Hmmm. In 1957 with my family, as a five-year-old, I crossed the Sahara Lagos-Paris in a Lockheed Electra (I think it was).

It took all night. We refueled in Kano before setting out over the desert. On landing we received the traditional caravanseria's trumpet-fanfare greeting.

It was a bit grueling -- those planes were noisy! Only one sunrise during the flight, though.

For decades the Roman church has embraced the neo-Darwinian synthesis of molecular genetics, mutations, natural selection, and changes to species over time. They already "came to their senses" and the Vatican is a worthy ally in favor of good science education in the US.

In WWII the president and congress were not the least bit afraid to ask the people to make sacrifices for the cause of the war.

I'm talking about higher taxes, war bonds, and the draft. Roosevelt didn't hesitate to say that winning that war would require blood and treasure from everybody. The call to common sacrifice made the call to arms more credible. And, the sacrifice of injured military people was honored greatly, especially in the commitment to care for them.

This war is being fought with attempts to conceal those sacrifices. The people of the Bush regime lacks the courage of their convictions to stand before the people and say, after Churchill, "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat." They never humbly asked the people to support this war. Instead, they arrogantly asserted the right to wage it.

The blood sacrifices are being borne by killed and maimed enlistees and to some extent by "private security forces." Both the blood and treasure sacrifices are being covered up. No wonder veterans' groups get irate when the Bush regime accuses them of various kinds of malingering in order to reduce costs: refusal to share in their sacrifice is the hallmark of way this war was presented to the people.

Yesterday (Wed 3/1/2006) morning, CNN ran two stories back to back.

One was the imperial visit to Afganistan.

The other was a fawning interview with Ms. Condi Rice on the subject of her personal workouts at her local gym.

I am her age. At our age, our choice of physical fitness routines have no intrinsic interest whatsoever, nor do photos of our scrawny (her) or too-large (me) bods in gym clothes. Surely CNN knows this. Surely the imperial PR machine knows this.

So why was this worth CNN airtime? Could it be that the machine is beginning to prepare the public for Cheney to resign and Rice to replace him?

The Mass. Republican party in the governor's office has pioneered the art of resigning to anoint a new incumbent, and thereby holding the job. It has worked for them in majority-Democratic Massachusetts. Why not in the federal government?