Brits cook more during the week, make conclusion they're better cooks than French

While there are plenty of great opportunities to eat well and find great food in London, there's still a significant difference between eating in France versus England. Sure I know plenty of good cooks from over there but quality drops off very, very quickly compared to what you find throughout France. You can almost always find good food anywhere if you try hard enough. What makes France (or Italy) so great is that you find high quality not only in the big cities, but you often find even higher quality in the countryside. From my own experience, that's much harder to find when you travel outside of London though surely there are some fine examples.

It's wonderful to see a more serious food culture developing in the UK but keep things in perspective folks.

The survey, carried out by the French magazine Madame Le Figaro and the BBC's food magazine Olive, has produced an agony of French soul-searching – and a certain amount of disbelief – over the apparent erosion of the country's most celebrated heritage.

More than 2,000 French people and nearly 1,350 Britons were asked about their eating and cooking habits. Their answers revealed that 72% of the British cook at home daily, compared with 59% of the French. One British cook in two spends more than 30 minutes preparing a meal while only a quarter of the French spend that long.

Four per cent of the French polled admitted they never cook, four times as many as Britons questioned. While French and British cooks are just as likely to bake a cake or fillet a fish, nearly twice as many British people as French make their own bread.

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Chile: 'The earthquake picture I never sent'

Moving picture, and story, about the earthquake in Chile.

Constitución, March 1 – An earthquake survivor carries the dog that he rescued from the ruins of his home, along a street devastated by the earthquake and tsunami.

“Take my picture with the dog,” the survivor tells me. I take it as if ordered to, and see that his face shows tremendous pain. “I lost my home, the sea took my son and my wife, and this is all that was left. I can’t leave the dog here. He was my son’s.” He pauses. “I found my wife (alive), but my boy is still missing.” Before he finishes speaking I lower my camera and cry. I walk together with him thinking what to say to lessen his suffering, but there is only silence...

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Conservative heart throb Ann Coulter canceled in Canada. Told Muslim student to 'take a camel' as alternative to flying.

Canceled. Good riddance.

[T]he contents of Monday’s talk — which included Coulter telling a Muslim student she “take a camel” as an alternative to flying — grabbed headlines on both sides of the border Tuesday.

Coulter made the camel quip when pressed on a question asked by UWO student Fatima Al-Dhaher, who was referencing a previous quote made to the media that Muslims shouldn’t be allowed on airplanes and should take "flying carpets" instead. Al-Dhaher had noted she didn’t own a flying carpet, and asked what Coulter suggested she do instead.

Racism and bigotry, thy name is Republican.

All kidding aside, it is interesting how none of the conservative hearthrobs - Limbaugh, Coulter, Hannity, Beck - are simply nice people. Who do liberals like? Obama? Not nearly enough mean bones in that man's body. Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann? None of them compare to the bile coming from the GOP's fantastic four. Read the rest of this post...

Stupak says Neugebauer should apologize on House floor for 'Baby Killer!' remark

Watch CBS News Videos Online Read the rest of this post...

Pay czar also notices that Wall Street employees are not running out the door

I'm starting to like Kenneth Feinberg more and more. He's in a tough situation to some degree and Congress didn't help by allowing so many TARP recipients to fall outside of his scope. How the number is so limited is an absolute joke, but that's why lobbyists get paid the big bucks.

Meanwhile, he's trimming the gravy train and also noticing what I've been saying since the beginning. People in that industry don't see that many outside opportunities so their threats to leave are a joke. Some will, no doubt, but for the most part, finance is a rough industry for finding new work these days. The threats are hollow and should be treated accordingly. If they want to leave, let them.

The Treasury, where Feinberg's office is housed, also said about 84 percent of the top earners under the pay czar's jurisdiction are still with their firms despite having their pay dramatically cut back.

"People at these five companies are not leaving the companies to go elsewhere," Feinberg told a news briefing. "There is a striking number of holdovers."

Treasury touted that statistic as evidence that Feinberg is striking the delicate balance at trying to soothe public anger over high paychecks underwritten by the taxpayer, while also trying to keep key talent at these firms.

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GOP Mormon bigot now trying to use health care reform to take marriage rights away from gay couples

All the ugly of the Republican party, and the Mormon church, fully unleashed. All because the Democrats had the temerity to help provide health care to 30m Americans in need, take away the pre-existing condition exclusion, and let parents add their adult-age kids on their insurance policies. Maybe David Dreier, Lindsey Graham, and Aaron Schock will come to our rescue. Read the rest of this post...

Now Coburn, another far-right Republican, is offering inane amendments to waste more time

Here are Senator Coburn's amendments. You'd think we had no problems in America that needed to be addressed. I guess John McCain was telling the truth - the Republicans aren't interested in doing any more real business this year.

#3556 -- To reduce the cost of providing federally funded prescription drugs by eliminating fraudulent payments andprohibiting coverage of Viagra for child molesters and rapists and for drugs intended to induce abortion.

#3557 -- To require that each new bureaucrat added to any department or agency of the Federal Government for the purpose of implementing the provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act be offset by a reduction of 1 existing bureaucrat at such department or agency.

#3558 -- To revoke the powers given the Sec. of HHS under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

#3559 -- To help the President keep his promise that Americans who like the health care coverage they have now can keep it.

#3566 -- To require all Members of Congress to read a bill prior to casting on a vote on the bi Read the rest of this post...

GOP adulterer Vitter offers first two amendments on HCR reconciliation bill: 1) Repeal HCR 2) ACORN

The Republican party has no ideas. They are a party of slogans. And fairly old ones at that.

Communism.

Socialism.

Tax cuts.

War. Lots of war.

Oh, and they're for deficit reduction after they break the bank and the Dems are finally back in power (cf. Reagan years, W. Bush years).

So what are the first two amendments the Republicans offer to make the health care fixes "better"? Amendments about ACORN - ACORN? - and about taking health insurance away from 30 million Americans, reinstating pre-existing conditions, and removing children from their parents' policies.

Can you say winner?

PS As for ACORN, they're going out of business, so why offer the amendment? Because Republicans believe that slogans are better than actual policy. "We're number one!" is always more important to a Republican than actually MAKING our country number one. Read the rest of this post...

Center for American Progress: DOD is 'dragging their feet' on DADT repeal // White House still silent on whether to repeal this year

We were told to wait until Health Care Reform was over. Great, it's over. Where is the 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' repeal that our 'fierce advocate' promised? Why is the Pentagon now dragging their feet on the commander in chief's orders? And why has it now been eight days since Barney Frank called on the White House to clarify whether or not they want DADT repealed this year? Silence from our fierce advocate at every step of the way. Read the rest of this post...

Biden caught on camera telling Obama about HCR: 'This is a big f--king deal'

Funny.

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SF Chron editorial blasts GOP incivility at HCR debate

SF Chronicle editorial:

For the record, House Republican leader John Boehner, GOP Chairman Michael Steele and the organizers of the Tea Party rally condemned the slurs. Steele suggested the movement and the party should not be linked with "idiots out there saying stupid things."

Stupid things? Try Rep. Randy Neugebauer, R-Texas, shouting "baby killer" when Rep. Bart Stupak, an anti-abortion Democrat from Michigan, was outlining his conviction that the bill would not result in federal funding of the procedure - and right after unruly House members had been admonished to stop yelling during the debate.

Stupid things? How about the House Republicans who cheered two hecklers who were ushered out of the public gallery by Capitol Police on Sunday. Or the GOP lawmakers who kept going to the House balcony during the debate to wave clenched fists and handwritten signs at the crowd and helped ensure it remained whipped into a frenzy.

Stupid things? How about the steady stream of rhetorical excesses during the debate. They warned of the death of freedom, of a coming era of totalitarianism, of a "fiscal Frankenstein."

"Shame on each and every one of you," Boehner said, drawing a GOP standing ovation during his overheated closing argument. He wasn't talking about the spitting, the slurs or the Tea Party signs comparing Speaker Nancy Pelosi with Joseph Stalin. He was blasting Democrats for moving forward without Republican help on a bill the minority party seemed hellbent to defeat from the outset. Boehner said Americans were right to be angry and fearful, as if their anxiety had emerged in a vacuum.

"The institution is broken," Boehner thundered.

Imagine that.

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White House bill signing of HCR, now

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Japan and China team up to kill shark conservation reform

The reasoning is once again tortured. The Japanese are suggesting the ban on hunting hammerhead sharks will hurt poor countries, as if that's somehow the issue. I've personally witnessed a number of great projects that are funded by the Japanese throughout southeast Asia and no doubt, they deserve credit for those investments. (A lot of that has to do with Japan's own negative history in the region last century.) But to suggest the destruction of the hammerhead shark population is about jobs is senseless. The faster they wipe out the population, the faster those same people will have no jobs because the massive fishing fleets will have eliminated everything that moves in the sea. The factory fishing fleets always over fish. Always.

So tell me again why the Obama administration is caving in to Japan on whale hunting when they are so environmentally destructive?

A U.S.-backed proposal to protect the heavily fished hammerhead sharks was narrowly rejected Tuesday over concerns by Asia nations that regulating the booming trade in shark fins could hurt poor nations.

Tom Strickland, the U.S. Assistant Interior Secretary for Fish, Wildlife and Parks, said regional fisheries bodies have done nothing to regulate the trade in endangered scalloped hammerhead, great hammerhead as well as the threatened smooth hammerhead, and their numbers have dropped by as much as 85 percent.

"The greatest threat to the hammerhead is from harvest for the international fin trade and the fin of the species is among highly valued of the trade," Strickland said. Shark fin soup is a much prized delicacy in China.

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Catholic Bishop in Germany making child rape scandal even worse

This week, more child rape cases were uncovered in the Diocese formerly controlled by Joseph Ratzinger, currently known as Pope Benedict XVI:

The Regensburg diocese in Pope Benedict's native Bavaria confirmed new allegations of child sexual abuse against four priests and two nuns on Monday, in the latest cases damaging the Catholic Church's image in Germany.

I'd say it's further damaging the Catholic Church's already tarnished image. For decades, the hierarchy of the Church protected and enabled child rapists. It's hard to understand how Bishops have any moral authority. In the U.S. alone, the Catholic Church has paid out over $2.7 billion in damages.

And, it's not good for the Catholic hierarchy when the subtitle in the Reuters article reads "NAZI COMPARISON BACKFIRES." They usually do:

Also in Regensburg, Bishop Gerhard Ludwig Mueller came under fire for a sermon on Saturday that appeared to compare critical media coverage of the abuse scandal in Germany to Nazi propaganda campaigns against the church.

Speaking at the 100-year anniversary of the German Catholic Women's League, Mueller said that over 1,000 local Catholics, mostly women, had demonstrated against Nazi injustice in 1941 and such courage was needed again to counter today's media.

"Now we are again witnessing a campaign against the church," he said. "The aim is to undermine the church's credibility."

Charlotte Knobloch, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, called his account of heroic resistance to the Nazis a "falsification of history." Hans-Ulrich Pfaffmann, a Social Democrat in Bavaria's state assembly, called the bishop's comments a "kick in the face" to abuse victims.

Yeah. Not good. But, the church has kicked victims in the face for decades.

Why does anyone in Congress pay any heed to the Catholic Bishops? Read the rest of this post...

The party of 'no' continues - not a single GOP vote for bank reform

But the icing on the cake is classic Washington insider nonsense that is right up there with being "for the war before being against it." The crusty Senator Shelby managed to say with a straight face that every GOP member of the committee voted against the bank reform but they were somehow not polarized. Uh huh. At this point it's quite clear that the GOP will say "no" to anything the Democrats propose even when it moves out of committee. It's also obvious that the GOP is there to support the bankers and there deep pocketed lobbyists to block any reform that may be good for consumers.

The Democrats are missing an easy target if they fail to make an issue of the Republicans support for the bankers who brought down the global economy. The Republicans still are much too comfortable with the positions related to being obstacles to Wall Street reform. If they can't even support this water-down proposal that includes their key idea of letting the Fed control consumer protection, it's a mystery what they need to agree to anything. MarketWatch:

After less than half an hour of discussion, a Senate panel late Monday approved sweeping bank-reform legislation to rewrite the rules for capitalism and banking without any Republican support, after GOP lawmakers on the committee decided not to include any amendments to the measure.

Senators voted 13 to 10 to pass the underlying 1,336-page bill introduced last week by Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee.

Dodd reached an agreement to have no Democratic amendments be considered, as part of an effort to reach a compromise with Republicans to create a bipartisan bill before it comes up for a Senate vote.

Maybe outside of the Beltway, "bipartisan" means something else. Read the rest of this post...

Tuesday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

I have a feeling -- and this is just a gut feeling -- that today we're going to hear more about the health care bill. In fact, the President will sign the Senate version of the bill today at 11:15 a.m. He'll be making a statement then, too. Meanwhile, the Senate is in the process of passing the reconciliation bill with the "fixes." Of course, the GOPers are doing everything possible to block that from happening.

AIPAC, the very powerful pro-Israel lobby, is holding its annual conference in DC this week. Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is in town for the event. I saw his motorcade roaring down Connecticut Avenue last night when I was walking Petey. Tonight, Netanyahu will be meeting with the President. Relations with Israel have been a little tense lately.

I do think that the antics of the Republicans are looking more and more desperate. They're now seen as sore losers. Sore, bitter, angry losers. And, I just don't think most people want to side with losers. And, John McCain has made himself the angry face of the losers -- again.

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

US supporting Japan for whale hunt expansion?

New Zealand is also reportedly planning to go along with the whale hunt changes as well. The administration was impressive with it's attempts to join the ban on fishing Atlantic bluefin tuna but this? What are they thinking? The US position has to do with supporting the Inuit hunting in Alaska, which is understandable, but expanding the whale hunts that use massive fishing fleets is unthinkable. How are they even having this discussion about hunting in a marine sanctuary?

The moratorium on commercial whaling, one of the environmental movement's greatest achievements, looks likely to be swept away this summer by a new international deal being negotiated behind closed doors. The new arrangement would legitimise the whaling activities of the three countries which have continued to hunt whales in defiance of the ban – Japan, Norway and Iceland – and would allow commercial whaling in the Southern Ocean Sanctuary set up by the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in 1994.

Conservationists regard it as catastrophic, but fear there is a very real chance of its being accepted at the next IWC meeting in Morocco in June, not least because it is being strongly supported by the US – previously one of whaling's most determined opponents.

Should the deal go ahead, it would represent one of the most significant setbacks ever for conservation, and as big a failure for wildlife protection as December's Copenhagen conference was for action on climate change.

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Google makes it official. Out of China.

Though they are moving to Hong Kong where they will continue to operate Chinese language searches, though the Beijing government will censor "sensitive" search requests. The Chinese government is furious that Google didn't live up to its end of a deal. The deal to go along with censorship - which they did - in the beginning.

Google shut down its search service on the Chinese mainland last night after a two-month standoff with Beijing over online freedom and an alleged intrusion by hackers.

But Chinese authorities attacked the internet giant as "totally wrong" for its decision to shift its Chinese-language offering to Hong Kong.

The move allowed the firm to stop self-censoring the service, although the government's filtering system would still prevent mainland users from seeing the results of many sensitive searches.

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