Both of Us .org

An interesting article in Today's Washington Post cites research that suggest that white people with more racist views are more likely to vote for Republicans and (P)Resident Bush.Study Ties Political Leanings to Hidden Biases

It is interesting that science can quantitatively prove things that seem obvious.

So who is the American government spying on to protect you from "terrorists"?

Why the peaceniks of course. You know that behind their non-violent anti-war stance, these people are really dangerous... dangerous to the Republican war-machine. The ACLU says they have proof of spying on American peace activists in Georgia. Read more here.

In other news, one brilliant cartoonist cam up with the 2006 George W. Bush Dead Kitten Survey as a method of testing where the American people's loyalty-limit is to our Commander in Thief. If you have time, please check it out.

This is definitely worth your time to read:Ex-EPA Chiefs Blame Bush in Global Warming Five of the six former heads of the Environmental Protection Agency are Republicans. Even the GOP is finally coming to terms with Bush's complete lack of leadership.

Last night Brokeback Mountain won four Golden Globe awards, including best picture (drama category), director, song and screenplay. The Golden Globe awards are a precursor to the Oscar, and 8 of the last 10 best picture winners have gone on to win the Oscar for best picture. The limited release movie is also building an impressive take at the box office with over 32 million dollars as of January 16th ( via boxofficemojo.com). It is difficult to dismiss the quality and impact of this movie, however that does not stop the religious right, the homophobes or the closet case columnists and pundits from trashing the movie.

Surprisingly there was little noise made by the religious right until recently. This has been a coordinated effort so as to not bring more attention to the movie (remember Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9-11?). The major religious organizations (Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition and James Dobson's Focus on the Family) have left the snipping to lesser columnists and pundits.

Before the movie opened, much of the commentary from the right wing was directed towards knocking the liberal leaning tendencies of Hollywood trying to 'force the homosexual lifestyle down our throats'. Most of the columns written also predicted the movie would fail miserably at the box office because the strong moral objection to homosexuality by middle Americans would stop any of them from going to see the movie.

Before limited release, Brokeback Mountain performed very well with the critics and won several film festival awards in the Fall. Again the main focus of the antagonists was left leaning Hollywood, "who are those uppity liberal elite critics to telling us what we should watch and find entertaining?".

Opening weekend (at 6 theaters) brought in stunning numbers. Of course the venues were in heavily liberal regions where the homos would come out in droves, so nothing to see here. In the following weeks, Brokeback widened to 200, 400 and today stands at 683 theaters and the ticket sales continued to boom. Funny they could find so many theaters in blue parts of America. Out came the homos in Miami and Minneapolis and many of them must have seen the movie twice!

Now 683 theaters is hardly a wide opening (most mid to majors open in >3000), so I will admit that much of red America has not had the opportunity to reject the movie. I think the movie producers have done an excellent job releasing the movie slowly and riding the wave of critical acclaim, attendance and now the Golden Globe awards. January 31, the Oscar nominations are released, and many people predict in the range of 4-8 nominations for Brokeback. On the heels of these nominations, it would seem logical for a further release of the movie...even into red states *gasp*Horror!*

The pundits now crow about the 'ick' factor that will be felt by moviegoers in the heartland. 'Plan on bringing a bucket, cause you are likely to hurl if you and your wife/girlfriend see the movie in Topeka'. Loosing the battle to date, the religious right now go back to the tried and true method using half truths and fear mongering to try to roll back positive headlines the movie is garnering. Columns are being published and probably in the works trying to remind their flocks the dangers and ungodliness of homosexuality. False facts, saying that the average gay man dies in his 40's, sex with feces is common and pedophilia is rampant, will be used again.

I am optimistic and heartened by the success of this movie so far. At first I was going to be happy if the movie broke even (14 million dollars to make the movie). At the break even point I was thinking that 30 million was certainly within reach. Today I look to 50 million, heck even 100 million if Brokeback wins best picture Oscar.

Those numbers say a lot about America to me. First it says there are a lot of us queers out there that enjoy a good movie about 'family'. Second, I do believe America still is moving towards more tolerance and acceptance of homosexuals. The recent years of the Bush-Religious Right Alliance represent some significant backsliding on many social and liberal issues, but hopefully we can look forward to better days ahead as indicated by the positive success of Brokeback Mountain.

PS...Go see the movie if you haven't yet!!!

Once again we had some friends over and made sushi on Thursday night. Our friends Phillip, Kristen and Michaela are quickly becoming experts rolling sushi with nori. We were joined by another friend Jim, who seemed to also really enjoy the raw fish. We used our standbys, tuna and salmon (the tuna was perfectly delicious as sashimi) but in addition we had used fresh raw squid, mackerel and crappy in our sushi rolls.

As dinner wound down, we were all properly stuffed with sushi. Phil and Jim graced us with a few songs. The favorite tune of the night was "Tokyo" which was gorgeously played by Phillip on guitar and Jim singing. We were practically rolling on the floor because of Jim's hilarious singing style. There is nothing that warms my heart like being a part of a group of people having a good time together. Ah what fun!

After the feast we played a bit of Texas hold 'em. Phil brought over one of his holiday gifts: a set of new professional looking poker chips. I had my clocked cleaned by the card sharks at the table. Michaela, who claimed to have never played poker before in her life, walked away with the pot of chips at the end of the night. After Jim and Michaela left, four of us continued the evening by playing hearts until around half-past-two drinking white wine and fresh coffee. Kristen proved that she is the Queen of Hearts.

Nights like these are what life is all about.

The Supreme Court of the USA is soon to have a new justice. Samuel Alito is in the process of being questioned by the US Senate, before they vote on confirmation. President Bush put forward Alito in the wake of the dubious selection of Harriet Myers (who was drummed into submitting her own withdrawal from consideration by her fellow conservatives). What we are now seeing is the anatomy of the conservative party, which is brought to light nearly every election cycle or nomination proceeding. What I am talking about is the glossing over of true conservative ideology in favor of presenting at the surface what seems to be moderate and open minded.

Alito has been subjected to substantial and powderpuff questioning by members of the Juditiary committee (some of whom could give a damn about the procedures, some of whom are grandstanding in attempt to garner attention for the 2008 presidency and some who are genuinely concerned about the future of the Supreme Court). Alito generally has been obtuse with his answers to questioning, such as being unable to recall his association with CAP (Concerned Alumni of Princeton - a group whose goals were to limit women and minorities admissions). His answers to the questions of preserving Roe vs. Wade were also ambiguous, leading many to believe that he would reconsider this landmark civil liberties case.

Again we are presented at face, a person who is difficult to fully evaluate. Is he going to be moderate like O'Connor or will he a Scalia clone? If we were to fully trust the Republican party and rely only on the mainstream media, we are likely to conclude that Alito is going to be fair and moderate. But I have to ask why do we continue to believe Republican talking points when over and over they turn out to be half truths if not bald face lies?

Anyone remember the 2000 presidential pitch by Bush? He was not interested in nation building, he was going to bring back ethics to Washington, he was not going to be lead by partisanship. How about every word that comes out of Cheney's mouth, especially those lovely truisms about Iraq and how we would be greeted with flowers and hugs. We have almost 5 years to evaluate Bush, his administration and the Republicans in Congress. Unless you are completely uninterested or gave up years ago, it should be clear what the primary Republican agenda is...pander to the Christian religious base, feed the military industrial complex, roll back/eliminate the New Deal and Great Society programs of social equality and play to the fears of American by trumpeting the war on Terror.

So why is it every time an election comes along or a nomination is put forth, we seem to allow ourselves to be bamboozled into believing the Republican candidate is moderate and open minded? We should know by now if the Bush/Rove team has found someone to fill a post, this person will have a hard right ideology. With that in mind, we have Samuel Alito, a white male, man of privilege. His past suggests he is not terribly concerned with promoting equality to minorities and women. His past rulings that suggest he supports unfettered presidential power and little support for civil liberties. Alito is very much a right wing 'wolf', and if you are concerned about a woman's right to choose, protection of privacy, preservation of civil liberties, the unchecked increase in presidential power and unlimited corporate authority do not be fooled by the 'sheeplike' appearance we are presented with by the Republican party and many in the mainstream media.

As proof that I am not yet numb to our ubergovernment's increasingly frightening intrusions into American civil liberties, I was shocked to read that now the Bush administration is reading our personal letters. First we learned about the massive government surveillance of our email and telephone conversations, now we know that our penned letters sent by traditional mail are also subject to government inspection at will.

If you are not a bit freaked out by our government's actions now, I want you to leave a comment here. Please answer the question of what it will take to make you think that the Bush administration has gone too far. Will it take random house-to-house searches for you to be concerned? Perhaps it will take detention camps for persons speaking against our beloved government during the perpetual "war on terror"?

Read more at this link: Homeland Security opening private mail

Just for kicks read about a four year old child that was harassed and almost not allowed to fly home for the holidays. God bless das Homeland Security.

I bet you would be surprised to know that your cell phone records are for sale. Anybody with the money can get all the details about who you have called and how long your conversations lasted. It is scary, but I guess not surprising in this time of shrinking personal privacy.

Read more about it: Your phone records are for sale.

When we lived in the Netherlands we ground our coffee fresh each day and we became accustomed to unlocking the fresh scents and delicious flavor of the beans with a small blade grinder. The problem with that grinder was that it was hard to control the coarseness/fineness of the grounds. Since we use a French press coffee makes which requires a very course grind and espresso which requires a very fine grind we were a bit frustrated with he limitations of our old grinder. When we moved back to the USA we gave our grinder to our Dutch friends Hensen and Cees since it runs on 220v and in the States our electricity is 110v. For the last sixteen months we have been grinding our coffee at the supermarket when we would buy it. This was a satisfactory, but not ideal way of getting our coffee ground, however, the grinders at the store are infrequently cleaned and we would inevitably get fine coffee in our course grounds, resulting in quite a bit of silt in our French press made coffee.

JSP and I received a pound of coffee beans from my sister Patty and her husband Brant for the holidays. This gave us the excuse to go out and finally purchase the coffee grinder that we had done without. Since the blade grinders were limited in their ability to control the grind, we decided to go a step up and purchase a burr type grinder that gives you control over the coarseness of the grounds. JSP checked out the local kitchen specialty store on the Italian Market and then we looked online for reviews and comments about which of the three grinders the local store stocked seemed the best fit for us. Since we plan on having the grinder for many years, and we drink coffee almost everyday, we figured that it would not be a bad investment to buy something that might be a little pricey but that would last and give us an enjoyable experience day after day of grinding fresh coffee. After looking into a couple of cheaper Braun and Cuisinart models, we choose a black Kitchenaid KCG200 updated replica of the 1938 A-9 model with a retro design made of glass and solid metal rather than the lighter plastic and light metal that the competitors were offering. Although we did not buy it from Amazon (the links are all to Amazon.com) the reviews there helped us decide what model we wanted. We like the idea of supporting our local independent stores.