by Mulan 83 Replies latest social current
Badger, instead of unilaterally saying that this is propaganda or right or left or unbiased, why don't you check it out intelligently and THEN come to a thought-out and UNbiased conclusion after considering ALL the facts.....
For your information, an interesting organization to get "independant" analysis on practically all issues, including political, economic or education issues, is http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/policyanalysis.html
>>I think that Moore should do a movie on Kerry and his blantant lies and inconsistencies. I'm tired of hearing about Bush when those who oppose Bush have every right to do so, yet ignore a man who lied about so much. POW's, massacars, had Robert F Kennedy speech writer do his speech before congress for him. Supported communisum etc. Published a book with a cover that trivializes Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima after its capture from the Japanese during World War II by holding the flag up side down. His medals he 'threw away' goes on and on.
That article is full of errors Richie....sure, its not the jobless recovery, but as I said its been proven that many many people are accepting lower paying wages and come off the unemployment rolls...Aren't you in Canada anyway? I can see firsthand how hard it is for some friends both in Seattle and Philly as well as New York...not for everyone but for alot of people.
Dim,
What in the article is "incorrect" and SUBSTANTIATE that. Number one, if they were on the Unemployment roles they weren't making $25.00 and hour. Soooo, where's your proof of what you're saying?
... ... No comment (Simon said it all already)
The mentality of those who defend Bush is, to me, mind bogling and astounding. We see them on here all the time, the name callers, the mud slingers, the pseudo-experts always ready to copy and paste articles from equally narrow-minded non-thinking zealots as themselves. I wonder at their humanity and lack of feeling and empathy for the inhuman suffering that they so gleefully cheer on.Bush is an evil, disgusting, inhuman fool who surrounds himself with villains, crooks and murderers. What a crowd they make. All in it for MONEY.
He is everything that is bad about America and it is to America's shame that he represents you. At least he wasn't elected though and we do not judge you from what he does.
I am sickened, disgusted and angry at why my country and our leaders have done, in our name.
Simon, I couldn't have said it better myself, nor shall I try.
These are dark scary days for our country. People need to wake up and think about what the next decades will bring if they re-elect this administration.
Our children will inherit a Supreme Court formed by a charismatic Christian and his bloodhungry cohorts who will stop at nothing to pursue their personal agendae. The prior good name and deeds of our country and people will be decimated in the international community. Women! WAKE UP! your personal freedom to make decisions over your own bodies will fall to the wayside. Our economy will continue to falter (booming economy my ass), and we will become a larger and larger target for attacks and hatred from many parts of the world.
TWO INFORMATIVE ARTICLES REGARDING OUR ILLUSTRIOUS LEADER...after what religious fanaticism has done to many of us here....aren't you just a little worried?
The Religiosity of George W. Bush
Is the personal presidential?
by Edmund D. Cohen
The following article is from Free Inquiry magazine, Volume 24, Number 4.
Until recently, I had not seriously thought that supernaturalism or superstition could be an issue of concern as regards the second Bush presidency. George W. Bush is, to be sure, a practicing fundamentalist Christian who begins each day meditating on the fustian prose of Oswald Chambers?s My Utmost for His Highest. But he is also an Ivy League graduate, the scion of an old Republican establishment family, and the chosen front man for the conservative Republican Party establishment. Surely that establishment must have vetted its candidate well enough to rule out nominating an unstable religious eccentric. When he speaks in churchly terms, surely he is only employing regional idiom and one cannot take him literally. Or can one?
When then-Governor of Texas Bush was seeking the presidency in 2000, a story circulated that he had phoned the televangelist James Robison and said to him, ?I?ve heard the call. I believe God wants me to run for president.? 1 Even that struck me as nothing more than standard Bible Belt hyperbole. What changed my mind is Stephen Mansfield?s unauthorized 2004 campaign hagiography, The Faith of George W. Bush. 2 In it, Mansfield sets out an account of events following upon that phone call, based on an apparently recent interview with Robison:
On the day that the evangelist entered Bush?s office, he was surprised to find political strategist Karl Rove there as well, and even more surprised at what Bush was about to say. ?My life is changed,? the governor said. ?I had a drinking problem. I won?t say I was an alcoholic, but it affected my relationships, even with my kids. It could have destroyed me. But I?ve given my life to Christ.?
Robison, who had heard rumors of Bush?s conversion, was struck by the sincerity he sensed. He was not prepared, though, for what came next. ?I feel like God wants me to run for president,? Bush said. ?I can?t explain it, but I sense my country is going to need me. Something is going to happen, and, at that time, my country is going to need me. I know it won?t be easy, on me or my family, but God wants me to do it.?
?In fact,? Bush continued, ?I really don?t want to run. My father was president. My whole family has been affected by it. I know the price. I know what it will mean. I would be perfectly happy to have people point at me someday when I?m buying my fishing lures at Wal-Mart and say, ?That was our governor.? That?s all I want. And if I run for president, that kind of life will be over. My life will never be the same. But I feel God wants me to do this, and I must do it.?
The president?s prophetic profession, if it really was expressed this way, definitely goes over the line into the realm of magical thinking and delusion. Neither he nor Karl Rove has come forward to correct or to clarify Mansfield?s account.
The president and Robison enjoy a very close relationship. Both the White House and Robison downplay it, and the mainstream media have not caught onto it yet. Robison visited with the president in the Oval Office in spring 2001, fall 2002, and perhaps at other times. Robison has been a guest repeatedly and perhaps frequently at the president?s ranch in Crawford, Texas. Of ?Bush?s unique friendship with James Robison . . . ,? Mansfield writes, ?[t]he two have prayed together while hiking Bush?s ranch or talked about faith, gun in hand, while waiting for game to approach.? 4
Robison was the featured speaker at the prayer breakfast preceding Bush?s inauguration as Texas governor. In February 1999, then-Governor Bush appeared on Robison?s televangelism show, Life Today?his only appearance on that kind of television program. Of the frequent phone conversations between the president and Robison, Darren Barbee, writing in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, reported:
In the new century, his cell phone rings with George W. Bush on the line asking Robison to tell him how he came across in a speech. More recently, the president and the . . . televangelist have talked about the war in Iraq, about the greed that consumed Enron and about the battle for America?s heart.
?I want you to tell me, spiritually, what do you sense?? Bush has asked the Euless [Texas] televangelist. 5
To try to understand President Bush, we cannot help but scrutinize Robison. Now sixty years old, Robison is the product of the rape of a forty-year-old woman who tried but was unable to secure an abortion. After a hard-scrabble childhood, Robison rose in Southern Baptist circles. As a young man, he became a big draw on the revival circuit.
Since his 1968 entry into television, his popularity as atelevangelist has waxed and waned. The scale of his current televangelism operation is modest. He has long been a high-profile figure on the Religious Right, and has usually been present when high-ranking Republicans met with top Religious Right leaders. Through the years, he has strayed from Southern Baptist doctrine and become a de facto Pentecostal or Charismatic. He has been through a phase of holding himself out as having special power to heal the sick by his praying.
By Robison?s own account, he was often a ?dark-visaged, angry preacher,? railing against other preachers whom he considered too liberal, too greedy, or too lustful. In 1979, he was put off the air for strident anti-gay rhetoric. He came to attribute his much-criticized, angry demeanor, as well as turmoil in his personal life, to the activity of demons. After undergoing what he regarded as a successful exorcism performed by lay exorcist Milton Green, a kindler, gentler James Robison emerged. ?Deliverance? or demon exorcism became part of his stock-in-trade.
In 1982, Robison befriended Texas millionaire T. Cullen Davis. Davis had been acquitted of the murder of his wife?s lover and his stepdaughter in 1977. In 1979, Davis was acquitted again, this time of attempting to procure the murder for hire of fifteen people, including the judge who had presided in his divorce case. Davis owned over one million dollars worth of Asian religious art treasures made of jade, ivory, and gold. He wanted to contribute them to Robison?s ministry. Robison opined that the objects were idols and had to be destroyed in obedience to Deuteronomy 7:25. 6 Davis and Robison broke the art objects to pieces with hammers and dumped the shards into a lake.
According to Robison, there are but two worldviews: Biblical Christianity and Relativism. Biblical Christianity represents the ?Absolutes.? 7 By ?Relativism,? he means complete lack of criteria for distinguishing right from wrong or truth from falsity. All those who are not Bible-believers are ipso facto Relativists. For Robison, liberal Democrats, Islamist terrorists, and all others who are not Christian Bible-believers count as Relativists and are therefore all interchangeable with one another.
What the myriad deceptively different forms of Relativism all have in common is unseen direction by demons or evil spirits:
Evil powers in the realm of darkness can affect and even control the actions of people. . . . The Bible refers to these powers as evil spirits, tormenting spirits, unclean spirits, seducing spirits, deceiving spirits, spirits of bondage and murder and destruction. It is important to realize that not all destructive spirits are as obvious and despicable as those responsible for the tragedy of September 11 and other atrocities. Seducing spirits are often subtle, sophisticated, and in some ways attractive. They can control professors, politicians, artists, and even religious leaders including Jesus? own disciples . . . . The entertainer, teacher or leader who undermines the relevance of absolute principles is no less demonically manipulated than the terrorist. [Italics added.] 8
Robison also believes that God communicates specific messages to believers by intervening in their thought processes:
I was driving down the road with my wife one day when I heard God speaking in my mind and my heart. It was not an audible voice, but it was nonetheless real. I heard Him say, ?I really like the way you come to me. You don?t just come to me with a list of requests and concerns. Instead, you crawl up into my arms, lay your head on my shoulder, and rest. I like that.? [Italics in original.] 9
Without friends in the corridors of power, Robison would be a mere buffoon. But with the president of the United States presumably absorbing his preposterous teaching, there is a problem, to say the least. How vulnerable might President Bush actually be to such mind-rotting bunk? I contend that we are seeing its effects each day, in the largest and most overarching policies of the Bush administration.
Conspicuous by its absence from recent public discourse has been any plausible theory as to how it came to pass that President Bush entered office with his mind already made up to invade Iraq. The reasons the administration has contrived for that invasion post hoc are less than credible.
Iraq in the last days of Saddam Hussein was far from the most troublesome of WMD-capable rogue nations. Vitiated by years of embargo, Iraq had neither molested any of its neighbors nor shown any proclivity to resume doing so. Iraq had little truck with Islamist terrorists. At a time when running Islamist terrorists to ground was supposedly America?s paramount foreign policy objective, the president diverted massive resources in order to invade a country with?for that region?a most un-Islamic regime. Iraq under Saddam repressed Islamists within its sphere of control more harshly than a regime with decent regard for human rights could have done, and permitted no young males to be indoctrinated in madrasas.
The possible ulterior motives that have been advanced?to revenge Saddam?s attempt on the life of the elder President Bush, or to drum up business for Texas oil interests?could scarcely have prompted a decision so momentous. Irrational reasons must have played a large part in the genesis of this otherwise incomprehensible policy. It can be no mere coincidence that the war waged for no sufficient reason?perhaps even by mistake?happens also to be the one waged against a nation and a tyrant that, for the Christian fundamentalist decision maker, resonate with biblical prophecy.
Loathing for ?Babylon? is a continual preoccupation throughout the Bible. The Bible?s Babylon references typically pertain to the captivity of the Israelites during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar and their liberation when Cyrus, King of Persia, conquered Babylon and let the Israelites return to Jerusalem. Many such references appear to point to the re-emergence of horrid Babylon near the end of time and to its dramatic annihilation before Christ?s return.
Saddam liked to style himself as Nebuchadnezzar?s successor. At the location of ancient Babylon, south of Baghdad, Saddam built a nationalistic ancient Babylon theme park. There he planned to replicate the fabled hanging gardens. Saddam identified far more closely with the glories of the distant, pre-Islamic past than with Islam.
A fundamentalist Christian decision maker is inevitably handicapped at seeing Saddam dispassionately for the glorified street thug that he is. The demons, devil, and Antichrist crowding the imaginary landscape get in the way. Of course one will overestimate Saddam?s capabilities wildly, if one imagines him to be some sort of preternatural being, to whose aid legions of ectoplasmic allies will come. After all, ectoplasmic allies do not respect United Nations embargoes.
Imagine the conversation that Robison and President Bush might have had about the Iraq war and Bible prophecy. The vituperations against Babylon in Revelation 17 and 18 would surely have been discussed:
And there came one of the seven angels which had the seven vials, and talked with me, saying unto me, Come hither: I will shew unto thee the judgment of the great whore that sitteth upon many waters. . . . And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH. . . . I saw another angel. . . . And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird . . . and she shall be utterly burned with fire. . . . And a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone, and cast it into the sea, saying, Thus with violence shall the great city Babylon be thrown down, and shall be found no more at all. 10
No doubt Robison would have been capable of counseling his presidential pupil to run out and invade ?Babylon? with the same flippancy he displayed when counseling Cullen Davis to smash the art treasures and throw them into the lake. The big question is whether or not President Bush was capable of coming by his idée fixe about invading Iraq in such a manner.
There have been many accounts of the president?s dangerously inflated confidence in his own hunches and gut feelings. He trusts his gut in preference to mastering the tedious information needed to craft reasoned policy decisions. It would be only a short leap further for him to persuade himself that those hunches and gut feelings come from God. Did not God give him a sign and perform a wonder in making the Florida count come out the way it did?
A similar explanation might apply to the president?s disastrous combination of unrestrained spending and strangling revenues through lopsided tax cuts for the affluent. Maybe Bush thinks he will get a dispensation from the laws of arithmetic?like the miracle of the loaves and fishes. Or maybe he runs up deficits as if there were no tomorrow because he really expects Christ to come back more quickly than our country can go bankrupt.
Both of these policies will predictably fail, not far into the second term President Bush seeks. While it is devoutly to be hoped that Iraq will succeed in forming a decent and stable government, the chances are not good. The realistic expectation is for Iraq?s politics to be dominated by Farsi-speaking Shiite ayatollahs not long after sovereignty is transferred. After that, Iraq will likely break up much as Yugoslavia did. As for the president?s fiscal policies, ?if the Lord tarries? they will quickly and with absolute arithmetic certainty prove unsustainable. What can the president be thinking? What could possess him to act so as to undercut his own contemplated second term in office?
For now, President Bush is on his best behavior, looking toward the 2004 election. Once re-elected, how might he change? The President Bush we know today is a far cry from the moderate, bipartisan Governor Bush who ran for president, styling himself a ?uniter, not a divider? and professing a platform of humility in foreign policy with no nation building. In a second term, would we see a higher-profile Robison given the run of the White House, perhaps to emerge as an American Rasputin? Would Bush devote the powers of his office to fulfilling prophecies that he thinks are supposed to precede the return of Christ? Does the president fantasize about being in office when Christ returns?of receiving Him in the Oval Office, and being told, ?Well done, my good and faithful servant? in the Rose Garden just before being taken up into the clouds?
I hope we never find out.
1. Tony Carnes, ?A Presidential Hopeful?s Progress,? Christianity Today, October 2, 2000.
2. Stephen Mansfield, The Faith of George W. Bush (Lake Mary, Florida: Charisma House, 2003.)
3. Ibid., p. 109. Robison gives a somewhat similar but far less damaging account of the conversation in his current book, The Absolutes: Freedom?s Only Hope (Wheaton, Illinois: Tyndale House, 2002), pp. 232?33. Robison says the meeting took place in August 1998 and Mrs. Robison was also present.
4. Mansfield, p. 156. See also Robison?s own account of such a visit, The Absolutes, pp. 130?31.
5. Darren Barbee, ?The Evolving James Robison,? Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, June 11, 2003. See also Jodi Enda, ?Bush Takes His Personal Faith a Step Beyond Predecessors,? Knight Ridder Tribune Washington Bureau, April 13, 2001.
6. ?The graven images of their gods shall ye burn with fire: thou shalt not desire the silver or gold that is on them, nor take it unto thee, lest thou be snared therein: for it is an abomination to the Lord thy God.?
7. Robison?s ?Absolutes? are nothing but mainstream American civic values: ?People Matter Most,? ?Greed Destroys,? ?Character Counts,? etc. The chapter on ?People Matter Most? (The Absolutes, pp. 83?99) could pass for a discussion of secular humanism! Robison finesses the question of how these ?Absolutes? arise from the Bible. (They are, for the most part, at odds with what I understand the Bible to be teaching.)
8. Ibid., p. 15.
9. Ibid., p. 44.
10. Revelation 17:1, 5; 18:1,2, 8, 21.
and......Article No. 2
So Iraq's a mess and half the country hates you. Just keep praying.
The Divine Calm of George W. Bush
by Rick Perlstein
May 3rd, 2004 9:30 AM
| In Focus: George W. Bush See More ... |
or George W. Bush, August 6, 2001, had to have been a pretty harrowing day, reading as he did in his Daily Brief that operatives of Osama bin Laden were "in the U.S. planning attacks with explosives," and surveilling federal buildings in New York, and mulling over plans to attack Washington, D.C. But a reporter who saw him cavorting on his Crawford ranch not long after said, "The president was probably at the most relaxed I've ever seen him."
April 9, 2004, couldn't have been too nice for the president either. That was when he was deciding whether to publicize the contents of that Daily Brief, after Condoleezza Rice's grilling at the hands of the commission investigating 9-11. He knew the document would unravel his cover story of several years' standing as to why he couldn?t have known Bin Laden was determined to strike in the U.S.; its title was "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." But Bush blithely spent the day pulling bass out of the lake on his ranch with a TV host, who observed, "The president was very relaxed."
It is one of the abiding mysteries of the Bush presidency: that when feces start hitting the fan, the man at the center seems not to have a care in the world.
Lyn Nofziger knows something about presidents under pressure: He worked with Nixon during Watergate and with Reagan during Iran-Contra. "There was a little panic on September 11," Nofziger, now a Republican lobbyist, observes of George W. Bush. "But I don?t really see any real signs of panic now."
Does it have something to do with growing up wealthy and handsome, the son of a powerful politician, breezing through Yale under the protection of his Skull and Bones confreres? But George Bush the father possessed those same attributes, and in the middle of his re-election campaign in 1992, his approval ratings likewise heading south, he looked about ready to walk into a wall. "Close associates and even some foreign leaders have talked privately about episodes in which Bush looked bad and seemed distracted, nervous, or not entirely focused on the subject at hand," the Los Angeles Times put it delicately at the time.
The pressures for Bush the elder were hardly as great as they are now for Bush the younger, with the occupation of Iraq falling into chaos. Yet the elder seemed wracked by doubts. The younger seems to harbor none. What accounts for the difference?
Consider this story.
Shortly after his 1998 re-election as governor of Texas, Republican heavyweights begin to discuss George Bush Jr. as a presidential prospect. W. is dubious. Then one day he's sitting in church, Highland Methodist in Dallas, with his mother. The pastor, Mark Craig, preaches on Moses' ambivalence about leading the Israelites out of bondage. ("Sorry, God, I'm busy," the minister has Moses responding. "I've got a family. I've got sheep to tend. I've got a life.")
Pastor Craig moves on from the allegorical portion of his sermon. The American people are "starved for leadership," he says, "starved for leaders who have ethical and moral courage." He reminds his congregation, "It's not always easy or convenient for leaders to step forward. Remember, even Moses had doubts."
Barbara Bush, the high-church Episcopalian whose husband rejected advice to insert scriptural references into his speeches because they made him uncomfortable, tells her son, "He was talking to you."
George W. Bush, the born-again Christian, apparently hears his mother's "he" as the providential He. According to Stephen Mansfield's sympathetic account in The Faith of George W. Bush, he then calls his friend, the Charismatic preacher James Robison, host of the TV show Life Today, and tells him, "I've heard the call. I believe God wants me to run for president."
It's hard to be perturbed when you believe what our president believes. According to Professor Bruce Lincoln, who teaches a seminar on the theology of George W. Bush at the University of Chicago Divinity School, the president "does feel that people are called upon by the Divine to undertake certain positions in the world, and undertake certain actions, and to be responsible for certain things. And he makes, I think, quite clear?explicitly in some contexts, and implicitly in a great many others?that he occupies the office by a Divine calling. That God put him there with a sense of purpose."
It has been a topic of some confusion, the meaning of George Bush's religious beliefs. Some commentators trumpet the president's ties to Howard Ahmanson, a fantastically wealthy Californian who is an acolyte of the "Christian Reconstructionist" movement?which aims to place the United States under Biblical law (though Ahmanson proclaims himself personally against, say, the stoning of homosexuals). Others point up his connections to apocalyptic millennialists like Tim LaHaye, co-author of the Left Behind novels. The problem is that, theologically, Bush can't serve both these masters at once. The likes of LaHaye actively search for signs of the Second Coming of Christ and spend their days feverishly speculating about and preparing for the seven years? battle for the world that will follow. Reconstructionists, Alan Jacobs, a professor at the evangelical college Wheaton, has explained, "are pretty confident Jesus isn?t going to show up any time soon," which is precisely their rationale for bringing the Book of Leviticus to life in the here-and-now.
There's no evidence that George Bush believes what Christian Reconstructionists believe. And in contrast to Ronald Reagan, who was always letting loose intemperate slips about America's role in Revelation's End Times showdown, the University of Chicago's Bruce Lincoln says, "in [Bush's] public messages I find very little that's apocalyptic."
Cautioning that it's almost impossible to know anyone's true beliefs, Lincoln still thinks he's got a pretty good sense of Bush's. The results help illuminate this question of how Bush maintains his peace of mind under such unimaginable stress.
When the drunken and dissolute prodigal finally found Jesus in the mid 1980s, the book of the Bible his study group was poring over was the Acts of the Apostles. "It's focused on missionizing, evangelizing, spreading the faith," Lincoln explains. "It's not end-of-the-world stuff. It's expansionist?it's religious imperialism, if you will. And I think that remains his primary orientation."
What's more, Lincoln adds, his primary orientation also holds that "the U.S. is the new Israel as God's most favored nation, and those responsible for the state of America in the world also enjoy special favor. . . . Foremost among the signs of grace?if I read him correctly?are the cardinal American virtues of courage, on the one hand, and compassion, on the other." For Bush to waver would be to tempt God's disfavor; what's more, we can speculate that the very act of holding to his resolve?what his critics identify as stubbornness and arrogance?becomes, tautologically, a way of both producing, and reassuring himself of, his special place in God's plan. The existential benefits are obvious. "Wherever the U.S. happens to advance something that he can call 'freedom,' he thinks he?s serving God's will, and he proclaims he's serving God's will."
The Al Qaeda attacks play into this vision perfectly. They have allowed George Bush to move his administration into a Manichaean realm that pre?9-11 issues like stem cell research and estate tax repeal never could have. It's why so much of his re-election rhetoric, both from the campaign and from his followers, proceeds as if his inauguration took place on September 12, 2001. Or, as the jacket copy for The Faith of George W. Bush puts it, "From the tragedy of September 11 to the present-day conflict in Iraq, President Bush has learned to use his faith to help him live his life?both in office and in private." It is a field of force that Bush helps shape every time he ends his speeches with the homiletic "May God continue to bless America."
Explains Lincoln in his book Holy Terrors: Thinking About Religion After September 11, it's a phrase that, by transcending the clichéd version of the formulation, "suggests Bush and his speechwriters gave serious thought to the phrase and decided to emphatically reaffirm the notion that the United States has enjoyed divine favor throughout its history?moreover, that it deserves said favor insofar as it remains firm in its faith."
Lincoln points out an especially cunning aspect of the post?9-11 incarnation of Christian militancy: that Bush's invocation of Islam as a "religion of peace," a great religion hijacked by the terrorists, need not contradict the specifically Christian aspects of this vision. Some Christians, Lincoln observes, "would maintain that Christianity is not a religion. The others"?Islam, Shinto, whatever?"are religions." Christianity, simply, is reality: the truth. Bush can praise Islam to the skies, but it needn't take away from the Christian right's sense that Bush knows it's really Christ who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
This belief among his followers is another element behind Bush's apparent imperturbability. His signals to them have produced a mass of people who unequivocally embrace the notion that their president was given to them by Providence.
Jennifer Shroder is the pseudonym of a California housewife and religious-right activist whose agitations against textbooks she claims teach children "how to pray to Allah" and "to participate in any and all religions except that of His Son, Jesus Christ" have won her coverage from the Associated Press, the New York Post, and USA Today. In an e-mail to the Voice, she explains President Bush's divine selection by way of 1 Corinthians, and also the Book of Isaiah?the latter for its injunction "Behold, I have given him for a witness to the people, a leader and commander to the people," the former for its description of the leader Jehoiada, "who is very similar to President Bush, using 'sword and shield' along with the leaders with him."
She illustrates an article on her website, blessedcause.org, called "President Bush, National Hero" with a painting of the president alongside the ghostly figures of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, who rest their hands upon his shoulders, heads bowed. A halo of light emanates from Bush's head; in intersection with the horizontal of the presidential lectern, it appears to form a crucifix.
Lest you think Jen is alone, the painting comes from a another website, presidentialprayerteam.com, through which 2.8 million members receive daily instructions on how to coordinate prayer for the president. I don't know about you, but if I had 2.8 million people advertising the fact that they were praying for my well-being every day?and, to boot, if I actually believed that prayer worked?I'd feel pretty damned relaxed, too.
No, President Bush feels little reason to doubt. "It's different from, say, Dick Nixon," says Lyn Nofziger, "who was putting on a brave front but knew underneath he was wrong?that he was doing things that if he ever got caught he would be in trouble. I don't think this guy thinks that. He thinks he's doing the proper thing."
Bio,
Whatever, the article doesn't even deserve a comment other than to say...whatever.
Mulan, Darlin
I must agree. The economy in our area certainly isn't booming. Then look a little harder, the economy is growing faster than it has in 20 years, over 100,000 NEW JOBS added every month....19 billion dollar budget surplus for June...oh, you didn't hear that did you the main stream ain't reporting it.I wonder if everyone would be as against MIchael Moore if he was a well built, not overweight, handsome well groomed man. I think he is unpleasant to look at but he is a very talented filmmaker. No doubt he's talented, so was Joseph Goebels, he's a talented propagandist. And yes, I have no more or less respect for him then I do for Ben Aflec.
There is a reason he won the highest award at the Cannes Film Festival. Yes, it's full of Leftists that don't like Bush or his policies.
Yeru, maybe you should try and find some appropriate religious symbol to add to your avatar .... a big cross or something... since you believe it is OK to use our governmental system to forward personal religious agendas.
By the way, my heart was warmed today to follow a car with a REPUBLICANS FOR KERRY bumper sticker. At least the lights are coming on with a few.
You want to read more about the author of the previous post Edmund Cohen? You'll be surprised about this man - just read this thread and you can consider this man to be more of a hoax and a conspirator of the highest order......some quotes from this article and you be the judge:
"one who never reads the Bible without serious study, I find Cohen's interpretation ridiculous at best and totally inapplicable to my own life. I say this in conclusion: Edmund Cohen's paranoia is nothing more than the blind, foaming-at-the-mouth hatred typical of apostates carrying wounded pride. When Cohen commends Christianity for "its intricately contradictory nondisprovability" [360] he describes nothing less than his schizophrenic conspiracy theory of the NT writers gathering together and plotting a new world religion that would serve as an opiate to control the masses in their favor. There was a conspiracy, he says, but it leaves no historical record; and if you try to prove that Christianity is true, you are simply fostering the delusion further (for example, Cohen puts of the study of Biblical languages as "an additional layer of irrelevancy to keep the conscious minds of the seminarians busy, lest unwanted insight intrude." [377n]). How much faster can you chase your own tail in a circle?"
"A Christian of different temperament might suppose that Cohen's voice was a demon and that his book is demonically inspired. It may well be for all I know. But I'm satisfied to say that it is extremely unlikely. Satan has a reputation and kingdom to uphold and wouldn't be caught dead being involved in something as shamelessly outrageous and absurd as what is found in the mind of Edmund Cohen."
