By PatD, a Trail Mix Contributor
Genesis 3:22 ESV
Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—”
therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden…
More Posts by PatD
Woo Hoo…. choo choo kaboo!
Everyone have a safe and happy Thanksgiving!
Wishing everyone all the best. ???
Missing those who haven’t visited lately – please remember you are always welcome. No walls here.
To those who visit but have never commented: try it, you’ll like it. Always enjoy a different twist & outlook on life.
with sister-in-law Dale and her husband Tom (his birthday today) Gloucester MA
Betting next year that instead of pardoning the White House Turkeys the Oval Office occupant will serve them with all the fixins’.
Speaking of the dark side …. I know the outcome of the election but can’t help in viewing any person who accepts a position in the next administration as somehow traitorous to common decency/American ideals. Never thought I’d say that in regards to any Presidential administration of either Party.
Happy Birthday Tom! ?
Up all night with a dog which drank pond water. This is going to be one of those Thanksgivings.
For all you travelers, Happy Trails to You
For everybody, I sure hope your table mates speak the same political language as you.
For all military and military families away from home, these holidays are the stories of the future (Turkey with grits stuffing is one)
For all feds stationed away from home, see above.
Not much else to report on a damp, cool and overcast day on the Chesapeake Bay
tom thanks you SJ. (He thinks I look like Colbert in that pic).
Stephen Colbert is a good guy. Tell Tom he is in good company being with you 😉
Happy Birthday to Tom and Happy Thanksgiving to all in whatever way you celebrate.
https://youtu.be/fYi9Vr8bHJY
more fuel for the fiery table talk today.
ap story: Clinton being pushed to seek vote recount in 3 states
…
But Halderman, in an article posted on Medium on Wednesday, stressed that the group has no evidence of a cyberattack or voting irregularities. He urged that a recount be ordered just to eliminate the possibility.
“The only way to know whether a cyberattack changed the result is to closely examine the available physical evidence — paper ballots and voting equipment in critical states like Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania,” Halderman wrote.
Recounts, which are often costly and time-intensive efforts, would likely only be initiated if the Clinton camp pushed for one, though Wisconsin independently announced that it would conduct an audit of its vote.
[….]
The deadlines for petitioning for a recount in all three states are in the coming days, with Wisconsin’s on Friday. Green Party candidate Jill Stein announced a fundraising effort Wednesday to pay for such recounts.
The focal point of any possible electoral cyberattack presumably would have been electronic voting machines that, whether or not they are connected to the internet, could be infected with malware that could change vote totals. But many of those machines produce a paper record of the vote that could be checked to see if the vote tabulations are accurate.
Pennsylvania is considered one of the states most susceptible to hacking because 96 percent of its voting machines have no paper trail. Wisconsin is far less vulnerable because it uses electronic machines with voter-verifiable paper trails in most counties. Michigan is considered the safest of the three because it uses paper ballots.
query: why is stein so interested in a recount?
happy birthday, tom!
Jamie, that was beautiful. thank you.
Like this version even more:
Alexandra petri:
How to survive Thanksgiving 2016
warn your family that if they speak the Forbidden Name three times you will shake off your skin and become a thing of rage and indignation that is too fearsome to behold
last week you accidentally turned on Fox News and bit a bat in half
you don’t know yet what you are capable of…
Patd
The motives for Stein are both negative and positive. Clinton can’t really do it because she would look petty (or pick an adjective) so Stein steps in to raise the funds and lead the parade. Good for her because an audit needs to be done if only for future elections analysis. Having amassed Millions of dollars for a political purpose, any unused funds could probably be transferred to later campaigns of some kind (Check with FEC). Since Stein is a professional candidate for something all the time in order to stay in the public eye and get more paid speaking engagements, an audit looks good on the resume and might help pay for the next campaign.
Feel free to speculate for fun and profit.
Pumpkin pie for breakfast.
Happy thanksgiving everyone
And yes, you all are on my list of the many things I’m thankful for.
Jack
“query: why is stein so interested in a recount?”
patd,
To take the scarlet letter “S” for spoiler off of her Russian TV ass? Once you’re on the wrong side of history, you are there forever. Every vote for Stein was a vote taken away from Clinton. And look what that accomplished.
and this if you’re into lyrics and handsome men
https://youtu.be/c_g4rEPXkyI
Pat, not the ‘Us’ ‘Us”. The Imperial ‘Us’ as in, ‘We’ are pleased when Prince Harry does his good works in support of disabled service men and women.
Things to consider the next time you are considering the Electoral College and why more and more people are being deprived of their vote or why your representative doesn’t represent you at all, you can consider this.
Great Britain has approximately 64 million people. The House of Commons has 650 members. The US has approximately 319 million. The House of Representatives is frozen at 435 never to change unless there is a law passed to change it.
This means that in the UK, the member takes care of about 92,000 people. In the US each Representatives represents an average of about 700,00.
A low population state like Wyoming has 584,000 people but still gets 1 representative and 3 electoral votes. A major state like California has 39 million and 53 Representatives taking care of 736,000 people and 55 electoral votes. Due to populations shifts taking more and more people away from the center of the country, and the freeze on the House size since 1911, fewer and fewer people have more impact on Presidential elections than the majority.
This year for the second time in recent history and very extreme this year, the popular vote exceeds the electoral vote in a way to totally divide the nation. It’s time to reform either the number in the House, the Electoral formula or just go to a direct popular vote.
I don’t see the Colbert thing – but that’s all right. Happy Birthday as well! Family is important. Spending the day with the Mrs., Spencer dog and youngest daughter. I went to the dark side this TG, bought one of those Jennie-O frozen pre-seasoned and ready to go turkey’s. Just pull the inner-bag out from the outer bag, poke 6 holes in the top of the bag, and bake for 4 hours at 375. We’ll see what happens – I’ll report back. Some review say that they’re OK, others say the best Turkey they’ve cooked. I normally do the whole thing from scratch – but the past few weeks have sucked the energy out of me.
As a side note – we’ve been binge watching law and order and criminal minds for the past couple of days – spending no time on the media or what’s happening in the alt-right universe we now call our government. I can almost feel a fog lifting from the morose. I guess I’m going to have to check out a bit (so to speak) from this – but still pay attention. Listening to the new audiobook by H.W. Brands on the relationship between Truman and McArthur – well written as is most of his stuff. Quite insightful.
Happy T-Day to everyone – toodles
“I fired MacArthur because he wouldn’t respect the authority of the president. I didn’t fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that’s not against the law for generals. If it was, half to three-quarters of them would be in jail.”
Harry Truman
“…dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that’s not against the law for generals…”
harry vs. donald
nytimes: Trump’s Focus on Generals for Top Jobs Stirs Worries Over Military’s Sway
now that Mr. Trump is the president-elect, he is spending a great deal of his time with retired generals, and those of a particular breed: commanders who, when they served, were often at odds with President Obama.
One has been named as Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, and several others are candidates for coveted positions in his cabinet or are advising him on how to confront the world’s greatest threats. They would give his foreign policy a far more aggressive cast than Mr. Obama’s.
Turning to the retired officers reflects Mr. Trump’s preference for having strong, even swaggering, men around him. But it worries national security experts and even other retired generals, who say that if Mr. Trump stacks critical jobs purely with warriors, it could lead to an undue emphasis on military force in American foreign policy.
Happy Thanksgiving all you trail mixers!
thankful for the Trailmix site and glad to see that new people come and feel comfortable and even
infrequent contributors can drop in as if no time has passed.
I am grateful to no longer be a criminal at least in California.
Craig
What a happy family photo – Happy Birthday and Happy Thanksgiving
Lobster -turkey – cake no wonder everyone is smiling
Happy Thaksgiving, Everyone !
Remember when discussing politics with your irritating relatives – leave no fingerprints.
What bothers me no end is the occasional reference to Gen Flynn being a military hero. This is usually done by a civilian spokesperson who mentions his Bronze Star with three Oak Leaf Clusters. Those Bronze Stars lack the Combat V that signifies valor in confronting an armed enemy. It’s a decoration that I don’t have and that he doesn’t either. When I was campaigning I used to wear a ribbon in my lapel. All the old soldiers knew what it was; the Army Good Conduct Ribbon. What a hoot.
Happy Thanksgiving, joy to those in the extended Crawford family, and congratulations to Katherine.
Oh, my monster 10-inch apple pie is in the oven!
The Message from the Master just for today
Happy Birthday to Tom and wishing everyone a very Happy Thanksgiving Day without too much indigestion and football overload.
Lucky for them we had just finished dinner as they strolled by. (photo credit: Cousin Frankie)
Greetings Flatus,
How was the pie? And spill the beans, please: what variety of apples do you use?
Arghh, My response to SJ was just devoured by the Internets.
The pie, made with 5-pounds of Granny Smiths, was acclaimed the highlight of the feast. All credit goes to my Great Aunt Carrie who taught me the right way to bake. It was worth the five hours of labor unaided by powered machines.
Flatus,
Your pie sounds delicious. How lucky you were to have had such a wonderful Aunt.
Flatus,
Do you parboil your apples? Can I have your recipe?
I made a rotmos dish, with some variation from the usual. Too few Scandihoovians at the board, so there was leftover rotmos. sigh.
The hostess’ mom got sick, and the paramedics took her to the hospital. She looked reeeeeaaally bad.
It was a somber Thanksgiving.
These notes are arranged in ascending order of importance – skyrocketing, in fact.
Goodnight, Mr Paranoia.
Jamie, love it. “wag more, bark less”
flatus, yes, the royal/imperial “we” is the usual interpretation, but it’s fun to think of more unusual ones like aliens, multi-headed revelations type critters and such. I was hoping for some creative musings on the “us” … maybe a metaphor for drumpf’s intro to political reality: the us would be old pro politicians saying since he ate the knowledge of political good and evil fruit he is now cast out of his eden of blissful ignorance.
pbs newshour last night interviewed bid’s hero jill stein re recount:
Jill Stein, the Green Party’s 2016 presidential candidate, is preparing to request recounts of election results in several battleground states. Concerned about the accuracy of machine-counted ballots, Stein has raised over $4 million in an online campaign to support verifying vote tallies. John Yang speaks with Stein about her efforts, then learns more from David Sanger of The New York Times.
now they tell us about it
wapo: Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say
The flood of “fake news” this election season got support from a sophisticated Russian propaganda campaign that created and spread misleading articles online with the goal of punishing Democrat Hillary Clinton, helping Republican Donald Trump and undermining faith in American democracy, say independent researchers who tracked the operation.
Russia’s increasingly sophisticated propaganda machinery — including thousands of botnets, teams of paid human “trolls,” and networks of websites and social-media accounts — echoed and amplified right-wing sites across the Internet as they portrayed Clinton as a criminal hiding potentially fatal health problems and preparing to hand control of the nation to a shadowy cabal of global financiers. The effort also sought to heighten the appearance of international tensions and promote fear of looming hostilities with nuclear-armed Russia.
Two teams of independent researchers found that the Russians exploited American-made technology platforms to attack U.S. democracy at a particularly vulnerable moment, as an insurgent candidate harnessed a wide range of grievances to claim the White House….
[….]
“The way that this propaganda apparatus supported Trump was equivalent to some massive amount of a media buy,” said the executive director of PropOrNot, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid being targeted by Russia’s legions of skilled hackers. “It was like Russia was running a super PAC for Trump’s campaign. . . . It worked.”
patd,
Though you may not have meant to do it, love that you followed the Opportunist Stein story with a story about Russian propaganda & paid human trolls. Lololol.
Can’t help but wonder if this Stein recount thing-y is yet another cog in the Russian propaganda machinery. Peel off the American Flag cover & check out what’s underneath.
A must read speech by Christiane Amanpour on the state of journalism.
Journalism Must Protect Itself
One of the first signs to me of the demise in the worth of cable news was when CNN removed Amanpour from the US market, but that is a whole other rant.
sjwny, no matter what her motive, i’m glad to see an effort for recount or audit of the “rush to judgement” declaration of winner. there should always be a complete count and verification (like the old rule to measure twice, cut once) of that count before pronouncements and official acts take place. we have become so averse to deferred gratification and lost the value of accuracy. so kudos to dr. stein.
Those folks sending their money to Stien would do better to send it to help elect Foster Campbell in Louisiana the 49th senator in the senate or spend it to help get a democrat in some of the seats to be vacated by cabinet appointments.
JMNSHO (Just my not so humble opinion)
Jack
BTW, in Pennsylvania it is past the deadline to request a recount and also There is no paper trail so any recount would just be asking the machines to give the vote total again.
Jack
Ahhhh, isn’t that sweet.
Hillary Clinton’s Thanksgiving surprise spearheaded by 6-year-old boy
No big family celebration for us this Thanksgiving. Just me and Mrs. Jack. That means left over pumpkin pie for breakfast!!!
Jack
“There is no paper trail so any recount would just be asking the machines to give the vote total again.”
jack, the IT experts are calling for audits of the machines themselves to detect hanky panky with the programing. there is the matter of voters being scrubbed from roles, of uncounted provisional votes plus reviewing the mysterious absentee ballots that were purported to added by the Russian hackers who were careful not to make the numbers too obvious as to garner attention.
I know I know, conspiracy theories all…. better adjust the antennae on my tin hat.
and even if the recounts show a clear win for Hillary, the media won’t recognize her. they enjoy the craziness of drumpf world too much. much more fun to go to the various estate locales, easier stories to cover and there’s always the quotable tweet from the chief twit. media will not want to address the complexities of government, global problems and climate change….boring. same ol same ol
Jamie, “Do you parboil your apples? Can I have your recipe?”
No I don’t parboil them. Sounds like that would only be appropriate if they were dehydrated. In fact, I cooked this pie at 425-deg for a full hour, about 15-min longer than I expected because of its tremendous bulk. Never remove an apple pie until it boils and expels liquid through the vents you have made in the top crust. Ringing the fluted edges with aluminum foil precluded them from being overdone. The crust was a magnificent golden brown.
You ask for the recipe. For the crust I used what is basically a double 8-inch pie recipe from the 1987 edition of the Betty Crocker Cookbook. It’s a better recipe than the one in the Joy of Cooking and my other ‘fancy’ cookbooks. In the crust, using lard results in magnificent texture, flakiness, flavor, raves, etc. It is quite tolerant of the high baking temperature I use. Patience, patience and more patience is needed when merging the dry ingredients with the lard in order to achieve the pea-sized nodules desired. It is only then that ‘just enough’ cold water is added to allow things to hang together for the rolling that is to follow.
For the filling, I found the largest Granny Smiths that i have ever seen at the Ft Jackson commissary. I bought nine of them and used seven. Once again I used the basic apple pie recipe from the Betty Crocker increasing the key ingredient, flour, to assure that the pie wouldn’t be a watery stew. I use salt-free butter (never margarine) in the filling, along with sea salt, hand-ground nutmeg and cinnamon as well as sugar and some lemon juice, all to taste. Certainly apple should be the dominant flavor tempered and supported by what one adds.
In rolling crusts, I remove a long piece of parchment paper, almost four feet, from its box. I then fold this in half across the short side and then put a ball of crust dough in the center of that sheaf. The paper has a silicone coating that makes it very easy to separate flattened dough from the paper once the dough is rolled out. By using the double recipe of a smaller crust, we have plenty of the finished product to make a handsome crust without skimping on fluting or the crown that this particular super pie has.
FWIW, after we finished dinner, we resolved to serve our desserts along with the dinner rather than as an afterthought.
Krugman oped nytimes: The Populism Perplex
Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by more than two million, and she would probably be president-elect if the director of the F.B.I. hadn’t laid such a heavy thumb on the scales, just days before the election. But it shouldn’t even have been close; what put Donald Trump in striking distance was overwhelming support from whites without college degrees…
[….]
The only way to make sense of what happened is to see the vote as an expression of, well, identity politics — some combination of white resentment at what voters see as favoritism toward nonwhites (even though it isn’t) and anger on the part of the less educated at liberal elites whom they imagine look down on them.
To be honest, I don’t fully understand this resentment. In particular, I don’t know why imagined liberal disdain inspires so much more anger than the very real disdain of conservatives who see the poverty of places like eastern Kentucky as a sign of the personal and moral inadequacy of their residents.
As I sit here watching all the auto makers tout their new models and their year end sales, the irony of the situation is not lost on me.
Absent Obama and democrats GM and Chrysler would not even exist.
Proof positive as if any were needed that no good deed ever goes unpunished!
Re. the Krugman article.
They took their country back, and then gave it away to Trump and Putin.
Flatus,
It’s all in the lard pie crust. Sounds delicious.
Craig,
Nice picture of the two turkeys. I immediately dubbed them Trump and Pence.
I don’t understand how I can possibly be hungry. It’s only 15 hours since I left the table.
I have a question for all you Trail Hands. Do you eat turkey skin, compost it, feed it to a pet, or put it in the garbage?
jace, also could be called drumpfstick and wishbone
In re: to turkey skin, I eat some, much to Mrs. Jacks disgust, Brewster would eat it all but that would make him difficult to live with 2 hrs later. So most of it goes into the stock pot with the bones and I freeze up the stock for later use in soups and stews and one pot of turkey and noodles.
Jack
I cook a turkey for just a couple of bites of that crispy skin. Not good for you I know, but oh my does it taste good. Mostly we use it to put a little flavor and richness into turkey soup.
Sweetie shares Mrs Jack’s disgust. I crisp it and eat it like bacon. Yum. It’s the best part of the bird.
My rotmos dish wasn’t too popular yesterday. I had no idea that so many people are afraid of vegetables. I blame it on early diet training via Gerbers. I could be wrong, because some of the other guests merely seemed to fear the rutabagas in the dish. Does Gerbers bottle rutabaga mush ? Anyway, I harbor very strong suspicions in this matter.
Folks and vegetables I think you have to blame it on their taste buds – for some vegetables don’t taste the same as they do to most people. We have friends in their 30’s and recently I served them a wonderful vegetable stew from the Greens Restaurant Cookbook. You would have thought I was trying to poison them — thank goodness I also had a chicken
The stew had sweet potatoes, chilis, fennel, beans, golden beets and more -but nooooooooooooo.
Flatus
Your directions and comments on the apple pie recipe are wonderful.
Someone needs to start exerting some leadership so trumpoppsition opposes all things all the time. He is appointing people who arae dangerous in many ways. I think it is very important to have a 50 state media strategy. Most people get their infomation from local sources and not enough of the opposition is filtering to local news outlets.
xr, is this what yours looks like and is it anything like mashed sweet potatoes but somewhat tangy? this time of year roasted root veggies are really good and colorful.
So far no announcement of a recount request to Wisconsin. Today is the last day to file. If that doesn’t happen, then Dr. Stein will just get a huge addition to her reputation for scamming others for her own enrichment.
Of course this would then add to my disappointment in anyone fool enough to vote for her.
Minneapolis startribune:
….
Martin said Stein’s campaign will file a recount request with the Wisconsin Elections Commission in Madison by the 5 p.m. deadline Friday.
[….]
Wisconsin officials already announced an audit of the state vote. Wisconsin is less vulnerable to cyberattacks because it uses electronic machines with voter-verifiable paper trails in most counties.
During a news conference in Milwaukee, Martin said Stein’s campaign would also ask for a “reconciliation” of voting records that would go beyond an audit. He didn’t provide details.
Unofficial results compiled by the Wisconsin Elections Commission show Trump with 1,404,000 votes, Hillary Clinton with 1,381,823 votes and Stein with 31,000 votes.
Wisconsin GOP Executive Director Mark Morgan issued a statement calling the recount request “absurd and nothing more than an expensive political stunt that undermines Wisconsin’s election process.” Martin said Republicans’ response was expected. He stressed that the recount was about determining whether the system was secure, not who won or lost the election.
Yes, Pat. My rotmos was mushed up more finely than the one in your picture. I used shallots instead of onion, plus parsnip, carrot, rutabaga and russet potatoes. I used butter and mayo, to smooth it. It’s like mashed potatoes with some lumps, only sweeter and with a tiny, little, wee-bit of root-ish tang. Swedes commonly serve rotmos with strips of roast beef or mutton on top. I’ve also seen people put it on a plate with salt herring. Or, eat it all by itself, the way I do.
Sweetie is afraid of okra: ” They’re snotty !!! ”
sigh.
boston globe:
Lawrence Lessig, a professor at Harvard Law School and former Democratic presidential primary candidate, offered a relatively simple (if unprecedented) reason in a column for The Washington Post Thursday: The electoral college has the power to reverse the peoples’ will, and since more Americans voted for Clinton, Lessig argues that electors voting for Clinton are merely choosing not to overturn their decision.
“The question [electors] must ask themselves is whether there is any good reason to veto the people’s choice. There is not. And indeed, there is an especially good reason for them not to nullify what the people have said — the fundamental principle of one person, one vote,” Lessig writes, referring to Clinton’s popular vote victory.
He acknowledges that historical precedent is very much in favor of President-elect Donald Trump: The electoral college has twice voted for the winner of the most electoral votes despite the popular vote favoring the loser.
And although Clinton won the popular vote by at least 2 million votes, Trump decisively won the electoral vote with victories in several large swing states.
But, Lessig argues both of those cases effectively violated the democratic principle of one person, one vote. Moreover, the Constitution does not require electors to vote in favor of the winner of the electoral vote.
“The Constitution says nothing about ‘winner take all.’ It says nothing to suggest that electors’ freedom should be constrained in any way. Instead, their wisdom — about whether to overrule ‘the people’ or not — was to be free of political control yet guided by democratic values,” he writes.
;Lessig took to Medium Friday to defend his argument with readers and answer questions.
Lessig, who made campaign finance reform the centerpiece of his short-lived bid for the Democratic nomination, pledged to serve as president only until he could pass reform legislation
xr, have sweetie try okra breaded with spiced cornmeal mix and fried in bacon grease. crispy and not a trace of snot.
Sweetie has had fried breaded okra, she just doesn’t know it. She liked it. Similarly, when my late sister was little she had a horror of mushrooms. When Mom called them ‘chinese beans’, she ate them with gusto.
anne telnaes: Trump plays the news media again
patd,
There are no noble motives in anything Stein does. If she had really wanted to help, oh, I dunno, Freedom & Democracy, she would have asked her followers to vote for what was in the best interest of America when it was obvious this election was a contest between Good vs Evil. Anything she does now in an effort to Gee Whiz! Let’s volunteer to help in recounts!! is simply a dirty rag trying to wipe away her actions in helping to elect Evil. Once you’ve flopped on your back & spread ’em wide you can’t turn over & suddenly regain your virtue. Had anyone else proposed the recount it would be viewed as a patriotic gesture. With Stein, it’s simply one more opportunistic stunt.
I wish Stein would take her recounts and go away. The recounts will only validate what we already know and serve to legitimize Trump even further. Move along, nothing to see here.