I'll be watching this

'Jeopardy!' to Hold 'Super Tournament'

"Producers of the game show announced Tuesday a "Super Tournament," which will pit Jennings in a final match against two survivors of a competition between nearly 150 past five-time winners."

Not marriage, but a good step

California's new Domestic partnership laws come into affect tomorrow.

"California's new law will require courts to treat domestic partnerships just as they would marriages in settling disputes over dissolution, financial support, community property, inheritance, child custody, debt assumption and other matters.

"Unlike marriages, however, domestic partners will not be able to file joint tax returns, and their unions will not be recognized by the federal government in qualifying for Medicare, Social Security, veterans, food stamp, housing, immigration or other national programs and subsidies.

"Other states are not obligated to honor California's domestic partnerships."

And from the opposition:

"The reality is, homosexual couples know they're not having real sex, deep down they know it's not real marriage, and no amount of social engineering from Democrats at the state Capitol will change that," added Randy Thomasson, a spokesman for Campaign for California Families.

Ethics? What ethics?

From Americablog:

"READ THIS AND TAKE ACTION

I cannot emphasize enough the importance of reading this article on the front page of today's Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37521-2004Dec30.html?sub=AR

In a nutshell, Republican leaders in the House are planning on GUTTING the ethics rules governing their own members, for the most part because one of their own, Rep. Tom Delay, got caught doing a lot of nasty stuff. So in retaliation, they're changing the rules to make it next to impossible to file an ethics complaint in the future. Any complaint will be dropped, period, unless a majority of members on the committee in favor of it. Like that will ever happen.

But oh, it gets better. They also plan to change the rules so family members of congressmen can more easily accept gifts from lobbyists trying to influence the congressman in question. AND, they even want to permit congressmen to BRING A PARENT ON A CONGRESSIONAL DELEGATION. Yes, now we're giving them perks for mom and dad. Wouldn't it be nice if all of our companies let us bring the folks on business trips to Europe, at the taxpayers' expense, no less.

This is absolutely outrageously disgusting what they are planning on doing. All the more so because this is the "values" party, and they're now trying to railroad new rules that will permit them to be less ethical. What a way to cast your first vote of the new Congress, and in the case of new members of Congress their first vote ever.

There are a few clear action steps that are needed:

1. I hear from good sources that the Dems in the House are terrified of taking on this issue full-blast as they don't want Tom Delay to get mad at them. Well, I'm through with playing nice, hoping the Republicans will throw us a few scraps while they lead us to the slaughterhouse.

Call Reps. Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer, both Democratic leaders who need to grow a set of balls (or vaginas) and finally throw down the gauntlet on this outrageous behavior by the Republicans. What more do the Democrats need handed to them than this proposed vote on Tuesday? If this were the Dems planning this kind of vote, what do you think Newt Gingrich would do? He certainly wouldn't be sitting back issuing press releases and having the occasional press conference. He'd be plotting all out war to embarrass the hell out of the Democrats. It's time the Dems did the same. Call Pelosi and Hoyer and tell them it's about time the democrats started fighting back - demand that they go nuclear over this proposed change to the ethics rules this coming Tuesday. And it is irrelevant if you're from their state or not - they are the leaders of the Democratic party, tell them you're one angry Democrat and demand that your voice be heard, or we should throw them all out.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)
Phone (415) 556-4862, (202) 225-4965
Email: sf.nancy@mail.house.gov

Rep. Steny Hoyer(D-MD)
Phone (202) 225-4131 - Fax(202) 225-4300
Phone (301) 474-0119 - Fax (301) 474-4697
Phone (301) 843-1577 - Fax (301) 843-1331
Web form for email: http://www.hoyer.house.gov/feedback.cfm?campaign=hoyers&type=Let%27s%20Talk

2. Then contact your own House member, Democrat or Republican, and let them have it. I'm serious, the only thing these people understand is pissed off constituents - I worked there, trust me, it gets their attention.

Use this zip-code locator to find your member of Congress. Call and email them today through Tuesday - fill their voice mail with messages over the weekend. Blast them over this issue. http://www.house.gov/htbin/zipfind

3. Call and email your local newspapers IMMEDIATELY over this issue, especially if you have a new member of Congress elected from your district. Will your congressman's first vote of the new congress, and possibly their career, be in favor of lowering their ethical standards? Make sure your local papers cover this issue - call the paper and ask for a reporter or editor covering the US Congress and talk to them about this issue. Trust me, if they get 20 or so calls from people, they'll write about the issue. Find some friends and have them call too (just look your papers up online for email and phone contact info, letters to the editor, etc.)

You can read more on this issue here:
http://www.citizensforethics.org/activities/20041216/

Feel free to copy this post and put it on your site, or to email this message to your friends. It's high time the Democrats fought back and stopped this outright theft of our government."

The dollar keeps sinking

The dollar ends 2004 at a 9 year low as "as investors fret about the growing size of the U.S. trade deficit."

Things don't look any better for next year:

"Apart from the odd bout of profit-taking and position-squaring in the past few weeks, the market's view on the euro and dollar going into 2005 is broadly the same as it has been for the past three years: more appreciation is in store for the euro, more depreciation for the dollar."

Now we're talking

The US just pledged $350 million in tsunami aid.

search engines for your PC

Slate.com has a great article about various search tools that can be downloaded onto your PC. If you've ever tried to search for a file using Microsoft's "search" function you know that it takes forever and it's not that useful. Slate rates Copernic as the best of the lot and I just downloaded it. It is very fast and so far it's done a great job of finding the documents I've tried searching for. It's worth checking out.

Grocery shopping in Boulder

Well, I lasted as long as I could on granola bars and what I could find in my Christmas stocking, but today I had to make my first big grocery shopping trip. Now, Boulder is an interesting place-- I knew that already. A liberal enclave in a rural, red state. Interestingly enough, you can tell that just by visiting a King Soopers (the large, chain grocery store near my house). The first thing I noticed were the yoga DVDs at the end of the aisles near the cash registers (the impulse buy section). Then I ran across the organic pasta aisle, which could easily rival what you would find at any Whole Foods (I can't wait to check out the Whole Foods in town). They did sell meat (thank goodness), but they seemed to have vegetarian options for almost everything -- even Stagg vegetarian chili, who knew that existed?

But, most importantly, for someone who's been trapped on the east coast/midwest for 7 years, was the selection of hot sauces and salsas. After the bland midwest, where they don't sell hot salsa, just medium and mild, and the east coast, which is ever so slightly better, I am looking forward to some good spicy Mexican food. Oh, happiness.

Priorities

Oh, this is too much. Atrios points out that Bush's inauguration will cost $30-40 million not including security costs.. Oddly, this is pretty close to the $35 million ($15 mill originally, plus the additional $20 mill) we're sending to help out after the incredible disaster in Asia which killed at least 52,000 people. Even if it is only a down payment, you'd think we could send more than we're spending for a party...

I'm back!

Finally, high speed internet access! I was using my brother's dial-up, which is just impossible for anything but e-mail (and then only if you have a good book handy to read between messages). I've also been news deprived-- what have I missed?

Huge earthquake/tsunami kills thousands in Asia. Bush is sending $15 million to help. Americablog points out that that's equivalent to what we spend in Iraq every 2 hours. Nice guy that George W. Update: Now we're sending another $20 million.

Yushchenko won the second Ukrainian election. The first election was "won" by the incumbant Yanukovych, but everything about that election looked fradulent and a repeat election was ordered. Now, of course, Yanokovych is claiming fraud, but international observers thought that this election (as opposed to the first one) was on the up and up.

More locally, the recount in Washington's governor's race changed the results and now the democrat won by 130 votes! Wild. The GOP may challenge. But seriously, do these people understand anything about error analysis?? It was a tie! It was so far within the margin of error that it's impossible to know who won. But, following the Bush strategy Gregoire should just claim a mandate and do whatever she wants.