Meet your Labor Secretary (via an "In the Loop" Background Check) -- plus State Dept. travel tips for students

Labor Secretary Thomas Perez with the boss

by Ken

If Washington Post "In the Loop"-master's idea with the Background Checks is to give us a better sense of the officeholder as a person, I have to say that this one on Labor Secretary Thomas Perez sure did the job for me.

DIAMOND DREAMS

When President Obama nominated Thomas Perez a year ago to be labor secretary, he noted that Perez was then an assistant attorney general for civil rights and had also been Maryland's labor secretary.

But he added that Perez -- the son of immigrants from the Dominican Republic and the first Cabinet secretary of Dominican descent -- had also worked in some less glamorous jobs, helping to pay his way through college as a garbage collector and in a warehouse, before he "went on to become the first lawyer in his family."

In his Background Check, Perez reveals, that, despite his Dominican roots, he can't come around very well on a fastball and that his own fastball, well, left a little to be desired. So he had to seek other professional opportunities.

Which Cabinet secretary would you most like to hang out with, and what would you do?

I have enjoyed working with all my Cabinet colleagues, and, while I have spent a considerable time with my former boss, Eric Holder, I currently work extensively and very productively with Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker. We have a shared belief that if we can help workers and businesses succeed, then America succeeds.

What's your favorite non-work-related Web site/blog/
app/magazine?

ESPN.com

Fill in the blank: People would be surprised to know that I _____.

Ran the Boston Marathon three times and have coached at least one of my children in basketball or some other sport for 10 years.

What's your dream job (other than your current gig)?

Major League Baseball commissioner. I played baseball throughout high school, but, unlike other Dominican Americans, I couldn't hit a fastball. My own fastball had deceptive speed -- it was slower than you think.

What motivated you to go into public service?

My parents emigrated from the Dominican Republic to escape a brutal dictator. [Loop note: That would be Rafael Leonidas Trujillo, a.k.a. "El Chivo," finally gunned down, apparently with CIA help, in 1961.] America was a land of opportunity for them, and they taught my four siblings (all of whom are doctors) and me to work hard, aim high and always give back to others. They taught us that if you want to get to heaven, you better have letters of reference from the underserved.

Favorite TV show?

The Wire.

Which character from that show do you most identify with?

I identify with the young people living in tough neighborhoods for which meaningful opportunity was elusive.

What subject, other than your work, do you know most about?

Civil rights history.

What's one word you wish people would use to describe you?

Innovative.

You can draft one person in the private sector to come work for the federal government. Who would it be, and what would you have them do?

I would resurrect Steve Jobs and enlist him to work with the Department of Labor to develop the next generation of technological tools to enable us to carry out our mission of expanding opportunity for everyone.

STATE DEPT. TIPS FOR SPRING BREAK 2014

Note that in this same column Loop-master Al offers his take on the State Department's just-released "Top Five Travel Tips for Spring Break 2014," which he suggests "read like a helicopter parent gone wild, or a post-Colorado-legalization version of Reefer Madness." You should check out Al's take on them, but here's the official State Department version (there are links onsite):

For some college students, Spring Break is a time to bask in the Caribbean sun. Some use their respite from classes to volunteer in a foreign country. Others venture across the Atlantic to embark upon a European adventure or to visit friends studying abroad. Regardless of the destination, the U.S. Department of State encourages students to follow our tips for traveling abroad:

• Avoid underage and excessive alcohol consumption. “Overdoing it” can lead to an arrest, accident, violent crime, or death.

* Obey all local laws, and remember they might be different from our own. Don’t carry or use drugs, as this can result in severe penalties. Don’t carry weapons either—some countries have strict laws, and even possessing something as small as a pocketknife or a single bullet can get you into legal trouble.

* Before you leave for your trip, learn as much as possible about your destination at our website dedicated to student travelers: studentsabroad.state.gov. Here, you can find out about entry requirements, crime, health precautions, and road conditions.

* Enroll in the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program (STEP). This program keeps students up-to-date with important safety and security announcements, such as Travel Warnings, Travel Alerts, and security messages.

• Keep in touch with your parents. If you will be without Internet or phone service for a few days, let them know. We receive many calls from parents who fear the worst when they have not heard from their children. In most cases, their child is fine, but has been too busy to check in.

• Remember to wear clean underwear and, for heaven’s sake, floss regularly!

This last one, Al admits, "we made up."

The State Department media release notes in conclusion: "Of course, even well-prepared travelers may face an emergency, like a lost passport or an injury. In those cases, our embassies and consulates are available to help 24/7. Be sure to write down the contact information for the U.S. embassy or consulate in your destination country." And there's a link for "members of the media who wish to speak about Spring Break travel tips with an official from the State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs."

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Cheap shots and big spenders

They're baaaaack!

(1) Jason Greenslate, the San Diego scrap-metal guitarist (his band is called Rattlife) whom we last met in August being interviewed by Fox's John Roberts, apparently living high off the lobster on food stamps that he clearly didn't need, unless as seemed likely to me at [jump]
the time he wasn't, but was merely trying to polish a naughty-bro image in the hope of encouraging sales of the band's album (sample lyric: "I don't want no motherfuckin job, I'd rather be broke and steal and rob"). This time he showed up being interviewed by Bill O'Reilly's shame-porn pimp Jesse Watters, with the same story,  but with no reference to his previous Fox experience, as if he'd never been there before.

(2) Betsy Tadder, the Illinois dental assistant we saw with Fox's Martha McCallum in November, complaining about how she liked her insurance but didn't get to keep it, though a little googling showed that since her husband worked for Lowes over in Janesville, which offers excellent benefits, she shouldn't have been paying for the family health insurance at all, let alone some crappy high-deductible plan with no out-of-pocket maximum that would have landed them all in bankruptcy one of these days—and it would be illegal for her to be paying for it now, through the Obamacare exchange. She's back with McCallum again, calling Senate Majority Reid a liar for publicly doubting all the Obamacare horror stories ("Who doesn't know somebody who lost their insurance?" asks Martha rhetorically, more than once, evidently having it down in her official talking points; I doubt anybody in Martha's social circle is having trouble), and shopping her story with even less detail than she put into it in the first time. And like young Jason, Betsy's presented out of the blue and context-free, with no reference to her having been on the show before.

Which leads me to wonder: do you think these characters might be althogether on the Fox payroll, showing up like Sarah Palin from time to time to present their shtik and then laying low until such a time as the sleepy elderly audience may have forgotten them, when they can come out again and do it afresh?

Fox says it never pays news sources, but not everybody believes them (like David Brock, here), and then their cousins in the Murdoch stable over in England certainly do or did, and we all know where they ended up a couple of springs ago:

Combine the culture of checkbook journalism with the culture of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. and you get one of the biggest media scandals of all time. Paying for news is at the root of News Corp.’s hacking and bribery scandals, and the reaction by tabloid hacks to the revelations about The Sun is revealing about the journalistic environment that gave rise to them.

And Fox could say, you know, strictly speaking it's not paying for news, because these stories aren't new, and for that matter aren't true either. It's paying for acting, or perhaps you might call it performance art, and not paying them would be very wrong.

Via Roy Edroso, the Republican imaginary politician and aspiring bed-and-breakfast host (I'm just making that up, but look at the rosy-cheeked orange-pecan muffin face in the picture) "Quin Hillyer" spoke to The Blaze on the subject of sports commentator Johnny Weir and his distasteful outfits:

“I think figure skating battles a perception that it’s not a manly sport,” he said. “Because it’s all about grace and style. And I think if I were a figure skater, I would want the focus to be on my athleticism. And if you’ve got somebody– I mean, who cares if he’s homosexual? The question is, by dressing as a woman and bringing that image of femininity to the sport, does that feed the image of it as somehow less than a fete of athleticism?”

As the bridegroom said to the wedding planner, "My fête is in your hands."

Thanks to the discovery that brunch is an "event," New York's besotted brunchers are back in booze heaven

Thrillist

by Ken

In a moment the question that's going to come to the fore is: Is brunch an "event"? It's a question that hasn't come into play as much as you would expect among the great philosophers. In my vast reading of Plato, for example (that's a joke), I don't recall coming across any citable insights.

However, if upon reflection you come to the conclusion that brunch is not an event, well, there's a portion of the New York population that would beg you not to voice your opinion within the hearing of New York's State Liquor Authority (SLA). These people have just been to hell and back, and may not be able to withstand the possibility of another reversal from the SLA.

For those of you who may not be familiar with this only-just-resolved crisis, Thrillist's Dave Infante (who describes himself in his bio as "an editor for Thrillist Media Group who would rather just split the check evenly, because you DID have some of that calamari, remember?") took his readers on a step-by-step trip through these momentous events, and we really can't do better than to follow along on the tour.

What Really Happened in NY's Illegal Bottomless Boozy Brunch Scandal

PUBLISHED ON 2/27/2014
BY DAVE INFANTE



For three terrifying days, bottomless brunch was illegal in our city.

On February 24th, 2014, our right to boozy brunch -- nay, the very right to be a community! -- came under attack. The bedrock promise that New York weekends are strictly about two-plus hours of unlimited mimosas? Threatened. Nobody knows who struck first.

Oh wait, that’s just a quote from The Matrix. We do know exactly who struck first! The NYC Hospitality Alliance started the maelstrom, by firing this unassuming tweet across the bottomless-Bellini bow of our fair city’s brunch spots.



Behind that link is the trade organization’s press release on the matter, which totally snitches politely cites Section 117-A of NY state’s booze laws. This particular SLA statute is clearer than a vodka tonic:



What?! No! Yes? The truth seemed obvious: Gotham’s beautiful, benevolent, Benedict-slinging, bottomless brunch spots have been ILLEGALLY pouring unlimited booze into our livers the entire time. The dream was over. Never again would a sunny Sunday begin sunny-side up and end, many drinks later, with you face-down in a couch surrounded by seven gyros and grievous shame.

No. Nonononono. NO!

But buck up! Despite the setback, we’re still the best city in the world, right? New Yorkers, for their part, reacted with that aplomb.



Here Dave reproduces three tweets, including the heartrending one I've put atop this post.

It was happening. The hour of judgement was upon us. TAKE ONLY WHAT YOU CAN CARRY AND HEAD FOR THE GEORGE WASHINGTON BRIDGE.

No one can accuse New Yorkers of crying over spilt milk. We’re a tough bunch. That said, milk is sort of weird, and also not made of alcohol, and so, for two days, blogger outrage flowed like beer tears. Think pieces were posted. Office listservs lit up. At least one New Yorker not named Dave Infante called his mom to ask about moving back home, because what’s the point anymore, and also it would be good to save some money on rent. Together, we wept.

But this is a family magazine (neither of those words are true, but just go with it, Barry Diller!), and every damn day, New York City tells a comeback story like one you’ve never heard. The saga of the Great Illegal Boozy Brunch has a happy ending, and not like the one you used to contemplate paying for on the West Side Highway after too many endless mimosas. The hero Gotham needed was about to emerge.

Batman! Not really. Wouldn’t that be great though? NYC’s actual liberating force turned out, improbably, to be the SLA itself. On the morning of February 27th, after nearly 36 hours of panic, a liquor board rep told Business Insider in a statement that reads equally bemused & befuddled:



So, as everyone who's ever been to one knows, boozy brunches are indeed events, and events are sometimes exempt. We were saved.

Play it again, Sam. Play it again, and again, and again. Then, play that sweet tune one more time for the shining stars at the SLA, who pulled an entire city from the jaws of despair by creating a loophole IN ITS OWN STATUTES so that we could continue to brunch like the kings & queens that we one day hope to become.

And that, dear neighbors & friends, is how it came to be that for three perilous days in February 2014, New York City lost, then won back, its right to bottomless brunch.

Now of course the "bottomless" boozed-up brunch isn't really bottomless. Typically it's all you can drink in an hour. And for most of us that's not likely to be a liver-killing quantity of the stuff. Still, one has to wonder at the quantity of agita experienced among the hard-core New York brunch set. (Or am I the only one wondering?)

I mean, even the strict interpretation of the ABC law in effect for those three blackout days would have permitted restaurants to offer special deals on two or three drinks. (Unless of course there's some other provision of NYS's often-impenetrable liquor laws that might have come into play.) One wonders then just how much those broken-hearted boozing brunchers are accustomed to consuming.

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Bill Maher and Bill Moyers Give Fox News Zombies Heart Attacks Over Ronnie Raygun

That Bill Maher video above is one of the best explanations-- especially for young people who didn't live through it-- of the RRR-- the Real Ronald Reagan. We sure don't hear it from Obama… and never will. Tonight, Bill Moyers will tackle the same subject from a more… genteel, less vituperative perspective. Moyers sat down with Ian Haney López to talk about his new book Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class and you can watch the entire interview at the bottom of the page. Please do. But in this short clip directly below, Haney López recalls a story Ronald Reagan told on the campaign trail during his first run for president in 1976. It's very much on the same page of Maher's entire thrust. Throughout his presidency, Haney López says that Reagan subtly (and sometimes not  so subtly) played on stereotypes to manipulate middle-class white voters into supporting economic policies that benefited corporations and the wealthy.

BILL MOYERS: So why did you use this for the title of your book Dog Whistle Politics?

IAN HANEY LÓPEZ: Well, think about a term like “welfare queen” or “food stamp president”. On one level, like a dog whistle, it's silent. Silent about race. It seems race-neutral. But on another, it also has a shrill blast, like a dog whistle, that can be heard by certain folks. And what the blast is is a warning about race and a warning, in particular about threatening minorities.

And the idea that I'm trying to get across here is, racism has evolved. Or, in particular, public racism has evolved. The way in which racism, the way in which racial divisions are stoked in public discourse has changed. And now it operates on two levels. On one level, it allows plausible deniability. This isn't really about race, it's just about welfare. Just about food stamps. And on another, there's a subtext, an underground message which can be piercingly loud, and that is: minorities are threatening us.

And so when people dog whistle about criminals, welfare cheats, terrorists, Islam, Sharia law, ostensibly they’re talking about culture, behavior, religion, but underneath are these old stereotypes of degraded minorities, but also, and this is important, implicitly of whites who are trustworthy, hard-working, decent.

BILL MOYERS: When I talk to people, I'm doing a group discussion somewhere, if I ask white people in the audience, if race is still relevant in your lives, they say absolutely not. You know, we're colorblind, is often what you hear.

IAN HANEY LÓPEZ: Right. Absolutely.

BILL MOYERS: And they believe that, don't you think?

IAN HANEY LÓPEZ: They do believe it. And it's important they believe it. And it's important for us to recognize that they believe it and that it's genuine. Look, here's a hard, difficult truth. Most racists are good people. They're not sick. They're not ruled by anger or raw emotion or hatred. They are complicated people reared in complicated societies.

They're fully capable of generosity, of empathy, of real kindness. But because of the idea systems in which they're reared, they're also capable of dehumanizing others and occasionally of brutal violence. And that's an important truth. Most people are not racist out of some sort of a sickness of the soul. They're racist because of the society in which they operate.

BILL MOYERS: How so?

IAN HANEY LÓPEZ: We need to understand that race has been one of the ways in which we’ve explained why certain groups get certain privileges and advantages and why other groups don’t get privileges or are exploited or are excluded from the country.

This operates not just in terms of class relations and group relations, this operates in terms of a common sense understanding of who’s trustworthy, who is decent, who is law-abiding, and in contrast, who’s loathsome, who’s diseased, who’s dangerous. That common sense of race used to be openly expressed through the 1950s, let’s say. Now it’s not openly expressed. And that’s one of the great triumphs of the civil rights moment. We ought not to gainsay that. But on the other hand, it didn’t all go away. It’s still there under the surface. Now it doesn’t, we don’t hear it in the language expressly of race, but we hear it in the language of culture and behavior.

BILL MOYERS: There are some assumptions in society, a general proposition, unexamined, that blacks prefer welfare to work, that undocumented immigrants breed crime, and that Islam spawns violence. Those are dog whistles, are they not?

IAN HANEY LÓPEZ: I think they’re absolutely dog whistles. They’re dog whistles in the sense that they’re stereotypes.

A stereotype is a sort of cultural presumption of minority inferiority: blacks are lazy, Latinos are dirty or filthy, Muslims don’t respect human life. Those are stereotypes. Dog whistles are when politicians use coded language that try and trigger those beliefs. But they’re not the stereotypes themselves. And, it’s important, because dog whistling is not about bigotry. It’s about the manipulation of bigotry. It’s about the manipulation of stereotypes.

BILL MOYERS: So you make it clear in the book, that this is sort of an old sport, politicians communicating with small groups of impassioned voters and a kind of code that only kindred spirits understand. Nothing especially troubling about that. But it's when it comes to the issue of race that you see a real injury.

IAN HANEY LÓPEZ: What makes race different? Two things. First, the message that politicians are trying to communicate, when they dog whistle in racial terms, is a message that runs directly counter to widely held values and norms of racial egalitarianism. The triumph of the civil rights movement is to teach us, to teach Americans that we're all human, we're all in this together. And so for a politician to come forward and say, I want your support because minorities are threatening and I believe that you ought to vote in solidarity with whites.

No one can say that expressly. That would be the end of a political career. So they use a dog whistle term and they say, I want you to vote in a way that cuts off food stamps and limits welfare and gets tough on crime and slams the border on illegal aliens. It's a racial appeal, but it has to happen in code. That's one difference.

The message that's being communicated is a message that violates core, common moral norms. Second difference, yes, there are lots of different cultural provocations that are expressed in dog whistle terms. Race is one of those. But I want to also suggest it's not just one of those, it's the primary cultural provocation that has been used by conservatives over the last 50 years. Race is special because it does so much damage not only to people of color, but in the way it restructured our society as a whole.

BILL MOYERS: Give me a clear example of that.

IAN HANEY LÓPEZ: So we know Ronald Reagan used to talk about welfare queens. But he also had this other stump speech that he would give. He would speak to his audiences and he would say, I understand how frustrating it is for you when you're standing in line at a grocery store waiting to buy hamburger and there's some young fellow ahead of you buying T-bone steak with food stamps.

Now the first time he told that tale, it wasn't some young fellow. He said, some “young buck." And a young buck was a racially-coded term that stood for a strong African American man. And so that term, that moved from being a dog whistle to an outright racial provocation. Reagan backed off and he started talking about, some young fellow buying a T-bone steak with food stamps.

Think about the characters in this story. The first character is the person buying a T-bone steak with food stamps. And that's conjuring the image of the lazy minority who's strong, who could work, but who doesn't want to work, and prefers to be on welfare. But the other image is the you in that story, who Reagan's talking to. And the you is ostensibly the voter, the hard-working taxpayer, the law-abiding American. That voter, that hard-working American implicitly has a racial identity. And that's white. So there you can see this racial narrative. You, Reagan is saying to white audiences, you're being taken advantage of.

There's a third character here. Government. It's government ostensibly that is taking advantage of whites, that is taking their money through taxes, and then giving it to these undeserving minorities. So what did Reagan suggest? He suggested tax cuts. We shouldn't, you shouldn't have to pay taxes to a government that's just taking your money and giving it to minorities.

And indeed, what did he do? He enacted tax cuts. In the first year of his tax cuts, $164 billion went to American corporations. Over the 1980’s, the Reagan tax cuts transferred a trillion dollars to America's top 1 percent. Yes, voters got the tax cuts they thought were aimed at cutting off undeserving minorities. But in fact, it was a politics that was showering money on the very richest Americans.

We have to understand the way in which something has fundamentally changed in American politics. We used to understand that the biggest threat in a political life was the power of concentrated money. The power of big money and of corporations to hijack the marketplace and to hijack government.

But now, Republicans for 50 years have been telling voters, the biggest threat in your life is that minorities are going to hijack government. That government has been taken over and now serves them. So when white voters vote against the government, they think they're voting against minorities. But in fact, they're voting to give over control of government back to the very rich, back to the big corporations.

FOR THE RIGHT, DEFEAT IS NEVER FINAL, SO OF COURSE THEY'LL KEEP FIGHTING THIS "RELIGIOUS FREEDOM" BATTLE

It's generally agreed that religious rightists went too far when they starting pushing refusal-of-service laws. Salon's Brian Beutler:

The effort to apply the ... religious freedom argument to anti-gay measures in states across the country has encountered tremendous resistance, not just from liberals but from business leaders, statewide Republican elected officials, and GOP celebrities who, for different reasons, seem to get that stomping away from a growing majority of the population with a middle finger hoisted overhead isn't a smart thing to do.

The New York Times adds:

The decision by members of the Republican establishment to join gay activists in opposing the bill reflected the alarm the Arizona battle stirred among party leaders, who worried about identifying their party with polarizing social issues at a time when Republicans see the prospect of big gains in Congressional elections on economic issues.

So this effort is dead, right?

I doubt it. When do right-wingers ever concede defeat? They just keep relitigating fights forever, adjusting tactics as needed. Did they give up on fighting abortion when the Supreme Court reaffirmed abortion rights in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, just around the time anti-abortion extremists were alienating most of America with acts of violence? No. They just shifted gears, put the violent protesters at arms' length, and began trying to kill Roe with a thousand cuts rather than all at once.

I'm not saying they're going to win. They're highly unlikely to be as successful in fighting gay marriage as they are in fighting abortion, because heartland America now seems far less squeamish about homosexuality than about abortion. But they will keep fighting, because the right never lets anything go. They may never be more than a minor nuisance on this. But they will continue to be a nuisance.

From The Washington Post:

Conservative activists said Thursday that they will continue to press for additional legal protections for private businesses that deny service to gay men and lesbians, saying that a defeat in Arizona this week is only a minor setback and that religious-liberty legislation is the best way to stave off a rapid shift in favor of gay rights....

"The fight has to be over what the First Amendment is," said John C. Eastman, chairman of the National Organization for Marriage, adding that his side needs to convince the public that conservatives are not trying to deny the rights of other Americans. "This is not somebody adhering to old Jim Crow lunch-counter discrimination. This is a fundamental dispute about what marriage means, and why it's important for society."

I know, I know -- it's just bluster. The GOP mainstream wants to step away from this fight. Right?

Except that, as the Times notes, this fight can't possibly go away:

Nelson Warfield, a conservative consultant ... said laws like the one vetoed in Arizona would certainly be embraced by some Republican presidential candidates in 2016 during the primaries, but would be toxic for a Republican candidate in a general election.

"You can bet your last dollar somebody will run on it for the nomination next time," he said, referring to the Republican presidential battle of 2016.

One or more candidates from the Cruz/Santorum/Huckabee wing of the party will make it impossible for mainstream candidates to shrug this issue off.

Oh, and even so-called establishment types have the vapors about so-called religious liberty issues. Here's Peggy Noonan:

The political-media complex is bravely coming down on florists with unfashionable views. On Twitter Thursday the freedom-fighter who tweets as @FriedrichHayek asked: "Can the government compel a Jewish baker to deliver a wedding cake on a Saturday? If not why not." Why not indeed. Because the truly tolerant give each other a little space? On an optimistic note, the Little Sisters of the Poor haven't been put out of business and patiently await their day in court.

That last reference is too Peggy's plucky heroines in the fight against the contraceptive mandate.

So right-wingers will find some way to press on with this. They'll probably go the court route on behalf of some baker allegedly crushed by the gay jackboot. We may defeat them, but they're never going to admit defeat.

Republicans And Their Own Peculiar Version Of A "Gay" Lifestyle

To be a conservative always means swimming against the tide of history. Under intense pressure from business groups, Jan Brewer may have vetoed her party's latest crazy anti-gay legislation in Arizona, but that isn't stopping other conservatives in other states the GOP controls from trying to pass identical loathsome legislation. GOP bigots are on this particular warpath in Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri and Oklahoma.

Louise Melling, the deputy legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union, said the efforts are part of a misguided attempt to preserve an outdated social order. She noted that federal courts have repeatedly rejected biblical claims as a justification for discriminatory action. Cases rejected by the courts have included a Christian school that paid men more than women in the 1980s because men traditionally are the heads of their households, and a South Carolina barbecue chain that defended its refusal to serve black customers in the 1960s on religious grounds.

“At moments of social change, what you see is a resistance, and a desire to create or preserve certain pockets,” Melling said. “Historically we’ve rejected those claims, based on our understanding and deeply held beliefs about religious freedoms.”

…Republican consultant Ron Bon­jean, by contrast, said the veto helped the party as it heads into the midterm-election campaigns.

“Republicans have been burned time and again by a few ‘lone wolf’ Republicans that have hijacked the message and painted our party in a bad light over issues such as abortion and rape,” Bonjean wrote in an e-mail. “Many prominent Republicans could see the danger being seen as intolerant and many wanted to prevent the party from stepping on another political land mine that would have turned off voters across the board.”

As Asam Nagourney pointed out in a NY Times analysis this morning, this latest manifestation of resistance to social change by conservatives and reactionaries, is frightening Republican professional politicians who know how to read polls. "The decision," he wrote, "by members of the Republican establishment to join gay activists in opposing the bill reflected the alarm the Arizona battle stirred among party leaders, who worried about identifying their party with polarizing social issues at a time when Republicans see the prospect of big gains in Congressional elections on economic issues. No less important, the bill produced almost unanimous opposition among one critical Republican constituency-- business owners--who feared it would entangle the state in lawsuits and prompt a damaging boycott."

More than anything else, the division was a window into a Republican Party that remains torn on gay rights issues, be it the Arizona measure, same-sex marriage or permitting gay men and lesbians to serve openly in the military. Some of the party’s most committed voters continue to be intensely opposed to gay marriage, but their views are at odds with an increasing percentage of the American electorate, particularly younger and independent voters.

“The establishment’s reaction to the Arizona law reflects the reality that much of the country’s views on these issues have changed,” said Tim Pawlenty, the former governor of Minnesota who sought the Republican presidential nomination in 2012.

Frank Keating, a former governor of Oklahoma, said that while he opposed same-sex marriage, issues of public accommodation had long ago been settled. He said that he, too, would have vetoed a bill like the Arizona one.

“This isn’t 1964 anymore,” he said. “We’ve moved beyond that. If you open up your doors to the general public, you can’t pick and choose who you are going to deal with.”

Many Republicans, including some who oppose gay marriage, said this bill crossed a line, enshrining discrimination in a way that they argued violated fundamental Republican principles.

Same-sex marriage continues to be an issue that can reliably turn out the party faithful, but it no longer produces the near-unanimity among Republicans that was once the case. Opposition to gay marriage and other gay issues is strong among the Tea Party, but that wing does not have the power that it once had.

“The new increment of energy at the grass-roots level is libertarianism,” Mr. Pawlenty said. “And many libertarians do not embrace the typical conservative view on this issue.”

Over the past four years, an increasing number of Republican leaders have argued that the party needs to embrace gay marriage, or risk losing younger, independent voters who polls suggest support it.

“It just makes the party look small and out of touch,” said Steve Schmidt, a Republican consultant who has warned that the party is hurting itself by being identified with opposition to gay rights. “Arizona has become an outlier state in which an extreme ring of the party is able to put forward legislation that damages the entire brand of the Republican Party.”

I guess it's better than the "closet case" brand the Republican Party has suffered through, as one hypocrite after another has been found to be having sex with men-- some with boys-- while preaching anti-gay Republican Party dogma. Some, like Senator Larry Craig (R-ID), Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL), Rep. Robert Bauman (R-MD) and Rep. Ed Schrock (R-VA), have been publicly and traumatically outed and banished. Others, like Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) , Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) and Aaron Schock (R-IL) are told they will be tolerated as long as they don't get caught in a public toilet or with an underage boy, aberrant behavior for normal gay people, but more typical for fearful, mentally deranged closet cases.

Aside from flamboyant couture and a penchant for hanging around gyms and posing without his shirt on, Aaron Schock's outward manifestation of his status as a notorious closet case seems to be expressed through a decadent and lavish lifestyle-- and one not financed by his own income. A corporate whore to the nth degree, young Schock thinks nothing of being wined and dined-- and not always legally-- by special interests who count on his votes to betray the ordinary families of Quincy, Peoria, Springfield and a safely red swathe of central Illinois.

"These are not supposed to be slush funds so that lobbyists and others seeking influence can contribute in order to help support a member's lifestyle," Sloan said. "I think they'd be in a hurry to tell you if the purposes were all innocent and legitimate."

Take Peoria Republican Aaron Schock's Generation-Y PAC, for example. According to documents filed with the Federal Election Commission, the fund started 2012 with $50,004.18 cash on hand. Over the next 24 months, the PAC had total receipts of $550,633.00. About half of that came from other PACs. But of the over $600,000.00 available to spend, less than half of GEN-Y's disbursements went to candidates and committees. More than $250,000.00 went to expenses apparently involved in running the PAC itself.

That included over $56,000.00 spent at hotels. During the 24-month period examined by NBC5 Investigates, the Schock PAC listed three stays at the legendary Beverly Hills Hotel in Los Angeles, totaling $9,462.27. There were three nights at L.A.'s luxurious Mondrian, and other stays at the Luxe and Beverly Wilshire. Gen-Y dropped another $12,285.00 at the Wynn in Las Vegas. In Chicago, the PAC listed 14 stays totaling over $11,000.00 at the Peninsula, and another four stopovers at the Trump.

The Generation-Y PAC dropped over $26,000.00 on private aircraft. Fine restaurants across the country added another $36,909.00. They shelled out $11,604.00 at a Colorado ski resort, with hundreds more for snowmobile rentals - all during a 24-month period.

Who enjoyed the largesse? Schock's staffers won't say.

"Gen-Y conducts its activities with all applicable rules and regulations," campaign spokesman Karen McDonald told NBC5 Investigates in a statement. "All activity is properly disclosed, and the committee is in full compliance with federal campaign finance laws."

"This is all we're offering on the record," she said.

"I think the reason they don't tell you is they have no good reason why members of Congress need to stay at the most expensive hotels in Los Angeles," Sloan said. "They'd rather not talk about it, and hope that it's just ignored, and their constituents don't notice."

Sloan and her organization point to one other tantalizing fact: The source of Leadership PAC funds. Often, thousands upon thousands of dollars come from the political action committees of special interest groups, hoping to curry favor.

"I think constituents have a right to wonder why somebody would give you so much money, what they would want in return, and how you're spending the money," she said. "It's a completely reasonable question for any constituent to ask."

Click here to view a three-month sampling of all of the "Itemized Disbursements" which NBC5 Investigates found for GEN-Y PAC over a three-month period in early 2013.

Schock is already under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for several serious breaches of campaign finance laws and Illinois media has their eyes on his shady dealings. This week, the Chicago Sun-Times let local readers know about the high life young Schock is living and who's footing the bill. And long ago, veteran DC reporter Al Kamen blew the whistle in Schock's real hometown paper, the Washington Post-- Aaron Schock Gets Ripped, about what we could expect from the rule-bending Aaron Schock over time.

Appearances matter.

Rep. Aaron Schock seems to understand this better than most members of Congress. After all, his chiseled physique and fashion sense has landed him, shirtless, on the cover of Men’s Health and in a photo spread in GQ in which he sported designer suits.

But the looks of his spending from campaign and PAC coffers aren’t quite as attractive. The sophomore Republican from Illinois has spent thousands of dollars from his campaign and political action committee on luxury hotels from Palm Beach to Manhattan, town-car service, antique stores and concerts.

That’s all perfectly legal: As long as the trips and expenses are legitimately related to campaigning and fundraising, they’re fine. “It’s an appearance problem,” said Melanie Sloan, director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the watchdog group that analyzed Schock’s spending. “He seems perfectly happy to live high on the hog as long as someone else is footing the bill.”

In the past three election cycles, Schock’s campaign and PAC spent $85,622 on luxury hotels, about half of which were four- and five-star outfits, including the Waldorf Astoria in Chicago, the famed Breakers in Palm Beach, Fla., and the Beverly Wilshire in Beverly Hills, Calif.

…CREW says the group first flagged Schock’s champagne tastes while scouring House members’ financials for a report titled “Family Affair.” In that analysis, they noted that Schock had used campaign funds for a fancy hotel stay in Greece (he later repaid the campaign) and for DVDs of the P90X fitness routine (billed under “healthcare,” by the way).

Other purchases included:

• $5,522 on what the campaign called “office equipment” from Euro Trash, an Illinois-based antique-import and design business whose must-see Web site (dig the massive chandeliers and to-die-for European antiques) declares that “everyone can and should live well.” Shearer, though, said the campaign purchased used office furniture, not antiques.

• $1,565 in “travel expenses” from “J Bondi Inc.” in Beverly Hills. Shearer says this was for concert tickets (that company, CREW says, appears to be a holding company owned by Elton John).

• $859 on “gifts” from Storks Snapshots ($407) and the Bare Belly Boutique ($452), upscale maternity boutiques in Illinois. We’re still awaiting an explanation from Shearer on that one.

One of the big problems with closet cases is that because they grow accustomed to living a lie to hide their sexual identity, they inevitably slip into lying about everything, the way normal people take a breath of fresh air or a sip of water. And eventually mental illness sets in. Living in the closet is a sick thing conservatives force on their own gays. And right-wing gays see how normal gay men and women live their lives and they are eager to see their own party dragged into modern times. But, like Schock, they are too scared to do anything about it. There are a dozen active Republican homosexuals in Congress now-- and not one of them has come out… while gay Democrats are getting married and having children and leading normal, healthy lives. Man up, Aaron; it's not too late to save yourself. Don't wait 'til you're caught doing something sexually embarrassing.

Of the faking of Brooks...

...there is no end.

Another Reynolds portrait of Johnson, wigless and somewhat younger (via Wikimedia).

David Brooks's sudden and startling jump into commentary on literary classics inexorably calls to mind the words of Dr. Samuel Johnson, in Rambler 28, on "The various arts of self-delusion":

There are men who always confound the praise of goodness with the practice, and who believe themselves mild and moderate, charitable and faithful, because they have exerted their eloquence in commendation of mildness, fidelity, and other virtues. This is an error almost universal [jump]
among those that converse much with dependents, with such whose fear or interest disposes them to a seeming reverence for any declamation, however enthusiastic, and submission to any boast, however arrogant. Having none to recall their attention to their lives, they rate themselves by the goodness of their opinions, and forget how much more easily men may show their virtue in their talk than in their actions.

In his own praise of that irascible old Tory as a "great essayist" and a self-made "something large, weighty and impressive," like a sort of human oak dining table, Brooks appropriates to himself an unearned character of literary ambition and moral seriousness in exactly that way. In fact praising himself by praising others (for mildness and moderation, charity and fidelity) is perhaps the central M.O. of his work, though it isn't often that he sets himself up as hilariously as this. I don't know to what extent he's surrounded by fearful yes-men and self-seeking flatterers, but some friend needs to tell him he is going too far.

I dearly love Johnson myself, though with little sympathy for his political and religious views—it's why I've taken his portrait by Joshua Reynolds, gaping in nearsighted horror at a typo or an ill-applied metaphor, as my avatar—but I don't think anybody has ever before called him one of "the greatest essayists who ever lived" on par with Michel de Montaigne, the inventor of the form (essai, "attempt", a literary hang-glider's leap off the cliff). Johnson's periodical essays on the model of Addison and Steele, all written and self-published on bloggy schedules when he was in his forties in 1750-54 and 1758-60, before and after he completed the Dictionary, were an important part of his career, and well-made and resonant, with their carefully plotted periods and grave messages, but if he achieved real greatness it was later on, in his writing on writing, the preface to his edition of Shakespeare and the Lives of the Poets, as a kind of Marian McPartland of 18th-century English letters, a fine performer in his own right but best remembered for his deep understanding, technical and emotional, of performers finer still.

Brooks's picture of Montaigne as a liberal and to Johnson's conservative is attractive but simplistic (Montaigne was far too skeptical and too aristoctatic to count as a progressive, and Johson's conservatism was not exactly conventional). It is certainly not correct to say that "Johnson was charming, but he was not amiable" or that his essays display "a witty but relentless moral teacher".* Nor is it in any sense the case that he didn't believe in Montaigne's nosce te ipsum:

But whereas Montaigne put the emphasis on self-understanding, Johnson put the emphasis on self-conquest. Johnson didn’t go inward; he went outward.**

He didn't examine himself in public, the way Montaigne did, or discuss the size of his penis (that Montaigne did seems to be true; I imagine Brooks got it from a 2011 Times op-ed by Michael Gottlieb, where he may have picked the concept of putting Johnson and Montaigne together in the same space), but he spent the better part of his time in private self-discovery, agonizing over his moral character, and recommended the same to others in strong terms:

"When a man employs himself upon remote and unnecessary subjects, and wastes his life upon questions which cannot be resolved, and of which the solution would conduce very little to the advancement of happiness; when he lavishes his hours in calculating the weight of the terraqueous globe, or in adjusting successive systems of worlds beyond the reach of the telescope; he may be very properly recalled from his excursions by this precept [Know Thyself], and reminded that there is a nearer being with which it is his duty to be more acquainted; and from which his attention has been hitherto withheld by studies to which he has no other motive than vanity or curiosity." (Rambler 24)

But that picture of a charming but not amiable, witty but relentless moralist, looking out rather than in, is pretty clearly how Brooks thinks of himself. I'd say he's wrong there too. I'd say he's neither a Montaigne nor a Johnson but a lazy, incurious amateur.

Via Tower of Babel.

Johnson socialized with Brooks's Whig hero Edmund Burke, but had a poor opinion of his politics as dishonest

Of a person [Burke] who differed from him in politicks, he said, "In private life he is a very honest gentleman; but I will not allow him to be so in publick life. People may be honest, though they are doing wrong; that is between their Maker and them. But we, who are suffering by their pernicious conduct, are to destroy them...."

and overly partisan

a certain eminent political friend of ours [Burke] was wrong, in his maxim of sticking to a certain set of men on all occasions. "I can see that a man may do right to stick to a party," said he; "that is to say, he is a Whig, or he is a Tory, and he thinks one of those parties upon the whole the best, and that to make it prevail, it must be generally supported, though, in particulars, it may be wrong. He takes its faggot of principles, in which there are fewer rotten sticks than in the other, though some rotten sticks to be sure; and they cannot be well separated. But, to blind one's self to one man, or one set of men (who may be right to-day and wrong to-morrow), without any general preference of system, I must disapprove."

(quotes from www.samueljohnson.com, by my tweep @FrankLynchBkln)

*Also false that

Thomas Boswell said he fought his sins as if they were “the wild beasts of the Arena.”

It wasn't his sins but his fears of death that the quote describes him as fighting down, and as I'm sure readers of this page tend to know it wasn't a sports columnist for the Washington Post who said it but Johnson's biographer, James Boswell. I've sent a note on this to the Times under my street name. I assume the Times will correct The Times has corrected the name, but a screen shot is below.

**Just last June, Brooks thought inward-to-outward was a particularly bad thing:

Somewhere along the way, many people in the humanities lost faith in this uplifting mission. The humanities turned from an inward to an outward focus. They were less about the old notions of truth, beauty and goodness and more about political and social categories like race, class and gender.

I KNOW REPUBLICANS DON'T REALLY HATE VETERANS BECAUSE THEIR BRANDING TELLS ME SO

Will this have any negative consequences for the GOP? Of course not:

Senate Republicans stopped Democrats from advancing a bill that would have expanded healthcare and education programs for veterans.

In a 56-41 vote Thursday, the motion to waive a budget point of order against the bill failed, as Democrats fell short of the 60 votes needed to overcome the Republican roadblock....

Even though the bill the GOP blocked was custom-tailored to win GOP votes?

... Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont brought forth a carefully crafted bill to provide $21 billion in new veterans benefits over the next decade. These included medical benefits, education benefits, and job-training. It contained 26 provisions that came from the Republican members of the Veterans Affairs Committee, which Sanders chairs. It was so wide-ranging that it contained a provision that would eliminate a rule prohibiting the Veterans Administration from covering in vitro fertilization on behalf of veterans whose wounds prevent them from conceiving a child in the usual manner. There was a time, and not so long ago, when both parties would fall all over themselves to help America's veterans. How many platitudes are we going to hear on the stump between now and November about America's Heroes and Our Wounded Warriors? This bill was a put up or shut up moment....

Only two Republicans were willing to vote with Sanders, and the bill died a procedural death.

Will there be consequences for the GOP? Nahhh. The GOP loves the troops. Everyone knows that because ... everyone knows that. It's a "fact" because we've been told for years that it's a fact. America believes that the GOP loves the troops because lots of Republicans appear on Fox News and Fox News has a lot more American-flag-and-eagle graphics than CNN or MSNBC. America believes that the GOP loves the troops because draft-dodgers Bush, Cheney, and Rove got misty-eyed about America as they sent lots of troops to die in two mismanaged wars. America believes that the GOP loves the troops because Ronald Reagan saluted a lot.

And so there was no possible risk to the Republican Party from this vote.

Yes, I know: the Republicans' excuse for the vote was that they wouldn't support the bill without being allowed to tack on additional Iran sanctions -- sanctions that would damage a fragile diplomatic process, and that even the American Legion thinks should have been kept out of the bill. Once upon a time, Washington politicians believed that politics stops at the water's edge. Politicizing diplomatic efforts in this way -- defying an opposition-party president and failing to present a united front to the world -- was deemed unpatriotic. But that's another thing Republicans can always get away with. They can do anything and never be charged with lack of patriotism. Patriotism is part of their brand too. We all know they're patriots because ... well, just because.

You Remember Miami's Ex-Rep David Rivera, Right?

Florida GOP crooks Alliegro and Rivera

We've been on his case for a long time but this isn't about him beating up a woman or even his crooked fundraising or even about the free-flowing-drugs-and-shady-cash party house he and Marco Rubio maintained in Tallahassee-- or even about how he managed to finance his extravagant and expensive lifestyle. All the evidence of Rivera, who was defeated in a reelection bid last cycle by Joe Garcia, immersing himself in gangsterism is leading to a trial and yesterday intrepid Miami Herald reporter Marc Caputo had the latest scoop on Rivera.

A fake Democrat who Rivera recruited to run, Justin Sternad, finally admitted for the record that "Rivera was a part of the conspiracy to funnel illegal contributions to his campaign." Rivera and one of his associates, Ana Alliegro (who's been on the lam in Central America), gave Sternad $81,486.15 in illegal campaign contributions. Sternad has been cooperating with federal investigators who are trying to bring charges against Rivera and Alliegro.

“To those who think this case has gone away: You’re wrong,” said Enrique “Rick” Yabor, an attorney for Sternad, who last month amended three of his FEC reports to note the involvement of Alliegro and Rivera in his 2012 Democratic primary race for Congressional District 26, which stretches from from Key West to Calle Ocho in Miami-Dade County.

Neither Alliegro nor Rivera-- both of whom have denied involvement in the scheme-- could be reached for comment.

Sternad has never publicly mentioned Rivera or Alliegro, but he has privately discussed them at length with federal investigators.

Sternad was busted by the FBI after the Miami Herald and el Nuevo Herald raised questions about his campaign finances and reports.

During the campaign, Sternad-- a political unknown with no experience and little money-- was producing and mailing slick flyers that sophisticatedly targeted specific segments of the electorate in the district.

One mailer savaged fellow Democrat Joe Garcia over his divorce, echoing a line of attack espoused by Rivera, who was then the Republican incumbent. Sternad also admitted to using Alliegro as a de facto campaign manager-- a strange choice for a Democrat considering her Republican background and close association with Rivera.

As the feds closed in, Alliegro fled to Nicaragua at one point, returned to Miami to talk to investigators last year, and then apparently left again, according to her Facebook page.

If Rivera was involved in the conspiracy, it indicates he wanted to use Sternad as a straw candidate to defeat Garcia in the primary or at least wound him before the 2012 election. It didn’t work. Amid the scandal, Garcia walloped Rivera in the general election.

This kind of thing is pretty standard operating procedure for Florida Republicans and although Rivera will probably end up in prison for it, it could just as well be Ileana Ros-Lehtinen in the Miami-Dade district next door. Last year we looked at how she managed-- probably with help from her allies Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Steve Israel-- to pick her own un-funded Democratic "opponent," Manny Yevancey.

One of the easiest districts for a Democrat to win would be FL-27, the seat now held by Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. But there is no recruitment; there is anti-recruitment. DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz has made it abundantly clear to Florida Democrats that she will not tolerate anyone credible running against Ileana, who, like her, is owned by the sugar baron Fanjul brothers. Last year Obama's 7 point margin in FL-27 was one of the highest margins of victory in any district held by a Republican Member of Congress. But Wasserman Schultz had the DCCC make sure there would be no viable candidate. The "Democrat" who ran, Manny Yevancey, still hasn't filed an FEC financial disclosure report, which means he raised and spent less than $5,000. His petitions-- which were commercially collected by a firm in Tampa that was paid by "someone else"-- is almost totally signed by folks in Tampa, not in Miami, Coral Gables, Hialeah, Miami Springs, South Miami, Westchester or anywhere else in Ros-Lehtinen's district. The total signatures on his petitions from Miami-Dade- 12. The total from Tampa- 1,147. And the other counties with significant petition numbers were also on the other side of the state, Hillsborough with 656 and Pasco with 502. Very convenient for Wasserman Schultz and Ros-Lehtinen to have a candidate with no income, no roots and no chance-- and old dirty trick that anti-democracy hacks employee.

The DCCC has moved to make sure there would be no plausible opponent for Ros-Lehtinen again this year-- despite polling that shows a Democrat would beat her and despite FL-27 being one of only two districts in the country with Republican congressmen where Obama increased his winning margin in 2012. So, by all means… throw Rivera in prison, but take Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Debbie Wassserman Schultz and Steve Israel as well. And throw away the key.


UPDATE: Alliegro Arrested, Deported To U.S.

The noose is tightening around Republican criminal and former Miami-Dade congressman, David Rivera. His coconspirator, Ana Alliegro, was arrested Friday in Nicaragua where she was hiding and is now in federal custody in a Miami jail. She's facing a quarter million dollars in fines and 5 years in prison. The expectation is that she'll rat out Rivera and that, eventually, Rivera will rat out Marco Rubio on unrelated criminal enterprises the two of them were involved in when they were running the Florida legislature.

The Best Thing I Ever Ate

You guys. I AM SO EXCITED. Not only do I have the ever amazing Stephanie from Life According to Steph on the blog today, but we're talking food. Steph is known to post recipes that sound unbelievably delicious and I've realize that girl loves food just as much as me. So we are partnering up to give you...

Steph: Lobster benedict at Blue Heaven in Key West. I drool thinking about this. Poached eggs on an english muffin topped with lobster and lime hollandaise. If they're out of the lobster or don't have it that day, the shrimp benedict will do. The hollandaise is plate licking good. If you're ever in Key West, you need to go have breakfast with the roosters at Blue Heaven.

Source

Margaret: I'm not a big breakfast eater, but when I am- it's Corned Beef Hash. All day. Every day. No matter what restaurant we go to, I will order corned beef hash. Side of potatoes, wheat toast smothered in butter and preferably a bloody mary on the side. Of all the places I've gotten corned beef hash, the place that takes the cake is within walking distance of my apartment (and pretty damn close to my new house too...thank the lord). Jack's is a Jewish deli right around the corner from our house. And damn, do they know how to do corned beef hash. Huge chunks of meat and onions, the perfect crispiness, runny poached eggs and a side of potatoes (hash browns, home fries, cottage potatoes- honestly I have no idea what the difference is- but I've never gotten one I didn't like).

Source

Steph: Give me a caprese salad with thick ripe tomatoes in season, fresh mozzarella, big leaves of basil, delectable extra virgin olive oil, and a sprinkling of sea salt and we'll be friends for life. If tomatoes are out of season, I'll take the mozzarella sticks. I'll eat them any time, any where. 

Margaret: It's a toss up for me between two absolutely amazing appetizers. Both of these come from The Flying Fig, an adorable (and delicious) little restaurant on the near west side of Cleveland.  The first is their tempura green beans. These things are the perfectly battered and fried to be super light and not at all greasy, and are served with a ponzu sauce which I could drink on it's own. The other is bacon wrapped dates stuffed with chorizo in a smoked paprika tomatoe-y sauce. While tons of places have bacon wrapped dates, this was the first place I had them- and the sauce they serve with theirs is still one of the best I've had!

Fun fact: the owner of The Flying Fig was my dad's cheerleading partner in highschool. Which is awesome. But also makes me laugh...because my dad was a cheerleader. Only for a year I think. 

Steph: I typically order steak or seafood at dinners out. I never order chicken because it's the easiest thing to make at home. So it's weird that my pick for this is something I would never order when eating out - chicken parm.  However, the chicken parm at Palo on the Disney Cruise Line is absolutely amazing. It melts in your mouth, it's fluffy, it's more flavorful and succulent than any chicken parm I've ever tasted. It's like someone fed the chicken magic for every meal. If the chefs can make me crave a dish I normally wouldn't waste my order on, then that gets my pick for one of the best entrees I've ever eaten.

lifeaccordingtosteph.com

Margaret: If we're going out to a nice dinner, it's likely I will order some sort of seafood. The first night I tried this dish it was no different. But the fact that it is one of the most amazing things I have EVER eaten is why I refuse to get anything else off the menu. The Shrimp and Grits at Washington Place Bistro. I'm telling you- pure bliss. Tons of shrimp, creamy cheesy grits, bits of chorizo and a beer blanc sauce that is making my mouth water just thinking about it. If any of you ever come to Cleveland and want to try this place, I am ALWAYS down to eat this meal. 

Photo courtesy of Bite Buff, one of my favorite food blogs in Cleveland!
She's also the reason I first ordered this dish. So I owe her one for that tip.

Steph: I will throw down with anyone and put Brothers Pizza in Langhorne, PA, up against your favorite pizza. It is not part of a chain or related to any Brothers near you.  It is delicious and cheesy and the sauce is just right. I love a slice of thick mushroom and their thin, plain, regular pie.

lifeaccordingtosteph.com

Margaret: I'm normally a pizza purist, and my favorite for just a good old pepperoni pizza is Mama Santas in Cleveland's Little Italy. Just damn good pizza at a damn good price. If I'm going to step out of my comfort zone, it's for the Potato Pizza at Bar Cento/Bier Markt. Super crispy thin crust with thinly sliced potatoes, crispy pancetta (which is housemade), provolone and rosemary. Just the smell of this pizza is fantastic- I love it!

Steph: Summer: mint julep with rainbow jimmies from Kohr Bros. at the shore. Any other time, something my mom makes, especially her chocolate cake with butter cream frosting or cookies. Her baked goods are excellent, I'd rather have them than dessert from anywhere else.

Margaret: I'm not a huge sweets person. My favorite dessert ever is my aunt's lemon bars. They are the perfect combination of sweetness and lemony tartness. I specifically requested them for the dessert bar at our wedding, and am still sad I didn't get one. She makes them for me almost every time we go to her place. The BEST.

Steph: I'm not even close to a daily boozer. It can literally be weeks between drinks for me. When I do drink, I'm low maintenance: give me a Blue Moon, a glass of pinot noir or cabernet, or a super dirty ice cold martini, and I'm happy. I'm not the girl trying the fancy mixed drinks on the menu, although I will have one if I'm in a tropical locale because yolo. Otherwise, I'm mostly drinking coffee (DD), water, and iced tea.

Margaret: Now everyone around here knows how much I love my wine. And beer. And a good bloody mary on occasion (and by occasion I mean as often as I can). It's rare that I really branch out from these. But these two drinks definitely caught my attention in the best way possible! The Moscow Mule from The Willeyville, a newer restaurant in The Flats area of Cleveland has been calling my name since the one and only time I was there. Housemade ginger beer, freshly squeezed lime juice and vodka (made in Ohio!). Holy damn was it good- and so fresh! The other is the sangria from Matisse in Chicago. In the weekend I was there for my birthday, we went here three times. Get a mix of the red and white- it will change your life.

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