It is all reducing down to the essence ............... like a finely crafted sauce.

[Stinky The Clown]

When one appreciates cooking and begins to do it as much as a a hobby as a chore, some more advanced techniques become known. One of these techniques is a reduction.

Many ingredients get added. In the case of a sauce for meats, it might include roasted bones and herbs and vegetables. Maybe some egg whites. Wine.

Each of these ingredients is a story in itself. How to make that wine. Where those vegetables were grown. Chicken bones or beef? Or the greater gelatin of a veal bone? These ingredient-specific issues can be debated and discussed.

But we're really looking for the final product. Each of the ingredients are added to the mix. Their contribution is added. They blend. The remains of the ingredients are removed and they are allowed to slowly blend, one into another. Te initial volume is diminished until a new compound is formed. If successful, it is silky and tasty and involves the various essences of the raw ingredients, but in a new way that is clear and unique to itself. A great reduction can even overcome a mediocre dish.






And so we find ourselves as we watch, fascinated and angry, as the manifold issues around the various bailouts make themselves clear. There have been many debates. Greedy borrowers hoping to score a big payday on a slum house. Hopeful but ignorant 'me-too' people living beyond their means in a McMansion. Credit Default Swaps. Retention bonuses. Crap cars from the big three and the holy grail of Honda and Toyota. Greedy retirees and hard working union people.

All of that has been discussed and parsed and debated and fought about and cursed and proposed and voted up and voted down.

But it has also been reducing.

Slowly.

Over a low fire.

And now, perhaps, it is almost ready.

There are really only two sides to the essential debate.

There are the haves.

And the have nots.

No middle ground. And 90% of us .... maybe more ..... are in the 'have not' category, whether we think so or not.





This whole thing is down to saving the people (the have nots) or saving the owner class (the haves). And owning a house or a car or some stocks or bonds or CDs does NOT make you an owner. Owners, in this case, own **you**.




So far, we have seen the owners get bailed out by their suckass servent, Paulson.

Now we're about to see the have nots get fucked by the suckass servents fighting the car biz thing.

This is not about who makes better or worse cars.

This IS about busting the unions and making all of us have nots have even less. Pissing on this one is pissing on your own shoes.

[ColbertWatcher]

1. While Greek students fight the police ...

... Americans watch (mostly Hispanic) employees take over a Chicago company for what was rightfully theirs.

We're slowly becoming democracy connoisseurs.

Good post.

Kick and rec.

[shadowknows69]

2. Proud to be the first K+R Damnit ok, second.

[Mist]

3. All that was standing in the way of making the US the world's biggest third-world

country was that pesky middle class...