As I sat down to read and write the APR this evening, I decided to try something new. Or something old, really. What’s new is just that I’m combining it with APR.
Before I went to the first story on the list, I got out a large glass bowl with a plastic lid, added 700 grams of bread flour, 2/3 of a package of instant yeast, and a teaspoon and a half of kosher salt. I whisked that all together, then I added 520 grams of cool water. Or at least, I started with 520 — which is what the original recipe called for about 100 loaves ago — but it never turns out to be quite enough for me, so I keep another 20-30 grams in reserve, ready to splash in after I’ve mixed the rest together with the handle of a wooden spoon. It took about half that extra water this time.
When it was all together in one big sticky mass, I popped the lid on and walked away. That gave me 45 minutes to do a little reading, a little writing, before I headed back to open the bowl, wet my hands, plopped the dough out on a damp counter for a moment, worked it around just a little, then dropped it back in the bowl and resealed the lid. I repeated this three more times, with 45 minutes in between each dough-mangling.
After that final pass, I floured the counter instead of wetting it, sprinkled more flour on the dough, and got my hands good and floury. Then I dropped the whole mass on the counter and cut it into four more-or-less equal pieces. I do not weigh them. Each little piece gets shaped up into a little loaf then all four loafs go under a tea towel to hang out for about 20 minutes. While they’re waiting, I get out a cake pan and set in on the bottom shelf of the oven. Into the cake pan goes a cup of water — so that as the oven heats, there will be steam. Steam, for reasons I’ve never really investigated, makes bread crispy. Don’t try to figure it out.
Finally, each of the little loaves gets shaped into a rough rectangle, pounded nearly flat, dusted with flour, and rolled up into a little tube. One at a time they go onto a floured tea towel, folded just enough to keep them from touching each other. Real bakers use something called a “couche” made from heavy linen. Honestly, I don’t even know why the bread goes on cloth at this point, I just know that it does, and I know that a plain old tea towel (not the terrycloth kind) works fine.
With all four baguettes laid out on the cloth, another tea towel went on top and they got to wait one last 20 minute period while the oven heated up. Finally, they were rolled onto a pair of lightly “pammed” baking sheets and slipped into the steamy oven above the cake pan. I tossed in another cup of water at that point, just to keep the steam up.
Theoretically, they cook in about 15 minutes. Only they never do for me. I check them at 15, and at 20, and at 25, and somewhere around 30 they actually start to look tempting. But this time, like so many time, I messed up one baguette. I didn’t get the little scores sliced across it well enough, and it split open, making a kind of ugly loaf. So I’m eating it. Right now. Steamy hot with butter and some local honey. I’m not even bothering to cut it, just listening to the crust crackle so beautifully as I tear off one piece after another. There’s a reason everyone thinks my recipe only makes three baguettes. One is always gone before sunrise.
Okay, let’s read pundits. And eat warm bread.
Jonathan Chait is on the story of the week — how environmentalists turned Trump orange.
New York Magazine
President Trump, speaking from inside the White House, delivered a series of bizarre remarks about his plans to weaken environmental regulations. Trump claimed water conservation standards have gotten so tight that toilets frequently require people to flush ten or fifteen times in a single trip …
Ten or fifteen times? What people? And what they eating that is causing this? Trump did not say.
The President also added that he intends to weaken standards of electricity usage in light bulbs. The new, efficient bulb “doesn’t make you look as good. … It gives you an orange look. I don’t want an orange look.”
It seems absolutely fitting that Mr. Executive Time, the king of the golden throne, would have some genuinely disturbing thoughts about … going potty.
It is interesting that Trump blames efficiency standards for his orange look. Trump, unlike most Americans, reportedly keeps a container of Bronx Colors brand face makeup, plus two full backup containers, in his bedroom at all times, and constantly needs new shirts because the thick makeup leaves “rust-colored stains on the collars.” Very few people have a problem with looking orange all the time, even though everybody has to use light bulbs that conform to EPA standards. Logic would seem to dictate the makeup he slathers onto his skin, rather than the light bulbs, are causing his orange appearance.
Everyone laughs at Trump’s orange skin, but without that stuff, he would bear an uncanny — and really unpleasant — appearance to that scene where Luke takes Vader’s helmet off. Trump’s natural skin color seems to be somewhere on the spectrum defined by “grub.”
Will Bunch on why Pete Buttigieg is doing no one any favors by cheaping out on his college plan.
Philadelphia Inquirer
Pete Buttigieg, the South Bend mayor who’s wowed pundits with a spike in the polls, especially in first-in-the-nation Iowa, is an avatar of the college-affordability-has-to-be-affordable crowd. And so the 37-year-old White House hopeful — who personally excelled at the current game, gaining admission to Harvard and becoming a Rhodes scholar — made news recently with his $500 million plan that aims to build on the status quo. The Hoosier wants to sharply increase spending on Pell Grants — the government’s main affordability vehicle for decades — and on career-oriented training while also aiming to make public universities free, but only for families making less than $100,000.
In 1862, abolitionist Wendell Phillips expressed his displeasure at Abraham Lincoln’s unwillingness to commit to ending slavery. Lincoln instead suggested several alternatives, including “recolonization” of slaves in Africa, out of concern over the effect abolition might have on the election and the nation. Phillips called Lincoln a "first rate, second rate man."
Pete Buttigieg’s college plan is a first rate, second rate plan. Yes, it improves on what we have now, but it doesn’t come close to what’s needed. And by embracing the idea that we can’t afford to send America’s youth to college, Buttigieg is far more a guardian of the status quo than any of the older candidates he’s facing.
“To me, it’s a plan that somebody would have proposed in the 1990s,” Sara Goldrick-Rab, the Temple University professor of higher-education policy and sociology, told me. Goldrick-Rab is a college-affordability guru, routinely sounded out by politicos, including the Buttigieg campaign. She said that there are things to like in his plan — such as a food-insecurity proposal for community college students — but that overall his limited vision overlooks a rarely mentioned asset of bolder proposals: The concept that higher education is a public good. “He’s missing," she said, "a major opportunity, frankly, to move beyond class warfare in higher ed.”
First rate, second rate.
Aisha Sultan has a Twitter experience way too common for women, people of color, and everyone.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
A Twitter user fired off a string of vulgar and bigoted tweets at 2:23 a.m. I was tagged in one that included the usual racist and expletive-ridden rants that are a dime a dozen on social media. It was another post that caught my eye.
“We’ll get rid of her.” That’s how this poster responded to a congratulatory tweet about my sister’s election in Texas. My sister is a sitting state judge.
I reported the tweets and threat to Twitter and sent screenshots to my sister, who passed them along to law enforcement.
This came on the heels of reports that a Republican candidate in St. Petersburg, Florida, recently sent a fundraising email saying U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Democrat from Minnesota, should be hanged. Omar’s Republican challenger in Minnesota was permanently suspended from Twitter for also suggesting the congresswoman should be tried for treason and hanged. Last month, Omar asked for leniency in the sentencing of a New York man who pleaded guilty in Federal District Court for threatening to kill her.
Omar, like my family, is Muslim.
Sultan is consistently one of my favorite writers working for any paper. I don’t feature her as often as I’d like, because she frequently covers local topics, and I generally leave those out of this compilation. But she’s worth reading at any time … and especially this week.
Outrage is too familiar a feeling on social media — that flash of anger and disgust at the latest moral transgression, blatant lie or hypocrisy. Some exist in a constant state of outrage, while others profit from peak outrage production. The line between expressing moral outrage to threatening violence against political opponents, however, is getting blurrier in the digital age.
Go read the rest.
Nancy LeTourneau is … absolutely righteous.
Washington Monthly
With the release of the report from the House Intelligence Committee on their impeachment hearings, Trump’s enablers are outraged that Representative Adam Schiff got access to the phone records of key players in Giuliani’s extortion scheme. According to Byron York, of particular concern is the fact that those records include telephone calls by John Solomon.
Finally, the publication of John Solomon’s records raised still other issues, this time about freedom of the press. In the excitement over the Democratic report, there was little or no discussion about the problems that might arise from the House Intelligence Committee publishing a journalist’s phone records. But in the past, at least when President Trump was not involved, similar issues have been a concern of press advocates…
Searching media coverage Tuesday and Wednesday, there was little or no discussion on whether Schiff’s disclosure touched on Solomon’s First Amendment rights. Solomon is the target of much criticism in mainstream reporting, but he is a journalist who should enjoy the same protections as others in his profession.
York isn’t the only one complaining. The guy who smeared a U.S. ambassador with a mountain of lies in order to get her fired actually had the nerve to talk about a lack of decency.
The problem with claiming that someone like Solomon deserves the protections of the first amendment is that he wasn’t acting as a journalist. While he calls himself an “investigative journalist,” he’s not simply a conservative reporter as some would suggest. He’s been a political operative for years now.
The only reason I didn’t say you had to read Sultan’s piece is because you have to read LeTourneau’s. It’s a prerequisite for … reading any further. Go. Read.
Art Cullen on the cost, and idiocy, of Iowa taking Medicad private.
Storm Lake Times
One of the first acts of the Iowa Legislature next month will be to pass a $120 million supplemental appropriation to cover the cost of privatizing the government insurance plan for the elderly, disabled and working poor. The decision by former Gov. Terry Branstad, embraced by Gov. Kim Reynolds, has been a fiscal disaster and a burden on our most vulnerable neighbors.
Do not expect that anything will be done to fix it. Gov. Reynolds cannot admit that there is a problem with the reform that has cost Iowa at least $400 million more than the former Medicaid program run by the Department of Human Services. It also is apparent to us, at least, if not the auditors or Republican legislative leaders, that the program is creating at least a $100 million annual budget deficit that is being covered by these supplemental appropriations.
This is an election year. Republicans will want as little attention as possible paid to this train wreck. They control the legislature and probably will approve the supplemental appropriation without much debate, if any, and then proceed to spend with even more abandon to secure their re-election and control of the entire statehouse.
Cullen usually writes a couple of topics each week, one of them more local and one often directed at the activities of the Democrats in his state for real soon now primary. But this week it’s the “local” story that has national implications.
Branstad in one of his final acts as governor before decamping to his new job as ambassador to China claimed that handing over Medicaid to the management of private insurance companies would save $400 million per year. (He also figured on enhancing our trade relationship with China — look how that worked out!) Instead, the program is about $400 million more expensive. The legislature had to cough up an additional $386 million to keep the insurers involved after they complained of losing money on the deal. They have enjoyed 8% annual contract increases, about twice the inflation of the Medicaid national average. One insurer dropped out because it was such a lousy business.
You just knew that a guy who set up a plan this good, had to end up working for Trump.
Michael Tomasky worries that Medicare for all, is good for none … at least not candidates.
There’s never any one reason that presidential campaigns end. Well, actually, there is, and Kamala Harris acknowledged it in her statement: Money. She was running out of it. It sucks, but it’s life.
Beyond that, though, post-mortems can point to a range of reasons. She never developed a clear rationale. Her campaign was a mess. Her prosecutor background was a killer among the woke. They’re all true to one extent or another. I remember thinking during her announcement speech that while it was obviously really impressively staged and she had a ton of personality, she didn’t seem to have much to say about economics.
I don’t agree with any of Tomasky’s post-mortem of Harris’ except for one thing: Her campaign was a mess. Because it was.
At a time when one of the core issues facing this country, or probably the core issue, is the various crises born of this malignant form of capitalism we’re living under, and when Democrats are desperate for action on inequality and the class war being waged against working people and young people, Harris’ economic world view was never really clear.
But I want to emphasize another point. I’m not saying that this particular factor was decisive for Harris. It probably was not. But it definitely tripped her up. And it’s worth taking note: If you combine Harris and Elizabeth Warren, that makes two campaigns that lost a lot of steam because of Medicare for All.
It was at a CNN town hall in January that Harris wrapped her arms around M4A. An audience member asked her about it. You can see the clip here. Then Jake Tapper followed up with the inevitable do-you-mean-that-private-insurance-would-be-eliminated question, and she said yes to that, too.
On this, I think Tomasky is completely off base. I don’t think Medicare for all had 1 percent of 1 percent to do with Harris withdrawing. This is really stretching to create a “problem.”
Charles Pierce is holding up his lantern, but finding no honest Republicans.
Esquire
Back in 2015, in the wake of the white-supremacist mass murder committed by Dylann Roof at Mother Emanuel church in Charleston, South Carolina, then-Governor Nikki Haley took the genuinely bold step of removing the Confederate battle flag from the grounds of the state capitol building. It was this move that catapulted Haley onto the national stage and even stirred, in the hearts of some wishful and childlike souls, the idea that Haley might be the person who brings the Republican Party back to sanity. "There is a place for that flag," she told CNN at the time. "It's not in a place that represents all people in South Carolina.” Make no mistake. This was a real political risk for Haley.
That was then. This is now, and, having sized up the inmates of Bedlam carefully, Haley apparently has decided to pound her most impressive moment as a public figure into small smithereens. She also apparently would like to be vice president if and when El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago gets tired of hanging around Mike (The Choirboy) Pence. So, we get this, from an interview with Glenn Beck—and if that’s not a giveaway right there, I don’t know what is.
"Here is this guy who comes out with this manifesto, holding the Confederate flag. And [he] had just hijacked everything that people thought of. We don’t have hateful people in South Carolina — there’s always the small minority, that’s always going to be there — but people saw it as service and sacrifice and heritage, but once he did that, there was no way to overcome it.”
The whole interview was one of the sorriest things of the week, but Haley’s statements about the treason flag of racists should haunt her. Right through 2024.
Joan Walsh on the Republican effort to drown out the impeachment by whining.
The Nation
This is what they do. We shouldn’t be surprised.
After three constitutional scholars spent hours making an unimpeachable case for impeaching Donald Trump, while George Washington University’s Jonathan Turley vainly argued otherwise, the whole exercise was upstaged by the well-greased GOP grievance machine. You heard about it: In arguing that Trump was behaving more like a monarch than a democratically elected head of state, Stanford University’s Pamela Karlan quipped, “The Constitution says there can be no titles of nobility, so while the president can name his son Barron, he cannot make him a baron.”
Cue the furies! White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham called the joke “classless,” while first lady Melania Trump harrumphed in a tweet: “A minor child deserves privacy and should be kept out of politics. Pamela Karlan, you should be ashamed of your very angry and obviously biased public pandering, and using a child to do it.” Vice President Mike Pence, brown noser in chief, grabbed the baton: “Impeachment hearings reached a new low,” he intoned, with Karlan’s Barron comment. “Democrats should be ashamed. Enough is enough.” Sadly, ABC’s David Muir even included it in his World News Tonight introduction: “The moment one witness brings up the president’s youngest son—did she cross the line?” (Spoiler alert: No, she didn’t.)
The Barron / Baron thing is one of those stories that makes me want to call up reporters and say, “Why? Why are you doing this? You know this is fake. You know this is created just to distract, and detract, from what’s really important. Why are you giving this air?”
Or punch people. One or the other.
Of course, Karlan’s Barron comment wouldn’t have made headlines without the boost from the teenager’s alleged protectors. If anybody invaded the boy’s privacy, it was the people who blew this up into a big story. Karlan quickly apologized (she didn’t need to), but the right wing, a few mainstream cable hosts, and David Muir had the distraction they needed.
Leonard Pitts is not thrilled by William Barr demanding that he “support the police.”
Miami Herald
Let’s get two things straight right off the bat.
The first is that, in the last few years, no one has protested police wrongdoing more vociferously than African Americans.
The second is that no one has had more reason.
Those reasons include Darrius Stewart, Oscar Grant, Jordan Edwards, John Crawford III, Tamir Rice, Philando Castile, Michael Brown, Terence Crutcher, Sandra Bland, Sean Bell, Rekia Boyd, Botham Jean, Antwon Rose, Amadou Diallo, Anthony Hill, Walter Scott, Eric Garner, Aiyana Stanley-Jones, Freddie Gray, LaQuan McDonald, Stephon Clark, Corey Jones, Atatiana Jefferson and all the other African Americans (almost all of them unarmed) who have inexplicably wound up dead from their encounters with law enforcement.
The horrible thing about that body count … is how far short of the real count it actually is.
So when Attorney General William Barr complains about certain unspecified “communities” protesting against police, let there be no confusion over who he’s referring to. This came in a speech at the Justice Department last week before an audience of cops and prosecutors. Barr compared protests against the Vietnam War a half century ago to those against police misbehavior now.
Americans, he said, “have to start showing, more than they do, the respect and support that law enforcement deserves.” He warned that “if communities don’t give that support and respect, they might find themselves without the police protection they need.”
Threaten much? Well … yes, and subtlety need not apply.
Dana Milbank thinks Trump wrote his own ticket to impeachment.
Washington Post
President Trump all but assured his own impeachment Friday night, but not without kicking out two more legs of the defense of him Republicans had been making in the House. For much of the past week, Republicans in Congress have been demanding that the House majority slow down the impeachment process.
“The issue that we have to deal with going forward is, why the rush?” Rep. Doug Collins (Ga.), the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said this week.
“You set an incredibly short period,” Republican witness Jonathan Turley scolded at a hearing this week.
“It’s the fastest impeachment in history,” echoed House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.).
And for the past couple of months, Republicans in Congress have been demanding that Trump have the opportunity to defend himself in the proceedings.
And then …
But White House counsel Pat Cipollone, in his letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler ((D-N.Y.) on Friday, undermined both complaints: The letter served as a formal answer from Trump refusing the Democrats’ invitation for him to defend himself in the House proceedings, and it instructed Democrats to hurry up.
“House Democrats have wasted enough of America’s time with this charade. You should end this inquiry now and not waste even more time with additional hearings,” it said, adding: "As the president has recently stated: ‘If you are going to impeach me, do it now, fast, so we can have a fair trial in the Senate, and so that our Country can get back to business.’"
Asked and answered, Donald. Asked and answered.