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Zoroaster [OP]

2003-03-04 01:09 | User Profile

[url=http://www.msnbc.com/news/878520.asp#BODY]http://www.msnbc.com/news/878520.asp#BODY[/url]

During his presidential campaign, George W. Bush said he'd been `called' to seek higher office and talked openly about his faith
Bush and God
A higher calling: It is his defining journey—from reveler to revelation. A biography of his faith, and how he wields it as he leads a nation on the brink of war

  By Howard Fineman

NEWSWEEK

  March 10 issue —  George W. Bush rises ahead of the dawn most days, when the loudest sound outside the White House is the dull, distant roar of F-16s patrolling the skies. Even before he brings his wife, Laura, a morning cup of coffee, he goes off to a quiet place to read alone.


      HIS TEXT ISN’T news summaries or the overnight intelligence dispatches. Those are for later, downstairs, in the Oval Office. It’s not recreational reading (recently, a biography of Sandy Koufax). Instead, he’s told friends, it’s a book of evangelical mini-sermons, “My Utmost for His Highest.” The author is Oswald Chambers, and, under the circumstances, the historical echoes are loud. A Scotsman and itinerant Baptist preacher, Chambers died in November 1917 as he was bringing the Gospel to Australian and New Zealand soldiers massed in Egypt. By Christmas they had helped to wrest Palestine from the Turks, and captured Jerusalem for the British Empire at the end of World War I.
   Now there is talk of a new war in the Near East, this time in a land once called Babylon. One morning last month, as the United Nations argued and Washingtonians raced to hardware stores for duct tape amid a new Orange alert, the daily homily in “My Utmost” was about Isaiah’s reminder that God is the author of all life and history. “Lift up your eyes on high,” the prophet of the Old Testament said, “and behold who hath created these things.” Chambers’s explication: “When you are up against difficulties, you have no power, you can only endure in darkness” unless you “go right out of yourself, and deliberately turn your imagination to God.”

    Later that day, the president did so. At Opryland in Nashville—the old “Buckle of the Bible Belt”—Bush told religious broadcasters that “the terrorists hate the fact that ... we can worship Almighty God the way we see fit,” and that the United States was called to bring God’s gift of liberty to “every human being in the world.” In his view, the chances of success were better than good. (After all, at the National Prayer Breakfast a few days before, he’d declared that “behind all of life and all history there is a dedication and purpose, set by the hand of a just and faithful God.” If that’s so, America couldn’t fail.)
    After his speech in Nashville, Bush met privately with pastoral social workers and bore witness to his own faith in Jesus Christ. “I would not be president today,” he said, “if I hadn’t stopped drinking 17 years ago. And I could only do that with the grace of God.” The prospect of war with Iraq was “weighing heavy” on him, he admitted. He knew that many people—including some at the table—saw the conflict as pre-emptive and unjust. (“I couldn’t imagine Jesus delivering a message of war to a cheering crowd, as I just heard the president do,” one participant, Charles Strobel, said later.) But, the president said, America had to see that it is “encountering evil” in the form of Saddam Hussein. The country had no choice but to confront it, by war if necessary. “If anyone can be at peace,” Bush said, “I am at peace about this.”


      Every president invokes God and asks his blessing. Every president promises, though not always in so many words, to lead according to moral principles rooted in Biblical tradition. The English writer G. K. Chesterton called America a “nation with the soul of a church,” and every president, at times, is the pastor in the bully pulpit. But it has taken a war, and the prospect of more, to highlight a central fact: this president—this presidency—is the most resolutely “faith-based” in modern times, an enterprise founded, supported and guided by trust in the temporal and spiritual power of God. Money matters, as does military might. But the Bush administration is dedicated to the idea that there is an answer to societal problems here and to terrorism abroad: give everyone, everywhere, the freedom to find God, too.
    Bush believes in God’s will—and in winning elections with the backing of those who agree with him. As a subaltern in his father’s 1988 campaign, George Bush the Younger assembled his career through contacts with ministers of the then emerging evangelical movement in political life. Now they form the core of the Republican Party, which controls all of the capital for the first time in a half century. Bible-believing Christians are Bush’s strongest backers, and turning them out next year in even greater numbers is the top priority of the president’s political adviser Karl Rove. He is busy tending to the base with pro-life judicial appointments, a proposed ban on human cloning (approved by the House last week) and a $15 billion plan to fight AIDS in Africa, a favorite project of Christian missionaries who want the chance to save souls there as well as beleaguered lives. The base is returning the favor. They are, by far, the strongest supporters of a war—unilateral if need be—to remove Saddam.
    Now comes the time of testing. The war is controversial, more so every day, and the nuclear crisis in North Korea intensifies. The president hasn’t played his diplomatic hand well, and is tied down by the likes of Hans Blix, the Philippine military and the Turkish Parliament, which late last week denied American troops transport rights through the country. Bush advisers know that many Americans—and much of the world—see him as a man blinded by his beliefs (and those of his most active supporters) to the complexities of the world as it is. He makes a point of praising Islam as “a religion of peace.” But to many Muslims, especially Arabs, he looks sinister: a new Crusader, bent on retaking the East for Christendom.

The Bush family attends church in Houston in 1964; George Sr. once taught Sunday school and George W. was an alter boy

   Aides say the president’s quiet but fervent Christian faith gives him strength but does not dictate policy. He’s only seemed like preacher in chief, they say, because of what one called “a confluence of events”: the horrors of 9-11, the terror alerts and the Columbia shuttle explosion. Still, belief gives him something more than confidence, says his closest friend, Commerce Secretary Don Evans: “It gives him a desire to serve others and a very clear sense of what is good and what is evil.”
    How did he get that way? Consider this a “faith portrait” of the president, the story of the power of belief to save a life and a family—and to shape a political career and a national government.

GROWING UP—‘God’s Frozen People’ The story begins in Connecticut. Protestants there long ago were a fiery breed, with Jonathan Edwards’s (Yale ’21—as in 1721) warning sinners to avoid the wrath of an “angry God.” But by 1946, when George W. Bush was born there, the old-line Episcopalians—Bushes among them—spoke in quieter voices. His dad was a “duty, honor, country” guy, a World War II hero and a punctilious churchgoer. But he was uncomfortable with public testimonies of faith, especially his own. The hoary joke among Episcopalians seemed apt: we’re “God’s Frozen People.” The Bible belt was another story, but not for the Bushes. Moving in 1948 to the oil patch of west Texas, they joined other Ivy League immigrants from back East at the Presbyterian church in Midland. (Barbara Bush had been reared in the denomination.) It was staid compared with other churches there, more madras than denim. Dad raised money for the building fund, and taught in Sunday school. “Georgie” was a dutiful son and churchgoer. Years later, in an excess of spin, his mother claimed that he’d always shown an interest in reading the Bible. George smilingly said he was unable to remember such a fact. Sent back East to prep at Andover, he became a school “deacon.” But that role had long since lost any true religious significance; Bush used it to engineer pranks, not minister to the student flock.

Delivering the 'Good News' While past presidents have invoked the name of God in public remarks, President Bush has done so, arguably, more than others-and has increasingly moved beyond broad statements on faith to include overt Christian references. An overview:
Inaugural Address, Jan. 21, 2001Speech to Congress, Sept. 20, 2001West Point Commencement, June 1, 20029-11 Remembrance,Sept. 11, 2002State of The Union, Jan. 29, 2003Hours After Shuttle Tragedy, Feb. 1, 2003State of The Union, Jan. 29, 2003 "An angel still rides in the whirlwind and directs this storm."

Context: The whirlwind symbolizes a medium for the voice of God in the Books of Job and Ezekiel. "Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them." "We are in a conflict between good and evil , and America will call evil by its name."

Context: Bush's references to "good" and "evil," on the upswing since 9-11, imply the Biblical clash between Christ and Satan. "And the light shines in the darkness. And the darkness will not overcome it."

Context: A reference from the Book of John (appropriated from the Hebrew Scriptures) to the coming of Christ. "The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world, it is God's gift to humanity."

Context: This statement is not found in Scripture, but harks back to the writings of French political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville. It raised a red flag for supporters of separation of church and state. "The crew of the shuttle Columbia did not return safely to Earth; yet we can pray that all are safely home."

Context: The words "safely home" are commonly used in homilies delivered at Christian funerals to mean that those who've died are now with Jesus. "There's power, wonder-working power, in the goodness and idealism and faith of the American people."

Context: "Power, wonder-working power" is a direct quote from one of the oldest evangelical gospel songs. Karen Yourish Printable version

    Come-to-Jesus stories are more dramatic if the sinner is a pro. Bush was a semipro, a hardy partyer—his Triumph convertible was famous in Houston—until he married Laura in 1977. They joined her Methodist church. In most respects, he became what his father was, a respected member of the congregation. But he was a drinker, and a serious one. Only after work and at night, he told himself. But sometimes the nights were long. He could be famously obnoxious at parties, and, worse, a bore to his patient wife. The birth of his twin daughters in 1982 brought him joy. But, friends say, Laura grew increasingly fed up with his drinking. By 1985, as he approached 40, he needed to fix his relationship with the women in his life. “Nothing was broken,” Evans said. “But he wanted it to be better.” Mostly, he had to leave alcohol behind.

BORN AGAIN—Walking ‘The Walk’

  In campaign biographies, ghostwriters highlight the role that Billy Graham played in launching Bush on what he and Evans call his “Walk.” The truth is more prosaic, and explains far more about Bush’s evolving views, not only of faith but of government. Evans, married to a Bush elementary-school chum, was the key. He had been the golden boy of Midland, a handsome straight arrow, a “Cowboy” at the University of Texas (the Skull and Bones of Austin). He had gone home to climb the ladder of Tom Brown Oil Co., a booming concern in a booming economy. But in 1984 the oil business caved in. “It was the worst industrial collapse in the history of the American economy,” says Evans, who was left with the task of plowing through piles of corporate debt. Personal life was hard, too. By that time, he’d learned that a daughter, born severely handicapped, would need lifetime care.




   As a west Texan, Evans did what came naturally in a storm: he joined a nondenominational Bible-study group. He coaxed his friend George to come along. The program was called Community Bible Study—started, ironically, in the Washington, D.C., area in 1975 by a group of suburban women. By the time it got to Midland, it was a scriptural boot camp: an intensive, yearlong study of a single book of the New Testament, each week a new chapter, with detailed read-ing and discussion in a group of 10 men. For two years Bush and Evans and their partners read the clear writings of the Gentile physician Luke—Acts and then his Gospel. Two themes stood out, one spiritual, one more political: Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus, and the founding of the church. Bush, who cares little for the abstract and a great deal for people, responded to the conversion story. He liked the idea of knowing Jesus as a friend.
    The CBS program was a turning point for the future president in several ways. It gave him, for the first time, an intellectual focus. Here was the product of elite secular education—Andover, Yale and Harvard—who, for the first time, was reading a book line by line with rapt attention. And it was ... the Bible. In that sense, Bush is a more unalloyed product of the Bible belt than his friends, who may have deeply studied something else in earlier days. A jogger and marathoner for years, Bush found in Bible study an equivalent mental and spiritual discipline, which he would soon need to steel himself for his main challenge in life to that point: to quit drinking.
    Bush says he never considered himself to be an alcoholic, and never attended an AA meeting. But it turned out he didn’t have to. CBS was something akin to the same thing, part of what has since come to be called the “small group” faith movement. It’s a baby-boomerish mix of self-help, self-discipline, group therapy (without using what, for Bush, is a dreaded word) and worship. Whatever, it worked. As the world knows, Bush did quit drinking in the summer of 1986, after his and Evans’s 40th birthday. “It was ‘goodbye Jack Daniels, hello Jesus’,” said one friend from those days.

THE POLITICS—Making New Friends Bush turned to the bible to save his marriage and his family. But was he also thinking of smoothing his path to elective office? We’ll never know for sure. But he knew the political landscape of his near-native Texas. He knew that, by 1985, the South had risen to take control of the GOP, and that evangelical activism and clout was rising with it—indeed had been instrumental in making it possible. He also knew that his father’s way—Episcopalian reserve, moderation on cultural issues, close ties to back East—was a tough sell, to say the least. Bush the Younger had experienced it firsthand, in 1978, when he impetuously ran for Congress in Midland. He was a proud alumnus of Sam Houston Elementary and San Jacinto Junior High. But he had been clobbered as an Ivy League interloper nonetheless. When Bush moved to Washington in 1987 to help run his father’s campaign, he seized the main chance: to take over the job of being the “liaison” to the religious right. He quickly saw that he could talk the talk as well as walk the walk. “His father wasn’t comfortable dealing with religious types,” recalled Doug Wead, who worked with him on evangelical outreach. “George knew exactly what to say, what to do.” He and Wead bombarded campaign higher-ups with novel ways to reach out. Wead slipped Biblical phrases—signals to the base—into the Old Man’s speeches. Dubya, typically, favored a direct approach. He wanted to feature Billy Graham in a campaign video. Dad nixed the idea. Bush and Rove built their joint careers on that new base. Faith and ambition became one, with Bush doing the talking and Rove doing the thinking on policy and spin. In 1993—the year before he ran for governor—Bush caused a small tempest by telling an Austin reporter (who happened to be Jewish) that only believers in Jesus go to heaven. It was a theologically unremarkable statement, at least in Texas. But the fact that he had been brazen enough to say it produced a stir. While the editorial writers huffed, Rove quietly expressed satisfaction. The story would help establish his client’s Bible-belt bona fides in rural (and, until then, primarily Democratic) Texas. As a candidate, Bush sought, and got, advice from pastors, especially leaders of new, nondenominational “megachurches” in the suburbs. His ideas for governing were congenial to his faith, and dreamed up in his faith circles. The ideas were designed to draw evangelicals to the polls without sounding too church-made. “Compassionate conservatism”—mentoring, tough love on crime, faith-based welfare—was in many ways just a CBS Bible study writ large. The discipline of faith can save lives—Bush knew it from personal experience—and undercut the stale answers of the left. The presidential campaign was Texas on a grander scale. As he prepared to run, in 1999, Bush assembled leading pastors at the governor’s mansion for a “laying-on of hands,” and told them he’d been “called” to seek higher office. In the GOP primaries, he outmaneuvered the field by practicing what one rival, Gary Bauer, called “identity politics.” Others tried to woo evangelicals by pledging strict allegiance on issues such as abortion and gay rights. “Bush talked about his faith,” said Bauer, “and people just believed him—and believed in him.” There was genius in this. The son of Bush One was widely, logically, believed by secular voters to be a closet moderate. Suddenly, the father’s burden was a gift: Bush Two could reach the base without threatening the rest. “He was and is ‘one of us’,” said Charles Colson, who sold the then Governor Bush on a faith-based prison program. For his public speeches, he hired Michael Gerson, a gifted writer recommended to him by Colson, among others. A graduate of Wheaton College in Illinois (“the Evangelical Harvard”), Gerson understood Bush’s compassionate conservatism. More important, he had a gift for expressing it in stately, lilting language that could appeal, simultaneously, to born-agains and to secular boomers searching for a lost sense of uplift in public life. The Bush campaign conducted its more-controversial outreach below radar, via letters and e-mail. Only once was it forced to reach out in a raw public way. After John McCain won the New Hampshire primary, Bush made his infamous visit to South Carolina’s Bob Jones University, the ultrafundamentalist and officially anti-Roman Catholic school. Strategists were opaque in public, unapologetic behind the scenes. “We had to send a message—fast—and sending him there was the only way to do it,” said one top Bush operative at the time. “It was a risk we had to take.” Bush won.

THE RECKONING—Forged in the Fire Faith didn’t make Bush a decisive person. He’s always been one. His birthright as a Bush gives him a sense of obligation to serve, and a sense of an entitlement to lead. West Texas, where dust storms and the gyrating economy buffeted the locals, left him with a love of straight shooters and a come-what-may view of life. A frat man at Yale in an increasingly radical time—the late 1960s—he came to loathe intellectual avatars of complexity and doubt—especially when they disparaged his dad. He is a Pierce, too: a quick-to-judge son of a quick-to-judge mother.

    Still, faith helps Bush pick a course and not look back. He talks regularly to pastors, and loves to hear that people are praying for him. As he describes it, his faith is not complex. In recent weeks he has added a new note to his theme of the personal uses of faith, drawn from CBS. Now there is a sense of destiny that approaches the Calvinistic. “There is a fatalistic element,” said David Frum, the author and former Bush speechwriter. “You do your best and accept that everything is in God’s hands.” The result is unflappability. “If you are confident that there is a God that rules the world,” said Frum, “you do your best, and things will work out.” But what some see as solidity, others view as a flammable mix of stubbornness and arrogance. “No one’s allowed to second-guess, even when you should,” said another former staffer.
    The atmosphere inside the White House, insiders say, is suffused with an aura of prayerfulness. There have always been Bible-study groups there; even the Clintonites had one. But the groups are everywhere now. Lead players set the tone. There is Gerson, whose office keeps being moved closer to the Oval. Chief of staff Andrew Card’s wife is a Methodist minister. National-security adviser Condi Rice’s father was a preacher in Alabama.
    The president is known to welcome questions about faith that staffers sometimes have the nerve to share with him. But he’s not the kind to initiate granular debates about theology. Would Iraq be a “just war” in Christian terms, as laid out by Augustine in the fourth century and amplified by Aquinas, Luther and others? Bush has satisfied himself that it would be—indeed, it seems he did so many months ago. But he didn’t do it by combing through texts or presiding over a disputation. He decided that Saddam was evil, and everything flowed from that.
    The language of good and evil—central to the war on terrorism—came about naturally, said Frum. From the first, he said, the president used the term “evildoers” to describe the terrorists because some commentators were wondering aloud whether the United States in some way deserved the attack visited upon it on September 11, 2001. “He wanted to cut that off right away,” said Frum, “and make it clear that he saw absolutely no moral equivalence. So he reached right into the Psalms for that word.” He continued to stress the idea. Osama bin Laden and his cohorts were “evil.” In November 2001, in an interview with NEWSWEEK, he first declared—blurted out, actually—that Saddam Hussein in Iraq was “evil,” too.
    The world, and the Bush administration, are focused on Iraq. But as a matter of politics and principle, the president knows that he needs to deliver on his faith-based domestic agenda, especially since his party controls Congress. The wish list compiled by Rove is a long one. It includes conservative, pro-life judicial nominations; new HUD regulations that allow federal grants for construction of “social service” facilities at religious institutions; a ban on human cloning and “partial birth” abortion; a sweeping program to allow churches, synagogues and mosques to use federal funds to administer social-welfare programs; strengthened limits on stem-cell research; increased funding to teach sexual abstinence in schools, rather than safer sex and pregnancy prevention; foreign-aid policies that stress right-to-life themes, and federal money for prison programs (like the one in Texas) that use Christian tough love in an effort to lower recidivism rates among convicts.
    While Rove and Hill leaders work the domestic side, Bush is dwelling on faith-based foreign policy of the most explosive kind: a potential war in the name of civil freedom—including religious freedom—in the ancient heart of Arab Islam. In the just-war debate, he has strong support from his base. Leading advocates for the moral virtue of his position include Richard Land, the key leader of the Southern Baptist Convention’s political arm. Another supporter is Michael Novak, the conservative Catholic theologian. Novak recently journeyed to Rome to make his case at the invitation of the U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, Jim Nicholson, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee. All politics is local.
    But the president is facing a mighty force of religious leaders on the other side. They include the pope (Bush will meet with a papal envoy this week, NEWSWEEK has learned), the Council of Bishops, the National Council of Churches, many Jewish groups and most Muslim leaders. “People appreciate his devotion to faith, but, in the context of war, there is a fine line, and he is starting to make people nervous,” says Steve Waldman, the editor and CEO of Beliefnet, a popular and authoritative Web site on religion and society. “They appreciate his moral clarity and decisiveness. But they wonder if he is ignoring nuances in what sounds like a messianic mission.”
    Muslims are especially wary. Bush has gone to great lengths to reassure them that he admires their religion. He has hosted Ramadan dinners, and periodically criticized evangelicals, including Franklin Graham, who denounce Islam as a corrupt, violent faith. Still, evangelical missionaries don’t hide their desire to convert Muslims to Christianity, even—if not especially—in Baghdad. If one of the goals of ousting Saddam Hussein is to bring freedom of worship to an oppressed people, how can the president object?
    For Bush, that’s a nettlesome question for another time. If he’s worried about it or other such weighty matters, it wasn’t obvious at dinner upstairs in the private quarters of the White House the other week. He and Laura had invited close friends and allies such as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Bush, as usual, was a genial, joshing host. Also, as usual, he didn’t want the evening to last too long. “He tends to rush through cocktail hour,” says a friend. “One quick Coke and he wants to eat.” The president asked Rumsfeld to say grace. (“Can you help us out here, Mr. Secretary?”) As 10:30 p.m. approached, the commander in chief seemed eager to turn in. Knowledgeable guests understood that he wanted to catch at least a few minutes of his beloved “SportsCenter” on ESPN. But he also needed to get up early, very early. He had some reading to do.

Ragnar

2003-03-04 10:56 | User Profile

*Makow's take on this subject is worth a look. *

George W. Bush - 'Alter Boy'

By Henry Makow, PhD

3-3-3

[url=http://www.rense.com/general35/makgw.htm]http://www.rense.com/general35/makgw.htm[/url]

The Newsweek caption under the old picture of H. W. Bush's family attending church says, "George Sr. once taught Sunday school and George W. was an alter [sic] boy." [url=http://www.msnbc.com/news/878520.asp]http://www.msnbc.com/news/878520.asp[/url]

The spelling error is perhaps the only truthful thing in this article by Howard Fineman (March 10,2003) which proclaims that the Bush presidency is "the most resolutely faith-based" in modern times, "an enterprise founded, supported and guided by trust in the temporal and spiritual power of God."

George W. Bush may still be an "alter" boy.

"Alters" are mind-controlled personalities. Illuminati families like the Bushes subject their children to mind control. They worship Satan and brainwash their children by subjecting them to severe traumatic experiences, such as torture or witnessing the murder of a baby. At these times the mind disassociates and splinters into different personalities that can be programmed and recalled. These personalities are called "alters." [url=http://www.savethemales.ca/141002.html]http://www.savethemales.ca/141002.html[/url]

Only a mind controlled "alter" could manage the brazen hypocrisy, deceit and blasphemy required to identify his foul, murderous policies with the will of God. Boris Savinkov once explained how difficult it was to get a real Christian to kill.

Savinkov was the leader of a Bolshevik terror squad responsible for the deaths of dozens of high Tsarist officials. When he tried to make a bomb-throwing terrorist out of former Tsarist officers he found they had courage and fanaticism but were restrained by something else.

"From childhood they had been brought up in the Christian concept that "Thou shalt not kill!" And although many of them were now hardened by years of war and revolutionary violence, when it came to murdering someone in cold blood something in them rebelled!" (Geoffrey Bailey, "The Conspirators" 1959, p.74)

But George Bush is no Christian. Never was. He is an illustration of how the Illuminati assume the mantle of Christianity to disguise their diabolical intentions and discredit God. Iraq is about oil, Zionism and world tyranny. Bush's pious drivel and Newsweek's hosannas fool no one.

The whole world is appalled.

Henry Makow, Ph.D. is the inventor of the board game Scruples and author of "A Long Way to go for a Date." His articles on feminism and the new world order are found at his web site www.savethemales.ca He welcomes feedback at henrym@mts.net

Avalanche

2003-03-04 15:50 | User Profile

**Only a mind controlled "alter" could manage the brazen hypocrisy, deceit and blasphemy required to identify his foul, murderous policies with the will of God. **

Ah geez, poor Henry -- He's SO brainwashed by (sorry Tex, et al.) his Christianity and his weird sussing of that, that's he's just blind! There is SO MUCH "brazen hypocrisy, deceit and blasphemy" that doesn't need baby sacrifice and split personalities to elicit! He's trying to imagine what it would take to get himself to lie cheat and steal, and his self-image is JUST a rigid as can be. So, he thinks, it HAS to be externally managed ("Satanic" :( ;) ) control, rather than merely Georgie wants power, money, and .... well, pick your reward. And he'll do WHATEVER his leaders tell him to do, as long as they continue to provide his 'drug of choice.' Billie Jeff wanted girls and money. Georgie seems to want (apparent, not actual) power on the world stage and an image of the righteous cowboy.

il ragno

2003-03-04 17:48 | User Profile

I don't think Makow's version is substantially crazier than Fineman's. One's as nutty as the other. I'm all for executing murderers, but I'm not deluded enough to call it "tough love on crime".

Would Iraq be a “just war” in Christian terms, as laid out by Augustine in the fourth century and amplified by Aquinas, Luther and others? Bush has satisfied himself that it would be—indeed, it seems he did so many months ago. But he didn’t do it by combing through texts or presiding over a disputation. He decided that Saddam was evil, and everything flowed from that.****

No comment necessary. Funny how he didn't let the rest of us in on this until well after the election, though. Oh well...at least it was faith-based dishonesty.

In the GOP primaries, others tried to woo evangelicals by pledging strict allegiance on issues such as abortion and gay rights. “Bush talked about his faith,” said Bauer, “and people just believed him—and believed in him.” There was genius in this.

Great article, Howard. Turn your head this way, babe....mm-hmm...you've got a little feces on one eyebrow and the bridge of your nose, but otherwise you look fine.

**At Opryland in Nashville—the old “Buckle of the Bible Belt”—Bush told religious broadcasters that “the terrorists hate the fact that ... we can worship Almighty God the way we see fit,” and that the United States was called to bring God’s gift of liberty to “every human being in the world.” In his view, the chances of success were better than good. **

You still sure Makow is the crazy one here?

Malachi

2003-03-05 00:01 | User Profile

To think I used to believe Clinton was the end of the line when it came to lowlifes in the White House.

Zoroaster

2003-03-05 06:30 | User Profile

This article may be a sign that ZOG is growing desperate. I've noticed lately that kosher preachers, those blessed saints who appear on the one-eyed Jew, are encouraging the lemmings to pray for Bush, saying God is on their side. When all else fails, the vote in the Turkish Parliament, for example, call on God.

Bush serves ZOG, not God. If ZOG prevails, a greater Eretz Israel will soon emerge in the Middle East, an Israel built upon Christian and Muslim corpses.

Bush's pending invasion of Iraq is reminiscent of Hitler's invasion of Poland in 1939. America could suffer the same fate as Germany.

-Z-

TexasAnarch

2003-03-06 03:45 | User Profile

No one on this board -- maybe one or two exceptions -- is capable of grasping the significance of this Newsweek piece by Fineman: in what the implication of its content, form, and timing. I will bring these together by discussiong particular points, beginning with Dr. Mackow's most astute:

 > **"George Sr. once taught Sunday schood and George W. wa an alter (sic) boy." The spelling error is perhaps the only dtruthful thing in this  article by Howard Fineman..."alters" are mind-controlled personalities.  Illuminati familiies like the Bushes subject their children to mind control  They worship Satan and brainwash their children by subjecting them to servere traumatic experiences such as torture or witnessing the morder of a baby."**


   Mackow has been reading Lloyd deMause's Journal of Psychohistory.  In the early and mid-90's, this publication, much of it on-loine now, was Abused Memory Recovery central, explaining with massive documentation and in learned detail:

  The further back in history one goes, the greater the incidence and severity of child abuse, in just the way Mackow states.  Civilization has advanced only by inducing  parents, who have survived such torturous conditions, to repress their infanticidal, rape-kill wishes toward their own children.  Not to kill the little fuggers before they grow up and kill the adults.  These are the same impulses that return later on, in developed civilizations, that lead to war.  War is ritualized child rape, killing and sacrifice to propitiate "Gods".  "Gods" being  **phantom placentas** that persons who are so full of feelings of sin, impotence and infantile helplessness delusionally flashback to re-experiencing.  These stand in the way of (re-)birth, so require sacrifice ("pure" = fetal/virgin blood) as "price" of birth/survival.

      -Then, thre is the connection between "altar" and "alter"-- and why the alteration Mackow so aptly notes should occur.  Altars are what "the illuminati families" laid their little lambs (=fangasy of fetal siblings) out on to slaughter.  Like Abraham did Isaac.  ("YO&#33; DAD&#33; WHAT"S WITH THE NOREIGA DEAL THERE?....Y&#33;&#33;&#33; -- we know GWB was assiduously pondering scripture during his bout with King Liquor...)  And from "altar" boys come "altered" boys; not just maybe future ramblin&#39; NAMBLA men, but like split-off, alltered personalities -- schizoids,  the old DSM&#39;s called &#39;em.  "Not together".  Personalities sorely in need of integration; extremely terrified of the ***father in their head***, to the point they will kill any imagined "enemy" of this ***father in their head***.  The Father, as Jungian developmental Archetype, overlays the Phantom Placenta, in the sunken, regressed, trauma-controlled demi-consciousness of those in this state, so that Oedipal guilt (repressed desire to kill the father, to win his place with the Mother, early entertained by boys) takes the form of heroic killing of daddy&#39;s enemies for re-birth of the group.  That is the delusion Bush&#39;s altar/alter is acting out.  By sacrificing the blood of the finest, and most virile American youth, he will <b><i>propitiate the father-God in his head, and "liberate" the Iraqi people from the Poisonous Placenta, Saddam Hussein.</i></b>

 It can be called Satanic because, in the first place, it was the incarnation of evil, Monster/Beasts, that adults often dressed as, in animal skins,  to terrorize  the children before raping and assauting them.  That is the origin of the notion of "satan", "the Devil", "The evil one", etc. --it is a historical memory each may thankfully escape dwelling on, if they did.  It always seems to come back in city slums, but it is by no means confined to any one social class, as Sigmund Freud disclosed to the astonishment of the world in 1900.  <b>All 18 of his first cases of hysteria showed a factor of earlier sexual abuse, in the later onset of "neurotic symptoms" -- irrational, compulsively  repetitive behaviors, for instance.   The feeble, pathetic, futile gestures of "striking out" as helpless infants...struggling to *ward off*-- defending  against both the Rapist/Killer Father-fiend "in our head" (if allowing ourselves to be carried along by/with Bush&#39;s madness) --  and the strangling, blood-sucking Poisonous Placenta:  DEMON GOD THE EARTH MUST BE RID OF TO EVER KNOW PEACE AGAIN.</b>  Again, in President Bush&#39;s metaphysics, that would be Saddam Husein.

 Of course, in Saddam Hussein&#39;s metaphysics. ... but we aren&#39;t supposed to think about that, I know.

 This partially explains the link between the theory of blood-sacrifice as propitiation of "God"s to gain "forgiveness of sin and rebirth", and childhood abuse under old-civilization parenting.  Altars produce alters, and the events of 0 a.d., coming to flourescence like a kind of "genetic boost" to humanity, itself, after 1500 a.d., were supposed to provide the higher-grade spirituality made possible by the more integrated personalities of those raised by parents who came to America, bringing with them the fruits of European civilization.  When the old-world, old-war-ways religions come back, the group becomes gripped with the need for sacrifice, and no way to express it but with blood.  Alters construct altars.

Malachi

2003-03-06 19:36 | User Profile

Mike Rivero's site found this little gem

[url=http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=544&u=/ap/20030304/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_iraq_catholics_3&printer=1]White House Rejects Pope's Iraq Argument [/url]

"Hey, I got God's private line on my speed dialer in the Oval Office, and he told me he WANTS me to do that ten plagues thing to the whole world!"

Ragnar

2003-03-06 20:31 | User Profile

Originally posted by wombatnine@Mar 6 2003, 03:45 ** The further back in history one goes, the greater the incidence and severity of child abuse, in just the way Mackow states.  Civilization has advanced only by inducing  parents, who have survived such torturous conditions, to repress their infanticidal, rape-kill wishes toward their own children. **

There are popular works on this subject for anyone curious (and odd as it might seem).

Saharasia: The 4000 BC Origins of Child Abuse, Sex-Repression, Warfare and Social Violence in the Deserts of the Old World by James DeMeo. This is a comprehensive volume with much good information; DeMeo is a Reichian and must be read critically in some areas. His maps and reseach are excellent and his insights are generally good.

Catastrophobia by Barbara Hand Clow. This is a bit New Age-ish but Clow's facts and citations are solid. A good quick source if you just ignore the bits about aliens and global mind change.

Both Rense and David Icke's websites link to stories on this general theme now and then. It's an interesting topic which has to be approached with caution because it's been abused. That said, the idea that humans are influenced by catastrophic trauma from the ancient past is not inherently ridiculous.