Today we give thanks for you, our friends, and the good lives we lead. Thank you, everyone.

Following a question The Holmberg asked on our forums, I thought a primer on how bills pass through the house and senate might help before Jeff, Darryl, and I talk health care and other pending issues.

Items Explained are…

• Sponsored bills
• Conference committees and reports
• Concurrent resolutions
• Super Majorities
• Filibusters
• Reconciliation
• Senate Rule XXII

For additional information, I recommend Project Vote Smart. It has a lot of good information.

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In October, my friend “Good Ken” Braun came to visit for a week. It was the first time he had been to New England and he picked the best time of year to do it. New Hampshire’s largest industry is tourism and September and October are our busiest months. That’s when people come to see the trees change color. (Regretably, this is called “leaf peeping,” extensibly making those that participate leaf peepers. Put that on a billboard why don’tcha.) There are a variety of ways to experience the north end of the Apalaichan Mountains and the majesty that is New Hampshire in autumn and we did a few (I clocked 1500 miles driving over the course of that week). The best among them is ziplining. We headed up to Lincoln, New Hampshire, to Alpine Adventures who provide this service (along with snowmobiling and other fun activities that I have partaken in and recommend). The concept is simple. Take a steel cable and run it from a tree on one mountain across to another mountain. Tie onto the cable and slide from one side to the other. Granted, you’re not “tied” on so much as clipped on with a pulley train, high-tensile harness, and crampons. It’s comparable to repelling but with a better view.

I also had the good sense to bring along a Flip video. Come along as we fly above New Hampshire in all its resplendency. (It was a cloudy day, but I have left the video untreated so you can see how awesome it is even when the sun isn’t out.) Something to think on as you watch, one hundred years ago New Hampshire was 94% deforested.

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Thank you.

It can be a bit daunting discussing politics with two political management graduate students. Who am I? Just some guy that likes politics. Or am I? Having grown up in Missouri, perhaps I gained some type of political psychic power, foresight into election results.

From NPR’s Political Junkie, I won the contest for the 2009 election day results:

Just back from a post-election visit to Mom in Florida — she’s fine, thanks for asking! — it’s now time to announce the winner of our 2009 Election Contest!

I compiled a list of key elections — everything from the two gubernatorial and two congressional races, plus the same-sex marriage referenda in Maine, down to a handful of mayoral contests. You had to pick the winners in each.

But there was also a scoring system involved: ten points each for the gov. races in Virginia and New Jersey, as well as the special congressional race in upstate New York. Five points each for the California 10 House race, the Maine referendum, and the New York City mayoral election. And one point each went to the other mayoral races.

We had a mechanism for breaking a tie, should that have been necessary.

It wasn’t.

Not only was Joe Selby of Nashua, N.H., the winner — he got every one right. He finished with 47 points … closely followed by Maureen Hogan of Phoenix, Ariz., with 46 points. Joe wins a pair of 1976 presidential campaign buttons from President Ford and Jimmy Carter.

To quote Nathan Fillion, Bam said the lady!

In a link passed from Awawro on twitter, we get to see a You Tube video of the real-life Anne Frank.

There is the book, the movie, and the museum in Amsterdam, but to me, there’s something different about seeing the person. Why is that, do you think? You don’t hear her speak. You don’t get any greater sense of her character than what those few seconds provide. But it’s real. It’s not words on a page or a Hollywood interpretation. It’s her. She was real. And everything that happened was real. History living for the briefest of seconds.