Tag: recipe

But first . . .

HOW OLD WILL YOU BE IN 2035?

Mark McMahon: ‘I am currently investing monthly in the Vanguard Target Retirement 2035 Fund as a way to supplement a pension. Are you familiar with this fund and if so would you recommend it for someone who wants a decent return and a hands-off approach?’

☞ Vanguard is always a good choice because of its low expenses and high integrity. And monthly investing, in the long run – whatever economic calamities may occur along the way – is a great way to attain financial security.

LA BUBBLE

In small part:

When the price of houses in California soared 17% in 2003 and 22% in 2004, a curious thing happened: Instead of home ownership decreasing because fewer people could afford houses, it rose to record levels . . .

Confronted with soaring home prices, Californians are adopting a “buy now, pay later” strategy on a massive scale. The boom in interest-only loans – nearly half the state’s home buyers used them last year, up from virtually none in 2001- is the engine behind California’s surging home prices.

But all that borrowed money might be living on borrowed time. When higher bills start coming due, Herron and hundreds of thousands of other homeowners in the state will have to find ways to cope – or will have to sell.

In the most dire scenario, if they owe more on the home than it’s worth, they’ll simply walk away. Abundant foreclosures could spark a downturn in the entire housing market, leading to the long-feared bursting of what some call a housing bubble.

. . . “If you can fog a mirror, you can get a home loan,” said mortgage analyst Ralph DeFranco.

SCALLOPS

John Lemon: ‘Just wanted to say that, as miserable as I have frankly been over the past seven months (what with the election and getting cancer and all – not sure which was worse) I recently experienced a moment of unadulterated ecstasy thanks to your wonderful scallop recipe. I guess while our civil rights are being eroded, the environment is being pillaged and the nation itself becomes increasingly isolated and vulnerable, I can take solace in being able to afford a pound of bi-valve delicacies once a week. It is indeed a grand time to be rich and powerful in America.’

And now . . .

CURVEBALL

Here is why each member of your family has already spent more than $1,000 attacking and occupying Iraq . . . each American’s share of an enterprise whose goals, with better planning and management, could have been achieved at a small fraction of the cost in cash and human tragedy. It turns out that in deciding to launch this effort before we were ready, we relied on one drunk we whom we knew to be highly suspect. And lost the goodwill of much of the world in the process.

Ah, but those scallops!

But first . . .

ACTIVIST JUDGES

A decision by a California judge yesterday, certain to be appealed, held that these gay couples – including one that has been together more than 51 years – are entitled to the same legal rights as any other married couples. Judges in New York City, Washington State – and of course Massachusetts – have found the same thing.

It’s amazing anyone cares so much whether gays get drivers’ licenses, marriage licenses, liquor licenses, or any of the other civil stuff law-abiding citizens get . . . but on the specific issue of ‘activist judges,’ something funny has happened, at least in Massachusetts.

The state legislators who voted in favor of gay marriage were all reelected, while some of those who voted it down have been voted out. It’s expected that when this issue next arises in the Massachusetts legislature, the elected representatives themselves will affirm the Court’s decision. So at least in some small pockets of civilization (Canada is another that comes to mind) it’s not just crazy judges who are interpreting ‘equal protection under the law’ to include gays – it’s legislators.

This is great news for the Republicans, who will try to use gay marriage to cut Social Security benefits, thwart funding for education and health care, impose a global ban on embryonic stem cell research, eliminate the estate tax, criminalize abortion, drill in ANWAR, attain a filibuster-proof lock on all three branches of government – the whole list. The longer gay marriage can be kept in the news, the better.

But what are judges to do? Conclude that a couple of 51 years should be entitled to equal protection under the law – but then rule otherwise?

It is a dilemma. Yet attitudes are changing. Soon, a majority of Americans may decide it’s just not that important to them to deny Rosie O’Donnell’s partner and their kids Social Security survivor benefits . . . or to insist that Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin, a committed couple of 51 years, remain ‘strangers in the eyes of the law.’

What is so fragile about Senator Rick Santorum’s marriage that it is threatened by the happiness and commitment of Phyllis and Del?

Interracial marriage, so long illegal, may not be your cup of tea – but how does it threaten or weaken your own?

Justice Clarence Thomas is married to Virginia, a white woman. But if he had been married to Virginia in Virginia prior to 1967, he could have been arrested.

Let’s hope he remembers that when, eventually, all this comes before him for a decision.

And now . . .

WOOF! WOOF!

Kevin Smith: ‘Another excellent organization is Canine Companions for Independence, which trains assistance dogs for sighted, but otherwise handicapped people. The program is similar to the Guide Dogs program, with early training being provided by volunteers and then intensive training afterwards before being matched with a person. If for some reason the dog does not pass the intensive training, the original trainer has the first right to keep the dog for a small fee. We’ve had several of these dogs in my office (an auditing department), and it’s been a great experience all the way around.’

Michael Roth: ‘Another part of Guide Dogs is that they cull out of the program really well-behaved dogs with good genetics and use them as breeding stock. They are looking for people to house these animals (‘Breeder-Keepers’). The role involves keeping the dog in your home, following the rules of the school, and taking care of them properly. This offers another wonderful opportunity for people to contribute to Guide Dogs and the Guide Dog mission. I am currently a Breeder-Keeper for Genie, a wonderful Golden Retriever, who has had three litters of pups who have gone on to be Guide Dogs.’

LIONS

Tony Spina: ‘Did you know that there are about 60 organizations in the US that train dogs to be eyes for the Blind? Paws with a Cause is one, and my personal favorite is Leader Dogs for the Blind in Rochester Michigan. And I would like to add two additional facts:

• All of the year-long training of the dogs that you wrote about and the weeks-long lodging/feeding/training of the dog’s blind future partner is completely free. Also dogs are given to people living all over the world, not just in a particular state.

• Lions International is a charity that focuses mainly on blindness. So by joining your local Lions Club, you support research to cure and prevent blindness throughout the world, and help your communities while you are doing it. The biggest share of the donations from the Lions Club that I am a member of (Addison Township, Michigan) is sent to Leader Dogs. With more than 46,000 clubs in 193 countries and geographical areas there is a Club to join near you!

Click here for the speech by Helen Keller in 1925, eight years after the Lions founding, that changed its purpose to helping the blind.’

Mike Wallin: ‘While I love the heartwarming stories about guide dogs and the heart burning stories about Brussels sprouts, can you occasionally mention something about money?’

☞ Tomorrow!

BUGS

Peter Vanderwicken: ‘How come I no longer get your column by email? By the way, Brussels sprouts are best cooked by boiling for 10 minutes, then drenching in red wine vinegar.’

☞ Fixed.

Toby Gottfried: ‘You mark some paragraphs with a little hand and outstretched index finger – in Internet Explorer anyway. In Mozilla Firefox, this wingding shows up as the letter F.’

☞ That’s F for Firefox.

TO EACH HER OWN

April Stevens: ‘At the sight of Brussels sprouts my husband will dramatically clutch his heart and cry, ‘No, not green balls of death!’ I have learned to measure and cook them for one.’

BANKRUPTCY

Jim Petersen: ‘When Harry Truman’s business went bust, he did not declare bankruptcy – instead, he worked hard and lived poorly for many years to pay back his debtors. I respect him for it. This is an uncommon value today. I do wish Congress would find a way to support people whose medical expenses exceed their capacity and pay our troops more, but don’t agree that encouraging them to declare bankruptcy is the answer.’

☞ I think anyone with the talent, charisma, and good health to become President of the United States should be ashamed to go bankrupt. And I agree: providing adequate health care to the uninsured would be a great way to reduce personal bankruptcies.

Ed Biebel: ‘Hearing about the change in the bankruptcy laws and all of the disparagements of the people who file bankruptcy drives me up a wall. Back in July 2003, I wrote you about my brother and his travails with his epilepsy and his hospital bills. You’ll see in that piece that, though hard-working, my brother had incurred a large debt through the despicable behavior of his employer. This company owner led employees to believe that they were insured and was taking premiums from their pay but not sending them to the insurance company. My brother was blocked from filing for bankruptcy by the tenacious lawyers from the hospital. My point in writing you is that many people ask why my brother didn’t pursue a claim against his employer. The answer is that the owner of the company and the company itself filed bankruptcy and were protected. Why do I have a feeling this new bankruptcy law will not one whit to protect people from unscrupulous companies that go into bankruptcy? It is a great time to be rich in America.’

Munch: ‘You link to Paul Krugman on the Administration’s bankruptcy bill – ‘tightening the screws on the least fortunate among us, as we gradually turn the clock back to the 1890s,’ as you put it. With the ascendancy of the religious right and corporatism, I would expect to start seeing quotes like this reappearing.’

CARAMELIZED

Marie Coffin: ‘Slice in half and broil until the outside is nearly black. Eat. Yum. Broiling seems to caramelize the sprouts and make them even sweeter and tastier.’

MINIMUM WAGE

Doug Jones: ‘I agree with your position on minimum wage in general. However, Washington and Oregon have relatively high minimum wages, $7.35 per hour give or take. Some McDonald’s restaurants now have call in centers for their drive thru windows, eliminating one or two employees. The call-in centers are located in North Dakota! There’s very little stopping McDonald’s from locating these overseas. So, even some of these jobs can be outsourced to a lower cost provider.’

☞ Talk about Yankee ingenuity. You drive up to the window and ask for Chicken McNuggets or Kibbles & Bits and someone in Pakistan enters this order. Even so, the bulk of the work of fast food chains or motel maid staffs is likely to remain in situ. My hope is that the relatively few jobs lost in a minimum wage hike – I agree there surely would be some – would be more than made up for in the increased economic demand those higher wages created.

WITH KETCHUP

John Kasley: ‘Place rinsed sprouts in microwave dish. Add a generous slug of ketchup (yes, ketchup). Roll them around in it. Cook for a while. Eat from dish.’

☞ Now you’re Cooking.

Monday: More of Your Minimum Wage Comments, and a Real Dog

color code: sprouts are green; bankrupts, deep in the red; minimum-wage earners, dirt poor

Tomorrow: Your thoughts on the minimum wage. Today: Don’t miss the links beneath these sprouts.

BRUSSELS SPROUTS

Mark Kirby: ‘I hope your praise of this unjustly maligned vegetable will encourage others to come forth.’

☞ And forth they came . . .

Bart: ‘A moment’s more work, creating a taste that has received enthusiastic endorsement from every Brussel Sprouts eater ever invited to our table. Boil sprouts in a generous amount of plain chicken broth. Do not overboil to point of mush. Drain all the broth from sprouts. Roll wet sprouts in and coat well with bread crumbs seasoned with a generous amount of ground black pepper and oregano. Lightly brown the sprouts in butter in a hot skillet. Serve immediately. When possible, purchase the sprouts still on the stalk. We generally prepare this as a last minute dish. Removing the stalk of sprouts from the refrigerator sparks conversation and allows one to extol the dish.’

☞ They come on stalks? I thought they were like little vegetable plums. In any event, Bart’s concept of ‘a moment’s more work’ does not quite jibe with mine. To me, a moment’s more work is putting them on a plate instead of eating them straight from the colander.

David: ‘Boil a bit, sauté a bit with butter and walnuts or pecans. Mmmm, good.’

☞ Sauté? What is this, sauté? We are Cooking Like a Guy™, may I remind you, not like a Guy de Maupassant.

Michael Ammerman: “Just as there is an S on ‘Cliffs’ in ‘Cliffs Notes,’ there is an S on ‘brussels’ in ‘brussels sprouts,’ the name derived from the Belgian city.”

☞ Well, I checked before I put that up – Google has 118,000 references to Brussel Sprouts. But in response to this e-mail, I checked and see 328,000 hits for Brussels Sprouts . . . so henceforth I will go with the crowd.

TWO LINKS WORTH CLICKING

Here is James Grant with his dour view of the investing landscape (if Warren Buffett has $43 billion parked on the sidelines, maybe the sidelines are not an entirely dumb place to be).

And here is Paul Krugman on the Administration’s bankruptcy bill (tightening the screws on the least fortunate among us, as we gradually turn the clock back to the 1890s).

BRUSSEL SPROUTS

Buy. Boil. Salt. Eat. One of life’s simplest underappreciated pleasures.*

RELIVE YOUR YOUTH

This site – thanks, Roger – reminds you how old you were when big things happened. Don’t miss the links that show how old you likely were when you first heard certain songs or saw certain movies. You can even print personalized, if somewhat gruesome, birthday cards (‘You were 7 years old when the Challenger blew up – Happy Birthday!’).

And now . . .

WHAT SHALL WE PAY THE NIGHT WATCHMAN?

Brooks: ‘I understand and basically agree with the principled reason for not raising the minimum wage: namely, that higher wages will reduce total employment because some employers will not be able to keep as many employees on payroll at the higher rate.’

☞ We no longer sew a lot of clothes – those jobs are already gone. Typical minimum wage jobs these days can’t easily go overseas. Hotel maids and fast-food employees are not going to lose their jobs to the Chinese if their pay is raised (for the first time in 9 years) from $5.15 to $7 an hour.

If all the competitors in an industry must raise wages, no one competitor is disadvantaged. The price of a burger might go up a nickel; the cost of a hotel room, a dollar . . . but people will not abandon fast food for home cooking over a nickel or sleep in their car over a dollar.

If it’s not overdone, raising the minimum wage should have far more positive effects than negative. It enhances the value of work and personal dignity. It creates more spending power among people who might actually spend it. And that boosts the economy, creating more jobs and profit. Certainly raising the minimum wage nine years ago did not raise unemployment, which fell to the lowest levels in our history.

Hiking the minimum wage gives people at the bottom a fairer shake, but also helps employers who want to give that fairer shake, yet can’t now because doing so unilaterally would put them at a competitive disadvantage.

The U.S. should espouse a global treaty requiring each signatory to establish a minimum wage – however low – and requiring ‘best efforts’ to raise that wage each year until it reaches the median minimum wage for all the signatories. All voluntary, but a matter of national pride and, when quantified this way, something to shoot for.

*For a few words on underappreciated vegetables generally, click here.

The market is high, given the huge problems we face. Bill Gross’s December letter is well worth the read. The dollar will continue to sink – especially against the eventually-to-be-revalued Chinese Yuan. The price of imported goods will rise. And sooner or later inflation and interest rates will rise here, too.

Of course, one of the (few?) justifications for the Dow over 10,000 here is that, relative to the Euro, say, it’s actually fallen to bargain levels, and will get cheaper still. When the Euro was at 90 American cents, buying $10,000 worth of the Dow at 10,000 (say) cost 11,111 Euros. With the Euro at $1.32, the same Dow at 10,000 now costs a mere 7,575 Euros. So it seems to us unchanged, but to the Europeans, it’s 32% cheaper.

And if the Chinese can buy IBM’s PC business, who’s to say, as they revalue their currency upward, they may not buy other U.S. assets and shares, driving up their prices and pumping funds into the bank accounts of the sellers, to be reinvested in other shares?

Moreover, while it is easy to envision all kinds of terrible scenarios – and there is a real chance one or more may materialize – we should never rule out brighter possibilities. With Arafat gone, the world really might be able to make peace in the Middle East, beginning a virtuous cycle as the seeds of bitterness and terror gave way to the power of hope and dreams. The election in Iraq could take place as scheduled and things could actually begin to get better (even though the CIA seems to think they will get worse). As King Abdullah II of Jordan told Chris Matthews yesterday, no one knows if this will happen. But if Iraq could join the modern world, it would be the beginning of a much brighter future.

So there is much to hope for – who among us did not hope we’d be greeted with flowers when we invaded Iraq? – and, I think, even more to be worried about.

SELL APPLE

Suggested here last November 25 at around $4 when the stock was just above 20, Apple’s long-term calls (known as LEAPS) are now around $43, with the stock at 63. Stupidly, foolishly, and reprehensibly, I suggested selling half at the end of March, for little more than a double (what was I thinking?). And later, when the LEAPS had tripled, I suggested perhaps selling a like number of out-of-the-money calls to make for what would have been a likely quadruple while you waited for the LEAPS to go long-term. So if you followed these suggestions, you would have long since doubled half your money and quadrupled the other half, but be sitting here like me, rocking back and forth wringing your hands, imagining how sweet life would be if you had just held on.

But while I can make an (uninformed, seat-of-the-pants) case for AAPL at 200 a few years from now, I have to think that if you had the good fortune not to see or act on my earlier profit-taking suggestions, now you surely should. Sell.

Yes, the company has no debt and close to $6 billion in cash and marketable securities (so you’re in effect paying ‘only’ $19 billion for the company, not its full $25 billion market cap). And yes it has a great young CEO and a phenomenal brand with fanatically loyal customers. But it earned only $276 million in fiscal 2004, which isn’t such a hot return even on $6 billion in cash and securities, let alone a $25 billion market cap. And if you had adjusted those earnings to account for stock option grants, as corporate America is likely to have to start doing this coming year, the $276 million, I’m told, would have been just $168 million. (And 2003 and 2002 would both have shown losses.)

Indeed, you might want to take a small bit of your realized profit from the LEAPS and buy (say) a July, 2005, 75 put, which last traded at $14.80 ($1,480), so that if the stock were $55 next July, you’d have turned your $1,480 into $2,000 . . . and if it were $45, you’d have turned it into $3,000, doubling your money, before taxes, in little more than 6 months.

But I’m not doing this (and at least for now missed my chance to do something like it when the stock hit $69), because Apple might just stay where it is or go up. One of my friends, who shorted Apple at a painfully lower price, scoffs at its 2% share of the computer market. But what if those millions of iPod owners not only continued to buy iPod add-ons and next-generation iPods, and all that . . . but began buying Macintoshes and, over the next few years, Apple’s market share rose from 2% (or whatever sliver it actually is) to 10%? Or even 5%?

Profits could well rise out of proportion to sales (tripling sales might only double costs), and maybe Apple’s profits jump 10-fold. You could have a $200 stock.

I am absolutely, positively, definitely not predicting this. But to me, Apple’s price here, while unattractive, is not necessarily bubblesville.

See how hard this is? I own an iPod, I’ve been to business school, I’ve spent at least half an hour thinking about all this, and still I don’t know what to do. I’m very happy having taken my lovely profit and now being off on the sidelines, neither long nor short, watching.

(My friend who is short thought Apple, instead of Lenovo, the Chinese firm, should buy the IBM PC business. What a nice little irony that would have been.)

COOKING LIKE A GUY™

The work proceeds apace. Like a soufflé (which you’ll find nowhere in my book), it cannot be rushed. Principal photography has begun. (I am having creative differences with the photographer. I need scruffy. I need ketchup stains.)

In any event, I present you:

Recipe 19 – Sinless Strawberry Sin
Step #1: Buy fresh strawberries and a can of fat-free Reddi-Wip.
Step #2: Having uncapped and shaken the Reddi-Wip – and marveled that the entire can, at 5 calories a serving, has just 200 calories – grab a strawberry by its green-leafy handle and swivel your wrist so that the berry itself faces mouthward.
Step #3: Shuzzle a snowdrift of Reddi-Wip on top . . . eat . . . repeat.
Step #4: Once all the strawberries are gone (this being America and you being a guy), invert the Reddi-Wip and place its nozzle in your mouth like a straw. Shuzzle one final crescendo. If there is a heaven, it must be very much like this.

YOUR WEEK-END ASSIGNMENT

And it will take you only 5 minutes: Bill Gross’s aforelinked December letter.

CONDI

The good news is that naming an extraordinarily talented black woman Secretary of State sends a terrific message, both to people here at home (especially young African-Americans) and to people around the world (especially in nations that oppress women or that would prefer to think of America as racist). Condoleezza Rice is a quadrilingual, figure-skating, concert piano-playing star.

The bad news is that, unlike her two predecessors (who were, combined, a black woman), she is the wrong person for the job. Where Bill Clinton arguably needed a Secretary of State who could help him go to war in Serbia (namely, Madeleine ‘What’s the point of having this superb military . . . if we can’t use it?’ Albright) . . . and George Bush certainly needed a Secretary of State to slow his rush to war in Iraq (namely, Colin ‘you break it, you own it’ Powell) . . . what Bush gets in Rice is not a counterbalance but rather, in effect, a co-conspirator. Or so one fears. So State may be purged of dissenting voices, as the CIA will be; the House and the Senate are already under tight rightwing control; the Judiciary tilts ever more rightward, as does the press. What ever happened to checks and balances?

YES BUSH CAN

You may recall that I erroneously billed this group (yesbushcan.com) as Kerry converts, when in fact they were pro-Kerry all along, just having a little fun. ‘Other stunts they’ve pulled,’ I just now learn from one of your pre-election e-mails I’m catching up on, ‘include stealing Barbie and GI Joe dolls off store shelves and swapping the voice boxes, so Barbie wants to go to war and GI Joe wants to go shopping and do his nails.’ I’m beginning to get the picture.

IS IT ME, OR IS IT HOT IN HERE?

Dan Kinsella: ‘It would appear that the global warming increase in the last 100 years that you referred to a few days ago is actually due to bad math. Click here. That doesn’t mean that global warming isn’t happening, just that the study that everyone refers to as ‘proof’ is wrong. More refereed studies would have to be run to see if the temperature has actually changed much in the last 100 years.’

☞ The temperature may not have changed much in the last 100 years. What I couldn’t tell from clicking that link is whether the two premises I’ve been operating on are wrong. The first is a spectacular rise in CO2 levels in the past century or so – after 400,000 years of moderate, regular cycles. (This data derived from glacial ice samples. The deeper you drill, the older the ice and the air trapped within. Or so I’m told.) The second, is the way, over those 400,000 years, temperature seemed consistently to follow the CO2 cycle. Did the bad math undermine either of those premises? If so, I need to post a correction here.

But I’d also ask: Do we really need to be 100% sure before we do something? What if there were only a 20% chance of catastrophe . . . would that not be worth beginning to take action to avert? And doesn’t common sense suggest that the modern-day activities of 6 billion people likely would have an effect on the environment? I’m not saying that if we all stamped our feet at the exact same moment the planet would shatter, although if we all gathered in one corner, like a pimple on a baseball, I feel sure we’d wobble its rotation. But why wouldn’t burning 70 million barrels of oil a day into the atmosphere (and however many tons of coal) eventually have some impact?

STUFF I OWE YOU

It’s just so hard to catch up! But . . . the Ten Commandments of E-mails (thanks to your refinements) . . . the Calico Cat Denouement . . . some more of your thoughts about the election . . . an (insincere) apology for talking so much about the election . . . responses to your responses to my responses about the election . . . my acorn squash recipe* . . . and coming soon, I hope: ‘Bin Thinking About the Dollar.’

*Oh, okay, here it is: BUY one acorn squash, STAB it once with a knife so it doesn’t explode, MICROWAVE for 8 minutes unless it’s very small (6 minutes) or your microwave is pretty lame (10 minutes). Voila! CUT in half, SALT and BUTTER (I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter Lite), DIG IN – and yes, it’s fine to eat the seeds and all the rest, though I eschew the skin.

My God the things you learn from this column you never got from Rukeyser.

SCALLOPS

Frank Nash: ‘You say, ‘Turn the scallops over and push ’em around a little.’ Don’t turn them over. Cook on one side only. The result is a splendid golden crust on one side and a much juicier scallop – no need to upend the pan to drink the juice, the juice remains in the scallops.’

☞ Chacon a son gout. (I don’t speak French and spelled haricot vert wrong yesterday, but I keep trying.)

YES, BUSH CAN

It seems the YES, BUSH CAN folks I’ve referred to a couple of times here didn’t really start out as Bushies and convert – they were anti-Bush all along. Sorry not to have caught that. Click here for their exploits.

ARROGANCE

Katie: ‘Your column beautifully illustrates why the Dems lost. You arrogantly assume that the people who voted for Bush were uninformed. The arrogance of the elites is why you lost this election. The majority of Americans can and do examine the facts and decide for themselves. That they choose to ignore you and the Dems does NOT make them uniformed. It means they disagree. But until you and your party can figure out that you do not know what’s best for the rest of us, you will continue to lose national elections.‘

☞ If the surveys are right, 60% to 70% of Bush voters believe Iraq had a significant hand in attacking us. That’s just one of many examples, but not an unimportant one.

Thomas Jefferson said, ‘If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.’

My fear is two-fold. First, that our citizenry does an only so-so job of staying informed. Second, that we are served by an increasingly consolidated, increasingly intimidated press.

As to the arrogance of ‘knowing what’s best for the rest of us,’ there are places where, yes, we would intrude – for example, we wanted to extend the ban on the sale of assault weapons. But that’s an area where polls show most people agree with us.

At the same time, there are so many areas where your elites believe they ‘know what’s best for the rest of us.’ For example:

• The Bush Administration says the people of California may not use medical marijuana to relieve their pain or reduce the nausea of chemotherapy – never mind the referendum by which they enacted this. The Bush Administration knows what’s best for them.

• The Bush Administration says terminally ill Oregonians may not choose assisted suicide, even though the people of Oregon twice passed this by referendum. The Bush Administration knows what’s best for them.

• The Bush team says abortion should be illegal. They know better than women and their doctors how to make this difficult choice – even though a majority of the country disagrees.

• The Bush team says that Charles and I should be denied equal rights – perhaps even jailed (as per the Texas law that Governor Bush supported but that, to his dismay, the Court struck down) – because they know better than we do whom it is okay for us to love.

• The Bush team says we cannot adopt, even if the trained social workers and family court judge believe it would be in the best interest of the child. The Bush Administration knows what’s best for the child.

So I think it maybe works both ways.

ONE FUNDAMENTALIST’S VIEW

From John Leonarz:

I write as a fundamentalist, born-again Christian, a Democrat and a strong Kerry supporter. I drove down to Jacksonville, FL, to give three days driving voters to the polls and do my bit to preclude a repeat of the debacle of 2000, when many thousands of votes (Dem.) were uncounted in Duval County. While at the Dem HQ a lady came in to ask for a bumper sticker which would say “Christians for Kerry.” There weren’t any. Apparently the campaign never made any of them up. The Black people I assisted were very strong Christians and had no difficulty seeing that God wanted them to support the Democratic Party.

Mr. Kerry was a red (blue?) flag to these people – “liberal”, Catholic, anti-Vietnam war, pro-abortion, pro-Gay, from Massachusetts, and “nuanced.” If we expect to win, ever again, we will have to meet these people at least half way with someone who is a recognizable, sincere, biblically-literate Christian. This person need not be a gay-basher, nor one who wants to re-criminalize abortion (mostly the right-wing does not want actually to recriminalize abortion). The candidate would have to begin with a simple, consistent, pro-American, pro-gun, pro-conventional-marriage base. Strong support for a proper health care system, strong defense, strong anti-terror program. The person should be a church-attending, credible veteran free of antiwar notoriety, a person with stature as a leader and politician, probably a Governor. The person must be well-vetted because the Republicans will take any incident out of context and make up stuff to discredit the person. The person must have a record of making good decisions and staying with them. Decisions should be informed, but not marked by long periods of study. Bush would have been vulnerable to a charge that he made snap decisions made on guesswork and then let himself become the prisoner of his ego. We never said that in so many words.

The gay marriage issue is answered for a concurrent majority of Christians by the appeal to fairness – i.e, advocacy of the civil union, together with the comment that “God knows who is married and who is not, and only God’s opinion counts.”

The gun issue is answered by taking the position that one will respect the opinions of law enforcement organizations, and that therefore gun-owning, public spirited citizens have nothing to fear from the Democratic party.

Christian voters abhor the idea of giving huge tax breaks to the wealthy, to be paid for by our children and grandchildren, but would not vote for Democrats because of the general fear of creating a massively secular, big-brotherly type of society, oriented to deterioration of the family and indulgent toward unconventional sexual mores.

Bush’s comment that the majority of the tax cut went to low income citizens, was misunderstood by most. What he apparently based it on was the number of persons in the categories who received tax cuts, which was unquestionably highest among those of low income. [OK, but if you gave a $5 cut to each of 100 million low-income households and a $1 million cut to the top 10,000, that would be $500 million for the people at the bottom and $10 billion to the people at the top. Wouldn’t it be purposely deceptive to deny that such a scheme gave most of the benefit to the wealthy, as Gore suggested, and state flatly, as Bush did, that “by far the vast majority” of the tax cut would go to people “at the bottom end of the economic ladder”? – A.T.]

Christian voters are not as stupid as many Democrats think they are. (Some of them, of course, are.) In general, Christians were greatly annoyed at the blatant lies put out by the Republicans, and appalled at the casual way in which they made stuff up as they went along. All things equal, a Christian will vote against that kind of tactic. In future we must adhere to a well-publicized effort toward truth and fair dealing in our campaign statements. When we slip from this standard we have to be prompt and full with our explanation and recognition of the truth, even apology, which can be even more devastating than any exaggeration we might have put forth.

We must recognize that Republicans are not interested in facts, only in values and impressions. If the world divides between the nerds and the jocks, they are the jocks, and the jocks are more numerous. Did it matter whether Iraq played a role in 9-11? No. Or that Bush is a heartless scoundrel (the Tucker case, the suppression of photos of the returning caskets)? No.

A decent regard for the heartland religion is key, because the heartland is where the electoral votes are. Karl Rove knows that, and that will still be true in 2008.

HOUSEKEEPING

1. Sorry about yesterday’s typos and garbles. I cleaned them up yesterday afternoon.

2. Sorry if you’ve me-mailed recently. I have more than 1,000 backed up and may for a brief time have to welsh on my normal practice of reading them all.

3. For those of you who may have come to this column because of the election, and thus not know what it’s about or how it works . . . it started in 1996, when Ameritrade asked me to write a daily comment for their web site. You can read about that here, on the occasion of my 750th and final column for Ameritrade . . . or here, on the occasion of the 2000th. (You don’t see the numbers, but today’s is #2154).

I keep the subscription price low because I learn at least as much from my readers as they do from me. I often feel as if I should be paying YOU. (Predictably, the feeling passes.)

But in return you have to suffer a lot of bad columns and a great deal of self-indulgence on my part (such as this parenthetical rumination on the topic of: ‘on who else’s part could self-indulgence be than one’s own?’) . . . with, I greatly hope, the reward of, here and there, from time to time, a thought on personal finance that makes you money. Or a thought on a political or economic issue that makes you think. (I particularly value those of you who come here who do not necessarily share my view of the world.) Or a thought that makes you smile. Or a recipe from my ongoing series, Cooking Like a Guy™, so fundamentally appalling that it makes you better appreciate your partner’s cooking.

SEA SCALLOPS

Sometimes my cooking is so good it dazzles even me.

1. Get rich enough so you can afford sea scallops, at $14 a pound, at the fresh fish counter of your supermarket. (They’re big white lumps, but not slimy. Be a man. Don’t be afraid to touch them.) Get half a pound for each of you.

2. Take your magic pan – everyone needs a little magic Teflon-coated pan – pour in a little olive oil and rub it around with your fingers so it coats the bottom of the pan.

3. Turn on the burner and, after a minute or two, when the pan is hot, drop in the scallops. This is far easier for the squeamish guy than lobster. The scallops are white lumps. They don’t scream little scallop screams the way lobsters do.

4. Sprinkle some interesting salt and ground pepper over top, sing a bawdy song . . . turn the scallops over and push ‘em around a little. Think about the Bears and the Bruins and the Bengals and the date you wish were watching you admiringly from the couch – guy stuff.

5. Stab fork into pan, lift sea scallop triumphantly, allow to cool a few seconds, and eat.

6. Is that not completely delicious? You’re telling me it is!

7. Now look skyward as you lift the pan above your mouth and drain the remaining olive-oily salt-and-peppery sea scallop juice down your gullet. Never in your life have you found a superior happiness.

8. Rinse out the pan and wipe dry with a rag.

• Elapsed time from commencement through consumption to completed cleanup – 7 minutes.

• If you do have a date on the couch, serve on plates instead, with some frozen green beans you tell her are “haricot vert” and microwaved before she came. Low light, a candle, and a bottle of Chardonay . . . man, are YOU ever going to score points.

BLACK TUESDAY

Professor David Kaiser began a blog last month that included this snippet from a long October 30 post, just before the election:

The election pits two entirely different philosophies against one another. On the one hand, the Democrat John Kerry wants, essentially, to continue building upon the achievements of Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson, with a nod to Bill Clinton’s remarkable budget-balancing achievements. On the other, George W. Bush wants almost entirely to undo the work of the twentieth century, vastly reducing public services, effectively ending environmental regulation, reducing or eliminating progressive taxation, privatizing social security, and essentially substituting faith for reason as our guide. Abroad, meanwhile, he has already junked 60 years of multilateralism and commitment to international law in favor of a belief in the efficacy of unbridled American force.

These changes are so dramatic that many in the major media refuse to believe they are taking place. Richard Cohen of the Washington Post has expressed astonishment at his many friends who see catastrophe lurking if Bush should be reelected, and when Wall Street Journal reporter Ron Suskind told Chris Matthews that many Bush supporters see the President as a messenger from God, Matthews exclaimed, “Oh, come on!” – prompting Suskind to exhort Matthews to get out of Washington and see what was happening in the rest of the country.

The wholesale repudiation of the beliefs of our educated elite at the highest levels of our government—amply documented in Suskind’s recent New York Times Magazine article—does come as a shock, but Strauss and Howe’s historical scheme helps understand how it has happened. Nor is it without precedent in western history, as something quite similar happened in Great Britain at the end of the eighteenth century . . .

☞ If you have time, it’s worth reading the whole thing.

Happy birthday, Marc!