January 22, two days post inauguration. Almost two whole days since President Obama took office and things haven't gotten any better. WTF?

My fascination with Volcan Chaiten continues. Not a day goes bye that I don't dial up the webcam so I can check out the steaming beast so far south on the coast of Chile. Estimates vary, but it looks like Chaiten has extruded approximately 3 cu.km. (1.3 cu. miles) of steaming hot lava dome. Wow. The eruption event is ongoing, with continuous water vapor emmisions highligted with dome collapes of varying sizes. A fairly large dome collapse occured on January 19, and has been captured in both the web-cam log as well as from space in NASA earth resource satellite imaging.



The cacophony continues, and the days press on. One of the best things to happen so far this new year is a reconnection with my dear friends Kim and Joe Martinez. I will not lose contact with close friends due to my lack of effort any more. Really.

So it's a new year. Thank goodness. President Obama will be sworn into office in less than three weeks, and the new "more democratic" congress was seated yesterday. It looks like W is going out more the lamb than the lion that he could've been. After all, he didn't bomb Iran. It's obvious that any escalation in force in Afghanistan will be left to the new president, and he's allowing Iraq to fade into memory. Shoot, maybe he'll go out of office with more than a 30% approval rating. Maybe he'll also benefit from Obama's long coat-tails.

Our guv, Mr. Richardson was forced to withdraw his name from consideration as the new Secretary of Commerce. This was due to some questions on the propriety of his dealings with a brokerage firm that contributed to his campaign and also won a lucrative state contract. These questions were large enough that they've been brought up by a federal grand jury. I thought a couple of weeks ago when Big Bill's name was mentioned that this investigation might just derail his nomination. Wow, I'm a pundit and didn't even realize it.

I been considering other blogs, and how some devote much space linking to and commenting on articles that support the author's points of view. The up-side of that approach is becoming better read on the issues and staying as current as possible. The down-side comes from tying oneself so tightly to a particular point of view that any comment made comes across as a bitter finger wagging ideological rant.

More on that later. A question just popped into my head about any correlation between political philosphies (secular liberal v. religious conservative) and national demographics. For example, I know the birth rate in Europe is in decline, and I'm wondering if that has any correlation to the overall movement of Europian society becomming more and more secular. Why birthing babies has anything to do with being godly escapes me, but it certainly has to be tied to giving some godly purpose to carnal activities. Whatever.

My next chore is to find a good liberal blog to subscribe to offset my subscription to various right-wing scribbles.

Peace.