Wednesday, August 30, 2017

Trump, candidate vs president

Candidate Trump ran as an isolationist. He said he'd bring the US troops home, no more wars. Peace with Syria and Russia.

Candidate Trump also promised to end foreign trade, repeating the Smoot-Hawley act of 1930 that stopped almost all US foreign trade. My school books said that the Smoot-Hawley bill made the Great Depression much worse. Prof Krugman won the Nobel Prize in Economics for his proof that Smoot-Hawley prevented the Great Depression from being much worse than it was.

Candidate Trump also promised to bring back jobs by incentives to produce coal, and an end to all environmental regulations.

President Trump agrees with Bush, jr and Obama. Obviously, Iran ordered 9/11, but no Iranians were among the hijackers, the thousands of jihadis who committed 9/11 were followers of the Iranian Ayatollahs from (in order of number of jihadis) Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, North Korea and Cuba. Not one Saudi had anything to do with 9/11, since all Saudis follow a peaceful, non-violent, vegetarian sect of Islam.

The US Senate voted to investigate if any Saudi might have been involved in 9/11, and Obama vetoed that bill, since it's been irrefutably proven that no Saudi had anything to do with 9/11.

So President Trump agrees that the US must keep lots of troops in Afghanistan, since those Afghans want to do another 9/11, but one that would cause far more damage if the US ever withdrew. One can easily see that the plurality of the 9/11 hijackers were Afghans, and the rest were Iraqis, Libyans, Syrians, North Koreans, and Cubans. So Trump, once he could see the intelligence only available to the president of the US, discovered that Bush, jr and Obama were right, and US troops must remain in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, and must liberate Syria, Iran, North Korea, and Cuba.

President Trump agrees with Candidate Trump about coal, and mines that were closed because it was too expensive to safely store mine waste can now dump that waste in drinking water supplies, but that's not a problem, since the US government is no longer allowed to test water, and, with no tests showing the water is unsafe, it's now safe to drink, lead and all. Lead is only dangerous if the water is tested and the lead is found. As long as the water's not tested, the lead isn't a problem.

So every day of his term, President Trump looks more and more like the kind of Great Leader the US deserves.

Shaken, not stirred?????

Most of the bars I've been in have been beer joints. The US makes the license for the sale of anything stronger than beer very expensive, so many bars only serve beer, and most Americans can only afford beer joints, where the owners get the cheap, beer license, rent a cheap place to place their bar, and sell beer at a price that normal Americans can afford.

In movies, I've seen tough guys order whiskey or rye. In the US, 'whiskey' means bourbon, a drink that must be made from maize in Kentucky. 'Rye' must, of course, be made with some rye grain.

Some sophisticates order Martinis, but most bars don't have Martinis, only those for the gentry.

So, when Bond said he wanted his Martinis 'shaken, not stirred,' in the movies, most Americans figured the sophisticates always want their Martinis 'shaken, not stirred.' Which is as far from the truth as any movie can go!!

For most drinks, a tough customer orders e,g., whiskey or rye. The spirit is poured into a measure, a small glass with two lines. Generous bartenders fill to the top line. Frugal bartenders fill to the bottom line. Then the spirit is poured into a large glass, and the customer (in an American bar) can ask for any mixer that's on tap at no extra cost.

A Martini is different. The Martini glass must be filled to the brim. Martini glasses vary in size, as do the contents.

In the US, there is a very heavy tax on gin. So a cheap Martini has as little gin as possible. Olives, lemon, and Vermouth take the place of as much of the gin as the bar owners think they can get away with.

The ingredients must be poured into a shaker with ice. If shaken, the contents of the Martini glass will be mostly melted ice, i.e., water. If the ice is made in a commercial ice-maker and is 0F, and the gin and vermouth are 60F, the result is 30F, below freezing, and if the time in the shaker is short, and there is absolutely no shaking, the Martini will be mostly gin and vermouth. Or, if the buyer says so, a spoonful of vermouth is poured into the shaker and then poured out, and the shaker filled with gin. So the contents of the Martini glass is almost 100% ice cold gin. And that's how sophisticated Martini drinkers demand their Martinis: barely stirred, never shaken (shaking 'bruises the gin').

I read the novel by Fleming with the 'shaken, not stirred.' It was NOT a Martini. Cocktails are like hash, some ingredients must always be the same, but hash is different from one diner to the next (hash can be different in the same diner from one meal to the next, but cocktails are usually the same every time in the same bar, since the owners tell the bartenders how each cocktail must be made).

The Martini, as I said, is gin and French vermouth (or an Italian imitation of French vermouth).

In the first Bond book, Bond orders a mixture of 4 shots of gin and one shot of vodka, shaken, not stirred, and poured into a large glass (since, with the large amount of gin, vodka, and melted ice, it would never fit into a Martini glass). The movies then had Bond order an ordinary Martini, served in a normal Martini glass, 'shaken, not stirred,' so it would have been a very weak Martini. And, not knowing anything about Martinis, most Americans thought the rich sophisticates who could afford Martinis always ordered them 'shaken, not stirred'.