Just how different are the people who vote republican or democrat? The AJC says today that the top 4 issues for republicans in Iowa are:
1. National Security 90%
2. Terrorism 85%
3. Immigration 81%
4. Tax policy 78%

And the top four issues for democrats in Iowa are:
1. Health care (tie) 87%
1. Economy and jobs (tie) 87%
3. Education 83%
4. War in Iraq 82%

I just wonder that republicans in Iowa are so worried about national security, terrorism, and immigration, when they are located right in the middle of the country. Are they worried about terror in Des Moines, or the hordes of Hispanics coming over the border from Missouri? Maybe someone has sold them a bill of goods?

When I was 19 I was invited to my girlfriend's family Christmas dinner, the one for her mother's family, with two aunts and an uncle and their families, assorted cousins thrown in. I didn't know at the time that it was a big deal for a boyfriend or girlfriend to be invited to these things. I'm not sure what kind of impression I made but I imagine that it was somewhere between unnoticed and disappointing, though I sure my hair was neatly combed and my shirt tucked in. We sat at a little table in the library I think, far away from the business executive elders who were the real reasons for the gathering. I met most of them and received the quizzical looks one gives to a young interloper who shows up holding the hand of a beautiful neice or cousin that you have loved for 20 years. Only a few of that generation are still living--my wife's godmother, two aunts, the wife of a cousin. The others have all gone on. With the passing of the last of the major characters some years ago, that party faded away, a reunion no more.

Somewhat to my surprise, by an accident of geography as much as anything else, the Christmas party for this generation has now come to rest at my wife's doorstep and so also on mine. The older generation are now she and her brothers and their wives, with a few older aunts and cousins whom it is our delight to see again. I noticed the scrungy looking boyfriends and girlfriends of the younger generation and thought how they must look at the older generation as masters of capitalism, with our fine house and all the fine cars, expensive clothing and jewelry. It is quite a journey from a card table in a distant room all the way to the head table. As I thought about it the other night, during our party (35 for dinner at 6 tables, all formally set with real linens, china and flatwear), I realized that while we are not the eldest, the wife and I are now far and away the old married couple with 34 years under our belts, a journey we began three years after that first Christmas dinner in 1970.

It was a lot of work to put on such a party, but I'll say also, it was a joyous thing to have them all together and in our home. Smiles and hugs and lots of questions. Did you graduate? What company? Will you have any more? There is a color to these events, a reddish, yellowish glow, and a sound of conversations and laughter, punctuated by song, the piano, the squeals or giggles of little ones from time to time, a smell of so many fine foods mingled together, the taste of cheeses and spiced meats, casseroles, wassail and coffees, the feeling of warm faces pressed against your own, firm handshakes and pats on your back, with blasts of cold air as people go in and out. For those not lucky enough to have such experiences in their life, experiences which define the best of the word family, I am sorry for their poverty. As for us, we rejoice in the wealth of our love for one another or to put it simply, for our family. You could not be luckier than to have the family Christmas party become your burden to bear.

This is published on Vox Verax.

The game of fiscal chicken

by Tom Maertens

It's astonishing that the debates, both Repub and Dem, have avoided the tremendous debt overhang the U.S. is facing.David Walker, the Comptroller, says that our unfunded liability is now at $53 trillion -- more than the entire private wealth in the country. We can reduce some of this liability by reducing Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security benefits, but those are difficult decisions. What are the candidates going to do? All the choices, including raising taxes, are hard.Second, the budget deficit is projected at $168 billion this year, while we are at the top of the business cycle. What happens at the bottom of the cycle? $400 billion deficit? $500 billion? That looks to me like a major structural deficit.Bush already ran up more than $4 trillion in debt. The debt service on that money is $200 billion per year. Bush and the Republican Congress have mortgaged our future, yet nobody seems to care. Tax and spend is reprehensible; borrow and spend is good government. How dare someone suggest we pay our bills.Perhaps the Repubs are hoping for a replay of '93 when Clinton's balanced budget amendment -- passed without a single Repub vote -- raised taxes and helped (eventually) result in a surplus.Of course, the Dems got creamed in '94, partly because of Clinton's tax increase. The Repubs seem to be playing the same irresponsible game of chicken, and the Dems aren't calling them on it. In fact, the Dems were thoroughly pusillanimous in opposition, letting the Busheviks pass a repeal of the estate tax, which affects the top 1/4 of 1 percent, 8200 of the ultrarich who financed the campaign against the 'death tax.'The debate moderators seem more interested in who's the most religious candidate.Makes you wonder....Does anyone care? Does anyone even know?

"These are not the droids you are looking for."

My son often speaks in "movie language." He quotes a line from a movie in a conversation with others. He expects them to both understand the allusion and if they are really sharp, to respond with the next line from the movie. It is a wonderful game and when we do it well, our conversations leave others who may be listening totally in the dark. We seldom explain.

He might know that the first line of this blog reflects directly on the preznit's late Friday pronouncement that there should be no investigation of the destruction of CIA tapes that showed the torture of prisoners in American captivity. I missed the "pseudo news conference" (actaully only another propaganda opportunity), where he pretened to be Obi-Wan Kenobi practicing mind control over storm troopers in order to pass through a check point. "These are not the droids you are looking for." "It is better if there is no investigation of the destroyed CIA tapes." Now, we should all believe those words and get on with our lives.

Another Bush administration scandal.

I saw another editorial slamming our colleges and universitys for having a liberal bias and for hiring with a liberal bias. But when I talk with college professors, they ask "what are you talking about?" If someone knew that they were liberal or conservative before they were hired, these professors don't know how they would have known. Most intellectuals turn out to be liberals, but it is not because of hiring biases. Rather, most academics have experienced that it is difficult to know things for certain and that fact alone is enough to make them find fault with political conservatives who know practically everything with absolute certainty. And if you doubt the conservative mantra, by default you are a liberal. My professors challenged us always to think. It was difficult to pin them down as to what they believed. They told us that their opinions were not that important. Finding our own point of view was what was important. This freedom to search tended to make us "liberal" too. The conservatives among us came with their opinions in concrete, given to them by an authority figure.

When an authoritarian government takes hold, they must discredit or destroy the intelligensia. Look at the cultural revolution in China. To control the people and the media you must not interference from educated intelligent people.

I have another student who has withdrawn from public school to be home schooled. Oh wait, her parents aren't actually "homeschooling" her. Rather, she goes over to a local facility for home school students. She is a junior and says there are 20 in her classes. That's a bunch of kids. There are no standards for the teachers, no standardized tests to take and class only meets once a week. Now get this. Students who were struggling in public school suddenly make all A's and B's. What's more, they can take twice as many subjects as they were taking before and graduate a year early. What's more, they can get a daytime job at Chick-fil-a and rake in the bucks with 30 hour work weeks. Class only once a week, twice the subject load, top grades, graduate early with money in your pocket.

How can anyone fall for this? Why does the government allow it?

There may be some great home schooling efforts going on, but this is certainly not one of them. This is just education fraud.

Repubs in the Senate are blocking all legislation except that which is exactly what the President dictates. Democrats have gone along several times, being cowed by fears of doing nothing. While the Senate has always been a body that believed in compromise, that governed from the center because of the filibuster, the current crop of Repub zealots believes what they believe and even in the minority they will not compromise. The expect the government to be shut down and they plan to blame the Democrats for it. That is their only plan. Our way or you get blamed. And face it, they do control much of America's media. The days of the fourt estate have passed. The liberal independent media has simply been purchased and now belongs to the right. Perhaps the word will get out anyway and we'll be able to boot a significant number of them and get back the bully pulpit too.

Why has no major media yet covered the McClellen assertions that Bush and Cheny were in the loop on the Plame affair? McClellen was on the inside. His testimony is a smoking gun to treason by our leaders. The media has been sold. There is no fourth estate.

A surprising experience yesterday. I baked a cake. It turned out to be beautiful and tasted wonderful. Woo Haw! A friend had given us this cake awhile back and I have been after her for the recipe. It arrived via email about 3 days ago and yesterday, being a day that called for a cake anyway, I decided to roll up my sleeves and bake it. Since mine came out so well, I'm going to post the recipe for you. I have never baked a cake before. I must be a natural. I did make a mess doing it.

I used:
a Pillsbury butter recipe golden cake mix (18.5 oz) You only want the mix here,
discard the directions.
8 oz cream cheese (let it warm to room temperature)
4 large eggs
1/2 cup of water
1/2 cup of vegetable oil
1/2 cup of sugar
1 tsp pure vanilla extract (the imitation vanilla extract is exactly the same)
1 tsp pure almond extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Grease pan and dust with flour (I used a bundt cake pan and sprayed it with
Pam for Baking (with flour) which worked great.

Pour ingredients into a mixing bowl and stir them with a spoon until everything is moist.

Then mix with a mixer on medium speed for 2 minutes.

Pour batter into your pan

Instructions said bake 35-40 minutes or until cake is golden brown and springs back when lightly pressed. But the Pillsbury box said bake bundt cakes for 39 to 43 minutes. I ended up baking for 43 minutes and it came out perfect. You will just have to watch it. Remember that when you take it out it continues to cook for awhile.

Cool for 20 minutes on a wire rack and then it is ready to pop out of the pan, eat, or frost if you like.

This cake is goooood. Thank you Amber for giving me the recipe.

A little Indian Summer weather just before winter. As I understand it, Indian Summer is summer-like weather that occurs following the onset of freezing weather. So 78 degrees in December qualifies. Now we could use a little rain to go with it.

There is no such thing as a housing market bubble. Housing costs whatever the materials cost, plus the land, plus paying the labor, plus about 12% for the builder. Markets do jump up above this level at times when for whatever reason people will pay higher amounts to live near a beautiful vista (the mountains of the lake), or in a fabulous climate (southern California), or a business opportunity like a major city. If enough people go through hard times and can't pony up the money to buy those vistas, climates, and locales, then prices will deflate until people have enough money to compete for luxury areas again. In my lifetime, I've always found that the luxury spots were way beyond where ever I was financially, so the average guy doesn't care if there is a bit of deflation. Prices have not gone down in our area.

I see the middle schoolers waiting on the school bus in the morning when I walk Patches. Their parents are there too and the kids sit in cars until the bus comes. What is that? We walked to the bus stop and stood in the cold, everyone together. Sometimes there were bullies. Sometimes we froze. If it rained we ran to Bobby and Cathy Crawford's house and their mom would let us in to wait. Never saw an umbrella. There wasn't even a bus stop on my street and there were 20ish kids on my street. Today's kids have to be babied, protected, and separated from each other. It's not real. The threat from predators is not that great, but they've all seen the monsters on TV. It's sort of like the homeland security department. Incredible expense for no reason and with no result. We are not safer. The kids are warmer and more pampered and more isolated. The kids aren't growing though. Less supervision is required for growth.

Okay, the word is out so I may as well admit that I've once again bought my own Christmas present and a bit early. I want to be able to use my camera at Christmas and there is definitely a learning curve. The first real success came last night at the chorus concert where from my tripod in the middle of the auditorium I got the best shots since shooting 20 years ago with my Canon F1. The camera? A Nikon D200. It is a monster. Got the 18-200 VR Zoom to go with it, so I'm a pig. Planning to get the SB-800 flash soon. I'll have to do the flicker thing soon so you can see what I see.

Okay it is cold. You go out and get frozen walking the dog in the morning and can't warm up again.

So why wouldn't I order Christmas online when

A. The prices are lower.
B. There is no sales tax so the price is lower again.
C. There is no charge for shipping so I don't have to drive and the price is lower.

There is something nice about holding it in your hand before you buy it.

All the stuff I learned in American Government class and political science seems to have gone out the window in the past 7 years. I'm beginning to think there has been a takeover of the land of the free and the home of the brave. It started with Al Gore surrendering the fight in that first election. Florida was so fixed. In the end the courts just said "Stop. Stop counting. You may upset the results we want." They ordered precints to stop counting and then said time had run out so they couldn't be counted. All the outpouring of local support for stopping the count turned out to be paid repub staffers. Al could have kept up the fight but decided not to do so. That was a mistake. In the next election, it is clear now that Ohio was stolen.

Now the chief executive does whatever he wants, refuses to answer to congress, breaks the law by erasing Whitehouse emails, undermines our CIA to punish people, lies about intelligence findings, and no one is calling him into account. Good grief! Somebody get up and fight these people.

I'll never be happy if they don't imprison this president and vice-president for the rest of their lives.

It's treason and a cover-up. I don't have a comment. This is just the news.

Waxman, Mukasey and Ten Million Missing Emails
By Matt Renner, Truthout, December 5, 2007
5 Dec 2007 // A government watchdog group now says ten to twenty million White House emails, which may contain information about the leak of Valerie Plame Wilson's covert CIA status, have been destroyed by the Bush administration.
In a report from April, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) detailed a massive hole in the White House email records. The report, titled "Without a Trace: The Missing White House Emails and the Violations of the Presidential Records Act," accused the Bush administration of destroying "more than 5 million" emails and failing to attempt to recover them.
According to CREW, their sources now tell them the number of missing emails is probably between ten and twenty million.
Anne Weisman, CREW's chief counsel said the revised estimate "highlights that this is a very serious and systematic problem at the White House." Currently CREW, along with The National Security Archives are suing the Bush administration in an attempt to force the administration to restore the missing documents from backup tapes.
The missing email were discovered in the fall of 2005 when staff at the White House Office of Administration were attempting to respond to a subpoena from Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald for any White House records relating to the leak of Plame Wilson's identity.
The CREW report includes a letter from Fitzgerald that shows his investigation was hampered by problems with the White House email archiving system. "... we have learned that not all email of the office of the Vice President and the Executive Office of the President for certain time periods in 2003 was preserved through the normal archiving process on the White House computer system," Fitzgerald wrote in his letter to I. Lewis Libby's attorneys.
The report detailed two separate possible violations of the Presidential Records Act (PRA), a law passed in the wake of the Watergate scandal that requires the preservation of all presidential documents for the historical record. The first violation was the use of unofficial email accounts by White House staff to conduct official business. This revelation made headlines during the US attorney firings investigation, which remains ongoing.
The second potential violation, which received little media coverage, was the destruction of internal emails at the White House. According to CREW, two independent White House insiders have confirmed a massive systematic failure occurred that wiped out "hundreds of days" of email records between March 2003 and October 2005.
When the report was first issued in April, White House spokesperson Dana Perino was asked specifically about the millions of missing emails. She stated there was a system in place that archived emails sent to and from the Executive Office of the President (EOP) and the Office of the Vice President (OVP) that complied with the PRA. She suggested any email that had been deleted would be available on backup tapes that serve as a second level of defense by storing data in case of any failure.
However, according to the CREW report, the archiving system the White House used has been inadequate and a plan to restore the destroyed records was never acted upon.
During the press conference, Perino said she was not "taking issue with [CREW's] conclusions at this point. We're checking into them."
According to an August letter from Congressman Henry Waxman (D-California) to White House counsel Fred Fielding, White House staff informed the Committee "an unknown number" of White House emails were unaccounted for. The White House apparently confirmed there were days where no White House email had been preserved.
The emails in question come directly from EOP, and could include communications between the president, vice president and their high-level staff. These missing emails take on new significance as Waxman continues to pursue investigative documents collected during special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation into the leak of Plame Wilson's CIA status and the subsequent cover-up by top Bush administration officials.
As chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, the main investigative committee in the House of Representatives, Waxman has been battling the White House for documents relating to the many ongoing investigations his committee is conducting. He has accused the Bush administration of stonewalling because of their resistance to turn over documents.
It is clear Waxman is hot on the trail of documents that could explain who was involved in the leak of Plame Wilson's identity. In a letter to Fitzgerald, Waxman specifically requested "Documents describing the transmission of information about Plame Wilson's CIA employment status to or from any official at the White House, Office of the Vice President, Central Intelligence Agency, or State Department ... "
In a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey, Waxman said the White House has been preventing Fitzgerald from turning documents over to Congress, specifically "documents relating to White House officials."
According to Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientist's Project on Government Secrecy, this type of "stonewalling" has been "characteristic of the Bush Administration" and has been "effective in inhibiting Congressional oversight." Aftergood pointed out this letter from Waxman to Attorney General Michael Mukasey is the first such challenge of its kind for the recently confirmed AG. Aftergood said the letter is "a test of [Mukasey's] attitude towards disclosure and towards Congress."

The Republican Base
[from Kevin Drum’s Political Animal]

THE REPUBLICAN BASE....Last night Joe Klein sat in on one of Frank Luntz's focus group sessions for the Republican debate. It was one of those deals where each participant got a "dial" that allowed them to register instant approval or disapproval of what each candidate said. Klein's report:

In the next segment — the debate between Romney and Mike Huckabee over Huckabee's college scholarships for the deserving children of illegal immigrants — I noticed something really distressing: When Huckabee said, "After all, these are children of God," the dials plummeted. And that happened time and again through the evening: Any time any candidate proposed doing anything nice for anyone poor, the dials plummeted (30s).

The other big loser: John McCain saying we shouldn't torture people. In fact, it was an even bigger loser. It turns out that the only thing these GOP voters hated more than helping the poor was being told that it's wrong to torture people.

Ladies and gentlemen, your Republican base.

As predicted, LSU jumped from 7th to 2nd in the BCS standings by beating Tennessee by a touchdown. ESPN lobbied for them all day on TV. Georgia is ready to thrash LSU, USC, Okalahoma, Ohio (pansy schedule) State, or any one else for the national championship. Instead, they'll only let us play Hawaii. The BCS sucks.

Don't think the Republican agenda is on holiday. Though they have fallen out of their position of complete power, they are busy at every level, especially the at the grass roots. They are busy moving America toward fascism and you can be sure they'll call fascism "democracy."

After 27 years as a science teacher and 9 years as the Texas Education Agency's director of science, Christine Comer finds herself out of a job because she forwarded an email on a talk about evolution and intelligent design. The suggestion that evolution is science or that intelligent design (neo-creationism) is not science, is against policy. The Scopes monkey trial is still going on for these people. William Jennings Bryan lives on.

You can also be certain that the swift boating ads are ready for Hillary or Barack. And did you notice we are now "winning" the war in Iraq. I remind you. There hasn't been a war for years. We are occupying a foreign country. We have now participated in or facilitated the slaughter of two thirds of a million of their people and resistance has waned. Ethnic cleansing is largely responsible. The Sunnis and Shias that used to live in the same neighborhoods are now all segregated. They are still at war with each other. The government doesn't work. The billions of U.S. taxpayer money is still missing and we are still there, losing a soldier every day.

It won't last until morning. But for right now, the Georgia Bulldogs, who were ranked number 4 and the Ohio State Buckeyes, who were ranked number 3, both feel that they should move up to 2 and 1 respectively in the national polls since the number 1 and 2 teams both lost over the weekend. That would have them play off for the national championship.

Unfortunately, since Georgia did not win the SEC, LSU will likely be jumped over them to be number 2 and they will get to play instead. Truthfully there are a lot of good teams out there. Missouri and Oklahoma were brutal. But the TennesseeLSU game was not so impressive. The real question comes down to "How did Georgia lose to South Carolina?" Early season jitters I guess. They have developed into a fine team since then with an overpowering offense and a so-so defense. They set out to score 40 in every game now.

Unfortunately again, Georgia may end up in a no win situation against Hawaii in the Sugar Bowl. Win and everyone will say, well Hawaii wasn't that good. Lose to the nation's only undefeated team and they'll say the same and say see Georgia wasn't that good either. I'd rather play Missouri, Oklahoma, USC, or LSU. Congratulations Dawg Gridders on a great season. You've given me a whole day at the end of the year to think about a national championship.

Woof. Woof. Woof.