In her most recent class lecture, Psychic Vera told her students that the Republican response to the Elian Gonzalez crisis was hypocritical and solely based on their obsession with regaining the White House and controlling the country.

Speaking in an angry tone, Vera said, "I'm sick and tired of the Republicans putting their own agenda ahead of the general welfare of the citizens of this country. Something has got to put a stop to their selfish interference with other people's lives. In the case of Elian Gonzalez, it is clear that the Republicans are pandering to the anti-Castro Cubans in Little Havana, in order to chalk up the State of Florida in the Republican column in the November election."

"The Republicans are interested in two things--power and money. They try to white wash these selfish motives by ranting and raving about family values. Returning a child traumatized by his mother's death to a loving father is certainly the right thing to do, and should be considered a positive family value. Yet Republicans from Trent (pork barrel) Lott to Henry (home wrecker) Hyde, and to George (never met a gun he didn't like) Bush have castigated the Clinton administration for doing just that."

Vera also stated that George W. Bush, in an instance of hypocritical stupidity, responded to the armed raid in the Miami household with, "We are a nation of laws not guns." As though addressing the presidential candidate herself, the psychic said, "It was against the law for the relatives to hold Elian in their Miami home, Mr., (signed a bill that allowed guns in Texas churches), Bush. And your Republicans in the Congress are now objecting to a law they passed that allowed the INS to go armed into the Little Havana home. "

"As a sensitive," Vera continued, "I should probably be more empathetic with the anti-Castro Cubans, but I have to admit that I share many of the feelings that some of my students have revealed to me. They feel angry that the Cubans claim to be American citizens, and yet fly the Cuban flag from their homes. They have noticed, as I have, that the Cubans are so consumed with hatred and bitterness for Castro that they tried to ignore our laws by refusing to release Elian to his father. They've demonized their relative, Elian's father, because he doesn't want to live in the United States and wishes to go back to Cuba with his son. Some of you have described the Cubans as hysterical and irrational. One of you has even suggested that some anti-Castro Cubans were involved with the Kennedy assassination as pay back for the failed Bay of Pigs fiasco."

Unfortunately, she went on to say, the crisis has created a great deal of animosity towards the Cubans which the Republicans have helped to inflame by their own rhetoric aimed at the Clinton administration. How about this quote from the religious right wing columnist, Cal Thomas, comparing the Clinton administration to the Nazis and the Communists: Until recently, the knock on the door in the middle of the night by armed agents of the state was the history of Jews in Nazi Germany, or Russians in the old Soviet Union. It was the stuff of novels by Arthur Koestler and Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Then came Ruby Ridge and Waco and now Miami. No wonder Fidel Castro praises Janet Reno and Bill Clinton."

"Bloated bombast like this is decidedly unhelpful in trying to resolve difficult Issues, and yet our eyes and ears are constantly being assaulted with these hysterical right-wing diatribes. The Evil One must be very happy these days. He's got the Republicans right where he wants them, and the rest of us imprisoned by their craven stupidity."