JOHN BOLTON'S NOT A LOCK FOR AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED NATIONS

By: Thomas McKelvey Cleaver

Progressives around the world were dismayed this past week when the president announced the appointment of John Bolton as United States Ambassador to the United Nations. Bolton, who had been Undersecretary of State for Arms Control during the president's first term in office - the man responsible for taking the United States out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and for making nonproliferation negotiations with North Korea and Iran more difficult with his hardline policies - had been thought to have lost out when Rice did not promote him to Deputy Secretary of State. There were even those who thought his "sidelining" might mean that the power of the neocons within the Bush Administration was on the wane. Thus, the sudden announcement - after several weeks of the President and his Secretaries of State and Defense having "played nice" with allies around the world - was definitely a bucket of cold water in the faces of those who thought George W. Bush might become more moderate in his dealing with the world.

As several writers have pointed out, Bolton has been a long-term foe of the United Nations, a perfect example of the old John Birch Society cry, "Get the U.S. out of the United Nations and the United Nations out of the U.S."

In the early 1990s, Bolton stated, "If I were redoing the security council today, I'd have one permanent member because that's the real reflection of the distribution of power in the world."

As Sidney Blumenthal pointed out in The Guardian, "Bolton is an extraordinary combination of political operator and ideologue. He began his career as a cog in the machine of Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina... Bolton is often called a neoconservative, but he is more their ally, implementer and agent. His roots are in Helms's Dixiecrat Republicanism, not the neocons' airy Trotskyism or Straussianism."

Harry Truman's Secretary of State Dean Acheson called the unilateralists and McCarthyites of the early Cold War "primitives." Bolton is the modern version of the "primitives," and he could be properly classified a "neoprimitive." He was Colin Powell's enemy within. In 2001, he forced the U.S. withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, destroyed a protocol on enforcing the biological weapons convention, scuttled the nuclear test ban treaty and the UN conference on the illicit trade in small arms and light weapons. And he was the leading force behind the renunciation of our signature to the 1998 Rome statute creating the International Criminal Court. He described sending his letter notifying the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, of American withdrawal from the treaty as "the happiest moment of my government service".

In 1999, at the outset of American involvement in Kosovo, Bolton managed to make even an idiot like Bill O'Reilly look like a thoughtful commentator when he visited the "The O'Reilly Factor":

O'REILLY: And I find it difficult to stand by and watch another Cambodia, another Rwanda, unfold. And I believe the United States has a responsibility here.

BOLTON: Let me ask you this, Mr. O'Reilly. How many dead Americans is it worth to you to stop the brutality?

O'REILLY: I don't think I would quantify that because...

BOLTON: I think you have to quantify it. I think if you don't answer that question...

O'REILLY: ... I think if you're going to be a superpower...

BOLTON: ... you're ducking the key point that the commander in chief has to decide upon before putting American troops into a combat situation. We are now at war with Serbia. And the president has to be able to justify to himself and to the American people that Americans are about to die, or may well die, for a certain specific American interest.

O'REILLY: ... I do not believe in standing by while people are slaughtered.

BOLTON: ... Our foreign policy should support American interests. Let the rest of the world support the rest of the world's interests.

As Steve Clemons, President of the New America Foundation put it, "This debate about John Bolton is not just about him, or the United Nations -- it is about restoring a sense of integrity and common purpose among the great nations of the world and restoring U.S. leadership after the debacle that preceded the Iraq War."

The Bush Administration knows that Bolton is controversial, to say the least. They moved this past week to try and get the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to fast-track the confirmation process for Bolton. This ran into a roadblock when Senator Richard D. Lugar, Chairman of the Committee, refused to allow the confirmation process to move forward this coming week. With the Senate and House set to go on a two week Spring Recess this coming Friday, March 18, it means the Bolton nomination hearings will not happen before the second week in April at the earliest.

This means there is still time to derail this terrible nomination. Phone calls from voters to the members of the Foreign Relations Committee this past week were responsible for derailing the fast-track strategy the White House was banking on.

Now we need to tell all the members of the Senate that we the people want someone at the United Nations who will actually take steps to improve our relations with the rest of the world, not make them worse. The President doesn't have to nominate a UN true believer. There are any number of Republicans with solid backgrounds who have some skepticism over the operations of the United Nations - and this is not a bad thing - who believe in the value of the organization and the possibilities of improving America's position in the world through our work with the UN.

Call your Senator! E-mail them at senator@yoursenatorsname.senate.gov - let them hear from you.

Call the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Majority Staff at 202-224-4651 and tell them you want to see another Republican nominated to this important position.

We can win this one. Bolton is so far out of the mainstream, so far to the radical right, that even Republicans are worried by this nomination.

Steve Clemons published a sample letter at his blog, The Washington Note which can give good guidance as to the tone to take and the points to make. I am quoting it here in full:

Dear Senator Lugar:

You are the kind of outstanding citizen committed to principled American leadership in the world that our Ambassador to the United Nations should also exemplify.

Many of your fans and those who feel that America must make some credible efforts at rebuilding bridges with parts of the world that have traditionally been friends and allies are hopeful that America will begin demonstrating fresh and revitalized, principled global leadership. President Bush's nomination of John Bolton as Ambassador to the United Nations inflames world opinion and may undermine America's efforts to constructively assist in UN reform efforts.

John Bolton has served in government a long time and deserves a fair hearing -- but that hearing must be fair for those who have serious questions and doubts about his candidacy.

Please do the right thing. The fair and balanced thing to do is give advocates and skeptics a reasonable amount of time to make their case or lodge their concerns.

Inspiration From a Real Hero

by
Ryan Oddey

Although this site is relatively new, my love of politics and country have been in existence for years. As I stated in bio piece in the "About Us" section, the events of September 11, 2001 had such an effect on me that I decided to go back to college, get my degree, and do what I could to try and make things better for as many people as I could.

My interest in 9-11 has caused me to read as much material as I can on the subject, and I recently read 102 Minutes by Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn. The purpose of this piece is not to review this book, although I highly recommend it. I would rather use this time to introduce America to a hero. All too often we throw the term hero around and its meaning can become somewhat diluted. When you hear the story of Frank De Martini you will full appreciate the definition of a hero.

In 102 Minutes there is a picture of Frank, and underneath it a bio. It reads "Frank De Martini, the Port Authority construction manager, worked on the 88th floor of the north tower. He loved the World Trade Center and all its gadgetry ever since he started work as a consultant following the 1993 bombings. After a 1994 project to overhaul the window-washing and maintenance rigs, he took an inspection ride along the side of the building, boarding at the roof, 1,350 feet above the street. On September 11, De Martini helped rescue people on his floor and then led a group that pried open doors on twelve floors along the boundary of the crash zone, rescuing dozens of others."

After the plane hit the north tower, while so many people fled for safety, Frank disregarded his own well-being, and worked his way around the crash area. Frank, along with the help of some others, was able to pry open doors and break through walls, which in the end would directly result in the safe exit for dozens of people who would have otherwise perished. Frank was a rare breed of person, because even as he saved one group, it was not enough. He would seek out other groups of people who were trapped and free them. With death staring down at him and countless others, Frank did not flinch, and through selfless actions he personally kept death at bay for numerous survivors.

In a perfect world, Frank's story would have ended with him escorting the final group of survivors out of the North Floor and he would be able to return home to his family after an unimaginable day. But, as September 11, 2001 showed us, we do not live in a perfect world. Frank De Martini died on 9-11, at the age of 49, when the North Tower collapsed. For those of you that have seen the History Channel's documentary on the World Trade Center, you may remember Frank stating his belief that he felt the towers could withstand the impact of an airliner. That sentiment stayed with Frank until the day he died, as he refused to exit the North Tower, confidant that it would remain standing. His faith in his building, coupled with his selfless behavior, fueled the rescue effort that he led. His mind set saved lives.

When I watched the towers fall on September 11, 2001 I had no idea who Frank De Martini was. All I knew is that people had died, families had been shattered, and a landmark that I had the pleasure of seeing grace the skyline of Manhattan was gone. Yet, when I read the story of Frank De Martini I was both devastated and inspired. I was devastated that a husband, a father, a son, had died in the attacks of September 11th 2001, and yet I was inspired that in his final moments on this planet, he spent his time saving lives. Unlike the firefighters, police officers, and port authority, Frank was not trained in any emergency rescue. Frank was not employed for his ability to save lives. Yet, with all of the people around him fleeing for safety, and all of the carnage in his building, Frank chose to stay and save lives. Frank chose to do what he could to make sure other people could get away from the crash site, and ultimately out of the building prior to its collapse.

There were many heroes on September 11, 2001, but for some reason the story of Frank De Martini seemed especially profound. I am sure we would all like to think that we would have done what Frank did if we ever faced the same horrific situation, and even though we say we would do what Frank did, most of us would not. Most of us would have rushed down those flights of stairs as fast as we could, bursting through the lobby and out on to the street, calling our loved ones as soon as we could just to let them know we made it. Frank De Martini never got to make that phone call, but through his actions, dozens of others were able to call a loved one that day and told them "I made it out." That is what makes Frank De Martini a hero.

Frank De Martini and thousands of other died on Tuesday September 11th. The events of that day changed the skyline of New York City and the fabric of our nation forever. The images of the Twin Towers on fire, and later collapsing will be forever etched in the memories of anyone who saw it unfold, either in person or on television. Yet for me, and others like me, September 11th 2001 was not just the end of thousands of lives, it was the beginning of the rest of my life. I will never cease to stop feeling grateful to be alive, and I will never cease to be inspired by the actions of heroes like Frank De Martini. Although their time on earth is over, we owe it to their memories to make the most out of our lives. Doing so, will forever ensure that heroes like Frank De Martini did not die in vein.

ARNOLD GETS HIS SCRIPT REWRITTEN

By: Thomas McKelvey Cleaver

Last week I commented about Der Governator, that he's only The Hero when the script is written that way. The news is out that there?s a new draft of the movie "Der Governator Reforms California."

This draft of the script has Der Governator's parties being crashed by opponents, forcing Ahnuld The Hero to alter his schedule and duck into his events through the back door, at locations from California to New York City to Washington D.C. He's getting testy with this opposition - A-listers like him aren't supposed to deal with the "below-the-line" folks. (For those not in the know, that?s a Hollywood term for those whose names appear in the credits "below the title", in other words, all the hard workers without whom the movie doesn't get made.)

When he appeared at "21" in New York to meet his $22,300-a-person out-of-state supporters for his "local" reforms here in Kahleeforneeah, Arnold found himself slipping inside through the service entrance while Governor Pataki went in through the front door, to avoid fire-fighters, policemen and nurses yelling "Screw Arnold!" outside.

Inside, San Jose firefighter Jeremy Ray, secretary of Santa Clara Firefighters Local 1171 had reserved a table for dinner. Once there, he slipped in to Big Boy's reception on the floor above and confronted Der Governator over his "reform" of the state retirement system, turning it into a Wall Street-run 401(k) system that the California Attorney General has said will deny pensions to the widows and children of firefighters and policemen who die in the line of duty. According to Ray, "He said 'I'm a friend of the firefighters and would never take anything away from them.' I said 'No, you're not a friend to us, sir. And what you're doing is wrong.'" The NYPD was called to remove the "unruly extra" from Arnold's set. As Ray remembered, "while I was being led away, one of the officers introduced himself and said 'God bless you, brother, we're on the same side. Thanks for doing what you did.'"

When Arnie showed up in Columbus Ohio over the weekend for his Arnold Classic bodybuilding competition, nurses from California marched outside, providing information to passers-by about Der Governator's move to sidestep a state law requiring sufficient hospital nurse staffing to provide proper care for patients.

Arnold isn't used to this. For the past thirty-odd years, he's basked in the adoration of the crowd, whether it was at a Mr. Universe competition, a Hollywood blockbuster opening, or his campaign for Governor in 2003. While speaking before groups who make five-figure individual contributions to sit in the same room with him, he calls the nurses, firefighters and policemen picketing outside "special interests."

Still, 75 of them were waiting for him outside the St. Regis Hotel in Washington, D.C., when he arrived for a "business roundtable" with national corporate donors for his "local" reforms. Der Governator's cavalcade drove up to the side of the building where he walked down a flight of stairs to an underground rear entrance. Still, he couldn?t avoid the demonstrators, who crowded around the stairwell chanting "Hey! Hey! Ho! Ho! Schwarzenegger's got to go!!"

Arnold Schwarzenegger is not a "new kind of Republican." He shills for the far right just like any other standard-issue Rightie. He's even been caught with his own "Karen Ryan" scandal. For those with short memories, "Karen Ryan" was the actress portraying a news reporter in the stealth campaign by the Department of Health and Human Services to promote Bush's Medicare prescription drug "reform" that was being hit in the "real" news. Here in California, Der Governator spent $1,262 of the taxpayers' money for a "video news release" that supports his proposal to wipe out mandatory meal breaks for hourly workers. An ex-reporter now working in Arnold's publicity office is heard over professionally-shot "B-roll" footage of men and women at work, saying "Many working Californians can benefit from the proposed regulations because the change provides real-life relief." With the text helpfully provided for the local anchor to open and close with, the unwary viewer might think they were watching an actual "news" report. This past Wednesday, it was revealed the Governor?s office has prepared other "video press releases" on the subject of nurse staffing ratios and public employee retirement. Unlike official press releases, however, neither of these have any statement on them that they come from the office of the Governor, either. What we have is more Republican lies, just like the President's.

The good news is, the California press is beginning to clear their heads of Der Governator's Cubano smokescreen and see him for the right-wing shill he is and always has been. The rest of the country needs to wake up to the truth of Arnold. Speaking to his corporate sponsors at "21", he said "As California goes, so goes the nation." He's right. George Bush?s campaign against Middle America?s greatest asset - Social Security - is only the first wave of a far right attempt to cosset the comfortable and roll back the rights won over the past 70 years by the rest of us who work for a living.

WARD CHURCHILL - THE FAR LEFT FRAUD AND CON ARTIST

By: Thomas McKelvey Cleaver

The left needs to back off its knee-jerk defense of the fake 1st Amendment claims and see "Professor" Ward Churchill for the lying, cheating, thieving, morally-corrupt academic and political fraud that he is. This scumball is completely undeserving of the support he's been getting of late from people who should know better.

Let's start with the fact that Ward Churchill is about as much of a "Native American" as I am. Which is: Not Any At All. Churchill has been denounced as an impostor for close to 30 years now for his claim of being "Native American." He began by saying he was a Creek, but when the Creek Nation said they'd never heard of him, he changed that claim to being Keetoowah Cherokee. The Tribal Council of the Keetoowah Cherokee say none of the Cherokee ancestors he lists ever existed. Carol Standing Elk, head of the American Indian Movement of Northern California has said, "We have told the University of Colorado he is not an Indian and he should not be out there indicting Indian people."

That last point is a reference to Churchill's campaign against the "racist" tribal membership rules that prevent his making up his ethnic background without question. Churchill also finds it "racist" that a "Native American artist" has to be able to prove actual membership in a tribe in order to sell their work as Native American art, since he made a good living before that selling his "art." Nowadays, he just commits art fraud by passing off copies of the original work of artists like the late Thomas Mails as his own.

All this leads to the first point of Ward Churchill's career of continuing Academic Fraud.

Churchill has promulgated in his "writing" the lie that the "1/16 Rule" of tribal membership was forced on Native Americans by the U.S. Government when they passed the law breaking up tribal reservations into 160-acre individual parcels in 1887. In fact, there is nothing in the law that defines how one is to be defined as a tribal member, this rule being left to the individual tribes. The rules are "racist" because they prevent Churchill living out his fantasies.

Beyond playing fast and loose with historical fact on this point, Churchill has also promulgated the fraudulent "history" of the U.S. Army's "genocide of the Mandans" in 1837, in which he claims the Army provided blankets infected with smallpox, which he then claims killed a quarter-million Mandans in a government-planned act of genocide. Churchill's "academic citation" of these "facts" is the work of UCLA professor Russell Thornton (who really is a for-real Native American historian). Thornton's own account is completely different from Churchill's ravings and makes no mention of the Army whatsoever. When he was asked about this, Professor Thornton said "If Ward Churchill is citing my work as supporting his, then he has no support at all for what he says."

In other words, folks, Ward Churchill just makes this shit up as he goes along.

The fact Churchill has the position he does at the University of Colorado is further proof of the complete corruption of "the Academy" in the past 30 years. When he applied to CU in 1978 for a position tutoring minority students, he checked off "Native American" on his employment application and Federal affirmative action forms - something that was never verified, but with which he then managed to create an entire career. In 1991, he beat out several actual Native American applicants for a position at the university, teaching Native American Studies despite the fact that two of his competitors held Doctorates in the subject while his academic background is a Master’s Degree in "Communications."

Later that year, the faculty of the CU Communications Department was informed by their incoming chairman Michael Pacanowsky that Ward Churchill had been offered a full professorship at California State University Northridge and that they had to decide whether Churchill should receive tenure in the Communications Department after he was turned down by the Sociology and Political Science Departments. Pacanowsky said that hiring Churchill would be "making a contribution to increasing the cultural diversity on campus." Despite his lack of academic credentials, Churchill was given tenure in the name of academic political correctness.

In fact, no such offer had been made. John Chandler, spokesman for California State University Northridge, has stated "We have full records from that time and we cannot find any evidence of a hiring offer ever being made to Ward Churchill."

So, this scumball's a liar as well as an academic fraud from beginning to end.

He's also a liar and a fraud in the rest of his so-called "resume." What particularly pisses me off is his bullshit claim to be a "Vietnam combat veteran." If all those who claim this status really were, we’d likely have won that war. The truth is - of 1,500,000 who served in Vietnam - maybe 175,000 actually were "Vietnam combat veterans." That's because in the American armed forces at that time, for every grunt in the boonies there were nine others in "support." According to the US Army's records, PFC Churchill did his year in-country as a "light vehicle driver." In other words, he drove a jeep. Back in the rear, with the gear. There was a term for those guys back then: REMF - which stands for "Rear Echelon Mother F---er."

To me, what completely demonstrates his total unreliability is his claim to have come home from the war, become an organizer for Students for a Democratic Society, and to have joined The Weatherman Faction, who he taught to make bombs. I was in SDS back in the days of the scumbag Weathermen, a bunch of upper class radical-leftist morons who should have all died unlamented in the Townhouse explosion in 1970. I personally still hope that "Professor" Bill Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dohrn "get theirs" one of these days for their crimes against the antiwar movement and the left back then.

These people like Ward Churchill made our work harder back then, and they still do so. They weren't worthy of support 35 years ago, and they still aren't today. Unless you think a lying, conniving, thief and third-rate fraudulent con artist is someone you want on your side.

COME TOGETHER, RIGHT NOW, OVER THIS
by
Ryan Oddey

It is rare when a situation arises involving politics that people from both sides of the aisle agree on. In spite of that, I believe that the upcoming situation involving Election Law and how it relates to the Internet will be a cause in which many bloggers from all walks of life will find themselves on the same side. The reason for this rare showing of unity has less to do with politics and more to do with something we all cherish: Freedom.

A Recent Interview by Brad Smith has caused some in the Blogging world to become concerned about the future of the internet. Smith, who is one of the six commissioners on the Federal Elections Commission, has decided that a controversial court decision made in 2002 regarding campaign finance law should be applied to the internet.

The law that was adopted in 2002 pretty much put a limit on media (TV, Radio, Mailing Lists, etc) that is done in conjunction with Political Campaigns. At the time this law was adopted, the FEC voted to 4-2 to exclude the internet from this new form of regulation. However, last Fall U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kelley ruled that the FEC's decision to exclude the internet from these regulations severely undermines the intent of the campaign finance law.

So, now that Kollar-Kelley has made that ruling, lets examine some of the changes Brad Smith has talked about. Smith wants to assign a value to links on personal pages that direct someone towards a politician. He feels that this is important, because if an individual has already contributed the legal maximum amount to a campaign their website would be in violation of campaign finance law.

You may be wondering just how much a website is worth, well, Smith has a plan for calculating that too. Smith says "Design fees, that sort of thing." Granted, I can not totally critique Smith's plan because I do not know the specifics of "that sort of thing" but I do understand a thing about design fees. However, I pose this question, what if you designed your own site, or the site was designed for free?

As for the individual links that bring you to a politicians website, Smith plans on that being quite expensive when he uses the following logic. Consider this:

"Corporations aren't allowed to donate to campaigns. Suppose a corporation devotes 20 minutes of a secretary's time and $30 in postage to sending out letters for an executive. As a result, the campaign raises $35,000. Do we value the violation on the amount of corporate resources actually spent, maybe $40, or the $35,000 actually raised? The commission has usually taken the view that we value it by the amount raised. It's still going to be difficult to value the link, but the value of the link will go up very quickly."

Ok, so how about instead of using a link, we just post website addresses. Should the viewer of the website wish to view any of the web addresses posted, they will need to put the web address into their web browser on their own.

You see, Smith thinks that the judges decision means this:


"The judge's decision is in no way limited to ads. She says that any coordinated activity over the Internet would need to be regulated, as a minimum. The problem with coordinated activity over the Internet is that it will strike, as a minimum, Internet reporting services." So a fine start up website such as www.ThatsAnotherFineMess.com would fall under this category since we read the news and report what we feel is useful information.

We have hope, because the internet currently falls under the press exemption. However, the debate over whether or not the internet should fall under the press exemption is approaching the foreground of this debate.

I believe that the internet is the most open form of media. Average citizens, such as myself and countless others, do not have the pull to have our own section in a news paper or our own talk show on a cable news network. However, we do have the resources to go online and find a way to post our political opinions. Some of us own a website, some of us contribute to a website, while others find a forum where they can engage in political debate. The internet opens people up to a wide range of opinions that they would otherwise not hear. Why are people like Bradley Smith so intent on undoing a good thing?

Yes, both parties take advantage of the internet loophole, but if that is the worst thing that happens I think it should be allowed so average citizens continue to have access to view and voice different opinions. If Smith is able to regulate the internet he will silence countless voices that are a valuable part of the blogging community and the political scene at large.

It does not matter if you are a Democrat, a Republican, or anything else, limiting free speech on the internet, which is what Brad Smith is trying to do, is totally and completely nightmarish. We can't all own a newspaper company, we can't all own a television station, but so many of us own a computer. The internet gives us the forum to spout of our ideals and engage in the discussions that we so cherish. It must be protected.

Let us not forget that the United States does not own the internet. Yes, the government can monitor campaign donations from abroad, but how is someone like Brad Smith going to tell some person in France that they have to shut down their website because it is in violation of United States Election law simply because it has a link to a certain candidate? What is your plan to do when that person in France tells you to buzz off because you don't own the internet? Do you censor him? Do you block American access to all foreign based web sites that contain information about political candidates?

Hmmm, a country that censors all websites based in foreign nations that contain any political information...I've heard of this before.......oh yeah, China, Cuba, North Korea. We won the Cold War Mr. Smith, why must we follow the lead of Communist Nations?

This is a serious problem, and it is perhaps the one thing that most bloggers can agree on. It does not matter what side of the aisle you sit on, I am willing to bet you want to keep the internet free so we can all continue to post our rants, opinions, and any other important information we feel like sharing. With so many of us using the internet to raise public awareness about the issues and share our differing opinions I only have one final question for Brad Smith.

WHY DO YOU HATE FREEDOM?

SOCIAL SECURITY: THE DILEMMA OF THE WORKING MASSES

By: Dallas Foster


The President wants to change Social Security now while he is in the Oval Office so that he will not be considered a "lame duck" President like many others before him in history. President Bush wants this as his legacy as it was for Roosevelt's Presidency during the Great Depression. He feels that if he were to "fix" Social Security, he will go down in history as a great President and not the man who touched of a deadly war because of bad intelligence.

But what he is telling us is a lie or at least a half truth. He claims that "One way for a younger worker to come closer to what the government has promised is to be able to take a portion of the money and get a better rate of return on your own money than that which the Social Security system gets." But that's only true if you make more than a 3% return on your investment that you make with the 4 points that the President wants to give you. If you make lower than the 3% that Social Security makes, than you are worse off than if they just lowered your benefits in the first place. Also, he never explicitly says that there is a risk; he tells everyone to be conservative with their stocks and bonds and not to take their money to the track. But the fact is that all stocks experience a loss over a period of time, while Social Security does not experience a loss in value.

He also claims that "It's your money, and the interest off that money goes to supplement the Social Security check that you're going to get from the federal government. Personal accounts are an add-on to that which the government is going to pay you. It doesn't replace the Social Security system. It is a part of getting a better rate of return to come closer to the promises made." But this implies that the check you will receive under the new plan will be the same as it is with the current system and that the investment is an extra add-on to this money. But its not, it's a replacement for the money the government will need to keep the program up and running. So again, you could receive less than you would if we stay under the current plan and fixed it to work as needed.

Another false claim is that "You can pass that money [from a private account] to whomever you want." But again that is an untruth. What is really going to happen is this, under Bush's proposal a portion will be set aside by the government as an annuity and can only be paid to the tax payer it belongs to and can not be inherited by others. But the other portion is able to be given away as the taxpayer sees fit. So if this is our money why can't we give all of it away to our children or other loved ones when we pass? It is so that the government can use that unused part of your annuity to help Social Security to keep going. So again, not all the truth is coming out of our leader's mouth.

The next false statement about the new Social Security plan is that there is an $11 trillion dollar deficit. The President said: "If we don't act, we're looking at about an $11 trillion hole for the American taxpayer coming up. This is a big liability not for me or baby boomers ... but if you're a young worker, you've got a problem." The President incorrectly suggests that younger workers will have to deal with this shortfall if the program continues on its wayward course. This $11 trillion number according to the Board of Trustees report is over an "infinite" about a time not over the next 75 years that number is more like 3.75 trillion. So why all the lies about how much trouble Social Security is really in? Because the President is looking out for his own legacy and not what is good for the people that elected him.

So beware of all the false statements on Social Security and let's tell the President what we think of his cockamamie plan.

SAY GOOD-BYE TO YOUR DAY IN COURT - PART 2

By: Thomas McKelvey Cleaver

Note: You can read part 1 of Say Good-Bye to Your Day In Court By Clicking here.

Now that the Republicans have eviscerated your right to pursue a legal claim against a corporation for wrongdoing by use of class action lawsuits in state courts, the President is aiming his sights at curbing "frivolous" medical malpractice lawsuits.

I think the best overall comment on the President and the policies he announced in the State of the Union speech was made by Marshall Wittmann of the Democratic Leadership Council at his Bullmoose Blog
"Unfortunately, the President will offer a domestic program in his State of the Union address that will serve the narrow and partisan agenda of the Republican Party to comfort the comfortable and crush the domestic opposition. This President is completely incapable of a politics of national unity or greatness even amidst a long twilight struggle against our terrorist foes. The donor class must come first."

While many might think that the war in Iraq or the struggle over Social Security are the over-riding issues progressives need to take on, one that will have a far wider, far more thorough effect in changing life in America is what the President disingenuously calls "tort reform."

Bush is depending on the American people's general ignorance of what goes on in the public life of this country in order to bring this about - in the same way he depended on the general ignorance of foreign affairs by most Americans to turn the War On Terrorism into the War in Iraq. With all the anti-lawyer jokes that abound, and thirty years of right wing propaganda against "ambulance chasers," it just might work.

For the past fifty years, as the definition of actionable torts was reformed and expanded, the American civil justice system became the last and best line of defense for the average citizen against the abuse of corporate power and government policies that fail to protect the citizens they claim to be doing. When the courts began to allow class action lawsuits under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, more progress for society came into real day-to-day effect than had happened in the previous century.

Class action litigation forced the Veteran's Administration and the Congress to address the issue of the use of Agent Orange in Vietnam for veterans and their offspring suffering from the effects of dioxin exposure when the government claimed there was no such problem.

Class action litigation formed the basis of the civil rights movement that finally ended segregation and promoted the equal protection and treatment of women and minorities from their previous status as victims of allowable discrimination.

Class action litigation forced the American automobile industry to start producing safer cars.

Class action litigation brought the tobacco industry to its knees.

When one looks at that list, it's no wonder the Republican Party wanted to change the rules regarding class action lawsuits. Their "reform" - designed, they said, to prevent "frivolous lawsuits" from being instituted in jurisdictions that are "too friendly to plaintiffs" - was to federalize almost all class actions so that the already-overburdened federal courts would be the only forum.

It's no surprise that the interests supporting these "reforms" include the insurance industry.

I don't know about you, but my definition of "reform" doesn't include proposals that make things worse. I once endured five years of attempting to obtain redress from an insurance company that tried everything they could to destroy my credibility as to whether I had any injury to be compensated for, probably spending four times as much doing this as they would have paid out with just compensation for demonstrated losses, and finally made it clear they would never accept a final judgement within my lifetime, with the result they were able to settle for about ten cents on the dollar after they exhausted me.

The President is set to make his case to rein in "frivolous" medical malpractice lawsuits that result in millions of dollars of losses to doctors. As with his assertions that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, this lie doesn't stand up under the light of day either.

There is no "malpractice crisis." The "crisis" the President is riding in to rescue is the crisis created by the pinstriped pimps of the insurance industry, whose brilliance and "business acumen" resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in investment losses on the stock market (that wonderful place he wants to have you play in to create your retirement "nest egg."

A friend of mine - a "good conservative" (lifetime NRA member) Republican lawyer with 20 years' experience in tort litigation - recently pointed out some home truths about the "malpractice crisis." As he said, "The claims from the insurance companies that the payments are killing them are FALSE. But many are willing to believe them without proof. The insurance companies complain they have to raise premiums due to the litigious nature of our society. I don't believe that is true. The last time we went through this, in the 80's, the insurance companies had taken a bath in the real estate market. We're going through it now because they took a bath recently in their stock investments. All you have to do is look at their payouts relative to their income. For 2003 - the last year numbers are available - claim payments of medical malpractice suits were 1.5 percent of their gross budgets. They publicize rare and unusual cases as the norm, and folks believe it's true. "

He went on to say, "I have not seen one shred of empirical evidence that supports the insurance companies' position that their recent punitive premium increases are due to monetary judgments. In fact, there is substantial evidence that the insurance companies scream this mantra when their investments go sour. The last time we heard the insurance companies claiming they had to raise premiums due to legal judgments was in the 1980's. After Congress researched the issue, they concluded that the insurance companies' real problem was they had lost a bundle of money in the real estate market. The insurance companies go berserk when their investments tank. And their favorite scapegoat is the courts. If you know anything about insurance companies then you know their accounting practices are nothing short of bizarre when compared to other businesses. It is the only industry I know of that can enjoy substantial growth and claim a loss."

President Bush has been called the most partisan President in recent history. I personally think he can win the title hands down for all 43 presidencies in the country?s history. As Thomas B. Edsall and John F. Harris pointed out in the Washington Post on January 30, "... a recurring theme of many items on Bush's second-term domestic agenda is that if enacted, they would weaken political and financial pillars that have propped up Democrats for years, political strategists from both parties say... legislation putting caps on civil damage awards, for instance, would choke income to trial lawyers, among the most generous contributors to the Democratic Party." They go on to say, "What is notable about the Bush White House, some analysts believe, is the extent to which its agenda is crafted with an eye toward the long-term partisan implications."

John D. Podesta, who was chief of staff to President Clinton and is now President of the Center for American Progress, has said, "I think that most of their domestic agenda is driven and run by a political strategy as much as core fundamentals and belief. Why would you make this (a curb on lawsuits) the cause celebre? The notion that this is a key element of their economic program is laughable. It's important to them in both directions both in organizing core elements of their business and doctor communities, and at least undermining a financial base of the Democratic Party."

If you really want to know why George W. Bush is promoting the "legal crisis" the way he promoted the "Iraq WMD crisis," here is the reason: during the 2004 electoral cycle, lawyers gave Democrats $107.3 million according to the Center for Responsive Politics, and $39 million to Republicans. The Association of Trial Lawyers of America gave a total of $2.4 million, and 92 percent went to Democrats. Baron and Budd, a trial lawyer firm based in Dallas, gave 98 percent its $1.1 million in contributions to Democrats.

Looking at the President's campaigns for "domestic reform" - Social Security, class action lawsuits, medical malpractice claims - it's hard not to think of what H.L. Mencken had to say about American politics 80 years ago:

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

Bush crying "crisis" is like the little boy crying "wolf." There were no WMDs in Iraq, there is no Social Security crisis, and there is no medical malpractice crisis. All these "crises" are entirely of the President's own making.

SAY GOOD-BYE TO YOUR DAY IN COURT - PART 1

By: Thomas McKelvey Cleaver

On the day he signed legislation protecting his corporate sponsors from the threat of class action lawsuits to bring their excesses and crimes to account, President Bush went on to say that his next goal is to limit further litigation over the issue of asbestos. He claimed that 70 companies had been forced into bankruptcy with the loss of more than 10,000 jobs, all to pay $70 billion in claims by plaintiffs, "many of whom weren't even sick." In the President's view, the legal system is being misused by these "frivolous asbestos claims," which are holding back the economy.

In the same week, Senate Majority Leader and serial kitten killer Bill Frist made the claim on the Senate floor that one of those 70 companies - the W.R. Grace Company - was "a reputable company driven unfairly into bankruptcy."

As usual, both the President and his Senate Majority Leader are lying about an important issue, one that has severely affected many people who likely voted for George W. Bush.

The case of the W.R. Grace Company is of more than passing interest, since it represents the worst aspects of both the problem of asbestos contamination, and the contamination caused by Republican political intervention in the cases. It is no coincidence that the President and the Majority Leader would mention the company by name, since this case personally involves the Vice President of the United States, Dick Cheney. In 1995, while Cheney was CEO of Halliburton, he made an executive decision to acquire the W.R. Grace Company, without doing the due diligence necessary to easily discover the asbestos liability claims the company faced (sort of reminds you of the way he led the charge into Iraq without accurate information, doesn't it?).

While the President and the Senate Majority Leader were claiming W.R. Grace company had been unfairly driven into bankruptcy, the Grand Jury in Missoula, Montana, had two weeks earlier brought felony indictments against seven former and current top W.R. Grace executives for having knowingly put their workers and the public across the entire United States in danger with their mining activities in Libby, Montana, over the past 50 years.

Here's a little background:

W.R. Grace Co. mined asbestos-contaminated vermiculite in Libby, Montana since the late 1940s. For those who don't know what this is, vermiculite is a substance that is widely used in home heating insulation and floor tiles used in kitchens across the country. The result of the contamination was that hundreds of the company's employees have died over the years of asbestos disease, along with many residents of the town of Libby who never worked in the mine but were exposed to asbestos fibers in windswept dust coming from the mine.

The executives of W.R. Grace not only knew from the beginning the hazards of asbestos and did nothing about it, but they also committed outrageous and reckless misconduct in the course of the asbestos litigation over the past twenty years, which resulted in the company receiving punitive damages by the jury hearing the cases. It was this punishment for deliberate, demonstrated, proven illegal, outrageous and reckless behavior that drove the company into bankruptcy and may yet put Halliburton - and Dick Cheney's personal fortune, which stems from his time at the Halliburton helm - at risk of being held corporately responsible for the crimes committed by Grace.

As it happens, the economic ripples of this case extend far beyond Dick Cheney's billfold. Over the years, 700 mills nationwide have processed millions of tons of the asbestos-contaminated vermiculite mined by W.R. Grace, and government experts believe it highly likely that most of these mills have released hazardous levels of asbestos dust into the environment. It is estimated that 35 million American homes have Zonolite insulation in them, a W.R. Grace product manufactured from the asbestos-contaminated vermiculite.

When the Environmental Protection Agency wanted to issue a warning about Zonolite in 2001, it was rejected by the Bush Administration's Office of Management and Budget as an "onerous regulation" of the housing industry.

When the World Trade Center towers fell, they released a toxic cloud that included hundreds of tons of asbestos insulation and thousands of tons of asbestos-containing floor tiles, made from the asbestos-contaminated vermiculite mined by W.R. Grace. When the Environmental Protection Agency wanted to alert the residents of lower Manhattan to the health hazard, the agency was overruled by the Council on Environmental Quality, which wished to avoid any action that might slow the reopening of Wall Street. Instead, that good Republican "moderate" Christie Whitman stated publicly that the air in lower Manhattan was "safe to breathe." Her claim was later disputed by the EPA's Inspector General. In the three years since 9/11, medical authorities have found that 60 percent of those who worked at Ground Zero have developed persistent upper and lower respiratory tract symptoms associated with asbestos disease. Many of the firefighters, police, and other first responders who toiled in the ruins have been forced into early retirement for medical reasons as a result of this toxic contamination.

Asbestos disease was first tracked in the early 1960s, when Dr. Irving J. Selikoff's pioneering studies demonstrated the threat of asbestos insulation and the spread of the disease in workers employed in installing such insulation. He then demonstrated that asbestos disease was striking less-exposed workers who worked with the insulators in shipyards and building construction sites. Other investigators discovered the spread of the disease among wives and children of those who worked with asbestos, who were dying as a result of exposure to the asbestos fibers and dust carried home by their husbands and fathers on their clothes.

Beginning in the 1970s and through the 1980s, product liability class action lawsuits were brought against the manufacturers of asbestos insulation. Most of these plaintiffs were able to prove that the asbestos manufacturers had not only known that asbestos could cause fatal lung disease since at least the late 1940s, but had withheld this information from their employees. With that knowledge, thousands of other suits have been brought by construction workers, factory workers, refinery workers, brake mechanics and other workers who have either developed asbestos disease or whose chest X-rays show evidence of lung damage caused by their exposure.

Asbestos diseases include asbestosis, a scarring of the lung tissue, lung cancer, and mesothelioma, which is an always-fatal tumor.

Millions of homes, office buildings and factories throughout the country still contain significant amounts of asbestos insulation. This means that whenever these structures are renovated or demolished, there is a definite possibility of continuing asbestos contamination of the local environment with the release of asbestos fibers. Asbestos disease will be responsible for the disability and death of people for most of the rest of the 21st century. The Environmental Working Group estimates that 10,000 people will die of asbestos disease in the next 20 years.

This isn't some "crisis" brought about by ambulance-chasing tort lawyers who successfully shopped around for jurisdictions where they could win big. Just like his attempt to point to a "crisis" in Social Security, the President's claims that a public health crisis should be seen as a crisis of "frivolous lawsuits" is as big a lie as his claim that he went to war in Iraq to prevent Saddam Hussein from using weapons of mass destruction.

The Republicans and their corporate supporters want to create a $140 billion asbestos compensation fund to satisfy all asbestos claims present and future, in return for those so compensated waiving their right to a jury trial on their claim. The figure of $140 billion was not arrived at through any attempt to quantify how many people might develop asbestos disease and submit claims, or how much compensation they deserved. The figure came from the Republicans in Congress asking the asbestos industry and its insurers how much they would be willing to pay to eliminate their liability. Anyone who has had the slightest experience suing an insurance company for a car accident knows they always settle short. The figure of $140 billion is - at best - perhaps half of what would be fair and just compensation. Since no one knows how many people will bring claims, there is no assurance the trust fund has any hope of remaining solvent.

As usual, Bush wants to cosset the comfortable, extending assistance to companies that behaved with proven criminal negligence in failing to notify their employees and customers of the known dangers of the product they were selling, while selling out the millions of workers and their families - many of whom likely voted him into office.

No wonder the Republicans are worried about "frivolous asbestos claims." In the newspeak of the GOP, "frivolous claims means anything that threatens their bank accounts.

Note: This is Part I in a two piece series, you can find Part II in next weeks edition of "This Week's Mess"

A CALL TO ACTION

By: Jake Gates

During his recent trip to Auschwitz, Vice President Dick Cheney said "...evil is real and must be called by its name and must be confronted."

He couldn't be more right.

And if liberty, democracy and peace are the measure of what is good, then the greatest evil our country faces right now waits not in the sun-fried desert of the Middle East, but behind a desk in the Oval Office. There is no need to waste ink on listing the president's abuses. They are plain enough.

We are in the midst not of a secret conspiracy, but an open one, in which we are all complicit if we do not act.

In light of the brazen nature of these unending assaults on our civil liberties, the rights of sovereign nations, the health of our world, and the moral fabric of our great country, we would be wise to examine not only what we have suffered, but how we have allowed the administration to perpetrate these evils.

First, we relinquished the free press. Our forefathers, in their extraordinary wisdom, built our government on a system of checks and balances. Likewise, they gave us the freedom of press, so that the media might act as a check on the power of the government and the rich and powerful. With the unprecedented consolidation of media outlets in the hands of a few huge corporations, that "check" has disappeared.

The media, being owned by huge companies, have the interests of those companies in mind. The big companies, needing the favor of the government, have the interest of their favorite politicians in mind. The media will defend themselves by saying "we are still fair and unbiased. There's no proof that we have suppressed any conspiracies." Which is true, to a point.

They may not have suppressed anything. But they have certainly manipulated Americans into accepting the conspiracy as prudent policy - FOX news, anyone? And in this "instant gratification" media age, they also slice, dice and omit information until even the hardest news story goes down as easy as a fruit smoothie. If we are to take back America, we must break up the huge media conglomerates.

Like our forefathers before us, fate has called upon us to overcome the abuses of a tyrant.
We won't have much help, either. The big-business media conglomerates aren't very interested in "calling a spade a spade" when it comes to the Bush administration. The simple explanation is that Bush is for big business. And for anyone who's thinking of doing it in the future, there's always Dan Rather's the majority of Americans don't have time to seek out the truth

REPUBLICAN CONSERVATIONISTS?

By: Thomas McKelvey Cleaver

Republicans like to point out that the first great conservationist to put his views about the environment and our will to save it into political action was Theodore Roosevelt. They neglect to mention that T.R. was detested by Mark Hanna, the Republican strategist most admired by Karl Rove. The Republican Right fought Roosevelt tooth and nail and breathed a sigh of relief when he chose not to run for re-election in 1908. They so detested him that my grandfather, a loyal Republican operative in Johnstown, Pennsylvania - was cast out for supporting T.R.'s 1912 comeback attempt. "The more things change, the more they remain the same," - today's GOP enforces ideological party loyalty against moderate and progressive Republicans and policies.

I recently ran across a textbook from 30 years ago, when I was working on an MPA degree in Environmental Management. It was the infamous "The Limits to Growth," published by the Club of Rome. The book was fiercely attacked for forecasting that global climate change would have an adverse impact on civilization, an end to limitless oil reserves and perhaps the end of oil itself, long-term problems associated with the storage of nuclear waste, and over-population. The funny thing is, all those problems are still problems, each more obvious than it was then.

Global warming is now considered a demonstrated fact by most scientists armed with the facts, yet the United States refuses to take part in any multi-national initiatives to fight this.

It is mainstream news that within a few decades, we will pump more oil than we discover replacements for. India and China - which didn't figure in the consumption statistics 30 years ago - exacerbate those figures as they compete for oil and China produces nearly as many SUVs as does the United States.

When the trans-Alaska pipeline was built, it was predicted by those defending the use of tankers to transport oil that there would be one accident in 20 years. The Exxon Valdez oil spill came almost 20 years to the day after that prediction. Prince William Sound has still not recovered, and our "national energy plan" is to increase production on the Alaskan North Slope.

We still have no storage for nuclear waste that will be dangerous for a half-life longer than recorded human history.

Last November, the head of the EPA said Bush's re-election was a mandate to implement the president's environmental policies. These include:

Revision of the Clean Air Act to rely on "voluntary" cleanup by industry, relaxing pollution limits on ozone, elimination of vehicle tailpipe inspections, lowering pollution standards for cars, SUVs and diesel-powered big trucks and heavy equipment, end all new-source review suits against coal-fired power plants and weaken consent decrees reached earlier with coal companies.

Revision of the Clean Water Act to increase allowable pollution including a complete end to monitoring mercury.

Revision of the Endangered Species Act to make economic impacts on human activities a higher priority, making it more difficult to list a species and easier to de-list a species.

Revision of the National Environmental Policy Act to limit challenges to Environmental Impact Statements, and limiting the cases in which an EIS is required.

Changes to international audit law to allow corporations to keep information about environmental problems secret. Restriction of class-action lawsuits for asbestos claims, even as Halliburton is shown to know its W.R. Grace subsidiary hid facts about pollution from asbestos mining in Montana that had an adverse effect their workers and families, and the surrounding community.
A national energy policy opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling and increased drilling in Padre Island National Seashore, the longest stretch of undeveloped barrier island in the world and the last great coastal wild land in America, as well as changes to wilderness protection regulations of the BLM which will result in the last clean air in America - in northeastern Wyoming - being dirtier than the air I breathe in Los Angeles as drilling is increased by 1,000 percent.

One has to ask, why?

Bill Moyers recently described what he sees as the major problem we face at present: "One of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the Oval Office and in Congress. For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington... Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a worldview despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind. And there is the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts."

Writing at Grist magazine online in October 2004, reporter Glenn Scherer states:

"Forty-five senators and 186 representatives in 2003 earned 80- to 100-percent approval ratings from the nation's three most influential Christian right advocacy groups -- the Christian Coalition, Eagle Forum, and Family Resource Council. Many of those same lawmakers also got flunking grades -- less than 10 percent, on average -- from the League of Conservation Voters last year."

"Many Christian fundamentalists feel that concern for the future of our planet is irrelevant, because it has no future. They believe we are living in the End Time, when the son of God will return, the righteous will enter heaven, and sinners will be condemned to eternal hellfire. They may also believe, along with millions of other Christian fundamentalists, that environmental destruction is not only to be disregarded but actually welcomed -- even hastened -- as a sign of the coming Apocalypse."

"We are not talking about a handful of fringe lawmakers who hold or are beholden to these beliefs. The 231 legislators (all but five of them Republicans) who received an average 80 percent approval rating or higher from the leading religious-right organizations make up more than 40 percent of the U.S. Congress. These politicians include some of the most powerful figures in the U.S. government, as well as key environmental decision makers: Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), Senate Majority Whip Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Senate Republican Conference Chair Rick Santorum (R-Penn.), Senate Republican Policy Chair Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, and quite possibly President Bush."

A 2002 Time/CNN poll found 59 percent of Americans believe the prophecies in the Book of Revelation are going to come true. Nearly 25 percent think the Bible predicted 9/11. Belief in the Apocalypse is a powerful driving force in American politics.

There are two groups to look at. The traditional dispensationalists are well-known, led by Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. They believe in the End Times and that salvation is all that matters, but they see this taking place in "God's time." The Dominionists put responsibility for the return of Jesus Christ not in biblical prophesy but political activism. They believe Christ will only make his Second Coming when the world has prepared a place for Him, that the first step in readying His arrival is to "Christianize" America.

The Dominionists believe that - until Jesus' return - "the Lord will provide." A popular dominionist high-school history textbook - America's Providential History - states: "The secular or socialist has a limited resource mentality and views the world as a pie ... that needs to be cut up so everyone can get a piece." However, "the Christian knows that the potential in God is unlimited and that there is no shortage of resources in God's Earth. The resources are waiting to be tapped." In another passage, the writers explain: "While many secularists view the world as overpopulated, Christians know that God has made the earth sufficiently large with plenty of resources to accommodate all of the people."

Individuals with the power to set national priorities with regard to conservation of the environment hold these views. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay has called for "march[ing] forward with a Biblical worldview" in U.S. politics, to convert America into a "God centered" nation whose government promotes prayer, worship, and the teaching of Christian values. James Inhofe, the Senate's most outspoken environmental critic, is also unwavering in his wish to remake America as a Christian state. Both oppose the EPA, calling it "the Gestapo." DeLay has put forward legislation to gut the Clean Air and Endangered Species acts. In 2003, Inhofe invited a stacked-deck of fossil fuel-funded climate-change skeptics to testify at a Senate hearing that climaxed with him calling global warming "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people."

Inhofe makes major decisions based on heavy corporate and theological influences, flawed science, and an apocalyptic worldview. "I trust God with my legislative goals and the issues that are important to my constituents," Inhofe has told Pentecostal Evangel magazine. He chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, the single most important congressional committee dealing with environmental legislation. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Inhofe received more than $588,000 from the fossil-fuel industry, electric utilities, mining, and other natural-resource interests from 1999 to 2004. Eight of the nine Republican members of the committee received an average of $408,000 per senator from the energy and natural resource sector in the same period. In 2003, Inhofe received a perfect 100 percent rating from all three major Christian-Right groups. By contrast, the eight Democrats and one Independent on the committee received an average of $132,000 per senator from that same sector.

It might be well here to consult the Patron Saint of Right Wing Revolution - Adolf Hitler had it figured out 80 years ago:

"In the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods."

This is how the Noise Machine of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy works, folks. Peer-reviewed environmental science that contradicts an End-Timer's interpretation of Holy Writ is automatically wrong, which explains the disregard for science among Christian fundamentalist lawmakers - the denial of global warming, of the damaged ozone layer, and of the poisoning caused by industrial arsenic and mercury. When God is going to take care of all things and The End Is Near, who needs to worry about such things, especially when they prove The Second Coming?

I have painted a dark picture here. When it comes to proposing an alternative, I'll let my favorite Southern Baptist, Bill Moyers, provide the necessary guidance at the conclusion of the sermon: "The news is not good these days. I can tell you, though, that as a journalist I know the news is never the end of the story. The news can be the truth that sets us free - not only to feel but to fight for the future we want. And the will to fight is the antidote to despair, the cure for cynicism...What we need is what the ancient Israelites called hochma, the science of the heart, the capacity to see, to feel and then to act as if the future depended on you. Believe me, it does."