Cooking Spotlight: Rosemary Roasted Potatoes in the Kitchen

We have two from Trina this edition.  First spotlighted is a potato recipe. 

 

Rosemary Roasted Potatoes in the Kitchen

"Another potato recipe!" cried readers. Okay, I can do that.

Here's one that when you read through, may elict a few groans. However, stay with me on this.

3 large baking potatoes, about 1 1/2 lb (750g), peeled and cut into 2-inch (5-cm) chunks
2 tablespoons chopped fresh rosemary
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

Preheat an over to 400 [degrees] F (200 C). On a large baking sheet, spread out the potatoes and lightly coat the tops and sides with nonstick cooking spray. Sprinkle with the rosemary and pepper.
Bake, turning every 15 minutes until golden brown and tender in the middle, about 1 hour.
To serve, divide among 4 individual plates.

I'm thinking someone may see the one hour baking time and groan since the potatoes have to be turned every 15 minutes. If you groaned, that's really three times, just three times. This is a very easy recipe and a tasty one as well. I have a friend who uses olive oil for everything and she uses it in place of nonstick cooking spray. I have another friend who grows her own rosemary and she will also use rosemary she's dried in this recipe (and others). If you're a rosemary wiz, you can probably do this with dried rosemary. I'm not a wiz, so I use fresh rosemary.

I asked Betty to try this recipe as a test run because her kids like potatoes and she's a working mom with not a lot of time. She says it took her fifteen minutes to do the steps before putting the dish into the oven and could probably cut it down to to ten minutes the next time. She set the microwave timer for 15 minutes, sliced some tomatoes for a salad, chopped some lettuce, some green onions and was working on doing the same to the carrots when the timer went off. She turned the potatoes, set the time for 15 minutes, finished her salad, checked on the kids in the living room, had a glass of ice water ("sitting down!"), timer went off, turned the potoes, set the timer again and then set the table. By the time she had the table set, the timer went off and she pulled the baking sheet from the oven and began putting the potatoes on plates.

She said it turned out "really good and that was the first time I'd made it." So this should be an easy recipe for most people. And it's from Cooking for Healthy Living by Jane Fonda. There are a number of wonderful recipes in that book. There are "120 Easy Low-Fat Recipes" according to the cover. I haven't made everyone in the book. I got this book in 1996 when it came out (I'm remembering that as the spring, but I may be remembering wrong). My oldest daughter picked it up for me because I love cooking and we love Jane Fonda in my house. She saw it at a bookstore and knew I'd enjoy it. (On Jane Fonda, C.I. knows I love the movie Julia and mailed me the DVD. I had looked for it on DVD awhile back and it wasn't available. So if there are any other Julia fans out there, it's now out on DVD.)

I do too. But I make the point about the recipes because there are three readers who have just purchased their first cookbooks. One's already given up and, I want to stress this, French cooking is something most are not going to master easily. You'll need patience for that. If you're a novice cook and you're interested in learning French cooking, I'd say you have two real choices: (a) sign up for lessons or (b) find a friend who knows how to cook that way. There used to be a number of programs dedicated to that. There may be some new ones now but I know the ship was pulling out of the harbor on that about ten years ago.

If you're looking for a cookbook to buy, I have a few tips. First off, don't buy one. Go to your library and look through the cooking books they have. See what interests you and check that book or those books out. Use those to experiment. Photos aren't what you're going to eat and a lot of cookbooks with lovely photos have recipes that aren't worth the printed page.

Some of the best cookbooks don't have photographs. But what you want to do is get beyond what a photo shows you (where you may be responding to the place setting, quite honestly) and what a book actually offers you.

If you're buying, or you're someone that doesn't have access to a library (with all the cuts these days, I imagine some areas of the country have that problem), I'd recommend you order Diet for a Small Planet which has never gone out of "style" in my kitchen. Frances Moore Lappe is the author and we've noted it here before. Those are tasty recipes you can follow. I'd also recommend Jane Fonda's Cooking For Healthy Living. Other than that, I'd recommend you go to a bookstore and look through the clearance cookbooks (there are always a large number of those) so you're not spending a huge amount on a cooking book you may not end up using.

If you become someone who frequently uses cookbooks, you'll learn how to flip through one in about ten minutes and know if it's something that you will really use in your kitchen. But when you're starting out, the easiest thing is to get lost in the pictures. My new daughter-in-law and I went book shopping recently and God bless her enthusiasm but after she showed me a photo and said she couldn't wait to make the dish in the photo, I pointed out to her that she was going to be using three pots, a skillet and two hours plus.

She hadn't noticed that. She'd noticed the wonderful photo. They're good about using the photo that hooks you. Then you get home, start making the recipe and may give up half-way through or finish the recipe while swearing, "Never again."

The reader that gave up on the cookbook (a French one) is making pasteries now because when we were all in DC, one morning C.I. made some pasteries from scratch. I was amazed both by how they'd turned out and how quickly it went (for the dish, you have to cut it with butter repeatedly, popping it into the fridge every few minutes). To me, that recipe is one that I will do once a year, in the winter. I'll share it this winter and if you want to try it, that's great. If you want to stick to the bakery, I don't blame you.

But if you get a cookbook and it's not one for you, don't panic. Just set it aside. It may be something that a year's time you're able to go back to. (Or it may be a worthless book, there are a number of those.) But, if you become someone who builds a cookbook library, you may find out what I have, which is that a good cookbook is one that has ten to twenty recipes you're going to use. As you get comfortable cooking, you'll have some set dishes you do quite well and what you'll be doing after that is just adding to those dishes.

When that happens, with new cookbooks, you'll mainly be going through to find recipes you think are interesting and not telling yourself (as I did when I started out), "I'm going to start with the first recipe and cook my way through this book!"

Most people I know who are good cooks tend to make it a point to add a recipe or more a year. That's it. (C.I., who is a wonderful cook, has added five recipes each year which is why C.I. can cook anything. Though frying was never mastered, as C.I. will readily admit.) If you go with one dish or with five and see this as a long range thing, you're looking at, in five years, five recipes or twenty-five that you've mastered.

Again, the point of this site is to provide you with some recipes that will hopefully strengthen the nutritional value of what you're eating and also provide you with a way to eat at a reasonable cost. Good nutrition is always important and with our econmy and our out of control health care costs, you can see it as your first line of self-defense.

I was looking through the morning paper and there's a great deal on the tunnel (Boston Globe, we had a panel in the tunnel to the airport come loose, fall on a car, crush it and kill the woman inside). One thing I heard on Free Speech Radio News this week that I'll note, the tuna situation may be worse than thought. There was a report with a man who recommended that grown ups limit themselves to one can a week. This is something Elaine and I spoke of on the phone yesterday. She called for Mike and we were talking for a bit, as we usually do when she calls. She was a big tuna eater until the warnings. I was as well. I think a lot of women are because it's less fattening, it's easy to fix in a number of ways and it's readily available.

She'd missed the report this week (she's only just returned from her vacation) and I was filling in her in on what was discussed. Another thing I'll note is Iraq. And what I'd like to note there is that when the 'crackdown' in Baghdad (the 'securing' of the capital) began, there was another wave of Operation Happy Talk especially as June closed and July began. If you remember, C.I. was very vocal that this wasn't going to be a calm period, not matter what the Happy Talk stated, and if you've followed the news, you know that's proven to be the case. While it's true that the deaths of US troops is down, it's also true that the deaths of Iraqi civilians continues to skyrocket. My guess is that well over 200 have died in the last seven days. (That's my estimate.) In the paper this morning, I saw some stuff already covered in C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot" Friday and a lot that wasn't covered. So I'll note the snapshot and then do some recommended links right after. "Iraq snapshot:"

The Operation Happy Talk goes on.
Sean McFarland becomes the biggest doofus outside the administration by delcaring, "I think we have turned a corner her in Ramadi." MacFarland is both an Army Col. and a Happy Talker.
In news that's a little harder to Happy Talk, Antonio Castaneda (AP) reports that of the 1000 Sunni soldiers who made up the May 2006 graduating class "only about 300 of them have reported for duty".
In other news from the real world, Reuters reports that the US Congressional Budget Office predicts: "The Iraq war could cost U.S. taxpayers between $202 billion and $406 billion more over the next 10 years".
These projections come at a time when, as Martha Burk has pointed out (Ms.), the US government has cut "[d]omestic-violence prevention by $35 million, Medicaid by $17 billion over five years and child care programs by 1.03 billion over five years."
In other costs paid, Reuters reports 12 corpses were discovered in Tal Afar. CBS and the AP note a corpse ("shot in the chest . . . signs of torture") discovered in Azizyah".
Bombings?
As noted earlier this morning, seven people were killed ("after Friday prayers") when a Sunni mosque in Baghdad was bombed. Meanwhile Reuters reports that a mosque in Balad Ruz was hit by mortar rounds leaving at least two dead and four wounded while a car bomber in Mosul who killed himself and five others. The AFP covers a mortar attack in Baghdad that left one person dead and nine wounded.
Shooting deaths?
Reuters notes that two policeman were killed by a sniper in Tal Afar while a minibus near Kut was attacked "with machine gun fire" resulting in five dead ("including a wwoman and a child"). Meanwhile, the AFP reports attacks in two cities: a car was "ambushed" in Tikrit by assailants who shot the father dead and wounded the son; and, in Mosul, two different attacks left a police officer dead as well as the bodyguard of a judge. And the Associated Press reports a drive-by in Baghdad that killed a taxi driver.
The BBC noted the death of several Iraqi soldiers (12 at that point) in Kirkuk when they were attacked with "rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns". AFX raised the number dead to 13 (citing "colonel Mahmud Abdulla").
Meanwhile, following yesterday's kidnapping attempt that left wrestling coach Mohammed Karim Abid Sahib dead, the AP reports that: "Iraq's national wrestling team [has] pulled out of a tournament in the United Arab Emirates".
In the United States, Saturday July 15th is a day of action calling for Suzanne Swift to receive an honorable discharge including a protest, "at the gates of Ft. Lewis (exit 119) beginning at 12 pm with a press converence at 3 pm" in Washington state -- while in Eugen, Oregon there will be a demonstration outside the Federal Building at noon.
In DC (and across the globe -- over 22 countries), the fast led by CODEPINK and others continues. As Thursday's The KPFA Evening News reported some Congressional members, including Barbara Lee, Maxine Waters, Dennis Kucinich, Cynthia McKinney and Lynne Woolsey took part in a one-day fast on Thursday. Ann Wright, who ressigned from the State Department on May 19, 2003 and is taking part in the actions stated: "The only reason we fast is to force us to remember what's going on here. That innocent Iraqis are dying every day, Americans are dying every day. We need to get this war ended. So, yeah, we're going to up the ante".
Lastly, Wednesday July 19th, San Antonio, TX will be the location for a "public hearing held by the the independent Commission on the National Guard and Reserves" -- "in the Iberia Ballroom of the La Mansion Del Rio Hotel, 112 College Street, San Antonio."
There will be two panels with the first lasting from 9:30 a.m. to 12 p.m. and focused on "roles and missions to funding requirements" and the second, lasting from 2:00 pm to 4 pm, focusing on how reserves were "involuntarily mobilized after September 11, 2001".

Recommended: "THIS JUST IN! DON'T TAKE YOUR WORK HOME WITH YOU!"
"Friday "
"A light post (I won't pretend this is deep)"
"What to call it? I'm too tired to figure that out "
"The War Paint Council"
"NYT: The continued decline of Dexy"
"NYT: Trying to give out that peaceful, easy feeling (someone break it to them -- they're a paper, not a rock group)"
"NYT: Worth reports, Dexy role plays"
"My Iraq op-ed"
"Bono's Anti-Chavez Video Game"
"Editorial: American wants the war over now"
"TV: Supernatural -- a tale of bad TV"
"The Hidden War on Women in Iraq"
"The Enduring Logic of Withdrawal"
"Bugging Hillary"

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Blog Spotlight: Cedric on war breeding war

Cedric offers some thoughts on how war breeds war.

 

What to call it? I'm too tired to figure that out

"Iraq Snapshot" (The Common Ills)
The Operation Happy Talk goes on.
Sean McFarland becomes the biggest doofus outside the administration by delcaring, "I think we have turned a corner her in Ramadi." MacFarland is both an Army Col. and a Happy Talker.
In news that's a little harder to Happy Talk, Antonio Castaneda (AP) reports that of the 1000 Sunni soldiers who made up the May 2006 graduating class "only about 300 of them have reported for duty".
In other news from the real world, Reuters reports that the US Congressional Budget Office predicts: "The Iraq war could cost U.S. taxpayers between $202 billion and $406 billion more over the next 10 years".
These projections come at a time when, as Martha Burk has pointed out (Ms.), the US government has cut "[d]omestic-violence prevention by $35 million, Medicaid by $17 billion over five years and child care programs by 1.03 billion over five years."
In other costs paid, Reuters reports 12 corpses were discovered in Tal Afar. CBS and the AP note a corpse ("shot in the chest . . . signs of torture") discovered in Azizyah".
Bombings?
As noted earlier this morning, seven people were killed ("after Friday prayers") when a Sunni mosque in Baghdad was bombed. Meanwhile Reuters reports that a mosque in Balad Ruz was hit by mortar rounds leaving at least two dead and four wounded while a car bomber in Mosul who killed himself and five others. The AFP covers a mortar attack in Baghdad that left one person dead and nine wounded.
Shooting deaths?
Reuters notes that two policeman were killed by a sniper in Tal Afar while a minibus near Kut was attacked "with machine gun fire" resulting in five dead ("including a wwoman and a child"). Meanwhile, the AFP reports attacks in two cities: a car was "ambushed" in Tikrit by assailants who shot the father dead and wounded the son; and, in Mosul, two different attacks left a police officer dead as well as the bodyguard of a judge. And the Associated Press reports a drive-by in Baghdad that killed a taxi driver.
The BBC noted the death of several Iraqi soldiers (12 at that point) in Kirkuk when they were attacked with "rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns". AFX raised the number dead to 13 (citing "colonel Mahmud Abdulla").
Meanwhile, following yesterday's kidnapping attempt that left wrestling coach Mohammed Karim Abid Sahib dead, the AP reports that: "Iraq's national wrestling team [has] pulled out of a tournament in the United Arab Emirates".
In the United States, Saturday July 15th is a day of action calling for Suzanne Swift to receive an honorable discharge including a protest, "at the gates of Ft. Lewis (exit 119) beginning at 12 pm with a press converence at 3 pm" in Washington state -- while in Eugen, Oregon there will be a demonstration outside the Federal Building at noon.
In DC (and across the globe -- over 22 countries), the fast led by CODEPINK and others continues. As Thursday's The KPFA Evening News reported some Congressional members, including Barbara Lee, Maxine Waters, Dennis Kucinich, Cynthia McKinney and Lynne Woolsey took part in a one-day fast on Thursday. Ann Wright, who ressigned from the State Department on May 19, 2003 and is taking part in the actions stated: "The only reason we fast is to force us to remember what's going on here. That innocent Iraqis are dying every day, Americans are dying every day. We need to get this war ended. So, yeah, we're going to up the ante".
Lastly, Wednesday July 19th, San Antonio, TX will be the location for a "public hearing held by the the independent Commission on the National Guard and Reserves" -- "in the Iberia Ballroom of the La Mansion Del Rio Hotel, 112 College Street, San Antonio."
There will be two panels with the first lasting from 9:30 a.m. to 12 p.m. and focused on "roles and missions to funding requirements" and the second, lasting from 2:00 pm to 4 pm, focusing on how reserves were "involuntarily mobilized after September 11, 2001".

I started this thing a lot earlier but was wondering around checking out sites. I have to say Betty's doing a wonderful job filling in for Rebecca at Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude. I enjoy hearing her talk. She'll always apologize and say, "I'm going on too much." But she really doesn't. I think she's pretty wonderful. Tonight, among other things, she wrote about Wally. I wished I'd thought to do that because we do those joint posts pretty regularly and I should have written to explain that, if nothing else.

I think Betty's captured Wally perfectly so I won't talk about that but I will say that he usually calls up and asks if I want to post. I'm always up for it if I've got the time. (I had to turn him down once due to a church thing.) It's fun working with him. When I'm not working with him, he'll run his posts by C.I. and ask, "Where am I losing it?" He really does work on those things. They're funny and sometimes you might think, "Oh, he dashed that off." That was what he hoped to do but sometimes, he'll work on that for an hour when he's working on them by himself. Then he'll read it to a friend or go straight to C.I. and say, "Help!" C.I. will tell you he doesn't need help, but Wally's not the best judge of his humor. Fridays are usually the worst for Wally because he really would like to be done with it fairly early but on Fridays, big news tend to come later in the day.

I should add that when Wally and I are doing a joint post and have "Must credit . . ." -- that's not serious. We're making fun of Wonkette when the Cox woman was doing it. She seemed to use that all the time. She'd write about some news she'd just read at the AP or something and it would seem like she'd even tag those "Must credit Wonkette." So that's just a joke.

Something else I can add is that Wally and Mike are like C.I.'s kids. I'm serious, C.I. is very protective of them. C.I.'s protective of all of us but those two, and they know it (you can ask them), C.I. is just super protective of them. That's true of anyone who starts up a site but it's also because they are the youngest. I'll leave it at that but Mike's written about it and he knows just what I'm talking about. With the rest of us, to give an example, if someone told C.I. they didn't care for our sites, the response would be, "Well that's your problem." But if they said that about Mike or Wally, C.I. would get ticked off. "They are young college students! Who are you?" (I've actually heard C.I. say to that someone and it should be noted that C.I.'s very protective of college activists period.)

Kat's "My thoughts" is a really good post and one I strongly recommend. She spoke to me about and I believe she did that with everyone. I wish I could say I was thinking, "Hmmm. Someone's on a fast right now. Is this the best time for this?" But I didn't. She makes some strong points and her biggest point is that that's over, it can't be changed. But if something similar happens next time, maybe we could all think (me included, I don't exempt myself) is this really the best time for this?

My cousin showed up tonight with about four friends. I had just fixed a pizza (Trina gave me a recipe, seriously, I did the whole thing myself) and was thinking, "Great. One pizza, six people."
(I put out some pretzels while the pizza was cooking and also opened up a can of black eyed peas, that's really all I had in the apartment. I haven't had time for grocery shopping this week and plan to go in the morning.)

But he reads Mikey Likes It! and was thinking about Mike's group and he thought that we could do something like that. (Mike and his friends put together a group that meets every Friday night to talk about Iraq. That group started off bigger than they planned and has just gotten huge.) Great idea and my only complaint is, next time let me know ahead of time.

So we were talking about Iraq and one point we made that I want to make here is that we don't think you'd be seeing what's going on right now, with Israel bombing this and striking that, if it wasn't for the Bully Boy.

If the Bully Boy hadn't illegally invaded Iraq and started a 'pre-emptive' war, Israel wouldn't have the cover to do what it's doing. There would be a lot of outrage over it. (There is outrage but I don't think it's enough outrage myself.)

When one player in the system disregards the rules, no one else has to follow them. I think we'll see more of this. I think we already have seen it in other ways.

Take Bully Boy's so-called 'war on terror' and the way it's played out in other countries which is basically, if you're a brutal regime and you want to take out some people, you call them 'terrorists.' Maybe they're drug dealers or runners (or maybe you just say they were), well that's a 'terrorist' so kill them.

We are going to be paying for the Bully Boy's actions for years. In this country, we're going to have to deal with all the hatred he's brought on our country. But in terms of conflicts where people might have been encouraged to talk, they don't need to now. If Bully Boy can act alone and do what he wants just because he wants to, if he doesn't have to justify a war (just grab one because he wants one), then none of the other players are going to feel that they have to justify it. They can do what they want as well.

I know a lot of people worry about North Korea, but I'm more worried Israel will use a nuclear bomb. If they did, that's it. There is no hope of peace in the Middle East, in my opinion. If they use one of their nuclear weapons, there will be so much outrage (even if our journalists bend over backwards to justify it -- which is what they do with Israel in every other situation), Egypt, Jordan, you're just going to see a never ending war.

I feel sorry for the Israeli people because I can imagine how they're about to be tarred and feathered world wide for the actions of the idiot in charge of their country. I can relate to that. They've got their own Bully Boy and he's out to do as much damage as he can.

Actions have consequences but they also influence other actions and Bully Boy's war on Iraq has given every other bully the excuse they need to destroy whoever and whatever they want. (I think Michael Ratner's talked about how that would happen on Law and Disorder, to give credit. I don't mean just once. I think he's warned about it repeatedly.)

That's it for me, but be sure to read Betty's "The War Paint Council" (that's her latest Betinna chapter).

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Blog Spotlight: Elaine on summer and summer reading

Elaine's back from vacation.  (Sunny did a great job filling in while Elaine was gone.)  This post touches on a number of things, including literature.

 

A light post (I won't pretend this is deep)

I really did hope to blog last night. But I got back Weds. and went to work Thursday. After the evening group, I was so tempted to take a nap before even going home. Please visit Mikey Likes It! to get Mike's thoughts for the day. We're toying with different ideas still on how we'll remain "blog twins" after we've decided to delink. Hopefully, by next Friday, we'll have it down.

"Iraq Snapshot" (The Common Ills):
The Operation Happy Talk goes on.
Sean McFarland becomes the biggest doofus outside the administration by delcaring, "I think we have turned a corner her in Ramadi." MacFarland is both an Army Col. and a Happy Talker.
In news that's a little harder to Happy Talk, Antonio Castaneda (AP) reports that of the 1000 Sunni soldiers who made up the May 2006 graduating class "only about 300 of them have reported for duty".
In other news from the real world, Reuters reports that the US Congressional Budget Office predicts: "The Iraq war could cost U.S. taxpayers between $202 billion and $406 billion more over the next 10 years".
These projections come at a time when, as Martha Burk has pointed out (Ms.), the US government has cut "[d]omestic-violence prevention by $35 million, Medicaid by $17 billion over five years and child care programs by 1.03 billion over five years."
In other costs paid, Reuters reports 12 corpses were discovered in Tal Afar. CBS and the AP note a corpse ("shot in the chest . . . signs of torture") discovered in Azizyah".
Bombings?
As noted earlier this morning, seven people were killed ("after Friday prayers") when a Sunni mosque in Baghdad was bombed. Meanwhile Reuters reports that a mosque in Balad Ruz was hit by mortar rounds leaving at least two dead and four wounded while a car bomber in Mosul who killed himself and five others. The AFP covers a mortar attack in Baghdad that left one person dead and nine wounded.
Shooting deaths?
Reuters notes that two policeman were killed by a sniper in Tal Afar while a minibus near Kut was attacked "with machine gun fire" resulting in five dead ("including a wwoman and a child"). Meanwhile, the AFP reports attacks in two cities: a car was "ambushed" in Tikrit by assailants who shot the father dead and wounded the son; and, in Mosul, two different attacks left a police officer dead as well as the bodyguard of a judge. And the Associated Press reports a drive-by in Baghdad that killed a taxi driver.
The BBC noted the death of several Iraqi soldiers (12 at that point) in Kirkuk when they were attacked with "rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns". AFX raised the number dead to 13 (citing "colonel Mahmud Abdulla").
Meanwhile, following yesterday's kidnapping attempt that left wrestling coach Mohammed Karim Abid Sahib dead, the AP reports that: "Iraq's national wrestling team [has] pulled out of a tournament in the United Arab Emirates".
In the United States, Saturday July 15th is a day of action calling for Suzanne Swift to receive an honorable discharge including a protest, "at the gates of Ft. Lewis (exit 119) beginning at 12 pm with a press converence at 3 pm" in Washington state -- while in Eugen, Oregon there will be a demonstration outside the Federal Building at noon.
In DC (and across the globe -- over 22 countries), the fast led by CODEPINK and others continues. As Thursday's The KPFA Evening News reported some Congressional members, including Barbara Lee, Maxine Waters, Dennis Kucinich, Cynthia McKinney and Lynne Woolsey took part in a one-day fast on Thursday. Ann Wright, who ressigned from the State Department on May 19, 2003 and is taking part in the actions stated: "The only reason we fast is to force us to remember what's going on here. That innocent Iraqis are dying every day, Americans are dying every day. We need to get this war ended. So, yeah, we're going to up the ante".
Lastly, Wednesday July 19th, San Antonio, TX will be the location for a "public hearing held by the the independent Commission on the National Guard and Reserves" -- "in the Iberia Ballroom of the La Mansion Del Rio Hotel, 112 College Street, San Antonio."
There will be two panels with the first lasting from 9:30 a.m. to 12 p.m. and focused on "roles and missions to funding requirements" and the second, lasting from 2:00 pm to 4 pm, focusing on how reserves were "involuntarily mobilized after September 11, 2001".


On the above, there are numerous items that are important and I'm sure that something will stand out for everyone. I am tremendously bothered by the cuts in domestic abuse prevention.
You could argue, and you'd be right, that there's no way this administration wasn't going to do those cuts because they don't care about safety and they especially don't care about women's safety. However, look at that cut, $35 million. While we'll likely end up spending over $200 billion on the illegal war, we can't cough up $35 million for prevention? It proves, though it doesn't need proving at this late date, that there's always money for war.

I didn't know the new issue of Ms. was out. I'll be visiting my bookstore tomorrow and picking it up. I prefer to buy my magazines in person. I know some people enjoy the excitement of going to the mailbox and wondering, "Is this the day?" As I've explained here before, this was something my father did on Saturdays, took my brother and I to the bookstore to get us out of my mother's hair. Saturdays aren't Saturdays without a visit to a bookstore.

One of the worst parts of the vacation which had a store of some type on the resort but it was all travel, garden, sports and finances in terms of magazines and, in terms of books, a lot of right wing bios/'studies' and a lot of page turners. No Jackie Collins because I would've picked her up for a beach read. I ended up raiding the books Rebecca brought along that she'd snagged from C.I. One was nonfiction and I was so-so on it. The other one I read was Alentejo Blue and the author is Monica Ali. It was a . . . Involving. It reminded me of some of Anais Nin's short fiction and a great deal of her novel Collages. I'm speaking of the way it offered character studies. The locale and the characters were quite different. But if you enjoyed Collages, you would really enjoy this book. I had packed Mauguerite Young's Miss MacIntosh, My Darling and I read (and strongly enjoyed) that book. That is a book that I've meant to read for some time. It's a very long book and I lost a copy once on a trip mid-way through the book. I've had a difficult time finding it over the years (at one point it was out-of-print and may be still) but C.I. has a copy and was kind enough to send it to me.

I should note that C.I., in college, is the one who turned both Rebecca and myself onto Anais Nin. Her interest in the human psyche and her choices of illustrative words have always moved me. So if you're searching for some fiction to read, I'd recommend Alentejo Blue, anything by Anais Nin and Miss MacIntosh, My Darling.

When we were out on the beach, Rebecca would moan, "Not the big book!" It is a big book, Young's novel. I haven't even unpacked. I got back late Weds. and was too tired Thursday. But let me walk away from the computer and see if I can find the suitcase with that book.

Okay. This is the hardcover edition. It is 1,198 pages. That's why Rebecca called it "the big book." I was hoping to skim some of the book because I had been half-way through it when I lost my copy. But her style is part of the book's charm and I got caught up in it. So I'd read about 30 pages and look over at Rebecca and if she was at a stopping point in her book, we'd talk about what we were reading or what we were going to eat at dinner. Or who's turn it was to waive the guy over for more drinks. We were very lazy. The guys were more productive and went scuba diving. If it had been a longer vacation for me, I probably would have done that as well. However, I have had swimmer's ear before and with such a short time, I didn't want to risk getting it and then getting stuck with it on the flights back which would have been a painful nightmare.

We didn't just read. We walked a great deal. It was a little too . . . It wasn't my taste, the resort. It was beautiful. But . . . I enjoyed myself. I did. We did end up doing picnics in the evening because some of the other guests really got on my nerves.

Want a good read online? Read Betty's "The War Paint Council" which is very funny and it's nice to see the 'macho' War Hawks in a different light. I love how she takes a needles to their ballons and let's all the hot air out. Another good read is Trina's "Deviled Eggs in the Kitchen." That will touch you. But if you're looking funny, Sunny showed this to me today at the office. She said she read it three times and couldn't stop laughing each time. If the excerpt doesn't make you laugh and you enjoy humorous writing, just assume that I've chosen wrong for the excerpt because it is very funny.

"Bugging Hillary" (Susie Day, CounterPunch):
One morning, as Hillary Rodham Clinton was waking up from anxious dreams, she discovered that she had been changed into a monstrous verminous Republican.
She lay on her armor-hard back and saw, as she lifted her head up a little, her brown, arched abdomen divided into rigid bow-like sections. Her numerous legs, pitifully thin in comparison to the rest of her circumference, flickered helplessly before her eyes.
"Oh, great," she muttered. "I am 100% enjoying this. In fact, I'd really like to french kiss whoever did this to me."
Hillary Rodham Clinton was no stranger to sarcasm. Sarcasm had gotten her out of the house ­ where she had once loved to bake cookies in the shape of Tammy Wynette ­ and into the public fray, to fight the rightwing plots that assailed her and her husband.
There, in order to survive, she had learned to "triangulate." She had become highly skilled in moving to the center, between two opposing sides, ignoring the liberal losers and placating the neoconservative ascendancy ­ all the while remaining staunch and true to whatever it was she stood for that day. She was proud of her record in the Senate, proud that Pete Seeger had never written a song about voting for her.
Who could have done this? Was her loathsome new form the work of another rightwing conspiracy? But why would the Right do this to her now? Hadn't she just complimented the President on his "charm and charisma"? Hadn't she supported capital punishment and welfare reform? Sponsored anti-flag-burning legislation? Asked for 80,000 more troops in the army? Pounced on photo-ops with the likes of Tom DeLay, Karl Rove, and Bill Frist, and planned a fundraiser hosted by Rupert Murdoch? Hmm Maybe FBI higher-ups, seeking to upgrade surveillance, had told one of their inept agents to "bug" her room. Those imbeciles screwed up so much; no telling what they might do to a figure of speech.

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Blog Spotlight: Kat pointing out something many missed

Everyone e-mailing since Saturday wondered if we knew about this post Kat was doing?  Yes, she spoke to all of us about it days before she wrote it.  It raises some good point.  (None of us, everyone working on this edition, was offended by it.)

 

My thoughts

The Operation Happy Talk goes on.
Sean McFarland becomes the biggest doofus outside the administration by delcaring, "I think we have turned a corner her in Ramadi." MacFarland is both an Army Col. and a Happy Talker.
In news that's a little harder to Happy Talk, Antonio Castaneda (AP) reports that of the 1000 Sunni soldiers who made up the May 2006 graduating class "only about 300 of them have reported for duty".
In other news from the real world, Reuters reports that the US Congressional Budget Office predicts: "The Iraq war could cost U.S. taxpayers between $202 billion and $406 billion more over the next 10 years".
These projections come at a time when, as Martha Burk has pointed out (Ms.), the US government has cut "[d]omestic-violence prevention by $35 million, Medicaid by $17 billion over five years and child care programs by 1.03 billion over five years."
In other costs paid, Reuters reports 12 corpses were discovered in Tal Afar. CBS and the AP note a corpse ("shot in the chest . . . signs of torture") discovered in Azizyah".
Bombings?
As noted earlier this morning, seven people were killed ("after Friday prayers") when a Sunni mosque in Baghdad was bombed. Meanwhile Reuters reports that a mosque in Balad Ruz was hit by mortar rounds leaving at least two dead and four wounded while a car bomber in Mosul who killed himself and five others. The AFP covers a mortar attack in Baghdad that left one person dead and nine wounded.
Shooting deaths?
Reuters notes that two policeman were killed by a sniper in Tal Afar while a minibus near Kut was attacked "with machine gun fire" resulting in five dead ("including a wwoman and a child"). Meanwhile, the AFP reports attacks in two cities: a car was "ambushed" in Tikrit by assailants who shot the father dead and wounded the son; and, in Mosul, two different attacks left a police officer dead as well as the bodyguard of a judge. And the Associated Press reports a drive-by in Baghdad that killed a taxi driver.
The BBC noted the death of several Iraqi soldiers (12 at that point) in Kirkuk when they were attacked with "rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns". AFX raised the number dead to 13 (citing "colonel Mahmud Abdulla").
Meanwhile, following yesterday's kidnapping attempt that left wrestling coach Mohammed Karim Abid Sahib dead, the AP reports that: "Iraq's national wrestling team [has] pulled out of a tournament in the United Arab Emirates".
In the United States, Saturday July 15th is a day of action calling for Suzanne Swift to receive an honorable discharge including a protest, "at the gates of Ft. Lewis (exit 119) beginning at 12 pm with a press converence at 3 pm" in Washington state -- while in Eugen, Oregon there will be a demonstration outside the Federal Building at noon.
In DC (and across the globe -- over 22 countries), the fast led by CODEPINK and others continues. As Thursday's The KPFA Evening News reported some Congressional members, including Barbara Lee, Maxine Waters, Dennis Kucinich, Cynthia McKinney and Lynne Woolsey took part in a one-day fast on Thursday. Ann Wright, who ressigned from the State Department on May 19, 2003 and is taking part in the actions stated: "The only reason we fast is to force us to remember what's going on here. That innocent Iraqis are dying every day, Americans are dying every day. We need to get this war ended. So, yeah, we're going to up the ante".
Lastly, Wednesday July 19th, San Antonio, TX will be the location for a "public hearing held by the the independent Commission on the National Guard and Reserves" -- "in the Iberia Ballroom of the La Mansion Del Rio Hotel, 112 College Street, San Antonio."
There will be two panels with the first lasting from 9:30 a.m. to 12 p.m. and focused on "roles and missions to funding requirements" and the second, lasting from 2:00 pm to 4 pm, focusing on how reserves were "involuntarily mobilized after September 11, 2001".

C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot" above, in case you didn't know. I was asked in e-mails why I wasn't weighing in on Democracy Now! and figure I better note that here so the issue can go away. I didn't link to it on my blogroll and the reason was because I took from it what I could use and left the other stuff alone. Rebecca's "is there a price tag on your ass?" writes about the problem I had with a 2004 episode. Reading C.I.'s "Community note" and finding out that the guest who was supposed to 'debate' was, as David Ray Griffin said on air, someone who makes a point to go around sneering 'crackpot' really made me mad because I wasn't aware of that. (The article, I asked C.I., appeared in CJR, the one where he sneered about Pacifica Radio.)

So my concern this week and last and the week before hasn't been the program. C.I. really does like the program (there was no attempt to hide that online) and my concern was more with C.I.
I read Beth's column in the round-robin this morning and I know how many members are thrilled that the program's not being noted anymore. I understand the wish of the community.

But I guess where it comes in for me is, as important as that is, C.I. is the one who writes those entries that go up at The Common Ills. I just thought another road could have been found. Or should have been. And if anyone is bothered by that remark, let's remember C.I. started the fast on the Fourth and is still on it. This was a lot of crap to get dumped on C.I. That's how I see it. And that would have been at any time, but especially when someone's fasting for days and days.

I knew there was stuff going on so I stayed out of it until I saw the thing Thursday. Then I went over to C.I.'s and we called Betty to hear how her latest chapter was going (it's "The War Paint Council" so make a point to read it). C.I. didn't hide in the entry announcing the community had come to a decision that the decision was personally depressing.

I mean. I don't know. I just think if it needed to be done, if the community wanted it enough to put the kind of pressure behind their opinions that they did, I think everyone could have waited another week.

Now maybe that's not a "news" decision. It was probably going to do more harm over a week's time. But I kept coming back to how tired and depressed and hungry C.I. already was. It honestly just struck me as the wrong time to pile on with any topic.

We ended up buying CDs last night. I went over on a cheer up mission. After we were done talking to Betty, C.I. thanked me for stopping by and was intending to get back in bed. I said, "No, no, no. I need the new Thom Yorke. Come on, I'm going CD shopping, you can tag along."
When we were there, I remembered Jess saying no one could find Ben Harper's Both Sides of the Gun, so I suggested that and then really started saying, "Come on, buy the store out."

(I was joking.)

I bought Yorke and three other CDs (and, instead am listening to Aimee Mann which just got returned this morning -- The Lost Arm). C.I. bought gifts and probably 20 or so personal CDs. Including Ben Harper which I'm sure someone walked out of C.I.'s house with or C.I. is really, really tired. (Or both.)

Ten days of fasting is tough. I did two days and that was tough. Ann Wright and Diane Wilson and others are doing these really long-term fasts and that's amazing. But I just didn't think the timing was right.

I understood why the community felt it was. This had been building for some time due to any number of issues. (And if you read this and think, "Oh, I'll write C.I. that I'm okay with the show . . ." Don't. The decision is made. That's another reason why I didn't blog during this. I didn't want someone saying, "Oh we could have stopped noting it but Kat had to butt in.") But I really think, if only for the issue of the ongoing fast, that this could have waited. I know this was very depressing to C.I.

On the plus side, it shows, for any doubters, that it's a community and no one person controls it. On the other hand, I just would have, if I was advocating delinking, waited a week or so. I wouldn't have said, "Okay, Saturday C.I.'s off so I'll e-mail Saturday." I would have given it until at least next Monday to give someone a chance to really get back on their feet.

Beth makes good points and members make good points in her column in the round-robin. But in terms of the timing for C.I., I've really only seen (online) Mike express any regret about the fact that this happened during a fast.

So that does bother me.

My attitude on the show is that sometimes it has something valuable and sometimes it doesn't. And I do agree that there have been a lot of less valuable moments of late. I mean, there was stuff to do during this. C.I. was speaking and doing the site and the first day that C.I. made time off for was Thursday. The fact that the day was spent sleeping for the most part should indicate that this wasn't a good time.

I'm not trying to act like I'm the best person in the world. I'm not. I don't think anyone demanding the delinking was a bad person, either. But, for instance, Thursday after we got done shopping, I swung by a food place and ordered take out. I was really hoping, fast be damned, C.I. would eat something. There was a deep sniff and a comment on how good it all smelled but C.I. stayed on the fast.

So in this, my concern was the timing.

It's over. Nothing can be changed. But if there's something to take away from this, I hope it's that the community is listened to, does decide so if there's ever a need for something similar, some thought is given as to whether or not this is a good time.

That's all I'll say on it. It's over. Aimee Mann's singing:

So, like a ghost in the snow
I'm getting ready to go.
Because baby, that's all I know --
how to open the door.
And though the exit is crude
It saves me coming unglued
for when you're not in the mood
for the gloves
and the canvas floor.
That's how I kne wthis story would break my heart.





iraq
martha burk
ms.
ms. magazine
suzanne swift
ann wright
codepink
the kpfa evening news

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A Note to Our Readers

Hey --
Sunday and it feels like we're finishing at a reasonable time. (Though Dona points out we're in a different time zone so we probably feel like we've gained three hours for that reason alone.)

This edition's a little different. We knew we'd have a lot to deal with personally when we all got together after Mike's column last Sunday (on who refused to note that the US government does keep a body count for Iraq civilians -- listing who was notified, who replied and who still took a pass). Some illusions die hard, but eventually, they all die.

The rebirth is the exciting part of the learning process.

We'd love to tell you that all being in a central location, together, for basically an entire week meant that we spent a great deal time of thinking about this edition. It didn't. The feature we talked about the most we dropped four hours ago when it was obvious that we wouldn't have time to do it justice. We hope to pick it up next week.

What we did do was a lot of meet ups, a lot of political discussions, a lot of music. And some of us fasted past the Fourth. (We'd hoped to do a story on that but decided to hold that as well since Rebecca and Elaine fasted on the Fourth but are on vacation and not participating on this edition.) Mike noted how lonely he felt on the East Coast even though five of us and he are in two different states. The distance felt very real this week.

I, Jim, did not state that Ava and C.I.'s brains might have gone to mush out in La-La Land. (But it made for a nice joke in their TESR Investigates commentary last week.) But there is a different rhythm and this edition may benefit from it or it may suffer as a result.

First, we do have highlights. We were really surprised to get e-mails complaining that there were no highlights. Marci wrote that she could understand if we had eliminated it in the print edition but to have it in one and not the other didn't seem fair. So highlights are back:

Ruth's Public Radio Report Pt. 1
Ruth's Public Radio Report Pt. II
C.I. critiques Dexy
Blog Spotlight: Substituting for Elaine, Sunny introduces herself (*** note please check out Sunny's writing, we think she's doing a wonderful job)
Blog Spotlight: Cedric covering Law and Disorder
Blog Spotlight: Ask Blog Betty (*** ditto for Betty)
Blog Spotlight: Kat subbing for the substitute
Blog Spotlight: Mike on the importance of being your own media
Humor Spotllight: Bully Boy Press notes Bully Boy Turned 60
Ex soldado se declara inocente de violacion y asesinato de iraquies
Blog Spotlight: Kat on how Bono "makes even Sonny look cool"


The new content was written by the following:

The Third Estate Sunday Review's Dona, Jess, Ty, Ava and me, Jim;
Betty of Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man;
C.I. of The Common Ills and The Third Estate Sunday Review;
Kat of Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills);
Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix;
Mike of Mikey Likes It!;
and Wally of The Daily Jot

The new content:

Editorial: American wants the war over now -- an obvious editorial but apparently not an obvious to most Democrats.

TV: Supernatural -- a tale of bad TV -- Ava and C.I.'s latest. As always, they write the TV commentary themselves. We actually requested this when Dona and Jim saw a commercial for it and couldn't belive how bad it looked.

Things to Ponder This Summer -- a 'think' piece -- with about as much depth as any thought piece you'll find. (Meaning, not much. But we don't pretend otherwise.)

Ehren Watada -- the story that wasn't . . . covered. The one that should have been. By all outlets and all media.

Ehren Watada in song form -- for weeks now, we've all suffered through multiple versions of lyrics set to the Beatles' "Lady Madonna." Since Jess and C.I. heard the name pronouced (they belive on Democracy Now!), they've seized on the natural rhyme with "Lady Madonna" and composed various versions. This weekend, we all sat down and had some fun with it as a group.

Thoughts on a Saturday Times column -- we had some positive and negative response to last week's book discussion. Some felt too much time was spent on "special interest issues" (we wonder if they'd ever read us before?) and others loved it. When we read the column by Dowd on Saturday, we passed it around the table and felt it never weighed in one way or the other. Call it "special interest issue" if you're a hater but we wanted to weigh in.

Little Liars Lie Dirt Cheap -- just because Woody publishes it doesn't make so. (Also a way to note Robert Parry who we don't note enough of.)

The Damage Done? -- some of us are pleased with the way this turned out and some of us aren't. We are agreed that since a number of parents have taken to saying (we hope not bragging -- people would look at them like, "You poor souls") that their kids take part in this. To avoid anyone having to say, "Yeah, that was me!" if they don't want to, we kept an identity hidden online. (Although we will note that we had the father's permission to name him.) That's really not the issue. Ava and C.I. are happy to go on the record saying that they think it turned out very well. They say that they like the fact that there's no pretense at "knowing." Ava: "It's just out there. Take it for what it is and if you can build on it, great." (Okay, maybe I will say the California sun is effecting brains.)

Iraq coverage for today through last Monday -- we know C.I. works hard on the Iraq snapshots and we know if we can note some of the coverage over the weekend, it can get a link or an excerpt in the Sunday evening post and cut down on the time required for C.I. to do that. So we've started doing adding this recently. That's our personal reason for it. Our other reason? There's still not enough Iraq coverage.

So that's what we've got and for Will who has complained that we've dropped the note to the readers, look, we did it. And we did it before evening! Actually, we always plan to do one. But there are times when we are exhausted and if C.I.'s got four or five hours Sunday evening that are used going through e-mails and then posting the "And the war drags on" entry, we really aren't comfortable saying, "Hey, drop everything so we can do the note!" It's also true that on especially long sessions, Ava's attitude is, "I gave 18 hours plus, leave me alone. Don't mention that site. Don't talk to me if you're going to."

Hopefully you found something here that made you think, made you laugh or made you angry.
See you next week.


-- Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava and C.I.

Editorial: American wants the war over now

The Green Party's National Committee has endorsed the VotersForPeace pledge, a national effort to organize the emerging 'Peace Vote' as a voting block with the power to determine the outcome of elections.
The pledge reads "I will not vote for or support any candidate for Congress or President who does not make a speedy end to the war in Iraq, and preventing any future war of aggression, a public position in his or her campaign."
"We encourage all voters who agree that U.S. troops must be withdrawn from Iraq to sign the VotersForPeace pledge," said Rae Vogeler, Wisconsin Green candidate for the U.S. Senate. "The only way to stop the war is to get Democratic and Republican warhawks out of office."

The above is from the Green Party's press release, "Green Party Endorses Voters for Peace Pledge." United for Peace & Justice supports and notes the pledge in "No Peace, No Vote: Sign the Voters for Peace Pledge:"

Last March, the ever-outspoken Molly Ivins wrote that she was fed up with "every calculating, equivocating, triangulating, straddling, hair-splitting son of a bitch" in Washington DC. Denouncing the sparseness of antiwar candidates, she proclaimed, "This is not a time for a candidate who will offend no one. It is time for a candidate who takes clear stands and kicks ass."
We couldn't agree more. It's time to put every Congressional candidate -- incumbents and newcomers alike -- on notice that if they want our votes, they must take a clear, public stand on ending the Iraq war and preventing any other unjust, illegal war.
We urge you to stand up with other outraged voters and sign the Voters for Peace pledge:
"I will not vote for or support any candidate for Congress or President who does not make a speedy end to the war in Iraq, and preventing any future war of aggression, a public position in his or her campaign."

Others are endorsing it as well and we'll get to that in a moment, but to pull back a moment, Editor & Publisher reports on a recent Gallup poll which found:

roughly 2 in 3 Americans urge a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, with 31% wanting this to start immediately. Gallup's director, Frank Newport, sums up the results today: "Taken together, it is perhaps fair to say that a significant majority of Americans would like the United States to either withdraw troops from Iraq or make specific plans to do so, although there is no majority demand that troops be withdrawn immediately."

The poll found that a third of the people responding were happy to wait and see what tomorrow might bring (apparently chaos and violence make for "happy thoughts" -- quick, someone tell that to Peter Pan!). A third wanted an immediate pullout and another third wanted a timetable for withdrawal. The poll, again, found that two-thirds of Americans (surveyed) wanted the troops withdrawn from Iraq.

The people turned against this war some time ago. The 'brains' on up the chain at various papers and news organizations haven't grasped it but, more surprising?, neither have a number of politicians. Only thirteen Senators supported the Feingold-Kerry proposal to set a timetable for withdrawal (twelve Democrats -- counting John Kerry and Russ Feingold -- and the Senate's only independnet, Jim Jeffords). Demonstrators camped outside of War Hawk Dianne Feinstein's new home but "Diane Feinstein, Girl Senator" can't seem to grasp the plain message they're sending. War Hawks Maria Cantwell and Joe Lieberman are having a rough go of it in their primaries. One political party grasps the importance to voters of the illegal war and, no surprise, it's not the Democratic Party.

The pledge is well known. Short of debating whether or not it should include the words "under God," we don't think it could get a great deal more attention than it's already received. Katrina vanden Heuvel noted the pledge in "The Peace Race" (Editor's Cut, The Nation):

VotersForPeace has initiated the Peace Voter Pledge along with 18 other antiwar organizations -- including United for Peace and Justice, itself a coalition of 1,400 local groups.The pledge is focused on the Iraq war as well as potential armed conflicts such as that with Iran, and -- using language crafted by The Nation in its cover editorial last November -- it reads: "I will not vote for or support any candidate for Congress or President who does not make a speedy end to the war in Iraq, and preventing any future war of aggression, a public position in his or her campaign."

As vanden Heuvel notes, before there was the pledge, there was The Nation's November editorial. The point here is that this idea (which isn't all the new, it's had traction in previous wars as well) didn't just spring to life last week. But timid Democrats (as well as War Hawks) act as though they're completely unfamiliar with it. If they continue to remain willfully oblivious, you may hear what a political consultant told us Saturday, if the Democrats can't address the war, expect a huge number of people to stay home in 2008.

That shocked us. Not for the remarks, which we agree with, but because they came from someone who would never say that publicly. We're honestly surprised he said it privately. What changed his mind? The rough go of it so many are having from challengers, established candidates holding office having to fight off challengers not from opposing parties but from their own Democratic ranks.

We were given permission to paraphrase this: If Democrats don't start addressing the feelings on the war, it will only be worse in the 2008 elections.

Somewhere along the way, when Cindy Sheehan woke up the country with Camp Casey in Crawford, the public mood shifted and it's not going back now. When two-thirds are saying the war needs to end, it's not a minority opinion -- no matter how editors and politicians attempt to marginalize it. Fence straddlers and War Hawks don't seem to grasp their current positions are no longer "safe" or electable. Possibly, more time at home in their districts and less time in the Beltway would straighten that out for them.

Something needs to. America wants the illegal war over.

To cite one more organization, CODEPINK has noted the pledge on the front page of their website for months now:

Take a Stand by Signing the Voters Pledge!
What if millions decided to vote their conscience and said 'No More War Candidates'? The Voters Pledge makes visible a powerful political force, the peace vote, a force that politicians cannot continue to ignore. It sends a clear message to the hawkish minority that leads both major parties to end the occupation of Iraq and to end unprovoked attacks on other nations. Sign the Voters Pledge and ask at least 10 of your friends to sign as well. You can help get 2 million signers in 2006!

TV: Supernatural -- a tale of bad TV

The WB is still the WB until this fall when it and UPN merge to become CW. We wonder if that stands for "conventional wisdom"? Or just "crappy writing"?

Both come to mind when viewing Supernatural (a show that will "cross over" to the CW). We're not sure what to make of this show. On the one hand, it's like really bad gay porn where the leads forget to take their clothes off. On the other, it's as though someone had a secret fondness for The American Girls.

That quickly forgotten show aired a few episodes in 1978 (white slavery was a theme of one episode) as two "lookers" took to the road to find out the truth. These days, brothers Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean (Jensen Ackles) bounce around the country, from one 'adventure' to the next, and the show tries to add a little X-Files flavor -- only instead of wondering what happened to a character's sister, they're motivated by what happened to their mother and finding Daddy.

Times are tough, the news is not good. Maybe you need to hit the road with two 'lookers' once a week just to have an outlet? If so, have at it. Most people will just be bored with the WB's latest attempt to 'mature.'

That was what this show was supposed to do. They'd nailed the pre-teen set with offerings from Dawson's Creek all the way up to One Tree Hill. The problem was, as the kiddies leave high school, the shows tend to lose their audiences. So what if, it was thought, we cast two dreamboats as characters already out of school!

To really pimp the show, in the fall it aired twice a week. What most of us would call "repeats," the WB generously dubbed "encore presentation" -- akin to claiming Kelly Osbourne was brought back for an encore after really rocking the house. But when your network's all hype anyway, what are you going to do? (Merge this fall, apparently.)

The ratings started off well enough and the suits thought they'd build. That really hasn't happened. Though a few females and males continue to tune in to drool over the two leads, it really hasn't managed to pull in a large enough audience to term it a 'hit' (not even by net-let standards) and, in fact, it's also started to lose some of the viewers it initally had.

Ackles left an actual hit (Smallville, though it, like the characters, were aging) to do this show. By the way, he's from Dallas, Texas -- remember, we've been all over that emerging 'trend' -- actors from Texas on prime time for over a year -- even if AOL only recently saw fit to 'main page' it. He's the blond, the one who looks less like a CK ad model. He poses as Dean. He can't play him and it's so hard to watch him try. Ackles isn't the silent type and watching him try to be nonverbal is like watching Little Richard try to 'butch it up.' He tries so hard. He storms around in a perpetual snit, as though someone told him, "Pick one hair color and stick to it!"

Padalecki was also born in Texas. (San Antonio, we told you, it's a 'trend'! Water cooler critics take note!) He also left a successful WB show to do this (Gilmor Girls). On that show, his character was named "Dean" and on this show he plays "Sam" -- that's about it for his "stretching" from role to role.

If you've ever seen Padalecki speak as Padalecki, you know he favors exclamation points. He's quite exuberant. Possibly that's why he was given the showier role of "Sam"?

He plays the part just as you'd expect to him, just as he performed every other role he's been cast in -- with a lot of exclamation points. It's as though all those years studying acting were spent learning at the feet of Barbi Benton.

So while Padalecki eats the scenery and Ackles works so hard to blend into it, they go from one place to another and encounter not-so-scary supernatural events. The only real jolt (the special effects are a joke) in this show comes from the moments when someone reaches up through a sink drain or someone pops up behind a character.

The big problem is that the 'thinkers' behind this series failed to grasp is that the WB's hits are always about interlaced relationships. When the audience grows bored with a Joey and Dawson, they need that Andi and Pacey to quickly move from the backburner to the front burner. The scripts tell you that Sam and Dean are brothers. There's nothing else the show has to offer to the audience who wants to see ahead to high school traumas (or relive them).

Sam and Dean have "conflict" from time to time. In last week's episode Sam even tried to kill Dean -- in a really convoluted story that would have made more sense if the actors had instead argued over who spent more time in make up each morning.

For a full season the show played out like we feared The Ghost Whisperer might (but fortunately did not and got a larger, continuing storyline): Touched by a Supernatural. It doesn't play to the kids (of any age). They need the messy relationships, they need a show to be locked in, not traveling across the country.

That's bascially true of most audiences today and why you see so few successful shows set "on the road." (We understand that even Charles Kuralt struggles these days.)

What the WB audience wants (and presumably the CW audience will as well) is Sam and Dean in one location. They want them in messy relationships, long term ones, possibly alternating the same woman, arguing with friends and enemies. They aren't interested in the whole "This week, we're in Phoenix!" thinking that appears to go into this show.

When you have no real supporting cast, you need strong leads or a strong storyline. Supernatural has neither. If they were smart, the first thing they would fix would be Dean. Early in the second season, Dean would decide he was tired of being the "responsible" one (translation, Mr. Brooding Grumpy). They'd let Ackles bring some humor into the part. That could potentially carry them through two more seasons if they played the whole thing as a camp send-up. If they're intent on playing it serious, they need to put the brothers in one location and give them a strong supporting cast because no one's tuning in for the shifting locales.

The truth is, not that many are tuning in for the show that much anymore. (If that's a shock for anyone -- when you not only can't hold your lead-in audience but are also being beat by UPN's Eve -- not picked up by the CW -- to come in dead last of all networks and net-lets -- you aren't a "hit." Nor does being the 19th ranked show for males ages 18-49 make you a "hit.") A second season pick up was surprising, especially considering it was competing with shows not only airing on the WB but also on UPN. We understand the most surprised were advertisers who've looked at the demographics, such as they are, and balked at the ad rates.

The show is, mainly, two things: a tale of offscreen 'talent' that doesn't know an audience and a tale of the downfall of the WB.

Supernatural is a testement to "creators" never grasping the core audience. Like an ugly poly-blend that never breathes in the summer, the show started off wanting to be everything (comedy, horror, thriller, drama) and ended up being nothing. (Despite some critics who rushed in to gush over the show. We'll be kind and not name names.) From plotline to dialogue, the show was troubled the moment the pilot was filmed. If that wasn't clear enough to anyone early on, all they had to do was check out the music the show regularly uses such as Bachman-Turner Overdrive ("Hey You" played in last week's episode), Grand Funk Railroad, Quiet Riot and Ratt. The WB, home to Sarah Mac, the Wallflowers, the made over Liz Phair and assorted others, traditionally ran with the hoped for new 'hot' song (emphasis on "new"). The WB shows were notorious for their efforts to be trendy (which was novel when Square Pegs attempted it in the eighties). There is nothing trendy about Grand Funk Railroad. There wasn't anything trendy about the group 'back in the day.'

The only other show the WB offered in 2006 that was so woefully mistargeted to their audience was the unfunny Jerry Bruckheimer attempt to corner the sitcom market. Ratings have been down for the WB period. The CW lineup won't change that. Shows that needed work done have had no work done. Shows that should have been retired are brought back. Their isn't one solid night of programming, despite the fact that they're not only raiding two net-lets but also bringing on new "attractions" (apparently someone thinks Donnie Wahlberg is an "attraction" -- although we're actually hearing good things about Runaway, his new show).

The WB officially goes out in September with plans for a look back at the pilots of four of their 'biggest' shows: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dawson's Creek, Felicity and Angel (yeah that last one must be included for a laugh). There's a story in those four. Buffy remains the only show that was a hit when it went out (on the WB, it floundered in it's two additional years at UPN) and still entertaining. Had they been paying attention, they would have attempted to recreate the formula which tallked to viewers (possibly talked up to them in some cases) but never talked down. The "thrills" were usually not the reason to watch (with the two-parter "Becoming," the show achieved everything many hoped for it). It was the relationships, the dialogue and the acting.

The WB's attempts at photo-copying Buffy got worse each season. First up was Dawson's which had the relationships and the dialogue but, rarely, the acting. (Michelle Williams was the stand out and would have been on any show; however, on Dawson's she had little competition for bragging rights.) Then came Felicity. Like a photo-copy of a photo-copy, it left out a lot of details and focused only on the 'relationship.' The infamous hair cut may have indeed hastened people tuning out but the truth was the show was heavy on the 'after school special' and light on the involvement. Watching Felicity decide which of the two boys she loved that year (similiar to one of the WB's lowest rated shows of 2006, What I Like About You), didn't inspire a strong core following. By the time they got to Angel, an early attempt by the WB to grow up (and grab the straight teen males), the net-let was dead. Like all the other attempts to grow up, it failed miserably. The constant cast changes and the constant refocusing only demonstrated how ill thought out the show was from the start.

Angel's the story of the WB's downfall. Airing a show that struggled to find an audience for five seasons may have helped 'syndication!' (the same reason Reba got a thirteen episode pick up from the CW) but it only forced viewers to tune out. Playing like the worst fantasy show in syndication, Angel was a detective, he was a father, he was bad, he was good, he was, above all, boring. Year after year. As the show continued to fail to pull in the desired demographics, it repeatedly raided supporting characters from Buffy (Wesley, Spike, Harmony, Faith, etc.). It dropped the voice over, it dropped one thing after another in its attempts to become something, anything, other than a really cheesy show. In it's fifth season, it finally received the mercy killing it had long deserved -- the stake through it's heart was consistently poor demographics.

That storyline appears ready for a repeat with the CW. There's not a show with "heat" on the list. (When your target audience is teens, "heat" is important.) Supposedly, One Tree Hill is going to "explode" this season. That's the current talk. That this is the year it puts to rest the comparisons to The OC. Maybe it will. If it does, it could pull in an audience. (There is also talk that the 'explosion' makes the new suits nervous.)

But what you have currently is a Sunday lineup that can boast one of the best shows on TV (Everybody Hates Chris) and not much else unless you enjoy Kelsey Grammer's interpretations of African-American females. (Failing with his company's "sketch" "comedy," he's going back to the well with The Game.) Mondays offers another year of 7th Heaven (we may review it this year, if we feel the need to punish ourselves) and the Wahlberg show. Tuesday will offer Gilmor Girls (which, as we've noted before, but Ty says the e-mails require that we note it again, we will not be reviewing because we know too many people involved with that show) and the overly praised and underly critiqued Veronica Mars. Everwood had higher ratings and better demographics but it was bumped and Moronic Mars got picked up. The CW's already touting Tuesday, to sponsors, as "girls' night." We'd argue "girls night" is about to get really dumbed down. (And add that, at it's height, every night on the WB tended to be "girls night.") Wednesdays will offer America's Next Top Model (also closing out Sunday's prime time) and the already addressed One Tree Hill. Thursdays finds the WB asking the question of exactly how many people still care about Smallville? (We think the answer will disappoint them.) And pairing it with dead last in its time slot, Supernatural. On Fridays, proof of how little they know their target audience, they intend to carry over UPN's Smackdown.

Despite raiding two net-lets, you may first note that they couldn't come up with seven nights of programming. (Fox still can't either.) But what you'll probably notice second is that there's not one night solid enough to make people tune in (even on the nights where only two hours of prime time programming is aired!). Joss Whedon was never able to recreate the success he had in Buffy so it may not be that much of a surprise that the WB also failed.

But it says something about how miserable TV is today that not only could they not program seven nights, but they have nothing new to offer. One half-hour comedy, one hour of drama. That's it for offering anything new. The shows that make up the bulk of the schedule have underwhelmed for some time. It's as though Nabisco merged with Pepperidge Farms and had nothing to offer but the products that never made it off the shelf to the check out counter. It's so bad we honestly wonder if fall 2007 (provided it survives that long) will find the net-let rescuing what ever the big three cancels and attempting to build six nights around that.