Nearly Half of All Americans Deny Evolution:

And yet nearly every one of them accept modern medicine. Presumably, these folks assume that modern medicine is nothing more than witchcraft. Is there any wonder that the state of education in this country fails to progress? That so many people buy houses they can't pay for? That drivers are unable to calculate their gas mileage? That voters elect and then re-elect an administration that does so much to ruin their country?

Amy Harmon tells the story of a Florida biology teacher who struggles to open the minds of his students, in today's New York Times.

Putting America into Debt and Keeping It There:

Jonathan D. Glater reports on the massive student debt issue in America, in today's New York Times. Once upon a time—your grandfather's time—the cost of a college education amounted to lost wages during the period you attended college. Young people were encouraged to go to college because their increased wages over their working lives, as a result of the better jobs they would have, would more than make up for the four or five years of lost wages during the time they spent in school.

Then colleges realized they could charge practically any fee they could devise because lenders were so eager to loan money to students. The cost of education skyrocketed well beyond inflation, rivaled only by the increased cost of health care. Today, the average college grad leaves school with something like $23,000 of debt, and considering the current economy, perhaps little hope of paying that debt off for many years to come.

Perhaps even worse, we have learned in the recent past that colleges have been colluding with lenders at the detriment of students, funneling debt to unscrupulous lenders with ballooning interest rates.

40 Years in the Wilderness:

Forty years ago this week, Channing Phillips of Washington, D.C. had his name entered into nomination for the office of president of The United States. It was the first time in history that an African American's name was entered at a major party convention. (See The New York Times' Sunday Book Review.)

The Dude discusses vampires: "One of the interesting initiatives we've taken in Washington, D.C., is we've got these vampire-busting devices. A vampire is a—a cell deal you can plug in the wall to charge your cell phone." — George W. Bush, Denver, Colorado, August 2001. (Please, nobody tell Buffy about this!)

One Step Closer to a Police State:

In an effort to further enhance the imperial presidency, the Justice Department has proposed another measure to increase the level of domestic spying that the government conducts against American citizens in the name of "security." Today's Washington Post tells the story of the move that will allow local and state police around the country to increase their spying and retention of data compiled over any ten-year period.

Naturally, the one form of security officials in any government agency are truly concerned about is their retention of power.

So what's Dick Cheney going to do after January? Well, if he succeeds in privatizing everything that used to be a part of the government, he'll still be president.

The Dude speaks out on the nature of peace: "My administration has been calling upon all the leaders in the—in the Middle East to do everything they can to stop the violence, to tell the different parties involved that peace will never happen." — George W. Bush, Crawford, Texas, August 2001. (You have to wish Cheney was at least a better ventriloquist.)

The Changing Face of America:

In thirty-six years, America will cease to be a "white" nation, according to the latest Census Bureau projections, reported on in today's New York Times. That's 2042. Due to the influx of immigrants and higher birth rates among so called minorities, people who identify themselves as descendants of Europeans will no longer make up the lion's share of the population. According to the Times report, this is taking place at an increasingly rapid rate. The project for this change had been for 2050; however, the latest Census Bureau data indicates it will occur some eight years earlier than previously thought.

Two factors should be kept in mind when contemplating these changes: 1) the economy is totally dependent on population growth, and 2) population size directly affects the degradation of the environment. It's the supreme catch 22.

So just how large will the U.S. population be by mid-century? Current expectations are that it will reach 439 million people. Sounds like an argument for mass transit, and apparently as many as 40 U.S. cities are doing that now.

In addition, according to The Washington Post, by 2050, one out of every five U.S. citizens will be over the age of 65. That's a lot of Social Security checks.

The Lessons of Vietnam:

Dick Cheney learned from his Vietnam experience—he never went, managing to dodge the draft repeatedly—that the best way to fight wars was to privatize the military. Having an all volunteer military, rather than a draft, goes a long way, but using private contractors, driven by profit and responsible only to themselves, is really the best way to be able to do whatever you want.

Republicans have long argued that privatizing government agencies is the way to achieve efficiency, but they never bother to explain to the taxpayer just how they define efficiency. We can now clearly see from the experience in Iraq that they are defining efficiency as being the most efficient way to extract billions of dollars from the taxpayer without being required to justify themselves. (See James Risen's New York Times' story in today's paper.)

The Republican argument about privatizing government services has never been about making those services work more efficiently for the citizen, it has always been about efficiently milking profits for the few out of the taxpayers.

So why do Bush, Cheney and McCain want to drill off shore and in Alaska? It ain't for your sake, you can be absolutely sure of that. They represent the few and the wealthy.