Eleanor Duckwall's Spotlight

So, How Much Water Do You Really Need to Cook Pasta?

So how much water does pasta really need? My grandmother, my mother, mother-in-law, aunts, cousins, neighbors all filled an enormous stockpot with gallons of water, making the filled pot heavy, dangerous to lift, and difficult to work with at the end of the process.

I was delight to learn that experiments have developed products to lesson the amount of water, and in some cases, start the pasta in cold water. But would it work, and would THEY like it?

The THEY of course belong to the older generation who believe they know how pasta is supposed to be, and how it should taste with sauce.

And then there's the ultimate critic of all things: my husband. No other's opinion stands up to ultimate arbitrator of culinary matters. Freshness, taste, texture, aroma, appearance, seasoning of food are important matters, and judgment can make or break a following interval if a dish doesn't live up to his sometimes arbitrary standards that take years to master.

Rush Limbaugh's "First Televised Address to the Nation" at CPAC

If you missed Rush Limbaugh's "gem of a speech" at CPAC that lasted over an hour, you can find videos of the entire spech here posted at Hot Air.

Click here for the transcript at Rush's site.

Enjoy.

"A Crisis of Globalization" - Ferguson: 'There will be blood'

Via Richard Fernandez at Belmont Club.

Canada 2020 Speakers Series: Niall Ferguson on "The Great Recession"

View more presentations from Canada 2020. (tags: recession great)

“There will be blood” — Niall Ferguson, speaks in Ottawa. Does the crisis mean a new American century? Video [above]. “We are getting the deficits of a World War without a war.”

Ferguson observes that much of US consumption — indeed much of the Obama administration’s deficit — will be financed from overseas. And why do foreigners lend America money? Because crisis isn’t American. It’s global. And despite it’s weaknesses, the United States, was due its institutional strengths, the best bet in a storm. That combination of characteristics made it a safe(r) haven in the the coming upheavals. As Ferguson puts it, the current crisis “hits others harder than the United States”.

Obama's Creative Stealth Taxation

Every new fee, each inflation-rise increment is an unannounced stealth tax."

Douglas Lang, American Thinker:

One of the more create ways in which Americans are proposed to pay for the government's lavish spending habits has been revealed by Reuters. The proposed "Spectrum user license fee" on p132 of President Obama's budget would see cellular phone operators paying an annual levy for using certain bands of radio wavelength; despite operators already spending billions at FCC auctions for access to these frequencies. The fees will start at $50million for 2009, rising progressively to $550million per annum in 2013.

This license fee will naturally be passed on to the operator's customers should the budget be passed and in effect creating a stealth taxation of each citizen for their use of radio airwaves - an entity which is organically property of every American citizen.

Contact Douglas Lang at douglaslang@One

Eleanor: Perhaps they thought that we wouldn't find out, don't care, or can't or won't do anything about this; That resistance is futile.

They're wrong.

And it isn't just "Obama's stealth taxation."

Obama is just the latest face on this hydra with hundreds of thousands of heads!

See Also: Budget of the United States Government: Fiscal Year 2010

Depression Cooking with Clara

Today's obese Americans could benefit from Grandmother's frugal Depression-era cooking and tiny portions. Cleaning your plate will be neither difficult nor unhealthy.

Here is series created by a 92-year-old Depression survivor. (Be sure to check out the "Related" links at the middle of the page.) Check out some of the episodes here.

These recipes also remind me of some that my late Cuban mother-in-law would create.

My husband adores meat and chicken marinated in olive oil and lemon juice.

Enjoy!

Microchips, EDLs, Creeping Incrementalism, Fabian Socialism and Obama

The Stained Glass Window from the Fabian Society (Beatrice Webb House, Surrey, England, former headquarters of the Fabian Society)

"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were once our countrymen." ~ Samuel Adams

Incremetalism: Is a method of working by adding to a project using many small (often unplanned) changes instead of a few (extensively planned) large jumps. Even in processes that involve extensive planning, incrementalism is an important tactic for dealing reactively with small details.

Incrementalism is the method favored by the Fabian Society socialists over the abrupt methods of the Bolshevik Communists who demanded immediate, drastic changes.[See also: International Bolshevik Tendency]

Here are steps in the Fabian system of planning:

1. Strong, centralized government.

2. Powerful Executive at the expense of Congress and the Judicial.

3. Government controlled banking, credit and securities exchange.

4. Government control over employment.

5. Unemployment insurance, old age pensions.

6. Universal medical care, food and housing programs.

7. Access to unlimited government borrowing.

8. A managed monetary system.

9. Government control over foreign trade.

10. Government control over natural energy sources, transportation and agricultural production.

11. Government regulation of labor.

12. Youth camps devoted to health discipline, community service and ideological teaching consistent with those of the authorities.

13. Heavy progressive taxation.

Our Fearful Master

At The Return of Scipio:

It amuses—if that is the right word—to hear folks say that government is a force for good. Any man who supports its growth in any form certainly believes this. George Washington just as certainly did not.

Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.

It does not at all matter the type of government under consideration. It can be composed of the most charitable folk imaginable, yet at some point it will enforce its rulings with raw power. If you refused to pay your income tax you would realize this quite soon. Upon your doorstep there would appear armed men in uniform, and you would be taken way or even killed if you resisted. Your property would be turned over to the state and your family dispersed and impoverished. All of this would of course be entirely legal.

Any expansion of government for whatever reason—and that reason can be couched in kindly sounding phrases like “health care” or “education”—likewise expands government’s reach and control. There is no escaping that rather dismal fact. A growing government will have greater power to intrude into the lives of citizens. If this process is not halted—and when has it ever been halted?—then the citizens will cease to be free. So much of their lives will become defined by some type of government largess that they will really only live at the behest of the state.

some will enjoy this. Aristotle called such men "natural slaves."

It is clear, then, that some men are by nature free, and others slaves, and that for these latter slavery is both expedient and right.

Be prepared to learn Chinese - Isn't "the borrower servant to the lender"?

Barak Obama is about to spend more money in the name of the American people than has anyone is history. Don't you wonder where the money is coming from, and why foreign governments would lend such amounts?

Recently Obama's Secretary of State Hillary Clinton traveled to China ("with hat in hand") to request that country to continue purchasing U.S. debt:

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has urged China to keep buying US debt as she wrapped up her first overseas trip, during which she agreed to work closely with Beijing on the financial crisis. Ms Clinton made the plea shortly before leaving China, the final stop on a four-nation Asian tour that also took her to Japan, Indonesia and South Korea, where she worked the crowds to try to restore America's standing abroad. In Beijing, she called on authorities in Beijing to continue buying US Treasury bonds, saying it would help jumpstart the flagging US economy and stimulate imports of Chinese goods. "By continuing to support American Treasury instruments the Chinese are recognising our interconnection. We are truly going to rise or fall together,'' Ms Clinton said at the US embassy here.

A scam at the heart of the US: Who owns your mortgage?

Who owns your mortgage? Hmmm. Didn't you always think that the owner it was the bank where the loan was made? Most of us take out a mortgage after sitting down with at a local bank or savings and loan with officer that could be personally known, or even recommended by family or friends.

Unfortunately what they probably didn't tell you is that your mortgage might be sold, and in many cases, split among several, if not many, parties.

Here is Julian Delasantellis at Asia Time:

Travelers visiting New York city from Americas's rural heartland in the 1980s might have been able to regale the folks back home with tales of encounters with knife-wielding drug addicts and/or disease-scourged prostitutes, but it's not like their predecessors who made the same trek back in the 1950s didn't have a tale to tell around the cracker barrel as well. They might have come back to the square dance and talked about playing and losing at the game of three-card monte.

Set up on rapidly movable folding card tables, in order to remain mobile against the disproving eyes of the constabulatory, three-card monte games were operated by New York sharpies who, when spying a rural rube from Racine, Wisconsin, or maybe Red Wash, Utah, would invite the visitor to play a simple card game. Three cards from a deck would be dealt face up-one a face card such as a King or Queen. Then the cards would be turned face down, the "dealer" would arrange and re-arrange them on the table, and, the contestant would be invited to chance a wager as to which card was the face card.

This was a lot harder than it seemed, especially with the dealer usually employing sleight of hand to hide the face card in his sleeve. No matter how hard he tried, no matter with how much concentration he watched the dealer's hands, the contest could never be won by its very nature; the player was destined to lose the card and his wager - rather like the chances of those facing foreclosure in the current mortgage and financial crisis of ever gaining relief from their hardship.

Chinese Scoop Up SoCal Foreclosures

Get ready, America. Here come wealthy Chinese to buy up parts of America they don't already own through sale of Treasury Bonds that represent our national debt.

And Obama wants to increase our debt to $13 trillion by the of this fiscal year; Insane, don't you think?