Greetings, this is podcast number 75 of Blast the Right.

I'm Jack Clark from TheRationalRatical.com.

Today we're going to start off the new year with some new evidence, as if you really needed

any more, that right wing policies cause increased human misery, suffering, pain and death.

This example concerns thousands of unnecessary highway deaths from accidents involving

large trucks.

Oh, let's get right into it.

I almost didn't do this segment because after I first skimmed over the article in the

New York Times that this is primarily based upon, some letters to the editor were published,

which seemed to point out serious faults in the reporting.

Then I said to myself, wait a minute, right wingers are telling the truth?

So I went back and read the article itself carefully, and whoa, what was I thinking?

Of course right wingers are still lying.

Besides the article by Stephen Labataan in the New York Times, my sources are a New

York Times editorial, trucksafety.org, truckline.com, answers.com, the truckersreport.com, the

website of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, and a letter to the editor

from the head of that agency.

Here's what this segment is really all about, what the stakes are.

As Doris Edwards slowed for traffic near Kingdom City, Missouri on our way home from

a Thanksgiving trip in 2004, an 18-wheeler slammed into her jeep Cherokee.

The truck crushed the sport utility vehicle and shoved it down an embankment off Interstate

70.

...