Turning Points

Yes, I know there are thousands of recipes out there for apple pie, but mine has always gotten rave reviews, so I’ll post the recipe to see if people were just being nice. I like it and I think you will, too. The recipe is a modification of one that my Mother baked when I was a kid – I learned how to bake pies under her instruction.

Filling

6 medium Granny Smith apples
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 c. sugar
1/3 c. flour

Peel and quarter the apples, then slice them thinly lengthwise, 8 to 10 slices per quarter. Set aside. Combine the cinnamon, sugar, and flour and set that aside also.

Crust

2 c. unbleached flour
1 tsp. salt
1/2 c. safflower oil
1/4 c. cold milk

Sift the flour and salt three times, then add the oil/milk mixture and combine. You may need a tad more oil and milk – it depends on the humidity, like all baking. The crust should be smooth and slightly oily – not crumbly. Cut in half and roll out between two pieces of waxed paper, then place pie pan upside down on the crust and flip the crust and pan over. Remove the waxed paper and lay in the sliced apples in layers, adding the sugar/flour/cinnamon mix as you build the layers. Roll out the other half of the crust, place it on top, pinch to seal the two crusts and cut six vents in the top so that the moisture from the cooking apples can escape.

Bake in a preheated 350 oven for about 45 minutes or until the crust is browned. The pie is done when the apple juices start to bubble through the crust at the edge of the pan.

Enjoy and Merry Christmas, all!

I never developed an appreciation for poetry, but from time to time, I stumble across a poem that is just so …. right … that I am stunned by its insightfulness. Such is In a Dark Time, by Theodore Roethke.

In a Dark Time

In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood–
A lord of nature weeping to a tree,
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

What’s madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall,
That place among the rocks–is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is–
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.

Dark,dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.

I found an interesting article, courtesy of The Baseline Scenario, that counters the right-wing populist assertion that the soaring national deficit is all because of Obama’s out-of-control spending. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, which is obviously not a conservative think tank, nonetheless produces substantive, well-researched reports. I am posting a portion of a report from their website so that the next time someone who drinks the Koolade offered by the Beck/Palin/Limbaugh crowd explains why we are in such dire circumstances you can counter intelligently. For the full report, please click on the link. You can download an Adobe Acrobat file of the full report by clicking the icon under the title of the report, if you are interested.

President Obama Largely Inherited Today’s Huge Deficits
Economic Downturn, Financial Rescues, and Bush-Era Policies Drive the Numbers

By Kathy Ruffing and James R. Horney

December 16, 2009

Some critics charge that the new policies pursued by President Obama and the 111th Congress generated the huge federal budget deficits that the nation now faces. In fact, the tax cuts enacted under President George W. Bush, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the economic downturn together explain virtually the entire deficit over the next ten years (see Figure 1).

The deficit for fiscal 2009 was $1.4 trillion and, at an estimated 10 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), was the largest deficit relative to the size of the economy since the end of World War II. Under current policies, deficits will likely exceed $1 trillion in 2010 and 2011 and remain near that figure thereafter.

The events and policies that have pushed deficits to astronomical levels in the near term, however, were largely outside the new Administration’s control. If not for the tax cuts enacted during the Presidency of George W. Bush that Congress did not pay for, the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that began during that period, and the effects of the worst economic slump since the Great Depression (including the cost of steps necessary to combat it), we would not be facing these huge deficits in the near term.

While President Obama inherited a bad fiscal legacy, that does not diminish his responsibility to propose policies to address our fiscal imbalance and put the weight of his office behind them. Although policymakers should not tighten fiscal policy in the near term while the economy remains fragile, they and the nation at large must come to grips with the nation’s deficit problem. But we should all recognize how we got where we are today.

This year, many people have been forced to cut back on the consumerism that drove Christmases past. Maybe it would do us all good to read what a Catholic priest has to say about Christmas. This article appeared in the November/December 2008 issue of Tikkun Magazine.

Is Christmas Christian?

by Fr. Richard Rohr

As a Franciscan priest, I think I have the right to ask that question. Frankly, it is much easier to ask in a non-Christian owned magazine! We from the Catholic tradition too easily presume that because the title is right, the train following it is on the right track. We are not often open to asking if the train has anything to do with the direction of the original engine. In this case, the birth and message of Jesus of Nazareth.

We all know that the date of December 25 is not derived from Christian tradition. It instead traces back to the third-century Roman feast of the Rebirth of the Sun-normally celebrated as soon as they could observe the same, sometime after the Winter Solstice. Right away, that tells us that the first few centuries of the Common Era had no interest in knowing when Jesus was born or even celebrating it. That came with calendars and the demarcating of precise time.

Frankly, we must confess that it was likely our founder, St. Francis (1182-1226), who began to make Christmas the sentimental celebration that it has become, although his intention was never at all in the direction it has taken. He was the great lover of poverty and simplicity, and would be aghast at the consumer- and group-defining feast that Christmas has become. He merely replicated the drama of the stable with live animals and music.

For Francis and the early Franciscans, ‘incarnation was already redemption”and the feast of Christmas said that God was saying yes to humanity in the enfleshment of his Son in our midst. If that were true, then all questions of inherent dignity, worthiness, and belovedness were resolved once and forever–and for everything that was human, material, physical, and in the whole of creation. That’s why Francis liked animals and nature, praising the sun, moon, and stars, like some New Ager from California. It was all good and chosen and beautiful if God came among us “as Emmanuel” (Isaiah 7:14).

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By nature, I’m one who thinks humans are mostly good and that belief has led to severe disappointments over the years, most recently in February of this year. A number of years ago, a supervisor whom I was filling in for told me that he had a better understanding of human nature because he was a Catholic and believed that humans were born sinful, unlike Protestants who believed that humans were merely fallen. He expected, from the get-go, for people to be selfish and vicious and was rarely disappointed. Or something like that – perhaps someone more well-versed in theology can help me with that. Anyway, I think that this difference goes a long ways towards explaining my difficulty in grasping the essential nature of the American empire, as outlined by Chris Floyd in his most excellent essay, which I am reproducing here. When someone like Obama comes along, promising change and a new approach to politics, I fall for it, wanting to believe in what he says. But his speech on Afghanistan at West Point on December 1 and his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize for Peace in Oslo has brought me up short, once again, like Charlie in the Peanuts comic strip. With these two speeches, Obama has revealed his true agenda, which is the same as the agenda of the financial oligarchy which rules the world. Why should I be surprised, some say? Well, because I wanted to believe. And, like Charlie in the Peanuts comic strip, I never believe that Lucy will snatch the ball away, leaving me on my ass on the ground. It’s time for a change, a change that I can believe in: no more benefit-of-the-doubt for the politicians of any country. They are all servants of the financial oligarchy, whose aims are clearly laid out by Chris Floyd in this essay:

Savvy to a Fault: Coming to Terms With Imperial Power

by Chris Floyd

December 3, 2009

“How does it become a man to behave toward this American government to-day? I answer that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it”. — Henry David Thoreau

To me, this quote from Thoreau expresses the only rational, moral and humane stance that a citizen can take toward the vast and brutal machinery of the American imperial state in our time. The crimes of this state are monstrous, and mounting. But what is worse is that these crimes are not aberrations; they are the very essence of the system — they are its goal, its product, its lifeblood.

And what is this crimeful essence? Matt Taibbi described it well in a recent article:

“Our Western society quite openly embraces war as a means of solving problems, and for quite some time now has fashioned its entire social and economic structure around the preparation for war.”

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I’ve posted pieces by Chris Hedges before – a little goes a long way. But I’m sufficiently ticked off by Obama’s Afghanistan surge to post another of Hedges’ pieces and I’ve even borrowed the title of his article as the title of this post because I think it is provocative enough to catch people’s attention. So you say, enough with the Obama-bashing? Give him a chance? He had his chance and blew it. Now it is time to put his feet to the fire – the fire of an outraged group of activists tired of his pandering to Corporate America. He needs to know that there are plenty of people in this country who have seen through his empty rhetoric and demand the change that he so slickly promised. As Dennis Kucinich wrote, “when we were promised change, we weren’t thinking that we give a dollar and get back two cents.”

Liberals Are Useless

By Chris Hedges

Liberals are a useless lot. They talk about peace and do nothing to challenge our permanent war economy. They claim to support the working class, and vote for candidates that glibly defend the North American Free Trade Agreement. They insist they believe in welfare, the right to organize, universal health care and a host of other socially progressive causes, and will not risk stepping out of the mainstream to fight for them. The only talent they seem to possess is the ability to write abject, cloying letters to Barack Obama—as if he reads them—asking the president to come back to his “true” self. This sterile moral posturing, which is not only useless but humiliating, has made America’s liberal class an object of public derision.

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Some will say that I’m beating a dead horse, that, yes, we all know you oppose Obama’s Afghanistan policy. True enough. But I think articles like the following, by Mark Perry, need to be distributed widely so that an informed citizenry (yes, that could be an oxymoron!) can better evaluate what is transpiring in Washington. I find it interesting that this article appeared in the on-line edition of Asia Times, a non-U.S. newspaper. If the editors of that paper think it is important to run this article, don’t you think that maybe we should pay attention to what Mr. Perry is saying?

The Day the General Made a Misstep

By Mark Perry

President Barack Obama’s national address last Tuesday not only detailed the United States’ strategy on Afghanistan, it laid bare his new administration’s strengths and weaknesses – and confirmed the growing suspicion that, eight years after September 11, 2001, meeting America’s global challenges with a military response remains the default position of the Washington policymaking establishment.

“Don’t underestimate the impact that eight years of the [George W] Bush administration has had in Washington,” a senior State Department official explained this last summer. “The Bush people set out the language of the war on terrorism, invented the vocabulary, defined the terms. People talk about the importance of ‘doing’ diplomacy, but no one really knows what that means or how tough it can really be.”

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My last post was, as a friend has repeatedly told me in the past, shrill. In my defense, I was filled with despair when I posted it. When I wrote, “You lie!!!”, I meant it very seriously, on multiple counts, unlike Representative Joe Wilson’s outburst some weeks ago, who was only concerned with the immigration issue. I read Obama’s Afghanistan speech and was deeply offended at his deceptive phrasing and his outright misrepresentations. I apologize for perhaps offending some of you, but I am tired of reading the apologies offered for Obama by liberals and progressives. The most common refrain I hear is that he has only been in office for 10 months and that we should just give him a chance. He doesn’t need a chance – he needs help. Obama, we must realize, is just another spokesman for Corporate America, Wall Street, and the military-industrial complex that has run this country into a ditch for the last 50 years. He is a wolf in sheep’s clothing and deceived a lot of people, including me, with the empty rhetoric of Change We Can Believe In. Whose fault is that? Ours. It’s time to realize what we are up against and gird for war. Has there been change? Very little and what little has transpired has been cosmetic, at best. Obama has issued seven signing statements in the short time he has been in office, only one of which is legal, according to David Swanson. James Petras lists eight important foreign policy setbacks for the Obama administration and the toxic effects of the use of depleted uranium weapons in Iraq have barely been covered by the mainstream media. Granted, most of these weapons were used during the Bush administration, but I don’t doubt that they are being used in Afghanistan also. His cave-in on the public option in health care is shameful and his continuing support for the bailout of the financial elite is nothing short of criminal. I just learned tonight that Isi Siddiqui, vice president of CropLife America, the pesticide industry trade group that derided Michelle Obama’s organic garden, has been nominated to the position of chief agricultural negotiator for international trade. Of course, CropLife’s website doesn’t use the word “pesticide”, but read between the lines and draw your own conclusions. What are Mr. Sidiqqui’s qualifications to be an international agricultural trade negotiator? I don’t know, but I do know that there are very likely plenty of other very well qualified people for the job. Obama follows – he doesn’t lead, except with cosmetic touches such as his wife’s organic garden. He follows Corporate America and Wall Street because liberals and progressives are not pressuring him to do otherwise. But it was his surge in Afghanistan that sent me over the cliff. One of the quotes that is displayed on my blog, by Boris Yeltsin, applies here: “You can build a throne with bayonets, but you can’t sit on it for long.” Obama, I predict, will not be sitting on the throne in 2012 unless liberals and progressives get off their asses and start demanding change that we can believe in. Opposition to his Afghanistan surge is widespread. Kucinich was right and as the “recession” continues, Americans are going to get more and more upset with Obama’s agenda. Here is an essay by Rabbi Michael Lerner, of Tikkun Magazine, who wrote the following piece about the response of many religious leaders at the Parliament of World Religions taking place now in Melbourne, Australia. What Obama is doing is completely contrary to the message of Jesus Christ and it is past time that religious leaders in this country called him on his blood lust and war mongering. I urge you to support the Network of Spiritual Progressives – only religion has the power to draw people together in support of a cause. Martin Luther King proved that in the 1960s. The religious right learned this lesson long ago – now it is time for liberals and progressives to join together also.

World’s Religious Leaders mourn the Obama Escalation in Afghanistan

by Rabbi Michael Lerner
(Thursday, December 3, 2009)

“…Obama seems not yet to have absorbed in a serious way: that the path to peace must be a path of peace, and that you cannot bomb and kill your way to security. This simple insight is the one thing shared by most of the world’s religious traditions, and it is to testify to the path of peace that thousands of religious leaders are assembled here to affirm a truth that Obama and the world must take seriously.

Many of the world’s religious leaders in attendance at the Parliament of World Religions taking place in Melbourne, Australia, are in partial mourning for the dream of a new world that President Obama promised, and decisively torpedoed in his announcement of major escalation of military forces in Afghanistan. While the conference sessions have officially ignored current political developments, the hallways are filled with heated discussions of the widespread disillusionment with Obama.

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I’m sure I’m one of thousands who are posting this to their blogs. I’m sick …..

You’ve lost all credibility with me, Obama. I couldn’t stand to listen to Bush – now I can’t stand to listen to you, either. You lie!!!

On November 6, 2009, Dennis Kucinich (D – OH) issued the following statment. My sentiments, exactly:

“Why is it we have finite resources for health care but unlimited money for war?

“The inequities in our economy are piling up: trillions for war, trillions for Wall Street and tens of billions for the insurance companies. Banks and other corporations are sitting on piles of cash of taxpayer’s money while firing workers, cutting pay and denying small businesses money to survive.

“People are losing their homes, their jobs, their health, their investments, their retirement security; yet there is unlimited money for war, Wall Street and insurance companies, but very little money for jobs on Main Street.

“Unlimited money to blow up things in Iraq and Afghanistan, and relatively little money to build things in the US.

“The Administration may soon bring to Congress a request for an additional $50 billion for war. I can tell you that a Democratic version of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is no more acceptable than a Republican version of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Trillions for war and Wall Street, billions for insurance companies… When we were promised change, we weren’t thinking that we give a dollar and get back two cents.”