There is no clearer example of how the strategy of using front groups to create doubt and distraction about the facts is used to great effect than the efforts of the oil companies to create doubt about Global Warming.

Publicly, and even in their own advertising, oil companies will tout their 'alternative energy programs' and their dedicated to the environment. Privately, the story is the opposite.

Today, Laurie David has called out ExxonMobil and the $2.1 million they gave to groups who pay to create doubt about global warming. Read her post here.

Important to remember:

the strategy of using front groups is a core part of the strategy - this is ExxonMobil paying someone else to argue on their behalf - but since they are arguing lies, ExxonMobil can't do it directly; hence the front group.

Last week Al Gore released a very thought-provoking book The Assault On Reason. Vice President Gore's book has been very well-received and it quickly reached Number 1 on Amazon's best-seller list and now theNew York Times best-seller list.

The Assault On Reason is a remarkable look at where we are as a country, and where we might end up if we don't alter course. It also is remarkable for this day and age because it was written entirely by Mr. Gore, without the aid of a ghostwriter - something that has not been noted much.

"The Assault On Reason" is an important book that examines how decisions are made in American politics in our day and age. It discusses how changes in our world have made us less reliant on reason and logic and this, in turn, has that led to serious policy mistakes like ignoring global warming, and the Iraq war and occupation.

What could be more important than dealing with the threat of global warming? Exposing the companies and groups that continue to try and distort the issue for financial gain and holding the media accountable for their role and complicity in the continuing distortion of the truth.

Let's be perfectly clear. Global warming is a scientific fact - it is not a political issue. But a few corporations are bringing in incredibly high profit margins from the status quo. These profits depend on Americans and people worldwide burning more and more oil instead of working to put less carbon into the air. So they pollute the "marketplace of ideas," deceiving people by spreading the lie of doubt that global warming is a real problem.

Just as Big Tobacco was willing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars denying for decades that cigarettes caused cancer while hundreds of thousands died from their product each year -- spreading the same lie that the science was not clear -- so too is Big Oil willing to invest heavily in the global warming deniers.

"Doubt is our product" said the tobacco companies, and citizens continued to die. Now doubt is the product again - and the planet continues to grow hotter.

We just wanted to thank and congratulate both Newsweek and Sharon Begley, the author of a great new cover story about the funding of the Global Warming Deniers.

This story, read it here, is a major step forward in exposing this machine and in furthering the understanding we all need to have in how the right uses strategies first developed by the tobacco industry to promote its agenda.

In the early 1970s, the Nixon Administration took a page out of the tobacco industry's playbook and actively organized front groups to counter the anti-war efforts of Vietnam veterans like John Kerry and Bobby Muller. Men like John O'Neill - later to re-appear as one of the Swift Boat Veterans - were hired to create what Watergate felon Charles Colson called "counter-foils."

Today with the launch of "Freedoms Watch" our politics are further poisoned by the appearance of another mutant variation of this front-group tactic. Freedoms Watch is a shadowy 501c4 organization created to try to keep Republicans from abandoning the White House on Iraq. Ironically, on the very day the President invoked the legacy of Vietnam, his administration has created this Nixonian front-group counter-foil.

Since 2004, we have been very involved in investigating, exposing, and uncovering the roots and exposing the tactics and lies of the right-wing smear machine. James was involved not only in John Kerry's campaign, but also in the Truth and Trust Team, a group of Kerry friends and family who attempted to fight back against the Swift Boat Veterans.

Dave, of course, followed the campaign and those attacks closely, and then worked with James and others, including our friend, Taylor Marsh, on The Patriot Project in 2006. Created by John Kerry, David Thorne and others, The Patriot Project helped veterans such as Joe Sestak, Patrick Murphy and John Murtha defend themselves -- even looking into previous attacks on John McCain. We also were part of the team that exposed the Economic Freedom Fund, a group created with a $5,000,000 donation from Bob Perry that attacked moderate Democrats, primarily in red states.

Why do folks like Bob Perry give money like that? It's strictly business.