Artist: Botero (Columbia)
Dimension Mag
"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes that you can do these things. Among them are a few Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or businessman from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."
[President Dwight D. Eisenhower, l952]
IKE was in fact willing to strengthen those federal programs that had good track records and even to introduce new measures on a selective basis. But at the same time, he wanted to prune programs such as those in public power and agricultural subsidies, whose costs he thought far outweighed their benefits to the nation. If successful, he would slow and perhaps even stop the growth of the administrative state. This was his concept of the "middle way."
(Click da thumbnail to view Da Rev during the IKE years!
Yup - I broke the color barrier
in black blues bands in Dayton . . .)
Check out the Saloon Singer Chronicles
GOP - "God's Own Party", right?!
The other night, Bill Maher said, "Republicans - The Grouchy Old Party - need ... to find a channel for their anger; I mean a channel besides Fox News ..."
THE PROGRESSIVES ARE WINNING, AREN'T THEY?
What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages the know-nothings burned folks like me. Now they are usually content to burn our writings ...
(Click)
Jodi Wilgoren reports on the controversy between science and religion (no matter how it may be presented) in biology classes in the Kansas Public Schools in the NEW YORK TIMES :
"They have created a straw man. They are trying to make science stand for atheism, so they can fight atheism." [Jack Krebs, vice president of the pro-evolution Kansas Citizens for Science]
"Kansas has been through this before ... I'm really tired of going to conferences and being laughed at because I'm from Kansas." [Cheryl Shepherd-Adams, a physics teacher who took an unpaid day off from Hays High School to attend the hearings, sighing.] 
(Click thumbnail to view the most dangerous man in the last millennium . . .Charles Darwin
"Intelligent Design" is religion masquerading as science.
Keith Lockitch, Ph.D. in physics, is a junior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, CA. The Bait and Switch of "Intelligent Design"
The central issue under debate is whether "intelligent design" is, in fact, a genuine scientific theory or merely a disguised form of religious advocacy--creationism in camouflage.
Proponents of "intelligent design" aggressively market their viewpoint as real science, insisting it is not religiously based. Writes one leading advocate, Michael Behe: "The conclusion of intelligent design flows naturally from the data itself--not from sacred books or sectarian beliefs." ...
IT STILL TAKES A HELLUVA HUNTER
TO BRING DOWN A BIGHORN IN ITS
NATURAL, ICY ENVIRONS!
(Click thumbnail to view)
Roq LaRue
Daniel Duane's article in Mother Jones - Sacrificial Ram is so damn rational in describing a REASONABLE solution to extinction: Conservation groups think they’ve found a way to save endangered animals--by selling off the right to kill a few.
Yup, like the waterfowl gunners who support habitat and wildlife services through the purchase of limited edition artwork and collectable postage stamps from "Ducks Unlimited". Founded in 1937, it has raised $1.8 billion for conservation and saved more than 10 million acres of wetlands.
... In an unusual approach to environmental fundraising -- call it free-market wildlife conservation -- the Wyoming-based Foundation for North American Wild Sheep (FNAWS) has struck deals with 21 U.S., Canadian, and Mexican states in which FNAWS gets to auction a precious few bighorn hunting permits in return for giving 90 percent of the proceeds back to those states’ sheep conservation programs ... In other words, by helping locals exploit the economic potential of the wildlife on their land, FNAWS has given the collective an incentive to preserve both that wildlife and its habitat. Since FNAWS got involved, ejidatarios have been clearing brush around watering holes to reduce cover for stalking mountain lions, they’ve taught their neighbors to keep domestic goats and sheep (and the lethal diseases they carry) away from the bighorn, and they’ve successfully cracked down on poaching ... In just seven years, the biosphere’s bighorn herd (Baja) has nearly doubled, to 400. And the more sheep there are, the more rams can be sustainably harvested ...
In a civilized country, wild animals only continue to exist at all when preserved by sportsmen. The excellent people who protest against all hunting and consider sportsmen as enemies [do not understand] that in reality the genuine sportsman is, by all odds, the most important factor in keeping the larger and more valuable wild creatures from total extermination.”
Wonkette: Catastrophic Success? Priceless.
Today's Washington Post reports that an audit of government spending shows that flowering of democracy in the Middle East does have a cost; we just don't know what it is yet. According to the Post, the "system for managing work there is so diffuse that the government may not be able to get an accurate estimate of how much its projects cost." In other words, it's like Democrats are running the place. We're sorry, but when things are going so well that we don't know how much money we're spending, there's usually way more hookers and cocaine involved ...
(Click thumbnail to view MUG SHOT! )
SPEAKIN' OF SLEAZEY, PUBLICLY PIOUS,
RIGHT-WING RETHUGLICKIN' POLITICIANS:
Former bug zapper, Congressman Tom DeLay
- on the unconstitutional National Day of Preying -
Think of what we could accomplish if we checked our pride at the door, if collectively we all spent less time taking credit and more time deserving it. If we spent less time ducking responsibility and more time welcoming it. If we spent less time on our soapboxes and more time on our knees ...
Uh-oh! I gotta go.
I'LL TAKE THAT CALL! - IS IT MARIEL HEMINGWAY?!?
