I’m always fascinated by the flavors that people are drawn to. I think that there must be a direct correlation between one’s personality and their favorite tastes.

When I was three, my mother walked in on me finishing off an entire jar of pepperoncini peppers. I think she might of stopped me before I drank the juice. I’m not quite sure what that says about me, but I’m sure it says something. Or maybe it was just that I was so excited to find something to eat besides brown rice and adzuki beans.  I came from a house where we called the crispy part of the fried egg "bacon" and ate vitamin C’s as candy.

I often know what I want to eat because I can already taste it in my mouth. Sometimes the quality and the sensation of that desired taste is so palpable that I am half mad until I actually eat it. Often the flavor has something to do with that mystical citrus, the lemon.

I am a lemon lover. I know many are not, but I love lemons with every taste bud I have. I squeeze lemon into my chicken soup, I dress my salads with lemon, and I’ll eat a whole pan of lemon squares if there is no one around to share them. But most of all I love lemon peel.

I love how the peel has so little to do with the lemon. It has no sourness, only a rich hint of bitter mixed with a whole lot of fancy. When I read Laurie Colwin’s piece on lemon rice pudding, I became a bit monomaniacal. Her essays tend to do that to me these days.

This is the easiest rice pudding you will ever make. Our friends were visiting from far away, and as I stirred the chicken soup before their arrival, the pudding cooked away in the oven.

It did not disappoint. The lemon rind infused the very grains of rice, and the creaminess was exactly right. It was perfect.

For me, that is.

My husband grimaced with his first bite- then slowly worked through his little bowl, delicately removing the little moons of half dissolved lemon peel. Daughter number one had one bite and demanded ice cream. The husband of the visiting couple asked if I wouldn’t be offended if he added a bit of maple syrup.

And of course I wasn’t. I was too busy being in heaven. Daughter number two closed her eyes with every bite, and cleaned her bowl. The visiting wife ate her own and her childrens’ with a happy sigh. "Ah Lemon."

So be warned, this might not be a crowd pleaser. But if you are at all like me, this will please you, and that’s good enough.

Lemon Rice Pudding
from Jane Grigson’s Good Things, made irresistible by Laurie Colwin in More Home Cooking, and slightly adapted by me

serves 6-8

• 1/2 cup basmati rice
• 2 lemons
• 3 cups whole milk
• 1 cup half and half
• 3 Tablespoons sugar

Preheat the oven to 250 degrees. Peel the lemons with a vegetable peeler, taking care not to include any of the white pith. When you have a nice pile of peel, take your knife to it and chop roughly. Set the naked lemons aside.

Wash the rice. Put the rice, chopped lemon peel, milk, cream and sugar into a large casserole. Bake for 2 1/2 hours, stirring every 45 minutes or so. When it is done, add the juice of the lemons. Serve warm, or chill, depending on your patience.

He did not realize that the three different ways did NOT include anything French.

Sort of the cooking version of “I didn’t have sex with that woman.”  Sorry. My bad.

But, typical for me.  I discovered using crepes when I wanted to make baked manicotti and didn’t have any manicotti. Remind me to tell you about the time I wanted to make Szechuan Duck and only had turkey legs.

Substitution, people!!!

Crepes are not really pancakes in the way that we know pancakes in the United States. Our pancake have a leavening agent in it to make the pancakes rise and get all puffy and thick. The big stack. Crepes are really simple and have much more in common with pasta than with pancakes because there is no leavening agent in it and it is simply flour, eggs, and a little water, milk or a combination of the two. Pasta is simply flour and eggs with perhaps a little water.  Think of crepe batter as liquefied pasta.

There are sweetened crepe batters for dessert use (if you feel the need; I use the same batter for everything); regular unsweetened ones for main dish and vegetable use. All we are talking here is batter poured into a hot greased pan, twirled around so that it goes up the sides and cooks all thin, flipped out and onto a plate. Fill with something, pour some sort of sauce on top and serve. Crepes are a great way to use up leftovers in the fridge – you can put anything into crepes: seafood in a white or cheese sauce, chicken, meat, vegetables, vegetarian stuff – you name it. Just remember that crepes really don’t have a whole lot of flavor of their own – so make sure the fillings and sauces are complex and flavorful so that the dish doesn’t end up bland.

How to Make Crepes: You know, if making crepes were as difficult as people think it is, then performing cold fusion on your kitchen table would be possible. Seriously. Here is a great demo on making crepes. My only area of differing is that I use a cast iron enameled omelet pan; this chef uses a pan with Teflon™ on it. A major difference is that if I dropped that pan onto the chef’s foot – he’d feel it for a month. That pan weighs a ton and when I use it, I try to switch hands for every crepe because it makes for better muscle development in both arms that way. Here’s the demo – watch the swirl part – that’s the business end of crepe making (besides getting the pan HOT).  Chef Mohr Makes Crepes

Here is my crepe recipe:

1 cup of cold water

1 cup of milk (any type will do)

4 large eggs

¼ cup of olive oil (the type labeled “for sautéing and baking”)

2 cups of all purpose flour (I used 1 cup of bread flour and 1 cup of cake flour)

Combine water and milk

Put the eggs and the olive oil into the mixing bowl and beat.

Alternate flour and the water milk mixture until you have a thinnish sort of batter – like the quality of thin cake batter. NOT LIKE PANCAKE BATTER.

Let sit to allow the flour particles to soften up.

Watch the video and do what the chef does. If you use a regular omelet pan, you will need to heat it up and then at the last minute, put in a pat of butter. Don’t heat up the butter in the pan – it will take too long and burn.

Make all your crepes and put them on a plate. Do NOT put the plate into the oven, ok?

Here are three different and totally non-French ways to use crepes (I realize that this puts me on the other side from the folks who insist on things like the fact that champagne can only come from France, but go along with me here – knowing how to make crepes and do stuff with them opens whole new vistas in terms of quick meals at home), in order of the meal:

Appetizer crepes:

Sliding little cooked vegetable and cheese filled crepes is a very nice appetizer – and just filling enough to hold people through cocktails so that they won’t hit the table like a bunch of starving Rombovians. Great combinations:

Winter squash with a little nutmeg

Steamed broccoli with cheese

Black beans, cooked with major garlic and onions, smooshed up, with or without a little cheddar cheese

Main Dish crepes:

There is nothing that you can’t put into a crepe. The fillings used in the appetizer crepes can be expanded and used in larger crepes for main dish crepes.  Other great fillings include everything from chicken, fish, tuna, seafood, beef, left over anything. Here’s a tip: Any recipe that calls for tortillas or pasta – you can basically work it around to a filling for crepes. Here’s our version of  Enchiladas Suizas:

Ingredients:

6-8 crepes

2 boneless chicken breasts, sliced thinly

1 can of crushed tomatoes

1 medium onion, diced

2 tablespoons of taco seasoning OR:

1 clove of garlic, minced

¼ tsp each of ground cumin and coriander

1 small can of diced green chilis

1 cup of shredded cheese such as Monterey jack or Munster

Sautee the chicken in a little olive oil, sprinked with the spices or taco seasoning. Set aside.

In the same pan, sautee the onion (if you need more oil, add a little oil), add the can of tomatoes and diced green chilis.

Cover the bottom of a baking dish with the onions/tomatoes/chilis (I do this in an electric fry pan as a one dish meal, but you can bake it in the oven too)

Put 2-4 pieces of the chicken in a crepe, put a pinch of the cheese on top and roll up. Put into the pan. Finish up all the chicken and crepes.

Cover the crepes with the rest of the onions/tomatoes/chilis and sprinkle the cheese on the top.

Bake for 20-25 min. in a 375 degree oven until the cheese is all melted. If you use an electric fry pan, put the heat on 300 and once it’s bubbly, it’s ready to serve.

Aunt Toby’s Cannoli Crepes

I LOVE cannolis. But the part I like the best is the filling..I hate the deep fried shells. So here is my version of a cannoli, made with crepes.

Make your crepes (this recipe will make 5 crepes with a LOT of filling in them).

Cannoli filling. You can actually buy cannoli filling in some groceries now. I prefer to make my own – it’s simple to do.

2 cups of ricotta (I use whole milk but part skim will work also). If it looks sort of loose, then put it in cheese cloth or a strainer and let it drip for a while.

1 cup of powdered sugar

1 tsp. Of orange or lemon zest

1 tsp. Of almond extract

Chocolate glaze and garnish:

½ cup of chocolate chips

2 tablespoons of butter, unsalted

2 tablespoons of water

Slivered almonds for garnish

Make the filling:

Whip up the ricotta with the powdered sugar, zest and extract and put into the fridge to chill.

Make the glaze:

Put the chocolate chips into a heatproof dish and microwave for 2 minutes, 1 minute at a time, keep checking. Once it starts to melt, add the butter and zap again for a minute. Take out and mix it up with a spoon. It will be thick – add the water until it gets more like a glaze. If you need a little bit more water, that is ok.

Assemble:

Put a good big spoonful of the filling in the middle of the crepe and roll up. Do this until you have finished all the crepes. If you have extra filling, put it in a sealed container and put into the fridge.

Once you have all your filled crepes lined up on a dish, pour the chocolate glaze over the top and garnish with almonds. Refrigerate until you are ready to serve.

Sadly, the lesson seems to have been passed on to the administrations of this country and the nations of Europe, in their reliance on the financial moguls who made the mistakes to bring us back from the brink that they created. A European think tank on economic matters, ALTER-EU (Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation) is calling for increased participation by interests of the affected rather than affecting parties.

The vast majority of financial ‘experts’ advising the European Commission represent the banks and investors responsible for the global economic crisis, according to a new report published today by the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation (ALTER EU) [1].

The Commission must break free from these advisors on financial issues if it is serious about reforming the failed financial system, say the authors.

‘A captive Commission – the role of the financial industry in shaping EU regulation’ examines how before, during and in the wake of the worst financial crisis for a generation, the Commission chose to listen almost exclusively to the finance industry.

Expert Groups – bodies set up to advise the Commission – which gave, or still give, advice on financial issues are overwhelmingly dominated by representatives from the financial industry, with scarcely any representatives from academia, consumer groups or unions.

Case studies on key issues such as banking regulation, hedge funds, credit rating agencies, accountancy rules and tax havens show how the financial sector has been actively involved in designing the policies which contributed to recent financial instability. The European Union is now consulting the same experts on its plans to tackle the crisis.

Paul de Clerck member of ALTER-EU’s steering committee, said: "The Commission only seems to be interested in listening to the advice of the finance industry, rather than acting in the interests of society. Light touch regulation may have made it easier to do business, but it has not protected our savings and our pensions from being gambled away. Now the Commission tells us they are tightening the rules but in reality their proposals still leave many loopholes. If the Commission wants to restore confidence in our financial systems, it must break free of this stranglehold of partial advice."

Watching the TARP oversight commission headed by Dr. Elizabeth Warren of Harvard struggling with participating member Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX), why insistently sought to perpetuate right wing ideology that led to our present disaster, I have some reservations about the value of distributing the responsibility. However, their point is excellent.

The administration’s putting our economic sector back at work trying to bail the country out of the sinking ship they skewered does provoke endless criticism. While I do accept that familiarity with the perpetrators and the errors is helpful, complicity is a suspicion that gives us all pause.

Personally, I trust the present administration to bear up under critics and forge on with good prospects. I do recognize that we were rescued from the kind of disaster that we saw in Maryland during the S&L crises, when accounts were frozen and until the state remedied the situation with a cash inoculations. Some families I knew personally were kept from funds for their children’s college education. Some lost businesses, and the state wound up managing a pig farm on the Eastern Shore. (Yes, the temptation is great to say they still are in the presence of a certain former VP’s residence there, but there, I said it and I apologize to the innocent pigs of the world.)

We have the unfortunate struggle in this country to fight off the irresponsible right wing seeking to re-institute ideological values and practices, and effort to add to the causes of our present economic distress. On every front, from social stigmas from the past to the threats they wield against the internet, the right wing seems determined to destroy this country in order to prove the left can’t handle government, either.

ALTER-EU has sound ideas, and we need to look seriously at their proposal for this country as well. As the U.S. returns to functional relationships with the rest of the world, I see a great value to be gained from participation in thinking, sound consideration of alternatives to the way things got so badly damaged. A revocation of the policies of recidivism and refusal to learn from their mistakes could take serious bolstering from shared experience and expertise among all nations that includes this one as it rapidly regains ground.

During today’s House proceedings, the female Democrats were completely in order as they made salient points about how health care reform will improve the lives of women around the country. Here’s how one male Republican responded:

What’s on your mind tonight?

A couple of weeks ago Dick Cheney made headlines for accusing the Obama administration of "dithering" on its policy goals for Afghanistan. At this point Cheney does not deserve to be thought of as anything other than a crazy and potentially senile old coot, so the substance of what he said is irrelevant. Its subtext may be revealing, though.

The decision on the war should be viewed in the context of the shadowy activities that are taking place in Afghanistan, far away from any battlefields. The prison at Bagram seems particularly important; in Amy Davidson’s jaded but apparently accurate view "closing Guantánamo increases the need for a new Guantánamo." Andy Worthington fleshed out her point by making the persuasive case that the Obama administration is keenly interested in having a place to stash inconvenient human beings that is completely outside judicial or congressional jurisdiction. It appears the CIA is handing suspects over to the military, and they exist completely within the military’s chain of command.

During the Bush years the administration favored use of the Gang of Eight briefing process, approved in 1980, in which "the executive branch is permitted by statute to limit notification to the chairmen and ranking minority members of the two congressional intelligence committees, the Speaker and minority leader of the House, and Senate majority and minority leaders, rather than to notify the full intelligence committees." Unfortunately, there appears to be confusion over what is permitted with the briefing process; Jane Harman complained she was not allowed to take notes during the ones she attended or even discuss it with her colleagues.

Harman’s dissatisfaction shows what makes the Gang of Eight process a charade: The president decides when to use it and can bring enormous pressure to bear on those being briefed. Human nature is to err on the side of caution and to give the benefit of the doubt to those we work with. If the president says, "I’m going to tell you this, but it’s extremely sensitive and a leak could have grave consequences," how defiant do you think any of those eight will be? Harman could have flatly said, I’m taking notes – try to stop me. She did not, though. Yes it was a failure of courage on her part, but no formula for effective oversight can have courage as a prerequisite. Interestingly, the FAS article points out there is officially no restriction to members of the Gang of Eight sharing details of the briefing with the full membership of the intelligence committees. It still seems designed to strongly discourage sharing and disclosure, though.

Presidents will not willingly give that up that power. Barack Obama has threatened to veto the Intelligence Authorization Act of 2010 over its repeal of the Gang of Eight provision. When it was initially revealed a number of bloggers, including Spencer Ackerman, Matt Yglesias and Marcy Wheeler, noted its significance. It did not make much of a splash in the larger outlets, though, and unfortunately has never become a topic for discussion among political or media elites.

Allowing the House and Senate Permanent Select Committees on Intelligence set their own briefing rules is a greatly needed reform. As long as the president can in effect keep Congress in the dark – and make no mistake that is exactly what the Gang of Eight process does – the CIA also has reason to lightly regard it. Silvestre Reyes can furrow his brow at the CIA all he wants, but he must understand that the Agency feels it can lie to Congress as needed because the oversight process is so anemic. (By the way, the SpacePolicyOnline.com article claims "no intelligence authorization bill has cleared Congress in four years." If true that strikes me as noteworthy; failure to pass one presumably does not de-fund intelligence agencies. What kind of institutional inertia or perverse incentives are in play that makes failure to properly authorize a budget so attractive?)

Which leads back to Dick Cheney and Bagram. So far Afghanistan has been an executive branch playground. It is home for not just military adventure but a lawless netherworld into which all the unpleasant consequences of our aggrandized, arrogant and short sighted foreign policies can be hidden away. The courts don’t get to have a say and Congress doesn’t even have to be told. But if we pull out all our soldiers that situation will have to end. No wonder the former vice president wants lots of extra troops sent there, and the current president is so eager to keep news from there bottled up. America has heavily invested in a very dark project in Afghanistan. Transparency can only bring trouble.

if television is the drug of the nation,

satellite is immaculate reception

beaming in they can look and they can listen

so you see don’t believe in the system

to legalize you or give you your freedom

you want rights ask em’, they’ll read em’
but every flower got a right to be bloomin’

stay human."

\"Stay Human\" Michael Franti

I opened a bank account with the local Austin Telco credit union last week, and will close my Wells Fargo accounts in 10 days to allow for a smooth financial transition.  This report appears to be one of those trite twitter “who gives a damn” text intrusions.  I discovered however that this minute move has triggered magnificent meaning.  As Michael Franti’s lyrical prelude foreshadows it is about keepin’ it human.

My first major banking transaction was in Fort Stockton, Texas.  I looked the Ex High School basketball coach, turned loan officer in the eye and with a firm handshake got a sizable loan on my new 1984 blue Audi 4000.  He then introduced me as the new Church of Christ Youth Minister to the 1st National Bank President.

Not long after that 1st national went big city introducing an ATM card and machine.  I never got one.  It was crucial for me to go inside the bank, look into the face of the teller, exchange a joke or two and feel that human connection.

One awful morning my loan officer’s daughter died suddenly when her gas heater malfunctioned.  I was privileged to offer ongoing pastoral ministry to my devastated friend.  Plastic card banking wouldn’t have afforded this movement from officer to soul friend.

When I moved to Austin in late 1991 I banked with a local concern, Franklin Federal.  Once more I established names and faces that transcended my meager money balances.  Franklin got bought by Norwest.  Then Norwest and Wells Fargo merged.  There is one person at my branch who I still know as a person.  They move personnel more often than a Methodist Bishop moves pastors!

After Wells Fargo made a mistake that overdrew one of my accounts I went into the branch.  The one person I know was on lunch break.  The new “officer”/cog in the machine couldn’t help me.  She said I would have to call the 800 number.  A visit with the  branch manager lackey yielded, “that’s the way it is.”  It took me five hours and six or seven toll free numbers to get the mess cleared up.

After you and I became federal bailout shareholders of Wells Fargo, I got a notice announcing a 3% raise in my credit card interest rate.  I had just heard Wells had reported record profits and were awarding healthy bonuses to their big wigs.

That was it for me.  A visit to the only person I know yielded a fatalistic apology.  “I don’t agree with it.  They are raising our employee rates too.”

I googled all the major national banks in my area coupled with the term "bailout."  The headlines were nauseatingly the same – big quarterly profits, large executive bonuses.  I closed my laptop and declared.  "I’m not doing business with any of these fu*ker’s."  My resolve was seated in defiance.

Walking out of the credit union last week after dealing with a fresh faced college grad to open my account, I not only popped the balloon of my anger.  There was a much more fundamental transaction.  The light of my humanity was rekindled.

A central promise of health care reform is that if you like the health care coverage you have, you can keep it. Today in America, millions of women who buy health care on their own or who get it through the small business employer have abortion care coverage. Congressman Stupak’s amendment would strip them of that coverage, breaking that central promise.

Stupak wants to outlaw abortion coverage in the new health insurance Exchange, where individuals and small businesses will purchase their coverage. Instead, women would only be able to purchase abortion coverage in a "abortion rider" plan – a single-service plan that covers abortion only. Such an "abortion rider" is discriminatory and illogical. Women do not plan to have unintended pregnancies (or pregnancies in which a complication will arise that will require ending the pregnancy). In fact, about half of all pregnancies are unintended. Abortion is simply not something that women plan to insure against.

Put simply, the Stupak amendment is a dramatic departure from current law which would restrict a women’s right to choose. What’s more, it would put an unprecedented restriction on people who pay for their own health insurance.

There is already a compromise in the House health care bill that reflects current law on the subject. The current bill prohibits federal funds from being used for abortion but still allows women to use their own money to buy the coverage they need.

This isn’t good enough from Stupak, or, apparently, for the Members of Congress considering voting for this amendment. Below is a list of Representatives that need to hear from you today about this issue. If you live in their district, pick up the phone now and give them a call. This amendment will be voted on today, so time is of the essence.

Click here to call, or use the phone numbers below:

Leans pro-choice but needs shoring up

Arcuri (D, NY-24) – 202-225-3665
Bean (D, IL-08) – (202) 225-3711
Bishop, S. (D, GA-02) – (202) 225-2203
Boswell (D, IA-03) – (202) 225-3806
Butterfield (D, NC-01) – (202) 225-3101
Cardoza (D, CA-18) – (202) 225-6131
Chandler (D, KY-06) – (202) 225-4706
Cooper (D, TN-05) – 202-225-4311
Costa (D, CA-20) – 202-225-3341
Doyle (D, PA-14) – 202-225-2135
Edwards, C. (D, TX-17) – 202-225-6105
Etheridge (D, NC-02) – (202) 225-4531
Gordon (D, TN-06) – (202) 225-4231
Kratovil (D, MD-01) – (202) 225-5311
Langevin (D, RI-02) – (202) 225-2735
McMahon (D, NY-13) – (202) 225-3371
Michaud (D, ME-02) – 202-225-6306
Minnick (D, ID-01) – (202) 225-6611
Neal (D, MA-02) – (202) 225-5601
Nye (D, VA-02) – (202) 225-4215
Obey (D, WI-07) – (202) 225-3365
Owens (D, NY-23) – (202) 225-4611
Ruppersberger (D, MD-02) – 202-225-3061
Ryan, T. (D, OH-17) – 202-225-5261
Salazar (D, CO-03) – 202-225-4761
Space (D, OH-18) – (202) 225-6265

Unknown

Biggert (R, IL-13) – 202-225-3515
Carney (D, PA-10) – (202) 225-3731
Castle (R, DE-AL) – 202.225.4165
Cuellar (D, TX-28) – 202-225-1640
Davis, A. (D, AL-07) – (202) 225-2665
Dent (R, PA-15) – 202-225-6411
Ellsworth (D, IN-08) – (202) 225-4636
Frelinghuysen (R, NJ-11) – (202) 225-5034
Kirk (R, IL-10) – 202-225-4835
Lynch (D, MA-09) – 202-225-8273
Pomeroy (D, ND-AL) – (202) 225-2611
Snyder (D, AR-02) – (202) 225-2506
Tanner (D, TN-08) – (202) 225-4714
Visclosky (D, IN-01) – (202) 225-2461

Leaning anti-choice

Altmire (D, PA-04) – 202-225-2565
Barrow (D, GA-12) – (202) 225-2823
Berry (D, AR-01) – (202) 225-4076
Boccieri (D, OH-16) – (202) 225-3876
Bright (D, AL-02) – (202) 225-2901
Capito (R, WV-02) – 202.225.2711
Donnelly (D, IN-02) – (202) 225-3915
Hill (D, IN-09) – (202) 225-5315
Jenkins (R, KS-02) – (202) 225-6601
Kildee (D, MI-05) – 202-225-3611
Lance (R, NJ-07) – (202) 225-5361
Lee, C. (R, NY-26) – (202) 225-5265
Matheson (D, UT-02) – (202) 225-3011
Mollohan (D, WV-01) – (202) 225-4172
Ortiz (D, TX-27) – (202) 225-7742
Paulsen (R, MN-03) – (202) 225-2871
Perriello (D, VA-05) – (202) 225-4711
Rahall (D, WV-03) – (202) 225-3452
Ross (D, AR-04) – (202) 225-3772
Spratt (D, SC-05) – (202) 225-5501
Wilson, C. (D, OH-06) – (202) 225-5705

(also posted at the NOW! blog)

I’m proud to work for Health Care for America Now

The purpose of the barker, just in case you don’t know it, is that of advertising agent, to convince you of the product’s desirability so you will come into the tent. The big tent, no – their individual, tiny tent. Bearded ladies, fattest man in the world, genuine aliens in a jar, the car that Jayne Mansfield was riding in when she was decapitated, Balloon man – you aren’t going to be cool if you haven’t seen this 2010th wonder of the world.

The skills needed to sell the Republican party – that party that is still insisting its ideology will cure the ills that it has created – will rival those of the best barker. They are on display now. Listening to winger Chairman Michael Steele at his presser Wednesday express concern that the Democrats, with 60 members of the Senate, couldn’t pass a health care reform bill did bring to mind the backroom scene that had to have preceded it. That back room had to have filled with intaken breath where, gasping with astonished laughter, the assembled 2010 campaign planning committee barked with wonder at the calm grasp of spectacle their Chairman gave to this piece of phantasmagoria. I wonder what question prompted the Chair could plan to actually pass blame for his party’s obstruction tactics on to the Democrats.

The sense of responsibility that right wingers have shown in the administration of the country is epitomized to me by the Katrina tragedy, an immense disaster that a quarterhorse dilettante was given to solve as a reward for party loyalty. With an ability for administration that seemed to amount to picking out an appropriate shirt to wear for the cameras, a showman had in his flapping hands the city of New Orleans, with its hundreds of thousands of desperate people.

The concept of shilling as substitute for policy has been a recent one. I see it on the floor of the House and Senate now, where a debate on credit card regulations is turning ghastly. The Chairman of the Committee, Barney Frank, with deep logic, calls for an end to suffering on the part of constituents. Pitting this against Rep. Hensarling – who repeatedly expresses the surety that by passing consumer protections, Congress will prevent credit availability to his constituents for paying for the “trillion dollar government takeover of health care bill” – is an exercise in absurdity.

Yes, we all know that the government administers excellent health care plans for Hensarling as a member of Congress, and me under Medicare. The swill about government takeover has been thrown about since FDR, and has been disproven time after time. A carnival barker uses emotional language, not logic, though, to bring in the gullible passing by with a huge cup of whatever the mark was sold at the drink tents before reaching the freak show.

Sorry, but I remember when both parties approached running the government with an attitude of responsibility. The worst administration ever (Bush’s) was the first time I saw the spirit of product sales take over from commitment to a country. When the product they were selling was so devalued that its own qualities had to be ignored, the right wing turned into the freak show that we are seeing now.

Two unjustifiable wars that involved a descent into torture and bombardment of innocent civilians; a military strained with tasks never intended to be endured repeatedly by the same personnel to the point that suicides are at record numbers; deregulation that displayed its own inherent self-destructive results over eight years; administration by party faithful whose enthusiasm for ideology was their entire resume; substituting the pretense of ‘reverence for life’ for real measures that could save those tens of thousands of lives lost because of unattainable health care; educational meltdown leaving this country far down in our students’ ratings compared to industrial nations; tax incentives to executives to strip jobs and manufacturing facilities away from the real economy and to grab the short term gain; turning the prospering consumer economy into a wage and job starved depression: That’s the right wing product challenge. There’s a challenge that takes some real diversionary tactics. Selling it has turned the leadership of the party from one of solemn responsibility into the desperate barking we are hearing now.

What is required to sell the right wing product is dissociation from pride, dedication to overlook criteria about actual value, and the personal need to make it in a bewilderingly complex world where you are responsible for untold distress but have to pretend that repeating your mistakes will solve the immense damage you have done. The wonder is that even the most craven hypocrite can want to pass this crew off as capable of governing anything.

For myself, I wish them no luck at all.

With the House set to vote on the health care bill tomorrow, it will be helpful to know exactly who our representatives will be representing. Here’s how much money some of the key players in the debate have received from health industries in the current election cycle.

(Includes donations from health professionals, insurance companies, HMO’s, hospitals, nursing homes, and pharmaceuticals. Click here for a complete listing of all members of Congress.)

House:                                                                                                         Senate:

Steny Hoyer – $259,810 (3rd highest in body)                        Harry Reid – $611,075 (most in body)

Nancy Pelosi – $223,700 (5th)                                                       Blanche Lincoln – $427,950 (2nd)

Charlie Rangel – $ 201,800 (6th)                                                  Chuck Shumer – $366,650 (3rd)

Eric Cantor – $191,150 (7th)                                                           Chuck Grassley – $248,560 (8th)

Henry Waxman – $190,250 (8th)                                                Kent Conrad – $117,850

Roy Blunt – $170,700 (12th)                                                          Ben Nelson – $113,100

John Boehner – $137,725 (20th)                                                 Max Baucus – $70,500

Joe Wilson – $77,900                                                                        Tom Carper – $58,490

Alan Grayson – $38,800                                                                  Olympia Snowe – $12,000

Dennis Kucinich – $2,000                                                               Jay Rockefeller – $2,000

What ’s on your mind tonight?