TIME, OH, GOOD, GOOD TIME - WHERE HAS IT GONE?

THREE MORE MONTHS OF DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME?

Congress is taking time away from urgent considerations to deliberate the extension of DST for three more months.

All the time, people ask me, "Does anybody know what time it is?" (especially if they're from Chicago), and I reply, "Does anybody fucking care?"

If I could put time in a bottle, I bet I'd have to be drunk. Mick Jagger sang, "Time is on my side ..." and I wonder, "Where does that leave me? Is it ME against TIME?"

Has anybody considered abolition of time as a measurement? Think of all the energy we could save if we celebrated miles per gallon instead of miles per hour! TIME has always bugged me. NEWSWEEK, too. I prefer US NEWS.

Time is unforgiving. It waits for no one. What if everyone's day began when he arose and ended when he retired? If you leave the cake out in the rain the damage is done. Nobody counts the minutes. And I believe you WILL get that recipe again - if you quit watchin' the damn clock.

The fortunate fellow was the illiterate hillbilly who hit the Lotto (and managed to turn his ticket in on time). He went and bought himself a fancy ROLEX and stuck it on his wrist just in front of the tattooed name of his 3rd wife. A friend marveled at the beautiful watch on his arm and asked, "What time does it say it is?"

The nouveau riche rustic giggled and turned his watch toward his buddy and said, "Right there it is!"

To which his friend replied, excitedly, "DAMN IF'N IT HAIN'T!!"

Put me down for DST all year round.
Rev. Art                                                                                    _________________________________

Artist: Horsey

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FINALLY - THE DEMS ARE CALLING ATTENTION
TO OUR UNSECURED BORDERS!

Conservative pundit John Fund, writing in the Wall Street Opinion Journal, warned that Democrats, particularly Bill Richardson and Hillary Clinton, are positioning themselves to the right of DUBYA on border security:

" ... many Hispanics deplore the trend away from assimilation that has characterized U.S. policy in recent years. With dramatic gains in test scores among Hispanic students in English immersion programs since California voters ended most bilingual programs, a majority of the state's Hispanics embrace the new policy. And 47% of Hispanic voters in Arizona voted for Proposition 200, which denies some public services to illegal aliens and requires proof of citizenship to register to vote. As my colleague Steve Moore notes, the American people can't be expected to accept any immigration reform without assurances that all newcomers will follow in the path of other immigrant groups and assimilate.

President Bush's guest-worker program is politically stalled because of fears it will turn into another ill-fated amnesty program like the 1986 reform. But clearly a properly designed guest-worker program has promise. As the Bracero program for agricultural workers expanded in the 1950s, arrests of illegal aliens fell from 885,000 in 1953 to as low as 45,000 in 1959. After the Bracero program ended in 1964, apprehensions increased from 87,000 to 876,000 in 1976. They have remained at roughly that level or even higher ever since.

But Mr. Bush can win support for a guest-worker program only after he proves his bona fides in areas of legitimate concern on immigration. It is absurd that ranchers in New Mexico had to turn to state officials for money to repair fences at livestock yards on the border that had been trampled by smugglers bringing aliens across. At least 100 head of Mexican cattle had crossed the collapsed fence, bringing with them the threat of contagious diseases.

Similarly, Mr. Bush has to recognize that post-9/11 border security is now inextricably tied up in the public's mind with homeland security. In the ten months ending this July 24, border agents in the Tucson, Ariz., area arrested 375,000 illegals. More than 28,000 had criminal records, and dozens of others came from potentially worrisome countries such as Iran or Yemen.

Mr. Bush also needs to crack down on scofflaw officials who are thumbing their noses at federal immigration policy, including some in his own party. Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York has signed an executive order forbidding New York policemen to share information on immigration offenses with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, unless the immigrant breaks some other law or is suspected of terrorist activity.

As the maneuvering of Democrats such as Sen. Clinton and Gov. Richardson shows, Republicans risk letting Democrats turn immigration into a wedge issue that drives many voters to the other party. If Mr. Bush wants to leave office having brought about real immigration reform along with an increase in Hispanic support for Republicans, he must also pull off the delicate balancing act of convincing Americans that the federal government hasn't lost complete control of the border. Otherwise, the issue will remain stalemated and ripe for political demagoguery."

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Michael Breck                                                                  

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Evolution vs. Religion -

Quit pretending they're compatible.
Jacob Weisberg - writing in Slate - says what most of us already know:

" ... the acceptance of evolution diminishes religious belief in aggregate for a simple reason: It provides a better answer to the question of how we got here than religion does. Not a different answer, a better answer: more plausible, more logical, and supported by an enormous body of evidence. Post-Darwinian evolutionary theory, which can explain the emergence of the first bacteria, doesn't even leave much room for a deist God whose minimal role might have been to flick the first switch.

So, what should evolutionists and their supporters say to parents who don't want their children to become atheists and who may even hold firm to the virgin birth and the parting of the Red Sea? That it's time for them to finally let go of their quaint superstitions? That Darwinists aren't trying to push people away from religion but recognize that teaching their views does tend to have that effect? Dennett notes that Darwin himself avoided exploring the issue of the ultimate origins of life in part to avoid upsetting his wife Emma's religious beliefs.

One possible avenue is to focus more strongly on the practical consequences of resisting scientific reality. In a world where Koreans are cloning dogs, can the U.S. afford—ethically or economically—to raise our children on fraudulent biology? But whatever tack they take, evolutionists should quit pretending their views are no threat to believers. This insults our intelligence, and the president is doing that already."

That's why Da Rev calls 'em "nut-fundies"!

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The "KISS" Explanation of Evolution:
Yup - keep it simple, Stupid !

Slate

Someone posting @ National Review Online Blog said:
I sometimes use the following argument with people who ask about ID.

You are walking in your home town when you see a building on fire. You call the fire house. They ask the location of the fire. You tell them. They say: "Oh, we don't go out to fires there. The city has decided that block is to be left in God's hands. God has His own plan for the block, and whatever happens there is good, far as we are concerned. The fire is God's will. We can't interfere."

What can be said about the fire house's point of view? Well you can say this: It might be based in truth. God certainly behaves in mysterious ways, and it's not inconceivable that He might take into his charge a particular city block, and be angry at attempts to interfere with His will there, and code all that into scripture so that it can be reasonably deduced by those who take the scripture as His word. So our fire house, and the city council, might be on metaphysically firm ground.

I think you can also say this, though: The fire house's attitude IS NOT A PROPER ATTITUDE FOR FIREFIGHTERS TO HAVE. Firefighters ought to fight fires, and leave theology -- theirs, yours, and mine -- out of their work.

So with science. The work-a-day business of scientists is to investigate the natural world, and come up with naturalistic explanations for observed phenomena. A scientist who says: "There isn't a naturalistic explanation for this. Can't possibly be. Must be God's will," is just not being a good scientist. [Though an ID-er, for reasons to do with US law and the Constitution, and with the fundamental dishonesty of the ID project, would say "the designer" rather than "God."]

Even if, in some hypothetical long haul, it turned out that there actually *is* no naturalistic explanation for the observed phenomenon, that scientist would still have been behaving in a way that scientists ought not behave. He would have been in breach of professional ethics, just as much as a firefighter refusing to fight a fire. This accounts for much of the contempt and ill-will that working scientists feel towards the ID folk ...

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LOOK WHAT JUST PULLED OUTTA
"THE LAST CHANCE GARAGE"

1954 Studebaker Champion Regal Starlight