Duty to Warn

Republicans: The Anti-Christian, Christian Party

Howard Dean has received a great deal of unfair criticism for calling the Republicans a “pretty much white Christian party.” Dean was actually far to mild in his comments and his description of the Republican Party in regards to their narrow demographic and ideological base.

Personally, this writer does disagree with Dean on only one aspect of his comment. The Republicans calling themselves Christian are promoting an essentially anti-Christian agenda. While these so-called “Christian Right” political leaders claim to speak for the Christians of America, I think they are actually speaking only for a small minority of Christians who are placing Bush Republicanism above the teachings of Jesus Christ.

When is Someone Going to Toss Rumsfeld into a Cage?

If you want to ensure that the media doesn't cover an important political story, send out a press release on a Friday, preferably at the end of the day. By the time reporters return on Monday, the story will be old news and will either be buried deep within a newspaper or not covered at all.

That’s what the Pentagon brass is praying for.

At the end of the day Friday, the Pentagon confirmed a pattern of widespread abuse of the Muslim holy book, the Quran, by military personnel dating back two and a half years. Releasing the report when most beat reporters have left for the weekend was a calculated move by White House and Pentagon spin doctors to control media coverage of the explosive report.

Where’s the outrage?

Imposing minority views

Senator Bill Frist and the Bush White House seem to share strongly held minority political viewpoints that they are trying to impose on the majority of American citizens. Both seem to be abusing their positions of political power to “rule over” Americans instead of “representing” Americans.

Frist is willing to permanently divide the Senate by attacking long-standing Senate traditions in order to impose radical, Right Wing judicial nominees selected by the Bush White House. Although Bush has been able to get Senate approval for hundreds of judicial nominees, a handful of his nominees hold extreme legal views that would prevent them from giving a fair hearing to workers, consumers, the poor and powerless.

Former Army Sec, Enron VP, Thomas White Wants Gov't Funding For New Energy Project

Beware. This could be your tax dollars at work.

The federal government may guarantee hundreds of millions of dollars in loans to help a former energy executive who publicly admitted he had no idea that the division he once ran cooked its books and who is now trying to secure funding for a new energy company he started with three ex-colleagues.

Yes, Thomas White, the former vice chairman of Enron Energy Services and one-time Secretary of the Army, who testified before the U.S. Senate more than two years ago that he was clueless about the tactics the employees who worked for him used to manipulate electricity prices in the California power market in addition to the massive losses EES—under his leadership—hid in an effort to keep its parent company, Enron Corp, temporarily afloat, is back in the energy business and this time he’s looking for a handout. The federal government may guarantee hundreds of millions of dollars in loans to help a former energy executive who publicly admitted he had no idea that the division he once ran cooked its books and who is now trying to secure funding for a new energy company he started with three ex-colleagues.

The Hyper Rich

AUSTIN, Texas -- David Cay Johnston, the invaluable New York Times reporter who specializes in our tax system, has come up with some staggering figures on what he calls "the hyper-rich," the wealthiest one-thousandth of the population, and their taxes.

-- "The share of the nation's income earned by those in this uppermost category has more than doubled since 1980. ... The share of income earned by the rest of the top 10 percent rose far less, and the share earned by the bottom 90 percent fell."

-- "Under the Bush tax cuts, the 400 taxpayers with the highest income -- a minimum of $87 million in 2000, the last year for which the government will release such data -- now pay income, Medicare and Social Security taxes amounting to virtually the same percentage of their incomes as people making $50,000 to $75,000."

-- "Those earning more than $10 million a year now pay a lesser share of their income in these taxes than those making $100,000 to $200,000."

New Book: Did George W. Bush Steal America's 2004 Election?: Essential Documents

Did George W. Bush Steal
America’s 2004 Election?
ESSENTIAL DOCUMENTS
Edited by Bob Fitrakis, Steve Rosenfeld and Harvey Wasserman
Preface by Rev. Jesse Jackson

“In contrast to the deadly silence of the media is the silent scream of the numbers. The more you ponder these numbers, and all the accompanying data, the louder that scream grows.”
—Robert C. Koehler, Tribune Media Services

PLACE YOUR ORDER TODAY!!!

Indians pay conservative lobbyists to meet with Bush

AUSTIN, Texas -- A jaw-dropping article in The Texas Observer (www.texasobserver.org) shows that two lobbying clients of Jack Abramoff paid $25,000 to Grover Norquist's group for a lunch date and meeting with President George W. Bush in May 2001. Abramoff brought the Indian chiefs to the White house at the request of Norquist, a leading "movement conservative" in Washington. In addition, Abramoff obtained $2.5 million in contributions from the Indians for a nonprofit foundation run by his wife and himself.

The White House guests were the chiefs of two of the six casino-rich Indian tribes represented by Abramoff and his partner Michael Scanlon, former top aide to House Majority Whip Tom DeLay. The $25,000 check from the Coushatta tribe of Louisiana is made out to Americans for Tax Reform, an anti-tax group founded and directed by Norquist.

The Fundamentalist attack on separation of church and state defames America and its founders

The right-wing's multi-front war on American democracy now aims at our core belief in separation of church and state. It includes an attempt to say the founding fathers endorsed the idea that this is a "Christian nation," with an official religion.

But the founders---and a vast majority of Americans---repeatedly, vehemently and with stunning clarity denounced, rejected and despised such beliefs.

Nowhere in the Constitution they wrote does the word "Christian" or the name of Christ appear. The very first phrase of the First Amendment demands that "Congress shall make no law concerning an establishment of religion."

One major reason Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Tom Paine, Ethan Allen and the vast majority of early Americans rejected the merger of church and state was the lingering stench of Puritan intolerance. The infamous theocratic murders of the Salem witch trials sickened the American soul, just as today's power grab by Karl Rove's new corporate fundamentalists creates an atmosphere of intolerance and fear, defined by the world's largest prison gulag.
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