MEMO TO REPUBLICANS: KEEP TOM DELAY!

By: Thomas McKelvey Cleaver

I have been dismayed in recent days to learn that at least two Democratic political groups are organizing campaigns to try and get the Republicans in the House of Representatives to dump Tom DeLay as House Majority Leader. Specifically, the Campaign for America's Future, backed by labor and civil rights leaders, said it would spend $75,000 on cable TV ads in DeLay's Sugarland Texas district and in Washington, promoting DeLay's role in leading congressional involvement in the case of Terri Schiavo. "Tom DeLay can't wash his hands of corruption by involving Congress in one family's tragedy," the narrator says. In addition to these ads is a $25,000 campaign by the Public Campaign Action Fund, which is running an online petition calling for DeLay to resign and purchasing ads in the districts of Rep. Doc Hastings, the new chairman of the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct; Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee; and Rep. Rob Simmons, who may face a tough reelection race next year.

How can they be so stupid?

Fortunately, the Republican leadership knows better than to listen to Democrats when it comes to political decisions. Now that Tom DeLay has become a household name as a leader of the Rapture Right that he has been for 20 years, a man most Americans see as a threat to their personal liberty to decide for themselves within their families such important questions as how to deal with a loved family member at the end of that individual's life, a man who wants to substitute his absolute knowledge of what God wants for theirs, right wing leaders are crafting plans to launch a public campaign to defend DeLay.

The move follows a meeting this past week among DeLay, Rep. Eric Cantor of Virgina - the chief deputy majority whip - and nearly two dozen "movement conservative" leaders, that included
David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union; Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council; Morton Blackwell, president of the Leadership Institute; and Edwin Feulner, president of the Heritage Foundation. The group said they regard the recent attacks on DeLay as an attack on the whole conservative movement, and have talked about holding a salute or tribute dinner for DeLay.

Cantor explained the meeting this way: "It was a rallying cry to our conservative community that we are under assault. We need to fight back. We're going to have a challenging year with the judicial issue bubbling up in the Senate and the impact it may have on our ability to get things done."

Of course, the actions by Democrats sound may sound to activists who have been stung by Republican electoral successes like "the right thing to do" now that DeLay and his corrupt rule and extremist politics are becoming public, just as their campaign against unreconstructed Confederate segregationist Trent Lott as Senate Majority Leader in 2002 resulted in the dethroning of a major conservative. Sorry, wrong! To me, the far right's aggressive response is a welcome development. While the conservative heavy-hitters circle the wagons, the more they publicly defend DeLay, the more the public learns who DeLay is and why he needs so much defending.

In 1994, newt Gingrich rode a campaign against Democratic corruption in government to a new Republican majority by personalizing the campaign in the public mind through his successful effort to dethrone Speaker Jim Wright

DeLay is no Gingrich - he's never been concerned with creating an enduring GOP majority so he can go out and change the world. His ruthlessness - which is the basis of his success - comes from the fact he wants power. Period. He doesn't want it for his friends, his party or his patrons. He wants it for himself.

With any luck, in coming weeks and months, we are about to watch him cash in all the chips, call in all the IOUs. Given he can threaten the lawmakers he installed in power with primary opposition campaigns, we will watch them circle the wagons. The lobbyists he installed through the K Street project will contribute to the fund. DeLay's already preparing for war, constructing a me-against-the-world narrative, saying of his opponents, "Bring 'em on," with the same ignorant bravado that George Bush used that phrase.

DeLay's own belligerence - the very center of his ego - will close off his escape routes, now that he's entered the fight and vowed to win it. For a guttersnipe like DeLay, losing becomes unacceptable. He won't allow it, he can't allow it - to allow it is to die.

For Democrats, this is the best of all possible outcomes. DeLay is the kind of guy who operates under rocks, in the darkness of nights. For the country, watching what will increasingly look like DeLay flailing wildly, will lead to polls taking a nosedive. DeLay, has never been good in front of the cameras, as we have seen in the past two weeks as he has become increasingly rabid in public. He’s no skilled, charismatic media personality, but rather the type of public embarassment more apt to reach heights of sublime absurdity. His public statement that he couldn't get into the Army despite wanting to go in 1970 because minorities snatched up all the spots in the service to get the great benefits, leaving no room for a patriotic white boy like himself became a joke in conservative Vietnam Veteran circles. We've already seen that he is more likely to resort to blistering rage than to turn in a compelling, vulnerable performance.

As DeLay fights to survive, he'll be forced to act in public, to step into the limelight. Given his history, this might kill him on its own, since most Americans dislike unreconstructed Southern primitives when they pull off the mask and reveal their Tobacco Road origins - they're seen as objects of scorn and derision.

The truth is, the more public hits DeLay takes, the more blood is spilled over his omnipresent PAC contributions, his fundraisers, his ties with the rising Abramoff scandal, the more his private peccadilloes become public, the more these will hurt the candidates he designed his system to benefit.

We're lucky. Tom DeLay is too Southern, he's got too much pride to go quietly. DeLay is going to die, and he will be unable to avoid making it as publically painful as Terri Schiavo's ordeal, proving once again that there is indeed balance and harmony in the universe. He won't go clean because he can't. Tom DeLay will writhe and flail, and he'll take many a friend down with him.

For Democrats, one of the underlying goals of taking on DeLay is getting people familiar with him and his corrupt ways, so that the entire Republican system can be publically exposed for the moral swamp that it is. If conservatives want to help us boost DeLay’s name recognition, I welcome the help.

My great-uncle Jim McKelvey, who was a political operative for Harry Truman since they met in an artillery battery in the Argonne Forest of France in 1918, told me as a young man that "the good Republicans are pushing up daisies."

Watching Tom DeLay commit suicide publically will be more fun than kicking Nixon was 30 years ago.

Memo to Democrats: go re-read "B'rer Rabbit And The Tar Baby." We definitely don't want those Republicans to ever think of throwing Tom DeLay in that ol' briar patch.

A Closer Look at Bill Bradley's Strategy

by Ryan Oddey
On Wednesday the New York Times ran a piece written by former Senator Bill Bradley that offered his suggestion on how the Democratic Party can return to power. Much of this suggestion involved taking some ideas that the Republicans had done right, in terms of political strategy and planning, and applying them to the Democratic principles. Whenever a well-known Democrat makes a suggestion that involves adopting anything from the GOP, even if it is just strategy, then it is bound to stir the pot. Since that article first ran, preeminent bloggers have been commenting on the suggestion, mostly criticizing Bradley for his idea. However, after reading Bradley‛s suggestion and the responses that came with it I think that some people may have missed the point. We do not need to copy the GOP in its entirety but it would be a mistake not to learn from some of the things they have done right.

Bradley writes:
"Before deciding what Democrats should do now, it's important to see what Republicans have done right over many years. When the Goldwater Republicans lost in 1964, they didn't try to become Democrats. They tried to figure out how to make their own ideas more appealing to the voters. As part of this effort, they turned to Lewis Powell, then a corporate lawyer and soon to become a member of the United States Supreme Court. In 1971 he wrote a landmark memo for the United States Chamber of Commerce in which he advocated a sweeping, coordinated and long-term effort to spread conservative ideas on college campuses, in academic journals and in the news media.

To further the party's ideological and political goals, Republicans in the 1970's and 1980's built a comprehensive structure based on Powell's blueprint. Visualize that structure as a pyramid.

You've probably heard some of this before, but let me run through it again. Big individual donors and large foundations - the Scaife family and Olin foundations, for instance - form the base of the pyramid. They finance conservative research centers like the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, entities that make up the second level of the pyramid.

The ideas these organizations develop are then pushed up to the third level of the pyramid - the political level. There, strategists like Karl Rove or Ralph Reed or Ken Mehlman take these new ideas and, through polling, focus groups and careful attention to Democratic attacks, convert them into language that will appeal to the broadest electorate. That language is sometimes in the form of an assault on Democrats and at other times in the form of advocacy for a new policy position. The development process can take years. And then there's the fourth level of the pyramid: the partisan news media. Conservative commentators and networks spread these finely honed ideas."

Over at Tapped (link), Matthew Yglesias responded to this with some key points and he ends his response with a principle that I believe to be very true. Yglesias writes

"The past 30 years of right-wing infrastructure have served the financial interests of their financiers very, very, very well but they've achieved remarkably little in terms of advancing core ideological principles."

Yglesias is right, the GOP is a pawn of Big Business and the Religious Right because they are the financial base and the voting base of the Republican party and obviously each group falls into some sort of the Republican Pyramid. However, I believe Bradley was suggesting that we take the things that the GOP did right and make them our own. Democrats can do that, in a similar pyramid structure, without falling victim to being a pawn of the lower rungs of the pyramid.

Yglesias also writes:
"it's really not the case that the Goldwater Republicans "didn't try to become Democrats" after losing in 1964. Goldwater ran on a platform of eliminating Social Security, opposing the Civil Rights Act, opposing the creation of Medicare and Medicaid, and opposing a federal role in education finance. By the time Ronald Reagan brought the conservative movement to power in 1981 he had abandoned all of those planks and also had to accept the existence of the EPA and various other innovations of the 1970s. What he did once in power was basically scale back to some extent programs that didn't even exist when Goldwater ran."

All true, but that was in the early 1980's and it has been almost twenty years since Reagan was president. Now we have a President who is trying to eliminate Social Security, has taken stances against affirmative action, and is trying to slash funding for Medicare and Medicaid. It may not be the Goldwater platform, but it‛s a natural evolution of that agenda. Part of the reason for the agendas success, is that same pyramid structure that Bradley mentioned.

The Democrats need to be able to do the same thing in as much that we need core values that will continue to evolve over time while remaining true to our form and we need to be able to do this while building a strong "pyramid" with our own parts designed specifically to help spread the core principles of liberalism.

The key to making the pyramid work for the Democrats will be coming up with our own people and our own parts that fit perfectly and can advance the cause as a whole. Kevin Drum highlights this important fact over at Washington Monthly by writing:

"What conservatives really did was to exploit new levers of power in ways that no one had thought of before. Their answers turned out to be foundations, language, judges, talk radio, and lobbyists, but there's nothing sacred about those particular levers. So while creating our own foundations and talk shows is important, what's more important is that we should be constantly searching for new and underappreciated levers of power and figuring out creative ways to exploit them. Howard Dean's campaign did this in a minor way with its use of internet MeetUps, a new way of organizing grassroots support that took everyone by surprise."

Drum is exactly right, we must not copy the GOP structure in its entirety, but we must take what they have done right and improve upon it while simultaneously coming up with new ways to help the party. Air America Radio and Blogging are steps in the right direction but the party will thrive if we are able to come up with new ideas.
So what are these new ways? I think that no longer conceding the south to the Republicans is a strong move, as well as backing non-traditional Democratic candidates such as Bob Casey Jr in Pennsylvania and Tim Kaine in Virginia will help broaden the appeal of the party without completely abandoning the ideologies of the party.

The ideology of the party is what makes a pyramid scheme for the Democrats tricky to pull off. As Samuel Knight said "We need to think of a way to beat the machine without becoming the machine ourselves." I think we can do it, but its going to take a consistent and prolonged effort from the Democrats to make sure we become the party we know we can be.

Ryan Oddey
Ryan@TAFMess.com

DELIVER US FROM THEOCRACY

By: Thomas McKelvey Cleaver

Over the past two weeks, Americans have been treated to a not-so-pretty picture, as religious extremists have come out from under their rocks to participate in the collective public insanity known as The Schiavo Case, an event one can fervently hope will come to an end in the next few days.

The Schiavo Case may come to an end, but what is going on in the streets of Pinellas, Florida, is not going away.

These people may be crazy, but that doesn't mean they aren't dangerous. I was privileged to know the great screenwriter and director Billy Wilder in his latter years, and he told me about the years he spent in Berlin in the 1920s and 30s, watching Hitler and the Nazis rise to power, how they latched onto any public controversy in order to advance their cause. As he pointed out, one reason the Nazis got as far as they did was that the rest of the population considered them crazy, and with that appellation they were dismissed as something not to be taken seriously. "My friends used to call me an extremist, that I took them as seriously as I did," he once told me. On the morning after the Nazis won a plurality of the vote in the 1933 elections and it appeared Hitler would come to power, Wilder put his worldly belongings into a steamer trunk, bought a one-way ticket and caught the Paris Express from the Berlin station. "All my friends, who thought Hitler was crazy and the Nazis were fools, they all ended up dead."

It is easy to dismiss these people outside the hospice as loonies, and to see their Congressional allies as cynical opportunists. In a recent Time poll, 68% of Republicans have stated they are opposed to the intervention of Congress and the President in this matter, with 54% stating a willingness to vote against their Congressional representative for taking part in this. 62% of those identifying themselves as evangelical Christians are opposed to what they are seeing on the streets.

These good, decent, conservatives and evangelicals are not the people I am speaking of. The far fundamentalist right - some have identified them as "the rapture right" - is not "conservative." It is not even "reactionary." It is fundamentally "revolutionary" in the same sense Hitler's Nazis were, because it refuses to make its argument for change within the system of government we have had for the past 218 years. They seek nothing less than the overthrow of the constitution and the substitution of a theocracy no different from that advocated by Osama Bin Laden in its repression.

A friend who is more religiously-oriented than I am once pointed out to me that "Judaism," "Christianity" and "Islam" are all nouns - but when you place the word "Fundamentalist" before them, they become adjectives, merely describing different varieties of the same thing.

In the past 30 years, Muslim fundamentalists have revived a medieval provision of Islamic law called "hisba," which means "bringing to account." The way it works is that an individual who is not directly a party to a particular event, acting on behalf of society, will bring a case when he feels great harm has been done to religion. The best-known example of such religiously-based interference is that of Nasr Hamid Abu Zaid in Egypt. Abu Zaid - a respected modern scholar of Koranic studies - argued that contrary to medieval interpretations of Islamic law, women and men should receive equal inheritance shares. He was accused by Islamic fundamentalists of sacrilege; that charge was then used to bring a suit to have the courts forcibly divorce him from his wife, on the grounds a Muslim woman cannot be married to an infidel. In 1995, the hisba court actually found against Abu Zaid and his wife, who were then forced to flee to Europe, ultimately settling in Holland. The most objectionable feature of this is that persons without standing can interfere in private affairs. A perfect stranger can file a case about your marriage, because they represent themselves as defending and upholding religion and morality.

The Republican far right is increasingly willing to make private, intimate decisions matters of public interest and then bring the courts and the legislature to bear on them, repeating the tactics of Islamic fundamentalists in places like Egypt and Pakistan. Do you think "it can't happen here?" It already is! Back in the 1970s, when living will legislation first gained support, the anti-abortion movement was adamantly opposed to these demands for "death with dignity." Though the religious extremists lost this fight in the 1980s, Schiavo's case has re-energized their opposition to living wills, in the guise of opposition to euthanasia and assisted suicide. Right now, Republicans in the Wisconsin State Assembly have passed a "defense of medical morality" bill that allows doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other medical personnel who morally disagree with the guidelines regarding feeding and hydration tubes to ignore living wills and any advance directives an individual may have made for such a situation. This legislation is likely to pass the Republican-controlled State Senate in coming weeks.

In the past two days, it has been widely reported that, hours after Judge Greer ordered this past Wednesday that Terri Schiavo wasn't to be removed from her hospice and directly ordered every sheriff and chief of police in the state to uphold the order, a team of from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement were dispatched from Tallahassee to seize her and have her feeding tube reinserted. This event was only stopped when local police told them they would enforce the judge's order. For perhaps an hour or so, local police - who have officers around the hospice to keep protesters out - prepared for an armed showdown with the State Department of Law Enforcement, with the police informing the DLE agents that if they didn't have Judge Greer with them, they would be forcibly prevented from entering the hospice. I wouldn't even think for a moment of writing a screenplay with this level of unreality in it. A few hours later, Governor Jeb Bush went on TV to say that evidently he didn't have as much authority as some people thought.

When an executive orders his armed forces to carry out his personal whim, in contradiction of the authority of every other entity in the constitutional system - the state courts and legislature, the federal courts and legislature, federal executive - this is the first step to America becoming an Iranian-style theocratic dictatorship.

As if this wasn't enough insanity, Richard Alan Meywes was arrested without incident at his home in Fairview, North Carolina, charged with murder for hire and the transmission of interstate threatening communications for offering a $250,000 bounty for the murder of Michael Schiavo! He is additionally charged with offering $50,000 to eliminate an un-named judge - most likely Judge Greer - who denied a request to intervene in the Schiavo case.

Meywes may merely be some nut job, but there are people out there who would take this offer seriously. Among the certifiably-looney publicity hounds who came to Florida this past week was James "Bo" Gritz, a long time poseur in the so-called "Militia movement" who has in recent years been associated through marriage with the Christian Identity Church - the leading white supremacist/neo-Nazi movement in the country. Gritz arrived to conduct a "citizen's arrest" of Michael Schiavo.

Gritz has upped the ante by enlisting God against the government and its supporters. He has said, "I can assure you that if I was ever convinced that it was God's Will for me to commit an act of violence against the laws of our land, I would hesitate only long enough to, like Gideon, be certain. I would then do all within my power to accomplish what I felt he required of me. . . If God does call me into the Phineas Priesthood . . . my defense will be the truth as inspired by the Messiah."

For those who have never heard the term before the fundamentalist far right believes the "Phineas Priesthood" is a group one enters by killing someone who has broken "God's law," making it easily the most radical and potentially dangerous component of the extremist right groups. It is certainly only different in degree from the Islamic terrorists we are told we are at war with.

Right now, most people in this country look at the far fundamentalist right in a similar light to that the Nazis were held in by the "Good Germans" before 1933. Indeed, it is easy to dismiss grandstanding demagogues like Randall Terry or Bo Gritz as the pathetic media hounds they in fact are, but this movement they are working every day to create - by taking advantage whenever possible of emotionally-charged situations like that in Florida - is truly dangerous. With right wing Congressional Republicans like Tom DeLay and Rick Santorum having demonstrated their ability to ally themselves with what is going on out on the streets, the "rapture right" - the American Taliban, - now represents the greatest threat to the Republic since the Civil War.

This is about much more than one woman's right to die in dignity. The far fundamentalist Right has made it clear that it wants to run our lives from the moment of conception until death, based on their bizarre interpretation of ancient religious texts. They are not about religion, or politics, other than that those are tools for the realization of the power to dominate this society and transform it beyond recognition, and they have no limits in how far they will go. These haters never really go away. They're demonic versions of the Energizer Bunny. As Randall Terry says: "Our goal is a Christian nation. We have a biblical duty, we are called by God to conquer this country. We don't want equal time. We don't want pluralism. Theocracy means God rules."

Morality is not only for the religious. Morality is in the DNA of good democracies, which forge the framework in which it can thrive. Godliness is not cynical ethics for the public realm. It is private and it should stay that way.

The Bush White House believes that even if only a small fraction of the country supports its intervention in the Schiavo case, they are the people who tend to be more passionate and more likely to vote on the issue, as opposed to the broad mass of the public that disapproves.

If we want to keep America the America we grew up in, it is time to tell George Bush and Tom DeLay and Bill Frist that they couldn't be more wrong.

KARMA POLICE OR A PRESIDENCY RUNNING LOW ON POLITICAL CAPITAL?

By: Xaivier Martin

Whether you believe in God, Allah, Buddha, U2's Bono, or you don't believe in any supreme being, there is one universally-undeniable truth: what goes around, comes around. Call it whatever you want; karma, chi, fate or just desserts. Find yourself on the wrong side of it and life just sucks.

November 2004: we all remember hearing or reading about President Bush's first press conference after being declared the winner by everyone, but the eternally optimistic (and bitter) Democrats who held out hope. In that press conference, Bush spoke of the election results serving as a mandate by the people. He also spoke about feeling that he thought he'd earned some "political capital," and he planned to "take it out for a spin" . After all, he'd just had a victory in which he'd received a higher percentage of the vote than Bill Clinton.

March 26, 2005: several independent polls show Bush with an approval rating of 45%, as opposed to the 52% he received in polls taken the last two months. Oh what a difference a few weeks make! Now, as easy as it may be to suggest that Bush and his large, trunk-carrying friends are experiencing the karma backlash that they deserve, we should look a little deeper.

One of the issues that the real "Dr. Evil" - Karl Rove - hit people over their heads with during the election was the thought that if Democrats were in the White House all hell would break loose in Iraq and conditions would just get worse. The only thing is, since November, all anyone hears are about how many more U.S. troops have died on a given day. Undaunted, Republicans nearly broke their arms patting themselves on the back over the democratic elections that took place nearly two months ago in Iraq. Logic says the elections should have given the Republican Party a pretty big boost in public opinion, but as was stated earlier, Bush's approval rating was not affected. How could that be?

Take into consideration that at the same time as the elections, Bush rolled (or more accurately, dragged) out his plan to save Social Security. His legacy would not be weighed down by jobless rates or the worst single attack on U.S. soil. Bush had conquered Saddam Hussein and now set his sights on taming the 400-pound gorilla in the room that everyone else had intentionally ignored. The thing King George failed to realize - that Clinton, Bush's father and others before knew - is that, if provoked, the 400-pound gorilla will retaliate with a political punch the likes of which he'd never seen.

Still, Bush is the same man who entered May 2004 with a 46% approval rating and managed to get elected to office with a one-and-a-half percent majority. Say what you will about Clinton being bulletproof, but with everything Clinton dealt with, his approval rating rarely if ever dropped below 50%. Bush has had more go wrong in his tenure as President on top of terminal approval ratings and so far has managed to come out the other end relatively unscathed. He may not be the smartest man or even a good speaker, but he has been up to this point, the closest thing to untouchable this side of Elliot Ness.

With all of that said, Bush finds himself under siege. He is under siege by his own party, Democrats, the AARP and atheists. With unanimous court rulings coming down on the Schiavo appeals, he can't even get a break from the same Supreme Court that gave him his start in the 2000 election. Alas, this last attempt to take his political capital for a spin may just have taken the Bush train dangerously off track.

Not that he has the time, but if Bush ever watched his fictional counterpart on NBC's "The West Wing," he would have known that the Schiavo case was only worth a meeting and maybe some polling to see what public reaction would be to his involvement. The fictional President Josiah Bartlett (played brilliantly by Martin Sheen) would have handed the Schiavo case over to a senior counsel member and let that be it. Even if Bush and the Republicans had been successful in their attempt to keep Terri Schiavo alive, it would have publicly been seen as the administration and Congress spending valuable time - and tax payers' money - on a situation and person that didn't warrant it.

In the meantime, gas prices continue to skyrocket out of control - the national average is $2.11 a gallon - and people are slowly but surely distancing themselves from Bush's Social Security plan, while the economy seems to be going nowhere but south. During a campaign, the public will become concerned with whatever their candidate says they should be concerned about. After the smoke clears and the pomp and circumstance is through, the people care about themselves - and if they have any reason to believe their needs aren't being taken care of, things get real ugly, real quick.

In the end, the American people don't really care if Iraq has democratic elections and they don't care about saving the life of someone who supposedly doesn't want to live and is in a vegetative state anyway. The public cares about getting their money should they be fortunate to be able to retire and they care about sons/daughters, mothers/fathers and friends/family dying on foreign soil at the hands of those they are supposed to be helping. Lastly, the people care that it takes three or four more dollars to pay for a week's worth of gas.

If Bush wants to stop the bleeding, he'd better start caring about those things as well. The alternative is suffering second term shell shock and a being trapped on a runaway train quickly running short on political capital. Oil prices being as high as they are, it would be a harsh turn of karma if Bush's administration ran out of gas just months out of the gate wouldn't it?

ELMER GANTRY RIDES TO THE RESCUE

By: Thomas McKelvey Cleaver

I was momentarily surprised last weekend to discover what had crawled out from under its rock down in Florida, but after a New York minute's worth of thought it made perfect sense. The Schiavo case had become a sad sick circus, so why shouldn't Randall Terry be the ringmaster? As the biggest camera whore in the Troglodyte Right, it was almost predestined that he would show up.

Listening to National Public Radio "get it wrong" last Saturday on "Weekend Edition" when they identified him merely as the "family spokesman" reminded me that it really is true - those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.

I first saw Randall Terry during the "Holy Week of Rescue" back in 1989 when he and the morons of his "Operation Rescue" blockaded the Feminist Women’s Health Center here in Los Angeles, forcing it to close operations despite the efforts of a lot of good people - myself and SWMBO (though we hadn’t met yet then) included - who put their bodies between the clinic’s patients and the deluded fools of what I have since come to see as The American Taliban, aka The Christian Right.

If there is a "leader" of that movement worthy of the mantle of being the new Elmer Gantry, Randall Terry is the guy. Over the four years his Operation Rescue terrorized women across America, over 40,000 people were arrested in his demonstrations outside abortion clinics, most notably in Wichita Kansas over a long summer later in 1989.

As a writer of fiction, I wouldn't dare make up a biography like Randall Terry's. His grandmother was a civil rights activist and his aunts were strong feminists, one of whom would later serve as spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of Rochester, N.Y. She would later note with intentional irony that he was raised at the knees of feminists.

As a teenager Terry played a mean guitar and piano, and was a major local consumer of marijuana. Planning to become a rock star, he dropped out of high school and headed west. Several months later, he had his religious epiphany in a diner outside Galveston, Texas. Returning to Rochester, he began talking of God and hellfire, and selling used cars. Enrolling in a Bible school in the early 1980s, he met his wife, Cindy. They talked of serving as missionaries in Central America.

After a vision of using civil rights tactics to save the unborn, Terry began his operation in Binghamton, New York, in 1986. Among his most avid followers there was James Kopp, who would be a trusted lieutenant in the movement when they landed on the American political map with a series of demonstrations in Atlanta in the summer of 1988 where both were imprisoned for 40 days. Ten years later, Kopp was charged in the murder of a doctor who performed abortions in Buffalo, N.Y., who he killed from ambush, shooting the doctor in his home. When he was finally caught several years later after being hidden in the United States, Canada and France by movement supporters, Kopp pled guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.

There is additional evidence suggesting that Randall Terry and Operation Rescue may have provoked violence at abortion clinics, including the murder of an doctor and an assistant at a clinic in Pensacola, Florida in 1990.

At an anti-abortion rally in Fort Wayne, Indiana, on August 16, 1993, Terry declared that, "Our goal is a Christian nation... We have a biblical duty, we are called by God to conquer this country. We don't want equal time. We don't want pluralism.... Theocracy means God rules. I've got a hot flash. God rules." Two years later he declared, speaking of doctors who perform abortions, "When I, or people like me, are running the country, you’d better flee, because we will find you, we will try you and we will execute you."

Not only was Terry opposed to abortion, but to family planning in general. He once described Planned Parenthood's founder, Margaret Sanger, as a "whore" and an "adulteress." He also opposed and divorce, writing in his 1995 book The Judgment of God, that "Families are destroyed as a father vents his mid life crisis by abandoning his wife for a 'younger, prettier model.'" Seemingly unaware of the irony, Terry's fall from grace began later in 1995, when he divorced his wife of 20 years, Cindy, and married a much younger woman who had been his housekeeper. The pastor of his church - the Landmark Church of Binghamton, N.Y. - unceremoniously tossed him out when he divorced his wife.

On March 4, 1998, Terry was named in a lawsuit that sought to force anti-abortion leaders to pay for damages caused in clinic attacks, filed by the National Organization for Women (NOW) under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. Terry settled with NOW out of court, agreeing to a permanent injunction against any future actions against clinics, which many took as the end of Randall Terry.

On November 8, 1998, Terry filed for bankruptcy in an effort to avoid paying massive debts owed to women's groups and abortion clinics that had sued him. Terry's use of the bankruptcy laws to avoid paying the judgments against him was what prompted Senator Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) to propose amendments to each of the bankruptcy "reform" bills to specifically prevent abortion opponents from using the bankruptcy code to escape paying court fines. This year, with a 55-45 majority in the Senate, the Republicans defeated the Schumer Amendment that had stalled action on bankruptcy "reform" in 2002 and 2003 when anti-choice House Republicans refused to vote for a bill containing this provision.

Following his bankruptcy, Terry solicited donations from the True Believers, declaring on his website that "The purveyors of abortion on demand have stripped Randall Terry of everything he owned." Unsurprisingly, he failed to mention that the donations would be used to pay for his new $432,000 house in Florida - where he had moved to take advantage of the same "homestead protection law" O.J. Simpson has used to avoid paying civil judgement against him. Terry's explanation was that he wanted a home where his family would be safe and where "we could entertain people of stature, people of importance. I have a lot of important people that come through my home. And I will have more important people come through my home." The same month he paid the deposit on his new home, a court ruled that Mr. Family Values "was not paying a fair share of child support" to his ex-wife for their four children.

Like the proverbial bad penny, Randall Terry resurfaced last summer in Ponte Vedra Beach in northern Florida, where he had formed a new organization, The Society for Truth and Justice, to campaign against homosexuality after his adopted son had outed himself that Spring as being gay. His first campaign was against the U.S. Supreme Court's 6-3 decision striking down anti-sodomy laws, launching an "Impeach the Twisted Six" campaign with a rally in Jacksonville on August 9, 2004.

Thus, it really isn’t a surprise that this camera and microphone hound is where he is. Terri Schiavo's father Bob Schindler, announced in February that "Our family asked Randall Terry to come, and we gave him carte blanche to put Terri's fight in front of the American people. He did exactly what we asked, and more. Randall organized vigils and protests, he coordinated the media, he helped us meet with Governor Bush." In fact, "Terri's Law" signed by Gov. Jeb Bush last October 21 might better be known as "Terry’s Law", memorializing Randall Terry's key role in mobilizing fundamentalists to pressure the Governor and the legislature to intervene in the Schiavo case.

Over this past week, many commentators have said that the lesson of the Schiavo case is that one should be certain to have a living will on file. If Randall Terry and his like-minded troglodytes of the Christian Right have their way, even this won't be any good.

In the 1970s, when living will legislation first gained support, the anti-abortion movement was adamantly opposed to these demands for "death with dignity." The National Right to Life Coalition states on its website that "living wills are used to condition public acceptance of assisted suicide, mercy killing, and euthanasia." Though the religious extremists lost this fight in the 1980s, Schiavo's case has re-energized the movement's opposition to living wills, in the guise of opposition to euthanasia and assisted suicide.

Fr. Frank Pavone, the director of Priests for Life, which is an extremist anti-abortion group involved in the Schiavo case, has called living wills "unnecessary and dangerous for patients, doctors and society." In an article in the Baptist Press News on October 20, R. Albert Mohler, Jr. declared that the Schiavo case is proof "that the culture of death is gaining new ground and that what has been styled as 'voluntary' euthanasia is now turning into involuntary euthanasia."

Republicans in state legislatures have been working hard to overturn the authority for living wills. Legislation currently before the Wisconsin Senate allows doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other medical personnel who morally disagree with the guidelines regarding feeding and hydration tubes to ignore living wills and advance directives. This legislation has already passed the Republican-controlled Assembly and is likely to pass the Republican-controlled Senate. Of course, in Republican fundamentalist cloud-cuckoo land, it will then be perfectly all right for them to pass versions of the Texas legislation Governor George W. Bush signed, allowing hospitals to pull the plug when your bank account and insurance are exhausted.

In Elmer Gantry's America, you only ever get the salvation you pay for.

THE NEW CRUSADES

By: Xaivier Martin

When President Bush first began his seriously lobbying for "faith-based" initiatives in 2002, I thought to myself, "He's obviously catering to his base of evangelicals and conservative Christians." I figured a few small provisions would get through, but nothing major, because with all the religious ranting and raving, the U.S. is still steeped in a strong belief in individual rights and religious freedom.

Next, Bush moved his domestic policy of protecting the homeland to a foreign policy of liberating nations under tyrannical and volatile rule in the interest of "spreading democracy." The need to hunt down Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden became the need to oust Saddam Hussein and has now become the need to establish an Iraqi Democracy. Being the person I am, I'd like to believe in Bush's desire to do the right thing and help those in need. Still, there are two glaring omissions from this "goodwill tour" that make me skeptical: 1. There are people in the U.S. (the country Bush was elected to lead) that don't know what democracy is and yet we're using armed forces to make sure another nation understands and participates in it. 2. There are people in other nations like the Sudan (genocide) and the nations of southern Africa (AIDS) who have actually asked for and could probably use the U.S.'s help a little more than the Iraqi people.

And it was with the U.S. House passage of the act allowing "faith-based" organizations to hire and fire based on a person’s religious belief that really made me stop and think. I began thinking about everything that has been going on in the last few years and how it might be connected. My conclusion: We may be looking at a modern version of "The Crusades."

The original Crusades sought to cleanse the world of heretics and spread the word of God throughout those allegedly barbaric and underdeveloped areas. Whether be it through the spreading of Democracy or empowering of faith-based groups, the New Crusade promises to be just a tumultuous and divisive for this county as its predecessor's was on the world.

The Republican agenda in the last six months has consisted of creating a democratic Iraq, spreading democracy to every unstable nation in the world, giving faith-based groups immunity in following equal rights legislation and placing the Ten Commandments and other scriptures in front of courthouses.

Meanwhile, President Bush's first bold move of domestic policy, No Child Left Behind, has proven to be as effective as a pacifist in a bar brawl. Social Security is claimed to be broke in 2041, but quite a few members of his own party want no part of Bush’s proposed extreme makeover.

In 1620, some of this country's forefathers came to the shores of Massachusetts in search of the reality of religious freedom. In 1776, the social architects of our country created an outline of a society built on reason, checks and balances, and civic responsibility; all without the mention of religion. Yet, here in the 21st Century we find ourselves being divided into those who believe in God and want the right to subject all others to their beliefs and those who don't believe and wish the U.S. to remain a secular society.

How is it that the same party that wants the government to step in and essentially endorse a religion by putting its scripture in front of public courthouses also wants the same government to stay out its gun racks, bank accounts and Social Security? And these same people will explain away any accusations of authorized religious discrimination by saying the display of these scriptures is an affirmation of their faith, not a devaluing of other faiths.

Others might suggest that this is merely the affirmation of the faith that is interwoven throughout the rituals of this country such as the Pledge of Allegiance. After all, it is clearly stated when said,"One nation, under God……" right? Well, those of you who were around during the "Red Scare" that led to the Cold War might remember that the Pledge of Allegiance did not always have the previous line of religious conviction. The "One nation, under God……" was added at the insistence of The Knights of Columbus who suggested the language would help distinguish the U.S. as a righteous and just nation as opposed to the Godless and immoral Communist state of the Soviet Union.

Public officials are elected to write and protect legislation that is created to insure the citizens of this country have every opportunity at life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. They are not elected to act as a moral compass or to recommend what kind of relationship I have with my God, should I choose to have a relationship with God.

The character Sen. Vinnick (played Alan Alda) in NBC's
"The West Wing" perfectly articulated the stance of an elected official when addressing the fact that he did not regularly attend church and had not for several years: "I’ll answer any questions you have about my policies or my politics, but if you have questions about faith I suggest you go to a church."

Despite the many efforts of Republicans to suggest that our country is becoming more Godless by the minute, Faith-Based groups got $160,000,000 more from the federal government (Housing and Urban Development, Education, Labor, Justice and Health and Human Services) in 2004 than they did in 2003. Additionally, Faith-Based groups were given an additional $669 million in 2004 by the Department of Agriculture and the Agency for International Development in grants.

Still, a speech given to group of 250 religious leaders gathered at a conference organized by the White House suggests that, maybe it's not an increase in money for Faith-Based groups that President Bush ultimately wants, "Unfortunately, there are some roadblocks -- such as the culture inside government at the federal, state and local level that is unfriendly to faith-based
organizations," Bush later said. "It is said that faith can move mountains. Here in Washington, D.C., those helping the poor and needy often run up against a big mountain called bureaucracy."

Although dealing with completely different things, these words spoken over nine centuries ago sound strangely similar:

"The West must march to the defense of the East. All
should go, rich and poor alike. The Franks must stop
their internal wars and squabbles. Let them go instead against the infidel and fight a righteous war……God himself would lead them, for they would be doing His work. There will be absolution and remission of sins for all who die in the service of Christ. Here they are poor and miserable sinners; there they will be rich and happy. Let none hesitate; they must march next summer. God wills it!"

These words were spoken by Pope Urban II as a rallying cry to the Council of Clermont for what would later be known as The First Crusade. Now, Bush is far from the Pope, but summer is right around the corner.

TERRI SCHIAVO AND THE NUCLEAR OPTION

By: Thomas McKelvey Cleaver

As we look forward to Spring in Washington D.C. and the coming battle over judicial nominations, certain things come into sharp focus through the prism of events these past two weeks.

While 82 percent of Americans believe it was inappropriate for Congress and the president to insert themselves into the Schiavo case, with 78 percent believing it was a cynical use of a desperate family for political purposes, it's not impossible to see this awful situation as having become a major opportunity now being taken advantage of by the Don of the Mayberry Mafiosi, Karl Rove.

The President set an amazing precedent last week, when he broke off a vacation for the first time since his inauguration in 2001, to fly across country and appear at the White House to sign "Terri's Law," which the Republicans were crowing was a great political opportunity to excite the party base in the Christian Right.

After a week of legal appeal after appeal being turned down by judges appointed by Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, Bush #1, and Bill Clinton at all levels of the federal judicial system, "the base" is fired up and excited. From Chief Moron Rick "Man on Dog" Santorum ranting that the judges failed to follow the instructions of Congress, through every right wing shill on talk radio comparing Michael Schiavo to Scott Peterson, to "religious leaders" like Pat Robertson demonstrating they only believe literally in those parts of the Bible that serve their interests of the moment - they all seem unable to remember Christ's injunction "Judge not, lest ye be also judged" - to the pathetic fools "witnessing" outside the hospice in Pinellas, Florida, the troglodytes of the Far Right have managed to build a constituency that now believes the country has been taken over by a "runaway judiciary." As one of the protestors said, "This is a hostile takeover of our country by the judiciary."

The members of the Know-Nothing wing of crude religious demagoguery of the Republican Party have managed to publicly demonstrate they are even more politically-illiterate than most of their fellow citizens when it comes to understanding the theory of the separation of powers between the Executive, Legislative and Judicial Branches of our American government. The entire event has been a perfect example of why we need this separation of powers, a system designed specifically to deal with moments of public insanity such as we are witnessing now.

This constituency couldn't be better-timed to build public support for the next major Republican congressional initiative: packing the courts with President Bush's conservative judicial nominees by instituting the "Nuclear Option" of ending the right of judicial filibuster in the Senate. Bush practically signalled it with fireworks this past Tuesday when he commented on the refusal by 11th Circuit Court of Appeals - considered one of the most conservative Federal Appeals circuits in the country - to re-insert Terri Schiavo's feeding tube:

"I believe that in a case such as this, the legislative branch, the executive branch, ought to err on the side of life, which we have. Now we'll watch the courts make their decisions."

Let’s be clear: the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has a majority of judges appointed by Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush. Even David Pryor, the controversial judge whose nomination was filibustered in the last Congress - who was given a recess appointment to this court by George W. Bush - did not dissent from the ruling.

The Republican hypocrisy on this issue, with Senator Bill "Kitten-Killer" Frist demonstrating he slept through his college history classes while in pre-med with his pontificating that he will"“restore tradition" by killing the opportunity of judicial filibusters, is clearly shown when one considers that five years ago this month - while filibustering against a judicial nominee of Bill Clinton's - Senator Bob Smith (R-NH), one of the most rock-ribbed Republican conservatives to ever sit in the Senate, said:

"If you disagree with us on the basis of why we are objecting, fine. But don't pontificate on the floor of the Senate and tell me that somehow I am violating the Constitution of the United States of America by blocking a judge or filibustering a judge that I don't think deserves to be on the circuit court because I am going to continue to do it at every opportunity I believe a judge should not be on that court. That is my responsibility. That is my advise and consent role, and I intend to exercise it. I don’t appreciate being told that somehow I am violating the Constitution of the United States. I swore to uphold that Constitution, and I am doing it now by standing up and saying what I am saying...

As Ed Kilgore put it this week, "In the end, the Schindlers and their crusade is ultimately becoming just another battle in the right-to-life movement's long war to force a redefinition of life and the legal protections afforded it from the moment of conception to biological death."

We need to see the events of the past week as proof that the Republicans and the Christian Right have no principles, no bedrock ideology. Their only desire is for power, and they will not let anything stand in their way, not even 82 percent disapproval of their actions by the citizens of the country. They have no "mandate" other than their own illegitimate desire.

We all need to understand that this is what the Schiavo case is really about. The legal and factual arguments being thrown out as tactical maneuvers by the anti-abortion activists and Republican politicians pursuing this issue are meaningless, because Tom DeLay, Pat Robertson, Bill Frist and George Bush don't mean them for a moment. For most of the protestors "witnessing" in support of the Schindlers - whose cause has been taken over by publicity hounds like Randall Terry and Bo Gritz - the photos they wave of Terri Schiavo (may she rest in peace soon in the arms of a God these morons have no understanding of) are just the current version of the fetus posters they brandish every other day of the year. As Republican Christopher Shays of Connecticut put it, "This Republican Party of Lincoln has become a party of theocracy."

How a private disagreement between formerly-loving family members has managed to metastasize into what could be a full-blown constitutional crisis with the potential to ultimately destroy the basic form of government that has allowed us to be the nation we are is truly mind-boggling.

The newspapers say that our representatives in the House and Senate are paying attention to the public opinion polls that show overwhelming public disapproval of this circus, and strong support for the private right of Terri Schiavo not to be put though this meatgrinder of political publicity. During this recess, when your Representatives and Senators are back home to meet the people they represent, be certain they return to Washington a week from this next Monday with a clear understanding that this Far Right coup d' etat is not what the American people want.

Enough is enough.

ONE SIZE DOES NOT FIT ALL

by: Ryan Oddey

The article you are about to read is the final piece on an interesting intellectual journey that I had over the last twenty-four hours. When I wrote the first draft of this article I had every intent of calling out certain Democrats within the party who I felt would rather bash the donkey than attack the GOP on the issues. Tim Kaine, Democratic candidate for Governor of Virginia, was to be one of my biggest targets in this article. I planned on attacking him for the things he has said about his beliefs, other Democrats, and certain issues.

However, the comments I received after I sent the first draft in for editing opened my eyes to something, and I feel that it is important to share my revelation with you.

One of the main reasons I wanted to go after Kaine was because I had been following the comments he’d made; a recent interview he’d given initially pushed me to respond. In that interview, Kaine said he felt John Kerry seemed more comfortable talking about hockey and such than he did talking about religion. Kaine went on to say that the Democrats have failed to reach out to religious voters in out country and that the Democrats needed to do so to succeed. Initially I was upset at Kaine’s approach, feeling that this was a case of if you can’t beat them, join them.

At the time what I failed to realize, and what I believe other Democrats may fail to realize, is that reaching out to the religious groups of American society is not the same thing
as becoming Republican-lite.

Many Democrats, including myself at one point, believe in a "one size fits all" approach to campaigns. As we have learned with the last two presidential elections, this does not work. The "one size fits all" approach fails to an even greater extent when you try and run a campaign like that in a statewide election like governor.

We have seen that "Blue State" candidates do not appeal to voters in certain parts of the country, and that is why we have terms such as "Southern Democrats." These Southern Democrats have developed a platform consistent with the Democratic Party while at the same time embracing the cultural values of the south, including families, religion, and other concerns that fall under moral values. This is nothing short of political Darwinism, as Southern Democrats expressed the values of their fellow citizens. This is something we non-southern Democrats need to learn - Jimmy Carter is any Democrat's vision of a true progressive, and he has never had any difficulty acting from his Baptist religion in the best sense of that.

Tim Kaine is a product of this. He is the classic Southern Democrat in the same way Jimmy Carter was and is. Yes, he may have been frustrated with the way John Kerry ran his campaign, but most Democrats were. Furthermore, Kaine observed the shortcomings of the Kerry campaign and has set himself up to not trip over the same mistakes.

Paul Waldman of the Gadflyer criticized Kaine for saying that he is a Christian who takes his marriage vows seriously. Waldman's point was that, given the public forum, any politician would make those same claims. While I agree with Waldman that any politician would say that, the problem is that Democrats have not been saying that. Kaine took the opportunity to voice what more Democratic politicians need to say - that they do share these moral values.

Democrats do not need to beat the Republicans when it comes to the political arena of morals and values, rather they need to let the public know that Democrats are as concerned with morals and values as the GOP. Simply put, we need to even the playing field. The best way to draw even when it comes to morals and values will be for candidates to say the things that Kaine has been saying, and following through with those claims.

I believe the Democratic Party has come a long way in the short time since John Kerry lost last November, but we are not finished evolving. We do not need to adopt Republican values in order to reach out to the religious base - rather we need to express that, as Democrats, we too have cultural values and we need to list what they are. Kaine is doing that, and others need to follow in his footsteps if we are to take back Congress and the White House.

Make no mistake, this is not the same thing as Joe Lieberman's ideas of Republican-Lite. Lieberman has gone out of his way to agree and promote everything proposed by President Bush, climaxing with a kiss at the State of the Union Address. That is Republican-Lite, and we do not need that.

What we do need is Tim Kaine and more people like him. The DNC realizes how important the Kaine approach is, because they have pledged 5 million dollars to his campaign. Terry McAuliffe made this pledge before his term ended, and Howard Dean followed through with the promise. Actions like that show that Dean is the right man for the DNC as he helps lead the Democratic Party into a new era, one that will see more candidates like Tim Kaine.

And the victories to match.

THE AMERICAN DELUSION - TAKE 2

By: Thomas McKelvey Cleaver

A friend from the other side of the political spectrum and I were discussing the question of American international debt and its influence on policymaking. He commented that when Donald Trump was deeply in debt a few years ago, that he considered it a problem for his creditors, not for him. In many ways, the Bush Administration seems to think the same way as "The Donald" - but they fail to consider that there's a huge difference between an individual businessman, no matter how wealthy he is, going bankrupt and the world's most powerful state going through such an event.

In his masterful "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers", historian Paul Kennedy argued that great powers typically fail when military reach outstrips that nation's economic strength.

Recent events point in that direction for the United States. Consider:

On Thursday, March 10, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, when asked about the risks of having reserves too concentrated in one currency, told a parliamentary committee, "I believe diversification is necessary." His comment rekindled speculation in the currency market that the Japanese government - which with a total $840.6 billion in U.S. Treasury bonds holds the world's largest dollar-denominated foreign-exchange reserves - could shift out of dollars. The comment led to a drop in the dollar exchange rate with the yen, though the dollar recovered after the Ministry of Finance stated Japan had no plans to shift funds out of the dollar.

This latest gyration came after a downward spike in the dollar in February after the Korean central bank, which has the world's fourth-largest foreign-exchange reserves, referred in an annual report to possible diversification.

In January, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Fan Gang - Director of the National Economic Research Institute at the China Reform Foundation - said the issue for China isn't whether to devalue the Yuan but "to limit it from the U.S. Dollar." He went on to say (in English, to be sure he was not misunderstood): "The U.S. dollar, in our opinion, is no longer seen as a stable currency, and is devaluating all the time, and that's putting troubles all the time. So the real issue is how to change the regime from a U.S. dollar pegging to a more manageable reference...say Euros, Yen, Dollars, those kind of more diversified systems."

China now holds the second-largest dollar-denominated foreign-exchange reserves after Japan. In the past two years, China has replaced Japan as the largest trading partner of the United States.

Understanding all this depends on understanding the present situation of the current account deficit, which is an outgrowth of our biggest domestic economic problem - the shortfall of national saving. Since the First Quarter of 2002, our net national saving rate, which is the combined saving of individuals, businesses and government - adjusted for depreciation - is now at a record low of 1.5% of GDP. Because of this, the United States must import foreign savings in order to keep growing at acceptable rates. Thus, we run massive and ever-widening current account deficits to attract that foreign capital, making up for out lack of domestic savings.

As of the 4th Quarter of 2004, the current account deficit of the United States hit an all-time record of 6.3% of GDP, and the trade deficit on goods accounted for 98% of this because more and more the United States doesn't make things, at least not things the rest of the world wants to buy.

This current account deficit is a 1.8 percentage point deterioration from the 4.5% deficit announced a year earlier. This is not only a record current-account deficit for the United States, it is also a record financing burden for the rest of the world. We now require the rest of the world to buy an average of $2.9 billion of American debt - sold as Treasury Bonds - each and every business day just to keep the magic going. As a country, the United States is a family living paycheck to paycheck who has to go to the Payday Advance loan sharks every week, just to put food on the table and keep the bills paid.

This past Wednesday, March 16, the 4th Quarter 04 current account deficit was announced. On the same day General Motors announced a record earnings loss, and oil prices climbed to a record $56 per barrel.

This all comes together as results stemming from a single cause: The budget deficits run up by the Bush Administration in the past three years - now at record levels - have been crucial in pushing the national savings rate to a record lows. It is the capital inflows, and the trade deficits behind them, that are required to compensate for these budget deficits and so that a saving-short America can get the foreign aid it needs to keep on growing. This is "Big Government Conservatism" - otherwise known as "Bushonomics" - in action. We are running our own Ponzi scheme on ourselves.

The record increase in the price of oil is connected to all this. In real terms, $56 a barrel oil is a 400% increase in price from the lows of late 1998, which puts this on a par with the devastating blows we experienced in the 1970s. The sharp run-up of oil prices is the equivalent of a tax on household purchasing power that only digs the hole deeper for the already over-extended American consumer. Personally, I don't feel that bad watching SUV owners debate the question of whether to fill the tank or buy food for the family that week, but that's merely a personal feeling. In fact, as American families have to decide whether to fill the tank or buy food, this will lead to deferrals on other purchases that have kept the economy going over the past four years of the first Bush Administration. Falling demand for SUVs was reported on the business pages of the LA Times this past week. No wonder GM made the report it did - my bet is Ford and the others won't be far behind.

Of course, the Bush Administration's spin is that the rest of the world can't get enough of dollar-denominated assets because of the returns they offer in an otherwise return-starved economic environment. This is about as accurate a view of what is really what as "Saddam had WMDs" and "We're winning in Iraq."

The truth is the foreign capital pouring in at $2.9 billion a day is not the result of private investors plunging back into American assets. It is the result of policy decisions by foreign central banks. Total reserves increased by about $700 billion from year-end 2003 to year-end 2004, which implies an increase of nearly $500 billion in dollar-denominated holdings by the world's central banks. In other words, foreign central banks financed approximately 75% of America's current account deficit last year.

It is here that the Donald Trump analogy comes into play. This purchase of American debt is a bold attempt by foreign central banks to keep their dollar exchange rates from rising - thus maintaining their current account surpluses - and thus defer what could be a painfully-classic U.S. current account adjustment complete with a further decline in the dollar and sharply higher US interest rates. In other words, the central banks are providing a subsidy to American interest rates, which have allowed for such events as the drastic increase in housing value to the point where people like me are starting to remember the Real Estate Bust of 1989-90 here in California. This subsidy has been what has cushioned the blows of stagnant real wages and surging oil prices that would otherwise clobber the American consumer, and allows Bush to maintain his policy of coddling the comfortable.

When I was a teenager, I worked as a lifeguard at the local swimming pool. One thing we learned in water safety class was that our job did not include "going down with the ship." In other words, there comes a point where a would-be rescuer might have to let go of the drowning man. That is the point at which the rescuer realizes the drowning man can pull the rescuer down with him. The message that has been delivered at Davos, in Tokyo and Seoul in the past sixty days is that the central bankers are close to realizing they may have to let go of the drowning man.

The message is that the Republican's game is just about over. One by one, the Asian central banks who hold our Payday Advance checks have dropped increasingly less-subtle hints that they are saturated with dollar-denominated holdings. Korea, Japan, China, India, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and Singapore - all are coming to see these massive dollar overweights as a threat to their continued well-being.

Like Donald Trump, the standard Bush response borders on arrogance: "What choice do they have?" This comes from the presumption that we export-driven Asian economies over a barrel, that they are unwilling to accept the deterioration in export competitiveness currency appreciation might bring. This misses the key cost-benefit tradeoff - the moment when the rescuer has to decide whether or not to be dragged down by the drowning man - as the governments of these countries weigh the damage to exports against the fiscal cost of a loss on holdings of dollar-denominated assets. These are not private investors who have to worry only about themselves - these are governments who are ultimately responsible to their citizens and must inevitably think in terms of national interest. The bigger the dollar reserves, the more this cost-benefit analysis is likely to come to the policy decision of dollar diversification. And this spells the end of America's cut-rate foreign financing.

In addition to the economic news of the past two weeks, there is political news of more than passing interest. The People's Congress, meeting in Beijing, passed a law making any attempt by Taiwan to declare independence a cause for war. Bush recently declared that it is American official policy to support Taiwan in the event of a war between them and the mainland. We even got the Japanese to formally declare a national interest in maintaining the current status of Taiwan.

Consider the day that the Taiwanese declare independence. It won't be a struggle between the Chinese Navy and two American carrier battle groups in the Taiwan Straits. The Chinese in Beijing will only need to put in a call to Washington and inform the Secretary of the Treasury that they are planning to diversify their foreign exchange reserves into Euros.

The result of that move - with the Japanese, Koreans, and all the others following suit in order to protect their own national economies - will be an American economy that makes 1929 look like Good Times. Is there an American President of either party - or an American political party - that could take that sort of hit?

Taiwan independence is only one of several possible scenarios that hold this sort of outcome for the United States. The rest of the world doesn't need to draft a single soldier to bring the greatest superpower in history to its knees. As Paul Kennedy has pointed out, every Great Power going back to the Roman Empire has fallen when military reach outstrips that nation's economic strength.

YOUR ASSIGNMENT, SHOULD YOU CHOOSE TO ACCEPT IT...

By: Thomas McKelvey Cleaver

The House of Representatives and the Senate went on two weeks of Spring Break this past Friday, March 18.

I was going to suggest this weekend that you be sure to find out where your Congressman is meeting with his or her constituents, and be sure to drop by and ask some real questions about the real issues we face today.

That might not be so easy to do. It turns out that your assignment, should you accept it, may well be finding a way to sneak into the meeting your representative - if they're a Republican - has decided to hold as they take a page from the President's playbook.

At his press conference this last Wednesday, Bubble Boy said he thought the Congress Critters should go back to their districts and "talk to their constituents not only about the problem, but about solutions. I urge members to start talking about how we're going to permanently fix Social Security."

As is usual, the President acts as if he never heard the word "hypocrisy." So far, Bush hasn't talked to his constituents about Social Security outside of crowds of pre-screened Republican supporters of privatization who are willing to take direction on what to say from White House advance men in a performance so obvious even the mainstream media have taken to commenting on it unfavorably in their reporting of the Bamboozlepalooza Tour. So his advice to lawmakers is that they should have discussions with voters but he shouldn't?

As usual, actions speak louder than words, and the Best CongressCritters Money Can Buy have decided to follow his example, rather than his advice. Having had some disastrous public meetings where the dialogue wasn't scripted in advance when they went home in February, House Republican Conference Chairwoman Deborah Pryce (R-Oh) and other Republican leaders are urging Congressional Republicans to hold low-profile events to avoid "March Madness." The plan is for them to stop by newspaper editorial boards, speak at Rotary Club lunches and Chamber of Commerce meetings, and other local business groups - preach to the Kool-Aid drinkers, in other words. With an invitation-only/members-only format, "there isn't an opportunity for it to disintegrate into something that's less desirable," as Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, chairman of the Senate Republican Conference put it.

Since it would be an unlikely happenstance that anyone reading this would be a member of any of those organizations where they can get "face time" with their Critter, perhaps those of you who find out about these meetings might want to gather outside and let the rest of the world know they're happening. You might want to talk to the local media who will be dropping by (and if they don't know about the meeting, be sure to be polite and invite them over), and raise the questions that Mr./Ms. Critter sure as hell won't be bringing up inside.

Might I suggest you talk about the "nuclear option" and the coming confirmation fights over the Terrible Ten? That's the ten judicial nominations turned down in the last Congress that the President has renominated as part of his "mandate" to take the country back to 1896.

The first one up is going to be William G. Myers III, and he's an easy target, even for the reasonable Republicans. HE LIED TO THEM in his confirmation hearings last year, and again when he testified on March 1. Just in case you aren't familiar with the Rollins Case and Myers' involvement, go here (PUT IN LINK TO MY "NUCLEAR OPTION" ARTICLE HERE). Amazingly, on a 10-8 party-line vote, the Senate Judiciary Committee sent the nomination on to the full Senate for confirmation. This despite comments such as that of Senator Charles Shumer (D-NY) that "the President keeps recycling nominees like William Myers, whose words and deeds make him the most anti-environmental nominee we have ever seen." Every major environmental organization, along with civil rights, labor and Native American groups oppose Myers' nomination.

Senators of both parties traditionally dislike being lied to by nominees, especially when the lie is committed under oath, when it becomes perjury. Your Republican Senator may just surprise me and hold real "constituent meetings" during the break. If so, go and politely ask them if they intend to confirm a man to a lifetime position as a Federal Appeals Court Judge who is a known perjurer - and remind them that the perjury was committed against that august body they're a member of, the United States Senate. The Kool-Aid drinkers are going to do whatever they're ordered to, but there are responsible Republicans - not to mention most Democrats - who may not be aware of this information (feel free to copy/paste the relevant information from my article into a polite e-mail to your Senator, to be sure they "get the message"). Give them a "non-partisan" reason to protect their own house, and they just might see the light.

Bring up the "nuclear option," and remind the Republicans that the day will come again when they are the minority party (sooner rather than later, I fervently pray) and that they may well live to rue the day they let short-term advantage short circuit long-term reality.

Even such a moron as Mitch McConnell appears to have gotten the message. It's reported that McConnell is reluctant to take this step because he's aware of the long-term risk. As Majority Whip, McConnell's opinion counts and many of his fellow members would be hesitant to proceed on something this important without his approval.

It's now rumored in far-right circles that McConnell has argued in closed-door meetings that there's not a sufficient public clamor for the change. The Righties plan to raise grass-roots anger at Democratic filibusters, but you have a chance these next two weeks to let your Senator know that whoever's chanting outside their door is not "the voice of the people."

At present, there are indications that Senators McCain, Hagel, Chafee, Snowe, Collins, and Specter (we should call them the Sane Republican Caucus) are not ready to support the "nuclear option," even though as Judiciary Committee Chairman Spector has led the charge to get committee approval of the Myers nomination. This potentially leaves the thugs short of a majority.

It is CRUCIALLY IMPORTANT that you make your views known to your Senator during this recess, because Republicans close to the Senate leadership plan to force the issue when the Senate returns next month by voting to end filibusters, most likely in connection with the Myers nomination. If Senators have heard about his testimony in last year's hearings, they just might get hinky over a vote for such a scummy nominee. Remember: HE'S A PERJURER!! HE LIED TO THE SENATE!!!

This is of crucial importance, folks! The other side wants to get this over now, so the rules-change fight won't smear a Supreme Court candidate. There hasn't been a Supreme Court vacancy in 10 years, but with the current situation on the court we are going to see a Chief Justice nomination and at least two other Associate Justice nominations before 2008. The Right is looking to change the court as decisively for the next 40 years as happened with Roosevelt's nominations in 1937-40, when the Court was dragged kicking and screaming into the 20th Century.

The Right knows the importance of this fight. Richard Lessner, Executive Director of the American Conservative Union, put it clearly: "As we get closer to an anticipated opening on the Supreme Court, that creates a sense of urgency to invoke [the rules change] sooner rather than later, so we put that obstacle behind us as we move into a potential Supreme Court battle. If we're going to have a battle over a Supreme Court nominee, let's not also have a simultaneous fight over Senate rules." This past week Ed Meese, Reagan's Attorney General (and a far-far-right Republican asshole I have been at war with since 1967 when he was Alameda County District Attorney) and C. Boyden Gray - George H. W. Bush's White House counsel - said they want the Senate to move ahead with the scheme, and that incompetent moron George Will has announced that he's changed his mind on the subject after advising against the "nuclear option" two weeks ago.

NO!!

Let's make them do it out in the open, where everyone can see it and see what a difference it makes. If the "nuclear option" can be defeated next month by making Senators queasy over supporting a perjuring scumbag like Myers, it's going to be more difficult for them to do it later, because (hopefully) by then the public will be educated to the fact that this isn't some "arcane rule change" that has no effect on their lives.

Folks, we are talking about the country I will be living in for the rest of my life, and the world that my young comrade here at That's Another Fine Mess will - at a minimum - live in till he qualifies for Social Security (assuming we win that fight and it's still there for him). We are talking about The Immediately-Identifiable Future. Your life.

These two weeks are crucial. Make your voice heard. Call your Senator's local office in your state. Send an e-mail. Write a letter. Find out about any meetings and attend them - ask questions. Make absolutely certain that they can't say "I didn't know." Be like Jack Webb - "just the facts." We can win on "just the facts."

Act as if your life depends on it.

Because it does.