POLITICS

YES MEN TAKE ON HUD

CNN - A man who pulled a hoax on Louisiana officials and 1,000
contractors by presenting himself as a federal housing official said
Monday he intended to focus attention on a lack of affordable housing.
"We basically go around impersonating bad institutes or institutes doing
very bad things," said the man, who identified himself as Andy
Bichlbaum, a 42-year-old former college teacher of video and media arts
who lives in New York and Paris. "That would be HUD. At this moment,
they're doing some really bad things."

Masquerading as Rene Oswin, an official at the Department of Housing and
Urban Development, [Andy] Bichlbaum followed Louisiana Gov. Kathleen
Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin to the lectern Monday morning at
the Pontchartrain Center in Kenner.

In a speech to attendees of the Gulf Coast Reconstruction and Hurricane
Preparedness Summit, he laid out grandiose plans for HUD to reverse
course.

After the speaker read from a text he said had been prepared by his
boss, HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson, a HUD spokeswoman said the
department knew nothing about the man.

"Everything is going to change about the way we work, and the change is
going to start here today in New Orleans," the man said during his
speech. . .

William Loiry, president of meeting sponsor Equity International, said
he was duped. "We were contacted about a week ago or so by someone who
we believed to be [public relations firm] Hill & Knowlton [saying] that
they were representing the HUD secretary and that he wanted to make a
major announcement at this summit.". . . "We've done 75 national
conferences, 25,000 people participated, and we certainly never
encountered anything like this before," he said.

In his speech, Bichlbaum said the department's mission was to ensure
affordable housing is available for those who need it. . . The man added
that it also would be essential to create conditions for prosperity.

Toward that end, he said, Wal-Mart would withdraw its stores from near
low-income housing and "help nurture local businesses to replace them.".
. .

Finally, to ensure another hurricane does not inundate the city, Exxon
and Shell have promised to spend $8.6 billion "to finance wetlands
rebuilding from $60 billion in profits this year," he said. . .

Bichlbaum said Monday's prank was the latest in a series pulled off by
The Yes Men, whose members have recently masqueraded as representatives
of McDonald's, Halliburton and Dow Chemical. . .

In Washington, HUD spokeswoman Donna White called the hoax "sick.". . .
Annie Chen, media coordinator for Survivors Village, a tent-city protest
for the reopening of public housing in New Orleans, applauded
Bichlbaum's theatrics.
"Right now, a lie is better than the truth," she said.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/08/28/hud.hoax/index.html

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GOP SENATOR COMPARES ECOLOGISTS TO THIRD REICH

JIM MYERS TULSA WORLD - First came the Al Gore movie, and then there was
the Tom Brokaw television documentary. Now, a heat wave with
triple-digit temperatures is gripping much of the nation.

Is U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe, who believes that manmade global warming is
"the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people," losing the
public relations battle on that issue?

The Oklahoma Republican and chairman of the Senate Environment and
Public Works Committee concedes that those on the other side of the
global warming debate have dominated the air waves lately, but he
remains confident that his side will be proved right in the end.

Indeed, Inhofe insists that he feels even stronger about taking on what
he sees as the current hysteria about global warming than he did several
years ago when he first uttered that now-famous hoax statement. In an
interview, he heaped criticism on what he saw as the strategy used by
those on the other side of the debate and offered a historical
comparison.

"It kind of reminds . . . I could use the Third Reich, the big lie,"
Inhofe said. . .

While declining to watch either the Gore movie or the Brokaw
documentary, the senator said he armed himself with the statements used
in both. "I know the text, and I know they are using old stuff that has
been totally discredited," Inhofe said. "Everything on which they based
their story, in terms of the facts, has been refuted scientifically."

http://www.tulsaworld.com/NewsStory.asp?ID=060722_Ne_A1_Heatw72040

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Two States Join Iowa and NH as Early Primary States
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/082106K.shtml
Democrats agreed to shake up tradition Saturday by wedging Nevada between Iowa's
leadoff caucuses and the New Hampshire primary in the 2008 presidential
nominating calendar and adding South Carolina soon afterward. The addition of
Nevada's caucuses and the South Carolina primary to a presidential calendar long
dominated by Iowa and New Hampshire is intended to give a greater voice to
Hispanics and blacks - minorities critical to Democrats' success.

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Republican Senator Hagel: "GOP Has Lost Its Way"
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/082106D.shtml
"Republicans have lost their way when it comes to many core GOP principles and
may be in jeopardy heading into the fall elections," says Senator Chuck Hagel
(R-Neb). Hagel said that the GOP today is a very different party than when he
first voted Republican.