Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
But like ek horbeck
I would never make fun of LaEscapee or blame PhilJD. And I am highly organized.
Actually, I’m better organized. 😉
Happy Easter to all who celebrate. Although it is one of the holiest of Christian holidays many of the the traditions have roots in the Pagan beliefs and lore, from the Easter bunny to Easter Eggs. Whatever you celebrate, today is for family, friends, Spring and food.
Many will be feasting on ham and ham is salty. Whether its smoked or just fully cooked ham is salty. Since many people are trying to reduce the daily intake of salt, this is away to have your ham for Easter and eat your fill. I use chef Julia Child’s method to reduce the salt by boiling the ham first.
- Remove all wrappings from the ham and wash it under cold water.
- Place ham in a pot large enough to hold it and the boiling ingredients.
Add to the pot
- 2 onions, pealed and quartered;
- 2 carrots, cut in large chunks;
- 12 parsley sprigs, 6 thyme sprigs, 1 bay leaf, 12 peppercorns, 3 cloves tied in cheesecloth to make a sachet d’épices.
- Pour in one 750 ml. bottle of dry white wine and one quart of cold water.
Bring it to a boil skimming away any impurities off the top. Simmer 20 min per pound. Ham is done when internal temperature reaches 140ºF
Once cooked, removed from pot and let stand for 15 to 20 minutes before pealing away the skin, leaving the fat. With the tip of a very sharp knife, score the fat creating a diamond pattern. Keep warm by tenting with foil and a thick towel.
Pre-heat the oven to 450ºF
I don’t decorate the ham with anything, but I have used this recipe to glaze the ham while it bakes.
Ingredients
- 1 cup of bourbon
- 1 cup of cola, preferable Kosher Coke (no high fructose corn syrup)
- 1/2 cup dark brown sugar, packed
- 1/2 cup honey
- 1/4 cup dijon mustard
- 2 sprigs of fresh thyme tied in cheesecloth to make a sachet d’épices
Combine all ingredients in a small sauce pan, simmering gently to dissolve the sugar. Reduce the liquid until thick and syrupy and liquid coats the back of a wooden spoon.
Place the ham fat side up on a rack in a large roasting pan. Pour and brush the glaze over the ham. Place in the oven on the lower rack; roast 15 to 20 minutes until lightly browned. If using glaze, brush on more after first 10 minutes of cooking. When done, remove from oven, tent with foil and a thick towel. Let stand for 20 to 30 minutes before slicing.
You will be amazed at how tender and tasty this ham will be and nowhere near as salty.
Breakfast News
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Kiev pledges not to attack separatists as Russia defends troop deployments
Ukraine promises to suspend ‘active phase of anti-terrorist operation’ as Kremlin defends buildup of troops at border
The Ukrainian government pledged on Saturday not to attack separatists in the eastern part of the country over Easter as the Russian government justified the buildup of its forces at the border.
The Ukrainian foreign ministry promised “the suspension of the active phase of the anti-terrorist operation” among a list of government initiatives to defuse the crisis. A spokeswoman for the SBU state security service said on Saturday the suspension was “linked to the implementation of the Geneva agreement and the Easter holidays”.
In Moscow Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, said that an increase in troop levels near the border was caused by concern over instability in Ukraine.
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Besieged and terrified … and the food is about to run out for Damascus refugees
The desperate residents of a besieged district of Damascus are expected to run out of food on Sunday, leaving 18,000 people facing starvation and leading relief agencies to declare the crisis “unprecedented in living memory”.
Food packages have not been delivered to the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp for 10 days, and Syrian authorities are not expected to allow food trucks in over the Easter weekend. Residents have resorted to eating leaves and animal feed. Some say they cannot get access even to scraps, as a desperate blockade by government forces, in place for nearly 18 months, continues to cut off supplies.
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CIA torture architect breaks silence to defend ‘enhanced interrogation’
The psychologist regarded as the architect of the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation” program has broken a seven-year silence to defend the use of torture techniques against al-Qaida terror suspects in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.
In an uncompromising and wide-ranging interview with the Guardian, his first public remarks since he was linked to the program in 2007, James Mitchell was dismissive of a Senate intelligence committee report on CIA torture in which he features, and which is currently at the heart of an intense row between legislators and the agency.
The committee’s report found that the interrogation techniques devised by Mitchell, a retired air force psychologist, were far more brutal than disclosed at the time, and did not yield useful intelligence. These included waterboarding, stress positions, sleep deprivation for days at a time, confinement in a box and being slammed into walls.
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More than 100 hate-crime murders linked to single website, report finds
People charged with the murders of almost 100 people can be linked to a single far-right website, according to a new report from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).
The White Nationalist web forum Stormfront.org says it promotes values of “the embattled white minority,” and its users include Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 77 people in a 2011 massacre in Norway, and Wade Michael Page, who shot and killed six people at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin in 2012.
After a two-year investigation, the SPLC said (pdf) that since Stormfront became one of the first hate sites on the internet in 1995, its registered users have been disproportionately responsible for major killings. The report was released a month early after white supremacist Frazier Glenn Miller, also known as Frazier Glenn Cross, ]was accused of killing three people http://www.theguardian.com/wor… at a Jewish center in Kansas City on Sunday.
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Guantánamo Bay detainees’ release upon end of Afghanistan war ‘unlikely’
Typically, when a war ends, so does the combatants’ authority to detain the other side’s fighters. But as the conclusion of the US war in Afghanistan approaches, the inmate population of Guantánamo Bay is likely to be an exception – and, for the Obama administration, the latest complication to its attempt to close the infamous wartime detention complex.
In December, when President Barack Obama and his Nato allies formally end their combat role in Afghanistan, US officials indicate there is unlikely to be a corresponding release of detainees at Guantánamo who were captured during the country’s longest conflict.
The question has been the subject of recent internal debate in the Obama administration, which is wrapped up in the broader question of future detention policy.
Already human rights groups and lawyers for the detainees say they anticipate filing a new wave of lawsuits challenging the basis for a wartime detention after the war ends – the next phase in more than a decade of attempts to litigate the end of indefinite detention.
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Tennessee set to criminalise pregnant women who use illegal drugs
Tennessee is poised to become the first state in the US to criminalise pregnant women for harm caused to their foetuses or newborn babies as a result of addiction to illegal drugs.
The proposal, SB 1391, is expected to land on the desk of Bill Haslam, the Republican governor, early next week. He will then have 10 days to decide whether to sign it into law.
If Haslam passes the bill, which cleared both chambers of the state legislature last week with resounding majorities, Tennessee will become the first state in the union to hold women criminally accountable for illegal drug use during pregnancy, with punishments of up to 15 years in prison.
Many other states, predominantly in the south, have considered similar laws but have always pulled back in the face of the overwhelming medical consensus that such moves put babies at risk.
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Deaths, drugs, distress: why marine parks are losing their attraction
Something disquieting happened at SeaWorld marine parks this year. Numbers attending the group’s popular US centres between January and March dropped, from 3.5 million in 2013 to 3.05 million this year, a decline of 13%.
Nor is it hard to guess the cause, say wildlife campaigners. They see a clear link between the attendance slide and the release last year of the documentary Blackfish, which told the story of SeaWorld trainer Dawn Brancheau who ]was killed by Tilikum, a bull orca http://www.theguardian.com/wor… The killer whale, it was also revealed, had been involved in the deaths of other individuals while in captivity.
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Must Read Blog Posts
Intelligence Response to KSM’s Claim Intelligence Supersedes Justice Holds Up His Own Trial by Marcy Wheeler, emptywheel
Kenya’s Green Economy will Generate $45 Billion by 2030, Build Climate Resilience and Boost Food Security by Juan Cole, Informed Concent
Why climate deniers are winning: The twisted psychology that overwhelms scientific consensus by Paul Rosenberg, Salon
What is Your Problem?: Coffee the Cat by psychodrew, Daily Kos
Bill Moyers w/Paul Krugman: “What the 1% Don’t Want You to Know” by bobswern, Daily Kos
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The Daily Wiki
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Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
From Charles Pierce at Esquire
Two researchers from Princeton send us into the weekend with some happy fun news.
Using data drawn from over 1,800 different policy initiatives from 1981 to 2002, the two conclude that rich, well-connected individuals on the political scene now steer the direction of the country, regardless of or even against the will of the majority of voters. “The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy,” they write, “while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence.”
It is significant that these researchers date the tumble of the country into oligarchy from the date of Ronald Reagan’s inauguration. There’s no wonder that the effort to mythologize Reagan’s two terms has been so vigorous and unending. The truth is too painfully ongoing to contemplate, and the complicity, tacit and otherwise, of generations of Democratic politicians in empowering that mythology is going to go down in history as the party’s worst mistake.
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Breakfast Tunes
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Stuff by LaEscapee
Cross posted at The Stars Hollow Gazette, Voices on the Square and GOS