Our Federal Government spends two trillion dollars a year providing services to the public. Those services include things like the interstate highway system and our federal courts. They also include keeping the environment safe from the depredations of people who would harm it without considering the rest of us. They include advice on farming practices that reversed the harm done by the dust bowl creating agricultural practices of the early part of the last century. In every one of these cases the truth is more important than anyone's political agenda. They include the treasury department's analyses of tax policies and the impact they will have on the economy. They include the CIA and its analyses of weapon systems available to and threats resulting from foreign powers ability to bring them to bear in a war. They include defining the impacts of Federal Policies on State and Local Governments and informing the local officials of those impacts. They include analyzing how various import policies will affect the working public and how tax policies will impact families. Those services are a great boon to many of us and an important source of information about how our economic and political systems work together to keep this nation on track. Our national policies have been derailed and the train is headed down the wash toward the canyon with no rails to guide it. All aboard for our trip to a society with less justice less honesty and less truth without regard to race, creed or sexual preference.

Am I exaggerating? I don't believe so, we have all watched as our environmental watchdogs have been muzzled, and our Spooks have been exorcised and encouraged or simply told to lie. We have all watched as our financial analysts have been told what they will tell us about the "don't tax" and "do spend" policies of the burning Bush administration. Our bureaucrats are being used to support this administrations lies about the past, the present and the future. The worst part is this administration apparently believes its own lies. Self delusion is a special form of lying, we have all seen it before. It is there in the Alcoholic or drug addict when they keep telling themselves they can quit at any time. It is there in the sexual predator who just wants to have a little fun playing with your child. It is there in the mother or father who just won't see their beautiful daughter's struggle with eating disorders. It is there in the parents who will not allow their child the dignity of their gay sexual identity and help drive them to suicide with their disapproval. Self delusion is one of the most destructive forces on earth and it is running amuck in our government today.

What can we do? Everything that any set of concerned citizens could ever do before us. Do any of us really believe that this is the first time the government bureaucracy has been used to lie to us? Of course not! Can anyone top some of the grand old lies that were told by other Administrations in the history of this great nation? I doubt it with all of my doubtfulness. This is just another chapter in the annals of how this nation perseveres and sets things right eventually regardless of the quality of our political leadership. We are a rich and varied nation in which the admiration of a big lie is a large part of our national mythology. The stories of Pecos Bill and Paul Bunyan were told when I was young with great gusto in the classrooms of our nation. The story of Georgie W. will certainly take its place somewhere below them in the history of the great lies told in our nation. It is a lie that preemptive war is right for us and no one else on earth. It is a lie that you can spend and spend on defense or any other program of the government and never pay taxes. It is a lie that the recent tax cuts will create new jobs to replace the jobs we are exporting any time in the future. It is also a lie that this President will keep us safe from our enemies. If the success of a lie is measured by how many people believe it then these are very successful lies. It is up to us to discern the truth and we need to work at that job harder today because the bureaucrats are being used to tell us lies. God bless and keep you safe in these lying trying times.