Beans and Rice

post from My Left Wing - Front Page on 08 May 2012 11:33:56 PM. © My Left Wing - Front Page

Talk about serendipity... As the Sean Hannity beans-and-rice kerfuffle reached fever pitch, I was halfway through my week's ration of beans and rice.

Hey, times are tough. I'm getting divorced, I have bills to pay, I'm just scraping by. To cope, I've cut way back on groceries. Beans and rice? That's a dish most definitely in my budget.

Check out my recipe.

Silly English K'niggit Vegan Chili aka Sean's Deluxe Beans and Rice
two cups of rice (45 cents)
two onions (30 cents)
one green pepper (60 cents)
2 tbsp. vegetable oil (5 cents)
29 oz. can of diced tomatoes (house brand, 99 cents)
28 oz. can of kidney beans (house brand, $1.19)
6 oz. can of tomato paste (50 cents)
salt
spices if you can afford them
(cost: $4.08 for 8 servings)
Method:
Cook the rice
Chop up the onions and green pepper then sautee them in the vegetable oil.
In a kettle or large saucepan, mix the kidney beans (I used the liquid from the beans too), the diced tomatoes, and tomato paste. Add the sautéed onions and green pepper. Simmer for a while (depending on how much gas or electricity you can afford this month).

I suspect that Mr. Hannity could pay my monthly bills - mortgage, utilities, and groceries - with the money he spent on the clothes he wore to work today. But rather than showing compassion toward those less fortunate, Mr. Hannity appears to think that poverty is merely a lack of initiative.

I dare Mr. Hannity to eat beans and rice for a week. (Note: It keeps very well in the refrigerator.) Faced with the prospect of my eighth meal of Sean's Deluxe Beans and Rice in seven days, I rebelled. On the way home from work tonight I splurged and bought $3 worth of asparagus. Steamed until just tender, I ate it right out of the pan, dipping the end of each spear in a bit of mayonnaise. It was delicious; I ate almost all of it.

To borrow again from Monty Python, I fart in your general direction silly Mr. Sean Hannity.

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North Carolina Bans Gay MarriageWhy Would A
Public That So Often Has So Little Self-Respect Have Much Care For The Rights Of Others

post from Texas Liberal on 08 May 2012 11:31:53 PM. © Texas Liberal

Voters in North Carolina have made gay marriage in that state illegal by approving an amendment to the state constitution that will ban such marriages. This was a cruel act by North Carolina voters. Life is brutally short and people should be allowed to live in marriage with the person they most value. If I [...]

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-would-a-public-that-so-often-has-so-little-self-respect-have-much-care-for-the-rights-of-others/

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Open Thread - RIP Maurice Sendak

post from Crooks and Liars on 08 May 2012 11:30:28 PM. © Crooks and Liars

video details and more

h/t Nicole Belle, Christopher Walken reads his own annotated version of "Where the Wild Things Are." The POTUS version is here, and our sister site Newstalgia has Fresh Air's remembrance of Sendak from earlier today.

Open Thread below....

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http://crooksandliars.com/bluegal-aka-fran/open-thread-rip-maurice-sendak

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Open thread for night owls: Generational warfare

post from Daily Kos on 08 May 2012 11:30:04 PM. © Daily Kos

At Salon, Joan Walsh writes:

Does Mitt Romney have a prayer with young voters? [...]
A new survey by Harvard?s Institute of Politics shows that voters 18-24 are less engaged in this election than that age group was in 2008, with only 64 percent registered to vote, as opposed to 73 percent four years ago. Where two-thirds said they?d definitely vote in 2008, less than half say that today. ?The president?s support among young voters is bleeding away,? Republican strategist Mark McKinnon claimed in the Daily Beast, using IOP data. When McKinnon hyped his piece Monday on MSNBC?s ?Morning Joe,? Republican Joe Scarborough intoned that ?the bull?s-eye is really on the back of the young voters,? who know that the ?burden? of Social Security, Medicare and ?the $17 trillion debt will fall on them.?
As a matter of fact, the Institute of Politics youth-vote study actually contained mostly good news for Democrats. (This is typical in the media, in which ?Bad news for Dems? stories can be found everywhere, even in data that aren?t bad news for Dems.) ?Over the last several months, we have seen more of the Millennial vote begin to solidify around President Obama and Democrats in Congress,? Harvard Institute of Politics director Trey Grayson observed in the press release announcing the survey results. In fact, Obama?s lead over Romney increased to a 17-point margin, up from an 11-point lead in an IOP poll last November. It?s true that young-voter enthusiasm is down somewhat, and Obama doesn?t enjoy the 2-1 lead he built over Sen. John McCain in 2008 ? but there?s still time. [...]
The toxic but illogical politics of pitting young against old was on dizzying display in Esquire?s deeply messed up ?The War Against Youth? feature last month, which argued that the last 30 years have witnessed a massive income transfer from young to old, courtesy of greedy baby boomers and both parties. ?The old are eating the young at the dinner table,? author Stephen Marche memorably wrote. Ick. His piece started out with an economic blooper so egregious that the rest of its reporting is suspect ? confusing ?wealth? with ?income? when comparing young vs. old, then and now. But some of the points he made were valid. We are spending far more on seniors than we are on young people ? and it?s going to get worse as the boomers age. [...]
Of course, the party that?s determined to cut Social Security and Medicare is even more determined to slash programs for young people. To avoid the automatic defense cuts promised by the debt-ceiling deal last August, the House budget cuts Pell Grants and child nutrition programs, even the refundable child tax credit, for God?s sake. Mitt (?borrow college tuition from your parents?) Romney is probably not the best standard-bearer for a Republican Party that wants to win the youth vote, anyway. [...]
But the Democrats have to do more to earn the youth vote than keep the interest rate on one category of student loan from doubling.

Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2011:

It didn't take long for the usual suspects on the right to start whining about politicizing a historic moment. But it isn't political exploitation to tell the truth. And none of the voices that now decry the truth-telling cared a whit when Bush blatantly exploited the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, with politically timed orange alerts and the lies and fear-mongering that led the nation into a war on a nation that had had nothing to do with the September 11 attacks. Republicans have been dishonestly exploiting fears of foes real and imagined for decades, and the cynical strategy's most recent incarnations have been the questions about President Obama's birth certificate, the lies that he is secretly a Muslim?as if there is anything wrong with being a Muslim in the first place?and of course the Sharia Law freak show, as if anyone anywhere in this nation has ever been threatened with the imposition of any form of religious fundamentalism other than that emanating from the cesspool of right-wing theocrats.
This historic moment is political. All historic moments are political. History is political, and the only people who now claim otherwise do so purely for political reasons. Even the desperation to deceive the public into believing the lie that the Bush administration's immoral, inhuman, and illegal torture regime helped make this successful raid possible is purely impurely political. Dick Cheney wants credit for this success because Dick Cheney doesn't want anyone to remember that his astonshing failures made this raid necessary. Every time Dick Cheney appears on television, it becomes necessary to revisit the historic facts. Every time any Republican or right-wing apologist or oblivious media hack repeats the lie that Republicans are competent, much less superior to Democrats, at protecting national security, it becomes necessary to revisit the historic facts: If not for the Bush administration's unprecedented failure at national security, the unprecedented terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, would not have succeeded.

Tweet of the Day:

Supporting the Vietnam War. From Paris. #ThingsMittTakesCreditFor
? @TheDailyEdge via web

High Impact Posts. Top Comments.

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http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/Ar8jJC34N2Q/-Open-thread-for-night
-owls-Generational-warfare

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Barrett V. Walker

post from Talking Points Memo on 08 May 2012 11:01:14 PM. © Talking Points Memo

Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett wins Wisconsin's Democratic recall primary. He'll face Scott Walker (again) next month, June 5th. [...]

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r.php

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Just No Fight

post from Talking Points Memo on 08 May 2012 11:01:13 PM. © Talking Points Memo

TPM Reader BI checks in from on the ground in Indiana ...Maybe surprisingly, there wasn't a lot of drama around this race on either side. Lugar's campaign seemed to just be going through the motions. Maybe partly because they haven't had to run a[...]

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hp

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Late Night FDL: Maurice Sendak Let the Wild
Rumpus start!

post from Firedoglake on 08 May 2012 11:00:57 PM. © Firedoglake

Maurice Sendak has died. When my girls were young, I would read "Where the Wild Things Are" to them every night. It never got old. It never got tired. There is an openness to it that makes it timeless and ageless. Mr. Sendak didn't believe in childhood.[...]

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GOP Sen. Lugar loses primary

post from US Politics | AMERICAblog News on 08 May 2012 11:00:43 PM. © US Politics | AMERICAblog News

GOP Senator Dick Lugar lost his primary today to a Tea Party candidate. Here are two conservative leaders in Indiana explaining why they were out to dump Lugar:?Lugar is an honest and decent man, but he's voted wrong too many times,? says Bopp. ?His approach is just wrong now. When Reagan was president, we could afford someone who approaches these issues in a moderate, bipartisan way. But...

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mary.html

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North Carolina, Uppity Negroes, and Pushy
Homosexualists

Why is it that Confederate-Americans make the best historians? For years, good, godly, proudly white, Confederate-minded men like Pat Buchanan and others have been breaking ground with research proving slavery was a good thing.

Now, Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman of the North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission, tells us that greedy yankees, uppity Negroes, and abolitionists forced the good people of the Tarheel State to pass laws against emancipation:

Emancipation sentiment was ascendant in the South after 1783 though Northern inventions like the cotton gin and mills hungry for raw cotton perpetuated the existence of slave labor on Southern plantations. Fearful of slave revolts as the black population grew, and shaken by the Nat Turner massacre of women and children, Southerners erected anti-emancipation laws to control slave populations. The constant agitation of slave revolt by abolitionist fanatics culminating in John Brown?s crime in Virginia, was an effective means to end even voluntary emancipation in the South. Peaceful emancipation initiatives from the North would have had a better effect and avoided war.

All those complaining about last night's Amendment One results should take a lesson from Brother Thuersam's historical account. The good people of North Carolina wouldn't have passed Amendment One if homosexualists wouldn't go around demanding basic human rights.

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y-negroes-and-pushy.html

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C&L's Late Night Music Club With Freddie North

Title: Ain't Nothing In The News (But The Blues)Artist: Freddie North

Freddie North covers the state of the world in this song from 1971, and he sure paints a bleak picture. Got a favorite song that reminds you of current or past world affairs?

Ain't Nothing In The News