Margarita

Margarita - a drink for the gods! As our selfless gift to humanity, we continue our research to perfect recipes for refreshing adult beverages. In the past we've posted recipes for Mojito and Mai Tai. Well, one of our favorite drinks is a plain Margarita. The problem is that most recipes call for using storebought mix (yuck! ...why do they have to add coloring and all those chemicals?). Today my wife took some time out from less important tasks, and experimented to come up with this simple recipe that yields great-tasting Margaritas ...without any store-bought mix:

• Juice of 2 limes
• Juice of 1/2 lemon
• 4 Tablespoons sugar syrup (to make syrup, warm equal parts sugar and water until the sugar is disolved)
• 3/4 cup water
• 4 ounces Tequila
• 1/2 ounce Cointreau
• 1 1/4 cup ice

Make the syrup if you don't have any. Toss everything into a blender, mix it up, pour into 2 glasses, and enjoy!

By the way, for those curious about the picture (click on the image to see it full-size), the statue on the left is the Hawaiian god of peace and love (purchased on Maui, July 2004), and the statue on the right is Tangaroa, the Polynesian god of fertility (purchased on Rarotonga, Cook Islands, November 2000).

America Coming Together

The good folks at have posted a great video of Will Ferrell posing as Mr Bush recording a commercial. Click the image to the left to go to the site with the video.  There's a lot of other great stuff at the America Coming Together site. One is a petition to stop fraud in political advertising.

The Bush campaign has adopted a strategy of saying anything - anything - that they think will turn folks away from Kerry and towards Bush. They assume that we voters are too lazy to research and determine whether the claims are true or not. Well there's a lot wrong with this approach. The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth have now been discredited. Zell Miller's insane rant at the Republican convention included this statement, "Listing all the weapon systems that Senator Kerry tried his best to shut down sounds like an auctioneer selling off our national security but Americans need to know the facts." Well, now America does know the facts, and the truth is that Zell Miller recited a list that had been circulating through Internet emails ...and it is false! The text of his speech was approved beforehand, and neither Miller nor the Republicans took the time to see if they were stating the truth. What they were saying was what they wanted to hear ...and they lied. The list goes on and on.

(By the way, it appears that the Bush campaign is so embarrassed now by Miller's speech that the video is not available at their site - at least I couldn't find it - although many other videos of the convention speeches are posted!)

Well, America Coming Together has also posted a petition to demand that the FCC require political ads to be truthful. Bush lied to get us to invade Iraq, he lied about his service in the Guard, he refused to denouce the SBVFT lies about Kerry's service, his party either knowingly allowed Zell Miller to state as truth that which was not true - or they simply did not care enough about the American public to check if the "facts" were indeed true.

It is obvious that our current leadership does not respect Americans enough to be honest with us. Gosh, the Republican Party is supposed to stand for less government, but I really think that the only way we can get these folks to be honest is if the FCC forces them to stop lying.

Movies to see

There's a number of important films that have been released this year that are important for all Americans to see. My goal is to view one or more of these during each of the next several weeks until I've seen them all:

• Super Size Me: A look at the legal, financial and physical costs of America's hunger for fast food. Check the web site for theater locations.
• Control Room: A view of Al Jazeera's presentation of the second Iraq war to their worldwide Arab audience. Check web site for locations.
• The Corporation: Examines the far-reaching repercussions of the corporation’s increasing preeminence. Based on Joel Bakan’s book "The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power". Check web site for locations.
• Orwell Rolls in His Grave: The corporate takeover of our media. In very limited theater sreenings, but the DVD can be purchased at the web site.
• Bush's Brain: Meet Karl Rove, the most powerful political figure America has never heard of. In limited theater showings; DVD available at the web site.
• Outfoxed: Fox News Channel's consistent support of the Republican party is an issue critical to democracy. I've seen this a few times (we have the DVD), and it is a must see! Not in theaters; DVD available at the web site.
• Fahrenheit 9/11: An examination of the Bush administration's actions in the wake of the tragic events of 9/11. Still in theaters and the DVD will be out soon. We saw this twice on opening weekend. I posted some comments about this movie.

Impact from Frances minor here; Ivan next

We were lucky (again!). Hurricane Frances made its lazy way across Florida, and we were happily spared anything more than minor inconvenience. There was a lot of rain; I'm guessing we've received about a foot over the past few days. The ponds at the apartment complex are quite a bit higher now, with the water encroaching a fair amount onto the grass. One of the swimming pools had been drained a foot or more, and we noticed today that it is completely full. There are a few small trees that were blown down, and a couple of larger ones. These 2 fell down on the maintenence buidling right across from our building:

Here's a closer shot, showing some of the broken roof tiles:

The playground has about a foot of water in it, which seems to be fine with the kids playing out there:

Downtown Tampa was hit a little harder (by the rain). The local newspaper has posted some more pics showing some of the Tampa flooding. So...here's hoping Ivan decides he doesn't want to visit:

If the USA were a corporation, we would fire our CEO

The day after Mr. Bush's speech at the Republican National Convention, Dr.  Juan Cole, Professor of History at the University of Michigan, posted an opinion titled The CEO Test for Bush. I highly recommend that you read the entire post, but here is an excerpt:

Bush's basic characteristic is not steadfastness, as the convention attempted to argue, but rashness.  He is a gambler who goes for the big bang.  He loses his temper easily, and makes hasty and uninformed decisions about important matters.  No corporation would keep on a CEO that took risks the way Bush has, if the gambles so often resulted in huge losses.

Let us imagine you had a corporation with annual gross revenues of about $2 trillion.  And let's say that in 2000, it had profits of $150 billion.  So you bring in a new CEO, and within four years, the profit falls to zero and then the company goes into the red to the tune of over $400 billion per year.  You're on the Board of Directors and the CEO's term is up for renewal.  Do you vote to keep him in?  That's what Bush did to the US government.  He took it from surpluses to deep in the red.  We are all paying interest on the unprecedented $400 billion per year in deficits (a deficit is just a loan), and our grandchildren will be paying the interest in all likelihood.

Read Dr. Cole's full post