Tag: Resist

Fear Fest ’20

The latest Trump reelection strategy is not new to Republicans. Fear is what George W Bush used in 2004 with new Terror warnings whenever his poll numbers slipped.

In typical Trump style, of course, the fear strategy is being carried out in a cartoonish fashion by the junior varsity team compared to Bush. At least Bush understood what Americans feared after 9/11. And he never tried to claim that he alone could fix it.

Bush was able to use the fear of “radical Islamic Terrorists”TM so that rural Americans who didn’t live within 500 miles of a legitimate terrorist target would vote for him.

On the other hand, Trump ignores the real fears of Coronavirus that has killed nearly 200,000 Americans on his watch, preferring to stoke the fever swamp fears of his base that Black people might move into their neighborhood and lower property values instead.

Biden rightly noted in Pittsburgh this week that the images Trump is using in his campaign ads of violence and unrest and suggesting this is what would happen in “Joe Biden’s America” but are in fact happening in “Trump’s America.”

Trump has never really understood America, certainly not as well as his Russian handlers, anyway. There are no plane loads of black-clad Antifa thugs deploying around the country. Even trying to turn Antifa into some kind of Bogeyman is about as effective as raising the alarm about impending Sharknados.

America is an Antifa country, we proved that in the 1940s. While there aren’t many veterans left now, across American are people who’s grandparents fought, or worked in the factories turning out the armaments, planes, tanks, ships, etc that helped us win World War II and defeat Fascism.

Ultimately, the more Trump claims Antifa is his enemy, the more people will do the math and realize it must be because he is a fascist.

This is where the Trump campaign use of fear is different that how Biden is using it. Trump is trying to use made up fears, while Biden is pointing to actual events, such as the mishandling of the virus response and the consistent effort to put Russian and Putin’s interests above those of the U.S.

As we head into the next two months of the Campaign of Fear, have a Fear Itself cocktail and make your plan to vote. 80 years ago today, the Japanese signed the documents of surrender on the USS Missouri, officially ending WWII. On November 3 we can celebrate VT Day. But in the meantime, the Fear Itself cocktail, via KindredCocktail is:

2 oz Rye

1 oz Braulio

.5 oz Genepy

Stir over ice and strain onto a large cube

Cheers

By Any Means Necessary

Preservation

The 2020 Presidential election is a little more than 23 weeks away, and the death toll from the COVID-19 pandemic is approaching 100,000 Americans. Preservation is the watchword of the day. This is not only true with regard to preserving health against the virus, which is only made harder by the President* leading his cultto ignore the masks and social distancing that could help preserve health. As always preservation is a guiding principle for Trump, but self-preservation, not the fight against the virus.

As the number of Coronavirus cases and deaths mounted over the past couple of weeks, Trump has been focused on keeping his finances and activities with the Russians hidden from the public now that the cratering economy has forced a change in his re-election strategy. Trump’s focus on preserving his hopes for re-election are at the heart of the impeachment case against him, and now his minions in the Senate will continue that cause for him.

For the rest of us, this points to how the American system and institutions are in need of preservation, if it’s not too late already. The Lincoln Project ad that has really gotten under Trump’s skin, Mourning in America, asks the right question at the end regarding preservation. On this Memorial day weekend, a time originally set aside to remember the Union soldiers who died to preserve the United States during the Civil War, have a Means of Preservation cocktail and make your plans for Nov. 3. From the Boston bar Drink, via Frederic Yarm at cocktailvirgin the Means of Preservation is:

2 oz Beefeater Gin
1/2 oz St. Germain Liqueur
1/2 oz Dolin Dry Vermouth
2 dash Celery Bitters

Stir with ice and strain into a coupe glass. Garnish with a grapefruit twist.

Cheers!

Stupid and Contagious

Home range

I am by nature rebellious and insubordinate (my Army personnel file would confirm that), and it is not simply because I’m Gen X. But Gen X is also nothing if not pragmatic, with a “whatever it takes” attitude, (it’s time to do what they tell ya!) so the images from Florida of Spring Breakers gathering in large numbers in a state full of old people, or hitting the bars in NYC (endangering some of my favorite bartenders), got me a bit pissed off. There are some older and immuno-compromised folks I’d like to keep around a while longer.

Even Moronavirus Patient Zero in the White House may be starting to grasp how serious this is (but probably not) and the need for social distancing. Now that state and local governments are closing bars and restaurants, and setting curfews, you’ll need to do your drinking at home. Hopefully, while you were stocking up on toilet paper and canned goods, you made a stop by your liquor store. Gen X did, because we drink and we know things. While you’re doing your drinking from home, don’t forget to pay attention to what Cheeto Mussolini is trying to slip through while we’re distracted, like helping Putin and abandoning prosecution of the Russians Mueller found to have interfered in the 2016 election.

As you stay home to work on your home bartending skills, try the Home on the Range cocktail. Via Kindred Cocktails, The Home on the Range comes from the 1945 Crosby Gaige’s Cocktail Guide. And it’s worth keeping in mind how sacrificing for the good of the country in 1945 meant a lot more than staying home on the couch and watching NetFlix.

See you at the bar in a couple months when we get through this.

The Home on the Range is:

2 oz rye

.5 oz Cointreau

.5 oz sweet vermouth

2 dashes Angostura bitters

Stir and strain into an Old Fashioned glass over a larger cube, garnish with an orange twist. (If you don’t have these ingredients but do have more than three rolls of toilet paper per person in the house, you need to rethink your priorities.)

Cheers!

A Fool and His Memo

Fool

Congressman Devin Nunes’ foolishly dangerous memo is out, proving nothing except perhaps things that don’t help his buddy Trump.

Trump, being advised by Fox News fool Sean Hannity, of course, thinks the memo will help him do away with the Russian Conspiracy Investigation. It won’t. And Jennifer Rubin, The Washington Post conservative columnist, nails a truth about  Trump’s declassification of the memo allowing its release of information around intelligence gathering tools.

“This appears to be the second time (the first in the Oval Office with Russian officials) that Trump has handed the Russians classified material. If Trump is not a Russian agent, he surely is acting as effectively as one.”

Trump is being Trump, like the good Russian asset he is. However, what is the excuse for Nunes, Speaker Paul Ryan, and most of the rest of the GOP? As Obi-Wan Kenobi said: “Who’s more foolish, the fool or the fool who follows him?”

As we learn about all the things the release of this memo compromises (and how #MemoDay is the top trending hashtag for the Russian bots), it is best to have one of the worst named drinks according to the staff at New York’s Death & Co, Le Bateleur.

Le Bateleur is French for The Fool, and let’s face it, tagging these idiots with foreign-named drinks would annoy them. From the Death & Co book, it is a tasty concoction of:

2 oz London Dry gin

.75 oz Punt e Mes

.5 oz Strega

.25 oz Cynar

1 dash Angosturra bitters

Orange twist garnish

Stir, strain, garnish

Cheers!

This Is Not A Drill

Hawaiian

The erroneous Hawaiian ballistic missile alert is yet another example of the far too frequent stupid, funny, scary events of the past year.

As The Washington Post reported, a little after 8 a.m. local time Saturday, many Hawaii residents and visitors began posting screenshots of alerts they had received, reading: “BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.”

It took 10 minutes for notification of the false alarm to get out.

It appears to have come from a state civil defense system that had recently reactivated Cold War era alerts due to the threat from North Korea.

Not to sound like a cranky old man, but we used to be better at this stuff. Decades of denigrating government and all of its functions seems to have taken its toll, down to just getting details like a missile alert right.

As someone pointed out on Twitter, at least this didn’t happen with blaring headlines during Fox & Friends. President Shithole was safely on one of his golf courses and away from the big button on his desk.

This is also a reminder that I really need to visit Hawaii. In the meantime, time for a Royal Hawaiian cocktail. Taken from Dale Degroff’s The Essential Cocktail, the Royal Hawaiian is:

1.5 oz gin

1 oz unsweetened pineapple juice

.5 oz lemon juice

.75 oz orgeat

Shake over ice, strain into a cocktail glass, no garnish.

Cheers!

 

Panic at the Congress

Panic

President Very Stable Genius is not the only one who is, like, really smart. Republican members of Congress realize they can use the Michael Wolff book, its Trump v. Bannon storyline, and the President’s full-Fredo response as cover for their actions.

The last several days have seen Congressional Republicans across the board step up their assault on the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and the possibility of co-conspirators in the Trump campaign. The GOP now stands for the Grand Obstruction Party according to Brian Beutler.

House speaker Ryan has backed Devin Nunes’ attempts to further cover up Trump’s actions and denigrate investigators and the FBI. Meanwhile, in the Senate, the Judiciary Committee has recommended that the only investigation into potential criminal activity should focus on Christopher Steele, the former British intelligence agent who provided evidence of Russian involvement in the Trump campaign.

Paul Krugman has a theory for this action, that Republicans have made a deal with the devil, and now they’re stuck and can’t back out.

More specifically, Trump’s very awfulness means that if he falls, the whole party will fall with him. Republicans could conceivably distance themselves from a president who turned out to be a bad manager, or even one who turned out to have engaged in small-time corruption. But when the corruption is big time, and it’s combined with obstruction of justice and collaboration with Putin, nobody will notice which Republicans were a bit less involved, a bit less obsequious, than others. If Trump sinks, he’ll create a vortex that sucks down everyone involved.

Krugman has a point, and it may be the reason many Republicans are willing to go with the flow right now, but there seems to be something more at work. To watch the turnaround in Sen. Lindsey Graham, in the way he spoke about Trump until recently, really raises the question of whether he has been compromised in some way. No one knows, but stories of Russian oligarch money sloshing through our political system in the wake of Citizens United clearly raises the possibility of kompromat on any number of GOP officials.

Whether because of their deal with the devil or kompromat, Republicans certainly look to be putting party over country a lot lately. Krugman made another very true point about Republican complicity in Trump’s crimes: “Massive electoral defeat – massive enough to overwhelm gerrymandering and other structural advantages of the right – is the only way out.”

This is not lost on the, like, really smart Republicans. They have sounded the alarm about this trap and their actions from now until November to hold onto power are likely to be as un-American as anything we have seen. Trump may have a big nuclear button on his desk, but we are seeing that congressional Republicans are already pressing the panic button over the next elections.

In a rare moment of sympathy with the GOP, I suggest we all reach for the Panic Button tonight. This cocktail from the Dewberry Hotel in Charleston via Imbibe (that I found via Kindred Cocktails) contains:

1.5 oz bourbon
.75 oz Averna
.5 oz Campari
.5 oz Cheery Heering liqueur
.25 oz fresh lemon juice

Shake, strain into a chilled cocktail glass over a large ice ball (the button), express and discard lemon peel.

Cheers!

 

2017 Con La Mosca

Anisetta

And we thought 2016 was bad.

Of course, at this time in 2016 many people thought “how could 2017 get any worse.” No one is suggesting that about 2018. In fact, there is a growing realization we are walking along the precipice, or as @fmbutt (Farooq Butt) said on Twitter the other day, “we hugely underestimate the fragility of modernity.”

The usual sense of optimism for the new year is muted this year. I believe this is partly because 2017 was packed so full of news that portrayed democracy under grave threat. Amy Siskind’s “The Weekly List: This Is How Democracy Ends” has been cataloging the abnormalities under Trump for more than a year.

So much has been crammed into this year that it is hard to keep up with how many outrageous things have been normalized. In a year this full, the only way to see it off is with a good digestivo. Lots of choices as Italian amari have gained a lot more attention lately. I’m a big fan of Ramazzotti (though a Polish honey mead works well here, too, maybe just my Chicago upbringing).

Tonight, though, an anisetta con la mosca should do the trick because those three flies — (con la mosca) coffee beans representing health, happiness, and prosperity — are a symbol of the hope for 2018 as we let the anisette settle our digestion of 2017. The hope is not Mueller and his investigation, important as it is, but the reaction of so many Americans that are standing up to the kleptocracy, incompetence and the degradation of our traditions that Trump and his GOP enablers represent.

Meletti is my preference for anisette, but whatever you’re drinking tonight, raise a glass to the ideals that actually make America great, and to the work ahead in 2018.

Happy New Year!

Cheers!

On The Same Team?

Army

Go Army, Beat Navy! And they did last week by the score of 14-13. This college football rivalry goes back to 1890. As fun as the friendly rivalry is, everyone knows when the game is over, they play for the same team.

Our partisan rivalry may not be as friendly as Army v. Navy most of the time, but our traditions hold that everyone was playing for the same team once the elections were over. Lately, however, that doesn’t seem quite as clear.

In the past week since the football game we have had a number of reasons to wonder what team the Republicans are playing for. First, the Republican Party — minus a few prominent defections — was fully behind Roy Moore for Senate in Alabama. Even before credible allegations of child molestation came out, this is a man who has twice been removed from the bench in Alabama, believes the country was better during the days of slavery, and believes his interpretation of the Christian Bible supersedes the U.S. Constitution. Despite party backing, Moore lost in one of the most Republican states.

In the meantime, Trump and the GOP appear to be trying to dismantle the ability of government to work by either not filling positions (especially in the State Department), or nominating unqualified personnel as we saw again this week, or not letting those in place do their jobs. (Personally, I’d feel better if the Center for Disease Control findings were “science-based” or evidence-based.”)

The GOP has also wrangled its members so it now has the votes to pass sweeping tax “reform” that by all estimates benefits the rich at the expense of the poor and middle class. While maybe that doesn’t seem out of character for Republicans who have a tradition of being fiscal hawks. However, this bill will not cut the deficit or the debt, quite  the opposite adding $1 trillion to the latter. I’m not sure how traditional Republicans can say this is good for the country.

One thing that definitely is not good for the country is the way this week saw Congressional Republicans ramp up efforts to support Trump in killing investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 election. The Mueller investigation in particular, that has already resulted in two guilty pleas, has had Republicans trashing the FBI. Let that sink in. Republicans trashing the FBI.

The best possible outcome for the long-term health of our democracy is that Trump and his enablers actually are acting on behalf of Russia. Every other alternative is disheartening for the future of the United States.

So while you’re being nostalgic for the pre-Newt Gingrich days of partisanship, have an Army & Navy cocktail in honor of rivalry among teammates.

From Dr. Adam Elmegirab’s great new Book of Bitters, the Army & Navy is:

2 oz gin

.5 oz lemon juice

.25 oz orgeat syrup

2 dashes Dr. Adam’s Boker’s Bitters

Shake, strain into a chilled cocktail glass, lemon twist

Cheers!

Old Enemies and New Friends

Friend

It is amazing to see just how much the GOP has changed in less than 10 years.

Heading in to the 2008 presidential election, John McCain’s running mate Sarah Palin was trying to make hay out of Barack Obama’s association with William Ayers, co-founder of the 1960s radical group Weather Underground. Palin, as awful as she was, tried to play the patriotism card saying Obama “is someone who sees America it seems as being so imperfect that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country.”

Now, however, it is the republicans who seem to see America “as being so imperfect” that they’re willing to pall around with authoritarian leaders of foreign adversaries. Roy Moore, Alabama GOP Senate candidate, became the latest example the other day.

Saying that the U.S. was a “focus of evil” in the world – largely due to same sex marriage – he admired Vladimir Putin’s “morality.” The accused pedophile was not new in this line of thinking, echoing Trump from last year.

Denigrating America and praising Putin now seems to be the Republican Party policy. To honor this budding relationship, I suggest the New Friend cocktail. It’s not as bitter a drink as would seem appropriate, but they’re just palling around for now.

This variation on the Old Pal is from Serious Eats:

1 oz rye

1 oz Aperol

1 oz Cocchi Americano

orange twist

Stir over ice, strain into a chilled cocktail glass, garnish with an orange twist.

Cheers!

All In The (Crime) Family

Family

There are many distractions at the top of the news today, from Al Franken and Roy Moore to Trump’s Jerusalem decision, but this week is also seeing the noose tighten on America’s First Family of grifters.

On the heels of the Dec. 1 revelation of Michael Fynn’s guilty plea and cooperation with the Mueller investigation, the big news this week is that Mueller has apparently subpoenaed records of Trump and his family from Deutsche Bank. This might clarify issues around Trump’s $300 million debt to the bank and real estate deals involving Russian oligarchs.

The Flynn plea, which said a senior transition official had directed Flynn to contact the Russian Ambassador, pulled Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner deeper into the Russia investigation when he was identified as that official.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump Jr again proved to be the Fredo of the Trump crime family when he tried to not answer Congressional questioning about a conversation he had with his father regarding the infamous Trump Tower meeting by claiming attorney-client privilege (despite the fact that neither he nor his father are attorneys).

First daughter Ivanka Trump has largely been out of the news this week. Actually she has had a much lower profile since stories came out last month on her involvement in potential money laundering real estate schemes with Trump Organization affiliated properties, like the Trump Ocean Club in Panama. Shockingly, there are ties to Russian organized crime alleged as part of those investigative reports.

As we watch the world (hopefully) come apart for the Trumps with Mueller continuing  to build his case, have an Against the Family cocktail.

Via Kindred Cocktail, the Against the Family recipe is:

2 oz Rye

.5 oz sweet vermouth (Punt e Mes)

.5 oz Amaro Montenegro

Combine rye, vermouth, and amaro in a mixing glass and stir with cracked ice. Strain into a coupe glass and express orange oil over the top.

Cheers!