Don't panic. Don't get discouraged. Think of this as a replay of the 70s except this time we get to do it in a different way.

But we shall win! Civilization shall continue to go forward and our citizens - even the poorest among us - will have better lives because of our victory.

We won't win through demonstrations because those in power, the tools of the Xtians, have no consciences or compunctions so they will not affected by slogans and the like.

They are expecting that sort of stuff and are leaning back like fat cats and laughing at such naivette.

What they are NOT expecting is savvy political actions so I would recommend any liberal reading this column IMMEDIATELY start learning POLITICS.

We liberals have been sitting on our thumbs for years letting the Xtians and their puppets grind our government to a halt.

We stood by helpless as they put us through the long nightmare of Whitewater and the subsequent public porno show of a president's personal life while most of the congressional judges and prosecutors were doing worse, much worse.

Instead of demanding that politicians do the jobs they were being payed very handsomely for, the Congress did nothing. We stood like deer in the headlights waiting to be run over and did nothing. (I fault Al Gore for not using that as part of his campaign.)

WE MUST KNOW THE FACTS - this nation is facing at least four years of extreme political turmoil. It would be less if we, the liberals, were orgqnized, but we're not yet.

Today, if not sooner, contact your local democratic party and find out how to become active. If 100 of you do that in any locality, you can TAKE CONTROL of the party and lead it. So don't give me any crap about political parties not being effective. What is not effective is YOU if you do nothing.

Girls and boys, no matter who sits in that oval office in this bit of time is the dawn of the 21st century, he will not be able to lead this country without numbing opposition.

And it is up to us to keep up that numbing opposition. If we let up for one second, the bigots of this world will tear us to shreds.

We must show that the decent American people, are no longer confused and lost. We the people, the real people out here (far from the incestuous cocktail parties of the Washington insider columnists who through chardonnay fumes seem to be able to fathom what the American people" want without ever meeting one) are no longer floundering around without a lode star to lead us.

WE LIBERALS - and most American people are liberals who believe in human rights and dignity - HAD NO GOALS AND NO VISION FOR TOMORROW given to us by the man who would lead us. Al Gore whom I respect in many way failed to ignite the nation enough because he did not present a vision. There was no reason for the people to follow him. Yet, in spite of that lack, he still won the election because we KNEW the alternative. However, he did not capture our hearts and souls so that the rightwing Xtians were able to steal the vote and install Dumbya...

IF you want to protest, carry a sign or get bumper stickers made that read: "RE-ELECT AL GORE."

Had we been an army, the Xtians could not have gotten away with it with the coup in Florida and the U.S. Supreme Court. But we liberals and those who believe in justice and dignity for all stood aside and let the coup d'etat occur. We were waiting for one word, one wave of the flag to breach the ramparts and return the American vote to a place of honor.

It never came.

It did not come after the election as it had not come BEFORE the election.

Our leaders and ourselves sat on our thumbs and let this happen. Now we are frustrated and we don't know what to do about it. There are no bugle calls from the ramparts. We are in shock.

The ones who AREN'T frustrated, those who HAVE the vision and a goal are the radical reactionary religious rightwing republicans who very simply took charge of this nation's immediate destiny BY DEFAULT.

They wouldn't have dared if the liberals rose up and said, "now just one minute, you Neo-Nazis."

OR "just one damned second, get those rioting, paid republican congressional workers away from Dade County and let the people's vote be counted."

But Gore ran his "post election" campaign against fraud and highhandedness exactly as he did the pre- election - without spark and without a call for a vision to follow . . . so we had nowhere to go. We were dead in the water without a map.

The big dog was kept in the kennel - and there was no one to sound the alarm as the xtians stole the silver, the state governments, and the U.S. constitution

Before us, blocking the examination of ballot boxes and straight-forward action was a solid wall of dedicated radical religious righters who had thrown everything they had into the campaign to elect an empty suit with a swarmy smile (a thin Marion "Pat" Robertson) who would acquiesce to their vision of Amerika: keeping those uppity women whores, niggers, and poor/ lazy people in their proper places . . .i.e., serving the xtians.

(As one who taught Sunday School in a Presbyterian church, who sang in the choir for many years, etc., etc., before logic turned me into an atheist, I choke when I use the word "christian," in conjunction with the unbridled hatred shown by the fundy and charismatic churchers of Falwell, Roberts, Dodson, Robertson, Kennedy, the old pope, etc.

(I will now refer to them as xtians... x being an old symbol of the christ in the era when writing wasn't that common. BTW, that ignorance of the masses would be the situation again in the xtians have their way so I think xtians is a good moniker.)

These Xtians, even though they failed to take complete control of the congress will keep going in their march to abridge the rights of women, blacks, Asians, Hispanics. Jews, and liberals as if they had a mandate. Their brainwashed goal is a simpler, better understood world that was around when they were children... A world that never really existed except from their well-insulated point of view as a child.

They are brainwashed members of a large cult and should be treated as cultiest, no sane people. They are not rational. The xtians are fanatics like the moonies or the those who committed suicide because of a comet.

The Xtians know they must bludgeon their way to power to have their will done because everyone is after them, everyone is against what they believe. But they have FAITH! They KNOW they are right. After all, they gave marching orders to god, god acquised in giving them the Florida vote and the unconstitutional U.S. supremes decision, and their god (as distinquished from your god) is never wrong.

The Bushettes will go forward regardless of opposition or calls for decency. They are certain that the liberal opposition is too fragmented (after all, Patricia Ireland of the National Organization for Women has given a lefthanded approval of one of the most biased, narrowminded of the Bushette nominess, Linda Chavez simply because she is a woman - calling on women to ignore the fact that LC broke the laws of this nation in worse ways than lying about a consensual sexual affair. But of course Chavez, a woman, will be the first sacrificial lamb... there might be a second nominee to fail, but it will just be an appeasement of the liberal masses, to sate them to that the main prize will be protected - Ashcroft will be approved as Attorney General and seek to change the U.S. constitution unless YOU and YOURS organize to stop his confirmation.

Ashcroft is the most dangerous of all.

Among those with delusions of grandeur that they are more like gods than congressional employees are Tom DeLay, Jesse Helms, Dick Armey, Orin Hatch, and Trent Lott the more obvious of the political republican national leadership. They will ramrod programs through even though some of them KNOW the programs are flawed and bad for the future of this nation. Even their view of this nation.

Their handlers, devoted leaders of the money machine known as the "Christian right, i.e., xtians" would not allow them to retreat into the American tradition of decency and compromise even if they wanted to - even if they knew the meaning of decency in their bloated with self-importance minds. They couldn't because their puppet masters won't allow it.

Those hundreds of BILLION$ that have been spent to overturn the U.S. constitution these last eight years DEMAND$ a return. These radical reactionary republican leaders are under marching orders to give the very rich who have bankrolled the Xtian takeover of our government the tax breaks that will return their ENTIRE 2000 election expenditures PLUS the cost of the anti-Clinton-eight-year-crusade all in ONE year.

It doesn't matter that such a huge tax break will throw the economy into a horrendous world-wide tailspin like the one that was precipitated under Reagan when Reagan's handlers decreed an economic policiy of rewarding the rich in trickle-down economics that turned the U.S. from the richest nation in the world into the world greatest debtor nation.

What a manna from heaven was the interest the big money boyz were able to collect for the next upteen years on that huge debt . . But DAMN, Clinton beat Bush and Clinton actually reversed that huge debt. The obscene interest the big money guyz are pocketing is in DANGER.

Get rid of that sucker!!! Enter, stage left, Richard Mellon Scaife, Coors, etc., and big money fellow travelers who hired Kenneth Starr and orchestrated the entire Whitewater debacle.

Watergate failed, so enter stage right - Dumbya. An agreeable bumbling ass who could be trained to say anything the brighter lights around him wanted him to say. (The role of Karen Hughes in the making of the president by controlling what comes out of his mouth is one that would give any reporter a Pulitzer.)

The big money boys want to make the cheap dollars killing quickly and sock the $$$ away. Then they can sit back and smile while the economy goes into the toilet because these bottom feeders own the $eptic tank too - and they love poor times when people will work for less and less and less.

A high national debt with its bloated interest rates is perfect for the banking/insurance consortiums.

Let's talk practical life and then practical politics.

The basic problem in this nation - actually the world - is that we refuse to acknowledge that religious right- wing fanatics are cultiests, not quite sane.

We need to understand why much of the media and so many church goers want to back in time to the days when bigotry and hatred was accepted? (Remember the Southern Baptists broke with the regular American Baptists because the southern "christians" believe god had said they had the right to OWN other human beings. Yeah, the Xtians' religious belief is based on their right to own Black people and women!

Why aren't the medical head shrinks studying the problem that causes the paranoid Aryan nation-type people, the frightened, the disenfranchised who cannot change with the times (such as white males who want their wives to be the mothers they imagined they had).

Why are so few pointing out the similarities between the mindpolluting of the Nazis and the Xtians - the same brutish tactics.

Reporters joke among themselves about Dubya's "Who Me, Why Worry, Alfred Newman" mask that covers George W. Bush's intentions, but they refuse to admit the truth:

Tear the mask away and you find - evil. Evil as defined as lack of good. Actually, the lack of anything. Behind the mask is a big, black hole. And it is a hole that relishes petty cruelties.

There is no George W. Bush - at least, not as seen by TV screens or manufactured by a group of slick marionette masters.

Young George is a dyslexic who has trouble reading. For the first time in our history, foreign affairs briefing books are going to be presented in coloring book fashion with verbal instructions: Do not color outside the lines.

It isn't that Dumbya is actually dumb. He is just short circuited and has an attention span of a... well, he... what was the question. He doesn't know and Karen Hughes must be in his line of sight to feed him his words.

Bushette likes things simple, simply because he can't really process anything that's not simply presented simply.

But the people who surround him are NOT simple. They are complex, hateful creatures who believe everything they hear in two-way conversations with God and their checkbooks.

Why aren't psychologists studying this amazing phenomena of the widespread fanaticism of the xtian cults. Why aren't they looking into how seemingly normal people suddenly become robots following the same philosophical line and spouting the same verbage as they are instructed in their "Sunday School classes," or at their Wednesday night prayer meetings.

Look at them - listen to them - or TV or radio or in your grocery stores. It's as if they have little speakers in their brains and all they have to do is open their mouths.

By the way, there is a special website of all the writings of ultra-right wing fanatical columnists and TV's talking heads. You can subscribe to its emails. The site's emails are aptly called "Today's talking points." And believe it or not, those words are quickly transferred to whatever talking heads appear on TV that day. Haven't you noticed how the reps repeat the same phrases, unabashed by their lack of originality or intellectual bankruptcy?

Make no mistake, girls and boys, there is a war on for the soul of America - and we who believe in decency and honor and the right of every individual to a decent life had best get organized.

First - buy postcards from the post office. At 20 cents a pop, they are just as effective as first class letters. Start sending your local congressional rep and your senators how you stand regarding issues - starting with the nominees for the Bushette cabinet.

Send faxes.

Use the phone if you can.

GET INVOLVED IN YOUR LOCAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY. You can change it to obey the people's will. Ralph Nader, as a stalking horse for the republicans, tried to convince liberals that political parties (other than his) were not responsible to the people. Well, girls and boys, political parties are made up of people - and that people can be you.

But don't bother with emails or online petitions. They are considered junk mail to almost everyone and are trashed. Anyone who encourages you to email legislators is so naive they shouldn't be out of the play pen.

We will be sending out more information on how to organize and how to get your voice heard in Washington and in your state.

Remember, if enough state legislatures are controlled by the Xtians, the U.S. constitution can be changed almost overnight and we will be helpless like were before the U.S. Supreme Court election of Dumbya.

We have a great opportunity but we must recognize what we are fighting:
        Brainwashed xtian robots trained as money machines for a cadre of very rich men.

Religion, girls and boys, has nothing to do with what we are facing.

While I am finishing this column off, Linda Chavez is withdrawing her name from consideration as Labor Secretary. It was an exhibition that made me want to vomit. Parading all those employees (and child) in front of the camera to praise her... The woman has no shame!

ONWARD TO JOHN ASHCROFT - keep your eye on the prize!!!!!