Putrid President Bush - The Economy (News) (Commentary)

President Bush, our very own simple-minded "man in the White House," has screwed up just about everything he touched. This week CNN is doing a week-long series of stories on the economy and how deeply the current decline in the economy will reach. Bush is really, really working hard to reach for the title of "Worst President Ever."

Here's a summary of a lot of the economic woe that his policies have brought on. From Progress Report, March 17, 2008.

In a recent Wall Street Journal survey of the nation's top economists, 70 percent said the economy is in a recession and half said that "this year could be worse than the 2001 and 1990-91 downturns." "The evidence is now beyond a reasonable doubt," said one Wells Fargo & Co. senior economist. The Commerce Department also said last week that retail sales -- which account for more than 70 percent of U.S. economic activity -- fell 0.6 percent in February. Last month also saw the national unemployment rate increase as the Labor Department announced that the nation had lost 63,000 jobs -- the second consecutive monthly job decline. While the American public is in line with economists on the realities of the economy, President Bush has only recognized a "slowdown. " Bush recently acknowledged that the "root cause of the economic slowdown has been the downturn in the housing market." But in a speech last week, Bush echoed President Herbert Hoover's sentiments regarding government intervention into a struggling economy, saying he "strongly disagree[s]" with "massive government intervention in the housing market." Bush said in his Saturday radio address : "The market now is in the process of correcting itself, and delaying that correction would only prolong the problem."

Beyond job losses, a decrease in retail sales, and the housing market crisis , a Center for American Progress (CAP) economic outlook shows that wages remain flat, family debt has hit record highs, fewer people have health insurance, and an increasing number are paying more for basics. In addition to housing woes, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said last month that the nation's credit crunch is also fueling the economy's downturn . Additionally, government spending is in the red. The Treasury Department announced last week that "the U.S. federal government ran a monthly budget deficit of $175.56 billion in February, a record for any month" and "46% bigger than the deficit of $119.99 billion in February 2007." Last week, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) illustrated that the federal debt incurred during Bush's presidency has reached $7.7 trillion. The value of the dollar is also in free fall, plunging below the 100 yen level last week for the first time in 12 years and "hitting a new low against the euro " today. Iraq war costs are reaching astronomical proportions, with projections ranging anywhere from $10-12 billion per month . The war has also helped oil prices skyrocket -- prices per barrel have recently reached record highs . Naturally, Bush has passed the buck. When asked during a recent interview about the rising oil prices, Bush deferred to "experts," saying: "I’m just a simple president ."

More Religious BS (News) (Commentary)

The notion that church teachings come from the word of God is mostly a fallacy - church teachings come from humans who interpret what they read (which was also written by humans) and then pass these interpretations along as Gospel. Here's just another example of humans expanding religious dogma - and another example of why you shouldn't bother buying into any of it.

From The Times (London) Online...

Drug pushers, the obscenely rich, environmental polluters and "manipulative" genetic scientists beware - you may be in danger of losing your mortal soul unless you repent.

After 1,500 years the Vatican has brought the seven deadly sins up to date by adding seven new ones for the age of globalisation. The list, published yesterday in L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, came as the Pope deplored the "decreasing sense of sin" in today's "securalised world" and the falling numbers of Roman Catholics going to confession.

The Catholic Church divides sins into venial, or less serious, sins and mortal sins, which threaten the soul with eternal damnation unless absolved before death through confession and penitence. It holds mortal sins to be "grave violations of the Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes", including murder, contraception, abortion, perjury, adultery and lust.

Can The Democrats Stand Up To The President?

See the related post just preceeding this one...

From the LA Times...

House Democrats failed Tuesday to override President Bush's veto of a ban on waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques, and they castigated the administration for subjecting prisoners to torture in the fight against terrorism.

"We are on stronger ground ethically and morally . . . when we do not torture," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) said in closing the debate. "Our ability to lead the world depends not only on our military might but on our moral authority." The vote to overturn the veto, which required a two-thirds majority, fell short, 225-188.

The bill Bush vetoed authorized money for intelligence agencies and included a provision to limit the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies to tactics allowed by the Army manual used by military interrogators. The manual outlaws eight techniques, including waterboarding, a method that simulates drowning and is widely considered torture.

"Torture is no proper tool in the arsenal of democracy," said Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) "If we abandon our American values, we lose who we are as Americans. . . . And if the administration and all of its apologists . . . continue to force America to abandon our values, we will lose the war."

"Torture, he said, "is not only un-American, it is ineffective."

Home Schooling Problem (News) (Commentary)

As a retired educator, I have mixed feelings about home-schooling. If done properly, it can be a great experience for kids. If done poorly, it's an excuse to keep the children ignorant of the real world so that they can be easily brainwashed into the religious mind-set. But here's an article that really caught my eye.

From SF Gate...

A California appeals court ruling clamping down on homeschooling by parents without teaching credentials sent shock waves across the state this week, leaving an estimated 166,000 children as possible truants and their parents at risk of prosecution.

The homeschooling movement never saw the case coming.

"At first, there was a sense of, 'No way,' " said homeschool parent Loren Mavromati, a resident of Redondo Beach (Los Angeles County) who is active with a homeschool association. "Then there was a little bit of fear. I think it has moved now into indignation."

The ruling arose from a child welfare dispute between the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services and Philip and Mary Long of Lynwood, who have been homeschooling their eight children. Mary Long is their teacher, but holds no teaching credential.
The parents said they also enrolled their children in Sunland Christian School, a private religious academy in Sylmar (Los Angeles County), which considers the Long children part of its independent study program and visits the home about four times a year.

The Second District Court of Appeal ruled that California law requires parents to send their children to full-time public or private schools or have them taught by credentialed tutors at home.

Driving Russia Back to Communism

Are President Bush's policies pushing us back into a cold war? Being aggressive with our foreign policy pushes other nations into getting much more defensive and worried about who we will invade next. Russia is no exception.

With the US threatening to establish missiles in Europe, along the Russian frontier, and our invasion of other nations (Afghanistan and Iraq) in their backyard, a lot of leaders in Russia must be getting some goose bumps about the future direction of America. One has to acknowledge that the US is looking more and more like an aggressor nation who wants to export its brand of government around the world.

From Boing Boing...

Late last year, the European University at St. Petersburg in Russia launched a project to study how elections in Russia could be protected from rigging. That line of inquiry pissed off Russian President Vladimir Putin. Feeling the Kremlin's thumb, the university's academic council killed the project on January 31. Yet just two weeks later, the St. Petersburg court shut down the school as a "fire risk." Coincidence? Unlikely.

And now today, it's come out that the university has lost its license to operate. The Rector of the school says that if it isn't granted a new license within a month, the institution will be closed for good. A dear friend of mine, who emigrated from Russia in the 1980s, comments that this whole situation "is becoming so reminiscent of the old Soviet Union." From a February 11 article in The Guardian:

"It's clear this was politically motivated. We are observing a change in the political regime in Russia from uthoritarianism to totalitarianism. What happened here is one example among many," Maxim Reznik, leader of St Petersburg's opposition Yabloko party told the Guardian.

He added: "This hasn't got anything to do with fire risk. The
university was carrying out important work in connection with election monitoring. Now it's being punished for it."

Putin has launched frequent attacks on non-governmental organisations, human rights groups and Russia's small reformist opposition - accusing them of being tools of the west and traitors to their own country.

But the Kremlin has largely ignored the higher education sector, allowing Russian academics a relative degree of freedom and autonomy over teaching, student selection and research. Universities no longer appear to be an exception.

Moses on Drugs? (News) (Commentary)

Richard Dawkins, in The God Delusion, offers a number of different explanations as to how, possibly, the God delusion managed to evolve within the human mind. One thing he doesn't mention - perhaps it is some sort of chemically induced euphoria.

From Yahoo.Com

High on Mount Sinai, Moses was on psychedelic drugs when he heard God deliver the Ten Commandments, an Israeli researcher claimed in a study published this week.

Such mind-altering substances formed an integral part of the religious rites of Israelites in biblical times, Benny Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem wrote in the Time and Mind journal of philosophy. "As far Moses on Mount Sinai is concerned, it was either a supernatural cosmic event, which I don't believe, or a legend, which I don't believe either, or finally, and this is very probable, an event that joined Moses and the people of Israel under the effect of narcotics," Shanon told Israeli public radio on Tuesday.

Moses was probably also on drugs when he saw the "burning bush," suggested Shanon, who said he himself has dabbled with such substances. "The Bible says people see sounds, and that is a clasic phenomenon," he said citing the example of religious ceremonies in the Amazon in which drugs are used that induce people to "see music."

"Pastor-In-Chief" (Commentary)

In the race for the White House, the candidates have all been tripping over themselves to prove that they are adequately deluded about some mystical, all-powerful, imaginary friend that they have who lives in the sky. Sorta like their own personal Superman - or better. One blogger posted on some of the most important moments in this campaign from the religious front. I've given you a taste - click the link to read the rest...

Link

Top Ten Moments in the Race for "Pastor-in-Chief"

10. Mitt Romney is asked if he believes "every word" of the Bible (CNN/You Tube debate (11-28-07).

9. CNN's Soledad O'Brien asks John Edwards to "name his greatest sin"
(CNN/Sojourners town hall 6-26-07).

8. James Dobson tells a reporter he does not think that Fred Thompson is a Christian (3-27-07).

7. Barack Obama distributes a campaign flier describing himself as a "Committed Christian" (1-21-08).

Some Thoughts on the Economy (News) (Commentary)

The current economic problems that the US is facing all have pretty much the same source, I would argue - everyone, including the government, has over borrowed. Believing the US economy to be indestructible, mortgage companies and banks loaned money to people they had no right loaning money to. The US Government, in order to pay for the Iraq war and George Bush's tax cuts, has borrowed until the government's eyes are bleeding.

All of that borrowing is coming home to roost. The value of the dollar around the world is dropping like a lead balloon - nobody wants our dollars anymore - they would much prefer to be paid in Euros. This is causing the spike in gas prices. At home, lenders aren't collecting on the poor loans they offered and their liquidity is drying up. People are over-leveraged and have no cash to spend. And now we're going to borrow another $150 billion to pay for an economic stimulus package that will probably do nothing more than encourage people to borrow even more.

This is not going to be an easy recession.

And the cause of it all are the policies of President George W. Bush.

In my not so humble opinion, what we need to do right now is to bite the bullet, accept the recession it will exacerbate, and get the damn federal budget balanced. Today. Raise taxes. Cut spending. Begin bringing the troops home from Iraq. This will hurt for a while - it will increase the pain of the recession. But if we don't get a handle on this, and soon, we will pay for it for decades to come.

The following is from The Guardian...

In 2005, a Nobel prize-winning economist began the painstaking process of calculating the true cost of the Iraq war. In his new book, he reveals how short-sighted budget decisions, cover-ups and a war fought in bad faith will affect us all for decades to come. Aida Edemariam meets Joseph Stiglitz...

Some time in 2005, Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, who also served as an economic adviser under Clinton, noted that the official Congressional Budget Office estimate for the cost of the war so far was of the order of $500bn. The figure was so low, they didn't believe it, and decided to investigate. The paper they wrote together, and published in January 2006, revised the figure sharply upwards, to between $1 and $2 trillion. Even that, Stiglitz says now, was deliberately conservative: "We didn't want to sound outlandish."

So what did the Republicans say? "They had two reactions," Stiglitz says wearily. "One was Bush saying, 'We don't go to war on the calculations of green eye-shaded accountants or economists.' And our response was, 'No, you don't decide to fight a response to Pearl Harbour on the basis of that, but when there's a war of choice, you at least use it to make sure your timing is right, that you've done the preparation. And you really ought to do the calculations to see if there are alternative ways that are more effective at getting your objectives. The second criticism - which we admit - was that we only look at the costs, not the benefits. Now, we couldn't see any benefits. From our point of view we weren't sure what those were."

Republicans - Bilking The American Taxpayer (News) (Commentary)

I have written in the past about my feelings on privatizing public services. I've had (still have) at least three contacts with people who are connected with this process, and what it involves is a reduction in force of government employees and an increase of private contractors being hired to do the jobs of the government employees whose jobs were eliminated.

This all sounds great on paper - and it was the backbone of Ronald Reagan's term in office. This conservative view of government is based on the premise that the private sector does a more efficient job than does the bureaucracy. In reality this program has proven to be a boon for the private contractors who are lining their pockets with huge wads of cash.

Instead of hiring a skilled government employee at a salary of $100,000 per year, we outsource the job at $400 per hour - that's $16,000 per week and $832,000 per year. That's your taxpayer dollars going to the Republican party's rich friends.

In keeping with this "privatization" theory under the Republican administration, Medicare has been outsourcing some of its coverage to private HMO's. An elderly patient, instead of finding a doctor or hospital which will take Medicare, joins an HMO (fee paid by his/her Medicare plan) and then must go to a doctor and/or hospital covered by the HMO. Once again, the philosophy is that the private sector is much more efficient than the Government at running a health care program. But - the truth of the matter is - the programs are designed by Republicans to get more of your tax dollars into the hands of their rich friends.

From the New York Times...

Private Medicare plans often cost beneficiaries more than the traditional government-run Medicare program, Congressional investigators say.

Many private plans advertise extra benefits and low costs. But in a report to be issued Thursday, the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress, says that many people in private plans face higher costs for home health care, nursing homes and some hospital stays.

About one-fifth of the 44 million Medicare beneficiaries — 9 million people — are in private plans, known as Medicare Advantage plans.
The report says, “Medicare spends more per beneficiary in Medicare Advantage than it does for beneficiaries in the original Medicare fee-for-service program, at an estimated additional cost to Medicare of $54 billion from 2009 through 2012.”

Saudi Barbarism (New) (Commentary)

John McCain is not one of my favorite people. Hw has switched positions on so many issues over the past 8 years that it is virtually impossible to understand his position on any of the issues at any given time. Nonetheless, I heard him on the news this morning pointing out that something akin to 400 million dollars a year is spent by American citizens to buy gas and oil from the Saudis. Some of that money winds up in the hands of terrorists who would like to destroy us.

Saudi Arabia is a country we have to cozy up to for our energy needs, but it is not a nation that we should be providing arms to, as some day we will wind up fighting against our own technology.

If you need convincing, beyond the fact that 19 of the 20 terrorists who attacked the US on 9/11 were Saudis, that much of Saudi Arabia is not a civilized nation, read the following.

From Boing Boing...

The Saudi government is set to execute an illiterate woman for the crime of "witchcraft." She "confessed" to the crime after being beaten by the religious police and then fingerprinting a confession she could not read. The illiterate woman was detained by religious police in 2005 and allegedly beaten and forced to fingerprint a confession that she could not read. Among her accusers was a man who alleged she made him impotent...

When an appeal court decided she should not be executed, the law courts imposed the death sentence again, arguing that it would be in the public interest.

Another Republican Crook (News) (Commentary)

This is old news by now, but I can't help but post it. And I guess it's okay as long as you've got a big family (see McCain's reaction).

From Reuters - click the link to read more...

Republican U.S. Rep. Richard Renzi of Arizona, a state co-chair for Sen. John McCain 's presidential campaign, was indicted on corruption charges stemming from land deals in his state, Justice Department officials said on Friday.

The 35-count indictment stemmed from plans by Renzi and a business associate, a real estate investor, to benefit from a land-exchange deal in Arizona in return for Renzi's support for necessary federal legislation, according to court documents.

McCain, who faced new scrutiny about his ethics this week, reacted to Renzi's indictment and told reporters in Indianapolis, "I'm sorry. I feel for the family. As you know he has 12 children."

The Bushies Have Their Priorities (News) (Commentary)

The Bush administration has it's priorities - clearly fighting unwarranted wars is one of them (must be something in the Bible about always keeping your nation at war so that your rich friends can increase their profits). Working toward getting more kids in your own country to read is NOT one of those priorities.

From the website for Reading is FUNdamental (click the link to read more)...

"President Bush's proposed budget calling for the elimination of Reading Is Fundamental's (RIF) Inexpensive Book Distribution program would be devastating to the 4.6 million children and their families who receive free books and reading encouragement from RIF programs at nearly 20,000 locations throughout the U.S.

Liberal Manifesto (Commentary)

This is a good post from Daily Kos - I've just posted a snipet - click the link to read the rest of the post...

Daily Kos...

Dan Kurtzman, who keeps the political snark fires burning over at About.com wrote a terrific piece for his recent book "How to Win a Fight with a Conservative." We present it here with the author's kind permission:

Liberal Manifesto

Liberals believe in clean air, diplomacy, stem cells, living wages,
body armor for our troops, government accountability, and that exercising the right to dissent is the highest form of patriotism.

Liberals believe in reading actual books, going to war as a last resort, separating church and hate, and doing what Jesus would actually do, instead of lobbying for upper-class tax cuts and fantasizing about the apocalypse.

Genral Christian Speaks (Commentary)

General JC Christian, Patriot, often has some fun posts on his blog. Recently he's gotten pretty involved in the online game "Second Life," but a recent post was really spot on.

Visit his blog by clicking here...

from Jesus' General by Gen. JC Christian, Patriot

Conservatism's First Article of Faith states:
Inasmuch as the profit motive is the most basic, most efficient, and most noble of all the conditions that combine to form the human character, we believe that the corporation is far better suited than government to meeting the needs of the People.

We've seen the truth of this born out many times from the swift response of FEMA contractors to the compassionate service provided by the pharmaceutical industry and the efficient health care management of this nation's insurers. But no private endeavor for the public good has been as gratifying to true patriots than the wiretapping of our citizenry by the telecoms.

The Growing Religion Problem (News) (Commentary)

Do I dwell too much on the role of religion in politics? Perhaps. But the following piece is a clip from The Atlantic.Com and it seems to support my concerns. This is a great article, by the way - click the link to read the whole thing...

A recent cover story in The Economist, titled “The New Wars of Religion,” proclaimed, “Faith will unsettle politics everywhere this century.” Some scholars of religion have found new sport in predicting which religions will gain the most adherents (and upset the most applecarts) during the coming decades. Pentecostalism is one favorite candidate; it is sweeping through Latin America and Africa, already claiming some half-billion followers around the world. Catholicism is vying for the same conservative turf; Pope Benedict XVI’s insistence on stricter religious teachings, though not likely to grow the Church in Boston, appears intended to win more souls in Bogotá and Brazzaville. Islam claims a fifth of the world’s population, and its share is climbing quickly; it is only a matter of time, many believe, before it surpasses Christianity, which is embraced by a third of the world’s population, to become the predominant faith. Hindus and Buddhists together make up 20 percent of the world’s people, and high birthrates in the countries in which they are dominant suggest that this proportion will grow. ...

A lot rides on which of these predictions turn out to be true, and on how and where different religions bump up against one another. A common worry is that intense competition for souls could produce another era in which religious conflict leads to religious war—only this time with nuclear weapons. If we are really in for anything like the kind of zeal that accompanied earlier periods of religious expansion, we might as well say goodbye to the Enlightenment and its principles of tolerance.

Paying Off the Enemy (News) (Commentary)

The fact that the Bush administration lies, cheatsd and steals isn't a surprise anymore. What might be a surprise is that they are also a bunch of clowns. I ran across the floowing report and found it almost funny. See what you think.

From Information Clearing House...

It is impossible to keep up with all the Bush regime’s lies. There are simply too many. Among the recent crop, one of the biggest is that the “surge” is working.

Launched last year, the "surge" was the extra 20,000-30,000 U.S. troops sent to Iraq. These few extra troops, Americans were told, would finally supply the necessary forces to pacify Iraq.

This claim never made any sense. The extra troops didn't raise the total number of U.S. soldiers to more than one-third the number every expert has said is necessary in order to successfully occupy Iraq.

The real purpose of the "surge" was to hide another deception. The Bush regime is paying Sunni insurgents $800,000 a day not to attack U.S. forces. That's right, 80,000 members of an "Awakening group," the "Sons of Iraq," a newly formed "U.S.-allied security force" consisting of Sunni insurgents, are being paid $10 a day each not to attack U.S. troops. Allegedly, the Sons of Iraq are now at work fighting al-Qaeda.

Give It Up (News) (Commentary)

Wow - caving in on all of one's basic principals must not be hard for some folks to do. I can't believe that the International Olympic Committtee would ask member nations to give up their human rights in order to attend the Chinese Olympics this summer, but at least one prominent nation is going to do so anyway. If Bush and Company go along with this, I'm going to be more angry than usual.

From the Daily Mail...

British Olympic chiefs are to force athletes to sign a contract promising not to speak out about China's appalling human rights record – or face being banned from travelling to Beijing.

The move – which raises the spectre of the order given to the England football team to give a Nazi salute in Berlin in 1938 – immediately provoked a storm of protest. The controversial clause has been inserted into athletes' contracts for the first time and forbids them from making any political comment about countries staging the Olympic Games.

Republican Corruption (News) (Commentary)

Some days the corruption just seems normal. I won't even say that there aren't some Democrats who do it - but must the Republicans be so blatant?

From American Progress' Progress Report...

In October 2006, President Bush authorized the construction of a 700-mile border fence between the United States and Mexico. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is facing strong opposition from Texans who don't want the fence cutting through their land . Unfortunately for these homeowners, DHS gave them only "30 days to change their mind or face legal action," and now U.S. attorneys "have begun filing lawsuits against the holdouts." While DHS has no problem pursuing elderly and struggling homeowners, it will conveniently leave
untouched the border property of Dallas billionaire Ray L. Hunt. In 2000, Hunt was a Bush-Cheney "Pioneer ," and more recently, he "donated $35 million to Southern Methodist University to help build Bush's presidential library." Daniel Garza, a 76-year old man who might lose his home to the border fence's intrusion, noted, "I don't see why they have to destroy my home, my land, and let the wall end there." Pointing across the street to Hunt's land, he added, "How will that stop illegal immigration ?"

"The God Delusion" (Commentary)

Yep – here I go again. I can’t get over it – the fact that our wonderful, glorious, freedom loving nation is driven by people who are obsessed in their belief of a God. Obsessed to the degree that they believe God is speaking to them and telling them how to run the country.

"I trust God speaks through me. Without that I couldn't do my job."
---President George W. Bush, July, 2004

Now I’m reading The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins and it is giving me even more grave misgivings about these political/religious leaders. If they are so deluded as to believe God is telling them how to run the country, how do we control their delusions? How can we trust that the God they believe in is the kind, benevolent God of some preachers and not the murderous, evil SOB that Adolph Hitler believed in?

It seems to me that among believers, there is great diversity – people seem to make of God what they wish. Some believe you must live by the Bible (though they pick and choose which parts of the Bible they mean) and some believe God tells them to murder people. Some (Catholics at the least) believe in worshiping lesser Gods, virgins, angels and perhaps dozens of other religious forms, while other religions do not allow it. Some believe the Sabbath is Saturday, others believe the Sabbath is Sunday. Which truth is it? It certainly appears that the nature of God is of our (each individual) own choosing – we see Him as who – or whatever – we want.

If there were a “real” God – if in fact you were He – and You wanted everyone to worship You so that they could gain entry into Your Kingdom – would You not at least let them know what You stood for? Who You were? What Your governing principals were so that all might know together, not each picking out his/her own rules?

In “The God Delusion” Dawkins talks about the fact that there is quite a bit of evidence supporting the theory that those who believe most sincerely in God are also, on average, more poorly educated and learned than those who are atheists. The following paragraph caught my eye and seems to explain a lot – at least to me.

“That scientifically savvy philosopher Daniel Dennett pointed out that evolution counters one of the oldest ideas we have: ‘the idea that it takes a big fancy smart thing to make a lesser thing. I call that the trickle-down theory of creation. You’ll never see a spear making a spear maker. You’ll never see a horseshoe making a blacksmith. You’ll never see a pot making a potter.’ Darwin’s discovery of a workable process that does that very counter-intuitive thing is what makes his contribution to human thought so revolutionary and so loaded with the power to raise consciousness.”

The reluctance of so many Americans to give up their reliance on God, I am sure, is in no small part related to their experiences in life with just such a trickle-down theory. Conservatives, strongly tied to their religious beliefs, also believe in the trickle-down economic theory. That is, they believe that the universe (or the world) needs a big daddy to take care of them. I think I begin to understand, that at least for a significant number of conservatives, they feel small and unworthy. They are looking for a protector, someone of a higher order, be it God or the corporate captain, to watch over them and provide for them. This is their comfort in life and they are unwilling to give it up.

Thanks, Richard, your book is explaining a lot to me.

Florida - Sinking or Floating? (News) (Commentary)

Carl Hiaasan, in the Miami Herald writes about the strife in the state of Florida over the teaching of evolution in the state's public schools. It's a great article with humor tossed in to make it a good read. Here are just a couple of one-liners from the article to whet your taste buds.

In a move that could endanger Florida's flaky backwater reputation, the state Board of Education is poised to endorse the teaching of evolution as a science.

This is a dangerous idea -- not the presentation of Darwinism in schools, but the presentation of Florida as a place of progressive
scientific thought.

In recent weeks, the Board of Education has been swamped by e-mails and letters from religious conservatives who advocate teaching creationism or intelligent design, and who believe evolution should be discussed strictly as a ``theory.''

For those who wish to see Florida standing still, if not sinking, this is a fantastic strategy. In fact, it could be expanded to revise other educational doctrines.Let's start teaching gravity as a ''theory,'' too. And don't forget the solar system -- what proof do we really have, besides a bunch of fuzzy, fake-looking photos, that Mars really
exists?