British chefs take curry to India

And no, it's not a joke.

But since leaving its native India, the curry has been Westernised – undergoing subtle but distinct changes to the point that what the British describe as Indian food is regarded as something of a novelty by the people of Kolkata.

Nevertheless, they have been enthusiastic about the food served up to them as part of the 10-day Taste of Britain Curry Festival. "It is running to packed houses," said Koushik Sengupta, the food and beverage manager at the Hotel Hindustan International, which is hosting the festival. "We are overwhelmed with the interest and response [to] an everyday British food."

Syed Belal Ahmed, the festival's director, said: "The great British curry is going back to its roots – Kolkata. Once the proud seat of the British Raj in India, Kolkata is the place where the curry trail really started.

Read the rest of this post...

Glenn Beck freaks out over Markos

Apparently, Markos did something with railroad tracks, and somehow that's going to make the country socialist and communist but also fascist. Or something.

Here's a snippet:

We've disregarded the railroad, the rails of the rule of law of the Constitution, and equal justice, and then taken our foundation -- faith, hope, charity, self-reliance, accountability -- and replaced it with structure, socialism.

It's what ties the communists and the national socialists -- the Nazis -- together. They disagree with each other, but that's only because they want control, and these guys want control.

Read the rest of this post...

US Navy going green

Of course, it's probably also a lot about saving energy and costs but still a very positive move. The Guardian:

The US navy is set to be both green and mean with the dawning of an new eco-friendly assault force that will mind its carbon footprint as it destroys its enemy. It is to launch "the Great Green Fleet", a fighting force of ships, submarines and planes powered entirely by biofuels. The first group will be tested in 2012, and the navy plans for it to be operational by 2016.

The push for greener fighting forces runs across the Pentagon. The military accounts for nearly 80% of the US government's energy consumption and the two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have made strategists acutely conscious of both the massive cost and serious security risks of the gas-guzzling ways of the past.

Read the rest of this post...

Second volcano might go off in Iceland

I can already hear what our Londoner flat guest is going to say when he reads the details of the next one. Bugger.

Scientists fear tremors at the Eyjafjallajokull (ay-yah-FYAH-lah-yer-kuhl) volcano could trigger an even more dangerous eruption at the nearby Katla volcano — creating a worst-case scenario for the airline industry and travelers around the globe.

A Katla eruption would be 10 times stronger and shoot higher and larger plumes of ash into the air than its smaller neighbor, which has already brought European air travel to a standstill for five days and promises severe travel delays for days more.

The two volcanos are side by side in southern Iceland, about 12 miles (20 kilometers) apart and thought to be connected by a network of magma channels.

Katla, however, is buried under ice 550 yards (500 meters) thick — the massive Myrdalsjokull glacier, one of Iceland's largest. That means it has more than twice the amount of ice that the current eruption has burned through — threatening a new and possibly longer aviation standstill across Europe.

Read the rest of this post...

SEC reviewing accounting practices at largest banks

It's hard not to be impressed with Mary Schapiro. The focus on the shameless behavior by Wall Street is definitely appreciated.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is examining whether any of the 19 largest U.S. banks are using an accounting trick that a bankruptcy examiner has said led to the collapse of Lehman Brothers, SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro said Tuesday.

Schapiro testified at a congressional hearing that the SEC is scrutinizing Lehman's use of the accounting move, known as Repo 105, that allowed it to mask its weakness before it failed. She said the agency has sent letters to the 19 banks, seeking information about any such transactions.

Read the rest of this post...

Did living standards really improve during the Reagan years? Hint: No.

Perhaps your living standard improved during the Reagan years if you were on Wall Street, but the peak earning years for Americans has been on the decline since the early 1970s. Thanks to the lack of regulation first started by Reagan and Thatcher, we're in the worst recession in decades. The living standard in the West is in trouble because of their policies. Ignore that though, and dream of a world that doesn't really exist other than in the mind of economist Stephen King. Naturally, he was talking about his new book on CNBC.

The political philosophies espoused by former leaders Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher will wither and die as the West watches its financial and political power ebb away to the East, according to HSBC’s chief economist.

In his new book “Losing Control, The Emerging Threats to Western Prosperity,” HSBC’s Stephen King argues that the growing might of China, India and the other emerging nations has killed off the assumption of continuously improving living standards for those in the United States and Western Europe.

NOTE FROM JOHN: If you're ashamed of your history, just rewrite it. Read the rest of this post...

GOP Senate candidate taking on Harry Reid says everyone can get health care if they'd only give their doctor a chicken as payment

Seriously:

Chickens for Checkups!

That’s the name of a new Web site the DSCC is planning to unveil today in an effort to draw national attention to GOP Senate candidate Sue Lowden, who doubled down this week on her assertion that people should barter with doctors to reduce health care prices, a DSCC spox tells me.

Lowden, who wants to replace Harry Reid, said this:

“I’m telling you that this works. You know, before we all started having health care, in the olden days our grandparents, they would bring a chicken to the doctor, they would say I’ll paint your house. I mean, that’s the old days of what people would do to get health care with your doctors. Doctors are very sympathetic people. I’m not backing down from that system.”

The DSCC’s new Chickens for Checkups Web site — a name that first appeared below on this blog — will allow people to send Lowden a “personalized message asking for her help in finding a doctor for their 19th century illness,” DSCC spox Deirdre Murphy says. It will include a menu of stuff you can choose to barter for treatment.

Oh, but now there's more. Apparently she's defending her statement:

The Lowden campaign sends along this letter to a local paper from a local medical professional, supporting the concept. “I have bartered with patients — for alfalfa hay, a bath tub, yard work and horse shoeing in exchange for my care,” the doc wrote.

Ben Smith has more. Read the rest of this post...

VIDEO: GOP objecting to everything

Read the rest of this post...

AP: Do moderate candidates have a future in the GOP?

Not the kind of article the Republicans are looking for if they want to take back the Congress in the fall.

Races in all corners of the country raise the question of whether moderate candidates have a future in a party imposing ideological purity, and whether the GOP can attract moderate voters. In Senate races in Florida, Arizona, Utah, Kentucky and New Hampshire, conservatives backed by tea party activists are challenging more centrist candidates largely preferred by the party establishment in Washington.

The Republican Party already is facing declining membership and a diminished geographic foothold as it has moved further to the right over the past few decades.

If the GOP ends up driving middle-of-the-road candidates from the party, how can it attract moderates and independents? Do those voters, already the most likely to be turned off by politics, simply stay home? Or do they turn out for independent candidates, making the two-party structure less relevant?

The more people leave the GOP, the more the far-right Teabagging base will control the future of the party, and thus, the less likely anyone but the far right will vote Republican ever again. Unless the Dems screw up, and the public simply votes for "the other guy." That's the underlying danger of all of this. Pendulums swing. Read the rest of this post...

Vatican promotes bishop who blamed child rape lawsuits on devil

More of the same is a very bad sign. Promoting people like Paprocki is going in the wrong direction.

Paprocki, 57, said three years ago that the principal force behind the waves of abuse lawsuits was "none other than the devil."

He said the cost of litigation was making it more difficult for the church to perform charitable works. An attorney himself, Paprocki proposed that the courts revive an old policy of shielding nonprofit organizations from lawsuits over negligence and abuse.

"The settlement or award of civil damages is punishing the wrong people, namely the average parishioner or donor whose financial contributions support the church but who have no role in the supervision of clergy," Paprocki said in October 2007 during a special Mass for judges and attorneys.

Read the rest of this post...

Obama: No Litmus Tests on Abortion

I'm not sure we could have hoped for anything better. From ABC:

When asked if he would be willing to nominate someone who did not support a woman’s right to choose, the president said he does not have a litmus test.

“I will say the same thing that every President has said since this issue came up, which is I don’t have litmus tests around any of these issues,” Obama answered.

“I am somebody who believes that women should have the ability to make often very difficult decisions about their own bodies and issues of reproduction,” he added. “I want somebody who is going to be interpreting our Constitution in a way that takes into account individual rights, and that includes women’s rights.”

Read the rest of this post...

Dem. Sen. Carper: Dems should drop areas of disagreement from Wall St. reform bill

It's difficult to overstate how idiotic, politically naive, and just plain dangerous this move is.

Democrats should drop areas of disagreement with Republicans from their Wall Street reform bill in order to move forward, Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) suggested Wednesday.

Carper, a member of the Senate Finance Committee, said that he thinks a bipartisan deal can be reached on financial regulatory reform legislation, and argued it should be done by dropping the most contentious areas of the bill.

"At the end of the day…we agree on about 80 percent of the stuff here," Carper said during an appearance on Fox News. "I think what we need to do is focus on the 80 percent on which we agree and set aside the 20 percent for another day."

Among those provisions creating friction is a $50 billion, industry-funded pool of money to help wind down financial institutions if they begin to fail. Republicans have derided this provision as a pool for endless bailouts, though they've also maintained other objections to the legislation.

What he's recommending is that we cave to Republicans on their ridiculous claims that the bill includes a "bail out," which it does not. But by dropping the provision, we then prove their point, and they'll run against every single Democrat claiming that they wanted a bail out in the reform bill. It's the same thing that happened when Joe "You lie!" Wilson yelled at the president, claiming falsely that the health care reform bill would permit illegal aliens access to the bill's funds. The next day the White House had Dem Senators review the legislation to make sure Wilson's concerns were met. As a result, every Republican ran around claiming that Obama had just admitted that he had in fact lied, and the GOP was even more emboldened to challenge the Dems on health care, and they did. Read the rest of this post...

Dems have more money than GOP for fall elections

That's good news. I still worry that Democrats need to give Democratic voters something to vote for. I'm not sure they have, not enough at least.

Democrats' campaign committees on Tuesday posted more than a $21 million in-the-bank advantage over their Republican counterparts.

Although the Democrats' edge widened after Congress passed President Barack Obama's health care overhaul, both parties claimed the divisive health care debate motivated donors to give ahead of November's midterm elections. Yet is was clear the Democrats — in control of the House, the Senate and the White House — had the upper hand in cash, which can pay for campaign staffers, commercials and polling for candidates in a rough election environment.

Read the rest of this post...

McCain: Illegal immigrants intentionally cause car accidents

Um, okay.

McCain said that undocumented immigrants are a threat to American citizens because they are intentionally causing car accidents.

“It's the drive-by that -- the drivers of cars with illegals in it that are intentionally causing accidents on the freeway," the onetime Republican presidential nominee told O'Reilly.

I understand the Mexicans are responsible for stealing the socks from your dryer too. Read the rest of this post...

Google releases details on government requests for censorship

A good idea and very interesting to see what governments are requesting around the world. Here's their blog post about it and here is a link to the Government Requests page. Google may have stumbled badly during their "China episode" but this looks very good, or at least, very open.

We are today launching a new Government Requests tool to give people information about the requests for user data or content removal we receive from government agencies around the world. For this launch, we are using data from July-December, 2009, and we plan to update the data in 6-month increments. Read this post to learn more about our principles surrounding free expression and controversial content on the web.

We already try to be as transparent as legally possible with respect to requests. Whenever we can, we notify users about requests that may affect them personally. If we remove content in search results, we display a message to users. The numbers we are sharing today take this transparency a step further and reflect the total number of requests we have received broken down by jurisdiction. We are also sharing the number of these content removal requests that we do not comply with, and while we cannot yet provide more detail about our compliance with user data requests in a useful way, we intend to do so in the future.

As part of our commitment to the Global Network Initiative, we have already agreed to principles and practices that govern privacy and free expression. In the spirit of these principles, we hope this tool will shine some light on the scale and scope of government requests for censorship and data around the globe. We also hope that this is just the first step toward increased transparency about these actions across the technology and communications industries.

Read the rest of this post...

Major controversy over DC visit by Cardinal enmeshed in child rape scandal

The Catholic Church really, really doesn't get it. The leaders of the Church, like Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos, protected and enabled child rapists for decades. People know what they did and are appalled by it. Yet, the Church celebrates and venerates these guys. It's unbelievable. They have no shame:

It was planned as a solemn event -- a chance to experience the sacred liturgical roots of Catholic tradition at one of the country's most prominent churches. But after three years of fundraising and careful coordination, an elaborate Latin Mass scheduled for Saturday at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington has been dragged into the clergy abuse scandal.

Advocates for abuse victims voiced outrage Tuesday that the former Vatican official invited to lead the Mass -- Cardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos of Colombia -- once praised a French bishop for not telling police about a priest who had sexually assaulted children. Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests sent letters Tuesday to Pope Benedict XVI and Washington Archbishop Donald W. Wuerl, calling on them to condemn Castrillón's remarks and replace him in the Mass.

"To hold the cardinal up in a position of honor and leadership after what he's said would just rub salt in to the wounds of millions of betrayed Catholics and thousands of wounded victims," said David Clohessy, SNAP's director.

How can Archbishop Wuerl not condemn the remarks? How can he honor Castrillón Hoyos?

But, don't forget, Wuerl is the same guy who cut benefits to his own employees in order to fight same-sex marriage. Read the rest of this post...

Wednesday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

The President is hosting a meeting this morning with Senate leaders to talk about the upcoming nomination of the next Supreme Court Justice. He'll be joined by Senators Reid, Leahy, McConnell, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III. Sessions is the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee and truly one of the most heinous members of that body. I'm sure McConnell and Sessions will make it clear to Obama that no one he nominates will be acceptable to them, because that's how the GOPers roll these days.

This afternoon, Obama hosts Olympians and ParaOlympians from the Winter Games at the White House.

Tomorrow, Obama is heading to New York to talk Wall Street reform. Meanwhile, the Senate leaders have re-engaged to look for a bipartisan compromise on reform. So, Mitch McConnell's temper tantrum from last week -- and the threat of a filibuster once again had the desired effect.

Let's get it started... Read the rest of this post...

IMF warning on 'too big to fail' banks

Time may indeed be running out, but the GOP is ready, able and willing to defend those banks at all costs. Lobbyists of the world, unite!

In its half-yearly health check on the financial sector, the Washington-based fund said there was an urgent need for international co-operation to tackle the systemic risks posed by banks deemed "too big to fail".

"The future financial regulatory reform agenda is still a work in progress, but will need to move forward with at least the main ingredients soon", the IMF said in its Global Financial Stability Review. "The window of opportunity for dealing with too-important-to-fail institutions may be closing and should not be squandered, all the more so because some of these institutions have become bigger and more dominant than before the crisis erupted.

"Policymakers need to give serious thought about what makes these institutions systemically important and how risks to the financial system can be mitigated."

Read the rest of this post...

European skies continue to open post-volcano

For the most part the skies over Europe are moving again though this will take days to get back to normal. While some discount airlines are ignoring EU laws about providing passengers with room and board during the delays, the French-Anglo Eurostar has offered special discounted rates for last minute travelers. What a welcome relief. Our friend is still on target for a Saturday flight - one week late - and a colleague is due to find out soon if he can get back on schedule after two weeks in the US. The maps of the ash clouds are showing more of an impact in northeast Canada, which is interesting.

Airlines had also expressed their frustration at the closure of airspace in southern England yesterday, which closed Britain's biggest airports for the sixth day, while flight corridors opened in Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland and France. Just under half the continent's planned 27,500 flights went ahead.

Last night Nats said air traffic control services had still not resumed over an area of north-west Scotland because of a "dense concentration of volcanic ash" and warned that the situation remained "dynamic" as a result of changing weather conditions. "This brings to an end a period of disruption and uncertainty for air passengers," said a spokesman. "Our operation is fully staffed and already responding to the backlog of flights entering UK airspace. We will be working with the airlines and airports to resume normal operations as soon as possible.

"Due to the scale of the disruption, it will take some time for flights to resume normal operations, and passengers are advised to check with their airlines for the latest information about flights."

Read the rest of this post...