So...making a butternut squash soup, brightened with some chipotle, and topped with a dollop of chipotle cream (diced chipotle in adobo, with some sour cream).  First time making this recipe, so we'll see.

And since it's Chinese New Year, tomorrow I'm going to make some dumplings and some spicy beef in lettuce cups.

Also going to make some meatballs tomorrow to eat later in the week...something about this weather makes me want to cook... love making things I've never made before, so hoping for some winners!  

The Koch brothers and Rupert Murdoch are exactly what has been repeatedly proven about them: A ruthless and small gang of billionaires willing to distort fact in the interest of the extremely wealthy and at the expense of an accurate assessment of what is actually going on in our duped democracy. You don't have to shut up if you can put up enough money or can create a propaganda fount that never stops troubling the waters with its untruths.

Regarding her commitment to homosexuals being treated like everyone else, Maddow went the way of human identification. She repeatedly found members of our armed forces who had done exemplary duty under danger and had won the respect of those who had lived through the horror of war with them. Those who thought that homosexual soldiers would crack under pressure were summarily silenced.

Anyone who makes human reality more obvious to us all has done the nation a great service.

Maddow is also very different from those liberals whose hearts are sickening sugar pills hidden beneath bitter surfaces.

She has never attempted to dismiss the pressure on the brave men and women who fight our wars. She has not tied a huge rock of liberal cliches around her neck and tried to float across the water.

Her lengthy features about mass murderers and assassins have been distinguished by the restraint that makes her depth of feeling so much more powerful because we come to know what these people actually did - to their victims and to the victims' families and friends.