Energy
Drugs
Finance
Defense

Welcome to

Republican Rescue

A new perspective,

a new bribe,

and a new song!  

 

This is Not Your Father’s
Republican Party

In fact, it’s not my father’s Republican party, either. If he were alive today, he’d turn over in his grave at the anti-science, anti-logic, faith-based, economy-wrecking, power-mad, omni-bungling, hypocritical, secretive, self-righteous, big-government, all-corporate, war-mongering, powerlessness-promoting, possibly even Rapture-crazed White House gang who hijacked 9-11 and are calling the shots to an inexplicably willing “team” in Congress.

Abraham Lincoln, one of my three heroes (the other two being Jesus and Benjamin Franklin – neither of whom were Republicans, as far as I know), would do more than turn over in his grave; he’d jump out of his casket and off the balcony and start shooting!

This website isn’t intended to convince TV-addled, Limbaugh-dazed voters of the above, but simply to remind our Congresspeople, who live with this daily and know it better than anyone else, that there is an alternative: Save the party by leaving it, at least until the current gang of vampires in control, are gone.

Think of it as similar to the action of the Texas Democrats who fled the state to deny a quorum to the Tom Delay-controlled Texas legislature trying to make a grotesquely gerrymandered state even more so: They didn’t do it to glorify the Democratic party, but to do something positive for all the people of their state, in a nearly impossible situation.

Bribe? I’ll show you a bribe!

We’re soliciting pledges to be donated to the favorite charity of the first US Senator or Representative who bolts the Republican party, whether for “independence” or for the Democratic or any other party! To make a pledge, click here.

To hear a lovely song on the subject, “Let Me Out!,” see bottom of page, and feel free to make CD copies for radio broadcast, or to send to your senator or representative. You can help by notifying your legislators as well as press and broadcast contacts, friends, blogs, etc. about this site, and by donating to allow us to publicize this and similar efforts more fully.

Kudos, by the way, to those Republicans who occasionally remind us that Groupthink and Rapturethink have not entirely taken over: Lincoln Chafee, Susan Collins, Chuck Hagel, John McCain, Olympia Snowe, Arlen Specter, George Voinovich and others. While most of your colleagues go along with hideous nominees, rule-changing, chicken-hawking, distraction-politicking, judge-bashing and attributing all contrary opinion to “partisanship,”** you remind me that – as in the case of my father -- traditional Republicanism can co-exist with logic, humanity and common sense.

      Jim Terr

** Excuse me? Rejecting the 5% most bizarre of Bush’s judicial candidates (comparable to the percentage of Clinton’s that Republicans blocked) in order to protect all of us, is “playing politics”??

SOME NON-PARTISAN
FOOD FOR THOUGHT:



 
Ed. Note: Say you love your children? Here's something else that's worth a few minutes of thought per day, between the arguments about the Culture Wars and the non-crisis in Social Security (except for those who hope and believe that The Rapture makes this irrelevant). If you don't like The Observer, Google this subject from your favorite general news source.
 
Now the Pentagon tells Bush: climate change will destroy us

· Secret report warns of rioting and nuclear war
· Britain will be 'Siberian' in less than 20 years
· Threat to the world is greater than terrorism

Mark Townsend and Paul Harris in New York
Sunday February 22, 2004
The Observer

Climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters..

A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.

The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents.

'Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life,' concludes the Pentagon analysis. 'Once again, warfare would define human life.'

The findings will prove humiliating to the Bush administration, which has repeatedly denied that climate change even exists. Experts said that they will also make unsettling reading for a President who has insisted national defence is a priority.

The report was commissioned by influential Pentagon defence adviser Andrew Marshall, who has held considerable sway on US military thinking over the past three decades. He was the man behind a sweeping recent review aimed at transforming the American military under Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Climate change 'should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a US national security concern', say the authors, Peter Schwartz, CIA consultant and former head of planning at Royal Dutch/Shell Group, and Doug Randall of the California-based Global Business Network.

An imminent scenario of catastrophic climate change is 'plausible and would challenge United States national security in ways that should be considered immediately', they conclude. As early as next year widespread flooding by a rise in sea levels will create major upheaval for millions.

Last week the Bush administration came under heavy fire from a large body of respected scientists who claimed that it cherry-picked science to suit its policy agenda and suppressed studies that it did not like. Jeremy Symons, a former whistleblower at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), said that suppression of the report for four months was a further example of the White House trying to bury the threat of climate change.

Senior climatologists, however, believe that their verdicts could prove the catalyst in forcing Bush to accept climate change as a real and happening phenomenon. They also hope it will convince the United States to sign up to global treaties to reduce the rate of climatic change.

A group of eminent UK scientists recently visited the White House to voice their fears over global warming, part of an intensifying drive to get the US to treat the issue seriously. Sources have told The Observer that American officials appeared extremely sensitive about the issue when faced with complaints that America's public stance appeared increasingly out of touch.

One even alleged that the White House had written to complain about some of the comments attributed to Professor Sir David King, Tony Blair's chief scientific adviser, after he branded the President's position on the issue as indefensible.

Among those scientists present at the White House talks were Professor John Schellnhuber, former chief environmental adviser to the German government and head of the UK's leading group of climate scientists at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. He said that the Pentagon's internal fears should prove the 'tipping point' in persuading Bush to accept climatic change.

Sir John Houghton, former chief executive of the Meteorological Office - and the first senior figure to liken the threat of climate change to that of terrorism - said: 'If the Pentagon is sending out that sort of message, then this is an important document indeed.'

Bob Watson, chief scientist for the World Bank and former chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, added that the Pentagon's dire warnings could no longer be ignored.

'Can Bush ignore the Pentagon? It's going be hard to blow off this sort of document. Its hugely embarrassing. After all, Bush's single highest priority is national defence. The Pentagon is no wacko, liberal group, generally speaking it is conservative. If climate change is a threat to national security and the economy, then he has to act. There are two groups the Bush Administration tend to listen to, the oil lobby and the Pentagon,' added Watson.

'You've got a President who says global warming is a hoax, and across the Potomac river you've got a Pentagon preparing for climate wars. It's pretty scary when Bush starts to ignore his own government on this issue,' said Rob Gueterbock of Greenpeace.

Already, according to Randall and Schwartz, the planet is carrying a higher population than it can sustain. By 2020 'catastrophic' shortages of water and energy supply will become increasingly harder to overcome, plunging the planet into war. They warn that 8,200 years ago climatic conditions brought widespread crop failure, famine, disease and mass migration of populations that could soon be repeated.

Randall told The Observer that the potential ramifications of rapid climate change would create global chaos. 'This is depressing stuff,' he said. 'It is a national security threat that is unique because there is no enemy to point your guns at and we have no control over the threat.'

Randall added that it was already possibly too late to prevent a disaster happening. 'We don't know exactly where we are in the process. It could start tomorrow and we would not know for another five years,' he said.

'The consequences for some nations of the climate change are unbelievable. It seems obvious that cutting the use of fossil fuels would be worthwhile.'

So dramatic are the report's scenarios, Watson said, that they may prove vital in the US elections. Democratic frontrunner John Kerry is known to accept climate change as a real problem. Scientists disillusioned with Bush's stance are threatening to make sure Kerry uses the Pentagon report in his campaign.

The fact that Marshall is behind its scathing findings will aid Kerry's cause. Marshall, 82, is a Pentagon legend who heads a secretive think-tank dedicated to weighing risks to national security called the Office of Net Assessment. Dubbed 'Yoda' by Pentagon insiders who respect his vast experience, he is credited with being behind the Department of Defence's push on ballistic-missile defence.

Symons, who left the EPA in protest at political interference, said that the suppression of the report was a further instance of the White House trying to bury evidence of climate change. 'It is yet another example of why this government should stop burying its head in the sand on this issue.'

Symons said the Bush administration's close links to high-powered energy and oil companies was vital in understanding why climate change was received sceptically in the Oval Office. 'This administration is ignoring the evidence in order to placate a handful of large energy and oil companies,' he added.


Special report
Climate change

Graphics
CO2 emissions
The world in the 2050s
The greenhouse effect

Interactive
Guide to drilling for oil in the Arctic
Calculate your personal carbon count

Key resources
The Kyoto protocol
Bjorn Lomborg: Are we doing the right thing?

Useful links
UN framework convention on climate change
Greenpeace
Friends of the earth

 



 Ed. note: About 25,000 people per day die of starvation, and billions more live in a state of extreme poverty, disease and hopelessness -- a situation that used to be of concern to what used to be called "Christians," and others, and even a few politicians. NPR has managed to squeeze in an infrequent story on ongoing global human and ecological disasters (and progress), between the daily features on business, sports, etc. Here is one, about Jeffrey Sachs, who has an actual solution, in case anyone is interested.

 

 

Listen

NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO March 30, 2005 · Economist Jeffrey Sachs wants to end global poverty. He says simple measures -- like a mass distribution of mosquito nets -- could have a huge impact. We host a conversation with Sachs about a blueprint for a more prosperous world.

Jeffrey Sachs, director, Earth Institute at Columbia University; author of The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time Book Excerpt The path from poverty to development has come incredibly fast in the span of human history. Two hundred years ago, the idea that we could potentially achieve the end of poverty would have been unimaginable. Just about everybody was poor with the exception of a very small minority of royals and landed gentry. Life was as difficult in much of Europe as it was in India or China. With very few exceptions, your great-great-grandparents were poor and most likely living on the farm. One leading economic historian, Angus Maddison, puts the average income per person in Western Europe in 1820 at around 90 percent of the average income of sub-Saharan Africa today. Life expectancy in Western Europe and Japan as of 1800 was probably about 40 years.

If we are to understand why vast gaps between rich and poor exist today, we need therefore to understand a very recent period of human history during which these vast gaps opened. The past two centuries, since around 1800, constitute a unique era in economic history, a period that the great economic historian Simon Kuznets famously termed the period of Modern Economic Growth, or MEG for short. Before the era of MEG, indeed for thousands of years, there had been virtually no sustained economic growth in the world and only gradual increases in the human population...

Read More

Related NPR Stories

 

 

 
 What we could do with a 15% reduction in Pentagon budget:

 The United States spends more on "defense" than the next eight countries combined! Former admirals, generals and military officials agree that the U.S. can safely reduce the Pentagon budget by 15%.
That's enough to do ALL of the following:

Provide basic health and food to the world's poor: $12 billion
Rebuild America's public schools over 10 years: $12 billion
Reduce class size for grades 1-3 to 15 students per class: $11 billion
Reduce debts of impoverished nations: $10 billion
Provide health insurance to all uninsured American kids: $6 billion
Increase federal funding for clean energy and energy efficiency: $6 billion
Public financing of all federal elections: $1 billion
Fully fund Head Start: $2 billion

 

Onward Christian Soldiers

These are the countries bombed by the United States since the end of World War Two, as listed by historian William Blum. Quiz:  In how many of these countries has democracy resulted?

  • China 1945-46
  • Korea 1950-53
  • China 1950-53
  • Guatemala 1954
  • Indonesia 1958
  • Guatemala 1960
  • Cuba 1959-60
  • Congo 1964
  • Peru 1965
  • Laos 1964-73
  • Vietnam 1961-73
  • Cambodia 1969-70
  • Guatemala 1967-69
  • Grenada 1983
  • Libya 1986
  • El Salvador 1980s
  • Nicaragua 1980s
  • Panama 1989
  • Iraq 1991-99, 2003-present
  • Bosnia 1995 (Republic of Srpska)
  • Sudan 1998
  • Afghanistan 1998
  • Yugoslavia 1999

 


How did we come this far?

Excerpts of a recent article from a mainstream newsweekly. Guess which one):

...this bill, like so many others moving through Congress, comforts the comfortable and afflicts the afflicted. Worse, it provides for no distinction between those who get unlucky in Las Vegas and those who get cancer.

The law was literally written by the credit-card industry, the same folks whose siren-song targeting of high-risk borrowers caused much of the bankruptcy problem in the first place. Financial services has now surpassed oil and gas as the most powerful lobby in Washington. It's a fitting coincidence of circumstances. First Congress puts a half trillion in budget deficits a year on the plastic for our grandchildren to pay off. Then it sells out the average American to predatory lenders, who have the run of the place. (all italics added) History should remember the 109th as the Credit Card Congress.

... according to a Harvard study of bankruptcy, the most thorough ever undertaken, this deadbeat is the exception. Nearly 95 percent of those who declare personal bankruptcy are swamped by job loss, family breakup, medical problems or some combination. For about half, it's the health-care costs that do them in. (Alcohol- and drug-rehab expenses account for only 2 percent of defaulted expenses.) About 10 percent have the pleasure of getting cancer and going bankrupt at the same time.

This is an argument, of course, for overhauling our broken health-care system, or at least providing catastrophic coverage. But if Bush won't go there, the least he and the bipartisan bag men on Capitol Hill could have done was avoid further harming middle-class people who are already suffering enough. "All of the money is on one side of the debate," says Elizabeth Warren, who authored the Harvard study. "And all of the hurting is on the other." And remember, these borrowers are usually trying their best to get out of debt. By the time a debtor has filed for bankruptcy, he or she has often repaid the original credit-card debt plus some interest but still owes thousands in interest on the interest and other fees.

Tom DeLay's House, typically, allowed no amendments or real debate. In the Senate, one amendment would have protected those declaring bankruptcy for medical reasons. Another capped interest at 30 percent, which is usury by any standard. Both failed. Although the Bible clearly bars usury, all of the big congressional Bible thumpers sided with their corporate contributors. The only insolvent people who get a break are farmers, anti-abortion protesters (who continue to be protected against being sued into bankruptcy by the abortion clinics they try to shut down) and the deadbeat rich, who can still use "asset-protection trusts" to shelter their jewels and mansions from the bankruptcy court. For the GOP-led Congress, the other 98 percent of Americans are second-class citizens.

-Jonathan Alter, Newsweek, April 25, 2005

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3672516/site/newsweek/

 


(The late Senator Paul Wellstone’s) last major legislative act was to vote against the resolution authorizing the war in Iraq. He was the sole Democrat in the Senate facing a significant election challenge to do so, but he told a reporter, "I'm not 38, I'm 58. And at this point in my life, I'm not making any decision that I don't believe in." (italics added)

-Anna Quindlen, Newsweek, January 10, 2005


Right-brain, Right-thinking inspiration:

BuDDy gets "NEKKID" for a better world! See "NEKKID" music video.
Real Video
Windows Media
(L-R: Buddy, Kerry Morrigan, Julie Ethridge)


"The Top 10 Filibuster Falsehoods":  http://mediamatters.org/items/printable/200505180004


Good Can Be as Communicable as Evil

by Norman Corwin 

Andrea Bucci

“The blood relatives of common courtesy are kindness, sympathy and consideration. And the reward for exercising them is to feel good about having done so.”

Listen  
Morning Edition, April 25, 2005 · Years ago, while watching a baseball game on television, I saw Orel Hershiser, pitching for the Dodgers, throw a fastball that hit a batter. The camera was on a close-up of Hershiser, and I could read his lips as he mouthed, "I'm sorry." The batter, taking first base, nodded to the pitcher in a friendly way and the game went on.

Just two words, and I felt good about Hershiser and the batter and the game all at once. It was only a common courtesy but it made an impression striking enough for me to remember after many summers.

The blood relatives of common courtesy are kindness, sympathy and consideration. And the reward for exercising them is to feel good about having done so. When a motorist at an intersection signals to another who’s waiting to join the flow of traffic, "Go ahead, it’s OK, move in," and the recipient of the favor smiles and makes a gesture of appreciation, the giver enjoys a glow of pleasure. It’s a very little thing, but it represents something quite big. Ultimately it’s related to compassion, a quality in very short supply lately, and getting scarcer.

But look, let's not kid ourselves. It would be foolish to hope that kindness, consideration and compassion will right wrongs, and heal wounds, and keep the peace and set the new century on a course to recover from inherited ills. That would be asking a lot from even a heaven-sent methodology, and heaven is not in that business.

It comes down to the value of examples, which can be either positive or negative, and it works like this: Because of the principle that a calm sea and prosperous voyage do not make news but a shipwreck does, most circulated news is bad news. The badness of it is publicized, and the negative publicity attracts more of the same through repetition and imitation.

But good can be as communicable as evil, and that is where kindness and compassion come into play. So long as conscionable and caring people are around, so long as they are not muted or exiled, so long as they remain alert in thought and action, there is a chance for contagions of the right stuff, whereby democracy becomes no longer a choice of lesser evils, whereby the right to vote is not betrayed by staying away from the polls, whereby the freedoms of speech, assembly, religion, and dissent are never forsaken.

But why linger? Why wait to begin planting seeds, however long they take to germinate? It took us 200-plus years to get into the straits we now occupy, and it may take us as long again to get out, but there must be a beginning.

Related NPR Stories

Norman Corwin's 1945 production, On a Note of Triumph, about the end of World War II in Europe, is considered a radio masterpiece. Now in his 90s, Corwin continues to teach writing and journalism at the University of Southern California.

'On a Note of Triumph'

Hear excerpts of this classic program, Corwin's masterpiece.

 
 


 Three recommended sites addressing news slant problems: 

OPERATION TRUTH  www.OpTruth.org  

COUNTERSPIN  www.FAIR.org 

P.R. WATCH  www.PRWatch.org

 

"Could somebody explain
a few things to me...?"


"Head of Christ" by Max Wieczork



(Here's another song that will hopefully be recorded and up on this site soon.
   Please check back in a few days.)
 

The Congressional Democrat Fight Song

  “Ob – struct Away” (to the tune of “Up, Up and Away”)  (© Jim Terr 2004)

 

Would you like to try, to hinder some buffoons?

Will there ever be, a time more opportune?

Sometimes you can’t do much more than just dig in your heels.

How good it feels... to not make deals....

 

Ob - struct away, yes liberate that room

From all the right-wing freaks, conservative baboons.

If you accomplish only one thing in the current term,

Make ‘em squirm..... yes please stand firm....

 

I really don’t care if you bring home any pork.

Just do like they did to good old Robert Bork.

Yes keep the Supreme Court free of flaming nuts.

Block some nominations -- prevent abominations!

They think they’ve got a mandate – won’t you please set them straight?

 

So please don’t be afraid, to thwart those wacky loons.

You’re not getting paid, to sing their evil tune.

Sometimes you can’t do much more than just dig in your heels.

Show your ideals... yeah make ‘em squeal...

 

Ob - struct away, yes aggravate those fools.

Gridlock is okay, yeah fillibusterin’s cool!

If you accomplish only one thing in the current term,

Please stand firm... make ‘em squirm...

Obstruct away... Hastert and Delay...

Pop that cyst... named Bill Frist

Obstruct away.... Obstruct awayyyy..........

 _____________________________________________________________________

     “Bush was just chosen as a figurehead, an acceptable face for a sinister group,” he said, adding, “Cheney is the Capo.” Pressed on how so much of the country could support Bush and Cheney, given his dismissive assessment, Soros cited the German scholar Erich Fromm’s landmark study of totalitarianism, “Escape from Freedom,” suggesting, “In uncertain times, people want to escape to safety. They seek a father figure, who acts with conviction.” He added, “Bush does have conviction. He practically claims a link to God.”       
               - George Soros, New Yorker, October 18, 2004, page 184


“Let Me Out” (The Congresswoman’s Lament)
Windows Media 56k   MP3   2:29

 

Sung by Gwen Spatzier; parody lyrics and production by Jim Terr

(Parody of the 1962 Sensations hit, “Let Me In”)

Hear it! "Hands Off My NPR" click here