The "green" kids have got nothing on us. We reuse and recycle, although maybe we're not so great on the "reduce" part of the prayer. Anyway, back when it was jack-o'-lantern time, the Mrs. and the kids brought home a tall gourd that was so interesting in its natural state that they left it uncarved. We're not sure you would even call it a pumpkin. Anyway, it joined our front porch Halloween display, then added to the atmosphere of Thanksgiving, and now is doing one more turn as a Christmas elf:

When the new year is here and the holiday trim is put away, that gal is heading for North Plains. But not before we will have gotten our money's worth out of her.

Last night we told the tale of our attempting to mix a Last Word cocktail with a wrong -- very wrong -- ingredient. Man, was it bad. But thanks an alert reader, who showed us how to track down a liquor store that had the right stuff, we gave it another shot tonight. And it was good.

Merry Christmas!

This one's a 2.8, at 4:25 this afternoon local time. Things are slipping under that part of town; there was a 3.1 nearby last month.

The tighty righty senator from Idaho apparently got too tight last night. Wonder if he was packing.

The players in our charity pro football underdog game have chosen the puppies they hope to find under the tree:

14 JACKSONVILLE vs. New England - Usual Kevin
13 TENNESSEE at Green Bay - Gary, Ted, Annie
13 CLEVELAND at Denver - Jeremy, Biggest Cubs Loser, Eric W.
9.5 OAKLAND at Carolina - Tinknocker, genop's gal, Coastal Storm
9.5 MINNESOTA at Houston - PDXileinOmaha, NoPoGuy, Rudie, Bob, George, Will, DB Cooper, Tung, Cinderella Story, Drewbob, Bad Brad, Dr. D
6.5 KANSAS CITY vs. Indianapolis - Pdxmick, Broadway Joe, Juicen, Gordon
5.5 ARIZONA vs. Chicago - genop, John Cr., John Ch.
4.5 PHILADELPHIA vs. Washington - Lucas
4 CINCINNATI at Pittsburgh - Carol, Sola, Paul
3 ST. LOUIS at Tampa Bay - Pete Rose, JMH, Dave A., Michael K., Grizfan
1 NEW ORLEANS at Dallas - Bayou Baby

Quite a few are following our leader, who revealed his pick publicly a few days back. We'll see if he jinxed himself with that move. In any event, happy holiday weekend, and enjoy the games, all!

UPDATE, 2:27 p.m.: Four 'dogs produce points for our players in the first games, including, of course, DB Cooper's pick, Minnesota. St. Louis, Cincinnati, and New Orleans all succeed.

UPDATE, 9:00 p.m.: With no winners among our players in the later games, here's where we stand going into the final week of the regular season:

Continue reading "Yo, Adrian!" »

... we're proud to know that Uncle Sam has the kitty cats under control.

Many a Blazer team has run up a win streak in December or January. Often it comes to naught in the spring, but it's a great time to be a fan in Portlandia. Tonight Lillard, J.J., and the boys made it five in a row. All at home, of course, but still... go, Blazers!

In case anyone was interested, none of the players in our charity pro football underdog game picked Detroit this evening. And apparently, that's a good thing.

Here at Blog Central, Christmastime is our excuse to imbibe some fancy cocktails. The other night we indulged in a Butterfly Kiss (vanilla vodka and Frangelico), and tonight we were ready to try something new for us -- a concoction known as the Last Word. The Mrs.'s cousin left us a wonderful gift yesterday: all the ingredients you would need for this drink, which we're told is the hot item at trendy bars from coast to coast this year. It's equal parts gin, lime juice, green chartreuse, and Luxardo liqueur. Tonight, with most of the shopping done for the holiday, we were ready to give it a go.

We dutifully squeezed and strained the limes, measured out the various shots, and shook it up with ice. When we poured it, we were a little taken aback by the color -- a bit like prune juice:

But hey, they say it's the latest and greatest, and so it was bottoms up!

Gack!

Man, that was bad. Maybe the first, unfavorable impression would subside with the second sip...

Ewwww!

Just as bad, maybe worse. A thought occurred to this: They should serve this at A.A. meetings. You taste this, you will never drink again.

Nowadays, when adversity strikes, we reach for the smart phone, and we immediately did so in this instance. Soon we discovered what was going on. The recipe apparently wants Luxardo's Maraschino liqueur, not its wickedly bitter licorice colleague, Fernet, which is what we had. Thank goodness. We'll try to get it right next time.

Meanwhile, it's back to the Butterfly Kiss. Use that cinnamon stick garnish as a straw. Merry Christmas!

A neighbor of ours is in the running for the international title of Open Water Swimming Woman of the Year 2012. In these parts, she's known as a faithful volunteer at the aquatic therapy program of the Providence Hospital Center for Medically Fragile Children. But around the globe, she's known as a champion distance swimmer and a superb leader:

Karen Gaffney is a champion in every sense of the word: a humble heroine, a remarkable role model, a spectacular speaker. The English Channel relay swimmer has dedicated herself and the tools at her disposal to champion a journey to full inclusion in families, schools, communities and the workplace for people with Down syndrome or other developmental disabilities. With dramatic open water swims to emphasize one’s potential, as well as her speeches, video tapes and resource materials, she constantly installs hope for others with Down syndrome. Her lifestyle proves a full productive and inclusive life is in store for parents and families of a child born with Down syndrome or other learning disabilities. For her swims across Lake Champlain, Lake Tahoe, in Hawaii and in San Francisco Bay, for her ability to heighten awareness and raise expectations of students, counselors, educators and those in the medical profession of the capabilities of children with Down syndrome to learn, grow and contribute in an inclusive setting, Karen Gaffney is a worthy nominee for the 2012 WOWSA Open Water Swimming Woman of the Year.

We all get to vote on this, even those of us who can hardly go about 50 yards without stopping. The balloting is taking place here, and there are just nine days left.

A commenter going by the moniker Info/Clackistani/tighty righty ran away with our comment contest the other day, and so he gets to designate where $250 of our charity donation goes from Buck-a-Hit Day. Any organization covered by tax code section 501(c)(3) is eligible. Given the nature of the winning comment, it will be interesting to see which charity gets the dough. Congratulations to Info, thanks to everyone who voted, and thanks to everyone who participated in any way in our 10th annual charity fundraising event.

One place he looked was the 'Couv.

We like to buy local, despite our annoyance at our city government's burning money for frivolous flacks who hound us to do so. A few weeks back we were in our local market when we met a local guy who makes hot sauce. It tasted pretty good at the little sampling table, and so we bought a bottle. Since then, we've been into it a few times at the house, and confirmed that it's really good. It's called Bushwacker, and it would be a fine way to take up space in somebody's Christmas stocking. (In case the FTC is reading this, we got absolutely nothing in exchange for this post.)

Players in our charity pro football underdog game, take note: The Saturday games have begun, and there's one this evening. If you want home-'dog Detroit over Atlanta for 4 points this week, you must send us your pick by kickoff time, today at 5:30 p.m. PST. Everyone else, your deadline is 10 a.m. PST tomorrow. Good luck!

Late Friday afternoon is usually when politicians and bureaucrats announce something they'd rather not have people notice or talk about. And with Christmas coming on a Tuesday, they're really going to be tempted to unload some bad news over the next few hours. By the time anybody focuses again, it could be next Wednesday -- or even the Wednesday after that.

So far, not so good for the famous Portland pepper spray poster child. She may have the last laugh, though, as she's suing back.

With his deciding vote to try to rig the water fluoridation election that he tried to prevent in the first place, Spineless Jelly is throwing down a gauntlet. He seems to be overestimating his political clout, and forgetting that he couldn't beat Sam Adams for a City Council seat. Fish now has "vulnerable" written all over him. He'd better start dialing for dollars now, because he's going to need all the Mark Wiener he can afford in 2014. If somebody else gets Wiener, Fish's political career will, well... sleep with the fishes.

Having wasted everyone's time with his fatally flawed bid to be Portland mayor, the unemployed ex-state legislator is calling together his faithful to talk about future political causes that he might espouse. Holding a real job is, as we all know, out of the question.

The final tally of our Buck-a-Hit Day fundraising is now complete. Our generous sponsors have all kept to their original pledges despite our missing our traffic goal by a bit, and contributions by other readers went far beyond our expectations. And so the amounts that will go to charities over the next week are as follows:

So nice. Thanks again to all who visited, and especially to all who gave.

UPDATE, 10:08 a.m.: A very-last-minute $50 gift to Sisters of the Road has pushed us over the $13,000 mark.

Please take off your shoes and grab a cup. Coats in the foyer. There's ice out back. Smoking out on the deck.

And in refreshing change from the current mindless regime at Portland City Hall, it's somebody with meaningful experience at something. But let's hope he's good a twisting language, because his new boss is one of the great double-talkers of all time.

Don't forget, we'll be holding our annual Yule party this afternoon -- perfect for all you telecommuters out there. Everybody else gets a chance to make a fool of themselves at an office party -- why not you? Come as you are. What happens at the Cyber-office Christmas Party stays at the Cyber-office Christmas Party.

It looks as though the inquiry into irregularities in the UC Nike football program will linger long past the Tostitos Bowl. For an inside perspective, there's no better source than UO Matters.

It's time to pick the winner of the comment contest from Buck-a-Hit Day yesterday. The winner gets to steer $250 of our charity donations to the nonprofit (501(c)(3)) organization of his or her choice.

Here are our contestants, in chronological order:

Bronson:

Jack, thank you for your blog. In an era of diminished journalism, this is what a blog is supposed to be. It provides information not covered, or lost under bigger headlines. It provides new perspectives. It's focused, but willing to step outside its bounds to look at other issues from time to time. It balances news with humor. For all these reasons, I visit the site every day.

As for my contribution. Well, it's been a rough week. And after weeks like we've collectively had, you have to make a choice of either growing bitter and retreating from an increasingly crazy world, or you have to chose to find a path forward and make society grow from the experience. And so I share with you a fitting poem by Whitman:

A Christmas Greeting - Walt Whitman

Welcome, Brazilian brother--thy ample place is ready;
A loving hand--a smile from the north--a sunny instant hall!
(Let the future care for itself, where it reveals its troubles,
impedimentas,
Ours, ours the present throe, the democratic aim, the acceptance and
the faith;)
To thee to-day our reaching arm, our turning neck--to thee from us
the expectant eye,
Thou cluster free! thou brilliant lustrous one! thou, learning well,
The true lesson of a nation's light in the sky,
(More shining than the Cross, more than the Crown,)
The height to be superb humanity.

Allan L.:

Be generous, folks! Use your credit cards. Remember, the world is ending on Friday, before the bill comes.

Gibby:

Happy "Buck-A-Hit" day! Before breaking out the credit card this year I decided to Google the history for the organizations listed, because I really knew just a smidgen about each. I wanted to read the real story about why each was started, and why. Better than reading the news lately, right? I was a little worried it might be depressing, but hell, surfing the net couldn't get much worse than the info posted this week anyway. Luckily, I was inspired and lifted into a renewed Christmas spirit. That's why I intend to give a little today, and still have a strong desire to stick around this nasty old world for as long as I can (at least until the end comes Friday).

INFO/Clackistani/tighty righty:

Hi there all you people.

This is my first comment here.
Just kidding.

I've been reading bojack, for a long time.

How is it that Jack, a liberal democrat, can be so much like me while at the same time remaining liberal in many other ways?

He's messing up the natural order of things.
We can't maintain the great divide in this country if clowns like Jack are continually blurring the stereotyping lines of separation.

I've noticed the local deep blue progressives don't like him at all and the far righies get agitated when his liberal core surfaces.

So how are we to label this bojack guy?
A freak of nature? That can't be.
He a charitable guy with a nice wife, two lovely little girls, a home in a neighborhood and Stenchy.

Is he just too normal? The new normal?
Eeek! That's got to be offensive to a lot of people.
Too bad.

I'm going with that for now.

So Merry Christmas to Jack "the new normal" (and family) for disrupting the polarization of society one clever blog at a time.

Linda Kruschke:

So this is a little more serious than I was planning, but in looking at some of my original poems to share I found this one. I hope you like it.

Words are powerful. Let’s use their power for good, and not for evil.

The Power of Words

Sticks and stones
will only break bones
but words cut hard and deep
crushing heart and soul
when cruelly we speak
leaving scars no one can see

Sticks and stones
can make buildings and homes
but words sink soft and deep
lifting heart and soul
when lovingly we speak
healing scars only God can see

Take care with your words
use encouraging ones
let the cruel ones remain unspoken
shower kindness and love
offer mercy from above
in a world already too broken

Merry Christmas, Jack!

Newleaf:

Here is my hope and prayer for the New Year.

Each among us has a relative, friend, neighbor or acquaintance who seems strange, doesn’t fit in, is distant and disillusioned or isn’t all there. That’s someone who especially needs a hug, a warm smile, a friendly wave or a kind word. Please find it in your heart. Someone who acts out horrifically does so only when he has lost hope. A small gesture guarantees nothing, but it can go an incredibly long way. This, each and every one of us can do.

Thank you.

Sally:

Your "No donation is too small" got me. We had a wicked year, mostly owing to enormous medical expenses. But I made a "too small" donation, in thanks for everything you do here and my partaking of it, to Ronald McDonald House.

Separately: my mother is well advanced into some sort of dementia, in all probability Alzheimer's. But I happened to speak with her last Friday, the day of the horror in Newtown, Connecticut. Somehow that monstrosity had penetrated past and through all the disconnections and un-comprehensions in her brain. We had a conversation almost like those we would have had, and did, years ago. She even sounded like her old self. Somehow that tragedy brought a few moments of clarity as well as tears. Things that make you wonder.

Portland Native:

There but for fate, joss, luck, the gods, whatever....those in need could have been or be any of us.

We'll leave the balloting open until noon tomorrow, and formally announce the winner tomorrow afternoon, just in time for the big holiday weekend.

Thanks to everyone who visited here yesterday, left a comment, or made a donation. You are greatly appreciated.

They relentlessly milk the misery of the mass shooting of children, but when the President wants to talk about gun control, they immediately change the subject.

The clock has struck midnight on our 10th annual Buck-a-Hit Day -- actually, we slept through the final bell -- and once again we broke our record for this charity event. As of the close of the day, we amassed $12,093 for our six charities, bettering last year's mark of $10,410 by more than 16%. That's pretty darned good.

Seventy-nine readers clicked on our donation buttons, with gifts ranging from $5 to $1,000, and the six members of our "inner circle" of sponsors primed the pump with contributions as high as $2,000. The $5,890 of reader money that came in during the day was by far a record; last year, the number was $4,762.

We fell a little short on traffic, however, clocking only about 4,600 unique visits for the day; even counting an estimated 100 missed because of a brief server outage in morning prime time, we were shy of the 5,500 hits we had been hoping for. We are now consulting with our sponsors to see if they might be persuaded to give the full amount of their original pledges even though our hit total was shy of our goal. We'll see what they say -- it's up to them -- but as noted earlier, we have racked up at least $12,093, which is a great day.

Once we have the final word from our sponsors, we'll have a detailed breakout of which charities are getting how much of the pot. The largest share will go to the Oregon Food Bank, the perennial favorite charity here; it should get around 40% of our total. Ronald McDonald House is second with about 16%; followed by Virginia Garcia, Sisters of the Road, Human Solutions, and Children's Heart Foundation (about 8%), in that order. If you'd really like to blow our mind, the donation buttons still work; we'll add in any additional amounts that arrive before 3:00 this afternoon, just around the time the cocktail wieners go into the oven for our Cyber-office Christmas Party, which starts at 4-ish.

We're grateful beyond words to everyone who visited, everyone who sent traffic our way, everyone who left a comment, and especially everyone who donated money. It wouldn't be Christmastime at Blog Central without all of you. In the darkest time of a dark year, you have helped some people who need help, which is what the season should be about.

There's a first time for everything, and this year we dozed off and missed the last hour and a half of Buck-a-Hit Day. But no worries -- our eye in the sky knows all. We beat our main goal of $11,000 with room to spare, and now we'll undertake the final accounting. Thanks to everyone who made the day a success!

We're past $10,600 in our annual charity fundraiser day -- eclipsing last year's record of $10,410. Any unique visit, donation, or both between now and midnight (Pacific Time) takes us further into the record books. Thanks for coming, and please think about dropping a few dollars into the hat. Our goal for the day is $11,000, and the sky's the limit.

UPDATE, 10:04 p.m.: We have reached our day's goal of $11,000, with generous reader donations more than making up for a slight shortfall in unique visits. But hey, we will take it any way we can get it. Our charities are going to be so happy. Let's keep it going to midnight. See if you can rope in some more hits -- they're still worth a buck apiece and will be so until our day is over.

Thanks for coming to this blog on our 10th annual Buck-a-Hit Day. Just by visiting here today, you have caused the bojack.org Gift-Giving Team to give $1 to one of our six designated charities. We'll throw in a buck a hit for the first 5,500 unique visits (as measured by SiteMeter).

Now that you've shaken a dollar out of us, please don't leave just yet. Don't miss your chance to subvert some of the action to your own favorite charity. The writer of the best comment left attached to this post will get to designate where $250 of our kitty goes. Make us laugh, make us cry, tell us why you gave, make us think, whatever -- the criteria for "best" are wide open. Something having to do with the spirit of the season would be welcome. Even a link to an original photo of yours would be good. We'll pull out six or so contenders from the comments tonight, and hold a reader poll tomorrow to see which commenter gets to make the call.

Last but not least, here is your chance to help our charities. Please click on one or more of the six buttons below and give generously to the organization pictured. You'll go to a secure PayPal site, which will take your credit card info if you don't have a PayPal account. (We pay all PayPal fees; every dollar you give goes to charity.) Please enter the amount of your donation, and "Update" or "Update Total." Then either log in to your PayPal account or click where indicated to pay by credit card.

No donation is too small!

For more information about these excellent charities, you can check out their websites here:

If you'd like a receipt (contributions are tax-deductible for you deduction-itemizers out there), just be sure that PayPal has your current address; we'll see to it that you get proper acknowledgment in the mail for the amount you've contributed. And if you've got questions or concerns, please email me here.

If we get our 5,500 unique visits and collect $4,300 in donation from readers, then taking into account matches from the Gift-Giving Crew, we'll be raising $11,000 for good causes here today. Now, that would be awesome.

Regardless of whether you donate or comment, thank you for coming by today. If you are a newcomer to this blog, we hope that you will look around the site a bit (the archives are on the left sidebar, if you're interested), and come back again another day. And please don't hesitate to get out the word to others who may want to visit and give before this day is out. It's a tough time for a lot of people, and we need all the help we can get.

[Note: The time stamp on this post will be changed throughout the day to keep it on top of our main page. It was first posted just seconds after midnight this morning.]

With four hours to go, Buck-a-Hit Day is ahead of budget on reader donations -- thank you so much! -- but behind on visits to the site. We need some combination of 941 hits or $941 in the next four hours. Please see if you can round up the cavalry. Let's finish strong!

Why haven't we seen these on the streets yet?

We ran out on a little family Santa errand a while ago, and when we checked our email over a slice of pizza on Trendy-third Ave., lo and behold, a reader had pushed us up and over -- way over -- our $500 afternoon match for the Oregon Food Bank. Then another reader shot a thousand bucks to Ronald McDonald House. Amazing stuff, people, thank you.

We are now within striking distance of our reader donation goal for the day, but we're still 2,500 hits short of our 5,500-hit goal. Please pull out whatever stops you can to get us some more visitors. Tweet it, Facebook it, shout it from the rooftops. Would you be cheating if you logged in again from another IP address? We'll never tell.

We have made our $500 match to the Oregon Food Bank, and then some. Our readers are overwhelming us with their generosity. We'll have a full report in a few minutes.

Here's an updated, unofficial progress report of where our readers' contributions have been going so far today (not counting our splendid sponsors, who are funding the "buck a hit" tally):

Oregon Food Bank (including match) $1,145
Sisters of the Road $375
Children's Heart Foundation, Oregon Chapter $215
Human Solutions $115
Virginia Garcia Clinics $190
Ronald McDonald House of Oregon/SW Wash. $175

See somebody there you'd like to help? You know what to do.

We didn't get too far into it when...

Down in Lake O., the losers hurl a final insult at the winners. Don't let the door hit you, folks.

We have just received a $500 pledge from a good friend of this blog. She wants it to go to the Oregon Food Bank, but only if readers will match it. Let's try for $100 an hour, which would make the match run until 4:04. Come on, readers -- your $1 now equals $2. No amount is too small! Just head here and click on the food bank. And/or any of our other five excellent charities. [Originally posted at 11:04 a.m., with time stamp changed to keep this post at or near the top.]

UPDATE, 12:14 p.m.: We had about a 20-minute outage a little while ago, and so we're extending the deadline for the match to 4:30.

At the risk of doing something new when something old would probably be just fine, here's an unofficial midday progress report of where our readers' contributions have been going so far today (not counting our splendid sponsors, who are funding the "buck a hit" tally):

Oregon Food Bank (including match) $655
Sisters of the Road $375
Children's Heart Foundation, Oregon Chapter $20
Human Solutions $115
Virginia Garcia Clinics $160
Ronald McDonald House of Oregon/SW Wash. $155

See somebody there who's underappreciated? You know what to do.

Down in Wilsonville, they're pushing another "urban renewal" plan. They're putting it up for a public vote. Given that they're in Clackistani rebel territory, they've got to be kidding.

Something just went kerblooey on the intertubes for a few minutes there. On Buck-a-Hit Day, of all days! We're looking into what happened, but we're back up and at 'em now. Please send some friends our way -- we now need to make up for lost time!

Here's your dose for this day -- let's hope it's the only one you get.

The Nike special tax law saga gets more and more outrageous as the details are revealed. Turns out that Governor Retread's minions in state government starting making a deal with the shoe and apparel behemoth last summer. And the state signed a confidentiality agreement in which it promised not to tell anyone what was going on. State legislative "leaders" also signed it, although it isn't clear when. The City of Portland may have signed it, too -- they won't even say whether they did.

These are public officials -- some of them elected officials. In a back room with a corporation. Signing agreements not to tell their constituents what they were discussing. That ought to be illegal, if it isn't already. This state has become quite a dirty little place.

Meanwhile, despite the rumors, we're not buying the prospect of Nike's moving into the impassable, expensive traffic thicket known as the SoWhat District in Portland. We suspect that's a head fake. If we had to bet, we'd say they're either staying near their current digs in Washington County or moving somewhere like Wilsonville -- or maybe even Eugene.

Of the 1,089 visitors who have dropped by this site so far today, 18 have made cash donations to one of our charities, including a few who have contributed to more than one. That is fantastic, and we thank them!

Now, if the rest of you need a little fundraising speech, here goes: We blog here 366 days a year, and we don't ask readers for money in exchange for what we offer. If you like what you find when you visit here, maybe you should acknowledge that. And the way to do it is to make a contribution, large or small, to one of our charities today. So far today, readers' gifts have ranged from $10 to $250. It's all good.

Thanks again to the first 18; now come on, other readers!

The Washington County commissioners just extended the permit for the obnoxious food composting operation that's stinking the people of North Plains right out of their houses and homes. But just for a month. Then they're going to decide on renewing it again. But just for nine months. They're on track to make a permanent decision in, oh, say 2099.

As the string is being played out, the official story is also changing. Now they say that most of the wretched food slop is coming from commercial outfits, and that only a small portion of it is coming from Portland homes. That sure seems odd, since the complaints about the ungodly stench began right around the time that Portland started twisting its residents' arms to throw food waste in with their yard debris.

In any event, the county commissioners who are jerking the population around out there ought to suffer the fate of the rogue commissioners in Clackistan. As the rebels on the other side of the big city have figured out, you can get even as well as mad.

Thanks to our faithful readers who have gotten us off to a flying start on Buck-a-Hit Day. At 7:17 this morning, we had garnered 451 unique visits and $670 in reader contributions. We're more than 20% of the way to our goal for the day of $11,000. But we need more visitors if we're going to make it to $5,500! Please link to bojack.org, early and often, on your social media and other pages today. All your friends and followers have to do is lick on your link to this site, and another buck goes to a worthy cause.

Should Portland's Metro government be in the business of breeding elephants, in two separate herds, on a large scale?

"The model assumes a robust reproductive rate with births occurring every four years per reproductively viable female," the plan reads. "To develop an unrelated multigenerational matriarchal herd at the remote elephant center, the zoo plans to acquire four unrelated females."

The plan calls for two bulls—Tusko and Samudra—to live on the reserve. Zoo officials say the current female elephants would stay at the zoo, and not visit the reserve. They won't make any promises about Packy.

What the zoo does to elephants is pretty sick. And it gets in bed with private carny operations that are even worse. To ramp up the misery, and the expense, seems to be against the public interest. Where's the voter pushback on this budding animal mill?

Loath to raise taxes on the middle class yet unwilling to cut deeply into the budgets for Social Security or Medicare, the president and his advisers proposed cutting the discretionary part of the budget devoted to everything except defense and other security agencies to 1.7 percent of economic output by 2022, down from 3.1 percent last year.

This is not irrelevant spending. It accounts for every government expenditure except entitlements, security and interest. It pays subsidies for higher education and housing assistance for the poor. It finances the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration. It pays for the Federal Emergency Management Agency and training programs for unemployed workers. Without such spending, the government becomes little more than a heavily armed pension plan with a health insurer on the side.

The whole thing is here.

With every day, it seems more likely that we will actually go off the precipice and see what happens. Maybe the new Congress and the White House can work something out and fix everything retroactively come January or February, but that's an even bet at best. In any event, it's looking like a highly screwed-up tax filing season is ahead of us. The IRS can't really publish the 2012 forms until the current clown show comes to a conclusion.

In a couple of hours, we'll flip a switch and it will be Buck-a-Hit Day on this blog. We and our sponsors will give $1 to charity for each of the first 5,500 unique visitors to this site over the 24 hours starting at midnight West Coast time, and we hope to raise enough donations from readers that we can send $11,000 to six worthy charities. Please come on back sometime tomorrow and help us reach our goals.

The Big Daddies of pro football don't stop for shopping, and so players in our underdog game have work to do in the prognostication department:

14 JACKSONVILLE vs. New England
13 TENNESSEE at Green Bay
13 CLEVELAND at Denver
9.5 OAKLAND at Carolina
9.5 MINNESOTA at Houston
6.5 KANSAS CITY vs. Indianapolis
5.5 ARIZONA vs. Chicago
4.5 PHILADELPHIA vs. Washington
4 BUFFALO at Miami
4 CINCINNATI at Pittsburgh
4 DETROIT vs. Atlanta (Saturday, 5:30 p.m. PST)
3 ST. LOUIS at Tampa Bay
1 NEW ORLEANS at Dallas
1 SAN DIEGO at New York Jets
1 BALTIMORE vs. New York Giants
1 SEATTLE vs. San Francisco

This is the next-to-last week of the regular season, followed by three weeks of the playoffs. We play all the way through Week 20, although the numbers of games and point spreads dwindle after next weekend. The standings are here. Players, you may want to pick accordingly.

If you want the Lions, your pick is due by kickoff time on Saturday, 5:30 p.m. PST. Everybody else, your pick is due at 10:00 a.m. PST Sunday. Good luck!

We are looking out the window here at bojack.org Storm Center 9000.2, and to our horror we see foolhardy people actually out in the current weather. Not only are these people endangering themselves, but they're also jeopardizing the well-being of first responders who may have to pick them up if they fall in a puddle. People, there is a chance of snow -- repeat, snow -- in Portland! Tri-Met is chaining up all 11 of its buses, and the city has both snow plows ready for operation at any moment. Stay indoors, cancel all activities, and stay tuned to bojack.org Storm Center 9000.2 for the latest updates. Play it safe until you get the all-clear signal from the nearest food cart pod.

Does anyone know what time the Mayan Apocalypse is supposed to happen on Friday? We are having our Cyber-office Christmas Party here on Thursday evening, and may try to party all the way through. Thanks.

We thought he liked being on the Portland City Council, but if he goes along with the Sam Rand Twins to manipulate the date on the water fluoridation vote, Spineless Jelly is going to make his own re-election in 2014 quite problematic.

People keep score, Nick -- and your army of homeless fans don't vote. The referendum easily got the signatures you didn't think it would get. If you think jerking the voters around isn't going to bring good candidates out to send you back to law firm timesheets, you're probably mistaken again.

Just a reminder: Tomorrow is our 10th annual Buck-a-Hit Day on this blog. We and our gift-giving elves pay $1 to charity for every visitor to this blog on that day, and with the help of some generous sponsors, this year we can keep giving those dollars all the way up to 5,500 visitors -- $5,500.

But the bucks will flow only as the hits come in -- that is, if and when visitors show up on this blog between midnight tonight and midnight tomorrow night. Fifty-five hundred hits is ambitious for a mid-December day, and so we need your help. Please alert your social media contacts, other friends, and readers if you have them -- all they have to do is click on your link to this blog any time tomorrow, and a buck of somebody else's money will go to charity.

Here are the beneficiaries of the day:

- Sisters of the Road Cafe
- Children's Heart Foundation, Oregon Chapter
- Human Solutions
- Virginia Garcia Memorial Health Center
- Oregon Food Bank
- Ronald McDonald House Charities of Oregon and Washington

We'll also be holding our annual comment contest tomorrow. The author of the best comment (determined by our readers' vote on Thursday) will get to steer $250 of our contributions to his or her own favorite nonprofit (501(c)(3)) organization.

Visiting here is a painless way to do a good deed, but we need those visitors. Please help us bring them in tomorrow. Thank you.

It is snowing here at Blog Central. Repeat: Snowing. In Portland. Remain calm. Remain indoors. Cancel all activity. This is an actual alert. We are headed to the Sylvan overpass at this hour for team coverage.

He had Mayor Creepy giving the sales job for the money for the new Pearl District hotel:

Lots of unforgettable moments there, especially this one:

If there isn't some sort of law about using the city seal and one's City Hall office for the private gain of some crony's business, there oughta be. Because the new mayor is going to be even more owned by these developers than the old one was.

Anyway, the foreign investors will own the whole project and can come by any time with their green cards. Homer and crew get paid up front. It's happening all over the country, apparently. What a scene.

A reader forwards this e-mail message:

Thank you for your email regarding the City Council's proposal to move up the vote on fluoridation.

I do not support changing the date of the public vote on fluoridation. I did support Council's decision earlier this year to add fluoride to our water and I continue to believe it's the right decision for our community.

But, I recognize that the public has spoken and wishes to engage in a community dialogue that culminates in a public vote in May of 2014.

I do not believe the date of the vote should be manipulated by Council to benefit one particular side in this issue. If Council does decide to move the vote to 2013, I apologize in advance for what I believe is a decision that disrespects the voters of Portland.

Sincerely,
Dan Saltzman

Way to stand up to the schoolyard bully -- albeit 10 years late.

"Wal-Mart de Mexico" -- you can just imagine.