I want to acknowledge some recent incoming links. Thanks! mjh

One Robot’s Dream
http://onerobotsdream.blogspot.com/

New Mexico FBIHOP
http://nmfbihop.blogspot.com/

NEW MEXICO FIRE NEWS
http://www.colfaxfire.com/fire/

I’m really bothered by the sing-song “blame-game” tossed about by the Right. There is, indeed, blame here. I was recently lectured by someone about other people’s failure to accept “personal responsibility.” Oh, like “the buck stops here”?

Bush seemed so inept not because he was on vacation but because Cheney and Rove were on vacation. Now we see “Bush’s brain” back on the attack.

Standing in a warehouse, Bush’s arms stuck out from his sides as if he were a weightlifter; he moved as if recovering from a stroke.

I saw Bush at a cabinet meeting explaining “we’ll solve these problems because that’s what we are — problem solvers.” And articulate, too. mjh

Parties Scramble for Post-Katrina Leverage
Hill GOP Sets Investigative Commission; Democrats Criticize Panel’s Makeup
By Charles Babington and Shailagh Murray

House and Senate GOP leaders announced the “Hurricane Katrina Joint Review Committee,” which will include only members of Congress, with Republicans outnumbering Democrats by a yet-to-be-determined ratio. The commission, which will have subpoena powers, will investigate the actions of local, state and federal governments before and after the storm that devastated New Orleans and other portions of the Gulf Coast.

They rejected Democratic appeals to model the panel after the Sept. 11 commission, which was made up of non-lawmakers and was equally balanced between Republicans and Democrats. That commission won wide praise for assessing how the 2001 terrorist attacks occurred, and for recommending changes in the government’s anti-terrorism structure. …

A Republican-led Congress cannot be trusted to make a thorough investigation of a Republican administration, said Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.). “Democrats strongly prefer that the response to Hurricane Katrina be investigated by a commission of independent experts like the 9/11 commission,” he said.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said the new commission “is not truly bipartisan, will not be made up of equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans, cannot write legislation and will not have bipartisan subpoena power.”

Bush Requests $51.8 Billion More for Relief
GOP Leaders Launch Inquiry on Katrina Preparation and Response
By Jonathan Weisman and Amy Goldstein

“While countless Americans are pulling together to lend a helping hand, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are pointing fingers in a shameless effort to tear us apart,” Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman responded.

[mjh: I hear Mrs Lovejoy crying, “think of the children; won’t somebody think of the children?” Somebody should remind Mehlman they won the election through shameless efforts to tear us apart.]

For Bush, a Deepening Divide By Dan Balz

[T]he aftermath of Katrina’s fury charts a clear deterioration in political consensus in the United States and a growing willingness to interpret events through a partisan prism. It is a problem that now appears destined to follow Bush through the final years of his presidency — a clear failure of his 2000 campaign promise to be a “uniter, not a divider.”

A Washington Post-ABC News poll taken last Friday illustrates the point vividly. Just 17 percent of Democrats said they approved of the way Bush was handling the Katrina crisis while 74 percent of Republicans said they approved. About two in three Republicans rated the federal government’s response as good or excellent, while two in three Democrats rated it not so good or poor.

The ‘Stuff Happens’ Presidency By Harold Meyerson

Even if we’ll never win the national-greatness sweepstakes for solidarity, though, we’ve long been the model of the world in matters infrastructural, in roads, bridges and dams and the like. But the America in which Eisenhower the Good decreed the construction of the interstate highway system now seems a far-off land in which even conservatives believed in public expenditures for the public good. The radical-capitalist conservatives of the past quarter-century not only haven’t supported the public expenditures, they don’t even believe there is such a thing as the public good. Let the Dutch build their dikes through some socialistic scheme of taxing and spending; that isn’t the American way. Here, the business of government is to let the private sector create wealth — even if that wealth doesn’t circulate where it’s most needed. So George W. Bush threw trillions of dollars in tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans, and what did they do with it? Did the Walton family up in Bentonville raise the levees in New Orleans? Did the Bass family over in Texas write a tax-deductible check to the Mennonites for the billions of dollars they would need to rescue the elderly from inundated nursing homes?

[mjh- re: that last point, read on…]

Wal-Mart at Forefront of Hurricane Relief

By Michael Barbaro and Justin Gillis
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, September 6, 2005; Page D01

At 8 a.m. on Wednesday, as New Orleans filled with water, Wal-Mart chief executive H. Lee Scott Jr. called an emergency meeting of his top lieutenants and warned them he did not want a “measured response” to the hurricane.

“I want us to respond in a way appropriate to our size and the impact we can have,” he said, according to an executive who attended the meeting. At the time, Wal-Mart had pledged $2 million to the relief efforts. “Should it be $10 million?” Scott asked.

Over the next few days, Wal-Mart’s response to Katrina — an unrivaled $20 million in cash donations, 1,500 truckloads of free merchandise, food for 100,000 meals and the promise of a job for every one of its displaced workers — has turned the chain into an unexpected lifeline for much of the Southeast and earned it near-universal praise at a time when the company is struggling to burnish its image. …

Wal-Mart has much to gain though its conspicuous largesse — it has hundreds of stores in Gulf Coast states and an image problem across the country — but even those who have criticized the company in the past are impressed.

It’s sad to see so many people so earnestly attacking real science while defending Intelligent Design. I noticed that most of the defenders of ID use the terms “micro” and “macro” evolution. I get it, though I haven’t heard those terms used before or, if so, not so religiously by one side of the Great Divide. mjh

ABQjournal: Letters to the Editor

… Naturalistic, neo-Darwinian “evolution” theory has been utterly unable to explain the appearance of these life forms. So, nothing in macro-biological evolutionary science makes sense.

On the other hand, the genetic code found in all life forms is characterized by complex information sequences similar to our own language. Information is observed to be, uniquely, the product of intelligent agents? no exceptions. Therefore, we reason that an intelligent agent? God? Space aliens? Whoever?? must have designed and created life in all its forms. …
PAUL GAMMILL
Albuquerque

Because we haven’t explained it, we can’t ever? Thank god that perspective didn’t take hold before the Enlightenment (though the same people tried their darndest to hang onto the Dark Ages).

Genetic code is a language? So, is the author crediting god with all language, too? Or, as the creators of language, can we also create life?

NO exceptions or no known exceptions? ID proponents seem very quick to embrace endless ignorance.

Gammill seems to confuse the way he views the world with the way the world is. Common mistake among the arrogant.

The broader application proposes a world ruled by the blind forces of scientific laws, a world without intrinsic purpose or meaning. …

It is rather confusing when Christians maintain that there is no conflict between Darwin’s evolution and the Christian faith. Do these Christians affirm that chance and the blind forces of nature rule their world? Thinking Christians might well affirm the basic principles of evolutionary theory for individual species, but they obviously cannot rest with chance as an explanation for human existence and history. What is God’s role in this world? …
DAVID M. JOHNSON
Albuquerque

You see, these guys are even going to tell other Christians whether they’re good enough or not. Notice also, while evolutionists are called “arrogant” for refusing to allow for design, if a Christian were to allow that maybe the broadly accepted view of the last 100+ years has some truth in it — well, such a Christian can’t be a “thinking Christian”. These are your own kind judging you.

Read ‘n’ Believe
CREATIONISM does not need to be proved or disproved scientifically. Read Psalms 95 starting with verse 4: “In his hand are the deep places of the earth. …” It has been written down for many generations. All we need to do is read and believe.
CHARLENE EICHEL
Albuquerque

Finally, a sincere believer who doesn’t hide his vestments under a labcoat. Bless you, CE.

[W]hat right does a small group of people have to impose their ideology on the rest of society? Another consideration is that the objectivity of science is always compromised when a philosophical preference is imposed on the data. I think these questions would stimulate a lot of healthy discussion in a classroom. …

Since the discovery was made early in the last century that the universe is expanding, are we not all design advocates of a sort? What alternative is there? Moreover, we now know that the universe is remarkably fine-tuned to allow life to exist. Shouldn’t these topics be open for discussion in a classroom?
MIKE KENT
Albuquerque

You might think a guy asking about a small group of people imposing their ideology on the rest of us to be a evolutionist describing IDers. Perhaps MK is just trying to fascilitate the discussion.

EVOLUTION? INTELLIGENT design? What’s the difference? Both sides have more faith than evidence. …

The greatest difference is in their agendas. Evolutionists want to abolish all moral and civil laws based on religious conviction. Religious fundamentalists want to destroy personal freedom for all but the ruling minority. Neither side allows any middle ground between anarchy and feudalism. Ironically, if either side were to succeed in pushing their agenda to its logical conclusion, the end result would be exactly the same.

The big loser is the public school system. By failing to teach moral philosophy based on anything at all, the teachers backed themselves into a corner from which there is no escape. The ruled masses will probably never know the difference.
JERRY BOCK
Albuquerque

Jerry, to see how these “agendas” differ, compare the scientific advances of the last few hundred years with the Dark Ages. The results are NOT exactly the same.

As one of the ruled masses, I have indeed noticed a significant difference in America in the last 10 years. As the Republicans have more power, everything gets uglier.

JB pretends to be a middle-of-the-roader, but he believes evolutionists would abolish moral and civil laws. I think we see which side he’s on.

What are they afraid of?… They have no answer for this, nor will they ever have one as long as they deny the existence of the first cause who has always existed. This first cause we call God is the intelligent design, the Creator who caused the universe and all life itself to come into being, and who set and guided the evolutionary process into motion. …
JOHN R. KOLLER
Albuquerque

John, I’m afraid of the narrow-minded bullies that have taken over the Republican Party and America.

Note that the more deceptive IDers say it isn’t about “god” or Christianity. But time and time again we see the truth behind their lies. mjh

Fixing the Gaps

SIR ISAAC NEWTON, one of the foremost names in the history of science, was a proponent of something like intelligent design for reasons similar to those we’re hearing by the Rio Rancho school board. But the subsequent history gives little consolation to those who would bring intelligent design into our classrooms.

Newton understood that his theory of gravitation explained the orbits of the planets around the sun, but he was aware of “gaps” in his theory. The orbits of Saturn and Jupiter were not as predicted. … Newton concluded that God, who had created matter and the laws of nature in the first place, made corrections from time to time as needed.

This is similar to the logic of those who believe that gaps in scientific knowledge may only be filled, in some instances, by accepting the presence of a transcendent designer.

Subsequent scientists and mathematicians were able to fill some of the gaps with improved methods and showed that the solar system was a stable, self-correcting system. The precision we admire in space exploration would not be possible in a culture that stopped with Newton’s answer to the gaps. …
DAN MATTHEWS
Albuquerque

Been Here Before

PERHAPS THE Rio Rancho school board does not realize that currently there is no scientific alternative to the theory of evolution, just as there was no alternative to Newtonian physics in 1900.

Although the Michelson and Morley studies had performed some very disturbing experiments in the 1880s, the problem they discovered was not resolved until Albert Einstein published his special theory of relativity in 1905.

I very much doubt that any of this drama was covered in high school classes at the turn of the 20th century. Nor would it have been very useful to science students of the time except as a philosophical reminder that nothing in science is absolute.

If the Rio Rancho school board actually intends to introduce non-scientific alternatives to evolution in their science classes, they are doing a profound injustice to their students and wasting valuable time.

In addition, if done honestly, subjecting religious beliefs such as intelligent design to the empirical approaches of science will generate a great deal of angst among the faithful and turn the science class into a philosophical squabble. All this has been done by David Hume and others during the 18th century and it was not considered science then.
W. CURTIS HINES
Albuquerque

Darwins Caveat

NOT ONLY DID Paul Veers’ commentary, “Intelligent Design Evidence Ignored,” fail to present any evidence for intelligent design, it misrepresented biological evolution.

The commentary stated: “They therefore have no need to examine contrary evidence; just keep on the blinders and stick to the religiously held belief in the all-sufficient power of Darwinian natural selection to produce all the complex elements of life we see.”

It’s bad enough the commentary complains of “attacks against intelligent design” while offering no evidence of it [mjh: this is a standard tactic of the Radical Right], but the false claim about natural selection is unacceptable, … is completely bogus? as well as a cheap shot at scientists around the planet.

Please pass along the following quote from Charles Darwin (“The Origin of Species,” 1872, page 421):

“But as my conclusions have lately been much misrepresented, and it has been stated that I attribute the modification of species exclusively to natural selection, I may be permitted to remark that in the first edition of this work, and subsequently, I placed in a most conspicuous position? namely, at the close of the introduction? the following words: ‘I am convinced that natural selection has been the main but not the exclusive means of modification.’ This has been of no avail. Great is the power of steady misrepresentation; but the history of science shows that fortunately this power does not long endure.”

Darwin was right about a lot of things, but it looks like he was wrong about the power of steady misrepresentation not lasting long. It’s still working over 125 years later. …
BOB WARD
Albuquerque

The conclusion that we don’t know how something works and therefore it must be the hand of God represents a fundamental corruption of the scientific method. As Americans, it is our civic duty to keep a minority viewpoint like the concept of intelligent design from destroying our culture and our leading role in the global scientific community.
TIM F. WAWRZYNIEC
Albuquerque

Alan Dershowitz: Telling the Truth About Chief Justice Rehnquist – Yahoo! News

Rehnquist’s judicial philosophy was result-oriented, activist, and authoritarian. He sometimes moderated his views for prudential or pragmatic reasons, but his vote could almost always be predicted based on who the parties were, not what the legal issues happened to be. He generally opposed the rights of gays, women, blacks, aliens, and religious minorities. He was a friend of corporations, polluters, right wing Republicans, religious fundamentalists, homophobes, and other bigots.

[Thanks, Jas.]

news > Mondo Washington by James Ridgeway” href=”http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0536,ridgewayweb,67412,2.html”>village voice > news > Mondo Washington by James Ridgeway

In this hurricane, the one government agency on the ball is the Coast Guard, a highly decentralized agency now stuck within the Homeland Security maze. With only 40 aircraft, it pulled off over 1,000 rescues yesterday. …

Diverted from its original function of maritime safety to such tasks as the war on drugs and lately the war on terror, the Coast Guard has shined. Remember, it was the Coast Guard commander in New York who organized one of the most extraordinary operations maritime rescues since Dunkirk on 9-11, pulling together ferries,tugs, yachts, and all sorts of other boats to evacuate half a million people from downtown New York. ?I have long thought the Coast Guard was a good model of how you can have devolution within the federal government,? said Sam Smith, editor of the online daily Progressive Review and himself a former operations officer on a cutter. ?The National Park Service has something of the same quality. Interestingly, they are two of the best regarded federal agencies.?