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The Slapdash Cook Worries about Drought and Makes a Green Chili Cheese Omelet

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

The wildfire season is upon us. Until it rains, as we hope it will, soon, the following  activities are banned from all Santa Fe city recreational areas: romantic campfires, wood- or charcoal-based cookery, cigarette smoking, fast-and-fun spark-generating vehicles and sky-piercing fireworks. Similar prohibitions apply to County and State lands. Last year the fire threat was so ominous that hiking trails were totally closed for many long weeks.

Meanwhile, rivers are trickles, reservoirs are low, forests are tinder waiting for ignition and—horror of horrors!—the chili crop in Hatch is under threat. Water needed for pepper irrigation is being slurped up before it reaches the chili fields in southern New Mexico. The way things are going, meteorologists say, the harvest will be small and any little green pods that manage to get to market will be expensive.

A crisis in the making.

In Northern New Mexico we put green chilis in or on practically everything—and I’m not referring only to huevos rancheros, enchiladas, tamales, empanadas and the like. How about steak with a green chili and mushroom topping? Or baked potatoes crowned with green chilis? Or marinara laced with green chilis? Or green chilis tucked under the skin of a roasting chicken? As for desert, consider chipotlé strawberry gelato or red hot dark chocolate made by the Chocolate Cartel in Albuquerque. When people mention Christmas in Santa Fe, they’re not thinking about Santa Claus. They’re ordering a dish that features red and green chili.

A chili habit is expensive to maintain, especially since a year’s supply has to be bought in a single swoop. Growers, having charred their chilis in wire cages rotated over beds of charcoal, stuff the limp hot pods into pint-sized baggies that have been been selling for five bucks a pop. Let’s do the math. I may live alone, but I still need twelve of fifteen bags to see me over the winter and through to the next harvest. That’s some sixty to seventy-five dollars per annum. Now multiply that sum by three or four to satisfy a whole family’s taste for tingle. Ouch!

Tingle varies, of course.  There’s mild for wimps, medium for those who can stand a little excitement and hot for people who like to play with fire.  A good trick is to mix a baggie of fire with a bag of medium.  Otherwise the heat in the dish you’re preparing may be so strong you can’t taste anything else.

Chilis bought, you take the bags home and freeze them, and here’s what you do when you hanker for some green chili. You thaw the chilis, peel off their cellophane-like skins, remove their heads and seeds, then chop, chop, chop. That’s it. Use the chopped chilis à la paragraph four above. Or any other way that comes to mind. If you have any freshly chopped chilis left over or want to ready several bags at once, do this: pretend you’re making drop cookies, but don’t put the cookie tray in the oven. Place it in the freezer. When the dollops are frozen, collect them into freezer bags and store them until you need them. Thawed eight or more months later, the chili will be just fine. But who can wait that long?

Meanwhile, you’ll need two dollops of chilis (about two tablespoons) for the two-egg omelet we’re about to make. In an hour or less they’ll thaw and be ready to use.

The eggs I prefer are from the super duper local poultry farm called Pollo Real, which retails chicken products every Saturday morning at the Farmers’ Market. (Tuesdays, too, during mid-summer.) These eggs are so fresh it’s almost a crime to tart them up, but the better the eggs the better the omelet. For cheese, what you’ll need is aged cheddar or maybe gruyère. At any rate, grate some cheese with a flavor you like. You’ll need a couple of ounces or more, depending on the runniness of the omelet you’re aiming for.

As for the rest, here’s what also goes into my chili cheese omelet: a couple of tablespoons of chopped fresh tomato and a generous tablespoon of chopped onions. Vary and balance the amounts to please your own palate. That’s what slapdash cooking is all about. Being free. Having fun. Eating well.

When it comes to beating the eggs, I blend the whites and yellows, then add a tablespoon or so of water and beat a little more. I apply the thinnest possible film of butter to a non-stick pan, get the surface really hot, pour in the eggs, scatter chili, tomato and onions over one half of the egg rondel and sprinkle the cheese over the whole circle. What comes next is simple but important.  I cook my omelets warily on fairly low heat, to keep the eggs from burning while the veggies get semi-cooked and the cheese melts.

Shortly after the bottom surface of the omelet begins to show hints of golden browning, I fold the non-veg half over the half with veggies.  Sometimes I flip the resulting half moon, too, once or twice, depending on what’s happening inside. The goal is to congeal the egg as much as you like without scorching the outer surface of the omelet. If you use good eggs, by the way, it's not necessary to cook them to death. What’s more, a decent omelet isn’t leathery.

Finally, slide the omelet onto one plate—or cut it in half and serve two people who want to have room for toast and muffins, too. Some words of caution: if presentation is important to you, don’t try to make a four egg omelet this way. You’ll end up with curious free form offerings on the plates.

By rights this chili cheese omelet should be served with green chile sausage, also from organic venders at the Farmers’s Market. But bacon’s just as good, and that’s all I had on hand: local bacon, smoked just right. Better than filet mignon. For breakfast, anyway.

And while you’re enjoying your omelet, do please pray for rain.

On Dealing with the Hermit Kingdom

By Patricia H Kushlis

Does North Korea’s leadership belong in the madhouse or Alcatraz as so many of our right wing politicians, militarists and some journalists seem to suggest?  Or are they behaving as sanely – at least from their perspective - as their accusers?  Is there something important going on in Pyongyang that is overlooked here that should be considered?

I attended an excellent two-day Santa Fe World Affairs Forum symposium on US-East Asian relations at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico early last week:  The North Korean nuclear threat, China’s capabilities and future intentions, reasons for Myanmar’s immense political changes and the overall ramifications of the changing face of Asia for US interests were at the top of the agenda.

Several years ago, then President George W Bush labeled North Korea – as well as Iran – as the Axis of Evil. This reversed Bill Clinton’s softer line that may or may not have been making progress towards some kind of normalization of relations with the Hermit Kingdom.  If such a sea change were to happen, our military presence in North Asia could and should be reduced substantially. This in itself is likely a flashing yellow light for those in the defense industry who profit from a continued state of high military readiness in the region not just those in Pyongyang but also our own in Washington.

No one, however, has ever satisfactorily explained to me the reasons for Pyongyang’s peculiar actions or what might induce its secretive leaders to change course.  In essence, the Hermit Kingdom has been brushed off as the proverbial enigma wrapped in a mystery - without further thought or examination.

Political Science 101

But put away the swords and the blinders for the moment and go back to the basics:  The first axiom of politics is a leader’s (or collective leadership’s) determination to remain in power.  That’s lesson one, political science 101.   In Pyongyang, the transfer of power is dynastic.  The country may call itself socialist, workers or communist but in reality it is governed through an age old form of familial leadership based on an historic Asian dynastic model.  Moreover, over the years, the North Korean dynasty has been propped up by the country’s military with China’s acquiesce and sometimes more.

I once had a Burmese cat named Cleo who spent the first two weeks of our assignment to Athens with her nose pointed into a back corner of a shelf in our bedroom closet.  I suppose she must have come out when no one was looking because she clearly used the litter box and ate her favorite food.  She ultimately resurfaced but only after we moved to a garden apartment which allowed her to explore the garden at will sitting for hours soaking up the Greek sun.

Fear of the unknown had much to do with Cleo’s behavior in that temporary apartment just as it’s plausible that fear of being dethroned (or possibly worse – think Ceaceşcu in December 1989) has been a likely motivating factor for North Korea’s seemingly irrational behavior since the country was established in the wake of the Korean War.  This flashed through my brain when one of the experts at the conference in describing the unique characteristics of the North Korean propaganda barrage pointed out that the country’s threats always concluded with the phrase: “if the Americans attack.”  But the speaker added that these four final words are not reported in the media or government statements we see in the West. 

Living in Challenging Times: the US and East Asia

 

LIVING IN CHALLENGING TIMES: THE UNITED STATES & EAST ASIA
a two-day symposium

April 8-9, 2013
St. John’s College, Santa Fe, New Mexico

sponsored by

SANTA FE WORLD AFFAIRS FORUM
Co-sponsors: U.N.M. Center for Science, Technology & Policy
Albuquerque Committee on Foreign Relations, American Foreign Service Association & St. John’s College

DAY ONE:  2-6 pm: Registration; “East Asia and the Pacific:  Issues and Challenges,” Ambassador Will Itoh, Director, Washington International Programs, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; and Senior Advisor, McLarty Associates ; “North Asia and the Korea Conundrum,” Dr. Chris Nelson, Vice President of Samuels International, Washington, D.C.; Cocktail reception for speakers and Symposium participants.

DAY TWO: 9:15 am -4:00 pm: Registration; “China as a Rising Power Seeking its Rightful Place,” Dr. Suisheng Zhao, Director of the Center for U.S.-China Cooperation, Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver; “The Chinese Military Machine,” Dennis Blasko, author “The Chinese Army Today: Tradition and Transformation” (Routledge 2012) and former US military attaché Beijing; talk on “Is the Myanmar Exuberance Irrational -- and whatever happened to Vietnam?,” Ms. Frances Zwenig, President, U.S.-ASEAN Business Council Institute, Inc.; wind-up panel.  Full buffet luncheon for speakers and Symposium participants.

All sessions will be followed by generous discussion periods.

PARTNER ORGANIZATIONS:  Friendship Force, Albuquerque Council on International Visitors, Public Diplomacy Alumni Association, University of New Mexico’s International Studies Institute, University of New Mexico’s National Security Studies Program, Public Diplomacy Council, Women’s Voices, American Association of University Women – Santa Fe Branch, & Fulbright Association of New Mexico.  

FEES & REGISTRATION: Both days: $70 members; $85 non-members; $30 students; 4/8 only: $40; 4/9 only: $50.  To reserve a place please e-mail waforum@gmail.com.  Symposium fees may be paid with your credit card using our Paypal account. You may access Paypal directly by clicking on this link or you may send your check to The Santa Fe World Affairs Forum, PO Box 31965, Santa Fe. NM, 87594, with your name and contact information, if you are not a member.  Checks should be made out to The Santa Fe World Affairs Forum.  Please note on your check that payment is for the April 2013 symposium.  Your payment guarantees you a place, but it is non-refundable after Wednesday, April 4, if you are unable to attend.

 

Please tell the RNC - It’s the message, not the media

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Two weeks ago Friday, David Brooks – upon learning that the U.S. unemployment rate had fallen to 7.7% in February with over 200,000 new jobs added – told Judy Woodward on the Newshour that if one combined the good jobs news with the bad sequestration news the US was experiencing the norm:  because the business cycle works independently from politics – and there is little, if anything, politicians can do to make the economy grow.  Essentially, Brooks argued that the economic growth of this country was out of its politicians’ hands.

This is certainly not the first time I’ve heard the politics/economics disconnect argument, but I wonder about its’ accuracy.  I also wonder if a Republican, not a Democrat, had been in the White House whether we would have heard Brooks’ pontification in such reverentially canonic terms.

The deep economic recession this country entered in 2007 as a result of poorly regulated banks and financial institutions that brought about the housing bubble, Lehman’s demise and the stock market collapse might well have been avoided had those pesky government regulations and regulators remained in place.  Furthermore, had this country not been spending zillions of dollars (something like $8 trillion and counting) to fight two wars in the Middle East simultaneously – one entered into on spurious grounds and the other which could have been handled more smartly, efficiently and cheaply from the outset through far more limited and targeted action – the US government would have had an easier time applying Keynesian economic principles when (and if) the economic seas became rough because the Treasury would not have had to borrow so deeply or the Federal Reserve go through such contortions to keep the economy from total collapse.

Keynes

British economist John Maynard Keynes, the right-wing’s bête noir and guru of the left, argued in the 1930s that governments needed to run deficits to keep the unemployed from starving or freezing to death so as to get through the rough patches when a country’s economy tanked.  Whereas governments needed to recoup, regroup and run a budgetary surplus when the private sector economy hummed along on all four cylinders.   Unfortunately, George W Bush, the most recent of America’s over-spenders, forgot – or never knew - the second part of Keynes’ prescription as he operated the US economy on a war footing for most of his two year term that ended in the “Great Recession” debacle.

The British government under the Coalition has also forgotten – or actually it has intentionally thumbed its nose at Keynes despite his British origins.  Most recently the British economy took a hit from the debt rating agencies because, in essence, its austerity programs have failed.  Why?  Sometimes it’s necessary to pump prime to get an economy moving again so that a country can grow its way out of recession.  It’s not all that counter-intuitive. Really.

Diplomacy still works – or does it?

By Patricia H. Kushlis

(The following speech by Patricia H. Kushlis on the future of Diplomacy was delivered at OASIS (Albuquerque, NM) on Monday, February 4, 2013)

On Thursday, January 24^th John Kerry sailed through his hour long hearing in front of former colleagues on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in his quest to become this country’s next Secretary of State.  Five days later, Kerry was confirmed as Secretary of State by the full Senate with a vote of 97-3. Friday was Hillary Clinton’s last day in that position and on Saturday – Kerry was sworn in as the State Department’s new chief.

He will take over a troubled department in a difficult post 9/11 era when far too often America’s approach has been to strike first and consider the consequences later.  He will also follow super-star Hillary Clinton in a position that – with the notable exception of Benghazi – was a far smoother ride for her than for either Colin Powell or Condoleezza Rice, her Bush administration predecessors. 

Already a celebrity as the wife of former president Bill Clinton and Senator from New York, Clinton was blessed by serving under a president who was popular in most parts of the world simply because he saw the world through a very different and more finely differentiated prism than had his predecessor. 

This obviously does not mean that our foreign affairs travails disappeared January 2009 but it does mean that we have been far more willing to deal with international issues in coordination with allies and friends using a wider range of tools at our disposal.  Often one size or one implement does not fit all – and this is the greatest decision a president faces – what to use, what mix to use – and when to apply it.  A political realist will say that the most effective foreign policy rests on the choice of tools, the people who use them and the timing of their use.   

It’s a truism that diplomacy is war by other means.  Diplomacy is also politics on a grand stage.             

Soon after 9/11/2001, the US government under George W Bush launched two major wars in Asia determined to use military force to resolve two very different foreign policy challenges.  The first – for which much of the rest of the world was supportive - was the pursuit of Osama Bin Laden, the financier and instigator of the murder of over 3,000 people – Americans and foreigners who happened to be at the wrong spot at the wrong time - through the audacious destruction of New York’s World Trade Center and a part of the Pentagon.

The second was the decision to invade Iraq to rid the world of Saddam Hussein’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction based on the premise that this would simultaneously solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict because - according to the invasion’s brains, protagonists and propagandists - the road to Jerusalem went through Baghdad.  The US learned the hard way that it didn’t, it doesn’t and it won’t.

The tracking down and killing of Osama bin Laden a decade later, did not take hundreds of thousands of boots on the ground – not even thousands – but it did require a first class intelligence effort on the part of the CIA and its execution by a couple of helicopters and a small crew of special forces.

One thing we should have learned, however, is that torture and water boarding of prisoners did not provide the information needed or used to find Bin Laden – thus what is purported otherwise to be a thought-provoking but controversial new movie – “Zero Dark Thirty” about his capture perpetuates and propagandizes an unnecessary falsehood.

Iraq Invasion Effects

No good case can be made for the ill-fated invasion of Iraq for which we continue to pay dearly.  It was based on false premises, built on false information – premises and information which many of you here in New Mexico know our weapons laboratory scientists, the CIA, the Department of Energy and State Department analysts questioned at the time. 

To compound the credibility problem, Secretary of State Colin Powell’s false accusations at the United Nations not only destroyed his personally illustrious international career but also called into question the veracity of America’s voice in the world.

But if the largest, best financed and equipped military in the world can’t protect America’s security alone what about its diplomats? How can just a few thousand people – fewer than the number of musicians in military bands – do the job? (15,150 including generalists and specialists; about 6200 generalists in 2004 and the total is not that much larger now) What is the job that needs to be done and what are the characteristics needed to do it?

What is diplomacy how is it practiced?

Let’s begin with definitions of diplomacy and diplomats. Is a diplomat a representative of a government sent abroad to lie for his or her country? Is diplomacy naturally duplicitous – or is Colin Powell’s “misstatement” about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction at the UN not representative of what American diplomacy can or should be? Or is diplomacy synonymous with the world’s second “oldest profession,” that is spying – or information collecting through surreptitious means?  

Is diplomacy a way to solve problems? Is it to avoid wars? Who practices diplomacy?  Who is a diplomat? Is it a briefcase-carrying man in a pinstriped suit? Is it jazz or hip hop musicians performing in other countries under US Embassy auspices? Or traveling privately? Where does diplomacy happen? Is it in conference rooms? Is it on basketball courts or golf courses? What does diplomacy help solve? Does it help resolve disagreements between countries? Quell world hunger and disease?  What does diplomacy do, who does it and why?    

Our Best Holiday Wishes

 

From the Rocky Mountains to England's West Coast, we at WhirledView wish you and yours a peaceful holiday season and a Happy New Year!

 

After the Fat Lady Sang

By Patricia H Kushlis

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about elections it’s that the fat lady’s song sometimes resembles a five hour Wagnerian opera far more than a three minute hip-hop track for I-pod. 

Furthermore, such elections may also not follow the shortest distance, or even the most obvious route, between two points – as we saw with the recent 2012 US presidential race as the tipping point came when the media called the race in Obama’s favor not, as expected, because of the swing states of Virginia, Ohio or Florida (where the state finally went for Obama by some 74,000 votes) but with the unlikely combination of New Hampshire, Iowa, Colorado and Nevada.

Yes, this was a reasonably close election but no cliffhanger. In the end, Obama rode to a second term despite a still struggling economy and relatively weak jobs performance numbers caused primarily by a self-inflicted and inherited drawn-out financial sector crisis that threatened to destroy the US and global economies before this young president’s election in 2008.

There are many reasons for Obama’s second term victory – the pundits and the analysts will be pouring over massive amounts of data generated for months to come but, as John Nichols in The Nation points out this was nothing like George W Bush’s squeaker “victories” in 2000 or 2004 which the Republican Party – or at least the powers that existed then – delusionally termed mandates with “winners” that behaved delusionally accordingly.          

Even a week before the November 6, 2012 Elections I had sworn to friends that I intended to turn off the television, shut down the computer, go to bed early and pull the covers over my head for the duration of election night.  I didn’t do that – as the composite polls and analyses began predicting solid Obama and Democratic Senate victories almost immediately thereafter. I did watch the results at home on PBS - between trips to the refrigerator - in a far more serene atmosphere than when I had worked at Voter News Service elections headquarters in New York City for Elections 2000 reporting the then too close to call swing and bell weather New Mexico vote to the major US news outlets throughout the long night and into the early hours of the morning.  

A different electorate?

Certainly the American electorate has changed demographically over the past decade and these changes have implications for the elections. In a nutshell, there are simply fewer Evangelical, older white males - except in the Old Confederacy and several of the Plains States - than in the past.

This was the first time New Mexico was designated neither a swing nor a Bell Weather state.  In reality, New Mexico is still a Bell Weather state because, after all, the electorate went for Obama and, like the country as a whole, by smaller margins than in 2008.  The percentage of the vote in the president’s camp here was 52% - three percentage points below what, I’m told, is considered safely blue.

Yes, New Mexico has a majority Hispanic population but Hispanics in the state’s south tend to register as Democrats but vote Republican so it should come as no surprise that Republican Congressman Steve Pearce gained reelection in the geographically-large, mostly rural, population-small District 3 that borders Mexico.  New Mexican Hispanics also tend to be more integrated into the society as a whole than Hispanics elsewhere in the country:  some New Mexican Hispanics are very much part of the professional and leadership classes that run this state.  In fact, their ancestors came directly from Spain in the 16^th and 17^th centuries. In no way then are they part and parcel of an underprivileged, immigrant, Hispanic working class as is the case for some of this state’s neighbors.    

Elections Horror 2012 – A 2000 Reprise?

By Patricia H. Kushlis

The final question at a talk on civil discourse by James A. Baker at the Wilson Center on Monday, October 23, 2012 raised the specter of another razor-thin election reminiscent of 2000.  A subsequent headline in the Washington Post suggested that the 2012 presidential election is so close that the Electoral College could split evenly between Obama and Romney.  Later, the revised headline which more accurately describes the story was that the popular vote and the Electoral College vote could be at odds but this time with Obama winning the Electoral College and Romney the popular vote.

Baker, of course, was a controversial figure in the 2000 presidential elections.  He was the lawyer who led the Republican legal challenge to the Democratic call for a recount of the vote in several Florida counties.  The recount - had the Supreme Court allowed it to proceed - might well have resulted in a changed Electoral College result that not only would have reflected the popular vote but also changed the political and economic complexion of this country and its role in and perception of it in the world.

In short, without Bush 43^rd’s ill-fated decision to invade Iraq in and of itself, a costly and difficult war would have been avoided and the US would have remained a largely benevolent power in the minds of most foreigners.     

In retrospect, the Democratic Party’s mistakes that fateful night were two:  1) to call for only a selective county recount, and, 2) in my estimation, appoint Warren Christopher to lead its legal challenge.  I never thought Christopher was a strong Secretary of State whereas Baker was and I thought even at the time that the Democrats would have done far better to appoint a far more aggressive lawyer to lead their legal challenge in 2000.   

Back to 2000

I spent elections night 2000 on the 93^rd floor of World Trade Center Tower Two – a place that sadly no longer exists – as New Mexico State Manager for Voter News Service, a national vote reporting and predictions organization that sadly also no longer exists.  At the time, New Mexico was both a swing and a Bell Weather State. I also happened to work in the same room as the Florida State Manager.

This year New Mexico is solid blue so how our voters vote doesn’t really matter to the campaigns this year except for a fight over a Senate seat which - if the US Chamber of Commerce has its way - would turn from blue to red.  But even with all the Chamber money thrown in, the polls continue to show Democratic Congressman Martin Heinrich well ahead - thus far, at least.  Occasionally common sense does trump money even in the craziness of American politics. 

In 2000, New Mexico was so closely divided in the presidential polls that every one of our votes mattered.  It took about a month for all the New Mexico votes to be counted before the state was narrowly declared Blue. Our major culprit was the then incompetent Republican Bernalillo County Clerk (the state’s largest county) famous for declaring that she never finished the count. This time she ultimately had to – despite a lost ballot box locked in some out of the way closet, a wayward box that mysteriously turned up about a month later when, of course, it no longer mattered.  

Due to their blatant incompetency both she and her elections manager were gone by elections 2002 and we’ve elected Democratic County Clerks ever since. By the time the missing ballots were found, however, I had been back in New Mexico for about a month and the real fight over the nation’s future had remained centered on Florida.

I don’t blame Baker for the outcome – he did his job all too well - but I do blame Florida’s then Secretary of State. One of the many problems with US elections is that they are run by politically partisan state and county officials who themselves have a stake in the outcome.  Nevertheless, most of all I blame the US Supreme Court, then as now controlled by judges appointed by Republican presidents, which never, repeat, never should have even agreed to hear the case. 

Unfortunately, the highest Court is still controlled – 5 to 4 – by the Republicans but let’s hope that if the elections balance on a knife’s edge yet again, that the justices exhibit better judgment this time around and stay out.  I’m skeptical, however, that the once burned, twice shy rule will play out.   The high court five already caused enough havoc earlier this year by upholding “Citizens United” (a 5-4 decision) which has resulted in the flooding of the campaigns with SUPERPAC money largely favoring the Republicans. More than 80% of these funds it turns out, come from fewer than 200 of America’s richest – according, at least, to a study cited in the October 13 Economist.

As the Economist also pointed out in another article in the magazine’s same special section that this approach to politics is just a step away from “The Gilded Age,” a time near the end of the nineteenth century when corporate America blatantly bought politicians outright before a depression brought on by their profligacy ushered in a populist reaction that swung the pendulum in the opposite direction.  This depression hit my ancestors so hard that my grandmother was denied her chance to study at Radcliffe College or ever get beyond a high school education because the family could no longer afford it.  The depression of the 1930s – following the “Roaring Twenties” - another Republican “gilded age” - denied my mother-in-law of a college education she too desperately wanted and deserved for the same reason.            

Back on the 93^rd floor, however, VNS called Florida for Al Gore because, in fact, that’s what the VNS predictions formula indicated. Exit polling, which was part of the formula, in and of itself is notoriously accurate (far more than pre-elections polls).  The VNS call came late in the evening: and, to repeat, the figures being reported from Florida substantiated it.  The VNS formula which factored in a number of indicators including select precinct reporting too may not have been perfect – but, in reality it was likely better than what we have now since VNS was destroyed by the major US news media that had funded it for 20 or more years and gave AP sole control of the process thereafter (which decided it didn’t need precinct reporting or a separate check on its own county reporters).

Here’s today’s problem:  The quagmire in Florida could repeat itself – the Republicans have been working hard to make it so - through that party’s perennial insistence upon denying poorer voters the franchise - at least those more likely to vote for the Democrats despite the fact that study after study has shown that electoral fraud perpetrated by ineligible voters is almost nonexistent.