April 2017 – Gin & Bitters

Toro!

Matador

The presidency of Theodore Roosevelt gave us the Bully Pulpit, Trump just gives us a bull in a China shop.

As the Reign of Error reaches its 100-Days milestone today, people are not so much tired of winning as they are tired of sweeping up aisles of broken glass.

Trump told Reuters that he misses his old life and he thought being president would be easier. That can help explain why he’s been running around breaking everything from alliances to promises. The NAFTA debacle is evidence he doesn’t understand what he is doing, or even supposed to do. After announcing he would sign an Executive Order to withdraw from NAFTA, he backtracked, saying discussions with the leaders of Mexico and Canada led him to give the agreement another chance after renegotiation.

However, as Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) noted, this isn’t really how this works. He told PBS NewsHour:

The fact that he doesn’t quite understand the ramifications, quite frankly, even the process — he said they already started negotiating, when the fact of the matter is you have to send a letter to Congress to even begin the process of having the conversation within your own country, within your own Congress, within the industry groups that would be affected by it.

That’s a 90-day process before you even start the negotiations with the other countries. And the fact that he didn’t even know that before he made his statements is worrisome to me, that he may actually, through trying to renegotiate NAFTA, he may actually make the process worse.

Trade policy, foreign policy, healthcare policy, none can be designed in 140 characters. They’re complicated. They are not meant to be ruled by royal decree, no matter how much the GOP Congress is willing to go along.

As the Trump administration bull rampages across our democracy, fortunately we have a growing cadre of bullfighters. As Nicolas Kristof wrote in the NY Times, nothing deflates an authoritarian more than ridicule.

In recruiting for the Trump resistance, Stephen Colbert may be more successful than a handful of angry Democratic senators. Trump can survive denunciations, but I’m less sure that in the long run he can withstand mockery.

The Atlantic also touches on this in a cover story on Alec Baldwin’s SNL portrayal of Trump.

So much of Trump’s popularity hinges on his image as a self-made miracle, a winner, a strong and successful man who is the best at everything and always gets his way. Baldwin has become our deflator in chief, a weekly pinprick in Trump’s balloon. Every time Trump tweets a wounded Sunday-morning response, every time Spicer laughs off McCarthy’s portrayal but then tries a little harder to bury his rage, every time Conway shows up on TV looking a little more challenged and broken, Baldwin can tell himself that SNL is not just making laughs but effecting change.

As you join the bullfight today, get prepared with a Matador Cocktail. As Philip Greene notes in his book The Manhattan, the recipe for the Matador was published in London in 1937, likely tied to the popularity of bullfighting, especially as noted in the writings of Ernest Hemingway. This refreshing variation on a Manhattan is:

.75 oz silver tequila

.75 oz dry vermouth

.75 oz Pierre Ferrand Dry Orange Curaçao

Shake over ice, strain into a chilled cocktail glass, garnish with lemon peel

Cheers!

The Union Forever!

Scorch

The United States has a history of defeating those who would enslave others.

Our victories over the Soviets, the Nazis, and the Confederates help to define who we are as Americans. Republicans from Abraham Lincoln to Ronald Reagan have led or supported that fight.

Today, the descendants of those defeated enemies have coalesced into an insurgency that threatens our democracy, all too often with the cooperation of the GOP. Evidence continues to mount that the Russians, led by a former Soviet KGB officer, undertook a disinformation campaign designed to help their choice of candidates get elected President, or at least create maximum confusion and mistrust with our political system.

Trump, the Conman-in-Chief with his fascist-leaning tendencies, has put into the highest reaches of our government actual Nazis and Nazi-sympathizers, along with an assortment of white supremacists. Meanwhile, Republican politicians in the former Confederate States work to suppress the votes of African-Americans, or simply undermine the workings of governing process.

These enemies are emboldened now. Just yesterday, GOP candidate for governor of Virginia Corey Stewart, who was born in Minnesota, said there is nothing worse than “yankees” saying Confederate monuments don’t matter, as Louisiana began taking down its monuments. Of course, there are many things worse, including slavery!

The fool has continued to double down on the nonsense today. Now Stewart tries to claim that taking down monuments to Confederate leaders is destroying U.S. history and next the politically correct left will tear down monuments to Washington and Jefferson. Of course, they weren’t traitors trying to pull the country apart, but perhaps we should spend more money on history education in our schools.

On this Confederate memorial day, when Alabama and Mississippi close state offices, there is no better time to sing The Battle Cry of Freedom, to rally around the flag, and as that favorite song of Union soldiers says:

We will welcome to our numbers
The loyal, true and brave,
Shouting the battle cry of Freedom;
And although they may be poor,
Not a man shall be a slave,
Shouting the battle cry of Freedom.

Within those numbers, let’s hope there’s a Ulysses S. Grant, a George S. Patton, or a William Tecumseh Sherman. While we plan our fight against the traitorous scum and toast the Union Forever, let’s make the drink a Scorch the Earth cocktail in Sherman’s honor.

The recipe, from Kindred Cocktails and attributed to Gary Regan, calls for:

1.5 oz cognac

.5 oz sweet vermouth

.5 oz Cynar

Stir over ice, strain into a cocktail glass, garnish with flamed lemon peel

Cheers!

Avenue to Impeachment

Avenue

Trump may not know where our aircraft carriers are headed, but the direction of his presidency is getting clearer every day: Impeachment.

As evidence of corruption and collusion with the Russians mounts, the real question is whether Republicans in Congress will find their patriotic spine and/or recognize the damage Trump is doing to their party to begin impeachment proceedings, or will it take the wave of Democrats elected in 2018.

Earlier this week in Slate, Harvard Constitutional Law Professor Noah Feldman defined high crimes and misdemeanors in laying out potential impeachment options for Congress. The options include public corruption in the ways Trump’s conflicts of interest are enriching him, abuse of power as he continues to threaten his opponents with power of the Presidency, and undermining the rule of law, most notably if the case is made for colluding with Russia to interfere with the election.

The corruption angle is difficult to keep up with since this is not an hourly blog. Despite contradicting the advise of our foreign policy officials, Trump congratulated Turkish President Erdogan on his (tainted by fraud) victory in a referendum weakening democracy and extending Erdogan’s power. I’m sure Trump’s business interests in Turkey had nothing to do with that.

In The Washington Post this week, Jennifer Rubin told us that Trump’s ethical squalor is worse than we thought:

On the financial side of the Trump sewer, matters are going from bad to worse. Trump never divested himself of his business holdings or released his tax returns. The extent of his conflicts of interest are therefore unknown. He has now amended the trust (showing how flimsy it is if it can be altered on a whim) to allow him to withdraw funds and to receive periodic briefings from his son Eric (who “can do that as chair of the trust’s advisory board, and told Forbes magazine last month that he plans to give his father big-picture financial briefings every quarter or so”). All this should underscore how ludicrous it is to claim separation between Trump and his business operations.

But the elephant in the room continues to be the questions about Trump’s collusion with Russia, and this week continued the drip-by-drip advance of the story. Further details of Trump advisor Carter Page and his ties to Russia that drew scrutiny from the FBI, the revitalization of the House Intelligence Committee investigation, and the big Reuters story on the Putin-linked group’s plan to sway the U.S. election.

This week also saw the professor who predicted Trump’s election publish a new book, The Case for Impeachment. Allan Lichtman, history professor at American University, is now predicting Trump will be impeached before his term is finished. One interesting point brought up in the Financial Times article on the book is:

Lichtman points out that Nixon faced impeachment for what was arguably the least important of his three big offences — the burglary of the Democratic offices in the Watergate complex. Even then, it was the cover-up, rather than the crime itself, that led to Nixon’s undoing.

Just last night, someone who knows a few things about Watergate, Carl Bernstein told a Trump advisor on CNN that “there’s an active cover-up going” with regard to the Russia investigation.

There is a lot more we need to learn, but as we look down the road toward Trump’s impeachment, we can raise an Avenue cocktail to the journey. This classic from the 1930s makes an appearance in Dr. Cocktail Ted Haigh’s book Vintage Cocktails and Forgotten Spirits. The recipe is:

1 oz Bourbon

1 oz Calvados

1 oz passionfruit juice (or nectar, I used syrup and cut the amount in half)

1 dash grenadine

1 dash orange flower water

Shake over ice, strain into a chilled cocktail glass

Cheers!

Drinks for the Resistance!

coup 1

A new bar opened in New York City over the weekend called Coup, as in coup d’etat designed for resisting the Trump regime.

All of the bar’s profits will be donated to various organizations fighting or being defunded by Trump. Owner Ravi DeRossi and his partners Sother Teague and Max Green have placed six jars around the establishment representing different non-profits for patrons to drop tokens into after purchasing a drink.

In the first two nights, Coup reportedly sold $20,000 worth of drinks that the donations
will be drawn from. Planned Parenthood saw the most donations, which could be due to recent defunding efforts, or that it was easier to get to their jar. The ACLU was second.

I got the chance to chat with Ravi on Friday night and the parallel motivations behind Coup and this blog were clear, to take something you know how to do well and use it to fight to make things better.

Coup has received some very good coverage from The New York Times, Food & Wine, and Saveur, among others. There was a nice opening weekend video interview with DeRossi here. And definitely keep an eye on coupnyc.com for the list of guest
bartenders.

The place was intimate and comfortable, and drinking for a cause is likely to make everyone that much more friendly. Opening weekend staff made it difficult to tell they really hadn’t worked together before (at least from my side of the bar), and Coup has a no tipping policy.

If you’re in New York, regularly or just visiting, Coup is a must for your cocktail itinerary. Located at 64
Cooper Square, it is very close to the Astor Place subway. (It is also very close to Amor y Amargo and Death & Co.)

Have a cocktail — the Dark and Stormy was both tasty and fitting for the times — and discuss the resistance. I’ll likely see you there.

Cheers!

All Blown Up

Philabuster

As the smoke clears on week 12 in the Reign of Error, we survey the damage from bunker busters in Afghanistan to the filibuster in the Senate. Clearly the most explosive week yet.

Employing his “Bomb-the-shit-out-of-them” strategy for defeating ISIS, Trump ordered the use of the GBU-43/B MOAB, which stands for Massive Ordinance Air Blast, or more popularly as Mother Of All Bombs. It is the most powerful non-nuclear bomb ever used by the U.S. in combat, and was dropped on Islamic State tunnels in Nangarhar province. The $314 million weapon reportedly killed 36 militants.

Shortly after dropping the MOAB, Trump scurried off to Mar-a-Lago for yet another round of golf, and perhaps to contemplate nuking North Korea over chocolate cake. He also faces the tightening noose after the bombshell report about campaign aid Carter Page.

The Washington Post reported that the FBI got a FISA warrant to monitor Page last summer as part of an investigation into possible links between Russia and the campaign.

The Page news had come quickly on the heels of the Sean Spicer implosion while attempting to use a Hitler analogy to defend the ineffective airstrikes in Syria.

On Monday, Neil Gorsuch was sworn in as a Supreme Court Justice to complete the GOP theft of this seat. The heist began about a year ago when Senate Majority Leader McConnell and the Republicans refused to even meet with President Obama’s nominee. Before they could get to Monday’s ceremony, however, McConnell had to use the “Nuclear Option” to get Gorsuch approved. Last Friday, McConnell dropped the Mother of All Bombs in the Senate and killed the filibuster so Gorsuch could be confirmed by a simple majority.

Of all the explosions over the past week, killing the filibuster and confirming Gorsuch is likely to have the greatest impact. This is true both for the way the Senate has historically operated (though the filibuster had been abused for some time), and for the country at large as a relatively very young right-wing ideologue now has a lifetime appointment to the highest court.

To wash away that Nuclear Senate residue and try to forget that the patriotic Republicans have just handed a stolen Supreme Court seat to a corporation-favoring tool, chosen by a puppet of the Russian government, I suggest a Philabuster cocktail via Kindred Cocktails.

1.5 oz rye, Rittenhouse 100

.5 oz Aperol

.5 oz Cocchi Americano

.25 oz Cynar

.12 oz Fernet Branca

1 dash grapefruit bitters

1 twist grapefruit peel as garnish

Stir, strain over rock, highball, garnish

Happy Friday!

Cheers!

Demonize and Distract

Satan

Quite a day for Trump spokesman Sean Spicer yesterday. While attempting to defend Trump’s ill-conceived and ineffective airstrikes in Syria, Spicer (in the way only NPR could describe it) “overlooked the Holocaust.”

Saying that Hitler didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons in World War II as proof of the need to bomb Syria drew a response from the White House briefing room. As the New York Times reported:

Asked to clarify his remarks, Mr. Spicer then acknowledged that Hitler had used chemical agents, but maintained that there was a difference.

“I think when you come to sarin gas, he was not using the gas on his own people the same way that Assad is doing,” Mr. Spicer said, incorrectly, before mentioning “Holocaust centers,” an apparent reference to Nazi death camps.

This brought about a clamor on social media that threatened to drown out the United Airlines re-accommodated passenger story, and brought calls for Spicer to be fired. Spicey, though, wasn’t finished. He went on CNN to apologize for the remarks, but he said he did not want his comments on Hitler to distract from Trump’s attempts “to destabilize the region.”

It just feels like there’s a Freudian slip in here. It is hard to believe the level of stupidity and incompetence we have seen from the Administration, so it is only natural to believe this is part of some master plan of deception and distraction.

The Washington Post story that the FBI obtained a FISA warrant to monitor former Trump adviser Carter Page only fed the idea that Trump needs to distract us from what is seeping out about his campaign’s collusion with Russia during the election.

Applying Occam’s Razor, however, the more likely explanation is that Spicer simply bungled his Hitler reference (owing to an already apparent tentative grasp on history), which was made in service of justifying a bungled response to Assad’s use of chemical weapons by using the well-worn playbook of demonizing your enemy.

The author of that playbook, Lucifer, just kicked back, twirled his mustache, and awaited some new arrivals. As the demonizations continue, the rest of us can kick back with a Satan’s Whiskers cocktail to see whether Spicer gets fired, or was just following orders. The recipe via Brad Thomas Parson’s Bitters is:

.5 oz gin

.5 oz sweet vermouth

.5 oz dry vermouth

.5 oz orange juice

.25 oz orange curaçao

3 dashes orange bitters

Shake over ice, strain into a chilled coupe or cocktail glass, garnish with an orange twist

Cheers!

Greatest Show On Earth

Barnum

Exactly seven weeks from today, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus will bring an end to nearly a century and a half of entertainment as its tours conclude and it folds its tents one last time.

Never fear, though, the calliope plays on in Washington D.C. After the GOP primary clown car of 17 major candidates, we elected Donald Trump to make sure the circus would continue.

Trump can draw a line from the great showman P.T. Barnum, who started with his American Museum in downtown New York City in 1841 and revolutionized the circus by adding the freak show. Meanwhile, Trump continues to fill out his cabinet. As Trump settles the $25 million lawsuit over Trump University, we can be reminded of the saying P.T. Barnum is famously credited with, “There’s a sucker born every minute.”

And as we see Nick Kristof’s report in the New York Times today, “In Trump Country, Shock at Trump Budget Cuts, but Still Loyalty,” the obvious drink tonight is the Barnum (Was Right) Cocktail.

Pulled from Dr. Cocktail Ted Haigh’s book Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails: From the Alamagoozlum to the Zombie and Beyond, the drink was clearly in reference to Barnum’s sucker quote. As the cocktail is a slight variation on a Pegu Club cocktail, and similar to others such as the Barbara West Cocktail, Haigh said cocktail patrons inevitably would find themselves muttering; “Hey! This is nothing but a blah blah cocktail with a little blah blah in it! Barnum was right!

2 oz gin

1 oz apricot brandy (Haigh suggests Marie Brizard’s Apry)

.5 oz fresh lemon juice

2 dashes Angostura Bitters

Shake over ice, strain into a cocktail glass, garnish with a lemon twist.

Cheers!