Whistlin' Down the River

There's lots of doomsday rhetoric going on lately. Pres. Bush hurls twin messages at us, if we don't throw tons of money at Wall Street total collapse of absolutely everything is imminent, and "things are going to be fine I'm your president you elected me to be the fixer now go on out and buy stuff." Crisis isn't new, nor is the brink of disaster. On this day in 1881 the British political leader William E. Gladstone got up and comforted the populace by saying, "The resources of civilization are not yet exhausted." The resources still may not be, but we are.