Clear day at Morro Rock 

Ciuapilli Lopez and Francisco Lopez eating by the bay. 

The valley around Avenal 

The kisses goodbye 

Pilli's trip to california

A hair raising experiance. 

MLK belated

just read this ... http://www.bustedhalo.com/features/TheProphetWithin.htm

Pilli saying by to Phoenix for a while... I'm going going back back to Cali cali.... 

Parents and lopez boyz. 

nothing was stirring not even a mouse named dora. 

My parents with dimissing vision but ever growing style. 

New years pics 

Pilli on one of last days of Pre-school 

New Years picture and update.

Here's the story of New Years. Had a crazy day before and at midnight. I enjoyed it very much. My uncle Cruz came to help show some cattle at the Arizona National Livestock Show for his ranch he works with the Spanish Ranch in the Mountains north of Santa Barbara. Since some jerk stole my cellphone I was phoneless for about a week and didn't know if my uncle had finally gotten to phoenix. So I didn't know he was here till his last day here the last day of the year. It was fun and I did take tons of pictures unfortunately I deleted them along with a ton of picture from Walter Jr.'s going away party and our Christmas pictures... Very bummed. But as a whole we had a very good christmas season and a good going way party even is mari wanted to fight or kick out most of the party goers. We ended the year seeing our good friend Amy and decided that we needed to make big changes this year or forever hold our peace. I gave mari an engagement ring with additional promises for each of us. (The bling bling will soon be on the blog.)
Plus the biggest news is that pilli is going to be on vacation for the first half of this year. Yes we decided to send her to my parents for the semester so that we could go to school and hopefully save some money. And now for the pictures. (Pictures not working ... will be up later might go to cali this weekend)

Good news

Eminem, ex-wife apply for marriage license
.... good for him... although I don't always agree with his raps or lyrics I do appreciate his real attempt to deal with issues and be a good father. Hopefully they can find happiness with one another again.

Sick

I've been sick since new years day... but it developed to full blown strep throat which hurts a lot. Got tons of pictures and stories to tell... hope to get better soon and drop them off on the blog.

Happy New Year 2006

Party hardy...

Beyond the Imperial Presidency

Chapman:

President Bush is a bundle of paradoxes. He thinks the scope of the federal government should be limited but the powers of the president should not. He wants judges to interpret the Constitution as the framers did, but doesn't think he should be constrained by their intentions.

He attacked Al Gore for trusting government instead of the people, but he insists anyone who wants to defeat terrorism must put absolute faith in the man at the helm of government.

...

But the theory boils down to a consistent and self-serving formula: What's good for George W. Bush is good for America, and anything that weakens his power weakens the nation. To call this an imperial presidency is unfair to emperors.

...

The government easily could have gotten search warrants to conduct electronic surveillance of anyone with the slightest possible connection to terrorists. The court that handles such requests hardly ever refuses. But Bush bridles at the notion that the president should ever have to ask permission of anyone.

He claims he can ignore the law because Congress granted permission when it authorized him to use force against Al Qaeda. But we know that can't be true. Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales says the administration didn't ask for a revision of the law to give the president explicit power to order such wiretaps because Congress--a Republican Congress, mind you--wouldn't have agreed. So the administration decided: Who needs Congress?

What we have now is not a robust executive but a reckless one. At times like this, it's apparent that Cheney and Bush want more power not because they need it to protect the nation, but because they want more power. Another paradox: In their conduct of the war on terror, they expect our trust, but they can't be bothered to earn it.

-Atrios

Christmas with the Silvas

Living with Family is an intresting experieance to say the least but for holidays is nice to be around a family. I wonder how this is going to fit under the Christmas tree.

27 anos casados

Alittle pilli to showcase the similarities.

Photoshopping...

my first photoshopping...

Chappelle theory?

don't know how truth this is.. but have Oprah in my room would mess with me too.
http://www.chappelletheory.com/

this is good too.... http://users.panola.com/AAGHS/ARTICLES/SURNAMES.html

Lety Lopez Birthday

Birthday posts

Pictures of Pilli on her weekend long birthday celebrate... which now she wakes up everyday and says I wanna party for me. Candy really spoils her.

Yes it matters... Liberal Oasis

December 20, 2005 PERMALINK
Why Checks and Balances Help Fight Terror
(posted Dec. 20 2 AM ET)

If ABC’s The Note weren’t on holiday break, they’d probably say something like: “When will stupid Democrats learn that smart Republicans love it when they focus on terrorism, because it reinforces the Strong GOP/Weak Dem narrative.”

And they would have half a point.

The Strong GOP/Weak Dem narrative, regarding national security, most certainly exists.

It’s not a new problem, and there is no quick fix for it.

But the solution is not to mimic Republican foreign policy principles, if for no other reason that Republican foreign policy is bad policy.

Nor is it to duck the issues and keep quiet when Republicans break the law when conducting foreign policy.

The solution, and it’s a long-term one, is to clearly and consistently articulate what Democratic foreign policy principles are, painting a positive vision of where the party would take the country and the world, and contrasting it with the GOP vision.

(LiberalOasis discussed this in terms of Iraq policy earlier this month.)

If you don’t do that, and you only raise your voice when civil liberties are violated, then you risk looking like you don’t have the stomach to do what it takes to protect the nation.

And you give the GOP the opening to say, Dems won’t go to the mat to stop terror.

It’s not enough to note that the laws were broken, or the Constitution was subverted. It can be shrugged off as mere technicality.

It’s not enough to raise the prospect of people’s rights being violated. It’s too easy to think that will only happen to the “bad guys” and not to yourself.

Both of those criticisms should be made, vigorously so.

But they should be put into the context of a larger, consistently articulated, anti-terror strategy.

And that is, if America is going to be a force for credible democracy, and if it's going to rally the world to isolate and suffocate Al Qaeda, we cannot allow America to lose its moral standing.

The torture, the secret prisons, the warrantless invasions of privacy, that gives our enemies ammunition.

That helps them make a case that we are not on the side of average Arabs and Muslims.

Terror suspects must be investigated, interrogated and imprisoned.

But we don’t wantonly invade privacy and secretly imprison people, because you can get it wrong and you can destroy the lives of innocents.

Not only does that hurt individuals, it hurts the larger cause.

We have checks and balances to prevent such errors and allow for mistakes to be fixed.

So sensitive decisions are not made recklessly and politically. So the fight against terror is as effective as possible.

And we are savvy enough to have created systems that allow for checks and balances without sacrificing speed and efficiency.

Bush in particular has shown how power can be abused, and why checks and balances are so important, by claiming legal authority he simply does not have.

It was that same attitude about unbalanced executive power that led to the blown cover of a CIA agent and the rendition of suspects to countries that torture.

Bush and the GOP are fighting terror and conducting foreign policy the wrong way, which is why the Al Qaeda ideology has dramatically spread since 9/11.

Once it’s clear that our way is the best way to fight terror, then not only will the GOP lose its ability to claim that Dems aren’t willing to do what it takes to protect the nation, it will become clear that the opposite is true.

Ripped from Angela's Blog

whoa. zach from saved by the bell is half asian. he's half malaysian. weird huh.

Dia de la Virgen

Some people say that Mexicans are more devoted to the Virgen de Guadalupe then to the actual savior. I would probably count myself as on of those they call the Guadalupanas. But today is her day and thus we honor her.

The War on Christmas

Sam Seder did a pretty good job on CNN today giving this issue the degree of respect it deserves:
SEDER: Listen, as far as the war on Christmas goes, I feel like we should be waging a war on Christmas. I mean, I believe that Christmas, it's almost proven that Christmas has nuclear weapons, can be an imminent threat to this country, that they have operative ties with terrorists and I believe that we should sacrifice thousands of American lives in pursuit of this war on Christmas. And hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money.

PHILLIPS: Is it a war on Christmas, a war Christians, a war on over-political correctness or just a lot of people with way too much time on their hands?

SEDER: I would say probably, if I was to be serious about it, too much time on their hands, but I'd like to get back to the operational ties between Santa Claus and al Qaeda.

PHILLIPS: I don't think that exists. Bob? Help me out here.

SEDER: We have intelligence, we have intelligence.

PHILLIPS: You have intel. Where exactly does your intel come from?

SEDER: Well, we have tortured an elf and it's actually how we got the same information from Al Libbi. It's exactly the same way the Bush administration got this info about the operational ties between al Qaeda and Saddam.


...

Yes, well, Kyra, I mean, listen, I would like Bob to tell me who is the person who has been offended by someone saying Merry Christmas to them? I've never met that person.

I don't celebrate Christmas. But if someone says "Merry Christmas" to me, I either think, well, it's a little bit odd, it's like me saying happy birthday to you on my birthday, but no one cares.

But I will tell you this, as we wage the war on the war on the war on the war on Christmas on our radio show. News Corp., Fox News, those people who have started this entire war on Christmas mean, fake war, they're having a holiday party.

President Bush saying "Happy Holidays." Tokyo Rose, Laura Bush, saying "Happy Holidays" to her dogs in the video, I'm sure you've seen it. I mean, these are the things that we should be talking about when we are waging this war in Iraq, we should be equating it to the war on Christmas.

What else would Bob Knight have an opportunity to do, how else would he get on television if he wasn't pretending to be attacked.

KINGHT: This would be funny except it is serious to a lot of people who have seen their faith cleansed from the public square systemically.

SEDER: Are you suggesting, Bob, that someone can't celebrate Christmas in America? Tell me about the person who can escape the celebration.

...

SEDER: I do agree with Bob. I think what should happen is companies should calculate how much money they're getting from people who are celebrating Christmas and provide exactly that much amount of Merry Christmas, because that is exactly how I would want any type of religious holiday to be celebrated.

...

SEDER: Hannukah is not a high holiday. Our high holidays are Rosh Hashanna and Yom Kippur, which I'm sure Bob has been protesting why there are not more Yom Kippur sales or Rosh Hashanah sales during those holidays. Why shouldn't there be, right Bob?

...

SEDER: Bob, have you ever protested Martin Luther King Day not being celebrated. Do you resent when people don't say "Happy Martin Luther King Day" a month out in advance?

...

PHILLIPS: Bob, I'm going to let you have the final thought.

KNIGHT: OK. You know, when the Nazis moved into Austria in 1936...

SEDER: Oh, that's offensive, Bob, to raise Nazis. KNIGHT: They immediately removed from the schools. You can read about it in...

PHILLIPS: Hold on, Sam. Let Bob make his point. Let Bob make his point. Go ahead, Bob.

KNIGHT: You can't even let me speak. Can you? You're so...

Maria Trapp wrote the story of the Trapp singers that's in "The Sound of Music," and she said she sent her kids to school after the Nazis took over. And they came home and said mama, we can't say the word Christmas anymore. It's now winter holiday.

I think that ought to disturb people...

SEDER: Kyra, that's offensive.

KNIGHT: ...that we're moving toward that kind of attitude in this country.

SEDER: The Puritans also outlawed Christmas. The founding fathers of this country would fine you in Massachusetts if you celebrated Christmas in the beginning. So don't talk about Nazis, Bob. I think that's really inappropriate.

Why do you have to bring hate to this Christmas and holiday season? That's so sad, Bob.

KNIGHT: Well, let's go to the Soviet Union then too. They had grandfather frost.

Well, it's the truth. You ought to read the book yourself, and maybe you'll change your mind.

SEDER: It's just sad that you have to raise Nazis when you're talking about Christmas and the holiday season. And we all know that Christmas actually, Tannenbaum, it's a German holiday. Bob, I'm really, really disappointed in you.

KNIGHT: I'm sorry to disappoint you, but if you can't understand the force of history...

SEDER: To bring up Nazis, Bob.

KNIGHT: I'm not calling you a Nazi.

SEDER: Oh, who you calling Nazi? Who are you calling a Nazi, sir?

KNIGHT: I'm not.

Domingo

Well very happy to see my first co-blogger posting some orginal poems and that she's doing well in Colorado. Hoping to go to church to celebrate el dia de la Virgen de Guadalupe one of the most important spiritual days for Mexicans everywhere. I decided that what I want for Christmas is to move. Somewhere prefably in California but sometime we go on crazy trying to figure out what is we want for life that we let live pass us by. Anyways. Now for a great political quote from Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) from WA and what he sees a wrong in our country... needless to say I fully agree.

McDERMOTT: But you are absolutely right and, you see, I mean, by the way if there's anything that's lost, that we've lost in the last for awhile, it's being the sense of the common good. You are honest enough to tell me that that's exactly how you thought. You are thinking about yourself. I've got a job, I've got health care, I've got, you know, I'm doing OK, so it's not a problem. Well Reagan started us down the road, not that he was the first, but he was the one that articulated best when he said: "are you better off this year than you were last year or four years ago?" The question should be are we better off than we were four years ago and the fact is that as a country and as a people and as a middle-class, we are not. Our salaries aren't going up, are ability to buy a house, you realize if we have any kind of financial problem in this country and we suddenly have to deal with rising interest rates, all those young people out there who have a house with an adjustable mortgage on it, you could have this thing jump 3%. . . . I think the biggest thing that's missing in the Democratic Party is that we have lost the idea of the common good. That's what Franklin Delano Roosevelt was going with social security, he's saying look, this is the worst that's ever been in this country but we would get together and we will find the way to help our old people in this country get back on their feet and we've driven down the poverty among senior from 50% to 10% and it's not all gone, is not perfect, is not the best system in the world, but it's going in the right direction and herein comes the President who says "we have to get rid off that, we want to put you on in the ownership society." What he means is that we want to put you out on your own and that's splitting again the idea of the common good. . . .

Bi-polar Day

Had my parents come thru Phoenix and forgot my damn camera.... Not happy about going to dinner today especially since it was forced on me. Along with a good gym workout, things are pretty 50-50 today... but I'm pesimistic for the end of the evening. Oh then there's christmas gifts. Blah.

Ciuapilli's Flu Shot day

belated Pilli picutres...

amy on her 25th day and pilli in various places.

40% of College Graduates Have "Unmanageable Debt Level"

The average student borrower now graduates with $27,600 of debt, almost three and a half times what it was a decade ago. 84 percent of black students and 66 percent of Latino students graduate with debt. And 39 percent of all student borrowers graduate with unmanageable levels of debt, according to the Department of Education.

Add to that young people's average credit card debt of over $4,000. Set aside your stereotypes of irresponsible youth: Over 70 percent of undergraduates use credit cards to buy school supplies, food and textbooks. 24 percent use their credit cards for tuition. Credit card companies are becoming the high-interest student loan industry of last resort. When it's all totaled up, young people spend 25 percent of every dollar earned on paying off debts and loans.

Federal policy isn't keeping pace with reality. Soaring education costs and inflation have not been met with aid increases. Caps on federal student loans have forced students to seek private loans, which were up from $1.1 billion in 1995-96 to $10.6 billion in 2003-04.These loans have much higher, often predatory, interest rates.

Today, the average Pell Grant covers only 40 percent of college tuition, compared to 77 percent 25 years ago. And under President Bush, the Department of Education revised Pell Grant eligibility guidelines, effectively excluding almost 100,000 young people from the program and reducing grant money for another 1.2 million.

The war on the middle class continues. College it is a ticket to indentured servitude.

Students are graduating with huge debt bills because state legislators have decided supplementing higher education is no longer important.

Let’s look at this from a timeline perspective. Student X graduates college with $27,600 — the average amount of graduate debt. Now student X decides he wants to become a doctor. There’s another 7 years of debt. Law school? – another three years of debt. Several people who I went to law school with were near $100,000 at graduation. How can these people even think about saving any money?

Here’s something else to think about: this level of debt discourages people from pursuing careers in lower income professions such as teaching. What’s the point in being a teacher if your salary won’t pay for the education you got to become a teacher?

How about this: by starting people into the world of debt at an early age, we are now encouraging people to take on ungodly levels of debt throughout their life. Debt is now OK – regardless of the level. College is now a debt trap.
Permalink by Hale Stewart

Anyone notice the minorities have the highes ratio? And then wonder why we don't continue our higher education in profesional schools and stuff. It's easier said than done especially when we're expected to be working or studying poor for 6-10 years min just while in school not counting the post school period. I think this also explains the expanding gap between rich and poor. Those that make it even with the debt and those that choose to live within there means or need to tend to more immediate matters such as family or other things. This really needs to be changed but how?

B-anal? or Banal?

lazy so copy and pasting

MISCELLANEOUS EZRA BLOGGING....I've always pronounced "banal" so that it rhymes with "anal." Thus I'm crushed to find out from Ezra that I'm in the minority: among the experts on the American Heritage Usage Panel, only 38% prefer that pronunciation, compared to 46% who prefer the pronunciation that rhymes with "canal." I've always considered that hopelessly pretentious. I wonder if it's an East coast/West coast thing?

But I still have a question for Ezra: how could you and a friend have gotten into even a "meaningless dispute" over this? It only takes a few seconds to look it up.

On a related Ezra note, sign me up as a Christmas carol lover. Actually, that's an unrelated note, isn't it? Either way, I love Christmas carols, especially classic tunes — anything written after 1900 is suspect in my book. For the perfect rendition of a classic carol, check out Amy Grant's version of "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing." Great stuff.

—Kevin Drum 1:53 PM Permalink | TrackBack (0) | Comments (111)

IMMIGRATION....In a few days I'll go to the polls to vote in a special election for the congressional seat vacated by Chris Cox, who was confirmed as head of the SEC last July. We've got the usual Republican and Democratic candidates on the ballot, of course, but we've also got an American Independent candidate: Jim Gilchrist, founder of The Minutemen, a group that became briefly famous earlier this year by heading down to the Arizona border with lawn chairs in tow to prevent the United States from being "devoured and plundered by the menace of tens of millions of invading illegal aliens."

Did it work? As a PR exercise it worked great, and although the Minutemen themselves didn't accomplish much, the pressure they've put on the Border Patrol for the past year seems to have paid off: vegetable growers say they're likely to get only 22,000 workers for their fields this year, compared to the 54,000 they need. Tom Nassif, president of the Western Growers Association, explains why:

"There are just some jobs people don't want to do," Nassif said. "It's the most developed nation in the world using a foreign workforce, and people need to recognize that. We need to make them legal."

Jack Vessey [who runs a vegetable farm near El Centro] said he listed openings for 300 laborers at the state office of employment last week to prepare the lettuce fields for harvest. "We got one person," he said. "He showed up and said, 'I'm not going to do that.' "

Now that's an odd thing, isn't it? Immigration foes like Gilchrist insist that if we only cut down on the supply of Mexican farm workers, wages and benefits would go up and plenty of Americans would be available for harvesting our leafy greens. And yet, despite this year's severe shortage of Mexican labor, Vessey is apparently offering the same backbreaking work, brutal conditions, low pay, and nonexistent benefits that he always has. Likewise, Ed Curry, a chili farmer who has given up on employing legal workers because the H2A program has "too many snafus," says only that he would be willing to pay legal workers "a bit more" than he does now.

Is this reluctance to increase wages caused by a fear that higher labor costs would make their produce too expensive to sell? On its face, that seems unlikely. Even a whopping 40% increase in farm wages would increase the wholesale cost of produce by only about 10%. But a shortage caused by letting crops go unharvested would surely have the same effect — and supermarkets would continue to buy.

That's not to say that foreign competition isn't a real issue for California farmers. It is. Still, the lesson from this natural experiment along the Arizona border seems pretty clear: farmers are flatly unwilling to pay their workers more. Whether that's because it would price their produce out of the market or because even a big wage increase wouldn't attract enough legal workers hardly matters. The evidence indicates that farmers would rather let their crops rot in the field than pay ten bucks an hour.

In other words, Gilchrist and his nativist ilk are barking up the wrong tree. What we need isn't a bunch of yahoos dotting the border with their lawn chairs and cell phones. Instead, we need to recognize that — like it or not — Americans very clearly want and rely on immigrant labor. The key, then, is not to eliminate it, but to figure out a rational way of limiting illegal immigration without simultaneously demonizing immigrants themselves. This might include programs that make it harder to cross the border illegally, but only if we also provide legal status to many more immigrants than we do now.

This combination — easier legal immigration paired with tougher illegal immigration — would provide immigrants with a greater incentive to try the legal route instead of the all-too-deadly "season of death" route. It would also provide us with the pool of immigrant labor we obviously want, increase immigrant wages, and cut down on the abuse they suffer from employers who know how easily they can be blackmailed.

Seems like it would be worth a try.

—Kevin Drum

Soul Food

panchitoatyale: but its a good day to remember family
panchitoatyale: or at least having to deal with them
Emar4: yes
Emar4: i love the family and SOUL FOOD!!!
Emar4: food cooked with love
Emar4: speaking of, next time you stop through CA, please stop by my place so i can cook for you
Emar4: tell me your favorite dishes and i'll make them

Reading time

Ok this one is especially for Irene, but read pass the third paragraph cuz this is good, just for thinking purposes.

http://amyhkonig.blogspot.com/2005/09/ensemble-film_29.html

Pray