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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (88602)	11/29/2004 8:52:35 AM
From: Sig	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793970

PS, since that piece worked its way up to rant mode, I will add another bit on evolution, specifically Evolution. I am still amazed at the latest Gallup showing 45% agreement with "God created man in present form.">>> Even a scientist like Carl Sagan believed there was an unknown director of events. If God is all seeing and created everything we observe , then the beings created have been proved by evolutionists to have changed over time. There could have been an Adam and Eve, and in fact there had to be. But presenting them as looking the same as people looked in the earliest literary record time is misleading. If people were actually apes at the time of creation it would not have went over big (been accepted) by common beliefs of the time. Until Darwin raised that possibility. But knowledge of evolution ( zilch) at that time did not provide any basis for speculation as to what they really looked like. Ancestors living for 969 years as reported, seems a bit of stretch to my mind unless Methuselah was a tree. Some have the opinion that years were measured differently in olden days. But I would not let them escape with such an unsupported and simplistic view. Some religions need amendments, such as used with our Constitution, to further define or clarify whether Mohammed seriously meant to kill all infidels. Our response to that idea can be seen in Iraq and other countries today. I am on the side of the evolutionists Sig

To: Lane3 who wrote (88602)	11/29/2004 9:10:59 AM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793970

Duct Tape Won't Cover This By William Raspberry Monday, November 29, 2004; Page A19 I don't have a plan. I know Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge says everyone should have one, and I think Ridge really does want me to be safe in the event of a major terrorist attack. Last week would have been a good time to start working on a plan. My children were home for Thanksgiving, and we surely could have set aside a few minutes between turkey and football to make at least a rudimentary one. But this is as far as we got: If we're separated when the terrorists strike, and if the local phone service is not working, we'll all call Aunt Jackie in Fort Wayne, Ind. She doesn't know this yet, but her job will be to relay messages, reassuring each of us that the others are okay. Or not. The assumptions are (1) that while we might not be able to phone each other, even on our cell phones, we will be able to get long-distance, and (2) the terrorists won't hit Fort Wayne. I'm sure I should have a better, more detailed plan than that. But, may the secretary forgive me, I cling to my old-fashioned notion that there are some things you can't get ready for. I believed that when the threat was nuclear attack by the Soviet Union, and I believe it now, when the threat is terrorism. Don't get me wrong. I'm as afraid of terrorists as you are. I just don't think there's much planning I can do to make myself safer against them. I may as well spill the whole thing: I never laid in my supply of duct tape and plastic, never sealed off a "safe room" at my house. I read the instructions, back when they were issued, but I kept thinking: What is the likelihood that I'll be at home when the terrorists hit? What are the odds that if I hear something weird going on outside I'll herd my family into the safe room instead of going out to see what the devil is going on? How long do I stay in the safe room? Is there any chance that the manufacturers of duct tape are major Republican contributors? Oh, and Ridge says we should talk to our children about terrorism and how to prepare for it. Well, my kids are all grown-ups, so this doesn't apply to them, but isn't talking to young children about terrorist threats less likely to make them feel safer than to frighten them silly? I remember back in the 1980s, when half of adult America watched the movie "The Day After," and Brown University students hung "We Are Scared" banners out their dorm windows, and young children had nightmares about the bomb. I wondered at the time: What was the point of scaring everybody? In the case of the bomb, I suppose the point was to convince the Soviets of our determination not to be blackmailed. If we behaved as though nuclear war was unthinkable, how could they take seriously our nuclear deterrence capability? So we built bomb shelters and stocked apartment house basements with saltines and water (Eisenhower) and had the Federal Emergency Management Agency plot escape routes out of the cities (Reagan). With this latest one (Bush) I don't know what the point is. All I know is we're supposed to make ourselves a plan. Several plans, actually, since the plan for biological terrorism won't be much help against suicidal airline hijackers or dirty bombs. What, by the way, would have been the plan if we had known al Qaeda was determined, on a date unknown, to hijack several planes and fly them into tall buildings? Would we have emptied all the buildings? Closed down commercial aviation? Interned all the Arabs? Had everybody call Aunt Jackie? And what do we do now, when we know neither the time, the place nor the method of the presumed attack? Even if you believe (as I do) that an attack is more likely than not, how do you get ready for it? Figure it out for yourselves. Just go to www.ready.gov, and let Tom Ridge walk you through it. I'm going back to the football game. willrasp@washpost.com

To: Lane3 who wrote (88602)	11/29/2004 10:02:28 AM
From: Mary Cluney	Respond to of 793970

The pots and the kettles, OTOH, favor the marketplace when the marketplace chooses their preferred direction and directional control when they disapprove of the marketplace's choice. And somehow they don't find anything illogical or dishonest about that. That hypocrisy has become one of my favorite hobby horses. Choose to operate off principle. Or choose to operate situationally. But don't complain about the other side doing both while you're doing both. That's double hypocrisy. The universe is complex. It is not necesarily all black or all white. Binary systems are useful, but there are other systems. Letting the market place decide is most often the wisest choice, but there are situations where you need someone to direct traffic such as at a busy intersection. Being dogmatic is not smart or logical. Quite often you do not need or want a traffic light at some rural intersection. Finding ways to make traffic flow as efficiently as possible is not dishonest. Dishonest is when you want the traffic to stop because 1) you can make it stop. 2). a higher authority told you to take traffic into another direction and 3). you want to deny certain people access to where they want to go.