by Shaker Glauke
[Part One can be read here.]
On June the 9th, the Dutch elected their new parliament. The new MPs are officially installed. But more importantly: There are indications that the new government isn't going to be all that bad. Spoiler Alert: Geert Wilders' Freedom Party is out of the current round of negotiations.
Holland has a multi-party system. But because we have always had substantial minorities—in contrast to, for example, Denmark—we've never experimented with minority governments. Instead, we build coalitions, that make negotiate a "regeerakkoord" or governing agreement. It's not perfect, but it works. Well, it usually works.
The coalition-building is done in two phases—the information and the formation. In the information phase, the party leaders discuss their preferences, and perhaps their "absolutely not" with the informateur. There is no real translation for informateur, but he is appointed by the queen as a go-between for the parties. When there is an agreement, one or more formateur(s) is or are appointed to look for the ministers and junior ministers to form the government.
Over the last few weeks, there have been a number of developments.
First of all, the VVD and Freedom Party seemed to want to form a government. That required a third party, so they looked to the Christian Democrats (CDA). CDA members are deeply divided over the question whether they should govern with the Freedom Party, for all the obvious reasons.* Additionally, CDA has lost almost half their votes, so they're not very eager to join the government. Thirdly, even if Freedom Party and the VVD agree on immigration (against), development cooperation (against), more police in the streets (in favor), and fewer civil servants (in favor), they differ hugely on socio-economic issues.
So, CDA MP Maxime Verhagen decided it would be better if VVD and the Freedom Party work out their differences before CDA joins the negotiations. Weird, from a team-building & negotiations perspective. Geert Wilders didn't want to start negotiations without CDA. Net result is a right-wing coalition is off the table.
Which means that Purple Plus is back on! Purple Plus is code for Purple (VVD, Social Democrats and D'66—the LibDems Dutch cousins if that helps) Plus GreenLeft. Which hurts like hell for VVD, because they have to work with more progressive and more left wing parties. I'm really not sure how it will work out for the Greens. I mean, we've casually tossed the notion of governing with the VVD having drinks after a party convention, but actually doing it... feels... weird.
Monday, the queen has appointed two informers, one Labour, one VVD. They have started negotiations today. Without the Freedom Party. It's not a done deal, but it seems this country is not going down the drain just yet.
Also: The Dutch football squad beat Brazil 2-1 and is playing Uruguay tonight.
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* Most importantly, the Freedom Party is racist, and wants out of the EU. But the Christian Democrats may also have their doubts about the governing skills of the Freedom Party: There is no internal party democracy, so there are no obvious candidates for the ministerial positions outside of the MP candidates list. Finally, it has been argued that because of these things, governing with the Freedom Party violates the party's basic principles.
On the Dutch Elections, Part Two
Daily Dose o' Cute
By request, here is some video of Dudz at the dog park—with some bits from home, too—over the holiday weekend. Set to Blur's "Song 2." For those who can't view the video, there are a pair of still shots below the fold, at the end of the post.
By way of update on Dudley's progress, he is getting increasingly playful both at the dog park and at home, evidence of which you'll see in this video, if you've been following his story. He almost gets tennis balls now, at least for chewing on, but still greets our throwing them with a quizzical look cut with a cold streak of indifference, as if to say, "Call me when you can throw it at 50 miles an hour."
When Iain comes home from work at night, Dudz gets so excited he can't contain himself. When Iain goes upstairs to change clothes, Dudz runs around in a circle in the living room and I say, "Oh, Dudz! You're gonna be in big trouble!" and I slap my knees with my hands and he falls to the ground in a spring-loaded crouch. I jump toward him, and he leapfrogs from one side to the other, still in a crouch, which makes me laugh uproariously. At which point he runs around in a circle again. "Oh, Dudz! You're gonna get it, you bad boy!" Back to the crouch. And on and on until we are both panting, and Dudley's tail is wagging furiously and I am a heap of giggles.
He's also become a ridiculous snugglepuss, leaning on me whenever he wants attention, and rubbing his face and the length of his body along my legs like a giant cat. He frequently lies on our feet, and he loves kisses on his velvety head (but not as much as TREATS!!!eleventy!). A couple of times a day, I get on the floor with him for a cuddle, and he twists himself around and flips onto his back, putting his big, pink belly in the air for scratches.
He was just at the vet on Friday for a booster shot and a check-up, and he's gained seven pounds, and now weighs a respectable and healthy 75. His hip bones don't show anymore, and he's less muscle-bound and more flexible, able to turn in tight spaces much more easily than he could when he first came to us.
And he's increasingly independent in the house. The first few days he was here, he liked to nap inside his crate; it was his safe space, and we left the door open for him, so he could retreat there whenever he felt overwhelmed with his new circumstances. Then, for a good month, he liked to nap wherever I was. Now, he spends some time with me, and some time up in the loft with the girls, where the sunshine streams in through the skylights. Right now, all four of them are up there together, dozing away, each with an ear open for the distinctive rustle of a treat bag.
Shaker Gourmet: Bacon-Wrapped Stuffed Jalapeños
There are about 35,671 versions of these on teh internets. They are so good, even just as a concept, that it's probably worth it to try all of them.
Yesterday we hosted a shindig and I made these. It's a good thing everyone arrived when they did or else I may have eaten the whole platter before anyone else had a chance! Anyway, this is how I made them:
They're delicious and I'm craving more. LOLBacon-Wrapped Stuffed Jalapeños
A dozen fresh, medium sized jalapeño peppers
one & a half pkgs of cream cheese
one clove elephant garlic (or about 4 regular cloves)
kosher salt
freshly ground pepper
thin sliced bacon
latex or plastic gloves
-- Wear latex or plastic gloves when handling all these peppers and their insides. Halve, lengthwise, the peppers and de-seed/de-rib them (if you like it HOTTT, leave in some seeds). If you don't like it HOTTT much at all, you can soak the halved peppers in cold milk for about 10 minutes OR drop them into boiling water for a couple minutes. Drain, dry (and/or cool) before stuffing. Both methods are supposed to reduce the heat factor (though I have not done either).
--Cut the cream cheese into smaller blocks. Put in bowl of food processor. Cut the garlic into chunks and also put in with cream cheese. Add a bit of the salt & pepper (about 1/2 tsp salt). Process until the garlic is totally minced into teeny bits and worked into the cream cheese. If the cream cheese mix is very soft (more like "saucy"), then put it in the fridge for 10 - 15 minutes to harden up a bit.
--Cut the package of bacon in half, down the middle (so you're cutting all the bacon in half). Put on some new gloves. Spoon some of the cream cheese mix into each pepper half, filling it nice and full but not overflowing. Wrap a halved piece of bacon around each one. Secure with tooth pick, if necessary.
--Grill over medium heat until bacon is crispy. OR bake at 375 for about 25 minutes. If baking, put peppers on a rack inside the pan so the bacon grease will drip down. Let cool for a few minutes before eating.
I did make a vegan version for a guest that was very similar--just used Tofutti's Better Than Cream Cheese and mixed it with garlic, salt, & pepper. No bacon, of course. Very easy and also turned out tasty!
Quote of the Day
"The internet's completely over. I don't see why I should give my new music to iTunes or anyone else. They won't pay me an advance for it and then they get angry when they can't get it. The internet's like MTV. At one time MTV was hip and suddenly it became outdated. Anyway, all these computers and digital gadgets are no good. They just fill your head with numbers and that can't be good for you." — Prince (AKA The Artist Formerly Known As Prince AKA The Artist AKA Unpronounceable Symbol), on why he closed his official website.
[Cross-posted.]
More From Krugman — He's Just That Good
While Corporate America, owners of the Republican Party, conduct their delicate dance of funding and promoting the latest incarnation of the Know Nothings in the form of Tea Partiers, while continuing to support their own unfettered access to the labor of undocumented immigrants kept in a legal limbo which makes them easy to manipulate and mistreat, their takeover of the Democratic Party proceeds apace.
Paul Krugman (smart guy! they even gave him a prize for it) notes in his blog that George Stephanopoulos said today on Good Morning, America that an official of the Obama White House told him "what we need to get businesses investing is for business to know that the government has stopped".
In particular, Krugman interprets this to mean, stopped spending and stopped regulating business, which seems to cover everything beyond imprisoning people and fighting wars. In short, Rand Paul's lifelong wet dream *(as long as the government continues to regulate women's bodies, and who among us doubts they will?)
Krugman points out that this is "garbage", while also noting that administration economists know it's garbage. But apparently on the political side of the Obama White House are those who fully support the Corporate Republican position that President Obama's job is to make them happy, and that he must do so by using his control of the U.S. government to halt its functioning.
There may be one thing this administration has been spectacularly successful at — sucking all the meaning out of the words 'hope' and 'change'.
*Edited to note the one regulatory function which neither Paul nor the Obama White House seems willing to give up.
lolsob
Last weekend I was in Toronto for an *amazing* queer roller derby event, loosely affiliated with Toronto Pride. My teammates and our hosts put a lot of work into bout production, what with the 5-foot high vagina and everything.
There was one rough spot, though. We were expecting hundreds of unsuspecting people to come out to this queer, pride-affiliated event, and the dj desperately needed to know what music we could play to aid in our recruitment efforts. The Allman Brothers? Peaches? Kansas? Finding music that could prove a gateway-to-gayness was a lot of work.
Fortunately, one of our ringleaders found [Trigger Warning: Homophobia] an amazing resource. You should really check it out. It's quite insightful hilarious tragic hateful (ETA: and also made up).
Another teammate pointed out that the same site also has a [TW]"Powerful tool" that can aid in your quest to avoid the hellish hellfires of hell. Cyndi Lauper tops the list of purifying acts, something that proved, uh, convenient?Reparative therapists: we're not even trying.
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ETA: As Deeky points out, Donnie Davies is totally a hoax, something that raises a bunch of questions that have undoubtedly already been discussed on the internet. Why is it that such a bizarre character resonates with some of us as an earnest person? Is someone out there making money off of this?
There were people saying things on the internet, and I wasn't told? Damn.
Caster Semenya to Return to Racing
Caster Semenya, the South African teenager who won the 800-meters at the world track championships so decisively last August that she was asked to undergo gender testing, and who was eventually allowed to keep her title and her gold medal, thus having rendered pointless the international invasion into her privacy and her very body, has been cleared by the International Association of Athletics Federations to return to competition, effective immediately.
The 19-year-old South African was sidelined for 11 months after undergoing gender tests following her 800-meter victory at the world championships last August.I am pleased that Semenya is being allowed to return to racing. I remain angry that she was ever required to stop in the first place.
The International Association of Athletics Federations said Tuesday it accepts the conclusion of a panel of medical experts that she can compete with "immediate effect."
The statement adds that medical details of her case remain confidential and the IAAF will have no further comment on the matter.
I could spend the next two hours detailing the many outrages of the invasive, coercive, exploitative, and flatly unnecessary gender-policing that went on in regard to Semenya, but instead I'm simply going to highlight a brilliant and incisive comment Shaker Rhiain left in a previous thread that gets right to the heart of the matter (emphasis mine):
There has been quite a bit of speculation about just what elements of [Michael Phelps'] physiognomy allowed him to be such a fast swimmer, but even those folks who are saying "he's fast 'cause he's a freak" are saying it in a good way; lucky him that his body is "weird" in a way that allows him to be so awesome at the sport he loves.Which makes for this rather bitter irony: There is, perhaps, no better evidence of Semenya's womanhood than the fact a year has been spent hand-wringing over her womanhood.
He essentially won the genetic lottery, because male bodies are coded as functional in our society, and Phelps' body allows him to be extra-functional. Semenya, who also won the genetic lottery* in a way that allows her to be awesome at the sport she loves, has the misfortune to exist as a gender that is coded for ornamentality rather than functionality, and therefore extra functionality is seen as cheating.
*Of course, she has won a lottery that sure seems to have made her life up to this point difficult and, now, carries dangerous implications for her personal safety. I'm not really asserting that she's coming from a position of privilege here.
Photo of the Day
Monday, July 5, 2010: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton toasts in downtown Tbilisi, Georgia. Hilary Clinton is on a Caucasian trip visiting post-Soviet states of Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia. Clinton has rebuked Russia for failing to live up to the cease-fire agreement it signed nearly two years ago to end the fighting in this small former Soviet state.(I loooooove this picture.)
They're Hungry
Tom Colicchio already had me at kitchen feminism, and now he's just spoiling me:
More recently, my wife [filmmaker Lori Silverbush] started mentoring a young girl from Brooklyn and she would come to the house and she would eat and then she'd say "Oh, I'm full. Can I bring this home?" And we realized what she was doing; she was bringing it home for her siblings.They're hungry.
When food stamps run out halfway through the month, these kids are hungry. And they're fed sweetened juice water, just to put something in their stomach; it's not nice.
…We had a Major General who testified that forty percent of new recruits going into the service fail out because they're obese. It's not from overfeeding. This is what people don't understand: obesity is a symptom of poverty. It's not a lifestyle choice where people are just eating and not exercising. It's because kids - and this is the problem with school lunch right now - are getting sugar, fat, empty calories - lots of calories - but no nutrition.
…And they're hungry, they're eating more cheap food.
In 2005, 12% of USians, 35 million people, were unable to put food on their tables for at least part of the year, and 11 million of them reported going hungry at times. It's only gotten worse, as joblessness has become more widespread and unemployment benefits run out. Access to nutrient-rich food is a class issue even in the best of times, and these are not the best of times.
The "war on obesity" is largely a class war, and the more we uncritically repeat narratives about laziness and lifestyle and pretend the primary solution to all childhood obesity in particular is increased activity, the more profoundly obscured is this simple fact: They're hungry.
(Which is to say nothing of the other issues we may be obscuring.)
Thanks to Chef Tom for the ray of light.
Question of the Day
What's your favorite food cooked outside, be it via an imu or lovo or hāngi or clambake or other earth oven, a tandoor, a grill or barbecue pit, a spit, a solar cooker, a kettle boil, a skewer over a campfire, or some other method altogether?
Daily Dose o' Cute
Dudley
Sophie
Olivia
Matilda
Monday Blogaround
Today's blogaround is brought to you by Matilda McEwan, maker of The Look. The Look: it says all that really needs to be said.
Historiann: Stars & Stripes Forever: Marla Miller’s Betsy Ross and the Making of America
GarlandGrey at Tiger Beatdown: Fond Memories of Vagina: Martin Amis’ The Pregnant Widow
Southern Fried Science: Bonehenge – Community action in science outreach
Neuroskeptic: XMRV and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Continued (Again)
Grant Jacobs: XMRV prompts media thought: ask for the “state of play” (Via Ed Yong)
BeckySharper at The Pursuit of Harpyness: Real American Art
Sujatha at Accidental Blogger: Freedom on the Fourth?
Michael Le: An Open Letter To Racebending.com Detractors. (Note: Le minimizes the problem of gender-based inequality in media when he writes, "In the states, we find it very easy to fight the gender stereotypes [kids] may be exposed to." However, he responds well to the issue in comments. So, read the comments!)
Susan Orlean: Hash
Laila Lalami: The Beautiful Game
Share your links in comments!
Today's Edition of "Conniving and Sinister"
(Taken from an actual conversation Deeky and I had yesterday...)
See Deeky's archive of all previous Conniving & Sinister strips here.
[In which Liss reimagines the long-running comic "Frank & Ernest," about two old straight white guys "telling it like it is," as a fat feminist white woman (Liss) and a biracial queerbait (Deeky) telling it like it actually is from their perspectives. Hilarity ensues.]
Today in no, not really
You may have heard that the Republicans are still *totes* concerned about budget deficits, the future, the children, wev...
Indeed: What. Ever.
I was a nerdy political kid in the 80s, and the biggest thing I heard over and over and over again was about how the US needed to invest bazillions of dollars in the disinterestedly-named Strategic Defense Initiative, which as far as I can tell was a bunch of cartoons lifted from sci-fi literature. (Seriously, the Wikipedia entry contains like, three potential Floyd album covers.)
And then there was Iraq. And then Iraq again. And also Afghanistan. And of course, our government's efforts in Latin America (and really, *everywhere*) that were the organic herb-infused Aïoli on the massively over-priced sandwich that's been American foreign policy since before I was born.
What I'm saying is this: Your newfound concern about the deficit? I'm not buying it.
Whenever it's time (and really, when isn't it time?) to provide social services to working Americans (including, interestingly enough, veterans), there's not enough money. Whenever multi-national corporations have interests that need defending, whenever there are resources in the Global South, it's loans ahoy!
The bigger question is: why is nobody with power calling the Republicans on this? It's hardly as if I've hit on some sort of super secret pattern here.
Shaker Help Request
Hulloo, Shakers far and near, I address myself particularly to those among us who are living in Portland (the West Coast one, in OR).
For the last four months, a friend of mine (I'll call her A) has been staying with me; she came to Canada from the US to be with her partner, but the partner turned out to have some interpersonal issues which made the relationship unsafe for her. She stayed in a shelter a bit, and then moved into my library/guestroom. She's got to go back to the US now, and has chosen Portland as her destination (she's from New England). As you might expect in the situation, she's not over-blessed with the dinero at the moment, for reasons I won't go into in a public post. Suffice to say, she's been working, but not at such a rate as to be able to save much.
She's already gotten onto the waiting list for a homeless shelter there, but it'll be anywhere from a few weeks to a couple of months before the spot comes open (really, it should be a couple of weeks, based on the way the list has moved so far, but I want to be conservative in estimating, if in nothing else in my life).
The help she's requesting is that she needs somewhere to lay her head of an evening, as a bridge between arrival and getting through the waiting list at the shelter. She expects to find work fairly quickly after arrival, because she has a skillset which is generally in-demand all over the continent.
If anyone knows of where A might find shelter in this bridge period until the shelter spot opens up, you'd have my deep gratitude.
I can vouch for her personally; I've known her online and sometimes in person for several years, and found her to be completely trustworthy. Shaker Rikibeth also knows her quite well (for over 20 years, she tells me), as does Shaker differentdrummer (both shared a house with her some years ago) and possibly some others among you (my local friends).
A's a reader here, rather than a commenter, but she's definitely our kind of people. I can be reached at this e-mail, if you would like to respond privately to me.
