Author: Matthew G. Saroff

While We Are Talking About How 911 F%$#ed Us All

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Scott Horton’s article on how the Obama administration has continued to embrace and extend the bush administration’s extreme views on executive power is worth a read:

A clear-cut example recently emerged when lawyers serving as defense counsel at Guantánamo discovered that they were arbitrarily being denied access to their clients on the orders of a military commandant, despite a series of court orders dating back to 2004 that had guaranteed them access. The Obama Administration had put in place new rules under which only those prisoners who are actively challenging their detention are guaranteed the right to talk to counsel; otherwise the commandant has the right to deny access. Moreover, to have any access to clients at all, the lawyers were being pressed to sign a “Memorandum of Understanding” with the Department of Defense under which they consented to these new rules.

 But the Guantánamo bar took the Obama Administration to court, and yesterday they won a resounding victory. Chief Judge Royce Lamberth’s decision (.pdf) was not only an uncompromising vindication of the posture of lawyers who have provided pro bono counsel to Gitmo inmates for years, it was also caustic in its dismissal of the arrogant and meritless arguments of the Justice Department:

 ………

 Barack Obama seemed at one point to appreciate this focal lesson. On the other hand, his Justice Department is so obsessed with the vindication of arbitrary and capricious exercises of power that it seems to have concluded that upholding the laws and the Constitution—to the extent that they impose obligations on, rather than grant rights to, the government—is a secondary consideration. And that, in a nutshell, explains the public’s current lack of confidence in the Justice Department.

Why I am glad to live in Maryland.  I can exercise my conscience and not vote for the purveyors of this crap, even if the other side is worse, because is Maryland is in play, the election is over anyway.

Yet Another Person Disenfranchised by the ‘Phants

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CNBC’s Jim Cramer’s dad:

Jim Cramer, host of CNBC’s “Mad Money,” revealed Tuesday that the Republican Party’s voter suppression efforts will prevent his own father, a veteran, from casting a ballot this fall in Pennsylvania.

“I have a problem,” Cramer said on Twitter Tuesday morning. “My dad, a vet, won’t be allowed to vote in Pa. because he does not drive, he is elderly, and can’t prove his citizenship.”

That would mean Cramer’s father is one of nearly 760,000 voters, or about 9 percent of Pennsylvanians who regularly participate in elections, who the state said does not carry a state-issued photo identification. Despite that alarming statistic, a Republican Pennsylvania judge approved the law last month, saying that voters still have time to obtain their ID cards.

So now Republicans are pissing off hysterical white dudes.

Isn’t that their base?

Moron

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With the new districts in Maryland, the 1stdistrict is pretty much a Republican lock.

The benefit is that it makes the 6th a district a lot more competitive.

So I understand that you might select a non-entity who has put in their dues as a sacrificial lamb.

However, when your candidate has committed felony voter fraud, you have not done even the minimal due diligence required:

Wendy Rosen, the Democratic challenger to Republican Rep. Andy Harris in the 1st Congressional District, withdrew from the race Monday amid allegations that she voted in elections in both Maryland and Florida in 2006 and 2008.

 It was unclear, however, whether she could remove her name from the ballot with the election less than two months away. Under state law, a candidate has until 70 days before an election to remove his or her name from the ballot. The deadline for the Nov. 6 election passed on Aug. 28.

 Democratic leaders — who raised the allegations, urged Rosen to step aside and notified prosecutors — said they would gather Central Committee members this month to identify a write-in candidate for the district, which includes the Eastern Shore and parts of Harford, Carroll, Cecil and Baltimore counties.

 Republicans, meanwhile, said the allegations prove that voter fraud is real and called on Democrats to join the GOP in calling for reforms.

 Rosen, 57, a Cockeysville businesswoman and Maryland voter, told The Baltimore Sun that she registered to vote in Florida several years ago in order to support a “very close friend” running for the St. Petersburg City Council and to vote on local issues there.

 Rosen said she was able to register in Florida because she owned property there.

 Under Maryland law, a voter here may not maintain registration in a second state if it allows the voter to participate in state or federal elections there, according to Jared DeMaris, director of candidacy and campaign finance at the State Board of Elections.

 State Democratic Chairwoman Yvette Lewis said an examination of voting records in Maryland and Florida showed that Rosen participated in the 2006 general election and the 2008 primaries in both states.

Unfortunately, it’s too late to get another name on the ballot.

Someone needs to get fired over this.

Note also that this is precisely the sort of voter fraud that the various Republican “Papers Please” voter suppression laws will not effect.

And Today Was the Party

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We had a brunch for Charlie’s Bar Mitzvah this morning.

Omelets, waffles, and pancakes, in addition to bagels and lox.  (Plus dessert)

All catered by the dairy restaurant Cocoaccino’s  (their meat companion restaurant Accents Grill did the Shabbos dinner.  Both are highly recommended, and not just because the proprietors son Jeremy is one of Charlie’s best friends)

We also had a DJ, and took some pix with Sharon’s side of the family.

Back to normalcy, and I hit the jungle grass on my front yard afterwards.

Another Bit of Copyright Insanity

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This time, the automated copyright cubicle gestapo took down the Democratic Convention live stream, despite the fact that everything was appropriately licensed:

Here we go again. Less than 24 hours ago, content-protection bots killed a livestream of the Hugo Awards, thanks to the brief appearance of fully approved clips from an episode of Dr. Who. The whole situation was completely absurd to anyone harboring the tiniest vestige of common sense, but IP-protection software isn’t built on common sense: it’s built on algorithms.

This time, content protection via crawling bots have taken down another approved, perfectly legal stream. The victim this time? The Democratic National Convention’s official stream, hosted at YouTube. ………

Un-dirtyword-believable.

We really need some sanity here.

My Computer is (Sort of) Working Again

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I can start it now.

The power switch wasn’t dead, the power button, the bit of plastic that hits the switch, was.

After removing about 5x as many parts as I needed to in retrospect (it all went back, no left over bits), I pulled the button, and so now I directly tap the switch ……… I just need to use a screwdriver or eraser end of a pencil.

I’m going to set up an appointment with the computer shop, so that I don’t have to wait a week for parts.

Might have them add some memory too.

An Addition to My “Piss on Their Grave” List.

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Art Model, the team owner who knifed Cleveland Football fans in the back when he moved the Browns to Baltimore has died.

It should be noted what is a decade prior to moving the Browns, he knifed to Baltimore fans in the back by blocking another teen being located in the city.

As someone who was 100 miles from Cleveland when he moved the Browns,  I am not mourning his passing.

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This is Called a Brushback Pitch

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The US has drastically scaled back its joint exercise with Israel, likely to prevent Netanyahu from launching an ill advised attack on Iran:

Seven months ago, Israel and the U.S. postponed a massive joint military exercise that was originally set to go forward just as concerns were brimming that Israel would launch a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. The exercise was rescheduled for late October and appears likely to go forward on the cusp of the U.S. presidential election. But it won’t be nearly the same exercise. Well-placed sources in both countries have told TIME that Washington has greatly reduced the scale of U.S. participation, slashing by more than two-thirds the number of American troops going to Israel and reducing both the number and potency of missile-interception systems at the core of the joint exercise.

“Basically what the Americans are saying is, ‘We don’t trust you,’” a senior Israeli military official says.

The reductions are striking. Instead of the approximately 5,000 U.S. troops originally trumpeted for Austere Challenge 12, as the annual exercise is called, the Pentagon will send only 1,500 service members and perhaps as few as 1,200. Patriot antimissile systems will arrive in Israel as planned, but the crews to operate them will not. Instead of two Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense warships being dispatched to Israeli waters, the new plan is to send one, though even the remaining vessel is listed as a “maybe,” according to officials in both militaries.

The claim is that there are “budget” issues, but it’s a brushback pitch directed at Benyamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, who both seek to derive personal political gain from an attack.

I approve, particularly in the case of Netanyahu, who, if reports are accurate, is still driven by the need for approval from his nonagenarian revisionist father, and that’s a level of crazy that ill serves both the security needs of Israel and the United States.

Amoral and crazy is a toxic mix, and Netanyahu has it in spades.

This Does Not Promote the Progress of Science and Useful Arts

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This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we’ll be lucky to live through it.

Or how the capture of our IP regulatory process by rent seekers has f%$#ed us all:

Last night, robots shut down the live broadcast of one of science fiction’s most prestigious award ceremonies. No, you’re not reading a science fiction story. In the middle of the annual Hugo Awards event at Worldcon, which thousands of people tuned into via video streaming service Ustream, the feed cut off — just as Neil Gaiman was giving an acceptance speech for his Doctor Who script, “The Doctor’s Wife.” Where Gaiman’s face had been were the words, “Worldcon banned due to copyright infringement.” What the hell?

Jumping onto Twitter, people who had been watching the livestream began asking what was going on. How could an award ceremony have anything to do with copyright infringement?

………

And then it began to dawn on people what happened. Gaiman had just gotten an award for his Doctor Who script. Before he took the stage, the Hugo Awards showed clips from his winning episode, along with clips from some other Doctor Who episodes that had been nominated, as well as a Community episode.

………

This was, of course, absurd. First of all, the clips had been provided by the studios to be shown during the award ceremony. The Hugo Awards had explicit permission to broadcast them. But even if they hadn’t, it is absolutely fair use to broadcast clips of copyrighted material during an award ceremony. Unfortunately, the digital restriction management (DRM) robots on Ustream had not been programmed with these basic contours of copyright law.

I would also note that the use of clips in an award show used to be clearly fair use, but they had the rights anyway, but the zero tolerance of the RIAA, the MPAA, and the BBC (who do you think produces Dr. Who).

Rent seeking is always a source of inefficiency in the economy, and it should be allowed, as in the case of patent and copyright, only to the degree to which we as a society see a benefit.

The current IP regime is an impediment, not an aid to innovation and other productive work.

Where I Was Yesterday

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I was kind of out of it after Saturday’s Trial by Fire, which I put down to rushing, the high humidity, and the fact that I did not eat until 6pm.

It turned out to be a bit more than that.

Yesterday evening, my forearms and calves began to hurt, and I was feeling too crappy to post.

When juxtaposed with the sore throat and cough that I’ve had for the past 2 weeks, had me worried about something like meningitis.

Even though I have a doctor’s appointment later this week, I went to the local clinic at my wife’s insistence.

The doctor saw me, and prescribed antibiotics for my sore throat, a short series of corticosteroids, and a cough medicine.

He also told me to lay off both the statin and the niacin that I am taking, as muscle pain of this sort is a not uncommon side effect for both drugs.

After picking the prescription, and taking all the pills, I sacked out for 4 hours.

When I woke up, I felt a lot better.  I still have a bit of pain, but I feel normal, and my sore throat is gone (indicating that it was bacterial).

I need to take a fasting blood test tomorrow to check muscle enzyme levels.  (CPK)

So, I appear to be all better, so there will be further bloggy goodness, though with Charlie’s Bar Mitzvah on Saturday, it will be light posting.

Best Trial By Fire Performance Ever

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On Saturday, I competed in Trial By Fire, which is a cooking competition, where you compete to cook authentic medieval dishes (650-1650 CE in this case)in 4 categories (Meat, Grain, Vegetable, Dessert) in 4 hours in camping conditions (no electricity, but bottled gas/coleman is OK).

I competed with two dishes, Toad in the Hole (Yorkshire Pudding with sausage in it), and Fried Kubba Kari (rice dumplings stuffed with the same), and I also made a thoroughly not-in-the-historical-period sausage gravy, because I had just cooked 2 lbs of lamb sausage, and because I had always wanted to make some.

Both the Toad in the Hole and the sausage gravy turned out well, though the dumplings did not.  They were made with broken rice, which was thoroughly cooked, but we could not get it to stick together, so it ended up fried rice with sausage.

Note on Recipes:
The following recipes are airy free.  I will replaced milk with almond milk, and butter with rendered chicken fat (schmaltz) so that they were kosher (fleishig) dishes.

Additionally, because of poor planning on my part, I picked up flour in the last minute, and could not find white flour without malted barley flour (Sharon* is allergic to malt and barley), so I used “white wheat” flour, which is not as suitable.

Recipes:

Toad in the Hole:

  • Roll Sausage in olive small balls, and brown in a skillet.
  • Mix with Yorkshire Pudding batter (see below).
  • Place cast iron dutch oven in a fire pit with the lid off. (I used the bottom of my charcoal smoker)
  • Place Dutch oven lid in fire as well.
  • Add ¼ cup of fat. (Drippings from a roast is traditional, you can also use olive oil, I used Schmaltz)
  • When the oil is just screaming hot (shimmering) pour the batter and sausage mixture in the dutch oven, and place the lid on, and pile coals on the lid. (See pic) This serves to create an oven effect on top of a fire.
  • Cook 20-30 minutes until puffy and brown on top.

Yorkshire Pudding Batter

Ingredients:

  • 6 large eggs
  • 1¼ Cup of Milk (I am using Almond Milk)
  • 1¼ Cup of flour
  • Pinch of salt
  • 3 tbsp of sweet butter (I am using Schmaltz)

Preparation:

  • Beat eggs and milk and melted schmaltz together until foamy.
  • Place the dry ingredients in a mixing bowl and make a well in and add the wet ingredients.
  • Beat until completely smooth (it should have the consistency of heavy cream).
  • Let the batter rest for 30-60 minutes before putting in pan for cooking.

Sausage Gravy

Ingredients:

  • 3 tablespoons butter (I am using chicken fat, not butter)
  • ¼ cup all-purpose flour
  • 3 cups whole milk (will be using almond milk)
  • salt and pepper to taste

Preparation:

  • Place sausage in a large, deep skillet.
  • Cook over medium-high heat until evenly brown.
  • Remove sausage with a slotted spoon, leaving the drippings in the pan.
  • Add butter, and stir until melted.
  • Add flour, turn heat to medium and stir until smooth and slightly brown.
  • Add milk slowly, stirring constantly.
  • Add back the crumbled sausage remaining after stuffing the Kubba Kari continuing to stir.
  • When the mixture has thickened, salt and pepper to taste.
  • If gravy becomes too thick, stir in a little more milk.

The sausage recipe I posted on the blog in 2007.

I did not win anything, but this is the first time that I’ve had a recipe actually go from the page to the table as intended at Trial by Fire. 

I have had things which became successful additions to my culinary repertoire, like my Indian spice rub, but this is the first time that my recipe turned out as initially intended.

There were no fire management issues, the batter came together well.

Considering the fact that I came up with the recipes about a week ahead of time, I got to cooking an hour late, that I didn’t do a trial run, and that this was my first time working with a roux (the sausage gravy), I am pleased with my results.

*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.

Too Pooped to Post

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Today, I participated in the annual local SCA group’s cooking competition.

We got there late, and I had nothing to eat until about 5 pm as a result of us rushing to get there.

Then I spent 4 hours cooking historical recipes under camping conditions in 90° heat and high humidity.

I feel like a hard of elephants stampeded over me, so I’m turning in now.

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