The creepy joy of cooking with Vincent Price. - By Paul Collins - Slate Magazine

No such fainthearted stuff for Vincent: The name Banana Pancake Flambé Stonehenge alone murders all culinary competitors. You wrap sautéed bananas into crêpes, vigorously stab strips of bacon atop them, and flambé it all in banana liqueur. It's a dish that rewards sleepy incompetence: If you don't flambé it properly, the pancakes immediately soak up copious amounts of hooch, leaving you woozily imitating lines from The Abominable Dr. Phibes while you twirl a villainous moustache and choose your victims for lunch.

Oh, this could be so much fun.

Where's your motherf*%&ing flag pin?

27 March 2008, on the modernizing regulation of financial markets:
"The great task before our Founders that day was putting into practice the ideal that government could simultaneously serve liberty and advance the common good. For Alexander Hamilton, the young Secretary of the Treasury, that task was bound to the vigor of the American economy. Hamilton had a strong belief in the power of the market. But he balanced that belief with the conviction that human enterprise "may be beneficially stimulated by prudent aids and encouragements on the part of the government." Government, he believed, had an important role to play in advancing our common prosperity. So he nationalized the state Revolutionary War debts, weaving together the economies of the states and creating an American system of credit and capital markets. ... I think all of us here today would acknowledge that we've lost that sense of shared prosperity."

22 May 2008, Camp Obama announces the formation of its search committee of heiress Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, former Fannie Mae CEO Jim Johnson, and former (Clinton-Bush) deputy AG Eric Holder who is also a member of Mr Obama's Security Council. Many were named including retired military brass, but only one man has hands in both finance and foreign affairs committees' pockets.

MarketTrustee, "Own a Piece of This Campaign", Splash Page Series, 23 Aug 2008 00:11:30 EST

So what took his search committee so long to figure that out?


Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

Here I sit all dejected.  Won't give up tribext.  Don't want to give up a working sendlink. Really don't want to start troubleshooting javascript.  Grumph.

Somewhere in cyberspace, the ghost of de Chardin is smiling.

The age of the train returns to French provinces
Locals win fight to reopen station as network extends to other rural areas

For almost 50 years, no train has stopped at the station of Bazancourt. A village in the Champagne region of France with just under 2,000 inhabitants, it was cut off from the railway network after the second world war and lay forgotten.

As France roared into a new era of high-speed train travel - or train à grande vitesse (TGV) as it is known in France - that linked up big cities, the provinces were left out in the cold.

Now, however, Bazancourt is back on track. Its dilapidated station has been given a lick of paint and restored to its former glory. The missing letters from its name have been fixed back on the freshly white-washed walls.

(...)

But it is not just in Bazancourt that this is happening. All over France authorities are showing signs of waking up to the needs of the provinces after years in which high-speed, inter-city links have been the unquestioned priority.

From Provence to the outskirts of Paris, disused lines are being reactivated, small town stations reopened and new networks built.

At the same time, in a summer of soaring petrol prices and plummeting spending power, many French people are starting to make changes to the way they move around. Fuel consumption is down. For the first time in 30 years, car use is down as well.

Public transport is facing its highest demand in years - and one French news magazine asked this month whether these trends indicated a new era and "the end of the reign of the car". Régis van Herreweghe, a spokesman for the Mayor of Bazancourt, said the changes in his village had clear implications for the wider world.

No mention of how this has been driven by the devolution of train operations to the regions, though.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

More Labor Day travelers expected to use rail, bus
Fewer travelers are expected to fly or drive for the holiday weekend, and AAA says the trend points to Americans seeking alternative means of transportation.
By Peter Pae, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
August 23, 2008

Fewer travelers are expected to fly or drive for the Labor Day holiday, with more opting instead for trains and buses as the weak economy and high fuel prices alter the vacation habits of Americans.

In its annual Labor Day forecast, AAA projected Friday that fewer Americans would travel more than 50 miles for the end-of-the-summer holiday. About 34 million Americans are expected to travel during the long weekend, down about 1% compared with last year. It would mark the first drop since 2006.

-Skip-

Nationally, the vast majority of travelers, or more than 83%, are expected to drive to their destinations, while 11.5% plan to fly and 5% will hop on trains, buses, motorcycles and cruise ships.

-Skip-

More Americans are expected to try alternative modes of transportation such as a train or bus. Those numbers are seen jumping 12.5%.

From L.A. San Diego, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo are all feasible by train.  Sadly, that 12.5% increase translates into less than 1% of total travelers, but it is still a boost for Amtrack.

If sanity be culturally normative, then by the norms of this culture I claim insanity.

It gets a robust rebuttal on dKos as well as links to other more detailed pieces.

However, I actually disagree with the view here;- It's one thing for an openly conservative columnist - Charles Krauthammer, Bill Kristol - arguing against the Democratic nominee.  It's another thing for a purportedly "objective" journalist, running the AP's Washington office at a time where the wire service has more influence than ever - offering a slanted take without disclosing his bias.

The entire Corporate media is totally in the tank for the republicans and has been without shame nor hesitation for the best part of a generation. How is Fournier qualitatively different from all the guys on the Straight Talk Express  ? Those who yuk it up over beer and BBQ while conveniently ignoring every idiocy, policy flip, and gaffe he trots out, yet at the same time Obama gets hit piece after hit piece.

They're all at it. The entire corporate whore media is utterly compromised. how is fournier actually worse than any of the others ?

keep to the Fen Causeway

If true, note that this suit was filed on the Friday before the National Convention.  This Berg person is allegedly a "strong Hillary supporter".  Interesting.

paul spencer

However he's really smart. In the category "smartest answers to a stupid question ever", look at this:

"Ne te courbe que pour aimer..." René Char