If This Is My Last Column, You’ll Know Why

COOKING LIKE A GUY™

I am sitting here with the label from a package of “refrigerated EGG BEATERS healthy real egg product” and a USE BY date of July 1.

You are thinking that it’s September 22, and I am too late. But I am thinking, “Two thousand and one? This thing has been in the freezer since July 1, 2001?”

Now, freezers are remarkable things, although at some point over the summer (but which summer, I wonder?) I apparently transferred this healthy real egg product from the freezer to the fridge. Didn’t they find a frozen 5,000 year old man in a glacier? They warmed him up, stuck a tennis racket in his hand, and he only lost 6-4, 6-2.

Still, as I gazed at the USE BY date, two conflicting emotions were at were within me – my deep distress at wasting food (even now, there are children starving in China), and my strong will to live. With all the while a third force pulling at my wee brain – hunger. Or perhaps more accurately – hankering. I just had a hankering for some healthy real egg product. And I also have a frying pan even glue wouldn’t stick to. Nothing sticks to this. It puts Charles’s expensive Calphalon™ pans to shame. I think you could literally mix Epoxy in the pan, let it sit, and then just wipe it all out with a rag. It was hanging from a hook high above the bread section at our supermarket when I snagged it for $12.95.

I love this pan.

So I figured if there’s anything wrong, I will see it or smell it, and I opened the container, half expecting a healthy real chicken product to jump out, tennis racket in hand.

But no . . . just the yellow liquid there always is when, every year or so, I treat myself to Egg Beaters.

On with the stove, into the frying pan, toss in some salt and an individually wrapped slice of American cheese (omelet! omelet! I hear you cry) . . . having carefully broken the cheese slice into little pieces for even distribution through the egg product, now quickly turning into a smooth egg pancake if you don’t deftly move it around and fold it over on itself and attempt to give it some texture.

Turn off the heat while Egg Beaters still highly runny, keep moving stuff around, and – voila! Eat it right out of the pan. (No muss, no fuss. This is the essence of COOKING LIKE A GUY™.)

I am here to tell you it was delicious.

If I am not here tomorrow, you will know why.

WE’RE GOING TO WIN

Senator Kerry’s Iraq speech Monday was a hit. His two speeches at our $4 million reception and dinner that evening were terrific. You can see it happening: The fight is rising in our candidate. The powerful end game for which he is known is building – and, while there will surely be bumps along the way – we are going to win.

The latest Zogby poll is now showing Pennsylvania back in our column (we are going to win Pennsylvania) and Florida back to totally tied (we are going to win Florida, also – see last Friday’s column for 10 reasons why).

Electoral-vote.com still shows New Jersey (15 electoral votes) tipping to Bush, based on an outdated September 12 poll – but no WAY will the President carry New Jersey. (Gore won it last time 56/40. And that was WITHOUT Springsteen.)

With New Jersey and Florida, we’re at 281 to their 241. (You need 270.)

We are going to win.

I got an e-mail today (well, yesterday, as you read this) from a well known member of a well known conservative think tank. He sat next to one of his colleagues at a wedding the other day, to whom for now, at least, he asks that I refer as “X.” He says that X is “perhaps the premier conservative policy journalist of our time.” And he says that over the wedding cake he learned that X is voting for Kerry.

Anecdotal, to be sure, but good to hear if you’re working for John Kerry, as I am.

Likewise:

I got $10,000 today from a fellow whose only previous presidential contribution since 1992 – you can look these things up on opensecrets.org – was $500 to Bush.

And I got $25,000 today from an entrepreneur I’ve never met WHO HAD NEVER MADE A POLITICAL CONTRIBUTION BEFORE.

People are getting it. This isn’t business as usual.

President Bush went to the UN today, and – lost in all the understandable focus on Iraq – he affirmed that the United States wants to shut down stem cell research . . . worldwide.

The President called it cloning, which is easier to decry; but the Costa Rican resolution he supports explicitly includes not just reproductive cloning – which almost all agree should be banned – but also therapeutic cloning, the stuff of stem cell research.

Last time, we lost the vote – thankfully – but by the barest of margins, 79-80.

The President has every right to want to impede stem cell research . . . and we have every right not to reelect him.

So if you know any independent voters who worry about things like Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s, let them know about this. It’s not just Nancy Reagan and Ron Reagan who are concerned – everyone should be.

And if your skeptical friends brush off the threat that President Bush will actually manage to seriously impede this research (“Oh, pshaw – that will never happen!”), remind them, first, that by using the expression “pshaw,” they show they are of an age ripe for such afflictions, so they’d best not dismiss this issue too lightly.

And remind them, second, that President Bush has already made considerable progress in impeding this research . . . and that “assault weapons” happened against the wishes of almost everybody, so why not this?

We are now taking cops off the streets and putting a wider variety of assault weapons back ON the streets, and as improbable as that seems, there you have it.

Remind them that a disastrous war happened, that the never-to-be-touched Social Security surplus was spent, that judges like Pickering and Pryor were forced through, that . . . well, before I lose control and turn this ramble into a screed, let me conclude by telling you just one quick fundraising story:

A dear old friend sent me $500 months ago — seemingly HIS first political contribution ever, too.

I sent it back marked “NSF.”

Being a financial guy, he would know, I knew, that NSF is bank shorthand for “Insufficient Funds.”

It was the first time in nearly six years as treasurer I had done that, but this was just not right. He and his wife are as eager as the rest of us to win, and he is a man of good humor, good heart, great intelligence and significant means. Five hundred dollars? The law allows each of us to invest $57,500 in this enterprise – he was missing, at the very, very least, one zero.

Well, after many further entreaties, he sent $5,000 and came to Monday night’s dinner – and left saying it was a terrific night he would never forget.

And that was even before the deep-dish apple crisp with vanilla ice cream.

(As usual with these things – and it kills me – everyone leapt from their seats the minute Senator Kerry finished speaking to go try to say hello to the next President of the United States. So we had 380 desserts left over . . . even after allowing for the several that I, and a handful of other stalwarts who have already met Senator Kerry and who hate to see even a penny of our contributors’ money go to waste, did our patriotic best to consume.)

My point: when people let themselves get involved, and realize they are part of something REALLY IMPORTANT, as my friend ultimately did, it goes from being something they seek to avoid to something they are really proud of having been able to do.

The purpose of this site is not to cost you money. (Note that the Anadarko Petroleum suggested here June 14 at $56.50 broke $64 yesterday and that the NTII re-recommended at $2.60 August 16 now sits around $3.80 – not that this is a fair sampling.) So if you have credit card debt on which you pay interest, stick to your plan to pay it off. Read no further.

And if you agree with President Bush about stem cell research, or about running large deficits to fund giant tax cuts for the best off . . . if you think invading Iraq in the manner we did was well thought out and has discouraged terrorism, then you, too, should read no further. I annoy you enough as it is! And I appreciate your willingness to read my point of view!)

But if you actually could afford to renovate your bathroom – or, dare I dream it – your kitchen . . . and if we do share some of the same concerns . . . then consider putting the renovation off for a year and saving your country instead. Go crazy. Dig deep in these critical last few days. Click here.

Or if it really is a renovation-size contribution you are considering, click “Me-Mail” up top.

When we win, you will know for the rest of your life that at a crucial moment in your country’s history, you helped make the difference in a really tight race. Many of you already have. Thank you!

As for E.L. Doctorow, I have to put him off until tomorrow.