While I find it hard to believe that anyone could have their mind changed by that debate--with both candidates doing fine, but workmanlike, jobs--Frank Luntz's group was really impressed by Governor Palin and it appeared to be because they'd lowered their expectations so much. She certainly gets points for her energy and for directness, but the biggest positive may just be that there were no negatives. Meanwhile, the format is nearly ideal for Senator Biden for a reason I'd not anticipated: he was forced to speak in short enough chunks that his bluster only seemed like authority and forcefulness. He didn't really have enough time to ramble off the reservation and speak spontaneously, which is when he poses the maximum danger to his own cause.
Any thoughts?
European bank rescue plan in tatters amid savings stampede (Patrick Hosking, 10/03/08, Times of London)
Plans for a pan-European response to the global financial crisis lay in tatters last night as Greece followed Ireland in unilaterally guaranteeing all bank deposits.Amid reports that Greek depositors were rushing to withdraw their savings, Greece's Cabinet agreed to protect all deposits whatever their size. Previously the maximum guaranteed was €20,000 (£15,600).
A proposal by President Sarkozy of France to create a European €300 billion bailout fund also collapsed, leaving attempts on this side of the Atlantic to calm investor panic and lubricate the money markets in chaos.
Sarah Palin is ruining my life: I rant about her; I can't stop thinking about her; I cannot stand to look at her; I'm possessed by her! (Cary Tennis, 9/29/08, Salon)
Dear Cary,I am a Democrat, a mother of three, and a full-time attorney. During the primaries, I was torn between Hillary Clinton, who I believed had the experience to be president (and really, really, really wanted it), and Barack Obama, who I believed was not only highly capable (albeit less experienced), but also the more sincere of the two and who inspired me on an emotional level that Clinton did not. [...]
And then came Sarah. My reaction to her, and the way the Republican Party threw her in our faces, and the pandering and hypocrisy that was behind their decision to do so, was immediate, visceral, and indeed, vicious. [...] I've also begun to suffer personally and professionally. I bore my friends with my constant tirades against her, and am constantly distracted from my work by my need to continually update myself on the latest criticism, and indeed, ridicule, of her. In my hatred for her, I have begun to hate myself.
I don't want this woman ruining my life before she even gets a chance to ruin our country. How do I stop? Is there a self-help group for this?
A "Hater"*
*As Sarah Palin calls all those who disagree with her (New York Times, Sunday, Sept. 14, 2008)
Dear "Hater,"I think what disturbs us about Sarah Palin is that she reminds us of the authoritarian personality. My guess is that she is also an ESFJ, or Extroverted Sensing Feeling Judging type, with a strong preference for sensing. Such a person prefers to acquire her knowledge from concrete objects and places instead of from abstract ideas. [...]
As an authoritarian type, she strikes us as a person who prefers power to reason. [...]
The very thing that appalls us about Sarah Palin -- her discomfort in the realm of reason -- is her main selling point. [...] Face it: Sarah Palin represents what many people want: a retreat from reason; a regression to childhood.
Inarticulateness is the weapon of the authoritarian in this way: To speak clearly is to risk being understood and thus disagreed with. To speak clearly is to invite debate. To obfuscate and muddle is to avoid disagreement and debate and force the issue to one of power. [...]
It can also be a trait, I think, of the sensing type who has not developed her weaker side. [...]
Why does she get away with exercising her particular magic? Moms exercise power without explanation. We trust them because they are moms. We are children. So we trust them. [...]
Our intellectual disciplines allow us to agree or disagree about realities separate from ourselves. You are a lawyer. You are trained in the law. The law is built of ideas that we can agree about in a general way. We can agree what most laws mean. We can talk about them. One reason you are so appalled by Sarah Palin may be that every time she opens her mouth she repudiates this tradition.
When a person will not articulate her positions well or clearly, she is asserting a kind of power; it is not possible to predict what she is going to do. [...]
But for some, they do appeal to a dark side, to something in us that desires to give up on reason, to have someone take over, to regress.
The shape this authoritarian has taken is the shape of the mother. We want to give Sarah Palin her due because she is a woman and a mother. A cynical trick has been played on us. She is a Trojan Horse. [...]
This is what frightens and angers us: The refusal to follow the rules of discourse, of language, even, implies that there is nothing to talk about.
And you thought Joe Biden gives funny answers.
Exclusive: Barack Obama is 'aloof' says British ambassador to US: Barack Obama is a "decidedly liberal" senator "who was finding his feet, and then got diverted by his presidential ambitions", according to a frank verdict delivered to Gordon Brown by the British ambassador to the United States. (Toby Harnden, 02 Oct 2008, Daily Telegraph)
Although the picture Sir Nigel paints is a highly complimentary one - Mr Obama's speeches are "elegant" and "mesmerising", he is "highly intelligent" and has "star quality" - he also judges that his "policies are still evolving" and that if elected he will "have less of a track record than any recent president".The letter's contents suggest that Mr Brown could initially find it difficult to deal with a President Obama because he remains a largely unknown quantity who "resists pigeon-holing" and the leak is likely to complicate relations. [...]
Mr Obama "can seem to sit on the fence, assiduously balancing pros and cons", Sir Nigel wrote, and "does betray a highly educated and upper middle class mindset". Charges of elitism "are not entirely unfair" and he is "maybe aloof, insensitive" at times.
Before we begin, let me just state for the record that I consider Rick Perlstein to be a friend, at least the unusual sort of friend we can have in this Internet Age. We've never met and we've spoken by telephone only once--when he was writing an essay for the Village Voice about how conservatives are unAmerican for not recognizing that George W. Bush is evil. But ever since he sent us his first book--the excellent, Before the Storm--we've corresponded somewhat regularly by e-mail and I'm one of a handful of conservatives he jousts with regularly enough that we get an undeserving mention in the Acknowledgments here. We agree on next to nothing and the manner of his disagreement has become quite frantic over the course of the Bush Epoch--plus, even as I type this he's welching on the steak dinner he lost to me in a bet--but we're friendly nonetheless. So you may wish to consider that as you read what follows.
If I understand correctly, Nixonland is the second volume in a projected trilogy on conservatism that will conclude with a history of the Reagan years. That aforementioned first volume won plaudits from those on the Right because, while Friend Perlstein is unabashedly a man of the far Left, a "progressive" as they like to style themselves, he was genuinely fair in his treatment of Barry Goldwater and took seriously the ideas of the conservative movement that spawned his presidential candidacy. The book was written with a kind of clinical detachment that permitted him to examine a political phenomenon and its underlying ideology without denouncing it at every opportunity. This installment is far more passionate and partisan, to the book's detriment and the reader's disappointment.
Mind you, Democrats and various denizens of the '60s/'70s Left take their share of incoming fire too and no one particularly cares if an author is overly fair to Richard Nixon, least of all conservatives. After all, to a considerable degree just three individuals are responsible for retarding the permanent realignment of America back to its default position on the Center-Right after the Great Depression/WWII years: Lee Harvey Oswald, Richard Nixon, and Mohammed Atta. However, the main shortcoming of the book lies in the sad reality that in making of Nixon a personal Moby Dick, Mr. Perlstein ends up doing damage to the historical/political analysis herein. Nixon becomes a satanic Zelig, in the frame for every awful thing that's happened in the past 50 years, rather than the pathetic little victim of social forces beyond his ken and control that he really was.
The basic problem lies in the way that the book is framed. Mr. Perlstein's contention is that the landslide election of LBJ in 1964 marked the acceptance by the American people of a liberal consensus but that the subsequent, supposedly sudden, splintering of society, the violence of the 60s and 70s, and even the Red v. Blue divide that we talk about today were brought about by Richard Nixon and the cunning way in which he manipulated "strange new angers, anxieties, and resentments." This essentially makes Richard Nixon responsible for the Klu Klux Klan bombing, beating, and murdering blacks during the Civil Rights Era--when he was a nearly forgotten lawyer in New York City--for the Weathermen attacking the US government, for Mayor Daley and NYC hardhats attacking hippies, and so on and so forth. Nevermind the absurd power it attributes to a Dick who was nowhere near that Tricky, even more problematic is that these are all cases of violence being perpetrated by the various factions of the New Deal coalition or the New Left: Dixiecrats; big city mayors; intellectuals; labor unions, etc.. Once we recognize that the particular pathologies of this period were played out within the Democratic Party, it would seem to become obvious that it was the Johnson presidency itself that blew up that party. And, fittingly, it did so because President Johnson misread the election returns of 1964 in the same way that our friend does.
The distance of decades, the unwillingness to think poorly of a murdered president, the haze of nostalgia, and a cottage industry of apologists for Camelot has tended to make us forget that John F. Kennedy thought it not unlikely that he could lose to Barry Goldwater in 1964. The young executive had already seriously screwed up his handling of Cuba, Moscow, and Vietnam and was subject to blame from white Southern Democrats for being too much opposed to Jim Crow and from the Civil Rights movement for doing too little about same. Indeed, JFK was only in Texas because he feared losing it the next year. We can never know whether he would in fact have been a one term failure but for Lee Harvey Oswald, but we do know that the gunman radically changed the political environment for the following Fall. LBJ just rode the martyr's coattails to a victory that should have told him nothing more, and a historian like Mr. Perlstein nothing more, than that Americans weren't about to let some psychotic decide which party should be in the White House. All Democrats had to do in 1964 was connect Barry Goldwater--whose intemperate rhetoric helped them immeasurably--to extremist views and the election was in the bag. Thus, while Mr. Goldwater's Convention Speech is one of the best remembered, and most notorious, in American history, no one recalls a word of LBJ's, because he said nothing, as he ran on nothing. Today we associate the Great Society with a series of quite specific and divisive policies that he used his "mandate" and majorities to enact, but when he was running it was all airy pabulum:
For a century we labored to settle and to subdue a continent. For half a century we called upon unbounded invention and untiring industry to create an order of plenty for all of our people.
The challenge of the next half century is whether we have the wisdom to use that wealth to enrich and elevate our national life, and to advance the quality of our American civilization.
Your imagination, your initiative and your indignation will determine whether we build a society where progress is the servant of our needs, or a society where old values and new visions are buried under unbridled growth. For in your time we have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the Great Society.
The Great Society rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice, to which we are totally committed in our time. But that is just the beginning.
The Great Society is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and to enlarge his talents. It is a place where leisure is a welcome chance to build and reflect, not a feared cause of boredom and restlessness. It is a place where the city of man serves not only the needs of the body and the demands of commerce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community.
It is a place where man can renew contact with nature. It is a place which honors creation for its own sake and for what it adds to the understanding of the race. It is a place where men are more concerned with the quality of their goals than the quantity of their goods.
It can come as no surprise then that voters ended the Great Society's ambitions just two years later, punishing Democrats in the '66 midterm. And while the Democrat on Democrat violence that ensued was certainly appalling, it was perhaps the inevitable result of a party undertaking such wrenching social experimentation with so little popular will behind it. Of course, conspicuously absent from the scene during these years was one Richard M. Nixon. The "fracturing of America," even if we concede that it occurred at this time, took place not in Nixonland, but Johnsonville.
Adding to the confusion, that term, "Nixonland," is borrowed from a letter that Adlai Stevenson wrote to John Kenneth Galbraith in the mid-50s, when the eponymous man was a mere vice president. Mr. Perlstein broadens the definition of Nixonland in a way that is instructive, though perplexing:
[I]t is the America where two separate and irreconcilable sets of apocalyptic fears coexist in the minds of two separate and irreconcilable groups of Americans. The first group, enemies of Richard Nixon, are the spiritual heirs of Stevenson and Galbraith. They take it as an axiom that if Richard Nixon and the values associated with him triumph, America itself might end. The second group are the people who wrote those telegrams begging Dwight D. Eisenhower to keep their hero on the 1952 Republican ticket. They believe, as did Nixon, that if the enemies of Richard Nixon triumph--the Alger Hisses and Helen Gahagan Douglases, the Herblocks, and hippies, the George McGoverns and all the rest--America might end.
Now, it may be the case that the Stevensons, Galbraiths, and Hisses located in Richard Nixon everything they hate about what Mr. Perlstein's friend, Thomas Frank, nowadays calls Kansas. Intelectualls have long been aware of and offended by the disdain in which they are held by most Americans. The irony of Richard Nixon though is that he was driven by a need for acceptance by the intellectual class, not a disregard for it. That is presumably why, when he did triumph, he governed like a liberal Democrat and converted from the anti-Communism of his youthful days to the despicable Realism of his Harvard-trained foreign policy mentor, Henry Kissinger. The book makes much of Nixon's founding of the Orthogonians at Whittier College, a club to compete with the more socially elevated Franklins:
Franklins were well-rounded, graceful, moved smoothly, talked slickly. Nixon's new club,the Orthogonians, was for the strivers, those not to the manner born, the commuter students like him. He persuaded this followers that reveling in one's nonpolish was a nobility of its own. ... Orthogonians wore shirtsleeves. "Beans, brains and brawn" was their motto. He told them orthogonian -- basically "at right angles" -- mean "upright," "straight shooter."
Unfortunately, when we begin picking at all these threads the whole Leftist obsession with Richard Nixon as a uniquely evil and quintessentially conservative figure comes unraveled. While Nixon is hardly a character who can inspire sympathy, Mr. Perlstein's obsessive pursuit ends up reminding us, or instructing the younger among us, of that long before there was a Bush Derangement Syndrome--whereby W is not only responsible for Hurricane Katrina but for the very fact that people live below sea level in a hurricane zone--there was this sort of lunatic hatred--such that even a somewhat silly confrontation between Yoko Ono and the cartoonist Al Capp can be blamed on Nixon.
Weighing in at 748 pages, some may think the investment of time and energy to great just to learn a lesson about how looney the Left can be. But Friend Perlstein brings along a staggering amount of research, a rich collection of anecdotes, an amusing and (on occasion) affecting righteous anger, and a tremendous zest as he rides roughshod through the period from '64 to '72. You may not agree with many, if any, of his conclusions about the era, and you'll not mistake him for the historian of his earlier book, but as a polemicist he's never less than entertaining. And if he writes from heart instead of the head here, what more ought we really expect from a liberal? Liberalism is, after all, about feeling instead of thinking. And, whatever else it may be, this book is deeply felt.
Upper Deck Releases Sarah Palin and Joe Biden Collectible Trading Cards (Maury Brown, 01 October 2008, Biz of Baseball)
The new pair of illustrated cards -- numbered PP-15 (Palin) and PP-16 (Biden) -- brings to a close Upper Deck's extremely popular 2008 "Presidential Predictors" series of insert cards (see all of the cards online here on The Biz of Baseball). The rare cards will be sprinkled into random packs (SRP: $4.99) of Upper Deck's SP Authentic Baseball release next week.Biden is depicted as longtime Washington Senator's pitcher Walter Johnson, a seasoned veteran who's looking for the biggest win of his career. Palin, meanwhile, is shown rounding the bases near the White House in a most unusual manner -- atop a dogsled and sporting a tiara – a fitting portrayal for a candidate who's determined to blaze new trails.
"The caricatures are great," added Stockholm. "We've taken some liberties with both of the VP candidates, but we believe collectors will see the cards as entertaining as well as informative."
The Obamas: Portrait of an American Family (Gwen Ifill, Essence)
[T]his summer ESSENCE became the only Black media outlet allowed a glimpse into the lives of Barack, Michelle and their two girls, Malia and Sasha, when we were invited to their South Side Chicago home. Weeks later, veteran political journalist Gwen Ifill was with the family as they campaigned in a small mostly White western town, and she flew with them to a Black church in the urban Midwest. [...]But on this Fourth of July, everyone is together. Even though there are at least a half-dozen aides and family members on the bus with us, it feels intimate back here. Michelle and Barack are curled up on the beige couch, while the children are reading and coloring a few feet away. Michelle folds her long legs to her chin and leans into her husband as he explains the reality of their lives. When he pauses, she finishes his sentences.
Their ease with each other recalls the day several weeks earlier when ESSENCE arrived to photograph the Obamas at their large Georgian Revivial home on Chicago's South Side. Barack stood on the lawn playfully teasing his wife as she posed for our cameras.
...here are this week's highlights:
Liberal Laughs: Filmmaker David Zucker on his new satire, 'An American Carol,' and why he converted to conservative politics. (Sarah Ball, 10/02/08, NEWSWEEK
David Zucker made his mark in Hollywood as the madcap brain behind the spoof-comedy classics "Airplane!" and "The Naked Gun." But now for something completely different: post 9/11, Zucker experienced a conservative political conversion, and his new film, "An American Carol," is a satire of the Charles Dickens tale featuring a liberal documentary filmmaker named Michael Malone who learns the true spirit of America. Zucker spoke with NEWSWEEK's Sarah Ball.NEWSWEEK: Your movie is filled with jokes about Hollywood liberals. Was this a hard sell in town?
David Zucker: Hollywood studios did not want to make this. We finally found a French company, of all things, to distribute it. This ends all my snide remarks about the French. [...]
Does spoof cancel out message?
No. Back in the early 1980s there were crazy airplane disaster movies that were taken seriously. So we made "Airplane!" and said, "Look, guys, the emperor has no clothes." I'm always trying to find new targets, and the loony-left really appealed to me as a source.
100 Incredibly Useful and Interesting Web Sites - Whether you need to find a home, share a huge file, or throw a wicked curve with a Wiffle ball, you'll find these sites indispensable. (Mark Sullivan, October 01, 2008, PC World)
Illustration by Harry Campbell
Even as the Web has become more entertaining--and certainly better looking--over the past 15 years, it has also become much more useful and practical, as the 100 sites in this feature will demonstrate.I've organized the sites in the list by the type of task they help you with. It is not a ranking; in each category I recommend sites that specialize in a different area than the others. I've also mixed in a smattering of sites that you might not use every day, but that provide ready answers to specific questions like "How can I learn to rumba?" or "Who should I vote for?" or "How do I make a wallet out of duct tape?"
Oatmeal Maple Cookies (Linda Cicero's Cook's Corner, Miami Herald)
• ¾ cup butter or margarine, cut in pieces• ½ cup brown sugar
• 1 cup maple syrup
• 1 egg
• 1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
• ½ teaspoon baking soda
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 2 cups uncooked oatmeal
• ½ cup of raisins and/or chopped nuts, if desired
• 48 chocolate candy stars (optional)
Beat the butter with the brown sugar until creamy, then beat in the maple syrup. Add the egg. In another bowl, whisk the flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon. Add to the butter mixture. Add oats along with raisins and/or nuts. Drop dough by rounded tablespoon onto lightly greased baking sheets. Bake at 350 degrees for 11 to 13 minutes, until light golden. Remove from oven and press a chocolate star into the center of each cookie.
India aglow as nuclear pact approved (Siddharth Srivastava, 10/03/08, Asia Times)
[M]any observers see India's admission to the Nuclear Suppliers' Group (NSG) as the global "nuclear exception" and a reward for a nation that has been rooted to democratic values and responsible international behavior.This is unlike countries such as Pakistan, North Korea, Iran and Iraq, which are not perceived well by the West due to their dubious proliferation records, alleged promotion of terrorism and extremist elements.
India's eligibility to access nuclear power technology and fuel from the international market while maintaining an independent nuclear weapons program has come about despite New Delhi's refusal to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
It has been a tortuous path to the impending culmination of the India-US nuclear deal. There have been periods when the deal was thought dead, and India's Manmohan government was almost voted out of power over its aggressive backing of the pact.
New Delhi faced a no-confidence motion in July after the anti-American left coalition withdrew its support, claiming the pact impinged on India's sovereignty and right to an independent weapons program
Only last-minute political deals cut by Congress party president Sonia Gandhi with regional parties saved the Manmohan government from collapsing.
Defying domestic political opposition and a reported attempt by China to derail the waiver at the NSG, India's nuclear exemption is a victory for New Delhi's diplomatic and strategic initiatives. It was helped along by a Washington government eager to check China's influence in the region.
McCain Is Wrong On Afghanistan (Barnett R. Rubin, 10.02.08, Forbes)
Though McCain has no plausible plan to increase troops in Afghanistan, he agrees that more should be sent. And what should they do there? According to McCain, duplicate the "same strategy" that "succeeded" in Iraq. That strategy consisted of increasing troops in Baghdad to control sectarian violence; moving those troops into neighborhoods to provide security to the population; and paying the Sunni tribes of Anbar (the Awakening) that were willing to shift from fighting the U.S. occupation to accepting its aid to strengthen themselves against the foreign extremists of al-Qaida and the Shi'a-dominated government in Baghdad. Not a single element of this strategy is applicable to Afghanistan except the crude idea of "more troops." There is now no open sectarian or ethnic conflict in Kabul. And whom would the U.S. forces pay to fight the Taliban? The Taliban's own tribes?The Iraqi insurgency was based in Iraq--but the Afghan insurgency is based in Pakistan. Iraq provides no lessons for dealing with the cross-border insurgency. But McCain has no policy toward Pakistan other than to continue the Bush administration's failed cooperation with the Pakistani military; he even maligned the elected government overthrown by Gen. Pervez Musharraf in 1999 as a "failed state." I was in Pakistan a week before that coup, and it was not a failed state. It was a state whose military was planning to unseat its elected government because that government might cooperate with the U.S. against the Taliban and al-Qaida.
Obama, however, not only promised more troops and said where he would get them, but outlined the other components of Afghanistan and Pakistan policy necessary for success: help the Afghan government provide more for its people; implement an effective strategy to curb the illegal drug industry; build a partnership with Pakistan based on more than a deal with a military dictator; and open diplomatic dialogue with Iran, Afghanistan's western neighbor, with whom the U.S. cooperated closely in the 2001 campaign against al-Qaida and the Pakistan-supported Taliban government.
Bad news for consumers as banks squeeze credit even further: Latest figures suggest Britain is heading for recession and prompt calls for half-point cut in interest rates (Julia Kollewe, 10/02/08, guardian.co.uk)
The availability of mortgage lending and credit lines to consumers and businesses worsened more than expected over the past three months, according to the Bank of England's latest credit conditions survey, published today. The amount of unsecured loans on offer to households hit a new low as the global credit crisis deepened.Default rates rose and banks said they expected defaults on all lending to increase further over the next three months.
"It's only going to get worse from here," said Paul Daley at Capital Economics. "Perhaps the worst aspect is that this survey excludes the dramatic events of the last few weeks – it was conducted from August 26 to September 17 - so credit conditions will probably tighten by even more than expected. Even if the problems in the financial markets were miraculously solved overnight, which is unlikely, the impact of the credit crisis on the real economy will be with us for some time."
A balance of 27.5% of lenders offered fewer unsecured loans to households in the third quarter, the lowest level since the series began. Mortgage lending was even scarcer: a balance of 39.3% of lenders reported a fall in mortgage lending to consumers, albeit fewer than the 47% in the previous quarter.
Businesses are also being hit. The balance of lenders reporting a fall in credit availability to firms rose to 36% from 32%. And again, lenders expect to cut credit to firms further.
"The survey highlights the vicious circle that now is at work, with banks cutting back on lending to companies and households because of the worsening economic outlook, a reduced appetite for risk and reduced availability of funds," said Saunders. "In turn, the reduction in the supply of credit exacerbates the downturn – which will reinforce the reluctance of bank to lend in coming quarters. It is notable that banks report that reduced investment spending is a major factor in the downturn in demand for credit from companies."
Barack and the brandy (Roger Scruton, 02 October 2008, New Statesman)
Only one feature of Obama seems to present a clear obstacle, in redneck eyes, to his prospect of being elected, and that is his first name. How could anyone get a name like Barack? What does it say about a guy, that he comes into the world with a name that nobody else could conceivably have as his own?As a contribution to peace between the factions, I offer to my neighbours an explanation of Obama's name. "Barack" means apricot in Hungarian. Of course, you have to pronounce the "c", and it is only when written down that you get the point. But, to those in the know, this name evokes a direct path to peace and reconciliation.
The Hungarian apricot brandy - barack pálinka - is one of those drinks that form an immediate atmosphere of goodwill and toleration between potential rivals, and the habit of taking a glass of it before a meal explains why Hungarians have lived through all the trials of modern times without falling out. Of course they quarrel, but usually over important issues: women, or religion, or the principles of tonal harmony.
Politics vanishes from their consciousness with that first fiery assault on the oesophagus, and usually by the time the meal is served they are ready to sit down in affable goodwill beside their opponent. It is thanks to apricot brandy that the Hungarians were able to set aside all differences in 1956 and unite against Soviet occupation.
Latest Immigration Wave: Retreat: An Illegal Worker Realizes Dream, Briefly; Fewer Are Sneaking In (MIRIAM JORDAN, 10/02/08, Wall Street Journal)
In 2004, Ambrosio Carrillo made a perilous and illegal journey to the U.S. in search of opportunity. Earlier this year, he made the equally wrenching decision to return home.Once a construction worker earning about $15 an hour in Maryland, Mr. Carrillo barely worked in the fall of 2007 as plentiful jobs evaporated. As winter set in, the illegal immigrant, who had mastered masonry, carpentry and drywalling in the U.S., didn't land a job for two months. There was no money to send to his wife and three children in Guatemala.
So in January, Mr. Carrillo sliced open the green plastic piggy bank he'd bought at Wal-Mart and counted $3,100 in change and bills. "There was enough to buy a plane ticket home and ship my truck to Guatemala," recalls Mr. Carrillo, 37 years old. Now back in San Juan Alotenango, a town of dirt streets and sporadic running water, he hauls fruit, firewood and recyclable metal for a few dollars a trip.
With his journey to the U.S. and back, Mr. Carrillo is helping to write the latest chapter in the American immigrant story. After years of growth, illegal immigration to the U.S. from Mexico and Central America has slowed sharply. At the same time, say demographers and immigrant advocates, more Latin American immigrants like Mr. Carrillo are apparently returning home. The impact of this shifting migration pattern is felt in the U.S. and beyond, in towns like San Juan Alotenango that depend to some degree on cash sent home by those working in the U.S.
Dutch ovens have turned from workhorse to status symbol (TANYA BRICKING LEACH, 10/01/08, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
The appeal has as much to do with aesthetics as cooking, with many people selecting ovens based on kitchen decor. "I don't know how much people cook with it, sometimes, but they decorate their kitchen," says Kim Collins, senior brand manager for Le Creuset.For those who do cook with them, durability and versatility are key selling points.
"This is cookware you can keep for a long time," says Kate Dering, a cookware buyer for Seattle-based kitchen retailer Sur la Table. "You can braise and bake all in the same pot and make an economical meal, like a roast or soup. That's why people are buying them."
Retailers across the spectrum have responded to the demand. The pots are standard fare for Williams-Sonoma, where a 15 1/2 -quart red oval Le Creuset Dutch oven fetches $415, as well as for Wal-Mart, where a green 3 1/2 -quart Tramontina goes for under $30.
Le Creuset and Batali brand Dutch ovens are among Sur la Table's best-selling items, says Dering. And to keep up with demand, the company stocks 40% more of them than just a few years ago, she says.
Cast-iron Dutch ovens, which can be round or oval, have been around for centuries, dating to at least 17th-Century Europe. Because they originally were intended for hearth-style cooking, most early versions had legs for standing them over a bed of coals.
Now as then, they are prized for their ability to retain heat and moisture and move easily from the stovetop to the oven, making them ideal for stews, baked beans, roasts, braising, even baked goods.
"They're the original slow cookers," says Vernon Winterton, author of "101 Things to do with a Dutch Oven."
