In FAVOR Of Waste, Fraud, And Abuse June 16, 2023June 14, 2023 Really. The Republican-controlled Iowa legislature voted overwhelmingly to protect it. (To their credit, six Republicans did defect.) Behold. (And keep your eye on Rob Sand. The kind of young Democrat who likely has “a future.”) Even though he died way too young, at 62, in 1996, astronomer and humanist Carl Sagan saw Trump coming: One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back. – The Demon-Haunted World As quoted in Matt Ball’s Losing My Religions. DINNER! Are you LGBT or a straight ally? Want to help put our annual dinner over the top? Perhaps even come? We’ve made so much progress since we began doing these dinners 24 years ago. At the first, some of our donors only agreed to come if there were no name tags. Today, the big issue isn’t “gays in the military” or “marriage” — 71% of the country favors marriage equality — it’s whether our democracy will survive.