyusha launcher is a comparatively light weapon, easily concealed - in a house, under a bundle of hay, in a farmyard or in a hole dug for it. Detecting Katyushas from the air is just about impossible, and they are, moreover, easily mobile. They can only be extricated on the ground - until defensive measures are developed that can shoot down short-range missiles in flight.
IT WAS ONLY when this truth was absorbed that the government mobilized the infantry reserves. But then, when they were at last called up, they were left twiddling their thumbs for days while the prime minister waited for a decision at the United Nations!
Though the army fought hard, the objectives set - at least to reach the Litani River - could not be achieved before that UN decision for a cease-fire, and so the war ended in a "draw"; far from a defeat, but not nearly near enough for a victory.
Meanwhile, a miracle had taken place on the civilian front.
The government had done nothing to cope with the tremendous evacuation of about a million souls from the towns in the North, despite Olmert's warning to ministers that Hizbullah would not take our initial counterattack lying down. Subjected to merciless pounding which reached southward as far as Haifa and Afula and eastward as far as Safed and Tiberias, the people that evacuated needed immediate shelter, food, medicines and to provide for all the special needs of their children, not excluding toys.
Then the miracle happened. A tremendous spontaneous wave of volunteerism throughout the country burst out. Local councils, hundreds of private businesses, thousands of homeowners threw themselves, as though by a single command, into the task. Within two days even a "tent city" was built, conceived and paid for by a great-hearted Israeli millionaire. Without such civic resourcefulness, there would have been chaos and a national disaster.
ALL THIS manifestly adds up to the reality that the people's crisis of confidence in its leaders lies in the government's total unpreparedness for war. But that sounds impossible. How could we be unprepared? Israel, the one country under constant threat since the moment of its creation. Are not Arab children taught from an early age of the glory of martyrdom in the name of Israel's destruction? Balance at the link.
#1
I've been waiting for Olmert's head to roll.
An idiot could fix the blame for this clusterfuck on him, why can't Israel ? What the hell are they waiting for ?
#2
I'm concluding because the problem in Israel is not just Olmert, it's the entire generation of leadership and followers. Remember this sequence of "leaders" Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter. A string like that ain't coincidence.
Tasked with pinpointing motivation, analysts find
terrorists 'rational actors' following 'holy book'
With suicide bombings spreading from Iraq to Afghanistan, the Pentagon has tasked intelligence analysts to pinpoint what's driving Muslim after Muslim to do the unthinkable.
Their preliminary finding is politically explosive: it's their "holy book" the Quran after all, according to intelligence briefings obtained by WND.
In public, the U.S. government has made an effort to avoid linking the terrorist threat to Islam and the Quran while dismissing suicide terrorists as crazed heretics who pervert Islamic teachings.
"The terrorists distort the idea of jihad into a call for violence and murder," the White House maintains in its recently released "National Strategy for Combating Terrorism" report.
But internal Pentagon briefings show intelligence analysts have reached a wholly different conclusion after studying Islamic scripture and the backgrounds of suicide terrorists. They've found that most Muslim suicide bombers are in fact students of the Quran who are motivated by its violent commands making them, as strange as it sounds to the West, "rational actors" on the Islamic stage.
In Islam, it is not how one lives one's life that guarantees spiritual salvation, but how one dies, according to the briefings. There are great advantages to becoming a martyr. Dying while fighting the infidels in the cause of Allah reserves a special place and honor in Paradise. And it earns special favor with Allah.
"Suicide in defense of Islam is permitted, and the Islamic suicide bomber is, in the main, a rational actor," concludes a recent Pentagon briefing paper titled, "Motivations of Muslim Suicide Bombers."
#1
About time that they stop saying Islam is areligion of peace. It is a religion of war and terrorism and teh reason there are good people between Mulsims is because in some people goodness is ingrained enough they resist Coran's murderous teachings. They are good people but they are bad Muslims.
#4
Holy Crap ! What a breakthru. I believe this forum has settled on this quite some time ago. Having arrived at this conclusion, what is the next rational step? Duuhh, like we've been saying, start deporting Mooselimbs from the US. Remove all mosks from our lands. Let's get moving, we're wasting valuable time.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
From behind the benign façade and the tranquilizing smile, the real Bill Clinton emerged Sunday during Chris Wallace's interview on Fox News Channel. There he was on live television, the man those who have worked for him have come to know the angry, sarcastic, snarling, self-righteous, bombastic bully, roused to a fever pitch. The truer the accusation, the greater the feigned indignation. 
