Month: June 2017

Empire Drinks

Imperial

Democracy is feeling a little weak these days.

As the Senate tries to ram through a secret health care bill that could hurt millions, Trump continues to use his position to enrich himself, and gerrymandering again seems too strong to overcome in the most expensive House race ever in GA06, these are dark days indeed.

We have heard more details on Russian attempts to interfere with our elections and evidence of cyber attacks on state election systems. Meanwhile Trump claims it is all a Democratic hoax and skirts with obstruction of justice to block any investigation.

The emperor may have no clothes, but he certainly has friends in Congress and the Kremlin. As hard as it is, now is the time to stay strong. The French elections remain a sign of hope against the global tide of nationalism and fascism. As the refrain goes in the French national anthem, La Marseillaise:

Aux armes, citoyens !
Formez vos bataillons !
Marchons ! Marchons !
Qu’un sang impur
Abreuve nos sillons !

For now, while we form our battalions, we can perhaps take a little power back with an Imperial Buck cocktail. From Kindred Cocktails, the recipe is:

2 oz Cruzan Blackstrap Rum

.5 oz lime juice

1 oz pineapple juice

3 oz ginger beer

Shake without ice all ingredients except the ginger beer, pour over ice into a Collins Glass, add the ginger beer.

Cheers!

The Poisoning of Democracy

Racer

The spectacle of Dear Leader Cheeto Mussolini receiving the sycophantic praise of his VP and Cabinet before the cameras yesterday raised serious questions about what alternate universe we’ve been beamed into.

Then the evening brought the trial balloon that Trump is considering firing Robert Mueller, the special counsel overseeing the Russia investigation (you know, the one that could potentially find that Russia interfered with the election to install Trump, who is now doing everything Putin could possibly want). This is a cause for concern not because of any doubt that Don Cheeto Corleone would do it, but rather that the GOP Congress would do nothing to stop or correct it.

Not to ignore the massive problems caused by our would-be naked emperor and his Russian patrons, but our representative democracy has some deep structural problems coming to a head right now.

In an encore to their utterly unprecedented stealing of a Supreme Court seat, Senate Republicans are now preparing to ram through some version of Trumpcare. There is no way to argue about its provisions specifically because no one knows what’s in it. However, if it follows the AHCA passed by the House GOP, then many Americans will suffer, many will lose their access to healthcare, most Americans will become that much more dependent on their employers for increasingly expensive healthcare, all while providing the wealthiest people in the country big tax breaks.

This breakdown in Congressional norms is the latest in a long string of anti-democratic actions that deny any real representation in our government. This certainly includes recent Republican voter suppression efforts around the country, but also the Gerrymandering work of both parties. In fact, it has been going on long enough that there is no false equivalence as both parties have undergone several changes in direction since it started. Those policies that were once the Democrats’ are now Republican, and vice-versa.

On Sunday, there was a vote that has the (unlikely) potential of exposing that structural flaw we are grappling with now. Once again, the voters of U.S. Territory Puerto Rico have voted for statehood. Now there are many problems with this vote, it was 97% in favor, but on 23% turnout, there was a voter roll purge before the election, etc.

However, despite its problems, half a million Puerto Ricans voted in favor of statehood, and that is about as many as the total population of a couple of states sending four Senators to Washington. Even Washington D.C. itself has more people than Wyoming, but Wyoming has 3 electoral votes and D.C. has none.

It is clear this Republican Congress is not going to give any real hearing to Puerto Rican statehood because that would add an awful lot of likely Democratic voters (the precise opposite of everything they have been working for) who are poorer, browner, and (worst of all) Spanish-speaking.

It is the fear of the other, the non-white invasion (that once included the Irish and Italians) that has kept our Congressional representation at the same number it has been since 1911 (with small variations).

The prospect of Puerto Rico becoming the 51st state reminds us of the question of representation. Sure, the Senate might move to 102 members, but the House would have to change a number it has had for more than 100 years with only temporary deviation for Alaska and Hawaii.

As the population of the U.S. has grown while the number in the House has remained 435, the power of smaller rural states has grown at the expense of larger urban areas. That is the poison at the heart of our system now, and the Puerto Rican vote has put it back in focus.

So the cocktail for today is the Puerto Rican Racer. Named for the island’s mildly venomous snake, this recipe from NYC’s Death & Co. calls for:

2 oz Puerto Rican Rum (Ron del Barrilito 3 Star)

.5 oz Laird’s Apple Brandy

.5 oz Yellow Chartreuse

1 tsp Grenadine

1 dash Peychaud’s Bitters

Stir over ice, strain into an old fashioned glass over a big rock, no garnish

Cheers!

MAGA? Nah, MACAA!

Hound

All eyes will soon be on the Senate Intelligence Committee and the testimony of ousted FBI Director James Comey. However, we must not overlook today’s testimony the Committee heard from several of the top intelligence officials in the administration.

On one hand, their refusal to answer questions should sound the alarm about what is going on. On the other hand, as conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin put it at The Washington Post, that refusal puts our intelligence officials in contempt of Congress.

“None of these witnesses invoked executive privilege or national security. They just didn’t want to answer,” she wrote. “This is nothing short of outrageous. …their behavior was contemptuous and frankly unprecedented.”

While these professionals knew exactly what they were doing (and I’ve heard cogent argument of how they were protecting the independence of foreign intelligence gathering), supporters of the administration seem likely to miss the significance. These self-proclaimed lovers of the Constitution have always been a bit fuzzy on the details, however.

Beyond the 2nd Amendment, the Gadsen-flag waving Tea Partiers would be hard pressed to describe any of the other 30 Constitutional Amendments (or even realize there are only 27). And, their 2nd Amendment Solutions™ have always been selectively applied.

The administration of George W. Bush spied on Americans and not only listened in on the calls home from our military stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan, but made jokes about those calls between our soldiers and their wives and sweethearts. Crickets from the NRA members, but when the black guy in the White House suggested improving health insurance, time to show up at protests with sidearms and semi-automatic weapons.

But I digress. Our problem today is that too many people lack a basic understanding of how our government works. That goes for Trump, who thinks he’s Don Corleone reincarnate, to the members of Congress who think they work for Trump.

This includes voters, as well. We just had a primary election in New Jersey yesterday and we heard again the usual complaints. Lamentations about the low voter turnout, anger over the lack of voting choices, and hand-wringing over the fate of our democracy. Too many people forget, however, that general elections are about democracy but primaries are about party organization. Back when most people identified with one of the two major parties, choosing the candidates for the general election was taken away from party bosses in smoke-filled back rooms and given to “rank-and-file” party members via primaries.

But today, lines are blurred. We’ve gone from those smoky rooms filled with party bosses giving us FDR and Ike, to primaries giving us presidents from Jimmy Carter to Trump. And now people who would refuse to declare themselves a party member want undue voice in deciding a party’s slate and direction. (Looking at you Bernie Bros.) If you want to change a party, either party, you have to get involved, convince people, build a slate and take over functions. It won’t happen by sitting back and waiting for an election.

As we’ve lost sight of the separation between primary and general elections, we have also overlooked the separation between the levels and branches of government.

Therefore, the hearings going on now will truly test whether our current crop of Congresscreatures understand they are a separate and co-equal branch of government. The future of our democracy may depend on this. Forget Trump’s MAGA slogan, we need MACAA, Make American Civics Accessible Again!

While we contemplate the educational effort ahead, and the need to keep Texas from determining the content of school books, to ensure basic knowledge of the workings of our democracy, have a Constitution Hound cocktail.

An appropriately bitter drink for our times, the recipe from Kindred Cocktails calls for:

1 oz rye

1 oz Campari

1 oz Fernet Branca

.5 oz Bigallet China-China

1 barspoon absinthe

3 dashes Peychaud’s Bitters

1 twist Grapefruit peel

Shake, strain, rocks, garnish

Cheers!

Who’s Minding the Store?

Buster

A consistent theme has developed during the Reign of Error in which, when the number of scandals or problems seem impossible to keep up with, Trump will take to Twitter to create or highlight another one.

Such was the case today, when Cheeto Mussolini complained in a tweet to Fox News: “Dems are taking forever to approve my people, including Ambassadors. They are nothing but OBSTRUCTIONISTS! Want approvals.”

Surprisingly, reality begs to differ. Of the 559 positions requiring confirmation, Trump has not even announced a nominee for 442 of them. At this point, 39 have been confirmed, 63 are awaiting confirmation, and another 15 have been announced but not yet nominated.

This has led to headlines like Newsweek‘s “Trump Not Doing His Job?” in reference to the lack of nominations, to Jennifer Rubin saying in The Washington Post that Trump is courting disaster by not fully staffing the government.

Worse, he depleted the ranks of long-time government staff, particularly in the Foreign Service, and continues to do so. Today, the acting ambassador to China, a 27-year State Department veteran, resigned over Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Accord. With all the problems in the world, he may just need an envoy, but maybe he doesn’t really want things to work.

It’s almost as though he is destroying the ability of our government to function, the way our primary foreign adversary might wish.

Trump’s tweet on nominees came on the heels of a slight Twitter meme that pointed out we have started Hurricane season without a head of FEMA or NOAA. That calls for a Hurricane Buster cocktail to ease all the various storm surges we are currently enduring as well as those to come.

The recipe, via Beachbum Berry’s Potions of the Caribbean, calls for:

1.5 oz gold Puerto Rican rum

.75 oz applejack

.5 oz Curaçao

3 oz guava juice

.75 oz lime juice

Shake well over ice, strain into a glass with crushed ice, garnish with sugar cane stick, cocktail cherry, pineapple and orange slices (I was out of garnish material, still tasty)

Cheers!

Deepest Condolences

Rites

After a painful and declining battle since November, American global leadership has succumbed to years of toxic rhetorical exposure and come to a sticky end.

The signs of imminent demise were pretty clear after Cheeto Mussolini’s disastrous first presidential trip where he dissed allies and praised dictators. But historians will mark June 1, 2017, as the day that America’s role in creating and leading the post-WWII world order went to live on a farm upstate.

On that day, Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Accord for pointless and petty reasons. And on that day, China moved another step closer to filling the vacuum we are unilaterally creating.

President America First was mentally incapable of grasping that the accord was another way to exert U.S. leadership and highlight American ingenuity and innovation to help solve problems facing the entire planet. Instead, Trump perceived slights from the politically correct opposition rather than recognize the science behind the dangers we face. So the spoiled brat decided to take his toys and go home. Unfortunately, he already was home, and everyone else lives there too. So now someone else (China) will step into the lead role.

To add an exclamation point and make sure everyone knew that American leadership is now pushing up daisies and pining for the fjords, Trump was allowed to get on Twitter as a terrorist attack was taking place in London.

The “leader of the Free World” bypassed all the massive intelligence capabilities at his disposal and simply retweeted an early unsubstantiated bit of news from The Drudge Report. From there he used the attack to again call for his travel ban, and he falsely attacked the Mayor of London.

As most world leaders delivered messages of resilience, Trump spouted fear and division. At this point, any Trump supporter displaying the slogan “Keep Calm and Carry On,” or any of its many variants, should be facing felony charges of fraud with mandatory jail time. Trump is proving a devil undeserving of sympathy.

As U.S. leadership goes the way of all flesh, who knew the idea of the American Century would be so literal. In 1917, with its entrance into WWI, the U.S. began taking on its role in the world. Now, one hundred years later, we can mark its passing with a Last Rites cocktail.

Last Rites is a tasty variant on the Last Word. The recipe via Kindred Cocktails is:

.75 oz blanco tequila

.75 oz yellow chartreuse

.75 oz lemon juice

.75 oz maraschino liqueur

Shake, strain, up

Cheers!