If the Obama administration did such a piss-poor job of national security

why is the Trump administration relying on the Obama list of terror-prone countries?

(I put this in the wrong forum earlier)

My darling aged husband

just set off for the Charles Schwab office

WEARING HIS PINK PUSSYHAT

A great day for evangelicals!

By advertising the christian preference clause of the muslim ban, the Trump administration has created a vast new vineyard of muslim souls ripe for the harvest by christian missionaries. I bet conversions are going to reach a historic high. Franklin Graham, get your prissy ass over there now!

If the Obama administration did such a piss-poor job of national security

why would these clowns use Obama's list of terrorist-breeding countries for their ban?

Discussing the muslim ban with the appropriate advisors

would have let the terrorists know ahead of time so they could all get their plane tickets and invade us before the ban took effect. Putting aside the fact that maybe we ought to be worrying that such a leak directly to the terrorists exists, how is announcing that christians will be given preferential treatment going to work?

If I were a terrorist, I'd be converting to a presbyterian even as I type.

I wore my pussyhat to the grocery store today

and got three thumbs-ups, all from women. There weren't a lot of people at the store, and I felt pretty conspicuous, but after the first woman whispered "I like your hat" as we passed in the condiments aisle everything was OK. I sensed disapproval from a couple of men but that might have been my imagination. And in the parking lot a woman came up to me and said "I'm a knitter--how do you make the little ears stick up?"

I'm going to wear my pussyhat everywhere, every day. I've made three for friends. My husband's new employee has 20-month-old twin daughters, and guess what I'm going to knit for them?

Our dinner party

Here's how it went:

drinks and hors d'oeuvres: I made way too many crudites, but everything else was pretty much devoured. The crab cakes and prosciutto/fontina/puff pastry pinwheels were the faves.

mushroom bisque a big hit

cod on garlic potatoes: the potatoes were a fail; I worried that they wouldn't be done in time and pre-baked them, so they were a little tough by serving time, but the cod was great

chicken breasts porcini: big hit; the chicken was very moist, which can be a problem be breasts pounded thin. The sauce was luscious.

shrimp a la greque: terrific--it's a go-to recipe from Craig Claiborne

strip roast: big fail. I wanted to try the Adele Davis method of roasting meat at the temperature you want to achieve, in this case 125. Despite the fact that I browned it first, the low heat did not melt the fat the way it should have, and it actually looked a little gross. The taste was very good, but it was so unappealing visually that not much got eaten. Roast beef sandwiches, anyone?

vegetables: green beans perfect, broccoli OK, roasted root vegetables a surprise hit. I thought they were a little soggy, but my guests ate them all up. I did get to taste celery root, which I'd never had before and which was the whole point of the dish for me. Creamed spinach did not go over, mostly because nobody likes spinach. It was very good but largely uneaten.

salad was OK

lemon sorbet was Haagen Dasz

desserts: Paris-Brest a big hit but hard to slice; triple chocolate mousse cake was good but I've made it better (I rushed the top, white chocolate layer)

Savoy truffles: always a winner

Now I have about four days of dishwashing ahead of me!

Among the multitude of things DT does not understand

is the fact that we don't care whether he likes a particular leader. We don't care if she's "great"; we don't care if he personally gets along with them. The relationships that matter are the relationships (military, economic, etc.) between our countries. As usual, everything is about Donald.

"Theresa"??? Really? "Theresa"? n/t

$1000 Dinner

is a book that inspired my husband and me to start having formal dinner parties. It's a wonderful book, about a dinner held in 1851. Our next $1000 dinner will be this Friday, and here is what we're serving:

Drinks and hor d'oeuvres (puff pastry/prosciutto/fontina pinwheels, round of warmed brie with honey and fresh thyme drizzled over w/toasted baguette slices, miniature crab cakes w/remoulade, multi-color baby carrots and baby cucumbers w/blue cheese dip. And pretzel rods.

First course: mushroom bisque

Second: cod fillets baked on little flat blocks of garlic potatoes, creamed spinach

Third: chicken breasts porcini over rice

Fourth: shrimp a la greque over fusilli, haricots verts

Fifth: strip roast, broccoli

Sixth: roasted vegetables

Seventh: chopped salad

Eighth: sorbet

Ninth: desserts: Paris-Brest, triple chocolate mousse cake

Tenth: champagne glace

Eleventh: fruit and nuts

Twelfth: coffee, liqueurs, Savoy truffle

We will have 14 at table--we built an extension to our dining room table out of a 4x8 sheet of plywood--and since I do pretty much all the cooking (my husband is making the soup and crabcakes), I've begun prep. Yesterday I made and froze the pinwheels--they're so easy and bake quickly at the last minute--and made the Savoy truffle, although I didn't ball it and roll it in coconut yet. Today I've made the praline for the Paris-Brest (the recipe calls for hazelnuts, which I used the first time I made it but my god what a pain in the ass hazelnuts are, so I'm using almonds this time) and will be making the blue cheese dip. I have to iron the tablecloth and napkins--we set up the table last night and moved all the chairs into the living room for cocktails.