Gazpacho for people who don't have a garden

Get a hydroponic cucumber, a green pepper, a small red onion and a head of garlic. Get a 28-oz can of Hunt's diced tomatoes and a big jug of V8. You probably already have some olive oil, red wine vinegar, hot sauce and s&p.

Cut the cucumber, pepper and onion into small dice, 1/4 to 1/2 inch. Smash a few cloves of garlic (depends on how spicy you want it to be; I usually use 4 or 5) and mince them. Put all this into a big metal bowl (metal because it will get cold faster). Dump in the tomatoes and V8. Put in a couple of splashes of hot sauce--don't overdo it because people can add more at the table--and s&p to taste. Here is the important part: be generous with oil and vinegar--start with about 1/4 cup of each, then taste. You should get a good vinegar tang, so add more if you need to.

Chill overnight.

I hear that real gazpacho is thickened with bread crumbs but I don't believe it.

You use hydroponic cucumbers because they are virtually seedless and are pretty straight, which makes it easier to dice them. I happen to grow cukes in my garden, but I won't use them in my gazpacho because they are too much work. Ditto tomatoes, because I don't want to have to blanch and peel them (1); (2) it takes a lot of them because they are watery and have seeds you have to get rid of and (3) I'd rather eat tomato sandwiches with my garden tomatoes.

There's no reason Lanny Davis would--I mean wouldn't--tell the truth

about the source of the leaks from the Michael Cohen tapes. I watched Rachel last night work herself into a swivet trying to figure out how the leaks would help Trump and why his side would be leaking. I think the answer is simple: because leaking is what Trump's underlings do. I don't think the leaks have any strategic purpose; I think it's yet another case of people working in the Trump administration having had it with the Jerkoff-in-Chief and leaking because they hate him so.

Trump mocks "1000 points of light" foundation FFS?

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Trump mocks "1000 points of light" foundation FFS?
I think all we dems made fun of George H.W. Bush's lame suggestion during his presidency that instead of social programs paid for with taxes, we all become a thousand points of light and let charities take care of our less fortunate brothers and sisters. It was silly-sounding, as well--Dana Carvey used it forever.

But the thing is, that should be the kind of thing Trump would want to encourage, too, isn't it? And I'm not sure that he wasn't making fun of the Bush Foundation, not the proposal during his presidency. And where the fuck does anyone named Trump get off criticizing any other family's charitable foundation? It's not the TPOL foundation that's under criminal investigation.

And so it has occurred to me that Trump and his base are ahistoric. They have never paid attention to politics, or even the news, unless something happened to outrage them, like the attack on the jogger in Central Park. This attack on TPOL was probably spurred by Trump's hearing about it for the first time ever, and the crowd reaction indicates that this was new to them, too. Further proof: Trump went out of his way to explain why he said "Democrat candidates" instead of "Democratic"--he's totally unaware of the history of that usage by Republic politicians.

This would explain the massive turnout of first-time voters for Trump, the first time most of his base was at all interested in who was running for president--they had no idea of what previous campaigns involved, or meant. If they voted at all, it was probably for the party they'd grown up with, without paying any attention to the candidates or what they stood for. And to be of this mind-set, you don't have to be poor white working-class; plenty of educated, well-off people have never paid attention to politics, either, and a significant part of Trump's support came from these people.

The good news for us is that as long as Trump himself isn't running, no matter how much he begs for votes to keep the House majority, his base still doesn't care about politics. That's why you can't talk to them, why facts don't matter. They have no idea of what has gone before--they suffer from ahistoricity. And enough of the shitheads who "just couldn't bring myself to vote for Hillary" and those who sat it out or voted for Jill Stein are angry enough now--because these are people who have paid attention to the past and continue to pay attention now--are going to make sure Trump is not re-elected.

I am feeling a lot better, thanks.

Toast of London

on Netflix--hilarious. Matt Berry of Mighty Boosh, Garth Marenghi's Dark Place--he's wonderful. Especially the sex scenes.

Happy Creepy Vintage Fourth

Starbucks again--this time mocking a stutterer

A University of Pennsylvania graduate student says a Starbucks barista in West Philadelphia mocked him for his stuttering disorder last week — just 29 days after the company closed its nearly 800 U.S. stores for anti-bias training following the wrongful arrests of two black men at a Center City store.

The 28-year-old student, who is pursuing a doctorate at the Wharton School, said he was shocked when he ordered an iced coffee at a Starbucks in University City, only to have the barista mimic his name by saying: “OK, S-S-Sam.”

It was even more disturbing when he realized while walking back to his office that the barista had written his name on the cup as “SSSam.”

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/starbucks-customer-cup-complaint-stutter-philadelphia-pennsylvania-20180702.html

Civility means allowing an elderly woman to use your gas station's toilet

It means allowing a family to hold a funeral without calling the cops to get them out of "your" church.
It means treating the professional reporters in your news conference with respect and answering questions truthfully
It means not calling names
It means treating families fleeing a desperate situation with compassion, not more terrorism
It means acknowledging terrible crimes even against people you disagree with
It means being kind to people who look like you and to people who don't look like you

Don't complain to me about the incivility of being asked, discretely, to leave a restaurant where you expect to be served by people you've publicly insulted and whose worth as human beings you have questioned.

Midnight snacking

I generally take in the big bird feeder, the one with sunflower seeds, at night because raccoons will empty it every time I don't. I stay up until 10 or 11, and if I don't forget, I turn on the outside light (that's because one time when I didn't I walked into a skunk raiding the feeder. I backed away slowly, murmuring "bon appetit, monsieur", check to see who's out there--I don't like interrupting male deer who are looking for a fight, either, even if they're on the other side of the yard--and usually just the light coming on causes the big fat raccoon who lives in my backyard to waddle off into the darkness.

Last night I turned on the light and saw raccoon-shape on the feeder. I went ahead out the door, figuring Fatso would be gone by the time I got outside. Wrong. And wrong again.

It wasn't Fatso. It was The Fruit of Fatso's Womb--two baby raccoons about the size of small house cats, one clinging to the feeder and shoveling in the seed, the other perched on top of the post, hanging over and waiting for his/her turn.

I expected Junior and Missy to take off when this unknown stack of smelly human advanced on them. Nope. As I got closer I started clapping my hands and "shoo"'ing them, to no avail. They watched me closely but sans peur as I approached nearer and nearer. I tried waving my arms and puffing myself up (I read somewhere that's how you scare away an aggressive swan), but they sat and enjoyed the show.

I was a little afraid that they would bite me if I tried to push them away or made any kind of physical contact with them. I confess that rabies crossed my mind, but only for an instant--I once saw a rabid skunk, and those are symptoms you don't forget. As soon as I dismissed rabies, the question of where Mom was crept in. While I was focused up high on the younger generation, was the old lady going to attack my ankles?

Never once did it occur to me that this was an almost-empty-at-this-point bird feeder so what was I doing. I had a galvanized trash can just inside the back door full of sunflower seed. No titmouse was going to go hungry if I didn't intervene.

Then I thought to myself "if I get bit by a raccoon, that'll be something to tell the (nonexistent) grandchildren about" and reached out for the feeder--I was so close to them I could count their whiskers. They were making little gutteral noises that might have been baby raccoon growls. We had stood nose to nose for several minutes, and they were damned if they were going to move, so it was up to me, the adult, to get the show on the road.

As I say, I reached out for the feeder. Junior/Missy clung. I shook it, and baby jumped off. I unhooked the feeder under the baleful eye of the sibling, fully ashamed of myself by this time--Big Brave Woman, scaring off hungry baby raccoons--and told the little guy "Aw, fuck it." I hooked the practically empty feeder back onto the post and went inside.

The light was still on, and I watched through the window to see if Mom or the other baby would return. Braveheart stayed there, clinging to the post until I decided the light was hampering his moves. I turned it off and went to bed.

This morning, every goddam sunflower seed was gone.