One oversight of the gift giving season was that no one at our house received President Carter's new book, Our Endangered Values. People knew that I wanted it. That was corrected last evening when Kent and Sarah came to visit us with Carter. It was wonderful to see Miss Sarah, who I was surprised to learn is now training as a launch flight controller for the shuttle. Scary job. She is in simulators now and says that things happen about 5 times faster than she can comprehend them so far. Kent brought us a signed copy of President Carter's book. That was especially nice. Of course we are distantly related to the President and I have had the privilege of meeting him and Rosalyn several times before so this all adds extra meaning to the gift. President Carter says this is his 20th book, but his first political book. It is so nice to see Sarah's face for real instead of just in a photo on the internet. She's off to Patagonia soon to climb mountains and photograph penquins and fjords.

On a serious note, I'm halfway through Al Franken's book, the Truth, with Jokes, and it is difficult to read. The delineation of the depravity of moral values of the leadership of the Republican party is difficult to imagine. We have all heard the cliche, "the end justifies the means." This of course is a negative and harsh thing to say whenever it is uttered. The current leadership of our country has taken this phrase to levels never before imagined. A BILLION dollars was spent promoting the message of the "Swift boat veterans for truth." It was directed by Karl Rove. After much investigation it is clear that everything they advocated was false. Every person who was in the area of John Kerry's military service supports the official accounts of his heroic actions in battle. Every person. Ted Coppel even ran down the Viet Cong commander who fought against Kerry. His account matches the official accounts. John Kerry was a war hero. And spending a BILLION dollars to call him a coward and a murderer may win you an election, but it also condemns you to hell. You need a bag when you read this book because the revulsion of the truth of how this election was won will make you vomit.

We can't stop fighting against these lying, stealing, murdering b%#*&s! Read Our Endangered Values and the Truth with Jokes.