Baker Street, Ultimo

Caramel eclair

Baker Street is another one of Sydney's classic hidden secrets. From the outside it looks like a simple coffee shop set-up in a converted terrace, but step inside and owner Juan Duret's display cabinet beckons with a raft of traditional Argentinian treats.


Baker Street

The cafe offers bacon and egg rolls, burgers and pies and is a popular haunt for local ABC workers and TAFE

Well, then, let's just hand her the presidency right now

So a comedian tactlessly told a joke about "special needs children" at a Sarah Palin event, and the very same "lamestream media" against which Palin rails all the time is having the vapors. Well, then....someone did something that might offensive to Sarah Palin. Let's just call off the election and anoint her Queen-for-life, then. After all, it's the least we can do, just in case her feelings were hurt.



John Cole is right. We ARE the dumbest country in the world.

Around the Blogroll and Elsewhere - special Wussy-Ass Democrats and Shamelessly Racist Republicans edition

Here in the Land that We Wish Irene Had Forgotten, the cleanup continues, with gawkers and scavengers haunting the neighborhoods of those still putting their ruined belongings out by the curb and the usual post-disaster scams cropping up already. Meanwhile, another storm is starting to look like it's gong to have to do a 90-degree turn soon if it's going to miss us, my electrician is I'm sure going to charge a multi-thousand dollar premium to get a wired generator setup in here before she hits, and I'm starting to think all this is Mother Earth shaking us off like a dog with a really bad flea infestation -- our just reward for treating her so shabbily.



Today I was in Springfield, NJ and took a side trip to World of Tile, a place I've gone past many hundreds of times in my life, most of them as a child, returning from a trip out to Route 22 to Harmony House to buy records, and perhaps a side stop at the Dairy Queen for a Buster Bar. World of Tile is out on that stretch of Route 22 in Union County that is now a sea of strip malls and megastores like you see on every other highway in the universe, with a few remnants of my childhood and businesses that advertised on AM rock 'n' roll radio still standing, like the Flagship (which is now a P.C. Richard store) and, yes, World of Tile -- a store I hadn't even thought about until I read about it on Retro Renovation. So the extra black wall tiles that I had hoped to get in case I want to replace the American Standard Ming Green bathrub with a shower pan are $12 each, because they are the original 1950's tile, so it's better to just either leave the tub alone or use the Home Depot tiles. But in one of the "showrooms" in the back, it's a cornucopia of retro bathroom floor tile, even an almost exact duplicate of the hideous green quasi-checkerboard pattern that all 1950's bathrooms have. And they have it in many, many colors, at $12.99 a square foot (though why anyone would want to replace one of these floors with the same thing, I have no idea). I was, however, happy to see that they have white 1" hex tile sheets and also black hex tile so that it's possible to do borders and flowers and other cool things with hex tile, and I will definitely go see them again after we recover from certain Generator Sticker Shock, assuming you can get near the place, because now that it's been linked in the New York Times Style section, this quirky little retro store in Springfield is going to become the hottest thing around.



Anyway, it's Labor Day weekend in a country that has been doing whatever it can go eliminate the protections and benefits that 100 years of organized labor brought us. I'm sure that out in the flyover states, where they worship people like Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin and Rick Perry, they're going to fly flags and grill hamburgers and "celebrate" Labor Day and shake the hands of their legislators who are gutting unions in a state of complete cluelessness as to what it really means.



So let's take a trip around the blogroll for some perspectives on some of the fresh horrors that this week in Year Three of the American Racial Freakout saw.



Karen Garcia gives a well-deserved smack to that shandeh far di goyim Eric Cantor.



How does this differ, really, from Obama's allegedly proposed "worker training program"?



If you were hit by Irene, maybe you'll start listening to Kindly Old Uncle Bustednuckles, finally.



Katherine Haenschen at Burnt Orange Report has the top Google searches for Rick Perry.



Cool historical Labor Day stuff at Ramona's Voices.



Driftglass: The Big Jobs Fuck.



You'll never hear about this on your local network news, but Oil is resurfing again not far from the location of the BP Macondo Well.



Gossip or truth? Go read this at Mudflats and decide. I'll tell you this much: whether Sarah Palin runs for president or not, she is definitely going to have a very hard time when the looks start to go -- no matter how much botox or surgery she has. Time bows to no surgeon. We're seeing it already. You could almost feel sorry for her if she wasn't such a bitch.



Helen Philpot, as always, cuts to the chase.



The Perry Platform is the new Shit My Dad Says.



And now I'm going to go pay some bills and wonder if I'll be able to get fresh corn tomorrow. After all, what's the point of making a quinoa salad with summer vegetables if I have to use frozen roasted corn from Trader Joe's?

"I Had a Dream..."

In his recent memoir, Murdering and Torturing Brown People For Fun and Profit, Dick Cheney recounted a dream that he'd had in a weeks-long coma following open heart surgery. Said Cheney in the epilogue,

I had a prolonged dream more vivid than any I’ve ever had, about a beautiful place in Italy.

The NY Times went on to say "that he was living in an Italian villa, pacing the stone paths to get coffee and newspapers."



Obviously, it hasn't occurred to Big Dick that his dreams are eerily similar to mobster Tony Soprano's dreams. Tony Soprano's dreams often looked as if they were penned by David Lynch. In one, he was briefly an Italian laborer showing up at a villa looking for a stonemason's job.



Cardiologists will sometimes say that during heart surgery and after, patients will have vivid dreams that often place them in situations quite removed from their real lives and they tend to be peaceful. In this respect, Cheney's dream was pretty typical. Furthering the mobster angle is the fact that, in real life, after murdering or ordering to have murdered countless people, this is exactly how many mobsters retire: Walking their little dogs, buying fruit from greengrocers, living the peaceful life, sometimes even going back to the Old Country.



Cheney's dream, if it's to be taken at face value, also shows what an incurable monster he truly is.



Cheney, while Chairman and CEO of Halliburton, overcharged the American taxpayer by capriciously doubling fuel distribution costs and was forced to pay back the government. He repeatedly went to Langley and twisted the dicks of junior intelligence analysts until he heard only what he wanted to hear about Iraq's weapons infrastructure program to legitimize going to war with them.



We wound up killing or having killed through the Flypaper Effect over one million Iraqis.



As "Vice President", he ordered whatever limited electricity to be had in Katrina's wake to be rerouted to the refineries in the Gulf Coast instead of hospitals. He advocated and still does the torture of hundreds if not thousands of innocents.



He got drunk and shot his best friend in the face then covered it up.



Any normal human being, toward the close of their life, would be bothered by their conscience in unguarded moments, especially during a post-operative coma. But not Cheney. Oh no. Cheney wasn't tortured by the six people at Gitmo who'd committed suicide or the countless others who'd been murdered or left to die through neglect while in American custody.



Cheney wasn't haunted by dreams of the million or more charred and dismembered Iraqis who'd died largely through his initiatives, he didn't have nightmares of hooded prisoners floating toward him in midair ready to electrocute him in a shocking embrace. He wasn't harangued by the five men who had to take his place in the draft because of his pathological dread of actually experiencing war.



No, what did he dream about?



Pacing on a stone path warmed by the sun while birds chirped and low-hanging fruit perfumed the air so he could get a coffee and a newspaper just like any normal human being. Cheney not only is untroubled by his conscience, he'd probably shotgunned it in the face, waterboarded it and put it out of its misery.

At last, someone points out the obvious

I never expected it to be Richard Wolffe, who's about as cautious as they come, but here you go:





Republicans hated Clinton too, but you never saw this level of contempt. And good for Wolffe for pointing out what's been obvious since January 20, 2009 -- that this country elected a black president and there are a sizable number of people, some of them Federal legislators, who simply can't deal with that.



The image I posted yesterday captured from Limbaugh's site embodies this perfectly -- a subordinate, supplicating black man, seemingly pleading with a white man, with Rush Limbaugh there with a megaphone shouting "NO!" Is there any image we've seen over the last nearly three years that more fully encapsulates the dynamic we've seen with this president's relations with the right? So good for Wolffe for going there.



Chauncey de Vega over at Alternet puts the disturbing dynamic of the whole jobs speech fracas -- a foofarah that is ultimately trivial in content but emblematic of the entirety of the Obama years so far, into historical perspective:

Where blacks had since slave days been expected to step off the sidewalk to allow white persons to pass unimpeded-failure to do so could result in being murdered-some communities with the new century began to require blacks to keep off the sidewalks altogether when any white children were occupying any part of them. Much the same held for the roadway, where blacks could expect to be stopped by police if they dared pass a white driver. So offensive to white sensibilities was a black driving an expensive car that even well-to-do African-Americans kept to older models so as not to give the dangerous impression of being above themselves…



One requirement was to sometimes illogically cede the right-of-way to a white driver-or even to a black driver who was chauffeuring white passengers. At many four-way-stop intersections in the South, the right-of-way was determined not by who reached the intersection first, but rather by the race of the drivers. When confronting a white driver who was female, a black male driver in the South could and sometimes did face a life-or-death decision. Compounding the difficulty facing African-Americans was the lack of universality of any of these conventions. In some places whites did maintain normal driving rules. But in others, Jim Crow was more important than highway safety.

Boehner just pulled a "boy you best get off the sidewalk and let a white man pass moment"; in his demand that the President reschedule his jobs speech scheduled for next week before Congress. If President Obama is not careful the Right may get him for “reckless eyeballing.”



Of course and once more, the Tea Party GOP are behaving like spoiled children.



Here MSNBC’s Richard Wolffe is spot on: to casual observers the spat over the time of the President’s speech on the economy, and how it “conflicts” with the Republican debate, seems mighty petty. This obstructionism on all things is the dominant political strategy by the GOP in the Age of Obama, and it is fueled by a deep hostility to Obama’s legitimacy as President.



As I have suggested many times, the idea that a Black person could be in the White House is too much for the White Conservative Soul and the white racial frame to handle. The symbolism is anathema to their conception of America.



[snip]



When the Birthers, the Graders and Donald Trump led a witch hunt and demanded to see the transcripts of the President, a Harvard grad and University of Chicago professor, because he could not possibly have earned his bonafides (and they remain curiously silent about Rick Perry’s abysmal college career as a “Gentlemen D” student).



In sum, these are moments where black Americans as a community have been collectively slapped in the face and denied their dignity simply because of the color of our skin, and the ways that race works to locate people in a hierarchy of “naturalized” relationships. America no longer has laws demanding that blacks get off the sidewalk when whites pass, or that African Americans cannot try on clothes or hats at a store without buying them first.



But, the intangibles of full and equal respect from whites towards non-whites cannot be legislated: history’s weight is too great and private thoughts and attitudes are often immune from legal precedent. In the United States, one of white supremacy’s most damning and difficult legacies is that for centuries the lowest, most ignorant, stupid, lazy trashy White was elevated above the most educated, refined, literate, and hard working black person.

The Tea Party GOP and their foot soldiers are drunk on that legacy. They may claim to respect the Office of the President, but they most certainly don’t respect the man. And no small part of that is because he is Black.

Freebie Friday: Win a box of mooncakes (four to win)

Moon Festival falls on September 12 this year, and to celebrate, Grab Your Fork has four boxes of mooncakes to giveaway thanks to Amyson.

The Casahana range includes flavours beyond the usual red bean and lotus, and comes packed in pretty re-usable boxes. Because Moon Festival is next week, this competition is only open for six days so get your entries in now!

The prizes
Four lucky Grab Your

Well, I guess Boehner "put him in his place"

Check out this screencap, from the front page of Rush Limbaugh's web site (red box added by me, for emphasis):







Yesterday Randi Rhodes played the clip of Limbaugh screeching about how John Boehner has to "put the guy in his place" about the timing of his speech on jobs. When you talk about putting someone in his place, and the person you're talking about is black, it is a racial remark, no matter how red faced and sputtering Limbaugh may be in denial of that fact. But if you still don't believe it, look at the graphic. Look at the photograph, which deliberately depicts the black President of the United States supplicating himself before a white (well, ok, orange) man.



So what does this president do when faced with a lying, hatemongering right-wing radio host demanding that the Speaker "put him in his place"?



He caves, of course (NYT link, emphasis mine):

In a surreal volley of letters, each released to the news media as soon as it was sent, Mr. Boehner rejected a request from the president to address a joint session of Congress next Wednesday at 8 p.m. — the same night that a Republican presidential debate is scheduled.



In an extraordinary turn, the House speaker fired back his own letter to the president saying, in a word, no. Might the president be able to reschedule for the following night, Sept. 8?



For several hours, the day turned into a very public game of chicken.



By late Wednesday night, though, the White House issued a statement saying that because Mr. Obama “is focused on the urgent need to create jobs and grow our economy,” he “welcomes the opportunity to address a joint session of Congress on Thursday, Sept. 8.”



The president had sent in the first volley with his request for a speech next Wednesday night, when Gov. Rick Perry of Texas is scheduled to debate his fellow would-be Republican presidential nominees for the first time.



“No, of course not,” the White House press secretary, Jay Carney, replied when a reporter asked if the timing of the president’s speech had been meant to play havoc with the Republican debate plans. He said that “one debate of many was no reason not to have a speech when we wanted to have it.”



Mr. Boehner was not budging.



“As the majority leader announced more than a month ago, the House will not be in session until Wednesday, Sept. 7, with votes at 6:30 that evening,” the speaker wrote. “With the significant amount of time, typically more than three hours, that is required to allow for a security sweep of the House chamber before receiving a president, it is my recommendation that your address be held on the following evening, when we can ensure there will be no parliamentary or logistical impediments that might detract from your remarks.”



Mr. Boehner did not specify what votes were scheduled for 6:30 that evening that could not be moved. The House calendar shows that members are expected to vote on the “suspension calendar,” generally minor bills like naming a post office.



Congressional historians said Mr. Boehner’s move was unprecedented.



“The Senate Historical Office knows of no instance in which Congress refused the president permission to speak before a joint session of Congress,” Betty K. Koed, associate historian with the Senate, said in an e-mail.

But then, we've never had a black president before, never mind one who has demonstrated over and over and over and over again that there is NO fight with Republicans from which he won't shy away.



Meanwhile, certain corners of the sizable Democratic base that this Administration threw under the bus very early in this presidency have stopped rumbling that perhaps it might stay home in 2012 and like Pavlov's dogs, are already falling for the same "We Suck But He's Crazy" card that Democrats have been playing for two decades:

Perry panic has spread from the conference rooms of Washington, D.C., to the coffee shops of Brooklyn, with the realization that the conservative Texan could conceivably become the 45th president of the United States, a wave of alarm centering around Perry’s drawling, small-town affect and stands on core cultural issues such as women’s rights, gun control, the death penalty, and the separation of church and state.



“His entry in the race is a signal and a wake-up call,” the Rev. Al Sharpton told POLITICO.



Perry, Sharpton said, “is looking to go to the O.K. Corral and start shooting. … Rather than the left get caught sleeping, we better load up, because he is bringing it.”



For Democrats, the pre-Perry GOP primary process was hardly for the faint of heart, as the other candidates have jockeyed to show who dislikes Obama the most. But even as the primary is fought on conservative turf, liberal leaders say they and their constituents see Perry as far worse than your average, hated Republican, and indeed as bad — if not worse — than his hated predecessor in Austin, George W. Bush. And progressives who might have had a hard time getting worked up about Mitt Romney find themselves struggling for superlatives with which to express their fear of a President Perry.

Oh, get real, people. Seriously. Does anyone actually see Barack Obama as some kind of bulwark against the kind of oligarchical theocracy that Rick Perry represents? The entire Republican Party has decided that an oligarchical theocracy is what it wants, and this president can't even stick to his guns about his own Constitutional right to call together a joint session of Congress? And people are looking to him to stop this relentless march backwards to the 13th century that Republicans now represent?



Idiots. They don't even realize that it's already a done deal. The only issue remaining is what the Obama Administration is going to say to try to tell us that massive tax increases on the poor and mandatory conversion to the teachings of R.J. Rushdoony are a GOOD thing.