BUSH: RELIGIOUS LOONEY

The fact that W is a certifiable religious zealot and nutbag doesn't get much play in the media.

Oh, sure, we all know that his handlers let him thow the ultra-religious right-wing wackos a bone every now and then, as long as it won't do him any political harm. But what the media won't look into for fear of being labeled "unpatriotic liberals" is the extent to which W himself is a far-out-there religious wacko.

Since W is a pointy-headed moron, it's no surprise that he could be coopted by the mindless superstition-mongering of the evangelical moonshots that control so much of the South. (If you want to get a good idea of their hateful influence, start reading Flannery O'Connor stories.)

So to make W feel at home in DC, his handlers have given him some lunatic counselors who keep playing up to him his God-designed role in the drama of the "end times."

Maureen Farrell has written a great article for Buzzflash on this particularly bizarre side of the W nightmare. Here is the link:

Farrell: Bush in Zealotland

And here is an excerpt:

With polls showing that the majority of Americans (including coveted swing voters) favor stem cell research by as much as 70%, and with most preferring to keep religion out of politics, the GOP has plenty to hide.

So, though conservative figureheads like Rick Santorum, Sen. Sam Brownback and House Speaker Dennis Hastert have been recently added as speakers to quell unrest within the base ("If the president is embarrassed to be seen with conservatives at the convention, maybe conservatives will be embarrassed to be seen with the president on Election Day," Religious Right activist Paul Weyrich recently wrote), there will be little evidence of the greased-up, Bible-thumping turbo engine currently driving the party.

Yes, in lieu of the GOP Congressmen who’ve been peddling Christian nation legislation, Democratic ideologue Zell Miller will appear on the stump. Instead of agenda-maven Tom DeLay, we’ll see stoic Rudy Giuliani. And rather than the less-than-conventional John Ashcroft, John McCain will be selling the GOP soap.

"They put on a fake Potemkin Village version of the Republican party," Bill Maher recently lamented on Larry King Live, adding that Arnold Schwarzenegger "doesn't represent what the Republican party is really going towards."

No, of course he doesn’t. Zell Miller does.

What the Republican party is "really going towards," you see, isn’t what most Americans want. For the most part, Jane and John Q. Public aren’t praying for Armageddon or a star-spangled theocracy, and chances are, most don’t even realize how diligently some GOP activists have been laying the groundwork for both.

In 1992, Frederick Clarkson, the author of Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy, warned that the "wildest dreams of the far right in America may actually be within their reach — control of the Republican Party," and little more than a decade later, Christian fundamentalists are, to quote the Guardian, "at the heart of power."

"For the first time since religious conservatives became a modern political movement, the president of the United States has become the movement's de facto leader," the Washington Post announced in 2001, long after Bush raised eyebrows by going to Bob Jones University and speaking before the Council for National Policy.

And when former Council for National Policy member Pat Robertson resigned as head of the Christian Coalition, it was considered a sign. "I think Robertson stepped down because the position has already been filled," Gary Bauer said, referring to President Bush’s role as the new head of the Religious Right. "You're no longer throwing rocks at the building; you're in the building," Ralph Reed added, regarding Christian conservatives' long struggle to gain control.

Bush’s own Messianic rhetoric aside, since G.W. barreled into power, there have been evangelical fingerprints throughout the Oval Office. From the U.S. approach to Iraq to participation in the global fight against AIDS to the failed Constitutional Amendment banning gay marriage, the far reach of the far right has been felt like never before.

And though some of this is pure strategy (the million gays who cast their vote for Bush in 2000, for example, are too geographically scattered to make a dent in the 19 battleground states, so why not throw the Christian Right a gay marriage bone?) some of it is very real. Talking to callers on Larry King Live, Bill Maher offered an excellent assessment of just how intertwined religion and policy have become:

CALLER: Yes, do you think President Bush is sincere in supporting Ariel Sharon's position, the government with denying the Palestinians right of return or do you think this is just a ploy to get the Jewish vote?

MAHER: I think this is all -- this has everything to do with the fact that George Bush is a born-again Christian. OK, and this is why religion is so dangerous in our society. Because George Bush is not just a Christian. He's a born-again, they believe Jesus is coming back any day now. And they want everything to be perfect for him. They call it the rapture, right?

KING: Why is that bad?

MAHER: Well, Thomas Jefferson said the book of revelations was the ravings of a lunatic. George Bush organizes his foreign policy around it. That's why it's bad. Because his decisions about Israel are affected by his religious beliefs.

KING: You mean that Christ is coming back Israel.

MAHER: Jesus is coming back, and he's not coming back to Toledo, Larry, he's coming back to his home, which is Jerusalem, which has to be in Jewish hands because the Jews have a very important role to play when Jesus comes back, which is, of course, to be dead. Because there can't be any Jews around.

KING: That's right, yes.

MAHER: I mean, this is scary stuff. Because it's completely irrational. It's like half this country wants to guide our ship of state by a compass. A compass, something that works by science and rationality, and imperial wisdom. And half this country wants to kill a chicken and read the entrails like they used to do in the old Roman Empire. And I'm with the compass people.

Ah, give W that ol' time religion. Especially if it stokes the fires of xenophobia, hallucinatory misanthropy, and irrational fear--the three primary food groups of the Republican party.

BUSH: LUNACY LEADS TO MISERY

Well that W has really done a GREAT job in the White House, hasn't he?

The misery index is so high right now that the smarmy, self-aggrandizing braggadocio of Republicans now looks absolutely obscene.

Today's info falls into two categories: the economy, which is bad for everyone but the wealthy elites; and the lies W and his handlers told, and continue to tell, about their adventure in Iraq.

There is so much to show you today that we don't even have room to comment on it. Fortunately, the info speaks for itself--and it tells a very miserable story for the American people.

Here are the stories, with links:

NYT: Recent Layoff Rate Was Highest Since Early 1980's

Layoffs occurred at the second-fastest rate on record during the first three years of the Bush administration, a government report has found.

In the government's latest survey of how frequently workers are permanently dismissed from their jobs, the layoff rate reached 8.7 percent of all adult jobholders, or 11.4 million men and women age 20 or older. That is nearly equal to the 9 percent rate for the 1981-1983 period, which included the steepest contraction in the American economy since the Great Depression.

CNN: Back to work for less

Judging from the latest government data, more than 50 percent of workers who lost or left full-time work between 2001 and 2003 and were lucky enough to have found another full-time job by this year were earning less than they used to.

From January 2001 through December 2003, 5.3 million long-tenured workers were displaced from full-time or part-time jobs they had held at least three years, according to a new report released Friday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Displacement in this context is defined as a job that was lost or left because a plant or company closed or moved, there wasn't enough work to do or a position or shift was eliminated.

Among the long-tenured workers who were displaced, 65 percent had found either full-time or part-time work by January of this year, when the BLS survey was conducted. Another 20 percent were still unemployed and 15 percent were not in the labor force, meaning they said they had not looked for work in the four weeks prior to the survey.

But 57 percent of the group who had lost full-time jobs and found new full-time work reported that they were now earning less than what they earned in their old jobs. Indeed, about one-third of those with smaller paychecks were being paid at least 20 percent less.

In unpublished data, the BLS found that among all workers displaced from 2001 through 2003 -- a total of 11.4 million people -- 52 percent of those who lost full-time work and regained it by this year were earning less than they used to.

Philadelphia Enquirer: The situation in Iraq right now is not as bad as the news media are portraying it to be. It's worse. (Requires free subscription.)

A kind of violence fatigue has descended over news coverage of Iraq. Car bombings that would have made the front page a year ago get scant mention these days.

Assassinations and kidnappings have become so common that they have lost their power to shock. More U.S. soldiers died in July (38) than in June (26), but that didn't make the nightly newscasts, either.

The U.S.-led effort to restore basic services has become a story of missed goals and frustrations. Hoped-for foreign investment in Iraq's economy hasn't materialized - what company is going to risk seeing its employees beheaded on television?

Simply by staving off stability and prosperity, the insurgents are winning.

These are painful observations for me to make, because in early April, I wrote on this page that the media had been underplaying the good things happening in Iraq, and were missing the potential for a turnaround.

I still believe the first part. But when I returned to Iraq in June, I found that the situation had deteriorated so dramatically that a lot of those good things have become irrelevant.

As for the turnaround, I couldn't have been more wrong.

Don't take my word for it: Listen to Sgt. Maj. John Jones, a First Infantry Division soldier who recently told my colleague Tom Lasseter that he grows annoyed every time he hears politicians and journalists on television talking about Iraq.

"When people come over here, where do they stay? In the Green Zone. I call it the Safe Zone," he said, referring to the heavily fortified area in Baghdad where most U.S. officials live and work. "They miss the full picture."

In the spring, I wrote: "I have seen a lot of good that has come of this painful expenditure of blood and treasure - very real progress that has made life better for some Iraqis, and promises to make it exponentially better, over time."

The article generated a flood of e-mail from readers who seemed to be thirsting for upbeat news out of Iraq, convinced that the media were hiding it from them.

"I am very happy to see The Inquirer allow a 'positive' article on the Iraq rebuilding effort to take up space in their pages," one person wrote. "I knew there was more to the situation than just what the sound bites allow in a quick TV flash."

I still believe the U.S.-led effort in Iraq is accomplishing many good things, most of which get no publicity. And I still think it's too early to abandon hope that a stable and democratic Iraq will emerge from this crucible.

But I learned this summer that the insurgency has been far more successful than I would have imagined at sowing instability and halting progress. Most Iraqis aren't seeing the improvements they had hoped for, and they're not blaming the guerillas - they're blaming the Americans. Sovereignty seems to have had zero effect on this equation.

In March, as I was writing, the $18.4 billion reconstruction effort was just getting off the ground. I had sat in on a briefing in which a senior U.S. official confidently predicted that, by June, thanks to American rebuilding efforts, Iraq would have electricity 18 hours a day throughout the country.

I called that promise "credible," and argued that, once Iraqis could see that kind of progress from the rebuilding program, perhaps the insurgency would abate.

I just couldn't conceive, given how severely the lack of electricity undermines everything they are trying to achieve, that the Americans would publicly set a goal and then fail to meet it.

But that's just what they did....

Earlier this year, U.S. journalists were able to drive to Fallujah and roam the city asking questions. One of the last Western reporters who tried that in May ended up writing about how it felt when machine-gun fire raked his vehicle. Only the armor plating saved him.

Those First Division soldiers know far more than any reporter does about such hazards. They spend their days dodging bullets and roadside bombs in insurgent-filled Al-Anbar province, west of Baghdad.

Staff Sgt. Sheldon Rivers doesn't speak in the nuanced language of a television talking head. The full picture as he and his buddies see it is much more practical - and much more telling:

"I'm tired of every time we go out the gate, someone tries to kill me."

And here's the most explosive article of all, which demonstrates that W and his thugs KNEW they were feeding garbage information to America in their utterly deceptive lead-up to their utterly immoral invasion of Iraq:

In These Times: THEY KNEW!

They Knew...

Despite the whitewash, we now know that the Bush administration was warned before the war that its Iraq claims were weak

By David Sirota and Christy Harvey
August 3, 2004

If desperation is ugly, then Washington, D.C. today is downright hideous.

As the 9/11 Commission recently reported, there was “no credible evidence” of a collaborative relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. Similarly, no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq. With U.S. casualties mounting in an election year, the White House is grasping at straws to avoid being held accountable for its dishonesty.

The whitewash already has started: In July, Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee released a controversial report blaming the CIA for the mess. The panel conveniently refuses to evaluate what the White House did with the information it was given or how the White House set up its own special team of Pentagon political appointees (called the Office of Special Plans) to circumvent well-established intelligence channels. And Vice President Dick Cheney continues to say without a shred of proof that there is “overwhelming evidence” justifying the administration’s pre-war charges.

But as author Flannery O’Conner noted, “Truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.” That means no matter how much defensive spin spews from the White House, the Bush administration cannot escape the documented fact that it was clearly warned before the war that its rationale for invading Iraq was weak.

Top administration officials repeatedly ignored warnings that their assertions about Iraq’s supposed Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and connections to al Qaeda were overstated. In some cases, they were told their claims were wholly without merit, yet they went ahead and made them anyway. Even the Senate report admits that the White House “misrepresented” classified intelligence by eliminating references to contradictory assertions.

In short, they knew they were misleading America.

And they did not care....

Conclusion: They knew they were misleading America

In his March 17, 2003 address preparing America for the Iraq invasion, President Bush stated unequivocally that there was an Iraq-al Qaeda nexus and that there was “no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.”

In the context of what we now know the White House knew at the time, Bush was deliberately dishonest. The intelligence community repeatedly told the White House there were many deep cracks in its case for war. The president’s willingness to ignore such warnings and make these unequivocal statements proves the administration was intentionally painting a black-and-white picture when it knew the facts merited only gray at best.

That has meant severe consequences for all Americans. Financially, U.S. taxpayers have shelled out more than $166 billion for the Iraq war, and more will soon be needed. Geopolitically, our country is more isolated from allies than ever, with anti-Americanism on the rise throughout the globe.

And we are less secure. A recent U.S. Army War College report says “the invasion of Iraq was a diversion from the more narrow focus on defeating al Qaeda.” U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi put it this way: “The war in Iraq was useless, it caused more problems than it solved, and it brought in terrorism.”

These statements are borne out by the facts: The International Institute of Strategic Studies in London reports al Qaeda is now 18,000 strong, with many new recruits joining as a result of the war in Iraq. Not coincidentally, the White House recently said the American homeland faces an imminent threat of a terrorist attack from a still-active al Qaeda operation in Afghanistan. Yet, the administration actually moved special forces out of Afghanistan in 2002 to prepare for an invasion of Iraq. Because of this, we face the absurd situation whereby we have no more than 20,000 troops in Afghanistan hunting down those who directly threaten us, yet have 140,000 troops in Iraq—a country that was not a serious menace before invasion.

Of course, it is those troops who have it the worst. Our men and women in uniform are bogged down in a quagmire, forced to lay down life and limb for a lie.

To be sure, neoconservative pundits and Bush administration hawks will continue to blame anyone but the White House for these deceptions. They also will say intelligence gave a bit of credence to some of the pre-war claims, and that is certainly true.

But nothing can negate the clear proof that President Bush and other administration official officials vastly overstated the intelligence they were given. They engaged in a calculated and well-coordinated effort to turn a war of choice in Iraq into a perceived war of imminent necessity.

And we are all left paying the price.

There is much more in this very important article that shows, without doubt, that W and his handlers were lying to America on Iraq as a nuclear threat, on the aluminum tubes, on the claim that Saddam could make nuclear weapons and deliver them to the US, on biological weapons, on collaboration between Saddam and bin Laden, and on the alleged meeting between Saddam's people and bin Laden's people in Prague. Go to the link and see for yourself.

W and everyone who pulls his strings are LIARS, of course, but what is more, they are liars who don't give a damn if people have to die for their lies. They are the lowest scum on the face of the earth: at least mass murderers do their evil deeds with their own hands. W, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Perle, et al. don't even have the perverted decency to kill people themselves; they get soldiers (or mercenaries, or spooks) to do it for them.

It's utterly obscene that there is even the PERCEPTION (although this may be driven mostly by poor media investigation) that the coming election is close. Have Americans been so thoroughly corrupted by conservative Orwellianism that they can't see pure evil when it's right in front of their eyes? The Bushies are the evillest monsters ever to have managed to get control of our once proud nation, and they demonstrate it daily, hourly, minute by minute.

We must throw them out of office. And we must not stop there. We must go after conservatism itself in a long-term crusade of truth-telling and evil-uncovering, until conservatism is shown up for the morally bankrupt ideology that it is. We must succeed in getting it relegated to the scrapheap of history so that humanity can move beyond selfishness and create a more humane, more sustainable, and more enlightened community on the face of this small planet.

BUSH: WAY OUT OF TOUCH

The Bushites are starting to look sourer and meaner than usual. We guess that they are starting to see the writing on the wall: their puppet is going down.

But tough times are when you really get the measure of a person--and of a party. And the nastiness of the conservative soul will start to show itself more and more clearly as their cause goes down the tubes.

Check out this anti-American Republican attempt to make sure only fanatic Bush supporters can hear what W and his puppetmaster Cheney have to say:

Milbank: Repugs Sandbag Ordinary Citizens

Republicans Sign Along the Dotted Line

By Dana Milbank
Sunday, August 1, 2004; Page A05

I pledge allegiance to the . . . candidate?

Political campaigns are always eager to keep hecklers out of their pep rallies, but the Republican National Committee took that desire to a new level last week, requiring supporters to sign an oath of loyalty before receiving tickets to Saturday's New Mexico rally featuring Vice President Cheney.

The Albuquerque Journal reported on Friday that people seeking tickets to the Cheney event who could not be identified as GOP partisans -- contributors or volunteers -- were told they could not receive tickets unless they signed an endorsement form saying "I, (full name) . . . do herby (sic) endorse George W. Bush for reelection of the United States." The form warns that signers "are consenting to use and release of your name by Bush-Cheney as an endorser of President Bush."

The paper quoted a Republican official saying a "Democrat operative group" was trying to infiltrate the limited-seating event -- although the party apparently turned away uncommitted voters who simply wanted to hear Cheney speak.

RNC communications director Jim Dyke defended the practice on Friday. "Maybe we should start having joint fundraisers with the DNC," he mused. "Please."

John F. Kerry's campaign has charged that the Bush campaign routinely screens attendees of Bush's speeches, and the Democrats say they do not impose loyalty requirements on crowds for their nominee's speeches. This much is certainly true: If the Democrats are trying to keep crowds loyal, they aren't doing a very good job. When Kerry visited New Mexico a few weeks ago, a group of young men in the crowd waved flip-flops in the air during his speech and chanted, "Viva Bush!"

And check out this nasty remark from a key Repug about working people:

Yahoo!: Let Them Eat Cake!

A campaign worker for President Bush (news - web sites) said on Thursday American workers unhappy with low-quality jobs should find new ones -- or pop a Prozac to make themselves feel better.

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?" said Susan Sheybani, an assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry Holt.

The comment was apparently directed to a colleague who was transferring a phone call from a reporter asking about job quality, and who overheard the remark.

When told the Prozac comment had been overheard, Sheybani said: "Oh, I was just kidding."

While recent employment growth has buoyed Bush's economic record, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry (news - web sites) has argued the new jobs are not as good as those lost due to outsourcing in recent years.

Nearly 1.1 million jobs have been lost since Bush took office in January 2001.


Yes, Republican values. You can always count on them to get it exactly wrong.