Thursday roundup

This J.J. McCullough piece at NRO is bracing, at least if one is still steadfastly in the character-matters camp. The gist: Face it, the overwhelming majority of Republican voters are fine with Trump on all levels, from personality to policy. The way he goes about constructing his argument is interesting. He starts out looking at the attitudinal gyrations Ann Coulter - she who authored In Trump We Trust: E Pluribus Awesome - has undergone, in order to give a stark example of what transactional support of the Very Stable Genius looks like. One of those you have to read in full to grasp the contour of what he's saying.

North Korea's interim ambassador to Rome has disappeared, and it sure looks like a defection.

LITD is still getting a handle on the totality of who new Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro is, but is mightily impressed with this tweet of his from yesterday:

One of our strategies to get Brazil to climb from the lowest spots of the educational rankings is to tackle the Marxist garbage in our schools head on. We shall succeed in forming citizens and not political militants.

Wish he was on my local school board!

Lara Marlowe, Paris correspondent for the Irish Times and seasoned Brexit observer, thinks derailment and a second referendum are in the offing.

I was first exposed to pasta carbonara in college. An guy in an apartment full of bohemians down the block from my fraternity house, with whom I produced a few issues of a campus humor magazine, showed me how to make it. It's since had its moments of popularity, but according to Ellie Bufkin at The Federalist, it's often presented in compromised form. A purist is going to settle for nothing less than this:

Carbonara must contain these ingredients: Pasta, a hard, salty cheese, guanciale, fresh black pepper, and egg.

Pasta should be cooked only to “al dente” level of doneness. Carbonara is actually not assigned to a particular pasta shape and size. I prefer to make it with a long noodle, like spaghetti, but have also made it with rigatoni and cavatelli. 

No garlic and no parsley, ever!

As for whether guanciale is imperative, she says this:

Traditionally, Carbonara is made with guanciale, which is jowl bacon. It is available at fine butchers and gourmet grocers in major markets, but if you live in the sticks, you may substitute a good pancetta (not pre-diced!), or high-quality, thick-cut bacon from a butcher. Do not use limp, anemic bacon from the grocery store. Your Carbonara will be bland, gutless, and disappointing.

If there's a must-read among the pieces presented here, it's Peter Heck's at The Resurgent, entitled "What Can a Christian Do When Up Is Down, Right Is Wrong, and Boys Are Girls?"