I'm so ashamed of Mary (Tax Cut Six) Landrieu (DINO) - I mean more than usual - which is saying quite a lot. You had to have seen the slavering Katherine Harris clone which constituted the alternative to understand that I held my nose and marched in and pulled that lever by her name.

I was unhappy about it but now I'm stricken. Look at the list of craven (D)'s who voted yea on the dismantling of the Bill of Rights.

Lincoln Chafee was the only (R) in the nay column...who showed more courage?

What pork chop deal did Mary sell out for this time?

" It [Democratic Party] isn’t an opposition party. I have been saying for the last thousand years that the United States has only one party—the property party. It’s the party of big corporations, the party of money. It has two right wings; one is Democrat and the other is Republican. - Gore Vidal

there ain't a Louisianan in the whole bunch. Ummm...

We usually get by just saying 'Bon temps' and letting the rest take care of itself.

Trying to figure what bearing south of I-10 (also an excellent song by our own master song writer and slide guitarist Sonny Landreth) has to do with Kate Choplin who was from central LA.

And then there's the neglect of Ellen Gilchrist.

The larger point is still if you mean 'Destination: New Orleans', fine. Say that. If you mean Louisiana, then you gotta at least mention something outside Orleans Parish (and, no, the near extinction of redfish in the wake of the Paul (only chef with his own zipcode) Prudhomme mania doesn't count.

I still have the Cuisine issue that launched a million 'blackened' somethings or other back in the 80's.

Surely the one that took the cake for me though was meeting this cat from South Africa who had decided that, armed only with a copy of Paul's book, he was going to launch a 'Cajun' restaurant in Cape Town. One shudders at what must pass for andouille...

Another was after a lightening strike set fire to a trendy Paul-knock-off place in Shreveport, the owner placed an ad in the Shreveport Times saying 'Everything on the menu is blackened now'. (That, admittedly, was a step up from the most unfortunate earlier announcement of the 'Special of the Week: Roasted Wild Boor', which led me to call and ask the owner as to the whereabouts of his notorious younger brother.)

What a waste of space.

Go away.

In all this talk of 'resources' you guys keep leaving out discussion of the one most essential resource: water.

I've been reading about farmers, responding like good little (highly subsidised) capitalists, to the higher prices for corn due to the (highly subsidised) increased demand for corn to convert to ethanol, switching from wheat to corn.

Big, big problem. Corn requires nearly three times as much (highly subsidised) water.

In most cases this is fossil water laid down 12,000 years ago in the retreat of the Ice Age glaciers which is being extracted at rates well in excess of any recharge. The Oglala aquifer, underlying all that wheat and corn in the high plains, will be depleted in about 30 years.

Then what?

"Rare indeed are the opportunities for religious leaders, philosophers, moralists, policymakers, politicians and indeed the "global public" to debate the trajectory of the world's human population in the context of its stress on the Earth system, and to decide what might be done.

Unless and until this changes, summits such as that in Montreal which address only part of the problem will be limited to at best very modest success, with the welfare and quality of life of future generations the ineluctable casualty. "

Professor Chris Rapley - Director of the British Antarctic Survey

Re: 1. Those of us pumping Ogalalla water are not pumping "highly subsidized" water. The cost to develop wells, install and operate irrigation systems comes directly from our own pockets. I spent $300,000 this year on irrigation fuel, none of that was subsidized.

Oh? And the fact that farmers are exempt from fuel and excise taxes is not a subsidy? How about special accelerated depreciation rules? Think that's not a subsidy? How about 'agricultural use' property taxes?

Think subsidies are just those lovely checks (drawn on money borrowed from China), babe?

The looming failure of sections of the aquifer is Chapter n to the 10th power in "Rape of the Commons".

When in point of fact the real person was not considered, even by her Empress mother who possibly had trouble distinquishing among her 19 or so children to start with, to be rather unattractive physically. And virtually everyone agreed that she was at best marginally equipped in the way of intelligence.

So I start with the casting of Kristin Dunst (forgive me if I've misspelled her name) as enough indication of shallowness to be going on with.

I thought "Lost in Translation' was excrutiating dull and inane; saved from total mediocrity only by excellent cinematography and art direction.

I can be briefly seduced by visually beautiful films of little substance but it's like a diet of Twinkies in the end: unfulfilling.

...how to legistlate a climate like California's for the rest of the nation.