The American people must have the shortest memories on the planet. It seems like yesterday to me that I read about the Keating Five and John McCain's involvement in the scandal.

For those of you who do not remember, I would like to point out that John McCain accepted a bribe, sorry, campaign donation, from Charles Keating, a close friend and the CEO of Lincoln Savings and Loan, in the amount of $20,000. Then, McCain attempted to influence the Senate to drop their investigation into this man's questionable business dealings which ended up costing the American taxpayer some $3 billion. It�s little problems like these that have put the American people some $10 trillion in debt, a debt we can never pay and which is suffocating us all, smothering the economy in even greater economic catastrophes to come.

McCain was censured for this un-American activity and probably should have gone to jail, but somehow rose above it and escaped any such fate. This loan scam was a precursor to the larger present situation we find ourselves in today which is now dubbed the 'Subprime Crisis' and has led to this nation's worst recession since WW II.

Ironically in a speech last week to the World Affairs Council, John McCain said that he would not bail out the homeowners caught in this current mortgage crisis. He said that �market forces� could solve the problem and that it was not the role of government to get involved in bailing out the American consumer. This is an identical attitude put forth by Marie Antoinette, the Queen of France, who when told that her subjects were starving is alleged to have said, �Let them eat cake.�

Therefore, McCain�s official policy is now on record and it states that �If you give Senator McCain a small donation, say in the area of $20,000 he will take strong and swift action to save your assets, keep you out of trouble, save your home, but if you are only the American people, the people that pay his salary, put food on his table, who have made him filthy rich and who provide him with the world�s most generous retirement plan and other benefits, you don�t rate even the slightest consideration from this man or from other men like him. Get lost, American people. Go away. Solve your own problems, even though we really brought them on you!�

This is the kind of Benito Mussolini, Adolph Hitler leadership that ended in total military disaster and economic failure in World War II. But, that�s okay, we�re used to that kind of mentality from the Republican Party.

What troubles me even more than this is that these same Republicans who elected Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon must have known the background of the Keating 5 co-conspirator. They must have the arrogance to presume that the American people either don�t remember this scandal and John McCain�s role in it, or they don�t care. I am appalled if it turns out to be either way. If this is indeed the Republican point of view and these Republicans represent such a large proportion of us, then all may be lost. We may be too far gone to regain our former standing as the �land of the free, the home of the brave.�

George Bush recently made a speech to government employees so that he wouldn�t be heckled wherein he stated, �Yes, I�m the one who broke Iraq, but I don�t have to pay for it personally, you the American people will have to pay. I also told you the Iraqi people and their oil reserves would pay for my mistaken and misdirected war, but unfortunately the Iraqi�s are stealing their own oil, right from under the noses of our military, and so they can�t pay for my mistakes and so the reconstruction of Iraq is coming out of your paychecks. Sorry!�

I�ve paraphrased, of course. However, this is the exact thrust of his speech made last Thursday before the Space Museum crowd, who I hope were secretly as aghast as I was when I watched on CNN as the words tumbled out of the president�s mouth.

Richard Nixon so adamantly stated, �I am not a crook,� while at the same time he was cleaning out his desk and preparing to get out of town so that he would not have to go to jail. But, the Republicans have adapted and survived and they will probably adapt and survive Bush too. And so, the main philosophy of the Republican Party today is, �If we are crooks, it�s just too bad. Get used to it.� They know that all they have to do to stay in power is to lie so often and so boldly that the people will tire of constantly chasing the truth and eventually will be forced to accept their lies as the truth.

With the help of the corporate media, which they own, they know they can get away with this -- the world�s greatest heist, the theft of the very freedom and livelihood of millions of people. It is this cynical attitude that was aptly demonstrated by Adolph Hitler in his meteoric rise to power, yet we all know the eventual fate of people who exploit power. The problem is all the damage they can do before they are eventually torn shivering and shrieking from the highest pinnacles of power. Hitler eventually destroyed half of Europe, murdered over 10 million people on his direct orders and another 50 million people from his ill-advised war, another war based on lies.

The sick and sociopathic mind of the tyrant believes that the lie is more powerful than the truth and they know how to wield this power skillfully. They have relied on this unwise philosophy for years and on many occasions, such as Watergate, the Keating 5 scandal, the fight against stem cell research, and now the war in Iraq. President Bush is just the most recent and the boldest proponent of this Republican platform. Remember, he�s the one who said, �I know that the human being and the fish can coexist peacefully.� [Washington Post, Oct. 1, 2000]

I wonder if he was referring at the time, to a kind of private joke that We The People are like so many myriads of fish swimming in the sea who are meant to be dominated, struggling in the nets of the great and total lords on the higher plane above? I think the Bush malapropisms say more about the basic Republican platform than we ever guessed.

In summary, after all the historical facts that we must learn, if we allow one of the Keating Five scandal to end up in the White House, then the Republicans are right. We are no better than fish swimming silently in the sea and we deserve the kind of government that keeps us on their long lines of lies and treachery until they gather us all up into their net of deceit, leaving the world a fury of mass extinction that rushes the silent and the apathetic into the jaws of hell.

I believe that despair is not an option. I believe there is hope for the world. I believe we are smarter than fish. I believe that the role of government is to be our protectors, not our adversaries but due to our own struggles to survive, we have forgotten our true roles. Their �Let them eat cake� economics doesn�t cut it any more.