Today, a NY Daily News headline says it all:

Stray cats? Drown 'em, sez state official

"....Biologist Doug Little suggested holding the furry animals' heads under water for several minutes in a telephone call that was secretly taped by the radical group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals...."

Still a few rough edges on that compassionate conservative approach (scroll all the way down to the bottom of that linked page), it seems.

New Zealand health ministry spokesman, Dr Doug Lush warned travelers of a typhoid outbreak in Samoa -- watch out for unsanitary food or water. And, when visiting Moscow, be careful of the air you breathe if you go to the theater.

Somebody said, "America just elected Lula president."

Not Bush's America. Watch closely as Bush and the CIA use tested tactics to try and take Lula down, to protect the profits of the multinationals. (One Doug recently observed that US and European drug companies are pushing hard to stop generic drug manufacturers in Brazil and elsewhere, to keep them from selling low-cost knock-offs of their anti-HIV/AIDS drugs, profits a higher priority than health, apparently).

Or, will the south rise again?


A Christmas Greeting
From a Northern Star-Group to a Southern, 1889-'90

by Walt Whitman

Welcome, Brazilian brother--thy ample place is ready:
A loving hand--a smile from the north--a sunny instant hail!
(Let the future care for itself, where it reveals its troubles,
impedimentas,
Ours, ours the present throe, the democratic aim, the
acceptance and the faith;)
To thee to-day our reaching arm, our turning neck--to thee
from us the expectant eye,
Thou cluster free! thou brilliant lustrous one! thou, learning
well,
The true lesson of a nation's light in the sky,
(More shining than the Cross, more than the Crown,)
The height to be superb humanity.


...Only a dream in Whitman's day, yet this Doug dares to dream it still....

Feeling sad today for the unfortunate victims in Moscow, and for all people who suffer in violent conflicts around the world. How many innocents will we kill in our sometimes well-intentioned but misguided and oxymoronic attempts to use violence to stop violence? Knowing that hundreds of thousands of people marched against war yesterday -- one of the many non-violent tactics available -- blunts the pain's edge a little bit. Not much but a little. I wonder if it helps to make a ritual entertainment of violence, as this Doug does, to the applause and delight of many: do we discharge the unhealthy tensions that way, or in glorifying violence do we set the stage for more?

Today's lesson on keeping things in perspective and wisely choosing what battles to fight: No use crying over spilled...corn, says one Doug after the collapse of a storage bin wall and $3 million in damage. But another Doug -- who runs his own investment firm, no less -- is out to get the flim-flam man who scammed him for $15.

An arc for the day: The appropriately named Doug Gross pledges to push more alien genes into those Iowa cornfields, urging a worried public to trust the "experts" as human hubris pushes us ever deeper into the myth that we can somehow control (vanity!) life's wellsprings, while artist Doug Aitken "takes us through a dramatic presentation of Nature, as if to allude to the power of God's creation, leaving us with a strong sense of awe and foreboding."

This Doug strikes gold Down Under, that Doug worries about money in Mississippi. But -- and this is quite a leap, I know, chalk it up to the mood I'm in this morning -- all the gold in the world won't help these victims of not-smart-enough US weapons.

Well, doh! Doug...

Alaska's Department of Fish and Game appears to be moving away from a policy of conserving game for hunters to kill and towards protecting wildlife so people can enjoy watching and learning about the animals, non-violently. "It is a change," Doug Larsen, deputy director of the agency, tells Kenai Peninsula Online. Now, if we could just get the U.S Department of Defense to start focusing on how to keep people alive, instead of how to kill them....

Doug Aylen is evicting 8,000 dead people from their graves in South Australia's largest cemetery, "so plots can be reused," Doug says. Lease-holders will have a chance to renew expiring licenses and continue to rest in peace, however. "The cemetery's chief executive officer Doug Aylen said a list of affected graves would be published in newspaper ads," according to Australia's Herald Sun...but Doug isn't saying how he can be so certain that the dead people in question read the daily newspaper.

Grow up, Doug Grow. You can do better than to smirk and gloat and vicariously pummel Sara Jane Olson as she sits in jail, railroaded in the wake of 11 September 2001, victim (many people believe) of the culture wars that have split the U.S. of A. since the '60s.

"What would Jesus do, if he were alive today?" asks Doug Lapp, in the current issue of SojoMail, answering somebody who would call God's wrath down upon the current enemy-of-the-week as perceived by Bush & Co. "Would he choose to live a comfortable life as a citizen of the world's most powerful country? Would he join the masses by holding up this country's financial dominance as a clear sign of God's blessing? Would he put his faith in building and maintaining military supremacy in order to secure his own peace and prosperity? I think not. There might well be valid geopolitical reasons for waging war in Iraq. However, to claim God's blessing on this action is overreaching."

"Montgomery County, Md., Executive, Doug Duncan has attended every funeral held so far for the victims of the Washington-area sniper, and he has two more this weekend," but some critics wonder if he's grandstanding for political reasons. Cynical stuff, but perhaps not as cynical as people who worry about the U.S. military taking over domestic police duties, as Bush/Ashcroft move us ever closer to Big Brother....

Doug Deegan's Deer, Diseased

It's "chronic wasting disease" and it sounds nasty.

The Milwaukee Channel.com, 17 October 2002

Two Dougs Worrying About Wastewater

Faced with the need to take quick action to comply with state requirements, the Galt City Council is scheduled to consider short- and long-term solutions to the city's wastewater disposal problems tonight. "Immediate action to address the lack of disposal capacity for next summer is crucial," Public Works Director Doug Gault said in a memo to the City Council.
Lodi News-Sentinel, 16 October 2002

"Deputy City Manager Doug Worden said the city has $135,000 budgeted this year for an emergency power generator for a wastewater lift station on Market Street as well as $350,000 for repiping the lift station in conjunction with the ongoing Hawkeye sewer separation project. "
The Hawk Eye, 15 October 2002

Doug Locks Garbage Up Tight

"Waste Management of Alaska put its new bear-resistant cans through what was to be a final test Monday, with help from Alaska Zoo black bears. Mavis and Zayk ate out of the containers over the weekend, and on Monday they were given the locked container with their favorite foods inside. After thrashing the can for about 20 minutes, above, Zayk popped the lid and got his reward, left. Doug Daniels of WMA said the company will fine-tune the locking mechanism and wheels and offer the cans to customers on the Hillside and Girdwood in April. "

Anchorage Daily News, 15 October 2002

Doug Watches Big Ice Cube Melt

The ice breaker, Auruora Australis, is heading south on a five-week marine science expedition, the first Australian voyage of this season's Antarctic program. The ship will drop about 15 people off on Macquarie Island to work on summer wildlife programs, before heading to the Antarctic. The voyage leader, Doug Thost, says among other things it is hoped to study an iceberg which broke off from the Ross Ice Shelf several years ago.

"It is 90 kilometres long, 40 kilometres wide and we're hoping to put an automatic weather station on that and also we're looking at how fast these things melt," he said.


ABC News Online, 14 October 2002

Armed with Plastic, Doug Subdues Crazed Biker

"[...] Finally around 9:15 p.m., police were able to get a clear view of Kokolios inside the garage and used a Sage gun to bring him down. The gun shoots a non-lethal plastic cylinder about the size of a golf ball, American Canyon Police Chief Doug Koford said. When Kokolios hit the ground, officers rushed the garage and took him into custody. But he didn't go willingly, Koford said. 'He was very belligerent and uncooperative. He was yelling at everyone, including the time he was talking to the negotiators,' Koford said. Kokolios had to be subdued in a body wrap, which restrained his legs and arms, Koford said. During the time Kokolios was inside the garage, he started his Harley-Davidson motorcycle. Koford said several times Kokolios attempted to crash the motorcycle through the door, but was unable to do so because law enforcement had secured the door. After he was taken down, Kokolios was taken by ambulance to Queen of the Valley Hospital were he was treated for the cut to his arm and carbon monoxide inhalation from the motorcycle fumes. "

NapaNews.com, 13 October 2002

"University of Alberta professor Doug Aoki thinks you are unattractive. ....Aoki, a practitioner of an obscure branch of psychoanalysis called Lacanian theory, delivered a presentation at the university Friday which focused on an ugly truth: Not everyone can be beautiful or brilliant, and most of us fall into the great mass of mediocrity."
The Edmonton Journal
October 12, 2002

Another Doug making the rest of us look bad:

"Republican Senate candidate Doug Forrester of New Jersey, fearful of almost certain defeat, is attacking his opponent, Frank Lautenberg, on the grounds that no gun safety law could have prevented the current killing spree that had traumatized the nation's capital. In fact, of course, Forrester knows absolutely nothing about the circumstances of the horror that has gripped the Washington area. Nobody does. except for forensic experts who are on the case -- and they're not talking, least of all to Doug Forrester. But that doesn't stop the desperate GOP candidate from exploiting the horror, and using it as a pretext to spout the National Rifle Association's gun-nut line. Doug Forrester has now established himself as the most despicable, indecent Republican candidate running for office this year -- and that's saying something! How dare he exploit the pain and anxiety of Americans in order to improve his poll ratings?"

from:
Media Whores Online
11 October 2002

Doug Martsch gets bored fast, moves on

Sorry, Doug. "Man bites dog," now that's news.

DOUG SAHM DAY
2pm
Sunday, October 13
Camargo Park
5500 Castroville

Doug Sahm makes beautiful music in heaven, no matter how sloppy things get on earth.

A DAY FOR DOUG

Somewhere in the seedy side of heaven there is a place for Doug Sahm. No doubt he has plenty of company: Hank is there, and so is Elvis, and Stevie Ray, and all the other musicians who meant so much to all of us. Townes Van Zandt busies himself writing timeless ballads, and Lefty Frizzell bangs them out on an old guitar with Ernest Tubb accompanying. There, off to the side, Valerio Longoria squeezes out a polka while T-Bone Walker plays the blues, and Bob Wills walks around with his fiddle, commenting on it all — Ah-haaah — in that lilting way so reminiscent of wide open West Texas spaces.


San Antonio Current, 10 October 2002

A couple of Doug's (OK, one has a Douglas as a family name, but that's close enough for government work, as they say) are slinging mud in the Vermont governmental race.

Preliminary reports show this spring's walleye and yellow perch hatches in Lake Erie were less than spectacular, which could have repercussions in the coming years. "We don't have anything official, but they're going to be rated very, very poor," said Doug Johnson, a biologist at the Sandusky office of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, division of wildlife. "We had a little bit of decent weather in April, but our April and May weather in general were terrible."

Port Clinton News Herald, 7 October 2002

All we seem to do these days is argue about the United States. And the arguments are awfully sparse, aren't they? Either our neighbour is the most powerful nation on Earth, a menacing imperialist intruder that we must resist, or it's the most powerful nation on Earth, a beneficial force of democracy and peace that we must join and support.

Let me offer you a new way of thinking about America: Over.

Under this school of thought, the United States stopped being the world's dominant nation years ago, and has quietly collapsed into being Just Another Country. We haven't really noticed this, the theory goes, because most other countries still act as if the United States has its old military and financial power, an assumption that could be stripped of its invisible clothes in the event of a protracted Iraq war.....

"The United States has been fading as a global power since the 1970s, and the U.S. response to the terrorist attacks has merely accelerated this decline." So says Immanuel Wallerstein, the Yale University political scientist who is by far the most outspoken member of this camp. A gravelly old contrarian with little time for the orthodoxies of the left or the right, he may have gained his remove by teaching at McGill University in the 1970s.

In a forthcoming book, to be titled Decline of American Power,he describes his country as "a lone superpower that lacks true power, a world leader nobody follows and few respect, and a nation drifting dangerously amidst a global chaos it cannot control." ....

This is how great powers end: Not by suddenly collapsing, but by quietly becoming Just Another Country. This happened to England around 1873, but it wasn't until 1945 that anyone there noticed.....

There are other signs: The middling liberals, who in the 1960s would have sided with the left in opposing U.S. imperialism, are today begging for an empire. Michael Ignatieff, the liberal scholar, argued at length recently that the United States ought to become an imperial force -- on humanitarian grounds. Would this argument be necessary if the United States actually dominated the world? ....


...says Doug Saunders in the Globe and Mail on 5 October 2002.

Doug Shivers.

So do I , sometimes.

Get down, Doug Brown!

"Are you having a hard time forgiving someone who wronged or betrayed you?" asks this Doug. "If so, here are some thoughts based on my own experience and study which you may wish to ponder. To help you explore Christian forgiveness, this site contains life experiences, biblical and psychological insights, self-test belief questions, sermons, voting on forgiveness questions, and a message board for discussions."

This Doug loves beer.

"On the 18th June, The Anarchist defeated both Drew McDonald and The Zebra Kid in the same night to become the Universal British Champion.  This means that Doug now represents all of the major promotions in Britain, including All Star, TWA, FWA, WAW and Premiere Promotions.  After being presented with the belt, Doug stated the following. 'I'd like to say it was an honour to win the belt here tonight in Southampton.  But I can't.  As far as I'm concerned, you can all go back in to the sea where your town came from.' Williams was then challenged to a tag team match at the next Southampton show.  However, after the lack of respect shown to him by the Southampton fans, Doug has decided to appear at Croydon that night. "

...That's telling them, Doug.

Doug Arenberg studies tumors.