Blackout of August 14, 2003

This is one version and thorough account of what went wrong in the midwest and eastern portions of the country. You'll pardon my being two years late. I stumbled upon this by accident and just assumed the blackout occured on non-managerial grounds.

Power Plays

"Politics, not lack of power, is to blame for the great American blackout," wrote the Economist on August 21. While cautioning that "not all the facts are in," researchers at Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA), a private energy consulting firm, have tentatively concluded that the massive power blackout of August 14 began with a series of failures by First Energy, a power conglomerate created from the merger of Toledo Edison, Cleveland Electric, Ohio Edison, Pennsylvania Power, Pennsylvania Electric, Metropolitan Edison and Jersey Central Power & Light. The nation's fourth largest investor-owned electric system, according to its web site, First Energy has been cited previously for plant mismanagement and accounting irregularities.

First Contributors Have a History
First Energy executives are among Bush's top campaign fundraisers. First Energy President Anthony Alexander was a member of the "Pioneers" -- the Bush campaign group composed of individuals who raised at least $100,000 each during the 2000 campaign. As a member of the Republican National Committee's Team 100, Alexander raised $250,000 in 2000, and personally donated $100,000 toward Bush's inauguration events. Alexander also served on the Bush energy transition team. And on June 30 of this year First Energy's chairman, H. Peter Burg hosted a $1,000-a-plate dinner at the Akron Hilton that raised $600,000 for Bush's 2004 campaign. In 2001-2002 First Energy executives contributed more than $1 million to federal candidates, with over 70% going to Republicans, placing the firm in the top ten political contributors from the electric utility industry. First Energy also spent $3.8 million lobbying Congress and the administration in 2001-2002.

In the 70s, Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich confronted one of First Energy's predecessors, Cleveland Electric (CEI), when it sought to undermine the City of Cleveland's ability to operate a municipal electric system, Muny Light. Muny Light provided power to streetlights and many city facilities, and to residential customers in parts of Cleveland at a savings of 20 - 30% over CEI. In a precursor to schemes that Williams and Enron would use later in California, CEI worked to prevent Muny Light from buying power from other suppliers, and then tripled the rates it charged. When Muny Light began to lose money as a result of CEI's schemes, CEI cited Muny Light's deteriorating financial condition as as evidence supporting their contention that the city should sell Muny Light to CEI. With the aid of local media that, in Kucinich's words, "received substantial advertising revenues from CEI," CEI succeeded in convincing Cleveland's mayor and city council to sell Muny Light in 1976. Kucinich, who held the elected office of Municipal Court Clerk at the time, organized a campaign to prevent the sale, and ran for mayor of Cleveland on the issue. He won and canceled the sale.

Two years later Cleveland Trust, Ohio's largest bank, informed Kucinich that it would not renew 15 million in loans taken out by his predecessor, unless he agreed to sell Muny Light to CEI. The bank offered $50 million in new credit if Kucinich would agree. Kucinich refused, and the City of Cleveland defaulted. Kucinich lost the election in 1979. Later it would emerge that Cleveland Trust that Cleveland Trust held a substantial interest in CEI, and that the firms had four directors in common. Kucinich's decision was vindicated in 1993 when Muny Light, now renamed Cleveland Public Power, announced the largest expansion of any municipal power system in the country.

First Failures
Fast forward ten years. At about 2pm on August 14, 2003 First Energy's 550-megawatt coal-fired Eastlake power plant east of Cleveland, OH, shut down. An hour later a single transmission line near Cleveland went out of service. By themselves, these incidents should have been routine. According to CERA Senior Consultant Hoff Stauffer, "they're designed to be able to withstand that kind of event without any problem." But those events were only the beginning.

The control room alarm system, which ordinarily would have notified operators of the generation and transmission problems, apparently did not work. With a transmission line unavailable, power that might have traveled along it flowed onto other lines, which heated up -- "as anticipated," says Stauffer. Also anticipated is that overheated power lines sag, which First Energy's did. But not anticipated was that one of the lines would sag into a tree. "That tree was not supposed to be there," Stauffer observed dryly, and so a second power line went out of service. At this point First Energy was experiencing four simultaneous problems, "and systems are not designed to be able to withstand that without some kind of blackout to at least some of their load," said Stauffer.

The American Electric Power (AEP) system to the south and the PJM to the east, successfully disconnected from First Energy, thereby protecting the supply of electricity to the Midwest, including Chicago, and to the east, including most of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maryland. "But," the New York Times's Richard Glanz and Andrew Revking wrote, "the severing of the two crucial Ohio lines was the equivalent of suddenly damming an onrushing stream: the flow had to divert to find a way to reach the Cleveland area." The power flowed into Indiana, Michigan, and back into Ohio. As a result, within a few seconds power in a grid serviced by the International Transmission Company (ITC) in lower Michigan went from a modest 200 megawatts to nearly 2000. At the same time, power that had been flowing from ITC to Ontario began to flow the other way, into northern Ohio. This caused instability in ITC's system, which took plants and transmission lines in eastern Michigan out of service, eventually causing a blackout in Detroit.

Responses to Dennis Prager and Rush Limbaugh

About a year ago I was a staunch conservative who had only the highest praise for Dennis Prager and conservative ideology alike. As you know, I am The Middle Ear now, and these columns further demonstrate to me what is the even more distancing of these individuals. The last column, on Rush, is such a devastating account of the man which it makes it awfully difficult to persuasively support him.

A Response to Dennis Prager

In an op-ed piece in the L.A. Times on Sunday, May 29th, conservative political pundit Dennis Prager revealed a great insight that came to him some years ago in a debate with Alan Dershowitz, whom Prager dismisses as "a Harvard liberal." That insight or "epiphany" for him was that the central genesis of the culture war in America is not between religions per se, but rather "the great divide in values is…between those who believe in a divine text and those who do not." "What distinguishes leftist Jews from rightist Jews and leftist Christians from rightist Christians…comes down to their belief in the bible, not their belief in God." He then goes on to argue that some Jews and some Christians believe that their sacred texts come "from God" and "are divine" and some Jews and Christians believe that biblical texts are "man-made": "conservative Jews and Christians share the belief that God revealed a text (while) liberal Jews and Christians share the belief that this text is man-made."

Then:

The problem with this smug argument is that it mischaracterizes the belief of those who disagree with a narrow, literalistic reading of sacred text as people who fail to hold sacred writings as divine, who are guided more by heart and sentiment than by the Word of God.

To argue that scripture is "from God" (Prager) is too simplistic by far; for what conservative Christians and Jews really suggest is that scripture is "authoritative and determinate" based on its "inerrancy." Evangelicals, faced with inconsistencies in scripture - e.g. the creation story in Genesis One in which God creates man and woman in his image simultaneously and Genesis Two in which man is created first and needing a helpmate, Eve is formed from Adam's side - argue that in their "original autographs," God's word is without error and that until these are found, we are bound to a corrupted and yet authoritative text.

From this "high theology" of scripture, conservative Jews and Christians argue for a closing of debate on settled issues of moral values (and by implication public policy). In his op-ed piece, Prager argues that there are four: that marriage can not be redefined to include gays and lesbians; that human life, not animal life, is sacred; that murderers should be executed and that people are not essentially good. (That conservative Roman Catholics read the same text and hold the same high regard for scripture as God's Word and conclude that a consistent and seamless regard for the sacredness of human life makes the death penalty unacceptable and immoral seems to have eluded Mr. Prager; that the Hebrew scriptures he holds so dear say in Genesis that "God saw all he had made, and indeed it was very good" [Genesis 1:31] also seems to have been lost.)

The sin (defined as "missing the mark") of Dennis Prager is to selectively elevate portions of sacred text which justify conservative politics (the death penalty, "defense of marriage", exploitation of the environment) and to ignore the vast witness of both Testaments which, for example, condemn the abuse of the poor by the rich. To paraphrase Jim Wallis, a progressive evangelical, in speaking of these believers: "I don't question their good faith; I question their bad theology." To say that scripture is "divinely inspired" is simply to say that God, not the written word, is divine. There is a danger in idolatry, including biblio-idolatry. Such narrow and uncritical reading of scripture leads not to God but to human enmity and strife.

Surely Dennis Prager knows that the scriptures of the so called "New Testament" were written by Jews who told the story of a Jewish rabbi who claimed that "no one comes to the Father but by me." If God's word is divine, then why are these words not binding for Jews, liberal or conservative? Many conservative Christians believe that they are and that there is no place in God's economy for the unconverted. That Mr. Prager, as a Jew does not accept this portion of 1st century Jewish sacred text as binding for him as a Jew, does not make it less so. The great pathos in Paul's epistles is his sadness for his fellow Jews who refused to accept Jesus as the Messiah. His call to them was to "repent and believe (accept as God's revealed truth) the gospel" that Jesus is Lord.

Dennis Prager is a gifted speaker and writer but his dismissal of those who don't agree with him as being merely "guided by the heart" ("do I listen to my heart or to what I believe is God's word?") is intellectually dishonest and unworthy. Many of us believe we should and must read the bible in the fullness of our humanity, through the God given faculties of head and heart; and to approach these texts with humility and wonder but ultimately knowing that they point the way to God but are indeed not Gods' self.

Dennis Prager and other conservatives have the right to read and interpret scripture as they wish. As progressives, we honor their voice and their perspective in that on-going dialogue with texts which are indeed "living words" which speak with newness and power to each generation. But we will not allow the conservative and repressive voices to claim for themselves the mantle of true and sole Godliness, nor allow them to dismiss those of us with an alternative view as being people of less faith or less integrity.

-St. Augustine

Dennis Prager and The Ecological Indian

Buffalo
Krech, a white anthropologist, says Indians killed more buffalo than they needed when they drove them over cliffs. Prager acts surprised by this "revelation." My response:

1) That’s a fairly well-known fact, despite what Prager thinks 99% of Americans think. To pretend it’s a secret the PC police have tried to conceal is nonsense.

2) The buffalo jumps were carried out by a few tribes out of many that hunted buffalo. For one thing, you had to have cliffs nearby to conduct the maneuver. Vast stretches of the Great Plains had no usable cliffs...which is probably why there weren’t many buffalo jumps south of the Dakotas.

3) So what if some Indians killed, say, 50 buffalo when they needed 10...when there were still a million buffalo extant? Do conservationists use every scrap of wood and bark when they cut down a tree? Every scrap of meat and hide when they kill a cow? Do they never litter or discard a half-eaten meal?

Of course not. We don’t live in that needy a society. Even the best of us wastes a little because we can.

To equate Indians killing an extra 40 buffalo to Europeans killing the remaining 999,850 buffalo (leaving 100 of 1,000,000 alive) is the worst sort of joke. It’s intellectual sophistry and Prager is guilty of it. Does the word "vile" or "reprehensible" suggest anything to you?

Were the Indians comparable to today’s conservationists? Hell, yes. They wasted a little because all humans do, but they didn’t touch the overall supply. Their actions conserved the population even if they didn’t conserve every animal.

Were the Indians comparable to today’s Euro-Americans? Hell, no. The Europeans killed entire species—as in permanently extinguished them. They also clearcut 90% or more of the virgin forests they found. In no way, shape, or form were the two groups equivalent.

Deer and beaver
Krech claims the Indians of middle America almost wiped out the deer and beaver. My response:

Both these alleged cases of massive hunting happened after Europeans arrived with their colonizing culture—a fact Prager the sophist neglected to mention. In the 1700s and 1800s, especially east of the Mississippi, Indians were no longer acting on their original beliefs, uncontaminated by outside contact. They were no longer completely free agents.

The Europeans forced them to adopt a cash economy and so they adopted one to survive. If they wanted to buy guns (to defend their lives) or food (because they were forced from their bountiful homelands) they needed something to trade. The Europeans valued furs, skins, and meat. Can you guess what happened?

That’s right, the Indians got co-opted into the European system. So if Indians decimated species, it was because they mimicked European culture, not because it was inherent in their own culture. If the Europeans hadn’t come, the Indians wouldn’t have harmed the deer or beaver populations.

Again, the conniving Prager didn’t bring up these points, though they seemed obvious to me. The anthro Krech didn’t sound like he had an axe to grind, but Prager sure did. Even if the three examples were valid—and none were close—they’d cover only a third or so of the continent. So where does Prager get off claiming Indians as a whole were as bad as Europeans?

Because they decimated two animal species while aping Europeans and mildly wasted one species on their own? While Europeans laid waste to flora and fauna like a nuclear holocaust? Who was it, exactly, who wiped the passenger pigeon from the face of the earth? Who came close to extinguishing the buffalo and the bald eagle, our national emblem? Who caused the Dust Bowl, the burning rivers, the eggs laced with DDT?

Native Americans? Don’t think so. Look in the mirror if you want to know who, because we’re still putting profits before polliwogs. Which reminds me of the massive die-off of frog species occurring now, but that’s another story.

Then:

The message here, and in all my multicultural postings, is that every culture has something to offer us. What I dispute is the incessant exaltation of Western civilization above all others. Western civilization exists only because it borrowed from earlier, non-Western traditions. (See my posting, Multicultural Origins of Civilization, for more on that point.)

The corollary to my message is that every culture has problems. I'm not exalting a Native American culture or lifestyle over its Western equivalent. You don't see me living in a tipi, hunting Bambi and kin, or grubbing for roots in the dirt, do you? Clearly I enjoy the benefits of our so-called civilization; I don't deny them.

I'll grant that Indians might have been no better than "average" in terms of their stewardship of nature. But Euro-Americans have been far worse than average. Despite their much larger populations, are China and India paved over like parking lots? No. The idea of conquering nature and replacing it with something "better" (cities, farms, strip malls, McDonald's) is peculiarly Western.

Bigotshtick: Rush Limbaugh on Indians
[The following award-winning essay was first published in Native Americas Journal, Fall 1995, after Rush Limbaugh made one of his "provocative" racial comments about American Indian people.]

"The American Indians were meaner to themselves than anybody was ever mean to them. The people were savages. It's true, they damn well were ? these people were out there destroying timber, they were out there conquering and killing each other, scalping people." - Rush Limbaugh

"Bigoted: Obstinately and blindly attached to some creed, opinion or party and intolerant toward others." - The Oxford Universal Dictionary



In my car, alone, and sometimes at home - to my wife's discomfort - I listen to Rush Limbaugh or catch his TV appearances.

I have heard enough of Limbaugh over the years to get the gist of his message and of his style, which is the medium of his message. The man's opinions might not be of much interest except that they are nearly inescapable. He has national airtime for over 20 hours a week and he reaches some 20 million people a week, in long, continuous monologues. Limbaugh, a veritable rotor of right wing politics in North America, is furthermore an entertainer. He can make people laugh.

The problem is that the man has an ugly side - a very ugly side.

The quote above must be considered. It is vintage Limbaugh when he gets rolling on his radio show. (He writes books, too, but they are severely whitewashed; you have to listen to Limbaugh's radio voice to get to know him.) On the radio, usually from a position of outrageous umbrage, he is one major national commentator willing to prejudice a whole race of people and perpetrate a racial slur that must be seen as significant, considering the breadth of the source. Why would a man in Limbaugh's position call Native peoples savages in this day and age?

Limbaugh is neither stupid nor particularly careless. True, he is self-promoting to an embarrassing degree, but he is nevertheless a master of public discourse with stated political goals. He is also a commentator who regularly uses the power of the medium and of his formatted personae to persuade, cajole, and at appointed times, command a large public to political action.

With a message well-suited for those mean times - his dominant idea seems to be championing unmitigated business development by dismissing all gestures of cooperative (as opposed to confrontational) thinking, and all efforts to regulate human activity to protect the earth and its resources - he plays to a major national audience, whose frustration and anger he mines in pursuit of ideological imperatives.

Dismissed for years as mostly a buffoon while his popularity increased exponentially, Limbaugh whips up the troops throughout the year, ditto, ditto, ditto, and come November elections, delivers for the Republicans. TIME has put him on its cover then and Ted Koppel has invited him to comment on his news show (as if 20 hours of national airtime per week is not enough for one mortal). Thus Limbaugh proved himself a hugely influential and highly marketable commentator. All of which makes it particularly troubling that dehumanization through racist stereotyping (used against Indians since Cotton Mather) is a trademark of the (formerly) rotund disc jockey.

Limbaugh developed his national audience by cleverly employing an old shtick: funny umbrage at imagined groups - the media, people on welfare, immigrants, feminists, black athletes, American Indians - that he props up to hit with a wide-slapping brush of ridicule, outright misinterpretation, and wanton disrespect. Limbaugh's shtick, becoming increasingly evident in media and in politics, is a 1990s kind of bigotry.

Those who like their politics mixed in with ridicule especially enjoyed his antagonistic sarcasm, ostensibly directed at "Liberals" but hitting, double-barreled, at many of the poor and resourceless groups whom Limbaugh giddily and nastily defines coast to coast. A master at reducing truth to comic line, he also knows how to repeat a half-truth that serves his purpose so regularly that it becomes a sort of reality substitute. Apparently, he is confident enough in his own positioning to hurl out stereotypes at whole classes and races of people without the slightest fear of rebuttal. In this era of trial by airtime, Limbaugh is a hanging judge.

The comment quoted earlier is not his first on Native peoples. I remember another, from 1992, when Native delegations met at the landmark Rio conference on environment and development. "What a ragtag looking bunch," he laughed on the air, expounding then too on the savvy ways of Indians and mocking "these fools out there" in the environmental movement who support Indians and want "us to live like stone-age people."

As Limbaugh is unabashedly political, one must assume that his attacks are orchestrated, his targets carefully selected. In this context, the connection with Native peoples is about the general public concern over environmental degradation, which Limbaugh and the interests he truly represents would like to see discredited or at least reduced. In the promised new era of non-regulated exploitative extraction of natural resources now well under way, concern over environment and Indians is a troublesome factor.

But, hey, the Indians ? "these people were destroying timber."

What Limbaugh is doing is transparent. It is part of the lining up of forces. Since Native peoples' issues often and naturally coincide with environmental concerns, Native peoples themselves must be attacked. As environmentalists are increasingly recognizing, interest in Native peoples and causes offers a convergence point where ecological issues can be creatively conceived. Native peoples' traditions are not made up by counter-culturalists or academic theorists - they are long-standing human ways that speak to the relationship to the natural world and can form the core of a realistic discussion among broad sectors of the population. Native traditional knowledge is sometimes abused or trivialized, but it is now widely accepted as a base on which to develop a true environmental philosophy.

A man in Limbaugh's position, I believe, must find ways to discredit that connection. That is his job. And Limbaugh is clearly very diligent about doing his job.

We might do well to consider Rush Limbaugh and his ways with words - not to banter with him, but because he should not so wantonly dominate and even seriously impact the most serious of topics. He should not be allowed to issue bigoted and racialist statements unchallenged. We should not pretend such languages and attitudes are proper for a public commentator of such wide reach.

Let's remember what Limbaugh said.

"The American Indians were meaner to themselves than anybody was ever mean to them."

This is the basic stereotype on Indians: a war-like nature. Limbaugh is starting by harping on this one. Watch him run with it again and again. It has just enough reality in it to make it useful. For instance, it is true that Indians warred, and that during wartime people sometimes acted with meanness and brutality. You won't hear from Limbaugh, however, how the damage inflicted in traditional Indian disputes pales in comparison to the mass exterminations carried out against tribes, or by nation-states against tribes, or by nation-states against civilian populations. It is a cheap stereotype. A trick.

"The people were savages. It's true, they damn well were ? scalping people."

This is a deepening of the stereotype, deceitful and manipulative, not only for what it says, but for what it hides and obfuscates.

By focusing on the "war-like" Indian image, by invoking the designation of "savage," the far more prevalent philosophies of Native American societies - governmental and spiritual application - the documented reality of Native American knowledge systems is completely left out of the listeners' perceptions. This reflects the Limbaugh style: over hours and hours each week, only negative images are reinforced of anyone Limbaugh perceives to be an enemy.

One never tunes in to find Limbaugh asking a Carl Sagan about ozone layer depletion or interviewing Native scholars on the variety of Native cultural viewpoints. Why present a balanced view when ridicule can suffice? Perhaps for Limbaugh a dialogue with "savages" would be unthinkable. "I am equal time," the commentator is prone to answer when questioned on the lack of balance in his shows.

They taught at my journalism alma mater that principles of public information handling were worked out over many decades. Major thinkers in American life contributed to the idea of balanced use of information channels - especially the national networks. Whether the law dictates it or not, the ethic holds that balanced journalism, well documented, is of central value to society. Simple, preferably depersonalized styles were expected from information handlers.

In that context, Limbaugh is to the national discourse what professional wrestling is to sports. Blowing his point of view often and loudly he takes center stage in the arena. His loud reductionism bombards the mind. His trick hold? The most scurrilous form of argumentation - crafting straw men for demolition - which he has down to a fine science. His sarcastic, constantly mocking style stresses the negative as primary - the negative, of course is whatever he is against; the positive and only the positive, of what he is for.

Still, despite his self-consciously arrogant style, Limbaugh can make people laugh. He is superb at skewering politicians' vanities, for instance. And no one is better at pulling out the loose threads of the Liberal coat, which he can then retie in clever knots of common logic, bathed in acid humor. He identifies some of what is wrong with the country after 40 years of (so-called) Liberal policies, and he can make sense. The problem is that Limbaugh projects his options in such one-sided, pin-the-blame contexts that the truth of matters is inevitably trivialized.

Limbaugh is superb at reducing environmentalism to some "animal rights nut" who won't kill a rat even to save her child from going through painful rabies shots. Listeners can identify with Limbaugh's outrage as his unbroken monologue guides us through. But then, hey, how about that spotted owl, he says and feigns eating a spotted owl, as if that somehow eliminates the need for bio-diversity conservation. Limbaugh tells us that there are more trees today than a century ago. Deforestation is not a problem. According to him, well, ahem, "there is not damage to the ozone layer, ha ha." Indians and the environment? Hey, "these people were out there destroying timber."

We used to know the difference between a stand-up comic with a political bent and a social commentator who, with respect and journalistic balance (the operative principle), integrates a range of information, analyzes the conflicting viewpoints, and strives to provide the public with a better ability to interpret. But Limbaugh blurs the two roles more thoroughly than anyone. His ego expands visibly as his "talent, on-loan from God," apparently grants him infallibility.

Limbaugh likes to run down a long list of people and causes that, in his eyes, fuel the Liberal conspiracy to end free enterprise, which must be saved from those he seems to consider less legitimate peoples with inferior viewpoints. That free enterprise might have excesses or that market-driven ideas are not always sacrosanct does not enter the picture. That some situation, might not fit within the Left/Right dichotomy seems inconceivable to Limbaugh. With him, it's full speed ahead, economically, and damn the rest. We can be sure how though: Native peoples - long condemned as "obstacles to progress" - are on the list.

It may be wise to keep watch on the bigoted views of Rush Limbaugh. Since he serves as a barometer of the national climate, familiarity with his points of attack can be useful. But remember also this truth, Native Americans - Limbaugh's so-called "savages" - carried out a prescribed protocol of participatory democracy that sat human beings in a circle. The object of discussion was placed in the center of the circle and in relation to it, everyone in the circle had a view, a unique vantage point. The truth was said to emerge from the common discussion, the respectful appreciation of everyone else's point of view. Highly trained specialists (elders) gathered the consensus. This style of governance spawned confederacies and produced a palpable freedom, a shared experience that inspired colonial American leaders, and that is more "of America" than Rush Limbaugh, from his glass-enclosed, push-button, over-blown, self-aggrandizing world will ever be.

Jose Barreiro, Ph.D., is senior editor at Indian Country Today.

An apology

I'd like to personally apologize for breaking email confidentiality to the author over at Greenie Watch. It wasn't appropriate to show the name of the email. I'm sure his website is invaluable for those seeking green extremist news. It isn't something I'm for as a whole ideology, but nonetheless I feel I'm in the wrong.

Also, I'm not sure "Opponents of the Environment" is an appropriate title either. It will be an investigation into the records of the Bush administration members, but to exactly what it should be titled, I'm not sure. As an fyi, I had originally intended on "Enemies of the Environment," but thought better of it.

Being their records do not strike me as pro-environmentalists, maybe something a little more subtle is appropriate?

Two-party system: Inadequate ideologies

I'd like to thank News Snipets for providing me with the single most important column I have read in many moons. This column almost perfectly encapsulates my frustrations with the two party's, and their supporters.It is better to 'defend to the end', no matter how awful each party's position is, then to agree for the sake of justice.

Chuck Colson's Inadequate ideologies

Recently, a Wall Street Journal poll announced that both political parties—Republicans and Democrats—are now held in low regard by the American people. Usually if the fortunes of one party decline, the other party increases—sort of a zero sum game. Now, however, for the first time in polling history, both parties come up in negative territory.

Why would this be? Well, the driver who took me to do a CNN broadcast recently gave me a hint. He didn’t know who Karl Rove was, and he didn’t know who all the people up on Capitol Hill were who were calling for his scalp. Nor did he care. He dismissed it as just politics, that is, ideologically driven politics.

When ideology begins to replace revealed truth as the basis for governing a society, you inevitably have the kind of polarization we have in America today, Reds vs. Blues. Ideology is a man-made political formulation for how people should live their lives together and is, therefore, from our perspective as Christians, inherently flawed. And it’s dangerous when a society becomes so polarized over ideology that it lacks a frame of reference for agreeing on the common good.

This all started when moral relativism took root in America, beginning in the sixties on the campuses and then invading popular culture—back when Time magazine asked that provocative question, “Is God dead?” When this happened, the overarching standards of truth and moral behavior historically governing our society were undermined. And forty years of aggressive secularism since then have simply erased the idea of moral absolutes—no such thing as truth; everything is a matter of personal preference.

This eliminates the possibility of reasoned, intelligent discourse. Since people are attracted to different ideologies, all we can do is clash. So every issue about how we govern ourselves, or what our standards ought to be, ends up in a titanic wrestling match.

The American public is rightly disenchanted with this poor excuse for a political process. And while I would like to blame the politicians, I can’t. They are simply reflecting what has happened in our broader culture—the death of truth, the lack of any common standard by which we can judge what we do. The tragedy is, of course, that politicians will continue to lose stature in the public’s eye with the over-the-top rhetoric we saw in the Karl Rove case. With no agreed-upon standards, you just start shouting more loudly. Public discourse becomes course, unreflective, harsh, and when you don’t get your way, it becomes shrill. You set out to destroy your political enemies, because power is the way to win an argument. Obviously, people are going to be turned off by this.

As Christians, we should be the first to recognize that ideology—substituting human schemes for revealed truth—is the enemy of the Gospel, and the enemy of historic conservatism: conservatism not as political ideology, but as a respect for tradition, custom, a reliance upon the past, a belief in natural law and the religious underpinnings for society.

Well, how do you change a culture? You change it one person at a time. We start explaining to our neighbors why things are happening the way they are, why they are disillusioned with politics. We have a special obligation to talk about how the death of truth and the secularizing of America are paralyzing the political process, and we had better get busy and make our case quickly, because the way we are going, America could become ungovernable.

The key to global warming

According to Greenie Watch:

THE ANTARCTIC IS THE KEY TO SEA-LEVEL RISE, 8-6-05

From CO2 Science Magazine, 15 June 2005

In an important new paper, Davis et al. (2005) analyze the elevation change (dH) of over 8.5 million km2 of the grounded Antarctic ice sheet interior (~70% of the total ice-sheet area) using ~347 million dH measurements derived from ERS-1 and ERS-2 ice-mode satellite radar altimeter data (with coverage extending to 81.6oS) for the period 1992 to 2003, after which they compare the observed elevation changes of ~1500 1o x 2o (latitude x longitude) regions, 22 major drainage basins, Berkner Island, West and East Antarctica, and the entire region of coverage (ROC) to estimates of concomitant snowfall derived from meteorological models.

The primary result of this exercise revealed, in the words of the five scientists who conducted the work, that "the vast majority of regions in East Antarctica are thickening, especially in the interior, while regions in West Antarctica exhibit both strong thickening and thinning trends." At the basin scale, as they continue, "dH/dt values range from 0 to +6 cm/year for East Antarctica, while there is substantial spatial variability in West Antarctica with dH/dt values ranging from -10 to +19 cm/year." Overall, they report that the East Antarctic ice sheet interior within the ROC is thickening at a rate of 1.8 - 0.3 cm/year, while that of the West Antarctic ice sheet interior is thinning at a rate of 0.9 - 0.3 cm/year. For the entire ROC, the 5:1 ratio of East to West Antarctic area coverage "causes slight thickening overall at the rate of 1.4 - 0.3 cm/year."

[...] There are many implications of these various observations that remain to be determined. At this point in time, however, we can safely conclude that the climate-alarmist claim of dramatic global flooding of earth's coastal areas in response to the melting of polar ice due to global warming has been thoroughly discredited, for during the period of time that they claim the planet experienced the warmest temperatures of the past two millennia, Antarctica experienced a net buildup of ice that actually removed water from earth's seas.

Then:

Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists.

Actually the environmental extremists are eco-imperialists.

When I asked the author of Greenie Watch in an email why the right only seems to focus on green extremism (not the positives) while their own party in question seems to be carrying out their own form of extremism, his reply was:

I note on my Greenie Watch blog that I support things that DO help the environment but most that can reasonably be done in that direction does get done anyway. Everyone wants a nice environment.

Most Greenie fads do NOT help the environmernt (e.g. the global warming panic) and unfortunately it is only the conservatives who oppose the hare-brained element.

Again, correct as far as it will go, but I was hoping for something along the lines that would disprove Bush's record or delve into how green extremism is so overwhelmingly in the majority. Instead I hope to in the coming days and weeks focus on a new column titled "Opponents of the Environment," which hopefully will provide some new findings that have not already been discussed thoroughly.

Global warmings whirlwind

Philip A. Cooney resigns

A former lawyer and lobbyist with the American Petroleum Institute, the main lobbying group for the oil industry, Mr. Cooney has no scientific training.

Replies:

It'll be a good day when studies funded by “pro-environment” groups are given the same scrutiny as those funded by big business. The former’s research and shenanigans are as bad if not worse than the latters. Since I have done a 180 as a result of extensive research, and come to realize that the theory of (human induced) global warming is weak to say the least, it should therefore be obvious which side I view as the worst offender.

FYI, in light of the recent slew of pro-global warming misinformation in the press, I posted this morning Part I of my attempt to set the record straight on the global warming “consensus” falsehood.

Again, "attempting to set the record straight on global warming" has been tried to the point I'm not sure anyone can accurately tell it like it is. By this time there is too much money and politics to accurately come to a truth. As a conservationist/environmentalist, I've decided this is a mute point which has been lassoed by agendas.

However, this person makes a good point by saying environmentalists are not under the same radar as big business, but then either doesn't acknowledge or misses that "Mr. Cooney has no scientific training." It's a point that trumps itself because usually if you want to convey to the public your pro-environmental record, you hire people with scientific experience, not ones without experience, or atleast do a better job of faking it.

Then this author makes some powerful points on the falsehood of global warming here.

But wait a minute (comments on the article):

Sounds like a 'deja vu' of the 2003 Steven McIntyre paper published by the same journal that is going to publish the unnamed Harvard scientists study.

Responses to Steven McIntyre article in Energy and Environment

Prepared by the Union of Concerned Scientists, October 28, 2003

1. The journal Energy & Environment is not a science journal and does not follow standard practices of scientific peer review. The journal has the explicitly political agenda to be “a forum for sceptical analyses of ‘global warming.’”

2. The author of the paper, Steven McIntyre, has no prior track record of research on climate issues or any record of training in this field.

3. The paper is said to be a direct criticism of Michael Mann, et al's paper "Northern Hemisphere Temperatures During the Past Millennium: Inferences, Uncertainties, and Limitations” published in the mainstream climate research journal, Geophysical Research Letters in1999. In stark contrast to standard peer review practices, neither the authors of this study nor any leading paleoclimate scientists were asked to review Mr. McIntyre’s paper.

4. Contrary to this un-peer reviewed paper in a non-scientific journal, a number of studies have been published over the last several years by independent scientists using different data sources and methodologies replicating the basic finding that the late 20th century Northern Hemisphere average temperatures are anomalous in the context of the past 1000 years.

Bradley and coworkers in the prestigious journal “Science” published the most recent study coming to this conclusion only a couple weeks ago. The list of recent studies supporting this conclusion includes, but is not limited to, the following:

Bauer, E., M. Claussen, and V. Brovkin, Assessing climate forcings of the earth system for the past millennium, Geophys. Res. Lett., 30 (6), doi: 10.1029/2002GL016639, 2003.

Bradley, R.S., M.K Hughes and H.F. Diaz., Climate in Medieval Time. Science, 302, 404-405, 2003.

Briffa, K.R., T.J. Osborn, F.H. Schweingruber, I.C. Harris, P.D. Jones, S.G. Shiyatov, S.G. and E.A. Vaganov, Low-frequency temperature variations from a northern tree-ring density network. J. Geophys. Res., 106, 2929-2941, 2001.

Crowley, T.J., Causes of Climate Change over the Past 1000 Years, Science, 289, 270-277, 2000.

Crowley, T.J., and T. Lowery, How Warm Was the Medieval Warm Period?, Ambio, 29, 51-54, 2000.

Folland, C.K., T.R. Karl, J.R. Christy, R.A. Clarke, G.V. Gruza, J. Jouzel, M.E. Mann, J. Oerlemans, M.J. Salinger, S.-W. Wang, Observed Climate Variability and Change, in Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis, edited by J.T. Houghton et al.., pp. 99–181, Cambridge Univ. Press, New York, 2001.

Gerber, S., F. Joos, P. Brügger, T. F. Stocker, M. E. Mann, S. Sitch, and M. Scholze, Constraining temperature variations over the last millennium by comparing simulated and observed atmospheric CO2, Climate Dynamics, 20, 281-299, 2003.

Hegerl, G.C., T.J. Crowley, S.K. Baum, K-Y. Kim, and W. T. Hyde, Detection of volcanic, solar and greenhouse gas signals in paleo-reconstructions of Northern Hemispheric temperature. Geophys. Res. Lett., 30 (5), doi: 10.1029/2002GL016635, 2003.

Jones, P.D., K.R. Briffa, T.P. Barnett and S.F.B. Tett, High-resolution palaeoclimatic records for the last millennium: Integration, interpretation and comparison with General Circulation Model control run temperatures, Holocene, 8, 455-471, 1998.

Jones, P.D., M. New, D.E. Parker, S. Martin, and I.G. Rigor, Surface air temperature and its changes over the past 150 years, Reviews of Geophysics, 37, 173-199, 1999.

Jones, P.D., T.J. Osborn, and K.R. Briffa, The Evolution of Climate Over the Last Millennium, Science, 292, 662-667, 2001.

Mann, M.E., Jones, P.D., Global surface temperature over the past two millennia, Geophysical Research Letters, 30 (15), 1820, doi: 10.1029/2003GL017814, 2003.

Mann, M.E., Ammann, C.M., Bradley, R.S., Briffa, K.R., Crowley, T.J., Hughes, M.K., Jones, P.D., Oppenheimer, M., Osborn, T.J., Overpeck, J.T., Rutherford, S., Trenberth, K.E., Wigley, T.M.L., On Past Temperatures and Anomalous Late 20th Century Warmth, Eos, 84, 256-258, 2003.

This article and opinion piece assert that the famous “hockey stick” diagram of recent rapid global warming (see attached) is incorrect. Both the USA Today op-ed by Schulz and the Energy and Environment (UK) article by McIntyre and McKitrick are false, misleading and biased. Neither contradicts the wealth of evidence that late 20th century Northern Hemisphere warmth is unprecedented in at least the past six centuries (and likely much longer).

· The Falsehood: The USA Today op-ed by Schulz contains the accusation that Dr. Michael Mann, lead author of the scientifically peer-reviewed articles on 20th century warming, “never made his data available online nor did many of the earlier researchers whose data Mann relied upon for his research. That by itself raises questions about the U.N. climate-change panel's scientific process.”

· The Fact: The data used by Mann and colleagues have been in the public domain for nearly two years, at the readily accessible website: ftp://holocene.evsc.virginia.edu/pub/MBH98/.

· The Misleading Statement: McIntyre & McKitrick say that they re-examined the Mann et al data and find the conclusions about warming to be inaccurate.

· The Fact: McIntyre and McKitrick – neither of whom is a scientist – did not re-examine Mann’s data. They analyzed jumbled datasets that combined several columns of figures – like trying to calculate a single grocery store receipt by adding data from five other cash registers. They then applied flawed methodologies to reach a result wildly at odds with the overwhelming weight of peer-reviewed science. Technically competent paleoclimatologists might have realized their errors – but neither author is a scientist, nor was the article peer-reviewed by any of the world’s leading climatologists. McKitrick is a long-time climate skeptic, and McIntyre’s principal qualification, according to his bio, is his thirty years working in the mining industry.

· The Unrevealed Biases: Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen, the editor of "Energy and Environment", has co-authored numerous pieces with fossil fuel industry-financed and/or industry-affiliated climate skeptics. By her own assertion, Ms. Boehmer-Christiansen follows a political agenda, rather than scientific standards of peer review.[1] Says Boehmer-Christiansen, who condemns the climate treaty as “unnecessary, unfair and self-interested,” "I'm following my political agenda -- a bit, anyway…isn't that the right of the editor?"

· TechCentralStation is financed in part by Exxon-Mobil Corporation.

(Usually to have credibility on the environment, one must be associated with similar organizations. -Bouncie)

For more information on how to get the real story from the world’s leading paleoclimatologists, contact Annie Petsonk at Environmental Defense at 202-365-3237.

[1] R. Monastersky, Chronicle of Higher Education, "Storm Brews Over Global Warming" (Sept. 5, 2003).

If anyone would care to share their ideas on this subject, please do. I've just about given up and need some refreshing from new sources.

Kerry's chances in '08 sinking

The Moderate says "Republicans Fare Better in '08."

A majority of Americans say they have favorable views of Republican and former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. On the other hand, more Americans view Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., unfavorably than favorably, and his ratings have grown more negative since his loss to George W. Bush in last fall's presidential election. The trial heat matchups show the two possible Republican candidates holding an edge over the two Democratic candidates among registered voters.

Of the four, Giuliani is rated most positively, with 64% of Americans saying they have a favorable opinion of him and only 19% with an unfavorable opinion. Clinton (53%) and McCain (51%) have similar favorable ratings, although Clinton is the much better-known figure (only 4% do not have an opinion of her, compared with 27% for McCain). Clinton's unfavorable ratings (43%) are nearly twice as high as McCain's (22%).

Attempting to put an end to the Bush/Kerry military records

Evidence came out which clearly, if indirectly, proved that John F. Kerry was dishonorably discharged from the US military. Briefly, Democrat president Jimmy Carter ordered a panel of officers to examine his discharge; this is only necessary for a veteran with a "less-than-honorable" discharge. On a side note, Kerry only released his military records after the 2004 election. Bush released his long before the election.

This quote from an undisclosed source suggests once again for me the real problems of the legitimacy of two party's squabbling over an issue where neither can possibly win on the basis neither candidate in the '04 elections had a clear cut stellar record. You see, it doesn't matter how awful we are on a subject. It doesn't matter the average person hearing both sides of the issue doesn't have any trust for either candidate. It only matters we focus on what the others doing. The two-party system has fallen, if not always, to a point where the party's don't even know their voters.

I fully admit these are sketchy schemes by the DNP to hide Kerry's record. Heck, the RNP was in the right for attacking Kerry's record after the DNP attacked Bush's record without considering their own candidates questionable past. But does any of this diffuse Bush's sketchy military record? No! By retaliating, the RNP brought themselves back up to a stalemate postion where both party's candidate has a sketchy record. This issue during the '04 election is a mute point. If this was not the case, then one would have clearly had an exemplary and proven record while the other a coward.

Tom Paine's investigation shows Bush's record was absent from 1972-73. This diatribe needs to be put to rest once and for all. Jeez...

The truth about Bush's military record

In his annual evaluation report, Bush's two supervising officers, Lieutenant Colonel William D. Harris Jr. and Lieutenant Colonel Jerry B. Killian, made it clear that Bush had "not been observed at" his Texas unit "during the period of report" -- the twelve month period from May 1972 through the end of April 1973.

In the comments section of this evaluation report Lieutenant Colonel Harris notes that Bush had "cleared this base on 15 May 1972, and has been performing equivalent training in a non flying role with the 187th Tac Recon Gp at Dannelly ANG Base, Alabama" (the Air National Guard Tactical Reconnaissance Group at Dannelly Air Force Base near Montgomery, Alabama).

This was incorrect. Bush didn't apply for duty at Dannelly Air Force Base until September 1972. From May until September he was in limbo, his temporary orders having been rejected. And when his orders to appear at Dannelly came through he still didn't appear. Although his instructions clearly directed Bush to report to Lieutenant Colonel William Turnipseed on the dates of "7-8 October 0730-1600, and 4-5 November 0730-1600," he never did. In interviews conducted with the Boston Globe earlier this year, both General Turnipseed and his former administration officer, Lieutenant Colonel Kenneth Lott, said that Bush never put in an appearance.

Then:

In this official summary of Bush's military service, I found something that was not mentioned in Bush's records from the National Guard Bureau in Arlington, Virginia. When Bush enlisted his commitment ran until May 26, 1974. This was the separation date shown on all documents as late as October 1973, when Bush was transferred to the inactive reserves at Denver, Colorado. But the date of final separation shown on the official summary from Denver, is November 21, 1974. The ARPC had tacked an extra six months on to Bush's commitment.

Bush may have finally "made-up" his missed days. But he did so not by attending drills -- in fact he never attended drills again after he enrolled at Harvard. Instead, he had his name added to the roster of a paper unit in Denver, Colorado, a paper unit where he had no responsibility to show up and do a job.

AWOL Bush has another take on not only Bush's record with side-by-side comparison of the two candidates, noting that nothing is mentioned of the 'Veterans against Kerry' movement.

Deciphering "better" and "less worse" for the undecided voters

The Perfect Storm

THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA is often inconsistent in covering stories. They gave us wall-to-wall coverage when George W. Bush's National Guard service came under scrutiny, but suddenly made themselves scarce when over two hundred Vietnam veterans pointed out hole after hole in John Kerry's service narrative. When Rush Limbaugh ran into legal problems surrounding his addiction to painkillers, we heard breathless updates on subpoenas and court orders, but when Eason Jordan revealed his predilection to slandering the U.S. military, again the press pulled a disappearing act.

This column reeks of liberal news bias, and the paragraph above highlights the two-party systems downfall into its proverbial cat-and-mouse game.

The supposed statistics on whom people vote for has been in the past measured by 25 percent of the vote going to the Democrats, 25 percent going to the Republicans, and 50 percent is still the middle or undecided voter. I'm sure those numbers are not accurate but are nonetheless being used as a guide.

The undecided voter is so because they are confused by the mass amount of every day indictments one party bestowes onto the other. The voter, let alone the undecided voter, has cynicism for politics in general. There can be much good to politics, obviously, but the truth is people have cynicism because politics built up its dirty reputation up by itself by lying, corruption, making empty promises, and so on. As a customer service slogan at a grocery store once said in so many words, 'It takes a long time to build up a customers trust with excellent customer service, but just a second to lose it with poor service.' This is evident in peoples mistrust of politicians.

It is why I propose for now on all politics alike mute topics where both party's candidates appear to have questionable military pasts. These back-and-forth attacks do nothing for the undecided voter because they just push themselves further into oblivion. Rather, it wouldn't be so bad if in fact Democrats/Republicans are so much better on most issues than the other, then they should be promoting those issues they have a rock solid foundation to fall back on. Even better, both party's, if they are so much better than the other, won't be afraid to highlight their pros and cons. Because, after all, if they are that much better than the opposing, they will have no confidence issues because their pros will heavily outweigh the cons. I mean, it's all about campaigning to the undecided voter, right?

The unfortunate reality is neither movement has any intentions of giving even one iota to the other party. It would mean they are acknowledging the other has a point -- and we wouldn't want to do that! Politicans and bloggers alike want to win and only win. They want nearly as much as the two opposing sides want at a planning commission. (Minnesota Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty should be applauded for suggesting his capital members, for once, get something accomplished by going into a "lock down" at a military barracks because he recognises with two sides there needs to be some middle agreement.) The people in general need to hear the truth: Politics isn't about whose "better." It is about whose "less worse." The choice is yours, but the cynical undecided voter (and for good reason) doesn't want to hear the "We're the good guys, they're the bad guys!" Most want to make an informed choice in voting for the lesser of two corruptions, and then move back into whatever their life interests are, particularly like raising a family. The rest of the yo-yo political spiel just confuses them and makes them more of an undecided voter.

Pharrryngula: Without knowledge, Dennis Prager is insignificant

Pharryngula

We live on one planet orbiting one star, which is only one of about a hundred billion stars in our galaxy, which is only one of a few hundred billion galaxies in our universe. These all have no meaning because Dennis Prager does not appreciate them.

Our universe is about 14 billion years old, our planet is about 4.5 billion years old, complex animal life has thrived for about a half billion years, modern Homo sapiens arose about 150,000 years ago, and none of this had any meaning until a few clannish goat-herders started worshipping a single sky-god a few thousand years ago."

The sacred pieties of these "God-centered Jews and Christians" reduce the meaning of a human life to equivalence with a single cell or a mindless near-corpse, and then they bestow on it only that portion of grandeur they can borrow from an imaginary super-being. His irony is a fabrication; humanists don't regard human life as worthless. Rather, one life in the here and now is all we get, and it is infinitely valuable. Furthermore, we don't need to boost our fragile self-esteem by deprecating everything else—dolphins are great and beautiful creatures, as are spiders and sea anemones and scrub pines and E. coli. The universe is a wonderful place, huge and complex and diverse and largely independent of my existence, and I am greatly privileged to be one small but precious voice singing in a mighty cosmic choir. Embracing the majesty of existence does not make me a smaller man.

Dennis Prager exemplifies for me the cheap and petty spirit of the Religious Right, the kind of small mind that tries to puff up its importance by diminishing the significance of everything else around him. Some "Christian"; I'd heard rumors that humility and respect for the awesome creations of their god were alleged virtues in his faith, but I guess those were wrong. They are worshippers of ignorance, acolytes of the cult of "me first", vandals and rapers of the natural world.

Replies:

Whenever I'm informed that my life lacks value because it is not eternal, I think that it a strange kind of economy that assigns greater worth to what is in abundance while devaluing that which is precious and rare.

So this guy can pretty much blow me.

Bad theology

It's All Good...For Me To Crush

I won't even go into Prager's whole argument on secular vs. religious views of the environment, because it's basically the same thing that's gone on in the prior 15 installments of Us vs. Them: secular ideas strip everything of all meaning and turn you into a suicidal shell of your former self while Christianity makes the sun shine and the birds sing.

Replies:

1.

Ugh. To say nothing of the notion of the Covenant in Judeo-Christian tradition (not to the exclusion of similar notions in other traditions). Dolphins, like all nature, are good and beautiful because G-d created them. And we should preserve them, as Noah preserved the animals, because G-d created them. And to say that something is beautiful only if and to the extent that humans find it so isn't religiosity, it's solipsism and nihilism.

Whatta schmuck.

2.

In the words of the Talmud, every person should look at the world and say, "The world was created for me."

I'm reasonably familiar with this---the original telling is that the rabbi said something along the lines of: "There are two truths, and you should keep both of them in your pocket, to bring out from time to time as you need each of them. The first, that the whole world was created for you. The second, that you are but dust and ashes."

It's one of my favorite religious lessons, expressing duality and goodness, complexity and simplicity, all in one little story. Somehow, repeating only one of them? doesn't seem to me to be a faithful retelling.

3.

The key notion for Judaism, Christianity, and Islam is stewardship. Humans have dominion only as G-d's local managers. The world isn't made for human consumption, but for temporary use in accord with G-d's plan. Since G-d made various creatures, environments, etc., humans are not entitled to capriciously destroy them.

On the science/history note, Prager is a moron. Newton was a Unitarian who was denied a position at Cambridge because he denied the doctrine of the Trinity (and implicitly the divinity of Jesus). Funny who Prager left that part out.

4.

I'm with paul: the description of scientists who are also religious is patronizing in the least, and a blatant mischaracterization. Part of both the study of God (theology) and the study of nature (science) is humility; reading the evidence in a way that conforms exclusively to a preconceived worldview and selectively ignoring the evidence that doesn't fit in is arrogant in the extreme. One has to assume some pretty awful things about the Creator to look at the universe and try to ram it into a form commensurate with the "literal" reading of Genesis. This "literal" reading is based on shoddy reasoning itself, turning two different creation stories (even the name used for God is different, if I remember my Hebrew class correctly) into one narrative.

The scientific evidence seems to say that biodiversity is a good thing for the planet, which is consistent with the religious view of stewardship.

5.

Jesse, I'm not seeing Prager fall victim to the central conceit of creationism-- namely that it is designed "just so." Rather, Prager seems to be making the argument that as rational beings, we can understand it. Now, his precise theological argument-- that we must use that understanding to dominate it-- is one that you can feel free to argue over on its theological merits, but I don't think he's falling victim to any of the standard creationist canards, and the starting point of his argument isn't anything that simply a generic belief in a god who created the universe would lead to.

The thing he misses, however, is the concept of humans as caretakers of the earth. He seems to be more concerned about the fact that abusing the earth is a personal sin than about the fact that abusing the earth also hurts others and shows a general disrespect for creation in general.

He also misses the truth of other parts of the old testament-- namely that nature will inevitably, inexorably wear us all down-- ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and all that. His attitude to the world owes more to the conceits of the Englightenment and what classical writers of Greece called hubris. He's just dressing it up in "Judeo-Christian moral values," because he wants to claim that his personal opinions are somehow the same worldview of a millenia-old religious tradition.

For those not familiar with Jump the Shark's website, it is based on television commentors discussing exactly why the left when their favorite programs started to go down hill. It would seem to me Dennis Prager's column on the environments insignificance would be the appropriate time to move on.

Bush administration's environmental record

Government corruption

March 2003
Forest Service officials inform employees of the agency's Content Analysis Team (CAT) that the work they are doing will be outsourced to the private sector. The management team will remain, but the content analysis work will be farmed out to contract consultants. This decision is made despite the department's reputation for remarkable efficiency. In October 2002, a study commissioned by Yosemite National Park had praised CAT saying it had a “track record ... [un]equaled by any other organized process.” (see October 2002). A study three months later will conclude that outsourcing will actually cost the agency more (see June 2004). [Missoulian, 11/15/2003; Associated Press, 11/14/2003; High Country News, 4/26/2004

February 12, 2004
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) auctions off oil and gas leases for 14 parcels of federal land located near Dinosaur Monument in Colorado and Utah. The leases—totaling some 5,000 acres—include areas that were previously identified by the agency as having wilderness quality but which lost their protected status as part of a settlement between the state of Utah and the BLM (see April 11, 2003). A number of the leases—some selling for as little as $5 per acre—are purchased by contributors to President Bush's 2004 reelection campaign. [The Washington Post, 3/1/2004; Salt Lake Tribune, 2/14/2004; League of Conservation Voters, n.d.] According to the Environmental Working Group, the area includes seven Mexican spotted owl habitats, 12 golden eagle habitats and four peregrine falcon habitats. [The Washington Post, 3/1/2004; Environmental Working Group, n.d.]

Government appointments and resignations
February 27, 2002
Eric Schaeffer, 47, head of the EPA's Office of Regulatory Enforcement, sends his letter of resignation to EPA administrator Christine Whitman. In the letter he says that he and his colleagues have been “fighting a White House that seems determined to weaken the rules that [EPA employees] are trying to enforce.” He complains that the administration is crippling the EPA's enforcement divisions with budget cuts and that the White House is working with energy-industry lobbyists to weaken the New Source Review provision of the Clean Air Act which requires older coal power plants to install pollution controls when upgrading plant equipment (see August 27, 2003). [Philadelphia Inquirer, 3/1/2002; Washington Monthly, July/August 2002; New York Times, 1/5/2004; MSNBC, 4/20/2004 Sources: Eric Schaeffer's Letter of Resignation, February 27, 2002]

August 11, 2003
President George Bush names Utah Governor Mike Leavitt as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, replacing Christie Todd Whitman who resigned in June. [White House, 8/11/2003] Leavitt was at the center of a controversy a couple of months ago for a back-room deal he made with Interior Secretary Gale Norton to suspend wilderness studies on millions of acres of Utah lands (see April 11, 2003). He supports replacing mandatory pollution controls with voluntary compliance programs for polluting industries and is a strong backer of the administration's policy of shifting environmental regulation to the states. [League of Conservation Voters, n.d.; Washington Times, 8/12/2003] During his term as governor, US Magnesium, a magnesium-processing company on the western side of the Great Salt Lake, earned the place as the nation's worst polluter. Leavitt says that he and Bush “have a like mind and a like heart” on environmental policy. [Salt Lake City Tribune, 8/12/2003] Environmentalists condemn the nomination noting that aside from Leavitt's strong opposition to a plan to store nuclear waste on a Utah Indian reservation, the governor has a very poor environmental record. “Mike Leavitt has no credentials, no understanding and no political willpower to protect America's clean air, clean water and clean land,” Marc Clemens, chapter coordinator for the Utah Sierra Club, tells the Salt Lake Tribune. [Salt Lake City Tribune, 8/12/2003]

Politicization and deception
(Between 2001 and 2002)
Undersecretary of Agriculture Mark Rey's office orders employees of the Forest Service's Content Analysis Team (CAT) to downplay the public's feelings towards the Roadless Rule in a report the team is preparing for policy decision-makers. The office also instructs them not to mention how many people have sent in comments on the issue. A memo is later distributed to the team's employees setting the limits on what they are permitted to say in the report. It instructs them to “avoid any emphasis on conflict or opposition and also avoid any appearance of measuring the ‘ote’ highlighting areas of conflict [because it] serves no good purpose in dealing with the issues or interests, and may only exacerbate the problems.” The memo even provides explicit instructions on what words the CAT team can and cannot use. Among the list of banned terms are: many, most, oppose, support, impacts and clear cuts. Words that the memo suggests using instead include: some, state, comment, effects and even-aged management. [High Country News, 4/26/2004]

July 16, 2001
A study conducted by the General Accounting Office (GAO) finds that the scientists and experts who sit on the Science Advisory Board panels which advise the EPA often have ties to the affected industries or other conflicts of interest. The study, requested by Rep. Henry A. Waxman (Calif.), says that EPA officials regularly fail to identify potential conflicts of interest when panel members are chosen and do not adequately disclose the existence of such conflicts to the public. Though it is prohibited for a federal employee to participate in any “particular matter” that could affect their financial interests, there is an exemption that permits special government employees to serve on advisory panels when the topic being studied directly affects the financial interests of their employer—as long as the employer is not “singularly affected.” [The Washington Post, 7/16/01]

(August 2003)
The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, under the White House's Office of Management and Budget, drafts a proposal that would shift the authority for releasing emergency declarations concerning public health, safety and the environment from federal regulatory agencies to the White House's Office of Management and Budget (OMB). [St Louis Post-Dispatch, 1/12/2004; Baltimore Sun, 12/19/2004; The Washington Post, 1/15/2004; League of Conservation Voters, n.d.] “Under this proposal, the White House would decide what and when the public would be told about an outbreak of mad cow disease, an anthrax release, a nuclear plant accident or any other crisis,” an article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch explains. [St Louis Post-Dispatch, 1/12/2004] Additionally, the White House office wants the OMB to reside over a centralized peer review process charged with vetting “any scientific or technical study relevant to regulatory policy” produced by the regulatory agencies. The OMB would have the power to reject or accept the outcome of such peer reviews. [St Louis Post-Dispatch, 1/12/2004; Baltimore Sun, 12/19/2004; The Washington Post, 1/15/2004; League of Conservation Voters, n.d.] Commercial permit applications, however, would not be subject to review. Alan Morrison, a lawyer for Public Citizen, commenting on the exception, notes, “If you want to build a dam, or dump a chemical ... you evidently don't need to have peer-reviewed science.” Academic experts who are recipients of grants from an agency whose work is being reviewed would be barred from serving on the review board. But there would be no restrictions against using experts from private industry. [Baltimore Sun, 12/19/2004] Though the administration claims that the proposed change reflects President Bush's commitment to “sound science,” critics say the measure would allow political interests to impede the creation of new regulations by subjecting them to a never-ending process of review and analysis. They also warn that the review process could easily become balanced in favor of industry. Backers of the administration's proposal include the National Association of Manufacturers, the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association, Ford Motor Co., the American Chemistry Council, the National Stone, Sand and Gravel Association (whose members include regulated mining concerns), and Syngenta, a pesticide company. Opponents of the plan include a number of former regulators from the administrations of Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton including former labor secretary Robert B. Reich, former EPA administrators Russell Train and Carol M. Browner, heads of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration under Carter and the elder Bush; and Neal Lane, who was director of the National Science Foundation under Clinton and head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. [Baltimore Sun, 12/19/2004; The Washington Post, 1/15/2004]

Late January 2004
The US Forest Service distributes a pamphlet promoting the agency's amendment (see August 6, 2004) to the 2001 Nevada Forest Plan, which calls for more logging. In one section of the pamphlet, put together by a public relations firm, there is a series of six black-and-white photos taken at different times over a span of 80 years. The first picture, taken in 1909, shows a forested area with large trees spaced far apart. Each of the following pictures, taken at the same spot, show how the forest became denser over time. The photo-chronology suggests that the first picture represents how forests should appear in their natural state. But in Spring 2004, it is learned that the first picture had been taken after the area had been logged. Furthermore, the pictures were actually taken in Montana, not the Sierra Nevadas. It also turns out that the photos had similarly been used before by the agency to promote other forest-thinning initiatives. [Associated Press, 4/12/2004 Sources: USFS, Forests with a Future, 1/2004]

Because Americans have the right to drive SUV's

http://www.phaster.com/road_trips/suv_review_why_they_suck.html

FACT OR FICTION: SUVs are sexy and safe?

WTF is so sexy about a big box on wheels? Victoria Secret models are sexy, a Ferrari has sleek sexy styling but the styling of all SUVs is based on a box, just like a mini van! The only thing an SUV is suppose to have is 4x4 capability which is useless in urban settings and for the most part SUVs on the market lack a true low gearing ratio, solid axle and ladder frame, sliders, etc. necessary for true outback vehicles. The H2 has a number of features necessary for taking it into the bush, but it was built because marketers figured the tonka toy styling appealed to wanabe explorer soccer moms (or dads) who if really taken out into the bush would not last more than a day or two at most.

All too often I've seen SUVs on the interstate blast past me at 80+ MPH. If people want a fast, safe luxury ride there is nothing like a 700 series BMW blasting down the freeway at 100+ MPH (which is not even taxing the design), or for a more unpretentious ride try a Mercedes Benz station wagon. SUVs are not optimized for high speed cruising since they have barn door aerodynamics which results in poor fuel economy, a higher than average center of gravity which results in poor handling and on average blind spots behind an SUV is much larger than that of a car (which means there would result in a greater probability for an accident in an SUV).

As far as being safe, DOE researchers who performed a “risk analysis” using crash data from the Institute for Highway Safety, found that most passenger cars are safer than the average SUV or pickup truck when the risk posed to other drivers is taken into account, a figure the research call “combined risk.” Even the the safest SUV on the road the mammoth Chevy Suburban, is bested by much smaller Honda Accords and Toyota Camrys. The safest vehicles of them all? Minivan and import luxury cars. The worst: full-size Chevy, Ford and Dodge pickup trucks.

So much for convention wisdom about big cars being safer than small cars. It should be noted that there is a wide disparity among small cars like the front-of-the-pack Jetta and Civic and the relatively risky Ford Escort and Dodge Neon, the bottom line is good vehicle design is more important that sheer mass in terms of occupant safety. The full report can be found at:

http://www.aceee.org/pubs/t021full.pdf

As an american I think we have the right to drive what ever, however I also think it is our responsibility to buy and utilize the most efficient vehicle available. From what I have observed in a great majority of cases the general class of vehicles called SUVs are poorly designed, over priced and under utilized. If an SUV is suppose to be able to be used in the bush, then why build a unibody (I’ve been in south america, central asia, etc., where a typical SUV with a unibody sold in the states would fall apart). In the bush, a person does not want leather seats, an automatic transmission, a gas engine or unibody construction (guess what, a majority of SUVs sold in the USA have these features). The simple truth is a majority of SUVs in the USA are used in urban settings. Because SUVs have barn door aero dynamics, less responsive handling and larger parking footprints, they seem like the wrong type of vehicle for daily urban use.

Lots of people drive SUVs in urban areas, but it seems most are in denial that SUVs are boxy inefficient vehicles, which are expensive to operate and insure and are potential accidents waiting to happen. As for reasons why manufacturers produce and market so many SUVs is, first since SUVs are classified as light trucks they escape most of the federal fuel and pollution standards that apply to passenger vehicles, second SUVs are exempted from testing for crash-worthiness and roll-over resistance, and third the profit margin on SUVs is much higher than typical autos.

http://www.bridger.us/2002/12/16/CrashTestingMINICooperVsFordF150

"Are the best performers the biggest and heaviest vehicles on the road? Not at all. Among the safest cars are the midsize imports, like the Toyota Camry and the Honda Accord. Or consider the extraordinary performance of some subcompacts, like the Volkswagen Jetta. Drivers of the tiny Jetta die at a rate of just forty-seven per million, which is in the same range as drivers of the five-thousand-pound Chevrolet Suburban and almost half that of popular S.U.V. models like the Ford Explorer or the GMC Jimmy. In a head-on crash, an Explorer or a Suburban would crush a Jetta or a Camry. But, clearly, the drivers of Camrys and Jettas are finding a way to avoid head-on crashes with Explorers and Suburbans. The benefits of being nimble--of being in an automobile that's capable of staying out of trouble--are in many cases greater than the benefits of being big."

Dennis Prager on the Environment, part 2

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/dennisprager/dp20050628.shtml

The Judeo-Christian responses are clear: Nature has been created for man's use; and on its own, without man, it has no meaning. Dolphins are adorable because human beings find them adorable. Without people to appreciate them or the role they play in the earth's ecosystem to enable human life, they are no more adorable or meaningful than a rock on Pluto.

Yes, Nature was created for mans use. Like any resource though, the issue continues to be that the industrialized world wants unlimited potential to produce and consume as much of the natural resources without regard to future generations survival. And extremist environmental groups want literally no usage of those natural resources. The yin/yang principles define an excess of one leading to a negative of another. So if green groups had their way human progress would be halted. While if the industrialized world has their way the Earth would be burned up at a pace where future generations survival would become in question.

It becomes all the more unfortunate for me to hear advice from a talk show host who has no actual pro-environmental record, whose vision for the environment resides from the polluted metropolitan LA (as opposed to living and experiencing unfettered country), and simply derives the man/nature political issue from his Bible. The Bible has always been humanities guide in life, but it cannot satisfactorily answer all of the every day and uneasy man/nature political issues. The Bible can heal and has the intention of being the highest ideal in values, but it cannot answer for corruption and human imperfection.

Dennis has in the past talked about how President Bush is a great man because of his faith in God and religion. Statements that do not have any lasting worth given the Bush Administration's record on the environment is filled with the types of mispractices that are not considered goodness. Rather a record which measures up with the dirty name the law field has built upon itself over the decades.

As for the modern secular objection to the Judeo-Christian notion of man as the pinnacle and purpose of nature, one can only say woe unto mankind if that objection prevails. When man is reduced to being part of the natural world, his status is reduced to that of a dolphin. It is one of the great ironies of the contemporary world that humanists render human life largely worthless while God-centered Jews and Christians render human life infinitely sacred. Man's worth is entirely dependent on a God-based view of the world. Without God, man is another part of the ecosystem, and often a lousy one at that.

Absurd. Humanity, irregardless of religious affiliation, will always view itself as the top of the food chain. While acknowledging religion is more prone to viewing humanity as sacred, it is the intelligence and survival mechanism built in all humans that will always remain atop the food chain. Because there are greens who spend an inordinate amount of time saving extinct species doesn't mean they themselves believe they are equal to animals. They are devoted to their causes not because they believe humanity is equal or lesser than animal, but because they feel humanity is surviving just fine on its own.

This brings up another point: Who is more responsible? Those who actively pursue their environmental causes, or those who are presumably sitting idly by on their computer criticizing those activists? Some of Dennis's points are valid provided those who side with him are actively contributing to society.

Does this mean that the biblical view of nature gives man the right to pollute the earth or to abuse animals? Absolutely not. Abusing animals is forbidden in the Torah: The ban on eating the limb of a living animal, the ban on placing two animals of different sizes on the same yoke and the ban on working animals seven days a week are just a few examples. To cause gratuitous suffering to an animal is a grave sin. As for polluting the earth, this, too, is religiously prohibited. If the purpose of nature is to ennoble human life and to bear witness to God's magnificence, by what understanding of this concept can a religious person defend polluting nature?

The best paragraph I've seen from Dennis on the environment. Unfortunately if one doesn't actively want to pursue his own political party's record on the environment, that is his prerogative. The Right's green extremism agenda becomes muted when their own party is involved in corrupt and illegal environmental practices. As a review stated earlier, I'm not certain environmental protections can have significant impact in a world that is constantly producing and developing. I do know that when a party has a record of total disregard for the environment, they are not the answer for it.

Dennis Prager on the Environment

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/dennisprager/dp20050621.shtml

This was extremely difficult for men to assimilate then. And as society drifts from Judeo-Christian values, it is becoming difficult to assimilate again today. Major elements in secular Western society are returning to a form of nature worship. Animals are elevated to equality with people, and the natural environment is increasingly regarded as sacred. The most extreme expressions of nature worship actually view human beings as essentially blights on nature.
Then came Genesis, which announced that a supernatural God, i.e., a god who existed outside of nature, created nature. Nothing about nature was divine.

A majority of this comment is dead on. The problem is it is plausible that there are those who are religiously inclined who find the environment a lesser, but necessary worship to God. In essence, certain of God's natural creations are worth protecting from inappropriate politicing. Otherwise Prager is suggesting there are no acts onto the environment that could be construed as being wrongdoing to God's natural creations (aka "The Bush Record").

This was extremely difficult for men to assimilate then. And as society drifts from Judeo-Christian values, it is becoming difficult to assimilate again today. Major elements in secular Western society are returning to a form of nature worship. Animals are elevated to equality with people, and the natural environment is increasingly regarded as sacred. The most extreme expressions of nature worship actually view human beings as essentially blights on nature.

Again, correct as far as it will go. "Saving the Whales" will strike many as an unhealthy nature worship, but protecting National Parks for the sake of human appreciation can hardly be put in the same category. Simply black & whiting the environmental topic wholeheartedly is an unwise vision considering the spiritual benefits that are present in people in a human/nature symbiotic relationship. That may be a mouthful, but Dennis Prager lives and breathes in LA's metropolitan. The expression 'You only know what you see' is precise considering rural America leads happier lives due to simplicity (less congestion, pollution, and consumption). The urban world, also known by author Robert Devine as the 'Wise Use' culture, knows far less about the rural world than the rural world knows about urban life. It should also be noted that passionate conservationists/environmentalists are far more likely to fight for the survival of natural wonders even though living at times up to thousands upon thousands of miles away. Why? Because they know spiritually that these visual wonders are far more of a lifelong memory and life enhancer than any human-made recreational vacation.

What is puzzling is that many people who claim to rely more on reason would do so. Nature is unworthy of worship. Nature, after all, is always amoral and usually cruel. Nature has no moral laws, only the amoral law of survival of the fittest.

Simply relying upon "it's a cruel world" isn't sufficient considering a wonder like the Grand Canyon is about the spectacle. A spectacle that was created by a God.

Why would people who value compassion, kindness or justice venerate nature? The notions of justice and caring for the weak are unique to humanity. In the rest of nature, the weak are to be killed. The individual means nothing in nature; the individual is everything to humans. A hospital, for example, is a profoundly unnatural, indeed antinatural, creation; to expend precious resources on keeping the most frail alive is simply against nature.

Because those same qualities are found in Nature just as Dennis says they are not. A pack of lions devouring a large prey is vicious and unforgiving. Yet when the meal is over, watching a mother lion clean her younger offspring of blood is "compassion" and "kindness" while creating "justice" in Nature by keeping a balance in the ecosystem for the survival of the fittest.

The romanticizing of nature, let alone the ascribing of divinity to it, involves ignoring what really happens in nature. I doubt that those American schoolchildren who conducted a campaign on behalf of freeing a killer whale (the whale in the film "Free Willy") ever saw films of actual killer whale behavior. There are National Geographic videos that show, among other things, killer whales tossing a terrified baby seal back and forth before finally killing it. Perhaps American schoolchildren should see those films and then petition killer whales not to treat baby seals sadistically.

While it is probable that most school children do not know a whales true predatory nature, do you think it is plausible that many others will just simply want whales to live a free, uninterrupted life in a violent yet beautiful natural world? Simply ascribing childrens naivity to an adult human and natural world doesn't convince.

If you care about good and evil, you cannot worship nature. And since that is what God most cares about, nature worship is antithetical to Judeo-Christian values.

Well, yes you can, but to a lesser extent. Because Nature is filled with good and evil as well.

This column by Dennis Prager, unfortunately like so many other 'conservative on the environment' columns, continues to show that the topic at hand (the environment) is merely a tug-of-war for the two-party battle. As the DNP will instigate the downfall of the current administrations war on terror, so will the RNP continue to demote the environmental topic not on the basis of what's right, but on whatever the Left is not. Once upon a time the words "conservative" and "conservationist" were one in the same as achieved by Teddy Roosevelt. Today the Left are in fact the "conservatives" on the environment, and the Right are the "liberals."

Like conservative sources, it is unfortunate that Dennis Prager's agenda on the environment revolves not around what is right, but what parallels his party. Like Rush, his program has no actual pro-environmental record in the form of taking the time to promote the "good" environmental efforts. Dennis has a record of talking about the negative or extremist green activities, but not one that focuses on any other avenues, as if green extremism has a singular definition on the environmental topic. In fact, Dennis's +/- ratio on the environment is overwhelmingly in the negative. And it becomes even more alarming to me to note that it has taken the same pattern off into conservative bloggers and local radio programs. The focus is uniformly on green extremism. I can only say from this it is the environment which loses in the end for politics, and one that is even more saddening considering I have respect for Dennis Prager on many other values. The bare truth must be told though that sources like Robert Devine's Bush Versus the Environment, Carl Pope's Strategic Ignorance, and The Bush Record are not pieces of information that will make it's way on to national conservative syndication with any consistency. Hence a sentence from my summary: "Each party believes in justice providing it benefits their agenda."

From "Bush Versus the Environment":

Of course, this is ridiculous--free-market capitalism and unbridled production and consumption are perhaps the most serious threat to the environment and the core issue underlying the regulatory aspects of environmental destruction.

It should also be noted that, as a heavey pro-consumer, Dennis Prager could never acknowledge that maybe America does consume too much as a general statement. His long standing liberal fiscal position doesn't have room for any thought process that challenges economists/marketers/producers to develop new ways of stimulating the ecomomy without producing quite the volume we are at. A near impossibility at this rate in our industrialized history given to do so would mean to increase prices to compensate for the what would be lower volume sales. As one of my favorite quotes states, "I can't change the world, but I sure can try."

Right Nation: Not representing the Right, not representing anyone

http://www.rightnation.us/forums/index.php?automodule=blog&blogid=14&cmd=showentry&eid=718
In a way only a traitor could manage it former President and destroyer of the economy of the the 70's Jimmy Carter told terrorists it's OK to kill Americans because you're justified.

This is an outright lie. Not only did Carter not say those words, but he also said these:

Carter said, however, that terrorist acts could not be justified, and that while Guantanamo "may be an aggravating factor ... it's not the basis of terrorism."

Then:

He praised British police and intelligence services for the swift arrests in connection with the July 21 failed bombing attempts on London's transit system.

I'm very proud to be in a nation that stands so stalwart against terrorism with us," he said. "The people of my country have united our hearts and sympathy for the tragedy that you have suffered from terrorism."

***

I lurked around here for about a week. Sure it is a specific site with a specific purpose, but considering the republicans are a "big tent" party, this site is more like a compact tent. Discussions either seem to be almost everyone basically agreeing and slapping each other on the back, or nasty arguments devoid of substance. The threads that are the exception to this, the ones not about political or moral issues, are perfectly fine, but they are more interesting, more humorous, and flat out better at other forums.
-Fred Johnson, on Right Nation's Forum

I read the spiel delivered in this website and wonder to myself, are these people pushing conservative propaganga for monetary gain directly or indirectly, or are they really this blind and ignorant.

Either way. I feel sorry for you, and will try to forgive what you've done to this country and others. It's incredulous...it really is that there are people like you out there, scary almost. What happened to you as you were growing up? Who raised you? Who hurt you? What's wrong with you?
-hdlc

I found this site to be somewhat entertaining.

Though, I'm sure there is a left-wing equivalent of this, it seems rather pointless, no?

I find that there is little fun in debate among those who concur with your state of mind.

However, I read through some posts, and I read through some articles. And although I didn't exactly see eye to eye, I found that you have your knowledge spoon-fed to you in the same way the "left" are, just with opposite "facts".

I don't think the right is right, and I don't think the left is right.

I think we are still searching for what will make America great.

:salute: God bless.
-A Random Nobody