Motley Moose – Archive

[UPDATE] Made this for dinner a couple of days ago. This is a great meal for the cooler weather we’ve been having lately. It’s also a way for our new members to get to know a little about me.

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Television food shows, beginning with Julia Child, changed the American food scene dramatically. The popularity of the Food Network and the celebrity status of famous chefs has changed the view of American cooking from provincial to world-class.

That change is great for food enthusiasts, like me. However, no matter how often I find myself experimenting with complicated and exotic meals, I always find myself returning to the tried-and-true meals of my predecessors. Comfort food is where it is at, as far as I’m concerned.

With that thought in mind, here is my latest offering – old-fashioned Chicken and Dumplings.

Well, after joining last week, I’m getting around to an introduction…

Hi 🙂 I’m Sarea.  I tend to lurk and comment, more than diary, so you’re more likely to see me in your own diaries.

Who am I?  I’m:  a writer, a reader, a musician and music lover, a good friend, a wife, a mother, a daughter, a sister, a 20-year marketing veteran who is dangerously close to quitting a toxic work environment.

Lots of goodness afoot with the jobs bill.

We are used to conservatives employing “wedge issues” to swing elections.  We often see these as cynical.  But for may conservatives, who are sincerely committed to these social issues, it also works the other way around.  Presidential elections offer opportunities to pursue their social agenda, as well as using that agenda to maximize support for their presidential candidate.  We often consider this a divisive tactic, but only because the issues they pursue (opposition to reproductive rights and marriage equality) are inherently divisive stances.  I’ll never forget commercials supporting the highly regressive and restrictive 2004 referendum on marriage here in MI.  A saccharine and ingratiating female voice over proclaiming “One fair set of laws for everyone” or something like that.  Every man is free to marry a woman and every woman is free to marry a man.  How can anyone fail to see how “fair” legally enforced hetero-normativity can be?  But my point is that there is nothing wrong with using an election year to promote a social issue and using a social issue to promote support for a candidate.

I’m wondering whether it might not be time to dust off the Equal Rights Amendment (with apologies to those devoted activists who have never flinched from promoting it).  We are only 3 states short.  The list of states that have not ratified it includes: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah, and Virginia.  Several of these are swing states (FL, MO, NC, VA) that will depend upon turnout.

Here’s the text:

Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.

Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.

Opponents argue that the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment already covers this.  But that same amendment identifies the electorate as “male” explicitly, for the first time in the Constitution.  Justice Antonin Scalia has expressed doubt that its wording provides legal protection from discrimination based on sex.

It would certainly help maximize women’s turnout and progressive turnout and affect the composition of state legislatures.  

The bonus?  If we succeed, there could be no greater tribute to Justice Ruth Bader-Ginsburg, one of the finest individuals in American public life in the past fifty years.  She has been recognized, by President Clinton among many others, as the “Thurgood Marshall of women’s rights.”  What better way to affirm that her contributions will reverberate for generations.

The official (and quite helpful) official site:

http://www.equalrightsamendmen…

SO what do you think?  Would there be real political benefit?  Is there another issue to rev up the base and activate some independents?

In principle, I still support capital punishment.  I still believe that is a just punishment for those guilty of the most heinous homicides.  In theory, all those executed would be guilty.  Unfortunately, we live in the real world, and not one merely of theory and principle.  And, in that real world, my position on capital punishment is informed by the risk of executing an innocent person.  There have been instances where it is strongly suspected an innocent person may have been executed, most notably that of Cameron Todd Willingham.  The case of Troy Davis, though, is even more egregious.  In fact, it has changed my mind when it comes to capital punishment.

Most people say their worst nightmare, when it comes to capital punishment, is that it would be learned after an execution that the condemned was innocent.  That is not, and never has been, my worst nightmare.  My worst nightmare has been that a state would execute a person it knew to be factually innocent, or have a high probability of innocence, at the time of execution.  This is what is happening in the case of Troy Davis.  It represents the complete failure of both the executive and judicial branches.

This, unfortunately, is not even the most egregious aspect of what is happening.  It turns out such executions might not even be unconstitutional.  Yes, that was read right.  It might not violate the Constitution to execute a person who is factually innocent, and, at the time of execution, it is already known, and admitted, by the state that the person is factually innocent.

This needs must be quick because the unofficial news has just hit the street, but for those of you who think Holder and the Department of Justice aren’t taking the what Gordon Brown has called the ‘criminal media nexus’ seriously, Bloomberg just has this

News Corp. was sent a letter by U.S. prosecutors investigating foreign bribery, requesting information on alleged payments employees made to U.K. police for tips, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

The letter is part of an effort by the U.S. Justice Department to determine whether News Corp. violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, or FCPA, according to the person, who declined to be identified because the matter isn’t public. News Corp. fell 1.7 percent on the news.

In light of recent events on a certain blog and elsewhere, and inspired to recommend a wonderful piece dealing with race, I am reposting this diary originally written in May.

September 20, 2011 ends the era of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

We can argue process or procedure.  We can argue the meaning of “fierce advocate.”  We can even argue whether celebrating the military in any form or fashion is appropriate.  

Some other time.

For now, I wish we would appreciate what we have instead of how we got here.  

Even if only for today.

Thanks to all the Mooses for their gracious welcome.  The Purge and Kos-Out of 2011 led a bunch of us here. Would we act like the Bumpus’ hounds in The Christmas Story, wolfing down all the turkey and destroying the screen door on the way out?

After a week, it’s hard to say.  I’ve wandered back to the dailykos, but only to chat with a few old friends.  I’m liking it here, and I plan to stick around.  Maybe someday I’ll even write a real diary.