mjh's blog

A better leader

Bush and Katrina:
A time for action, not aloofness” href=”http://www.theunionleader.com/articles_showa.html?article=59884″>The Union Leader and New Hampshire Sunday News – 03-Sep-05 – Bush and Katrina:
A time for action, not aloofness

A better leader would have flown straight to the disaster zone and announced the immediate mobilization of every available resource to rescue the stranded, find and bury the dead, and keep the survivors fed, clothed, sheltered and free of disease. …

[Showing] a diffident detachment unsuitable for the leader of a nation facing war, natural disaster and economic uncertainty.

Wow, people are surprised by Bush’s diffident detachment? mjh

When Government Is ‘Good’
By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Friday, September 2, 2005; Page A29

The sight of rescue workers, the police and the Coast Guard, governors, mayors, and federal officials struggling desperately with the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina brings to mind Cohen’s Law: “Government is the enemy until you need a friend.”

Bill Cohen, the former defense secretary, minted the phrase nine years ago when he was a Republican senator from Maine. He was speaking then of a plane crash and the public’s hankering for more effective safety regulation. Cohen’s point was that government-bashing is easy in good times for those doing just fine. But when disaster strikes, many turn around and ask why government didn’t do more to prevent a catastrophe — or why it wasn’t doing more to relieve its effects. …

Yet this is a moment in which individual acts of charity and courage, though laudable and absolutely necessary, cannot be enough. It is a time when government is morally obligated to be competent, prepared, innovative, flexible, well-financed — in short, smart enough and, yes, big enough to undertake an enormous task. Not only personal lives but also public things must be put back together.

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The Right is Wrong Again

|| RedState.org Katrina: The Political Hurricane
By: Tim Saler

Democrats want to play politics over the carnage, destruction, and devastation in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. They are using the bodies of those who lost their lives in this tragedy as a rhetorical platform from which to attack the President and everything he stands for. Republicans don’t want to fight about this issue, but when Democrats start firing, we have no choice but to oblige them in their desire for political combat.

The lack of speedy response to this disaster can be summed up simply as this: after decades of Democrats reinforcing the domination of this country by the federal government, we now have a situation where state and local governments no longer have the motivation nor the funding or equipment necessary to take care of the own problems. Many left-wingers are using this disaster as an example of how small government has failed the American people and must be replaced with a gargantuan, overbearing federal government presence to solve all of our problems. If anything, this disaster is the ultimate failure of federal power.

We do not need a larger federal government to solve our problems. We do not need a larger, heavier, and more expensive federal government to go clean up the disaster area in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. We need a smaller government, a more nimble government. We need a federal government that works in conjunction with state and local governments rather than displacing them and instilling in them a mental condition by which they are helpless in the face of crisis. The President shouldn’t need to be in Louisiana right now for Louisiana to be able to take care of its own business.

After decades of Democrats attempting to utterly destroy the federal system of government on which this country was founded, people like Kathleen Blanco and Ray Nagin freeze in the face of disaster. They no longer do what they need to do at the state and local level to help their citizens. Instead, they look for the federal government to come step in and save them. The federal government as our great American mommy has utterly and completely failed us.

The solution is not to make it bigger and stronger, but to put it back in its place and give states and local governments their constitutionally-defined power to take care of their own business. We will never know the number of lives that could have been saved if only we had respected the right and ability of states and local governments to do their job.

The Politburo Diktat » Blog Archive » Bloggers on Hurricane Katrina

raptor Says:
September 2nd, 2005 at 11:58 am

I have been checking blogs,both left and right.
Overwhemlinglly the left are showing themselves(agin)to be cold-hearted,selfserving bastards.The right are(agin)overwhelminglly showing thier compassion and willingness to help.

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Creating A Nation of Ignoramuses

I offer this is support of my rejection of the claim that Americans hold science in awe. In fact, this seems to be the new sex ed. Parents were unprepared to teach their kids anything useful about sex; they are far less qualified to choose between science and anti-science. mjh

Most in poll want creationism taught
Those in favor included liberals, secular supporters
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
THE NEW YORK TIMES

In a finding that is likely to intensify the debate over what to teach students about the origins of life, a poll released Tuesday found that nearly two-thirds of Americans say that creationism should be taught alongside evolution in public schools.

The poll found that 42 percent of respondents hold strict creationist views, agreeing that “living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time.”

In contrast, 48 percent said they believed that humans had evolved over time; but of those, 18 percent said that evolution was “guided by a supreme being,” and 26 percent said that evolution occurred through natural selection. In all, 64 percent said they were open to the idea of teaching creationism in addition to evolution, while 38 percent favored replacing evolution with creationism.

The poll was conducted July 7-17 by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life and the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. The questions about evolution were asked of 2,000 people, and the margin of error is 2.5 percentage points. …

Intelligent design, a descendant of creationism, is the belief that life is so intricate that only a supreme being could have designed it.

The poll showed 41 percent of Americans want parents to have the primary say over how evolution is taught, compared with 28 percent who say teachers and scientists should decide and 21 percent who say school boards should. Asked whether they believed creationism should be taught instead of evolution, 38 percent were in favor, and 49 percent were opposed.

More of those who believe in creationism said they were “very certain” of their views (63 percent), compared with those who believe in evolution (32 percent).

The poll also asked about religion and politics. This question was asked of a smaller pool of 1,000 respondents and the margin of error is 2.5 percentage points, Pew researchers said.

The public’s impression of the Democratic Party has changed in the last year, the survey found. Only 29 percent of respondents said they viewed Democrats as being “friendly toward religion,” down from 40 percent in August of 2004. Fifty-five percent said the Republican Party was friendly toward religion.

Several things are troubling about the following argument. We are called upon to be open-minded, non-dogmatic to allow for a view held by dogmatic, close-minded people. In classic “1984″-style, Galileo is used to indict Science and defend Religion. We are told that “complexity” is next to godliness — if we haven’t figured it out yet, we can’t and won’t cuz it’s god’s doing. Letting ID into the classroom will keep religion out? Nonsense. mjh

ABQjournal: Science Classes Should Educate, Not Indoctrinate By Rebecca Keller, Science Text Publisher

However, being willing to consider a design inference, if the data point in that direction, is good science regardless of the philosophical or religious implications.

No scientist should ever be so committed to an ideology, whether that ideology is religious or philosophical in nature, that it blinds him to possible interpretations of scientific data. That happened in Galileo’s time and it is happening today whenever people close their eyes and plug their ears to design inferences in biology.

Living things are incredibly complex. Even on the microscopic scale each cell is literally packed with interacting networks of molecular machines. It looks designed. If it looks designed, how can it be unscientific to wonder if that design is real?

It is understandable that people are concerned about the metaphysical implications; if there is design then there must be a designer.

But the basic trouble, and the underlying reason this controversy never ends, is that evolution is a creation story; it has huge metaphysical implications no matter how it is taught. How is it less religious or less controversial to teach evolution as it is now, pretending that we somehow know that there is no design? …

In fact, disagreeing about how data should be interpreted is what scientists do. That is science. The history of science illustrates that disagreements in science are the very thing that fuels scientific discovery.

Evolution as a secular creation story is already being preached from the classroom pulpit. Teaching the controversy helps keep religion, of any flavor, out of the classroom. [mjh: how can she possibly believe that last statement?]

This is good science education and this is what is being proposed in Rio Rancho and across the country.

Rebecca Keller, who has a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of New Mexico, is president of Gravitas Publications of Albuquerque and writes elementary and middle-school science textbooks.

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QOTD

ABQjournal: Disaster Areas Stun Bush

“If we can’t respond faster than this to an event we saw coming across the Gulf for days, then why do we think we’re prepared to respond to a nuclear or biological attack?” asked former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Republican.

President Bush looks out the window of Air Force One inspecting damage from Hurricane Katrina while flying over New Orleans en route back to the White House, Wednesday, Aug. 31, 2005. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

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Tuesday Deadline to Register to Vote

ABQjournal: Tuesday Deadline to Register to Vote
Journal Staff Report

The deadline to register to vote in the Oct. 4 municipal election is Tuesday.

To be eligible, you must register with the Bernalillo County Clerk’s Office, which is in the city-county Government Center at Fifth and Marquette NW. Call 768-4085 for more information.

Here are other key election dates:

# Wednesday: Absentee in-person voting starts. You may cast your absentee ballot in person at the City Clerk’s Office at the government center or at the city records center at 604 Menaul NW. The hours are Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Contact the clerk’s office online at www.cabq.gov or 768-3030 to request an absentee ballot application.

# Sept. 14: Early voting starts. You can vote in person at the City Clerk’s Office or at the Menaul records center. Both are open 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.
The records center is also open on two Saturdays — Sept. 17 and Sept. 24 — from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

# Sept. 30: Early voting ends.

# Oct. 4: Election Day. If you haven’t already turned in your absentee ballot, you must do so by 7 p.m. on Election Day.

# Nov. 15: Runoff election. If no candidate gets 40 percent of the vote on Oct. 4, there will be a runoff election involving the top two candidates in that race.

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