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Sunday, May 5, 2019

No time to work on this, as I spent Sunday trying to break in a new Mexican cookbook. Much of Saturday too, and more of Friday -- not that I had even started then. The one story that dominated the interest of the liberal media was Attorney General William Barr's Senate testimony and his failure to appear before the House. I was tempted to tweet when I looked at Talking Points Memo and they had devoted their entire front page to Barr (aside from one bit on the implosion of Stephen Moore's Fed nomination).

Actually, this should have been a banner week for the media to pick apart Trump's increasingly manic and deranged foreign policy. The US hasn't been taken such a nakedly imperial stance toward Latin America since FDR traded in his cousin's penchant for Gunboat Diplomacy for the sunny promise of a Good Neighbor Policy. I didn't link to anything below on Trump's phone call to Putin, mostly because no one seems to know enough about it to write intelligently. But there were also fairly major stories that could have been reported about Korea, China, Iran, Egypt, Turkey, Yemen, and Israel/Palestine (where Netanyahu celebrated his election victory by launching the heaviest assault on Gaza since 2014).

Some scattered links this week:

• Alexia Fernández Campbell:

  • Americans are working harder these days. Their paychecks don't show it.

  • April jobs report: tons of new jobs and teeny-tiny pay raises.

• Jason Del Ray: The making of Amazon Prime, the internet's most successful and devastating membership program.

• Jason Ditz: Venezuela's Guaido 'consering asking US to invade. That'll really convince the Venezuelan people he has their best interests at heart.

• David Enrich: Trump wants to block Deutsche Bank from sharing his financial records.

• Matt Gertz/Rob Savillo: Major media outlets' Twitter accounts amplify false Trump claims on average 19 times a day.

• Masha Gessen: Under Trump, the language we use to create political reality is crumbling:

  One of the most frightening things I've witnessed in recent months was a very polite conversation in a well-lit room in the Ronald Reagan Building, in Washington, D.C., on Monday. The director of policy planning at the State Department, Kiron Skinner, was interviewed onstage by a woman who used to hold her job: Anne-Marie Slaughter, who is now the head of the New America Foundation (where I am a fellow this year). . . .

  I have heard talk like this before, in Russia. A government official once told me that he "carried out emanations": not policies, laws, or even orders but signals akin to what Skinner called "hunches and instincts." It's what officials do in countries that are led by a combination of ignorance and corruption.

• Kathy Gilsinan:

  • A boom time for US sanctions: "The explosive growth in their use has prompted questionjs about how much is too much.

  • Pay attention to what the US is doing to Iran. Related: Krishnadev Calamur: Trump goes from threatening Iran to threatening the world.

• David A Graham: Why Stephen Moore's Fed bid failed.

• Sean Illing: Bill McKibben has been sounding the climate alarm for decades. Here's his best advice. Interview with McKibben, whose new book is Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?.

• Quinta Jurecic: All of the impeachable offenses: "Focusing on the Mueller report alone risks leaving out the obvious.

• Jen Kirby: Trump has nominated Kelly Craft to be the next UN ambassador. Here's who she is.

• Sonali Kolhatkar: Trump's abortion lies are going to get somebody killed.

• PR Lockhart: Tennessee passed a law that could make it harder to register voters.

• James North: Once again, 'NYT' distorts the news, dishonestly making Gazans the aggressor and Israel the victim.

• Molly Olmstead: John Kelly joines board of company that detains migrant children.

• Joshua Partlow/David A Fahrenthold: At Trump golf course, undocumented employees said they were sometimes told to work extra hours without pay.

• Susan E Rice: The real Trump foreign policy: stoking the GOP base: "Why else would he pursue so many policies in Latin America that do not serve the national interest?" What about the economic interests of his donors? Or their more general hatred of popular rule (aka democracy)?

• Charlie Savage/Eric Schmitt/Maggie Haberman: Trump pushes to designate Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist group. Paul Woodward, in linking to this, also linked to a background piece from Jan. 27, 2017: William McCants/Benjamin Wittes: Should the Muslim Brotherhood be designated a terrorist organization?

• Adam Serwer: The dangerous ideas of Bill Barr: "The attorney general's theory of executive power places presidents above the law."

• Danny Sjursen: The left needs to stop crushing on the generals. I'd respond that the left I know doesn't, but when you write for American Conservative your perspective might be distorted enough to include some "leftists" I wouldn't.

• Alex Ward:

  • Why North Korea's "projectiles" launch isn't a cause for concern -- yet.

  • The Trump administration's Venezuela policy is failing.

• Benjamin Wittes:

  • The catastrophic performance of Bill Barr.

  • Five things I learned from the Mueller report.

• Matthew Yglesias:

  • The push to break up Big Tech, explained.

  • Stephen Moore's failed Federal Reserve Board nomination, explained.

  • Medicare for Kids, a cheap step toward single-payer health care, explained.

For the record, tonight's Cinco de Mayo menu, nearly all from The Best Mexican Recipes (America's Test Kitchen):

• Chicken adobo
• Braised short ribs with peppers and onion
• Cheese enchiladas
• Classic Mexican rice
• Skillet street corn
• Restaurant-style black beans
• Shrimp and lime ceviche
• Mango, jicama, and orange salad
• Cherry tomato and avocado salad
• Key lime pie
• Duce de leche cheesecake

I generally cut the hot peppers back by 50%. I made the beef and the desserts the night before. Started around noon, aiming at 6pm dinner, but it wound up closer to 7pm, putting a couple guests to work. Used a gluten-free shell for the key lime pie, but made cheesecake crust from scratch, using a box of caramel and sea salt cookies plus some graham crackers. Used store-bought yellow corn tortillas, which were the weak link in the enchiladas (otherwise pretty great). Ten people, so the table was pretty crowded. Kitchen was a colossal mess, but got it straightened out by bedtime.

I've never been a big fan of Mexican food, but figured I should give it a try, especially given access to specialty grocers here. But when I bought my first Mexican cookbook, I found it impenetrable. This one is intentionally simplified, which helped get me started. This cookbook didn't have any desserts, so I scrounged around the web, not finding much that interested me. (I've made flan and rice pudding many times before, but didn't want to do them here. And while I'm partial to cake, tres leches isn't a favorite.) On the other hand, lime figures large in the meal, and I had the pie shell on the shelf. The cheesecake was a second thought, and turned out to be a nice complement.

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