Amalfi Clams



Serve these clams as a first course with good crusty bread to sop up the juices.
Or, pour over your favorite pasta.


2 dozen Fresh Littleneck Clams or Manila Clams
4 Tbsp. Butter
2 Tbsp. Olive Oil
1 Shallot
1 Cup Finely chopped Sweet Peppers – I like the mini peppers
1 Fennel Bulb – chopped
Dash Red Pepper flakes
2 Cloves Fresh Garlic chopped finely
1 Cup Prosecco or white wine
3 Tbsp. Chopped Fresh Parsley
Fresh Lemon juice

Melt butter in the olive oil over medium-high heat and add the peppers, shallots,
fennel and red pepper flakes. Cook on Medium High about 5 minutes.
Add garlic and cook another minute
Now, add your clams.

Pour in the prosecco or white wine.
 Add the parsley and quickly cover the pan.
Simmer about 8-10 minutes. If your clams are large you may need a few more
minutes. Make sure ALL the clams open, and discard any that do not.
Sprinkle on lemon juice.

Put the clams and broth in a bowl and serve at the table in individual plates and crusty
bread for dipping.

I'm not saying that Pete will win the nomination. But, he had a really good night. 
The President, with his whiney tweets, came off looking small and frightened.

I posted some comments on a site the other day that were critical of President Trump. The response was utterly predictable. Something along the lines of "Boy, Trump gets under your skin, that's what he was elected to do. MAGA! Hah ha" etc.
This got me to thinking. Yea, there were many reasons why Trump was elected in 2016.
However, one consistent theme was evident, and it was anger.
Trump was elected because he promised to stick his finger in the eyes of people that the Trumpers hate. Environmentalists with their pesky regulations, Gay people, liberals, intellectuals, brown people, black people, etc.

Trump said outrageous things. And whether those things were factually correct was not important. It was only important that what he said angered the folks they hate.

Fast forward to 2020. Is anger again the fuel that will power the ship? Should democrats just try to out-do Trump in that area?
I don't think so. Both Biden, and Mayor Pete are instead using the language of unity, and hope. And they are dominating the polls at this point.

People crave an optimistic message. And, they may be getting tired of the s-show that is Trump, talk radio, and Fox. 
They might just be getting exhausted with the insults, the tweet storms, the crudeness.
Trump is exhausting. That may be his undoing.

In Fox News town hall, Buttigieg calls out Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham as ‘not always there in good faith’
 

In a televised Fox News Channel town hall event Sunday, Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg defended his decision to appear on the network, days after a competitor, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), spurned Fox as a “hate-for-profit racket.”

During an hour-long conversation with moderator Chris Wallace, Buttigieg tried to distinguish between Fox News’s reporters and its opinion hosts. The latter, he said, were “not always there in good faith.”

Specifically, he called out Tucker Carlson, for saying that immigrants made the United States “dirtier,” as well as Laura Ingraham, who once compared detention centers for migrant children to summer camps.

“There is a reason why anybody has to swallow hard and think twice before participating in this media ecosystem,” Buttigieg said.

Still, the mayor of South Bend, Ind., said he thinks that many people who tune into the network are doing so in good faith and that he wants to be willing to meet voters wherever they are.

“There are a lot of Americans who my party can’t blame if they are ignoring our message, because they will never hear it if we don’t go on [Fox] and talk about it," Buttigieg said Sunday.

Buttigieg also took several opportunities to criticize President Trump, who earlier in the evening had tweeted his displeasure that his preferred news network was “wasting airtime on Mayor Pete.” When Wallace asked whether Trump should be impeached, Buttigieg said there was no question that Trump’s behavior was “beyond the pale, morally,” but said it would be up to Congress to decide whether the president should be removed from office.


Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
 · 12h
 Hard to believe that @FoxNews is wasting airtime on Mayor Pete, as Chris Wallace likes to call him. Fox is moving more and more to the losing (wrong) side in

Biden banks on Pennsylvania to frame 2020 ‘unity’ pitch

The former vice president’s 2020 kickoff rally in Philadelphia, where he is opening his campaign headquarters, highlighted ties to the state where he was born — and a state critical to the general election.

PHILADELPHIA — Joe Biden is betting on Pennsylvania.

He was born in Scranton, earned the nickname of “Pennsylvania’s third senator” while serving in the Senate, and will base his campaign headquarters in Philadelphia.

As he capped a three-week campaign launch tour with a rally Saturday in Philadelphia, Biden said he chose to be here for a reason.

"Why do we begin in this place, Philadelphia?” Biden asked a crowd of thousands of supporters. “This was the birthplace of our democracy.”

If Biden were to become the Democratic nominee for president, Pennsylvania could be crucial in taking back the White House from Republicans. President Donald Trump narrowly won Pennsylvania in 2016, a feat that helped him smash through the Democratic “blue wall” in industrial states and secure a majority of electoral college votes.

The former vice president is quickly making inroads here. He not only is headquartered in Philadelphia, but made his first official campaign appearance at a union hall in Pittsburgh and hosted a big-donor fundraiser in Philadelphia.

Biden recited the famous words from the Declaration of Independence, “we hold these truths to be self-evident,” words he said served as a foundation for the American ideals of equality, equity and fairness.

“America didn't live up to that promise for most of the people, for people of color, for women,” Biden said. “But we are born of an idea that every single solitary person in this country — given half a chance no matter where you start in life — there is not a single thing they cannot do if they work at it.”

Early polls are also showing that Biden would beat Trump here in a hypoth