Climate Change Odds Much Worse Than Thought

The wheel above depicts researchers' estimation of the range of probability of potential global temperature change over the next 100 years if no policy change is enacted on curbing greenhouse gas emissions. The wheel on the left assumes that aggressive policy is enacted. (Image courtesy / MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change)

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May 20, 2009 - ScienceDaily

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The most comprehensive modeling yet carried out on the likelihood of how much hotter the Earth's climate will get in this century shows that without rapid and massive action, the problem will be about twice as severe as previously estimated six years ago - and could be even worse than that.

The study uses the MIT Integrated Global Systems Model, a detailed computer simulation of global economic activity and climate processes that has been developed and refined by the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change since the early 1990s. The new research involved 400 runs of the model with each run using slight variations in input parameters, selected so that each run has about an equal probability of being correct based on present observations and knowledge. Other research groups have estimated the probabilities of various outcomes, based on variations in the physical response of the climate system itself. But the MIT model is the only one that interactively includes detailed treatment of possible changes in human activities as well - such as the degree of economic growth, with its associated energy use, in different countries.

Study co-author Ronald Prinn, the co-director of the Joint Program and director of MIT's Center for Global Change Science, says that, regarding global warming, it is important "to base our opinions and policies on the peer-reviewed science," he says. And in the peer-reviewed literature, the MIT model, unlike any other, looks in great detail at the effects of economic activity coupled with the effects of atmospheric, oceanic and biological systems. "In that sense, our work is unique," he says.

The new projections, published this month in the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate, indicate a median probability of surface warming of 5.2 degrees Celsius by 2100, with a 90% probability range of 3.5 to 7.4 degrees. This can be compared to a median projected increase in the 2003 study of just 2.4 degrees. The difference is caused by several factors rather than any single big change. Among these are improved economic modeling and newer economic data showing less chance of low emissions than had been projected in the earlier scenarios. Other changes include accounting for the past masking of underlying warming by the cooling induced by 20th century volcanoes, and for emissions of soot, which can add to the warming effect. In addition, measurements of deep ocean temperature rises, which enable estimates of how fast heat and carbon dioxide are removed from the atmosphere and transferred to the ocean depths, imply lower transfer rates than
previously estimated.

Prinn says these and a variety of other changes based on new measurements and new analyses changed the odds on what could be expected in this century in the "no policy" scenarios - that is, where there are no policies in place that specifically induce reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Overall, the changes "unfortunately largely summed up all in the same direction," he says. "Overall, they stacked up so they caused more projected global warming."

While the outcomes in the "no policy" projections now look much worse than before, there is less change from previous work in the projected outcomes if strong policies are put in place now to drastically curb greenhouse gas emissions. Without action, "there is significantly more risk than we previously estimated," Prinn says. "This increases the urgency for significant policy action."

To illustrate the range of probabilities revealed by the 400 simulations, Prinn and the team produced a "roulette wheel" that reflects the latest relative odds of various levels of temperature rise. The wheel provides a very graphic representation of just how serious the potential climate impacts are.

"There's no way the world can or should take these risks," Prinn says. And the odds indicated by this modeling may actually understate the problem, because the model does not fully incorporate other positive feedbacks that can occur, for example, if increased temperatures caused a large-scale melting of permafrost in arctic regions and subsequent release of large quantities of methane, a very potent greenhouse gas. Including that feedback "is just going to make it worse," Prinn says.

The lead author of the paper describing the new projections is Andrei Sokolov, research scientist in the Joint Program. Other authors, besides Sokolov and Prinn, include Peter H. Stone, Chris E. Forest, Sergey Paltsev, Adam Schlosser, Stephanie Dutkiewicz, John Reilly, Marcus Sarofim, Chien Wang and Henry D. Jacoby, all of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, as well as Mort Webster of MIT's Engineering Systems Division and D. Kicklighter, B. Felzer and J. Melillo of the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole.

Prinn stresses that the computer models are built to match the known conditions, processes and past history of the relevant human and natural systems, and the researchers are therefore dependent on the accuracy of this current knowledge. Beyond this, "we do the research, and let the results fall where they may," he says. Since there are so many uncertainties, especially with regard to what human beings will choose to do and how large the climate response will be, "we don't pretend we can do it accurately. Instead, we do these 400 runs and look at the spread of the odds."

Because vehicles last for years, and buildings and powerplants last for decades, it is essential to start making major changes through adoption of significant national and international policies as soon as possible, Prinn says. "The least-cost option to lower the risk is to start now and steadily transform the global energy system over the coming decades to low or zero greenhouse gas-emitting technologies."

This work was supported in part by grants from the Office of Science of the U.S. Dept. of Energy, and by the industrial and foundation sponsors of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change.

TOON

Charlie Crist: Boon or Bain of the GOP?

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Adele Stan
May 21, 2009 - Huffington Post

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Is Charlie Crist the face of a new Republican Party, or a harbinger of the GOP's demise?

He's handsome, personable and popular: a dream candidate for Florida's 2010 Senate race. And Charlie Crist, currently the Sunshine State's Republican governor, will probably win. That makes him a good thing for the Republican Party, right?

Yes and no. The GOP is desperate for another vote -- or 10 -- in the Senate, so Crist's bid sounds like good news to the ears of the party's Senate leaders. With his moderation on fiscal policy, his populist crusade against insurance companies and a rather solid record on right-wing social policy, Crist would seem to be a pretty palatable offering to conservative suburbanites, and perhaps even offers a model for the recovery of the national party -- that is, if his candidacy doesn't smash it up for good.

That's a serious "if". While Crist doesn't quite divide the party six ways to Sunday, his candidacy does slice it up in several. First, there's the Latino problem. Barack Obama's popular victory in 2008 is arguably owed to a significant shift of Latinos from the Republican to the Democratic column, thanks to right-wing demagoguery on immigration. Florida's Latino Republican leaders, reports Politico's Ben Smith, are hopping mad over the early embrace of the Crist candidacy by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and Sen. John Cornyn (Tex.), head of the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, over former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio, a young Cuban-American conservative.

Then there's the religious right, many of whose members have never forgiven Crist for his role, as Florida's attorney general, in allowing life support to be withdrawn from Terri Schiavo, a woman in a vegetative state whose fate became a cause célèbre of right-wing Catholics and evangelicals. (Crist defines himself as "pro-life", supporting parental notification laws and a ban on certain abortion procedures.) Right-wingers, both religious and secular, are furious with Crist not only for his happy acceptance of federal stimulus money from the Obama plan, but for Crist's decision to stand with the popular Democratic president at a campaign-style rally touting the stimulus.

Florida's business community is none too pleased with Crist's campaign, in the wake of Hurricane Rita, against insurers who appeared to be stiffing their policy-holders. Crist's crusade resulted in the creation of a state-run insurer, the Citizens Property Insurance Corp., which commercial insurers portray as unfair competition.

As if that wasn't enough, Crist's increasing shift to the right on social policy may be canceled out by the documentary film, Outrage, which reports on persistent rumors that Crist is a closeted gay man -- even as he states positions against marriage rights for LGBT people and his support for Florida's ban on adoption by LGBT folks. (Florida's law is the only such adoption ban in the country; some 4,000 adoptable Florida children languish in foster care.) As shown in Outrage, which opened nationwide just days before Crist announced his Senate bid, the allegations of Crist's accusers are likely to rankle not only the right, but stand to alienate voters who may not care whether their governor is gay or straight, but who do care about his veracity and integrity -- or lack thereof.

The film highlights the reporting of Bob Norman of the Broward-Palm Beach New Times, who followed a trail of dinner party conversations between sources and a male member of former Rep. Katherine Harris's staff (you remember her as the woman presiding over the recount of Florida's 2000 presidential vote), to fuel a provocative, if inconclusive, story about Crist's orientation. Norman also followed a deposition given by a friend of Norman said to be involved with Crist. "Charlie very smoothly denied that he knew or remembered knowing either of these people," Norman told filmmaker Kirby Dick. Then, Dick says, the two men named in his report left Florida until after Crist won his election.

The film looks more broadly at the cases of other anti-gay politicians who are believed to be gay themselves, or who have been successfully "outed" by their own behavior (Idaho Sen. Larry Craig, former Virginia Rep. Ed Scrock and others) -- most of them exposed by Mike Rogers of BlogActive, who focuses on senators and members of Congress who oppose LGBT rights.

Of anti-gay politicians who are privately having same-sex affairs, Rogers says to Dick, "They are traitors to their people...They are working against the [very] community they then expect to protect them."

In Outrage, Crist is heard in a radio interview saying that he believes marriage to be "a sacred relationship between a man and a woman, like my mother and father had, and like I had before I got divorced." (He is speaking here of his first marriage, which lasted six months; he married again last year, as his name was floated for the vice presidential slot on the McCain ticket.) Later in the film, Crist is heard telling a newscaster that he has "no second thoughts" on Florida's ban on adoptions by same-sex couples.

So far, the accusations seem not to have affected Crist's campaign. As governor, he still enjoys a 64 percent approval rating (Quinnipiac), is all but certain to survive a primary challenge by Rubio, and is a strong contender against Democrat Kendrick Meek, the congressman poised to challenge him in the general Senate election. But once ensconced on Capitol Hill, Crist will doubtless have Rogers on his trail, a perilous fate for any politician who votes against LGBT rights.

Charlie Crist will likely win a Senate seat for the Republican party, but the cost of his win to the GOP may be far greater than the millions that party leaders will pour into making it happen. For a party focused for so long on appeasing the most vituperative voices of its vaunted base, the ascendance of Charlie Crist represents a point of departure from which the GOP will not easily return.

Meltdown 101: Which jobs reports tell full story?

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Christopher Leonard
May 21, 2009 - AP

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One week, a federal report says the number of people filing new claims for unemployment insurance has unexpectedly dropped, pointing to a slowdown in layoffs. Good news, right? Maybe not.

Within weeks, another government report says the unemployment rate has climbed. Bad news? Not so fast: Soon a privately issued report says the labor market appears to be strengthening, news that reassures investors and sends stocks higher.

Confused yet? Don't worry — so are some of the nation's leading economists.

Gauging the labor market, and predicting where it might go, has proven to be an exceedingly difficult task during this fast-moving recession. The unemployment rate has spiked much faster than most analysts thought it would over the last year, and along the way numerous reports has given seemingly contradictory messages about the number of Americans out of work.

So which reports should be trusted, and which ones tell the whole story? Is the report on jobless claims released Thursday — which said that new claims dropped slightly to 631,000 — simply going to be contradicted by the next set of numbers? How do agencies even know how many jobs have been slashed?

Here are questions and answers about the main jobs reports that experts consult to read the labor market.

Q: What are the most important reports that experts watch?

A: Two major government reports get the most attention: the weekly jobless claims report filed by the Department of Labor, and the monthly unemployment report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. These are complemented by a slew of private reports issued by economic consultants like Moody's Economy.com, or Automatic Data Processing, Inc.

Q: What does the report on weekly jobless claims measure?

A: The report captures the number of people who file their first claim for unemployment insurance after being laid off.

This can be a good measure for how many jobs were cut the week before, but it doesn't capture the whole picture. For whatever reason, not everyone who loses their job ends up filing for unemployment insurance benefits, or at least they may not file right away. Still, the rough number can point to upward or downward trends in the labor market between monthly reports filed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Q: What does the monthly unemployment report measure?

A: The monthly unemployment report is based on a Census Bureau survey of 60,000 U.S. households. The survey asks respondents several questions, including whether they have a job, are looking for a job, or are so discouraged that they have quit looking for work altogether.

The report lays out a whole range of unemployment rates. The most-cited rate only counts people actively looking for work; the latest unemployment report, released on May 8, calculated that rate as 8.9 percent. A much broader unemployment rate — 15.8 percent in the latest report — also includes everyone who has dropped out of the labor force or has been forced into part-time work.

Q: Why do these reports seem to contradict each other sometimes?

A: The main reason is that the jobless claims report only catches one piece of the puzzle — the number of jobs being shed. But sometimes, the unemployment rate can climb even if fewer jobs are cut. That's because the unemployment rate also accounts for the all-important factor of job creation.

Even if employers don't shed any jobs, the unemployment rate can climb if they don't create enough new jobs to absorb all the graduates and immigrants who enter the work force each month.

Q: Why don't I hear more about private-sector jobs reports?

A: Investors pay close attention to these reports, like the ADP National Employment Report, which tend to be released before the government reports and can give stock traders a leg up when betting on economic trends. But academics shy away from them in part because companies don't fully reveal their study methodology. (ADP's report, for one, is based on payroll data from about 400,000 of the company's data service clients.)

Government reports, on the other hand, have been used for decades and their methodology is well known.

Q: So which reports should I pay attention to?

A: You can't go wrong by watching the monthly unemployment report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, said Arindrajit Dube, an economist with the Center for Labor Research and Education at the University of California at Berkeley.

The unemployment report is the best gauge of the labor market because it measures people's intentions — such as whether they've given up on the job hunt or decided to return to school — in a way payroll figures or jobless claims cannot.

The one downside of the report is that it only comes out monthly, and gives a good picture of where the labor market was last month rather than where it is this week, Dube said. So he watches the weekly jobless claims report to get a contemporary reading on the job market, rather than waiting a full month for the unemployment report. He will also look at reports like ADP's, but mostly as a complement to government issued data.

"I think the short answer is: I look at all of them because they each give a piece of information," Dube said.

TOON

George W. Bush "Kept Us Safe"?

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Jeffrey Feldman
May 21, 2009 - Huffington Post

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Lately, the only thing worse than Dick Cheney's boldfaced lie that the Bush administration policies "kept us safe" is the gaggle of mainstream journalists mindlessly repeating it.

My question for journalists working for CNN, MSNBC, FOX, ABC, CBS, NPR and the like is very simple: Exactly what kind of delusional definition of "kept us safe" is swirling around your cobweb covered newsrooms? That definition must be some kind of crazy, because it accommodates not only the deadliest terrorist attack in U.S. history and the tragic death of thousands in New Orleans, but dozens of other yikes-we-are-so-not-safe moments, all which happened during George W. Bush's Presidency.

For example:

* During George W. Bush's Presidency, thousands of soldiers died in Iraq--a war we now know without question to have been waged as part of an ideological program, not out of necessity. Those thousands of soldiers each had parents, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, children, and hometowns dragged through the cruel stop-gap policies imposed on service men and women by George W. Bush.

* During George W. Bush's Presidency, tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers were injured, only to return to the squalid conditions and cruel indifference of a veterans' care medical system that fell through the cracks of America's for-profit healthcare racket. The tragedy of our injured soldiers came to light during George W. Bush's Presidency.

* During George W. Bush's Presidency, the number of Americans living in abject fear for lack of health insurance reached the tens of millions. As a result of this crisis of fear, a private medical relief agency initially set up to fly doctors to remote jungles in South America began flying relief into poor American communities. This happened during George W. Bush's Presidency.

* During George W. Bush's Presidency, the NSA spied on the private citizens, thanks to the willing participation of major American telecom companies, a major violation of the most fundamental Constitutional rights Americans thought protected them from KGB-style domestic surveillance.

* During George W. Bush's Presidency, the citizens of nearly all American foreign allies began to view the United States as a hostile threat to world peace, safety, and security as a result of (1) the preemptive invasion policies of Dick Cheney and (2) the torture-of-prisoners policies of Dick Cheney.

* During George W. Bush's Presidency, job security for working communities dropped, underemployment reached historic highs, and earned wages for worker output stagnated.

* During George W. Bush's Presidency, Bernard Madoff was arrested for running the largest financial Ponzi scheme in history, defrauding private citizens, retirement funds, and not-for-profit organizations out of billions of dollars.

* During George W. Bush's Presidency, the United States impeded global cooperation to lower carbon emissions levels, thereby heightening a general fear over the destructive potential of global warming.

* During George W. Bush's Presidency, the United States economy tipped into the deepest economic crisis since the 1920s, hastening experts to describe the housing and financial market meltdown as a potential global economic 'depression.'

* During George W. Bush's Presidency, pet food produced in China was discovered as the cause of deaths for American dogs and cats contaminated by toxic melamine, resulting in a nationwide panic.

* During George W. Bush's Presidency, ecoli contamination killed multiple people who had ate spinach, tomatoes, and peppers.

* During George W. Bush's Presidency, elderly Americans panicked over shortages of flu vaccines.

* During George W. Bush's Presidency, the Republican Party ran political commercials claiming that voting for Democratic Party candidates would lead directly to the death and destruction of small town America by terrorists with nuclear bombs.

* During George W. Bush's Presidency, fear and hatred of homosexuality reached a fever pitch in American politics.

* During George W. Bush's Presidency, the Republican Party ran election campaigns designed to scare Jewish voters into thinking that the election of Democrats would result in another Holocaust.

* During George W. Bush's Presidency, civilian planes were hijacked and flown into two of the tallest buildings in the world--the event was broadcast on live television--and when the President was told these events were happening by one of his closest aides, he sat there stone faced and did nothing, while his vice President--Dick Cheney--vanished into an "undisclosed location."

* During George W. Bush's Presidency, the country was swept up in fear that terrorists were attacking ordinary citizens by sending the anthrax virus in the form of white powder through the United States Postal system.

* During George W. Bush's Presidency, invasive strip searches coupled with racial profiling were introduced to the act of getting onto an airplane.

* During George W. Bush's Presidency, a man who looked mentally ill was able to get past airport security, get on a plane, and then light a fuse connected to explosives in his shoes.

* During George W. Bush's Presidency, a color-coded system was created to tell Americans via broadcast television that the threat of a terrorist attack was high at all times.

* During George W. Bush's Presidency, the Republican Party launched a national campaign to convince the public that the Democratic nominee for president was a covert adherent to radical Islam with covert ties to domestic and foreign terrorists.

* During George W. Bush's Presidency--a time lauded and celebrated by the National Rifle Association, who claimed to have "their man in the Oval office"--the largest gun massacre on a university campus occurred at Virginia Tech, resulting in the violent deaths of 5 faculty members and 27 students.

* During George W. Bush's Presidency, the CIA at the bequest of Dick Cheney tortured prisoners using techniques in direct violation of U.S. and international law, dramatically increasing the likelihood that captured U.S. prisoners in the future will also be subject to torture.

And that is just to name a few, but you get the point. So, remind me again: How did George W. Bush's policies keep us safe? Call me crazy, but I just do not see it.

To understand what it means for a President to keep us safe, my advice is to ignore Dick Cheney altogether and listen directly to former President Franklin Roosevelt.

In 1941 FDR gave a speech about "Four Freedoms" which spoke directly to the issue of security for Americans and the rest of the world:

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In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.
The first is freedom of speech and expression--everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way--everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want--which, translated into universal terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants--everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear--which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor--anywhere in the world.

That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.

-- Franklin D. Roosevelt, excerpted from the State of the Union Address to the Congress, January 6, 1941

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To be fair, George W. Bush did some good work relative to Roosevelt's list of "Four Freedoms," in particular his dedication of a considerable funds to help fight AIDS in African nations. And yet, in his domestic and foreign policies--most of them designed and pushed by Dick Cheney--George W. Bush shrouded American life in a politics of fear. He did not make us more safe. Using the media and the military, George W. Bush made us more afraid, more anxious, and more concerned for our future. Even worse: he sought to profit politically from the fear he created.

If there is ever ranking of Presidents who made us feel the most safe, I will bet you a gas mask and a roll of duct tape that George W. Bush ends up in last place.

So the next time Dick Cheney repeats his big, fat, stinking lie that George W. Bush "kept us safe," I hope journalists have the wherewithal and the basic decency to laugh out loud.

The rest of us are already laughing.

Scathing watchdog report blasts Securities and Exchange Commission oversight

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Darren Barbee
May 15, 2009 - Star-Telegram (Dallas-Ft. Worth)

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The Securities and Exchange Commission abandons investigations for lack of resources, allows corporate wrongdoers to skip fines and drops cases because of a bureaucratic culture of risk aversion, according to a recent federal report.

The list goes on: A lack of support staff is so severe it forces SEC attorneys to send confidential documents to nonsecure copy shops. One attorney spent a day putting together document boxes instead of pursuing cases, according to the scathing report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

The report raises questions about how well the SEC can do its job protecting investors with such glaring deficiencies.

The number of SEC enforcement attorneys declined 11.5 percent from 2004 to 2008 while cases were closed prematurely or not investigated at all, the report says. Although a wide range of cases is pursued, "one attorney told us of closing several cases that were promising but which could not be pursued for lack of resources," according to the report.

Other times, lack of specialized experts, such as accountants and those knowledgeable about trading, weren't available, causing delays. Over four years, penalties and disgorgements declined by 84 percent — to $256 million in fiscal 2008, compared with $1.59 billion in 2005.

The report also details problems with the commission's lack of consensus in punishing corporate misconduct.

"Officials acknowledged that there could be flagrant misconduct, but no penalty, if corporate benefit [from the misconduct] cannot be identified through economic analysis," the report states.

According to many investigative attorneys, commission penalty policies have contributed to an adversarial relationship between the enforcement division and the commission. In one case, an enforcement attorney told the GAO that a company offered to pay $1 million to settle a case, but the attorney recommended no penalty because "they did not believe the commission would approve the company offer."

In response to the report, SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro wrote that she agreed with the findings and recommendations and that she has asked the new director of the enforcement division to conduct a top-to-bottom review of processes and culture.

Schapiro hired a longtime federal prosecutor to head the division. He and Schapiro will work on management reforms, including harnessing technology, improving risk assessment, and improving training and supervision for law enforcement personnel "so that we can maximize our resources to combat fraud and wrongdoing in our markets."

Andrew Stoltmann, a Chicago securities attorney, said the report reveals nothing new about the troubled agency.

"The SEC has been an impotent, toothless tiger pretty much since its creation in the 1930s," he said. "The SEC tends to be more concerned about banging the drum and getting publicity as opposed to stopping stock crooks like Bernie Madoff."

Toon

Republican Disaster -- The Evangelical/Zionist Anatomy of Meltdown

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Frank Schaeffer
May 19, 2009 - Huffington Post

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I was a Republican insider. For instance, the late Jack Kemp was a friend who I often advised on "connecting" with the Religious Right, until I left the Republican Party and the evangelical subculture and slammed the door behind me. During my last call with Jack he hung up on me. (I was backing McCain in 2000 and he was for W.) I want you to understand this context of my "insider's" comments here because they are going to strike you as shocking. So please let me recap some personal history.

My parents and I were the guests of the Reagans, Fords and Bush's in the White House and/or in other private meetings. Jack Kemp was so good a friend that he once interrupted a speech at a fund-raising banquet in Washington that I'd walked into late and walked from the podium to the back of the hall shook my hand introduced me to the assembled Republican leaders, then walked back to the podium and continued his speech. He did this because -- in those days -- I was an important link to the (then) powerful evangelical movement.

I was often in Jack's house with Jack and his wife Joanne who, at that time, was conducting a weekly Bible study group with other congressional wives called the "Schaeffer group," based on my father's books. In those days -- the 1970s and early 80s -- as both a staunch Republican and pro-life leader and the son of the famous evangelist, I was right in the middle of the Republican machine.

Talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy of doom -- in the 1970s my family was an integral part of bringing the Republican Party under the sway of the emerging Religious Right, particularly because of our support of the antiabortion movement. It was my father who talked Jerry Falwell into "taking a stand" on the "moral issues" of the day, which then morphed into the Moral Majority. Back in the 70s and early 80s Dad and I both appeared on the 700 Club many times, I preached from Jerry Falwell's pulpit and was the keynote speaker at the Religious Broadcasters and Christian Booksellers Association annual events several years running.

There came a day in 1985 (my dad had died in 1984) that I began to take another look at my commitment to the both the far right of Republican Party and the Religious Right. I came to realize that I was in bed with a group of people who were profoundly anti-American. They were professional haters. They wrapped themselves in the flag and "loved America," but it was an America in their imaginations only and cast in their image: white, middle-class, straight, born-again, homophobic and tinged with racism, not to mention misogyny.

The America most Americans lived in; diverse, open, tolerant and multi-ethnic was the America that the right would hardly even acknowledge. They "loved" an America that didn't exist, and hated the real country we live in. (I go into this in detail in two books; Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All -- or Almost All -- of It Back and also in my forthcoming Patience With God: Faith For People Who Don't Like Religion -- Or Atheism where I lay out an alternative to some very bad choices between the extremes.)

So what went wrong with the Republican Party? Believe me, it's all about religion!

Two religions (in the broadest sense of the term) have destroyed the Republican Party: evangelical Christianity and Christian/Jewish Zionism. Evangelical Christianity created the Religious Right which forever linked the Republican Party to the antiabortion, anti-sex education, anti-evolution and anti-gay crusades. And both Christian and Jewish Zionism linked the Republican Party to what became the neoconservative movement with its roots in such publications as Commentary magazine and their shrill Israel-can-do-no-wrong anti-Arab agenda. (I knew the late editor of Commentary Norman Podhoretz quite well, and we met several times to build alliances between evangelicals and the far American Zionist far right. When it came to Arabs, I believe he was a real racist.)

I would not call Zionism per se a religion, but I'm talking about secular goals pursued with religious fervor. I would call Zionism, American-style a politicized version of a religion. I also argue that the neo-con side got traction when religious Jews became Zionists and when religious Christians (evangelicals) hopped aboard to hasten the "Rapture." And I'd like to point out that American Zionists ally themselves with the Israeli hardliners, but that opinion in Israel is much more diverse and often tolerant than that, as is opinion among Jewish Americans, who do not by and large accept the AIPAC point of view uncritically.

The result of the Republican Party being taken over by these religious groups was that we got George W. Bush. His idea of governance was a hands-off, all-government-is-bad-government neglect, combined with an unnecessary war in Iraq inspired by a form of Zionism that sees all Arabs as a threat, Islam as evil, America as an exceptional place duty-bound "by God" to keep the world safe for evangelical Christian "values," on the one hand, and militant Christian and Jewish Zionism on the other. It is a poisonous blend. (It's not just Zionism, or a form of Zionism, that makes Americans hate Arabs. Anti-Arab, anti-Muslim images in America go way back and some right wing evangelicals and Jews merely tap into that racism.)

Evangelical/Christian Zionism has been bad for the State of Israel too. It has helped put that country into a permanent defensive crouch in which there is now perhaps no way out from destruction that comes to all people who see everyone else (from the EU to the UN to the Arabs and Iran) as a threat. The building of the illegal West Bank settlements and turning the Gaza Strip into what amounts to a concentration camp, combined with demographic reality will doom the State of Israel if a two state peace agreement is not reached and reached fast. But Christian Zionists have done all they can to undermine peace in the name of fulfilling "biblical prophecy" as have the far right of the Jewish Zionists, people like my old friend Norman Podhoretz.

With "friends" like the Christian Zionists -- exemplified by the Reverend John Hagee and many others who "support" Israel while eagerly waiting for the "return of Christ" and the destruction of all "unbelieving Jews" -- Israel needs no enemies. Given that the hard-line American Christian Zionists encouraged the Republican Party to become the party of permanent war to keep the State of Israel "safe" they have actually helped set the stage for its destruction. And therefore the Republicans also opened the door to our national economic ruin as well. The two are linked; eternal war and ruin, because our permanent wars (thinly veiled excuses to "keep Israel safe") are never paid for by increased taxes or a draft. (Disclosure: my son served in the Marines and was deployed.)

But attitudes are changing: The results of a new Zogby poll are interesting. They suggest that Obama would have strong support for a US diplomatic effort to forge an Israel-Palestine deal, even if it means tough pressure on Israel. According to the poll, when asked if the United States should "get tough" with Israel in order to back up its call for an end to settlement construction in the occupied West Bank, fully 50 percent of Americans said yes, with just 19 percent saying "do nothing," and 32 percent not sure.

Asked whether the interests of Israel and the US are identical, only 28 percent of Obama voters agreed, while 59 percent disagreed. Among McCain voters, it was the reverse: 78 percent of McCain voters said US and Israel interests were identical (!) and 15 percent said they are not.

So what did the Republicans become? They are the party of unnecessary wars both actual and cultural and the party of the rich -- those who never serve in the military, just put up flags to "support the troops." The actual war in Iraq was (as everyone knew with a wink and a nod, but few dared say) really about our commitment to Christian and Jewish Zionism as it was "understood" by the born-again fool Bush. The culture war is also an unnecessary and unmitigated war that pitted the "real America" (in other words white mostly uneducated, lower-middle-class evangelical/Catholic working Americans) against everyone else.

If you're not a gay-hating, "pro-life," born-again evangelical and/or an ardent Israel-can-do-no-wrong-all-Arabs-are-evil-Jesus-is-coming-back-soon evangelical on the one hand or a neoconservative I-never-met-a-war-I-didn't-like "intellectual" on the other hand, these days you're probably not a Republican. Throw in a college degree or the habit of getting information from any source other than right wing blogs, radio "personalities" like Rush Limbaugh or "authors" like Ann Coulter and you won't be voting Republican again in this lifetime.

What's caused the Republican Party's real meltdown? It's that it has ceased to exist as a political party and is instead a dwindling weirdly eclectic collection of uneducated rubes led by a few fearful angry far right thinkers who talk in media sound bites geared to the types of people who watch Fox News. Jack Kemp was not part of this horrible little "party." He was a smart compassionate man. There used to be more Republicans like Kemp. Today the Republican core constituency is the national village idiot.

With the election of President Obama America has turned the page on the village idiots. We now have a president who is a religious believer himself, who supports Israel (as I do, by the way), but who well understands -- and articulates beautifully as he just did at Notre Dame talking about abortion -- the fact that authentic faith should be a unifying force instead of a divisive one. That's bad news for religious nuts, be they Christians or Jews. That's good news for America and the world, and maybe for our overstretched military too.

The choice for America has always been between inclusive pluralism and exclusion. The kind of religion and Evangelical/Zionist/neoconservative cabal used to take over the interests of the Republican Party is just too small for this big diverse, tolerant and open country of ours. So the Republicans have a choice: become an American political party again serving American interests or continue to serve the narrowly defined religious interests of two angry and fearful Jewish/Evangelical minorities who are themselves bastardized offshoots of their Christian and Jewish traditions.

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Frank Schaeffer is a writer. He is author of Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back and also author of the forthcoming Patience With God: Faith For People Who Don't Like Religion Or Atheism