State of the Race

To make a long story short: 24 days out, Obama is dominating, very far ahead of McCain in the state polls, and poised to win the presidency.

Here's about the most objective read you can find, showing Obama's poll averages (including all polls) across the battleground states:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/10/11/11173/709/20/627471

Here's the key part:

State EVs Poll Total EVs

Safe Obama states 190
(10/7 res)
IA 7 O+14.2 (n/a) 197
PA 21 O+14.1 (O+12.9) 218
MI 17 O+13.6 (O+10.3) 235
NH 4 O+11.1 (O+11.6) 239
WI 10 O+9.0 (O+6.9) 249
MN 10 O+7.7 (O+10.9) 259
VA 13 O+7.7 (O+5.3) 272

So, Obama's up by over 7 points in the state he needs to win. And this doesn't include his, oh, 97 or so other likely pickups such as Colorado(9), Nex Mexico (5), Ohio(20), Florida (27), North Carolina(15), blah, blah. You get the picture. TODAY, it's looking good.

I add that last condition it's not time to celebrate or get complacent. But clearly, the complete fucking economic meltdown of the last few weeks has fundamentally altered the conditions of this race. States like Pennsylvania and Michigan, have moved into the guaranteed win status because concern with our dire situation has focused minds and reminded a lot of folks about just who's been watching over this disaster the last several years. McCain's attacks on Obama's 'otherness' and his (completely GOP-manufactured ) 'ties to terrorists' look tone deaf, clueless and pathetic when measured against the historic events of the last month. On the other hand, Obama's calm demeanor and steadiness are just very reassuring qualities to have in a leader.

It's not over, but it's going to take a lot to alter the fundamental new course this campaign has taken.

Still-sweet Scotch Ale

So I racked my super-sugary Scotch Ale last night. It had an Original Gravity of 1.065, and is down to 1.032. For normal human beings, that means it has the potential of being pretty alcoholic (7% or so) while maintaining a rich, sweet quality. But wow, this stuff is still syrupy sweet and is taking its time fermenting.

That's fine; I'm sure it'll be awesome after it ferments down and ages for a while (I'm thinking of drinking it in mid-July, but stretching it out into the fall). I'm also hoping for a hint of smokiness to emerge as the malty flavor fades.

I have no experience with or knowledge of Scotch Ale apart from the one chapter I read in the wonderful if totally geeky Designing Great Beers, so I won't have any idea if I screwed it up. That's probably a good thing.

Hillary: I'll Win Because I'm White

This thing is over. What is the point of remarks like these?

"I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."
"There's a pattern emerging here," she said.

Yeah, there's definitely a pattern: A once-respected Senator and powerful former First Lady has engaged in a pattern of shameful race-baiting to score political points.

Way to go, Hillary!

Updates!

For anyone waiting with bated breath:

Spicy and banana-y wiezenbock chilling;
Strong Scotch Ale fermenting;
Hops sprouting;
Garden tilled and planted;
Politics turned back on with a primary annoying me daily.

The Wonderful Immigration Agency I work with Daily, Episode 3

Citizenship and Immigration Services wants you to know it's working full-time to welcome legal immigrants and new citizens to the country:

The number of people who legally immigrated to the U.S. dropped 17 percent last year, largely because of administrative problems, according to a Homeland Security Department report.

A total of 1.05 million people became legal permanent residents in 2007, falling from 1.27 million a year earlier, according to the report by the department's Office of Immigration Statistics.

Citizenship and Immigration Services has been under fire after processing times grew because immigrants flooded the agency with applications filed last year in advance of a dramatic increases in filing fees. The delays will keep some people from becoming citizens in time to vote in November.

To be fair, "I don't think anyone could have anticipated" a massive increase in immigration and citizenship filings before fees tripled last July.

Plus, most of these potential new citizens would vote Democratic in November. Best to nip that problem in the bud right now.

Weihenstephan Weizenbock for Brooke

Weihenstephan Monastery in Germany has been brewing beer since 1040. 10-freaking-40. It's tough to really wrap your brain around the idea of a continuous trade in a good for nearly 1,000 years, but it makes sense. Stan Hieronymus in Brew Like a Monk notes that Benedictine Monks were ordered to sustain their living through work and trade. Add that to the demand that they offer hospitality to all who passed through (i.e. beer rather than the contaminated water of the middle ages), and you've got a built-in brewing tradition.

Weihenstephan makes an incredible weizenbock. They keep the color light to fit the heavy 'bananas and cream' flavor to this beer. It's just delicious - full-bodied, goes down smooth, very creamy and all at around 7.5%.

More than that, though, their Weizenbock 'doesn't have that yucky back of your mouth stingy' taste (paraphrased) that Brooke despises in beer. In fact, she loved the bottle we bought a couple weeks back. That's a big deal. A good friend of mine once commented that when her husband makes her beer, it's like having a song written for her.

So I took a stab at a similar style this weekend. I didn't match the Weihenstephan recipe and I didn't try to hunt one down. I did, however, use Weihenstephan weizen yeast, a ton of wheat and the same or similar noble hops. The original gravity wasn't at all what I was going for (this is an alcoholic beer, but it's also got a lot of delicious non-fermentables in it that add to the body), so I threw in a pound of turbinado sugar. I was careful in pitching and fermenting temperatures (55-65 degrees), which is central to the weizenbock style. I'll take advantage of the landlord's second fridge and cold-condition it for a week or so.

It won't be the same as the monks' brew. It never is. Hopefully it resonates with Brooke and the rest of us who drink it this late spring.
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*For Brewing Nerds: I used about 50% wheat, with the remainder split between two-row, munich and light crystal. The color was definitely darker than the commercial variety, but I knew that going in. Disturbed by the gravity reading, I added the sugar to the wort. I threw in Saaz at the boil, and a couple small additions of Hallertau in the last 20 minutes of an 80 minute boil. It's fermenting with Weihenstephan Weizenbock yeast from Wyeast.

Homegrown cascade hops

I am not a gardener. I would like to be, but I'm not. Or at least I haven't been.

The last time I "gardened" was when I was about 8 or 9 years old. I feel like it had something to do with Boy Scouts, but it may have been just for fun. Sadly, I often kill plants, or neglect them to the point that they're the sad-faced, plaintive stepchild of the yard.

But making beer at some point is going to lead to growing your own ingredients, so on a whim, I bought a hop rhizome a couple of weeks ago. I planted it yesterday.

It was fun. I like getting dirty in pursuit of making something, especially since it's novel and not what I do at work every day. Colorado's soil sucks but I added a bunch of good organic soil and compost to the heap, and threw mulch around it to help keep in some of the moisture. I think I'll set up a simple trellis to train the vines around, though I may get lazy and just use the fence. I hear they grow like mad, so it could be fun watching this little plant take over a sizeable portion of our yard's north border.

I planted a cascade rhizome. Cascade hops are just wonderful. They impart a ton of fresh-smelling, flowery aroma and citrusy flavor to pale ales, lagers and IPAs. Cascade hops remind me of a beautiful, mild May day spent outside.

It snowed just a touch last night, but I don't think that matters. With a little luck, I'll be picking and using my own this summer. That's a joy to think of but like I said, I'm not a gardener, so I'm not counting my chickens before they hatch.

The Wonderful Government Agency I Work with Daily, Episode 2

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services wants you to know it cares deeply about the sacrifices made by Iraqis in waging our Glorious War on Terror:

Sam Ahmad is a war hero and has the medals to prove it - the Navy-Marine Corps Achievement Medal and the War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal. But he's a civilian, not a soldier, and an Iraqi citizen to boot. After putting his life on the line for the United States in Iraq, death threats by anti-coalition forces forced Sam - whose entire family had been wiped out by Saddam Hussein's gas attack on Halabja - to flee to the United States under the auspices of a 2006 law granting visas to Iraqi translators. Sam was granted the visa, and subsequently granted asylum.

The next step is the "green card," or permanent residence. But in a stunning case of the left hand not knowing the right hand is even on the same planet, the government turned Sam down, saying he is "inadmissible" because he once belonged to a "terrorist" group. That group would be the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP,) a group that sought the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and now holds seats in the Iraqi parliament.

Is the KDP on a U.S. government list of terrorist organizations? No. USCIS decided the KDP is a bad apple based on one unofficial nongovernmental website, a DHS-funded anti-terrorism think tank in Oklahoma.

Did Sam hide his KDP past on his translator visa and asylum applications? No. That was fully disclosed from the get-go.

But really, what more do we owe any Iraqi after so graciously liberating them?

Free Joe Nacchio!

That's definitely not a popular view in Denver: the home of Qwest, the company at the center of former CEO Joe Nacchio's insider trading trial. Also, I suppose that as a liberal, I should whole-heartedly support pro-stick-it-to-the-man policies in all cases.

But I don't, and the 10th Circuit appeals court doesn't either:

Former Qwest chief executive Joe Nacchio was granted a new trial Monday when an appellate panel decided 2-1 to toss his insider-trading conviction because of an error by the trial judge. ...

The majority decision — by Judges Michael McConnell and Paul Kelly — said Nottingham erred in not allowing expert testimony from Northwestern law professor and private consultant Daniel Fischel.

"We conclude that on the record before him the district judge was wrong to prevent Professor Fischel from providing expert analysis, and that this error was not harmless," the ruling states.

To be honest though, I could care less about the expert's testimony - I have no idea what he was going to testify about. It's Nacchio's other main (losing) argument on appeal that bugs me:

Mr. Nacchio also argues that the district court was wrong to prevent him from presenting certain classified information as evidence at trial. He claims that the evidence would have shown that he personally had reason to believe that Qwest’s economic prospects were much better than others realized. Thus, he says, this evidence should have been permitted both to show that he did not have material information and to negate scienter. We affirm the district court’s decision, because even if the classified information were presented and established what he said it would, it could not exonerate Mr. Nacchio as he claims....

Essentially, Mr. Nacchio argues that undisclosed positive information can be used as a defense to a charge of trading on undisclosed negative information. We disagree. If an insider has material information that he cannot disclose because it is confidential or proprietary, then he must abstain from trading. That is the lesson of In re Cady, Roberts & Co....

Note the oblique reference to "classified information." What was that, anyway?

A former Qwest Communications International executive, appealing a conviction for insider trading, has alleged that the government withdrew opportunities for contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars after Qwest refused to participate in an unidentified National Security Agency program that the company thought might be illegal. ...

In the court filings disclosed this week, Nacchio suggests that Qwest's refusal to take part in that program led the government to cancel a separate, lucrative contract with the NSA in retribution. He is using the allegation to try to show why his stock sale should not have been considered improper.

So let's review:

1) Qwest had major government contracts in the pipeline in 2001, as the company was facing other financial difficulties.
2) Qwest got approached by the Bush Administration to see if the company would mind breaking privacy laws by helping the government illegally spy on millions of Americans contacting or being contacted by anyone overseas.
3) Qwest lawyers and Joe Nacchio reviewed the request and said "No. That would be illegal."
4) George Bush gets pissed, the government retaliates and Qwest loses all above-mentioned major contracts.
5) Joe Nacchio gets convicted of insider trading after the judge refused to allow classified evidence regarding the illegal spying into court under the "State Secrets" doctrine.

As to the above court holding regarding the classified evidence, it's absurd on its face. The court would have had Nacchio abstain from trading notwithstanding the fact that he thought the good and the bad future acts would cancel each other out. Cady, Roberts didn't address this situation at all and is, as they say, clearly distinguishable.

So that part of the holding is ridiculous, but whatever. Nacchio will get a new day in court in front of a new judge. It'll be interesting to see whether this classified information gets in.

After all, it'd just be shocking to discover that George Bush sold a corporate CEO down the river on criminal charges after fucking his company for obeying the law. Right? Right?

Mead today, bock tomorrow

We moved into our little fruit tree surrounded home about 9 months ago, just as the peaches were really growing. We heard that they usually went to the birds pretty quick every August. Happily, they got yellow and delicious, and the birds got few. Brooke and her mom and mema chopped a lot of peaches. I jumped in a bit too; it was fun and gross getting covered in peach juice. They're really tasty - we still have some in our freezer.

On the first day of September, I got up early to buy honey at the farmer's market. I bought a gallon of peach blossom honey harvested (or got, or stolen from angry bees, whatever) near Longmont, and the farmer (bee rancher?) asked "Making mead or eating all that?"

I spent that late morning making my first batch of mead, the kitchen humid with sweet honey water. I'm enjoying it for the first time tonight. I've drunk a small bottle from time to time, but it's only now near ready (and poised to get better with age).

The peaches are coming through in a wonderful way - I'm glad we got to them before the birds did.

***

Shiner Bock helps make Texas great. I have a lot of warm feelings for any craft brewery that can bring the surrounding area a great brew that's a lot different from the other beers you can buy (in Texas, at least) at your corner gas station. Dark, crisp, caramel, easy drinking, widely consumed and loved. In Colorado, it's easy to take good, diverse beers for granted. In Texas, Shiner stands out amongst a sea of Miller and Bud, which is not to lessen its appeal. It just has less competition in the "good beer" market. The drink is a source of pride in the state for good reason.

I'll try and get close with a batch tomorrow. Shiner's worthy of a personal attempt. I'm sure it'll be a lot different, though. It always is!
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FOR BREWING NERDS: The mead had about 10 lbs of honey, including a little choke cherry as well from my brother-in-law. Of course the peaches, and a yeast that made the folks at the beer store pause. "This could be really interesting." It was sharp at first but is working out well. I should let this sit a while longer.

The bock has 2-row pale, munich, amber and a pinch of black patent, plus flaked corn. I got a standard lager yeast and centennial and liberty hops. We'll see.

Racking rye lager with Amelia Claire, 11 mos.

Brooke was busy with an awesome dinner and 1/2 cake for Soren's 1/2 birthday, and the racking had to be done, so I enlisted Amelia as assistant for the event.

Daddy: Beer, Amelia. Daddy's beer. Beer. Daddy's beer, Amelia
Amelia: Yay, yay, bup, bup [swings racking cane and tube back and forth]
Daddy: Yeah, that's beer. Amelia [gripping cane fervently, steadfast in opposition to beer spurting out of carboy and across the floor].
Amelia: Huh-hah! Yay, yay [adversarily yanking racking cane].

She'll make her daddy proud.

Everything stayed clean, and the beer should be crisp with a nice bitterness to it. I'll throw it in the fridge to age for a while.

The wonderful government agency I work with daily, Episode 1

Immigration and Customs Enforcement wants you to know it cares about you and your growing, cancerous tumors:

In a stinging ruling, a Los Angeles federal judge said immigration officials' alleged decision to withhold a critical medical test and other treatment from a detainee who later died of cancer was "beyond cruel and unusual" punishment.

The decision from U.S. District Judge Dean Pregerson allows the family of Francisco Castaneda to seek financial damages from the government.

Castaneda, who suffered from penile cancer, died Feb. 16. Before his release from custody last year, the government had refused for 11 months to authorize a biopsy for a growing lesion, even though voluminous government records showed that several doctors said the test was urgently needed, given Castaneda's condition and a family history of cancer, Pregerson said.

But rather than test and treat Castaneda, government officials told him to be patient and prescribed antihistamines, ibuprofen and extra boxer shorts, the judge wrote in a decision released late Tuesday. In summary, the judge wrote, the care provided to Castaneda "can be characterized by one word: nothing."

But he was brown and got caught with drugs, so it's cool.

BTW: This is called a Bivens action. It allows for damages when the gov't shows extreme indifference to your basic constitutional rights.

Republican-appointed judges hate Bivens actions.

Keep your horse logo off my moon

Yes, there is a campaign by Rolling Rock Beer to (purportedly) advertise by "pointing a laser at the moon" to either shine or "etch" the Rolling Rock logo on said celestial body.

Yes, this gets you to go to moonvertising.com and waste your time on their site, endearing you to all things Rolling Rock.

Yes, there are some who think this might be for real.

No, it almost certainly isn't going to happen. The commercials mock the idea and I highly doubt it's legal to shine a 'laser' through airspace regulated by the FAA.

No, I will never drink Rolling Rock again if they do any sort of "moonvertising" on March 21st.

Yes, all this talk has led me to search for a Rolling Rock clone and brew it asap. I'll let you know how that goes.

UPDATE: I don't know if I want to bother with another lager right now. I just made a rye lager, it'll take weeks to clarify, and I can't afford another carboy now.

Hmm, what to brew?

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton make me tired

Soooo, I guess this is going through at least April 22nd. Oh, yippee!

Seriously, all the back and forth exhausts me at this point. Clearly, Hillary's bid is sort of quixotic (barring major changes and wins in redone Fla & MI primaries), but she's hanging in there regardless.

I'm taking a break. I have no interest in watching petty fights covered by a vapid press with (essentially) no delegates decided between the two.

I guess I'll call it my no politics month.

Wow! The House Dems might not cave on warrentless wiretapping?

I've been following the story of Bush's illegal spying program (aided by every major telecom company save Qwest) since it broke in late 2005. If you haven't, there's plenty out there to allow you to read up. Setting aside the details and nuances, though, I can boil it down for you pretty simply:

George Bush assumes he can break the law because he's president, and so he did by enlisting the telecom companies to illegally spy on all of you. Now that he's been caught, he's demanding Congress forever shield this from the courts so
they can't say he's a criminal.

That's really the meat of it.

It's been looking for sometime that Congress would allow him to get away with all this because to do otherwise would allow The Terrorists To Kill Us All In Our Beds.

There's been a lot of back and forth in Congress on the issues of a) whether to legalize the illegal spying and b) whether to grant retroactive immunity for illegal acts to telecom companies (and by extension, to Bush). But it's always seemed as though, at the end of the day, Congress would cave on both.

Maybe not:

[I]t's actually necessary to give some credit where it's due -- to the House Democratic leadership. Nobody expected that they would ever allow the Protect America Act to expire, yet they did. And nobody expected... that they would ignore the barrage of Terrorist-Lover accusations from the President and unveil yet another bill that is actually decent and refuses to bestow lawbreaking telecoms with amnesty, but they now have. ...

With regard to yesterday's FISA bill, more surprising than their defiance is their shrewdness. By including a provision that explicitly authorizes telecoms to submit to the court any exculpatory documents -- notwithstanding the assertion by the administration that those documents are subject to the "state secrets" privilege -- the House bill completely guts, in one fell swoop, the primary argument that, for months, has been made by telecoms and their allies as to why amnesty is necessary.

Bush and the pro-lawbreaking wing of Congress have been pushing the idea for sometime that, well, we've got to kill all these court cases against the administration and telecom companies because we can't allow the phone companies to expose Highly-Classified Super-Duper Secret documents in private to a judge. After all, he'll probably e-mail everything to Osama later that day. This provision would explicitly allow this confidential "in camera" viewing of such documents by the judge. He can then decide whether the documents really are exculpatory and, if so, he can let the telecoms off the hook. This leaves pro-amnesty groups without any coherent argument for granting immunity to Bush and the telecoms. This also would allow these court cases to go forward and (maybe, eventually) to show the country the depth of criminal depravity in the White House these past several years.

Hopefully our political leaders are finally emerging from their post-2002 stupor and realizing that we don't have to destroy our constitution and give George Bush everything he wants in order to save us from Al-Qaeda. It'd be nice to leave behind a frightening era of this nation's history.

UPDATE: It passed the House today (03/14). Bush'll veto it if it ever gets through the Senate. Because, you know, fuck the 4th Amendment.

That's fine. Let's just run out the clock on this nonsense.

Great Beer, Funky Yeast

One of my first beers I made on my own was an ESB. I tried to model it off Redhook's ESB, and it was, um, sort of close. It ended up being (at the very end of the batch - I was a bit impatient then) the best beer I have ever drunk. It nailed that ever-slow-slight citrus twist taste in a nice, reddish ale. Awesome.

But before it got awesome, it had the funkiest smell to it, and it must have been from the yeast. It just smelled earthy, and in a bad way. Obviously, smell and taste are pretty much interconnected, so it just turned the flavor in the same wrong direction. Plugging your nose did wonders for this beer's flavor. Like I said, in the end, it was incredible; I just drank it too fast to enjoy the end much.

This all brings me to my blueberry wit beer, which I cracked open for the first time tonight. This beer's got serious promise (and only a week out of the bottle), but again, the smell is off and it's from the yeast.

I'll put it away for a while. It'll be great in a month or so.


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* FOR BREWING NERDS: Haven't found the witbier recipe (clearly, I'm really careful about keeping this stuff - my paper organization consists of a shelf for beer books and a folder with scraps containing beer recipes). Still, I can say it had about 50/50 Belgian Pale and wheat, wit beer yeast form Wyeast, coriander, cardamom and a couple ounces of hops that totally escape me. I threw in 10 oz of organic cherries into 1/2 in the secondary fermenter, and 16 or so oz of blueberries in the other 1/2.

The ESB had Pale, Medium crystal, and a little caramunich, spaltz and willamette hops, and british ale yeast from Wyeast. Like I said, it's great - brew a batch and put it away for a while.

Oh, and I'm a loud-mouthed liberal

So expect links to Glen Greenwald in between the joy-of-brewing and worries-about-bacteria posts.

blogging about beer

Read History of the World in Six Glasses, by Tom Standage; you won't be disappointed. Standage's 2 chapters on beer and the brewing of beer depict a drink that became treasured (and cultivated, and cared for, and shared, and traded, and monopolized, and enjoyed) by nearly every society which learned of or discovered it. One prominent theory on the roots of agriculture - discussed in Six Glasses - asserts that crop domesitication by the first sedentary societies owes its existence to the people's love of beer.

And why not? Preparing the basic ingredients for beer (water, grains, hops and yeast), brewing and enjoying this ancient and delicious drink; all these things feel right. These acts bring out our humanity: care for our work, attention to taste, feel and smell and time, the desire to please ourselves and others through our acts and crafts. It's hardly a surprise that the drink fit in with us.

That's why I make beer. There's a lot to learn about the art of brewing - IBUs, AA%, mash efficiency, Original and Terminal gravity, etc., etc. - that's interesting but not at all necessary (or even necessarily enjoyable) to carrying on this practice. You can pretty much ignore all that if you'd like, and I largely do. Instead, I focus on the basics: 4 ingredients, spices, herbs and fruits to try when in the mood, getting the house to steam up and smell like sweet oatmeal, sticky floors, good exhaustion after 6 hours making something new while enjoying the last batches. That's it. That's all you need.

So I'm blogging to talk about beer and the making of beer because the process and the product are wonderful and worth the time and thought. So why not throw my thoughts in the mix.