New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson endorsed Barack Obama yesterday. Richardson, twice appointed to high level positions under President Clinton, was thought to be firmly in the Clinton camp. How did the Clinton folks respond?

"An act of betrayal," said James Carville, an adviser to Mrs. Clinton and a friend of Mr. Clinton.

"Mr. Richardson’s endorsement came right around the anniversary of the day when Judas sold out for 30 pieces of silver, so I think the timing is appropriate, if ironic," Mr. Carville said, referring to Holy Week.

In related news, Senator Clinton's chief pollster Mark Penn called Richardson's endorsement ". . . treacherous, but insignificant. More like Axis Sally than Judas, if you ask me."

Note: I've been posting diaries, one per week, to offer some distraction from the usual political shout-fests. I have political views, of course, but I can't often organize them into coherent posts. What I have to share with the community are recipes and meshugenah stories. Today's diary falls into that last camp.

When my uncle died, the house on Atlantic Boulevard stood vacant save for decades-old furniture, piles of trinkets (in Yiddish, tchotchkes), and garbage of one form or another. My parents wanted to know if there was anything I wanted, so I told them: one thing, only one thing. I wanted my grandfather's talent agency publicity photo from his time as a failed actor.

Another in my series of pointless non-candidate diaries designed to give y'all a break from Hillarobamamania.

This is a story about a revelation. Not one of those "LUKE, I AM YOUR FATHER" revelations; this is more of an "I was in love with you all through seventh grade!" revelation.

This is the story of the birth and demise of a political career.

Focaccia is a no-knead Italian quick bread which should be a part of everyone's repertoire. You'll need a few toys to make this one sing -- ideally, a four-cup and a one-cup measure, a good mixer or a strong arm, a rubber spatula for scraping down the sides of the mixer, a paint brush, an open-ended cookie sheet (or pizza peel), a pizza stone, and parchment paper. Of these, the last three are indispensable.

Sorry, no pictures this time. I hope the usefulness and quality of this recipe makes up for it!

Farsumauro: such a lovely, exotic-sounding name for a dish, no? If you don't know what it is, you probably clicked over to find out. And if I had called it what it is, you would have run the other way.

Meat-stuffed meat.

But is this recipe the killer answer to meat loaf? You betcha. It's impressive and tasty enough to serve to company, or just make it for the family if you're feeling especially motivated.

Simple.

Beautiful.

Delicious.

And completely uncommitted to either Presidential candidate. (The bread pudding that is, not me. If the bread pudding has chosen sides, he isn't talking.)

Maybe I'm too cynical, but when Obama quipped that Republicans were whispering their support to him, I thought, "Yeah, sure. Maybe one or two. But is it a movement?"

This morning, though, one of my patients made me realize that perhaps it really is a movement.

In recent weeks, I've gained, then lost, then regained my TU status, and it's all very mysterious to me. But I gather it has something to do with getting recommendations.

I rarely have insightful things to say about politics, however. So what's a bloke to do to get a few recs? Well, if there's one thing I can write about, it's food.

How is food relevant, you ask? Y'all have to eat, don't you?

A study released today in the online journal Health Affairs demonstrates that the time it takes for a patient to see an emergency physician has increased significantly between 1997 and 2004 (Waits To See An Emergency Department Physician: U.S. Trends And Predictors, 1997-2004). The authors, who looked specifically at adults waiting to be evaluated for acute myocardial infarction (AMI), noted some of the greatest increases were for blacks, Hispanics, and women:

Whites waited a median of twenty-four minutes, while blacks waited a median of thirty-one minutes and Hispanics, thirty-three minutes. Females waited slightly longer than males, a median of twenty-six minutes versus twenty-five minutes.

Below the cut: a few random observations from one doc's POV.

On MSNBC a little while ago, Keith Olbermann to Chuck Todd (NBC News Political Director):

I'm not disagreeing with the conventional wisdom about John Edwards, but explain, go through it, walk us through it, why a second place finish that actually exceeded Senator Clinton's by 1%, means that he's not a viable candidate at this point.

I'm not sure which is more depressing: that the House and Senate caved to White House intimidation over the "need" for broader domestic surveillance powers, or that none of my patients -- including a local attorney -- seems to have heard anything about it.

Like many Americans, I had a spike of hope when Democrats won control of the House and Senate last November. Since then, Republican/White House obstructionism combined with the cowardice of certain Democratic members of Congress has tempered (if not destroyed) that hope. And when I despair, I turn to the political blogs for hope; and when those blogs drive me further into depression, I listen to music.

This is a diary about the new Nine Inch Nails CD, Year Zero.

Since November, 2006, the Senate has been stymied several times due to its failure to achieve the 60 votes required for cloture. We've seen this most recently with the immigration bill, and of course with respect to the Senate's apparent inability to press forward on Iraq.

Here's my question: why are our Senators letting it all end at the cloture vote? Why are they so afraid of a filibuster?

mcjoan's post from last week about melamine contamination made me start fretting. I'm my family's chef. What should I feed them?

I'm worrying about melamine in our chicken and pork, mercury in our seafood, E. coli 0157:H7 in our beef and produce.

I don't have an answer to this question, but I do know something which could be a part of the solution: Senators Richard Durbin and Charles Schumer's Safe Food Act of 2007.

Hmm.

On April 26, Joe Scarborough said,

Damn. John Edwards just gave a fantastic closing argument. It was the most human moment of the debate and is the type of snapshot of a candidate's soul that moves voters.

But sometime between April 26 and April 27, Joe had a change of heart . . . leading me to ask: Hey, Joe -- WTF happened?

I'm watching Countdown on MSNBC with Alison Stewart (yup, Keith Olbermann is on vacation) and Richard Wolffe is at it again. I am so very sick of this guy.

This dicholoroacetate (DCA) story keeps dogging me. A cheap drug which kills all cancers! But Big Pharma won’t let the cat out of the bag, because it’ll kill their billion-dollar profits! Does a story get any sexier than that? Think about it: cancer fears; a discovery that would spark hope in millions of patients and their loved ones; and a great whopping conspiracy theory to top it all off. Wow.

Yummy bratwurst: you know you love it. But do you really want to know what goes into that bratwurst? The sausage-casing alone should give you pause. If you allow the sausage-making process to remain a mystery, your enjoyment need not be impaired.

Medical decisions are sausages. Some folks want their doctors to give them their plan as a fait accompli, while others would rather know every last fact and study result the doctor considered in making his decision. These patients want to know what's in their sausage.

The boy's identity is protected and hopefully will remain so. Foley has already resigned and may face prosecution. SO . . . why revel in schadenfreude? As others have pointed out, there is far more to this story than one Representative's fall. There's plenty of disgrace to go around (New York Times: GOP Aides Knew in Late '05 of E-mail).