What we have learned this week is discussed with Up with Chris Hayes guests Josh Barro (@jbarro), writes Bloomberg View‘s “The Ticker“; David Sirota, (@davidsirota) writes a nationally syndicated weekly newspaper column and hosts a radio show, “The Rundown with Sirota and Brown“; Ana Marie Cox (@anamariecox), columnist for “The Guardian” and founder of the political blog Wonkette; and Bob Herbert (@bobherbert), distinguished senior fellow at Demos and former New York Times columnist.

During the RNC Convention, Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney partied with millionaire and billionaire donors on a yacht registered in the Cayman Islands.

South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham told the Washington Post: “The demographics race, we’re losing badly ….

We’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term“

90% of the GOP is white.

Projected US White Population in 2050: 50.1%

NBC/WSJ Poll: Romney has 0 % Of African-American Vote.

Only 2% of the delegates at the RNC Convention were Black.

Federal judges are overturning controversial laws passed by Republican controlled states that discriminate against minority and disenfranchised voting rights.

Texas: Court rejects Texas legislative districts as discriminatory

Federal court overturns Texas law requiring voters to show photo ID

Texas is appealing both of these rulings.

Florida: Federal Court Blocks Florida Early Voting Restrictions

Ohio: Federal court overturns Ohio early voting restrictions

We now know what a gay bar at the RNC Convention looks like: It’s hard to tell who is gay or straight since they’re all dressed like Alex B. Keaton; what really identified it as a Republican Gay Bar was the Go-Go dancers were all wearing t-shirts and long pants.

Oy.

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Labor Day weekend is here, for some too soon, for others not soon enough. It has been a long very hot Summer. It is still time for celebration and breaking out Summer’s traditional recipes. Many of us have been to the traditional Clambake at the beach when we were kids. But since regulations at most public beaches prohibit open fires, the clambake has been relocated to backyard grills and the stove top. Actually, it’s easier and a lot less work and can be done indoors anytime you get an urge for the taste of Summer.

This recipe is an adaptation one one I found on line. You can modify the ingredients to suit your own taste and budget. The recipe serves four but can be easily doubled for more guests. I use andouille sausage for its spiciness. Kielbasi or pre-cooked Italian sausage are equally good. Lobsters can also be added. This season the market price is at a record low.

To remove the sand out of the clams, take the tightly sealed clams and soak them in water for about 20 minutes. A quick trick to make sure the clams are alive and safe to eat, if the clam is partially open, tap the shell, if it closes, the clam is alive. I go to a market where I can hand pick the clams. After cooking, discard any clams that have not opened.

Clambake

Equipment:

   

• 8 in x 8 in Disposable aluminum pans
• Aluminum foil
• Tongs
• Heavy oven mitts and/ or thick towels

Ingredients:

   

• 1/2cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted
• 1/3cup fresh lemon juice
• 1 tablespoon Cajun seasoning
• 1 tablespoon minced garlic
• 2 teaspoons chopped fresh thyme leaves
• 4 medium red potatoes, halved and sliced into 1/8-inch half-moons
• 3/4 pound jumbo shrimp (11/15 count), peeled and deveined, tails left on, cold
• 2 pounds littleneck clams, rinsed and scrubbed
• 1 package (12 ounces) andouille sausage, thinly sliced
• 2 ears fresh corn, each shucked and cut into 4 pieces

Preparation:

   1. In a small bowl combine the butter, lemon juice, seasoning, garlic, and thyme.

   2. Prepare the grill for direct cooking over medium heat (350° to 450°F).

   3. Cut eight sheets of aluminum foil, each about 12 by 20 inches. Line an 8×8-inch cake pan with two sheets of aluminum foil, arranged in a crisscross pattern. Layer the bottom of the foil-lined pan with the sliced potatoes (this will help insulate the shellfish and keep them from overcooking). Top the potatoes evenly with the shrimp, clams, sausage, and corn pieces. Drizzle each packet evenly with the butter mixture. Close the packet by bringing the ends of the two inner sheets together, folding them on top of the filling and then bringing the ends of the two outer sheets together, folding them down. Repeat this procedure with the remaining packets.

   4. Grill the packets over direct medium heat, with the lid closed, until the clams have opened, the shrimp have turned opaque, and the potatoes are cooked, 20 to 25 minutes. To check for doneness, using tongs, gently unfold one of the packets and carefully remove a potato, being careful not to puncture the bottom of the foil. Using a knife, gently pierce the potato to ensure doneness. When everything is cooked, remove the packets from the grill. Carefully open each packet to let the steam escape and then pour the contents into warm bowls. Serve immediately.

For larger crowds, I use the big disposable aluminum pans used for buffets and cook the potatoes, corn and sausage separately from the clams and shrimp.

Enjoy

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour a cup of your favorite morning beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

On this day in 1897, the Boston subways opens, becoming the first underground rapid transit system in North America. It was the inspiration for this song by the Kingston Trio.

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Tonight’s Blue Moon is special since there will not be another until 2015.

The moon will wax to its full phase at 9:58 a.m. EDT (1358 GMT) today, bringing August’s full moon count to two (the first one occurred Aug. 1). Two full moons won’t rise in a single month again until July 2015. [..]

Tonight’s blue moon also happens to fall on the day of late astronaut Neil Armstrong’s memorial service. Armstrong, who on July 20, 1969 became the first person to set foot on the moon, died Aug. 25 following complications from heart surgery.

So stargazers may want to keep Armstrong’s “one small step” in mind as they gaze up tonight.

“For those who may ask what they can do to honor Neil, we have a simple request,” Armstrong’s family wrote in a statement shortly after his death. “Honor his example of service, accomplishment and modesty, and the next time you walk outside on a clear night and see the moon smiling down at you, think of Neil Armstrong and give him a wink.”

So if your sky’s are clear tonight, even if they’re not, go outside, reach up with your arms towards the moon and breath.

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour a cup of your favorite morning beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

August 31 is the 243rd day of the year (244th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 122 days remaining until the end of the year.

I am very hesitant to make the death of Princess Diana the prominent story of the day but her death was a tragedy on so many levels that it is not surprising that the world nearly stood still for 6 days until her funeral. There are many things that we remember exactly where we were and what we were doing when they happened, like 9/11 and, for those of us old enough, JFK’s assassination.

I was living in Paris then not far from the site of the accident. I had been out to dinner that evening with my then ex-husband, Dr. TMC, when we heard the crash, it was that loud, and shortly after the sirens of emergency vehicles. Not unusual in Paris, so, we continued on to our destinations. It wasn’t until very early that I heard that the Princess had died and where. Paris was stunned. The site became a instant memorial.

We all sat glued to the TV for days waiting for the Queen to say something. The Queen badly underestimated the admiration that was held her former daughter-in-law.  The day of her funeral Paris froze, the only time I have ever seen the city this quiet was on 9/11.

After being criticized for failing to satisfactorily match the grief of the British people, the royal family arranged for a state funeral to be held for Diana at Westminster Abbey on September 6. Diana’s coffin was taken from Kensington Palace to the Abbey on a horse-drawn gun carriage, and an estimated one million mourners lined the route. Diana’s sons, William, 15, and Harry, 12, joined their father, Prince Charles; grandfather Prince Philip; and uncle Charles, the Earl of Spencer, to walk the final stretch of the procession with the casket. The only sound was the clatter of the horses’ hooves and the peal of a church bell.

The service, watched by an estimated two billion people worldwide, sacrificed royal pomp for a more human touch. Workers associated with Diana’s various charities represented 500 of the 2,000 people invited to attend the funeral. Elton John, a friend of Diana, lent a popular touch to the ceremony when he sang “Candle in the Wind,” accompanying himself on piano. After the service, Diana’s body was taken by hearse to her family’s ancestral estate near Althorp, north of London. In a private ceremony, she was laid to rest on a tree-shaded island in a small lake, securely beyond the reach of the camera lens.

Since the death of Princess Diana, Althorp, which has been in the Spencer family for over 500 years, is now a popular tourist attraction that offers tours to the general public.

I still light a candle in her memory on this day.

Blessed Be.

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour a cup of your favorite morning beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

August 30 is the 242nd day of the year (243rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 123 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1967, Thurgood Marshall becomes the first African American to be confirmed as a Supreme Court justice. He would remain on the Supreme Court for 24 years before retiring for health reasons, leaving a legacy of upholding the rights of the individual as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

Thurgood Marshall (July 2, 1908 – January 24, 1993) was an American jurist and the first African American to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States. Before becoming a judge, he was a lawyer who was best remembered for his high success rate in arguing before the Supreme Court and for the victory in Brown v. Board of Education. He was nominated to the court by President Lyndon Johnson in 1967.

Marshall was born in Baltimore, Maryland on July 2, 1908, the great-grandson of a slave who was born in modern-day Democratic Republic of the Congo.His original name was Thoroughgood, but he shortened it to Thurgood  in second grade because he disliked spelling it. His father, William Marshall, who was a railroad porter, instilled in him an appreciation for the Constitution of the United States and the rule of law.

Marshall graduated from Frederick Douglass High School in Baltimore in 1925 and from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania in 1930. Afterward, Marshall wanted to apply to his hometown law school, the University of Maryland School of Law, but the dean told him that he would not be accepted because of the school’s segregation policy. Later, as a civil rights litigator, he successfully sued the school for this policy in the case of Murray v. Pearson. As he could not attend the University of Maryland, Marshall sought admission and was accepted at Howard University School of Law.

Marshall received his law degree from the Howard University School of Law in 1933 where he graduated first in his class.

Marshall won his very first U.S. Supreme Court case, Chambers v. Florida, 309 U.S. 227 (1940), at the age of 32. That same year, he was appointed Chief Counsel for the NAACP. He argued many other cases before the Supreme Court, most of them successfully, including Smith v. Allwright, 321 U.S. 649 (1944); Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1 (1948); Sweatt v. Painter, 339 U.S. 629 (1950); and McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents, 339 U.S. 637 (1950). His most famous case as a lawyer was Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), the case in which the Supreme Court ruled that “separate but equal” public education, as established by Plessy v. Ferguson, was not applicable to public education because it could never be truly equal. In total, Marshall won 29 out of the 32 cases he argued before the Supreme Court.

Marshall served on the Court for the next twenty-four years, compiling a liberal record that included strong support for Constitutional protection of individual rights, especially the rights of criminal suspects against the government. His most frequent ally on the Court (indeed, the pair rarely voted at odds) was Justice William Brennan, who consistently joined him in supporting abortion rights and opposing the death penalty. Brennan and Marshall concluded in Furman v. Georgia that the death penalty was, in all circumstances, unconstitutional, and never accepted the legitimacy of Gregg v. Georgia, which ruled four years later that the death penalty was constitutional in some circumstances. Thereafter, Brennan or Marshall dissented from every denial of certiorari in a capital case and from every decision upholding a sentence of death.[citation needed] In 1987, Marshall gave a controversial speech on the occasion of the bicentennial celebrations of the Constitution of the United States. Marshall stated,

   

“the government they devised was defective from the start, requiring several amendments, a civil war, and major social transformations to attain the system of constitutional government and its respect for the freedoms and individual rights, we hold as fundamental today.”

In conclusion Marshall stated

   

“Some may more quietly commemorate the suffering, struggle, and sacrifice that has triumphed over much of what was wrong with the original document, and observe the anniversary with hopes not realized and promises not fulfilled. I plan to celebrate the bicentennial of the Constitution as a living document, including the Bill of Rights and the other amendments protecting individual freedoms and human rights.”

He retired from the Supreme Court in 1991, and was reportedly unhappy that it would fall to President George H. W. Bush to name his replacement. Bush nominated Clarence Thomas to replace Marshall.

Marshall died of heart failure at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, at 2:58 p.m. on January 24, 1993 at the age of 84. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. His second wife and their two sons survived him

On November 30, 1993, Justice Marshall was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton.

Over the last two days slow moving Hurricane Isaac has pounded the Gulf Coast states with high winds, torrential rain and coastal storm surge at high tides. Seven years after the disaster of Katrina Gulf Coast residents were more wary and many headed away from the coast to higher ground and shelters. Now downgraded to a tropical storm, New Orleans’ new levees, built with federal funding, have held, but to the west of the city, in Plaquemines Parish, there has been serious flooding and emergency evacuation and rescues are underway. There are plans to open a hole in the levee there to relieve the pressure behind the wall that if breached would cause even more damage.

On Wednesday, President Obama declared major disaster areas in Mississippi and Louisiana and has ordered the release of federal aid to supplement state and local recovery.

One friend of Stars Hollow who lives in the direct line of the storm managed to send a message before they lost power, that this was the slowest storm that she had ever experienced. It’s just not moving:

The worst-hit part of the coast was Plaquemines Parish, La., the finger of land that follows the Mississippi River from Orleans Parish out into the Gulf of Mexico, and the place where both Isaac and Katrina first made landfall.

Fears that a locally built gulf-side levee would be overtopped by Isaac’s massive surge were well founded. Many of those on Plaquemines Parish’s east bank who ignored Monday’s order to leave were forced into their attics when the gulf poured in, filling up the bowl between the levees with up to 14 feet of water.

Dozens of people had to be pulled to safety by rescue workers and neighbors. As of Wednesday evening, water was beginning to creep up the west bank of the parish as well, prompting officials to go door to door to evacuate what is effectively the bottom two-thirds of the parish.

“We’ve never seen anything like this, not even Katrina,” said a visibly rattled Billy Nungesser, the parish president, in a briefing to reporters. [..]

And still Isaac trudged on, drenching the towns of the north bank of Lake Pontchartrain on Wednesday night and heading at an agonizing 6 miles per hour in the direction of Baton Rouge. Officials warned that the risks were far from over, as flooding was a threat not only along the coast but in mid-Louisiana, upstate Mississippi and the drought-starved regions north. On Wednesday afternoon, Isaac was flooding towns farther inland with its unceasing rain, and was far from finished with southern Louisiana and the Gulf Coast.

“There is another half of the storm to go for most people who have already begun to experience it,” W. Craig Fugate, the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said on a conference call with reporters. “For some folks in the path, the event and the weather haven’t even begun. We are still way early before this is all over.”

While nowhere near the intensity and strength of Katrina, because Isaac is only moving at 10 miles an hour, the damages could match those of 2008’s Gustav, a Cat 2 storm, that topped $2 billion in insurance claims:

While comparatively modest as hurricanes go, Hurricane Isaac is already wreaking havoc. More than 644,000 were without power in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Arkansas, power companies told CNN. And some 100 residents had been or were in the process of being rescued from flooded homes and rooftops in coastal Plaquemines Parish, according to CNN affiliate WWL.

Eqecat, a catastrophe modeling firm, suggested onshore insured damage — which includes residential property, commercial property, energy production and the interruption of business but excludes most flooding damage — would run between $500 million and $1.5 billion. The firm excludes flooding because the federal government insures against flood damage for most properties.

The storm could also cause more than $500 million in damages to off-shore energy production.

The up side is that so far there has been only one death related to the storm, a young man fell 18 feet from a tree attempting to help his friends move a car. Another person has been reported missing after going jet skiing. A curfew has been declared in New Orleans and surrounding parishes to prevent looting areas without power and make it easier for utility crews to restore electricity.

Donations for victims of Isaac can be made to:

Salvation Army

Call 800-725-2769 (Sal-Army), text RED CROSS to 80888 for a $10 donation or visit www.salvationarmyusa.org.

Red Cross

Call 800-733-2767 (Red-Cross), text REDCROSS to 90999 for a $10 donation or visit www.redcross.org.

Stay safe, poligirl and LaEscapee

Welcome to the Health and Fitness News, a weekly diary which is cross-posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette. It is open for discussion about health related issues including diet, exercise, health and health care issues, as well as, tips on what you can do when there is a medical emergency. Also an opportunity to share and exchange your favorite healthy recipes.

Questions are encouraged and I will answer to the best of my ability. If I can’t, I will try to steer you in the right direction. Naturally, I cannot give individual medical advice for personal health issues. I can give you information about medical conditions and the current treatments available.

You can now find past Health and Fitness News diaries here and on the right hand side of the Front Page.

The drought that much of the nation is experiencing this summer is expected to affect the price of milk and meat because of the feed corn that these commodities rely on. But interestingly, according to Bloomberg Businessweek, shoppers are not likely to see higher prices for corn on the cob because sweet corn is not as vulnerable to drought conditions. Corn on the cob that is sold in supermarkets is an irrigated crop, like other vegetables and fruits grown on large farms. However, smaller farms that sell their produce at farmers’ markets in drought-stricken areas are having a difficult time with their yields, so you may see a spike in prices there. The season for good, fresh sweet corn is such a short one that I will pay the price for it, just as I’ll spend money on heirloom tomatoes.

~Martha Rose Shulman~