My concern about George Bush and his evangelical brain isn't that far afield. Watch Frontline tonight. Here is a column about it.
Understanding the President and His God

April 29, 2004
By ALESSANDRA STANLEY

The question is not, When did George W. Bush accept Jesus
as his personal savior? The "Frontline" documentary "The
Jesus Factor," on PBS tonight, raises a different issue: Do most Americans realize just how fervent the president's evangelical faith really is?

"The Jesus Factor" is a little like those illustrated
anatomy books where transparent plastic pages can be
flipped to reveal the muscle, bone and organs beneath the
skin. Stripping off the layers of patrician pedigree, Yale
and his Texas business pursuits, the documentary lays bare
Mr. Bush's spiritual conversion and its consequences.

It is not a disrespectful look. Yet by pulling together well-known and long forgotten incidents and remarks, the program reminds viewers that this "faith-based" president has blurred the line between religion and state more than any of his recent predecessors: a vision that affects the Iraq conflict as well as domestic policy.

In the wake of Sept. 11 of course the religious influence
seems obvious, since Mr. Bush has invoked a higher
authority who has led him to battle "the evildoers."

And at a time when Mel Gibson's film "The Passion of the Christ" is one of the top-earning movies, and the "Left Behind" series of books, apocalyptic Christian thrillers by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins (the Antichrist heads the United Nations), has outsold John Grisham, the evangelical Christian movement is highly visible even in places like New York and Los Angeles.

But like the evangelical movement, the president's
born-again faith was not as striking to outsiders in 1987,
when he moved to Washington to work on his father's presidential campaign. At the time reporters mostly saw him as the Bush family bouncer, someone who kept an eye on disloyal staff members.

Nor were his born-again evangelical beliefs much more than
a biographical footnote in Mr. Bush's gubernatorial
campaigns. Even in his 2000 presidential race most
journalists placed Mr. Bush's religious beliefs behind his family lineage, career and political ideology. His faith was mostly examined in the context of a midlife crisis: a black sheep's self-styled 12-step program that helped him stop drinking and focus on a political career in Texas.

"The Jesus Factor" examines Mr. Bush's faith by mingling
his public pronouncements with interviews with friends;
fellow members of the Community Bible Study group in
Midland, Tex.; evangelical leaders; and Texas journalists
who covered him.

Doug Wead, who was George H. W. Bush's liaison to the
religious right during the 1988 presidential campaign, says that the younger Mr. Bush was his ally, serving as a behind-the-scenes link between his father, an Episcopalian moderate, and the evangelical movement, which is a critical base for the Republican Party. Mr. Wead says his memorandums to the vice president came back to him annotated by someone who seemed very knowledgeable about evangelical Christians; Mr. Wead says he thought the candidate was handing them over to the Rev. Billy Graham, a Bush family friend. "But it turned out he was vetting them with his son," Mr. Wead says.

Once the younger Mr. Bush's faith took hold, it spread to
his political ambitions. "I believe that God wants me to be president," is what Richard Land, a leader of the Southern Baptist Convention, recalls hearing Mr. Bush say in a meeting with close associates on the day of his second inaugural as governor of Texas. Once elected president, Mr. Bush went to work. "We need common-sense judges who understand our rights were derived from God," he says in a 2002 clip. "And those are the kind of judges I intend to put on the bench."

The documentary revisits a 1993 interview Mr. Bush had with
a reporter for The Houston Post, Ken Herman, on the day he announced his intention to run for governor. Mr. Herman recalls that Mr. Bush said he believed that a person had to accept Christ to go to heaven, a view that Mr. Herman published.

"The political ramifications of that were huge," Mr. Wead explains. "And so he doesn't talk about that anymore." (During the 2000 campaign Mr. Bush said he thought schools should teach both creationism and evolution, but he has not been as forthcoming about which theory he personally
prefers.)

The imprint of Mr. Bush's faith can be seen on his
appointments to the bench and on his decisions on embryonic stem-cell research and so-called partial-birth abortion. And religion also veins Mr. Bush's discussion of war. Mr. Land describes him as a believer in "American exceptionalism." Jim Wallis, editor in chief of Sojourners magazine, a liberal evangelical publication, refers to his talk of a divine mission as the "language of righteous empire."

"The Jesus Factor" is an enlightening look at the president
and the electoral clout of evangelical Christians. But one drawback of focusing so intently on Mr. Bush's faith is that it screens out other perhaps equally important factors, like political expediencies, personality quirks and clashing interests, that inevitably influence decision making in the Oval Office.

And even some of the president's closest allies say they
are not sure when he is speaking from the pulpit and when
from the Beltway. "There is no question that the
president's faith is calculated, and there is no question
that the president's faith is real," Mr. Wead says. "I
would say that I don't know and George Bush doesn't know
when he's operating out of a genuine sense of his own faith
or when it's calculated."

FRONTLINE
The Jesus Factor

On most PBS stations tonight
(check local listings)

This from Maureen Dowd. It does give one pause.

"Mr. Kerry errs on the side of giving the answer he thinks people want to hear, even as Mr. Bush errs on the side of giving the answer he expects people to accept as true."

It does nail this campaign right on the head. I have gone from very optimistic about Kerry's chances to downright despair. Well, maybe not despair, but certainly in some level of depression.

Here's the problem as I see it. Bush is beatable. He has engaged us in a war over false pretenses, he has consistently mislead us on the cost and in the process has made the world even more dangerous. What more does it take to get a sitting president defeated? Well, the loss of jobs certainly is not a GOP positive. Having a fascist attorney general is certainly another liability. The fact that we have degraded the environmental laws back into the dark ages of the '50s. I guess we need a little blue dress with semen stains. That would be helpful, but I am very concerned that Kerry cannot deliver the message. The problem, actually, may be that he doesn't have a message.

Top 10 things Kerry needs to know:

10. Yes, John, you do own an SUV. It's called community property. And since most of America owns at least one, it's not a bad thing (though if you want to talk environment, it would have been better to have had your dippy wife drive a Chevy Malibu. And the prices are down on them right now.)
9. If you believed that what you did in protesting the Vietnam War was important in the 70s, then talk about your feelings about Vietnam now. YOU actually went to the war, and came back changed. That's a positive. George Bush went to Alabama and came back an alcoholic. Change is not always good.
8. Become a little more thick skinned. It will help you when the campaign REALLY gets hot and heavy. Yes, Dick Cheney was very much out of order in Missouri, and people saw through his heavyhandedness. You don't have to start the "i'm more patriotic than my adversaries" because I went to Vietnam. You are falling into a trap, John. People KNOW you went to Vietnam. If GOP innuendos need answering, let your menions hit the airways. Stay above the fray on this one.
7. Become an Episcopalian. Really, John, it's not so bad. Some of the churches even have all the bells and incense, and we call our religious leaders FATHER. And get this: we have FEMALE clergy. And we call them MOTHER. Seriously, John, you need to move away from a religion where the aging partiarch thinks that he can and should influence political thought in the U.S. John, our founding fathers felt like that was an important issue when it formed the constitution.
6. Get out more. Talk to people. Do town hall meetings around the country. Hear what real people are thinking and talking about, and let them pose questions to you. Everyone thinks that was a Bill Clinton playing Slick Willie. No, he developed that report with people by actually meeting and talking with them. At heart, John, you are just another Yalie snob. And you sound like a senator.
5. Pick an excellent vice president that will be a sharp contrast to Chaney. That should not be difficult. Yes, geographic balance to the ticket is important. I don't think you want a gender balance, unless its Hillary, and YOU DON'T EVEN WANT TO GO THERE. You need someone like Sen. McCain - a real contrast. Hey, go with the Arizona senator if you can. I don't think he would risk that political suicide now that you have faltered, but it never hurts to ask. You need something to shake up a very boring candidacy.
4. Get three message points and stick to them. Don't bounce all over the board with a message of the day. Here are the message points:
- The Bush Administration has failed in making America safer by taking changing objectives. Iraq oil and family revenge is not/was not/should not be an objective when trying to rid the world of Osama bin Laden and his ilk.
-Our economy is shakey. Because of GOP mismanagement, we have lost millions of jobs, inflation is on the rise and we have burdened generations of future Americans - our children and our children's children - with a debt totally out of control.
- The environment suffers every day that the GOP is in charge. You can ask eskimos in Alaska or world environmental scientists, and they will tell you the obvious. We are in a period of warming that will have serious affects on our agriculture and our lives over the next few decades. You do not have to wait for a definitive paper on it. It exists. And everyone knows it, though they don't know what it means for them personally. And think of all the arsenic anecdotes you can throw it.
War, economy, environment. Those are the three.
3. Avoid any late minute makeovers like Gore allowed. It didn't make him a better campaigner, and it sounded goofy from the start. It just reinforced what everyone thought about him. You are a good speaker when you are talking to masses of people. You are better when you are NOT behind the podium.
2. Accept the fact that you are smarter than Bush. God knows, so many people are. But don't try to outsmart him. Don't try to be smarter than you are. Let Bush be Bush and it will take care of itself.
1. The goal is to beat Bush. A lot of people are depending on you, but don't let it go to your head. You are not some caped crusader. You are John Kerry of Massachusetts. Leave your ego at home. (see No. 6 - talk to the people).

One other bit of advice. I think it has become evident - and one of the latest books on the Family Bush seems to confirm it - George W. Bush really believes that God has put him in the White House to battle the unbelievers. Bush believes there is a religious reason for battling the godless moslem while embracing our Jewish brothers. Religious evangelicals truly believe that Armageddon is coming and that Christians and Jews will unite to fight satan. The man is a little nuts. Let him run with that, and perhaps he will voice it more in the campaign. You never know. We can only pray.

From OxBlog blogspot (a site you should visit - very well written:

THANKS, MEL: The percentage of Americans who say Jews were responsible for Christ's death is rising - particularly among young people and blacks - according to a poll just released by the Pew Research Center. In a telephone survey of 1,703 randomly selected adults, 26 percent of respondents said Jews killed Christ - which was up from 19 percent in an identically worded poll from 1997, and the increase among people under thirty was a particularly startling threefold - from 10 percent to 34 percent. (The proportional rise among blacks was smaller, 21 percent to 42 percent.)

That these views are correlated with having seen Mel Gibson's "Passion" movie is borne out by the survey - particularly, again, among the troubling "young anti-semite" demographic: of those 18-34 year olds who have seen the film, 42 percent believe Jews were responsible for Christ's death, compared with 36 percent of 35-59 year olds who watched the movie. And for respondents 60 years and up, there was hardly any difference between the responses of people who had seen the film and those who hadn't.

Unfortunately, most people get their "history" from movies. That was what was so dangerous about "JFK." Oliver can say he was only making a movie. No, he was convincing a whole generation that JFK was killed by some bizarre conspiracy in Louisiana.

Mel, now you can go down in history as having produced a movie that has stirred up anti-semitism to a whole new level. Who knows, Mel, maybe your film will be perceived in the future to what "Birth of a Nation" did for racial relations.

Mel, let it be said here: you are a friggin' ignorant asshole. And a racist.

Gadhafi. Here is a known terrorist head of state, known for at least one mass murder in the blowing up of a airliner over Scotland, and he is being heralded as reformed and a good guy. He buys pipes and centrifuges used in the development of nuclear weapons and then "comes clean." And the world - particularly the Bush administration - says, "see, this is what happens when you show the world you will not tolerate makes of weapons of mass destruction." They say Iraq is responsible for the makeover.

No it's not. It's oil. Europe wants Algerian oil and needed a way to "forgive" Algeria.

It's always about oil. That is why we are in Irag. It is why Gadhafi gets to pose with the English Prime Minister shaking hands. Blair smiles like Gadhafi is a long lost brother. Blair is such a PIMP! How do the English people tolerate that twerp. Probably the same way the American people tolerate Bush. If it does not affect their lives PERSONALLY, then they don't want to upset the apple cart.

Well, here is a link about how the Iraqi Intrusion has affected lives personally.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A44839-2004Apr26.html

I know no one's reading this but me . . . but someone might accidently stumble over this blog. This is a horrific story about the wounds of soldiers in Irag, many of who are being returned to the U.S. alive but with wounds that easily would have claimed their lives in prior wars. And the wounds often involve the head. The soldiers are being returned alive - so they don't so up on the KIA reports - but without chucks of their brains. As one of the military doctors is quoted: "They are alive, but not quite like they once were."

It makes me sick. This war must end.

From NBC's "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" via Reuters:

"On '60 Minutes' last Sunday night, Bob Woodward suggested the main reason President Bush took the country to war was that he thinks he's on a mission from God; but the problem with that is that's also Osama bin Laden's reason."

The one thing I hate about God is that he is always involving himself in peoples' wars. You'd think he would have learned by now not to butt in!

For some odd reason I am feeling singularly philosophical today. Part of the reason may be the peculiar aspects of all that is going on in the news. Goony religious leaders. Members of the Far Right. The mind, or absence there of, of Bush. The Iraqui incursion. The release of a Israeli scientist (by the Israelis) who had the audacity to admit to the world that Israel had the bomb (and of course we did nothing about it since human rights were being violated by an ally).

It is a screwed up world. I fear for all our collective sanities.

However, I digress.

I am currently reading "Time, Love, Memory" by Jonathan Weiner about the quest for the origins of behavior. I just read of the moment when a group of scientists actually placed a behavioral gene from one species into another, and it became that species behaviorally. Admittedly, it was a fruit fly - drosophila, for those of you keeping score, or who took more than Introductory Biology in college.

Just reading those passages hit me hard. It was mini-evolution. And while I was pondering that, the next chapter began with a quote from Delmore Schwartz:

"I am a book I neither wrote nor read."

We all are books that we have neither written nor read.

I like that a lot. It really focused my thoughts. Even if all the information is there embedded in our genes - and the information is there - we will never know even the tiny bit about ourselves. But of more important: self-awareness may very well be a gene that mutated into self-awareness in an early primate ancestor. One generation before, we were just a mammal walking the African plains. The next generation goes, "Eureka! I am."

Did that mutation bear the finger of God? Or was it simply just that - a mutation but nothing more that turned out to be a very favorable gene that gave us a leg up in the evolutionary chain? Now that's a question. Ironically, it's the mutation that led to us even having a concept of God. A very interesting question in the vein of what came first, the chicken or the egg.

But before I leave, I leave you with another behavioral science saying: a hen is only an egg's way of making another egg.

Life's a cycle. Deal with it.

President George W. Bush's news conference was last night, and again he reads prepared text very well. But what did we learn?

1. He does not make mistakes, or at least he could never recall one.
2. He does not second-guess himself about 9/11 or Iraq.
3. Everything is just peachy in Iraq and that we all need to calm down.

I like what Salon had to say about Bush this morning.

"The president -- who won't testify before the 9/11 commission unless he can do it in private and only if his vice president can come with him -- presided over a press conference that left him looking like a high school kid surprised by a pop quiz on a book he didn't read."

Where have I heard this before? We have an Asian land war facing a popular uprising, and the violent opposition is described by a presidential administration as "a small number of insurgents." The administration claims that as soon as we quell the uprising, then "we will have turned the corner."

Hmmm. Where did I hear that before? Oh yeah, Secretary of Defense McNamara talking about "the light at the end of the tunnel." 1967 or thereabouts.

Again, sometimes others say it better than you can. Today, I share with you Maureen Dowd (I use her often) to explain the unexplainable. I share her frustration, and she nails it in regards to the Bush War.

By MAUREEN DOWD

Published: April 8, 2004

WASHINGTON

Maybe after high-definition TV, they'll invent high-dudgeon TV, a product so realistic you can just lunge through the screen and shake the Bush officials when they say something maddening about 9/11 or Iraq, or when they engage in some egregious bit of character assassination.

It would come in handy for Karen Hughes's Bush-nannying book tour and Condoleezza Rice's Clarke-riposting 9/11 commission testimony.

And I was desperately wishing for it yesterday, when Donald Rumsfeld held forth at a Pentagon briefing.

Even though the assumptions the Bush administration used to go to war have now proved to be astonishingly arrogant, naïve and ideological, Mr. Rumsfeld is as testy and Delphic as ever about the fragility of Iraq.

"We're trying to explain how things are going, and they are going as they are going," he said, adding: "Some things are going well and some things obviously are not going well. You're going to have good days and bad days." On the road to democracy, this "is one moment, and there will be other moments. And there will be good moments and there will be less good moments."

Calling the families of more than 30 young Americans killed this week in the confusing hell of Iraq must be a less good moment.

Our troops in Iraq don't know who they're fighting and who they're saving. They don't know when they're coming home or when they're being forcibly re-upped by Rummy. Our diplomats in Baghdad don't know who they're handing the country over to next month. And Bush officials don't know where to go for help, since the military's tapped out, the allies have cold feet, the Arab world's angry and the rest of the globe is thinking, "You got what you deserved."

Before heading out to Iraq last spring, Marine commanders explained that they would try to take a gentler approach than the Army. They would avoid using military tactics that would risk civilian casualties, learn Arabic and take off their sunglasses when talking with Iraqis. "If to kill a terrorist we have got to kill eight innocent people, you don't kill them," Maj. Gen. James Mattis told The Times's Michael Gordon.

But in the wake of the Falluja horror and Shiite uprising, civility must take a back seat to stomping.

The marines had to fire rockets at a mosque in Falluja used by the Shiite followers of the radical cleric Moktada al-Sadr, and the hospitals are filled with civilians. Instead of playing soccer with kids, now the marines have to worry that the kids are the enemy, spotting targets or wielding guns. The farmers and taxicab drivers, wearing their own clothes and driving their own cars, try to murder the marines before melting back into the populace.

Paul Wolfowitz assumed that the Shiites, tormented by Saddam over their religion, would be grateful, not hateful. Wrong. It isn't a cakewalk; it's chaos.

Every single thing the administration calculated would happen in Iraq has turned out the opposite. The W.M.D. that supposedly threatened us did not exist. The dangerous dictator was deluded and writing romance novels. The terrorism that would be thwarted has mushroomed in Iraq and is feeding Arab radicalism.

Mr. Rumsfeld thought invading Iraq would exorcise America's Vietnam syndrome, its squeamishness about using force. Instead, it has raised the specter of another Vietnam, where our courageous troops don't understand the culture, can't recognize the enemy and don't have an exit strategy. And the administration spins the war every day.

Rummy also thought he could show off his transformation of the military, using a leaner force. Now even some Republicans say he is putting our troops at risk by stubbornly refusing to admit he was wrong.

Dick Cheney thought fear was better than weak-kneed diplomacy, that if America whacked one Arab foe, all the others would cower. Wrong. The Iraq invasion has multiplied and emboldened our enemies.

Mr. Cheney and Mr. Rumsfeld thought America should flex its hyperpower muscles, castrating the U.N. and blowing off multilateral arrangements. Now the administration may have to crawl back for help.

The hawks thought they could establish a democracy that would produce a domino effect in the Arab world. Wrong. The dominoes are falling in a scarier direction.

The president thought he could improve on the ending to his father's gulf war. Wrong again.

We are increasing the number of troops in Iraq. Now, where have I heard that before? Was the word they used then "escalation"?

Well, this administration, which never lies, says everything is under control in Iraq. That makes me feel very, very apprehensive.

A quote from Plato:


"The penalty that good men pay for not being interested in politics is to be governed by men worse than themselves."

Ain't it the truth!

This Iraqi Intrusion is being to smell more and more like Vietnam.

Not in body counts and the like, although the deaths are being to come in with great regularity. No, it is watching an Administration trying to spin away the obvious. We lose five soldiers (actually six since a Marine was not included in the count until the following day) in an explosion, and four "civilians" - former Delta Force and Seals working as private security guards - are gundowned, burned and dragged about the streets (or hung from a bridge). Four thousand Marines hunkered down in their fortress just a few miles away and didn't even bother to collect the ashes. We'll get those murderers, Bremer says. It was only a few extremists.

Here is what Maureen Dowd had to say about it:

"The president did not want to mar the gay mood of his fund-raiser here Wednesday night, so he did not mention the ghoulish slam dance in Falluja. As The Times's David Sanger wrote, "In the Bush campaign, casualties are something to be alluded to obliquely, if at all." In the Bush alternative universe of eternal sunshine, where the environment is not toxic and Medicare is not a budget buster, body bags and funerals just muddy the picture."

The single most horrendous day since the so-called end of the war (I'm ignoring the larger number killed in the 'copter crash last year), and the President has nothing to say about it. Like, it never happened.

Bush is a piece of work. Disagree with him, and you are trashed. I hear that the Administration has already set loose the rumors that Clarke is gay (unmarried, etc.), as if that somehow makes his story less credible. What it does say about this administration and Republicans in general are that they are incredibly homophobic.

This President and his attack dogs, his ignorant asses on his cabinet, and the GOP in general needs to go the way of the do-do. How could the party of Abraham Lincoln sink so low. This is the party of William Jennings Bryan now more than Lincoln. Ignorance prevails.

In my heart, I know that God is no more on our side than he is on any other country. But I'd have real issues with him if I ever found out he was responsible for this administration being in power.

We can always hope . . . but the Watergate investigation started somewhat like this.

David Johnston and Richard W. Stevenson write in the New York Times today: "Prosecutors investigating whether someone in the Bush administration improperly disclosed the identity of a C.I.A. officer have expanded their inquiry to examine whether White House officials lied to investigators or mishandled classified information related to the case, lawyers involved in the case and government officials say. . . .

"The expansion of the inquiry's scope comes at a time when prosecutors, after a hiatus of about a month, appear to be preparing to seek additional testimony before a federal grand jury, lawyers with clients in the case said. It is not clear whether the renewed grand jury activity represents a concluding session or a prelude to an indictment.

"The broadened scope is a potentially significant development that represents exactly what allies of the Bush White House feared when Attorney General John Ashcroft removed himself from the case last December and turned it over to Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the United States attorney in Chicago."

Aha, from David Letterman (who is angry about the Yawning Kid flap caused by someone in the White House). It prompted Letterman to call the Bush Administration "liers" twice last night. Don't get David angry.

Top Ten Questions You're Afraid To Ask Condoleezza Rice


10. "Did Bush ever hurt himself trying to pronounce your name?"

9. "At cabinet meetings, who besides you and Cheney wear lipstick?"

8. "Do you know Leeza Gibbons?"

7. "Do you own a condo?"

6. "Did you ever try the 'Condoleezza Rice' at Chi-Chi's?"

5. "As a souvenir, did you keep any of Saddam's beard lice?"

4. "Hey, where'd you get that cool Halliburton sweatshirt?"

3. "Who told CNN that Letterman faked the footage of the bored kid next to Bush?"

2. "About those Iraqi weapons of mass destruction -- did you check Baghdad Mini-Storage?"

1. "What kind of job will you and Bush be looking for in January 2005?"

Today the New York Times fronts above the fold a picture of two dead, burned American civilians hanging from a Euphrates River bridge. This morning CNN actually showed video of American soldiers being chased by a mob and being pelted with bricks, rocks and, in one, a Iraqi swinging a club. It also showed soldiers pushing Iraqis and threatening them with guns. In more video, they showed an American soldier being treated and led from a truck with a bandage covering both eyes.

This is a major shift in news coverage by the American media. They have not been showing conflict at all. With the exception of the deaths announced, there has been no record for the American public that our presence in Iraq is nothing more than building schools, setting up a democracy, etc.

But George Bush's War is more than that, and unfortunately, extreme examples like yesterday's attacks has finally brought that to light. Will the media begin giving more than just reporting the news releases from the military in Iraq? Will they get back in the field and report the war? We all know that the images coming back from Vietnam finally convinced the American public that the Johnson administration had been lying all those many years. Is this the beginning of seeing a similar campaign? Will people finally get the point - George Bush and his administration is the largest group of liars we have seen since the Nixon administration.

The 2004 presidential vote is as important to this nation as was the 1968. I hope it works out a little better than that '68 one. We traded Johnson for Nixon (sorry Hubie, but you were just as much of the problem as Johnson). It was a bad exchange.