Tuesday, August 12, 2025

Classic Creamy Macaroni and Cheese in the Kitchen

Ginger loves mac and cheese and loves making it "every kind of way."  She notes Simple Bites' recipe for Classic Creamy Macaroni and Cheese:


Ingredients

  • 1/2 cup unsalted butter
  • 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
  • 5 1/2 cups 2% milk
  • 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
  • 1 teaspoon fine sea salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
  • 3 cups grated cheddar cheese
  • 1 lb Cappelletti pasta or Orechiette


Instructions
Preheat oven to 375°F. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil.
On the stovetop, melt the butter in a large heavy-bottomed braiser (a cooking vessel halfway between a pan and a pot) over medium heat. The brasier should be both stovetop and oven safe because we're going to do everything in one pot. A Dutch oven works too. When the butter is bubbling, dump in the flour and whisk vigorously until smooth. Cook this paste, called a "roux", for 1 minute, whisking slowly.
Slowly pour 2 cups of milk into the roux and whisk to combine. This will take a few minutes – don't rush it. You want to whisk until there are no lumps and it's a smooth sauce. Whisk in the Dijon mustard, salt and pepper, followed by the remaining milk.
Over medium-low heat, bring this cream sauce (now called a béchamel) to a simmer, whisking occasionally. Take care not to let it burn; use a spatula to scrape the bottom of the pot. It will thicken slightly. Stir 2 1/2 cups of grated cheese (reserving 1/2 cup for the top) into the sauce and remove from heat.
In rapidly boiling, salted water, cook the pasta 1 minute less than the package directions (about 8 minutes). Stir occasionally to prevent sticking. Drain pasta well in a colander.
Tumble the pasta into the béchamel sauce and stir to coat the pasta thoroughly. At this point you have stovetop mac & cheese and you can dish it into bowl.
For baked mac & cheese, sprinkle the remainder of the grated cheese on top of the pasta. Place on the middle shelf of the preheated oven and bake for 25 minutes until the sauce is bubbling around the edges. Serve hot!






Mike Madrid, former political director for the California Republican Party and expert on Latino voting trends, is amplifying a new poll by Equis Research which shows that among Latinos, 48% say they’ll vote Democrat while 27% will vote Republican, with 16% undecided.

Note: Madrid began to criticize the Republican Party during Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, and in 2019 co-founded the Lincoln Project, which raised almost $100 million to campaign against Trump’s failed 2020 re-election bid.

Madrid added to the poll results: “Latino voters back to 2016 Republican baseline,” and asserted the Latino swing toward the GOP, which helped re-elect Trump in 2024, represented the “shortest political honeymoon ever.”


As it should be. The targeting of immigrants -- which includes the profiling of Latino US citizens -- is enough to make people be done with the GOP forever.  What is taking place is outrageous. 


This is C.I.'s "The Snapshot" for Monday:


Monday, August 11, 2025.  PARAMOUNT tries to smear Colbert, Donald Chump goes to war on homeless people, though he scrapes his shoes repeatedly Epstein remains stuck to the bottom of them, his war on immigrants continues to see massive pushback, and much more.


Whores always reveal themselves.  They have to because they're whoring for a living so they have to advertise that they're open for business.  Erik Swann of CINEMA BLEND is nothing but a cheap whore.  Stephen Colbert is not losing support from "fellow stars."  That's a hit piece that PARAMOUNT spent last week shopping around and everyone said "pass."  Until it was offered to Erik Swann who moved in to grab it like the dirty whore he is. He knows it's not true and he knows who shopped it to him (I do as well).  

This an attempt to downgrade Colbert.  We've gone over this for years.  When a network wants to devalue a talent.  We charted the effort in depth when NBC tried to undermine Katie Couric's reputation enough so that CBS wouldn't want her.  Erick Swann sold out to be a corporate whore.

Colbert is actually stronger right now with "fellow stars" than he has ever been.

PARAMOUNT is bothered by the support he continues to have and they're also aware that the merger that's supposed to take place will means heads roll.  Mergers like this always leave positions redundant.  And when Colbert is gone from PARAMOUNT and the new suits are in charge, the question will be, "What the hell did you do?"  Because what's been done, the firing of Colbert, makes PARAMOUNT a much weaker property.  The merger/buy out should be stopped immediately.  PARAMOUNT is not the successful venture its been portrayed as.  Their assets are over valued and greatly misunderstood  

I am advising a friend who's part of Colbert's legal team so I am an not going to be discussing any of that here.  But this is something we've long covered, how when an outlet is losing talent and realize it's their mistake, they work to devalue the talent.  



US President Donald Trump has said homeless people must "move out" of Washington DC as he vowed to tackle crime in the city, but the mayor pushed back against the White House likening the American capital to Baghdad in Iraq.

The Republican president has also trailed a news conference for Monday about his plan to make the city "safer and more beautiful than it ever was before".

Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, said: "We are not experiencing a crime spike."

Trump signed an order last month making it easier to arrest homeless people, and he last week ordered federal law enforcement into the streets of Washington DC.

"The Homeless have to move out, IMMEDIATELY," Trump wrote on his social media site Truth Social on Sunday. "We will give you places to stay, but FAR from the Capital. The Criminals, you don't have to move out. We're going to put you in jail where you belong."

Alongside photos of tents and rubbish, he added: "There will be no 'MR. NICE GUY.' We want our Capital BACK. Thank you for your attention to this matter!"

The specifics of the president's plan are not yet clear, but in a 2022 speech he proposed moving homeless people to "high quality" tents on inexpensive land outside cities, while providing access to bathrooms and medical professionals.


Chump has lied that this is due to an increase in crime.

DC Mayor Muriel Bowser says no spikes are taking place.


 


Chump is refusing to address homelessness in this country.  You can't make it illegal for someone to be homeless.  You have to provide living spaces and, no, tent cities are not living spaces.  When Tulsi Gabbard was still pretending to be a Democrat and to care about people, she made a big show about how tiny homes might be a serious housing answer and something that the government could focus on -- she even went on Joe Rogan's program to discuss this.

So grasp that even if Chump doesn't know better, members of his administration do.


Robert Mackey (GUARDIAN) notes Chump's announcement on social media about arresting the homeless:

The post was illustrated with four photographs, all apparently taken from the president’s motorcade along the route from the White House to his golf course. Two of the images showed a total of 10 tents pitched on the grass along a highway on-ramp just over a mile from the White House. The third image showed a single person sleeping on the steps of the American Institute of Pharmacy Building on Constitution Avenue. The fourth image showed the line of vehicles that whisk Trump to his golf course passing a small amount of roadside litter on the E Street Expressway, near the Kennedy Center.

Trump’s post promoted a previously announced news conference on Monday, which he has promised, “will, essentially, stop violent crime” in the capital district, without explaining how. In a subsequent post, he said that the news conference at 10am Monday, “will not only involve ending the Crime, Murder, and Death in our Nation’s Capital, but will also be about Cleanliness”.

The Free DC movement, which advocates for self-determination, immediately scheduled a protest on Monday to coincide with Trump’s news conference.

Despite Trump’s claims, there is no epidemic of homelessness or violent crime in the capital.

According to the Community Partnership, which works to prevent homelessness in Washington DC, on any given night there are about 800 unsheltered persons sleeping outdoors in the city of about 700,000 people. A further 3,275 people use emergency shelters in Washington, and 1,065 people are in transitional housing facilities.

Trump’s repeated claims that it might be necessary to federalize law enforcement in the city to make it safe also ignores data collected by the Metropolitan police department, released in January by the federal government, which showed that violent crime in Washington DC in 2024 was down 35%

“We are not experiencing a crime spike,” Washington DC’s mayor, Muriel Bowser, told MSNBC on Sunday. “We have spent over the last two years driving down violent crime in this city, driving it down to a 30-year low.” She added that Washington DC police statistics show that violent crime is down a further 26% so far this year.



Trump's use of his authority to deploy National Guard troops to D.C. now to deal with "crime and beautification" contradicts his claim that he was unable to deploy troops on January 6th while insurrectionists attacked the Capitol Building.

The announcement comes just days after a Trump executive order implementing a national treatment-first approach to homelessness, which essentially provides grant funds for municipalities to forcibly institutionalize unhoused individuals in mental health and alcohol and drug abuse treatment centers. 


In other news, this is week six of the Epstein news cycle.  Donald Chump remains unable to shake the story of his 15 year friendship with the late Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted pedophile.  

J..D. Wolf (MEIDASTOUCH NEWS) reports:

On January 31, 2024 during his presidential campaign, Donald Trump posted a link on Truth Social to a video interview between Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly in which Carlson defended Trump’s legal troubles by invoking the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.

“They protect Epstein until they have to murder him in his cell,” Carlson said, comparing the alleged cover-up around Epstein’s death to what he claimed was political persecution against Trump. “The charges against Trump are not real… It’s insane, and it’s all on public display.”

Just a reminder that Epstein died in prison on Trump’s watch. Trump offered no pushback — instead, he amplified the message as part of his 2024 campaign, once again using the lack of Epstein transparency to deflect attention from his own indictments.

Yet in 2025, Trump has done nothing to advance the transparency he once implied was missing. He refuses to call for the release of the FBI’s Epstein files, has attacked supporters demanding accountability, and has shifted focus to grand jury materials that are harder to access.

Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s convicted accomplice, has been moved to a minimum-security prison to the shock of Epstein’s sex trafficking victims and their families.


The public past is not friendly to Chump.  Will Neal (DAILY BEAST) reports:


President Donald Trump’s shocking defense of a champion boxer who raped a teenage girl has resurfaced as the president faces intense scrutiny of his relationship with accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

In a 1992 clip from Late Night with David Letterman being circulated online, the future president tells the show’s host that he doesn’t think Mike Tyson ought to have been sentenced to six years in jail for the rape of beauty pageant contestant Desiree Washington, who was 18 years old at the time.

“It’s ridiculous,” Trump says, referencing the fact the crime took place late at night after Washington had been “dancing” for Tyson.

[. . .]

A second clip from Trump’s appearance the same year on The Charlie Rose Show features him questioning Washington’s account of the crime itself, saying she “was raped perhaps, perhaps not.”

Both videos have resurfaced at a time the president is facing public backlash over his administration’s handling of the Epstein files.


This story is not going away and Chump looks worse each day.  This is from a letter to the editors of THE SHEBOYGAN PRESS:


It is alarming that Trump’s former personal lawyer met with convicted sex trafficker (of minors) Ghislaine Maxwell while she is in prison. Why? This is not necessary. Just release all the files, immediately.

If we’re against corruption and want to drain the swamp, then that must include everyone, at all levels, left or right. This is about protecting children.

Sheboyganites don’t always agree on politics, but we strive to do our best, to tell the truth and do the right thing, even when it’s tough. Step up, call your representatives: U.S. senators Tammy Baldwin (202-224-5653) and Ron Johnson (202-224-5323), and U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman (202-225-2476), and tell them to release all the Epstein files. No exceptions. Let the chips fall where they may.

Ryan Holzem, Ph.D.


Maxwell.  The ugliest evidence against Chump.  He ignores the victims but sends a Deputy AG to meet with the convicted liar.   Anahita Dua (MSNBC) observes:


Indeed, amid the news of a prison transfer for Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, and the latest developments over whether documents will be unsealed, the victims are still suffering all the same. While much of the focus lately has been on the prominent figures that may have taken part in the sex trafficking scheme, we must never forget to focus on the health of the victims. We must confront more than criminal wrongdoing; we must also reckon with the lifelong physical and psychological devastation wrought on the victims.

The stories of survivors and those trafficked by Epstein and his accomplices cannot be reduced to scandalous headlines or footnotes in celebrity exposés. Their experiences demand national reckoning and action to protect future children and bring justice to the victims.

One Jane Doe, speaking in court in 2019, testified that she and the other victims “will always carry irreparable damage and pain throughout our lives after this.”

Victims typically enter exploitation during critical stages of their physical, emotional and cognitive development. Many children are targeted simply because they are children: young, naive and vulnerable. Young girls who become victims of sex trafficking have been tricked or forced into sexual exploitation by acquaintances, employers or even family members. Epstein’s victims were coerced by wealthy and influential men and women. Staggering power imbalances make self-escape nearly impossible. In the case of Epstein’s victims, that is adult versus child, man versus girl, wealthy versus poor. 


At THE OC REGISTER, Rafael Perez writes:

Reportedly, some of these Trump officials have been resisting the idea of releasing the transcripts in favor of simply letting the story die on its own. The problem with this strategy is that the administration was incredibly vocal about how much transparency they were creating by interviewing Maxwell. 

By refusing to release the transcripts, they are only making the administration seem increasingly guilty of covering for pedophiles (in the minds of those who believe in the conspiracy) despite the fact that the transcripts are unlikely to contain any interesting information. 


 The plan's to let the story die out?  This is week six, they grasp that, right?  And the victims will be heard.  Chump wants this over but it's not over.  It's not going away this week.  And it might be time to start asking about Alien Musk.


Alien Musk's most recent bread crumbs tossed to the public were about how records might be on computers.  Flight records maybe.  


And that begs the question of how does Musk know this?


It's a good guess.


But is that all this has been -- just good guesses on Musk's part?


He's known a lot more than should have been shared with him.  Where did the info come from?  Did his employees pull it in when they were being allowed to rummage through US government computers with no oversight at all?



That would be the most likely explanation as to how Musk knows what he knows.  Is it time for Congress to start asking that question -- and revealing to the country just how much our national security was put at risk by Donald Chump giving Musk free and full access to government computers and data bases?


Let's turn to John Oliver and immigration.



Chump's war on immigrants continues.  Tatum Todd  and Yesenia Amaro  (THE OREGONIAN) report:


Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officers on Thursday arrested a group of farmworkers near Woodburn as they headed to harvest blueberries, according to Oregon for All, an immigration rights advocacy group.

The incident marks the first publicly known ICE arrests of fieldworkers in Oregon since President Donald Trump took office for his second term. Last month, immigration authorities arrested a parent as he was dropping off his child at a Beaverton daycare, and in June ICE agents arrested workers from a Yamhill County vineyard services company.

[. . .]

Oregon for All in a news release said witnesses reported ICE agents broke the driver’s side window of the van.

“These tactics will only scare folks from working during the peak harvest,” said Reyna Lopez, executive director of PCUN, Oregon’s farmworker union. “This not only affects farmworkers’ ability to support their families, but also the many growers who rely on migrant labor and our collective ability to put food on our tables.”

Guembes said she learned about the arrests around 9:30 a.m. Thursday and immediately contacted U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to locate the group.


This just gets worse and worse each day.  It has nothing to do with national security.  It has nothing to do with the law.  It has to with revenge and fear.  Hate mongers foster it and Chump has to court the hate mongers because thinking people -- Democrats or Republicans -- long ago rejected the Convicted Felon. 

Lives are being destroyed.  


And around the country more and more people are standing up and calling this cruelty out.  The National Nurses Association issued the following: 


National Nurses United condemns the detainment of fellow registered nurse, Amanda Trebach, by federal agents. We call for her immediate release and a full dismissal of all the charges brought against her. 

All over the country, people have been standing up to the Trump administration’s immoral and unjust immigration raids, which have sowed intense fear and chaos in immigrant and migrant communities. In the absence of due process that protects Constitutional rights, people like Amanda Trebach – a RN and former member of California Nurses Association, an affiliate of National Nurses United – have taken up the essential role of monitoring ICE and Border Patrol, to protect the rights of community members and observe and document abductions by masked officers. While Amanda was participating in a community patrol Thursday morning, she was confronted by masked individuals believed to be ICE agents, pushed to the floor face-down, and violently detained. Her arrest is a direct and intentional attack against the constitutional right to protest. 

“As nurses, we advocate for our patients both at the bedside and beyond. Like all the violent escalations we have seen this year – including, but not limited, to using hospitals as a site for ICE law enforcement and arresting labor leaders and elected officials for demanding due process – they are meant to silence concerned Americans into accepting these authoritarian tactics,” said Sandy Reding, RN, who is a president of California Nurses Association and a vice president of National Nurses United, which is the nation’s largest union of registered nurses. “We refuse to stand by and watch as our patients and our community members are caught in the dragnet of the Trump administration’s cruel deportation schemes. Amanda must come home, and so must all the innocent people whose lives and whose families’ lives have been devastated by this administration.”

National Nurses United is the largest and fastest-growing union and professional association of registered nurses in the United States with more than 225,000 members nationwide. NNU affiliates include California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, DC Nurses Association, Michigan Nurses Association, Minnesota Nurses Association, and New York State Nurses Association.


Some horror stories register a lower emotional reading.  Maybe even cause some to chuckle?



When someone supports cruelty aimed at hundreds-of-thousands it's only fitting that the cruelty be turned on them.  It's the whole point of the phrase F**k Around and Find Out.  Matt Durr (MASS LIVE) reports:


One of the owners of the controversial Trump Burger restaurant franchise is facing deportation from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Despite his perceived allegiance to President Donald Trump, ICE arrested Roland Mehrez Beainy on May 16 and placed him in detention, The Hill reports.

Beainy came to the U.S. in 2019 from Lebanon on a non-immigrant visitor visa. However, it is alleged that he overstayed his visa and is now subject to deportation. Beainy was supposed to leave the U.S. in 2024, according to ICE. 

Since coming to the U.S., Beainy helped open a small chain of burger restaurants in Texas known for stamping “Trump” into the top of its burgers. The menu and decor of the restaurants all heap praise on the president. The company recently opened its fourth location in Texas. 

Maybe when he's deported to Lebanon, he can take comfort in the fact that his fellow hate mongering Chump supporters are happy his life got destroyed too.  You know, the way he was happy to root on the destruction of other immigrants?  That's if they remember him at all.  His landlord has already seized the greasy burger joints (saying Beainy wasn't making the payments on the lease) and renamed them to MAGA burgers.  Ramon Antonio Vargas (GUARDIAN) notes:


Trump Burger gained national attention after Beainy opened the original location in Bellville, Texas, in 2020, the same year Trump lost his bid for a second presidential term to Joe Biden. Replete with memorabilia paying reverence to Trump as well as politically satirical menu items targeting his enemies, Beainy’s chain expanded to other locations, including Houston.

Trump won a second presidency in January, and his administration summarily began delivering on promises to pursue mass deportations of immigrants. Political supporters of Trump in the US without papers, at least in many cases, have not been spared.

One case which generated considerable news headlines was that of a Canadian national who supported Trump’s plans for mass deportation of immigrants – only for federal authorities to detain her in California while she interviewed for permanent US residency and publicly describe her in a statement as “an illegal alien from Canada”.

In another instance, Ice reportedly detained a Christian Armenian Iranian woman who lost her legal permanent US residency, or green card, after a 2008 burglary conviction and incarcerated her at a federal detention facility in California despite her vocal support of Trump. Her husband, with whom she is raising four US citizen children, subsequently blamed the couple’s plight on Biden’s “doing for open borders”, as Newsweek noted.


They cheered it on until it happened to them.  Now they refuse to face reality with one idiot even blaming Joe Biden.  That's the sickness in America, the stupidity that drags us all down.  Even when slapped across the face by reality, some people prefer to delude themselves.  


People are fighting back with their voices.  The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, for example, is staging a protest against ICE raids on August 12th, starting in the morning at MacArthur Park and winding up in the evening outside a detention center.  They're fighting back because Los Angeles continues to be targeted.  Clara Harter, Brittny Mejia and Noah Goldberg (LOS ANGELES TIMES) report:


Federal agents detained day laborers outside of a Home Depot in Van Nuys during two raids Friday morning, raising questions over whether their actions may violate a court order that bans agents from using racial profiling to carry out indiscriminate immigration arrests.

The operations took place around 7:35 a.m. and then again at 11:50 a.m. outside the Home Depot on Roscoe Boulevard, according to Maegan Ortiz, executive director of Instituto de Educación Popular del Sur de California, which runs a resource center for day laborers directly next to the store. 

[. . .]

A number of unmarked white vans started circling the parking lot and immigration agents began "grabbing people first and then asking people for ID" said Ortiz, adding that her organization has confirmed 10 people were taken.

"[The agents] came straight for the day labor center," Ortiz said. "It is very clear they are targeting day laborers and they are targeting the organization."

Ortiz said immigration agents conducted another raid near a Home Depot in Cypress Park on Saturday. Ortiz said she was aware of a half-dozen arrests during the incident. Further details were not immediately available.

 
They're protesting in Kansas City.  Samantha Boring (KCTV) reports:


On Saturday, dozens lined the streets in Overland Park in support of the immigrant community after recent U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity in the metro.

This was a ‘No ICE’ protest, including Indivisible and Boots on the Ground Midwest. Protest organizers says the rally extended from 80th to 103rd street with about 1,000 people involved.

This comes after multiple workers were taken from ICE on Wednesday, July 30, from two restaurants in Lenexa and one in Kansas City, Kansas, as well as a Lenexa City Councilwoman sharing that her citizenship was questioned.






The following sites updated:


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