A sign of desperation ?

[Travelinman]

I thought there was supposed to be a seperation of church and state, so what can this mean.

From the Washington Post:

The Bush-Cheney reelection campaign has sent a detailed plan of action to religious volunteers across the country asking them to turn over church directories to the campaign, distribute issue guides in their churches and persuade their pastors to hold voter registration drives.

Campaign officials said the instructions are part of an accelerating effort to mobilize President Bush's base of religious supporters. They said the suggested activities are intended to help churchgoers rally support for Bush without violating tax rules that prohibit churches from engaging in partisan activity.

"We strongly believe that our religious outreach program is well within the framework of the law," said Terry Holt, spokesman for the Bush-Cheney campaign.

But tax experts said the campaign is walking a fine line between permissible activity by individual congregants and impermissible activity by congregations. Supporters of Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, charged that the Bush-Cheney campaign is luring churches into risking their tax status.

"I think it is sinful of them to encourage pastors and churches to engage in partisan political activity and run the risk of losing their tax-exempt status," said Steve Rosenthal, chief executive officer of America Coming Together, a group working to defeat Bush.

The instruction sheet circulated by the Bush-Cheney campaign to religious volunteers lists 22 "duties" to be performed by specific dates. By July 31, for example, volunteers are to "send your Church Directory to your State Bush-Cheney '04 Headquarters or give [it] to a BC04 Field Rep" and "Talk to your Pastor about holding a Citizenship Sunday and Voter Registration Drive."

By Aug. 15, they are to "talk to your Church's seniors or 20-30 something group about Bush/Cheney '04" and "recruit 5 more people in your church to volunteer for the Bush Cheney campaign."

By Sept. 17, they are to host at least two campaign-related potluck dinners with church members, and in October they are to "finish calling all Pro-Bush members of your church," "finish distributing Voter Guides in your church" and place notices on church bulletin boards or in Sunday programs "about all Christian citizens needing to vote."

The document was provided to The Washington Post by a Democrat. A spokesman for the Internal Revenue Service, Frank Keith, said, "It would be inappropriate for the IRS, based on a limited set of facts and circumstances, to render a judgment about whether the activities in this document would or would not endanger a church's tax-exempt status."

He pointed out, however, that the IRS on June 10 sent a strongly worded letter to both the Republican and Democratic national committees, reminding them that tax-exempt charitable groups "are prohibited from directly or indirectly participating or intervening in any political campaign on behalf of, or in opposition to, any candidate for public office."

That warning came one week after The Post and other news media reported on a Bush-Cheney campaign e-mail that sought to identify 1,600 "friendly congregations" in Pennsylvania where Bush supporters "might gather on a regular basis."

The IRS letter noted that religious organizations are allowed to sponsor debates, distribute voter guides and conduct voter registration drives. But if those efforts show "a preference for or against a certain candidate or party . . . it becomes a prohibited activity," the letter said.

Milton Cerny, a tax specialist in the Washington office of the law firm Caplin & Drysdale who formerly administered tax-exempt groups for the IRS, said there is nothing in the campaign instructions "that on its face clearly would violate" the law.

"But these activities, if conducted in concert with the church or church leadership, certainly could be construed by the IRS as the church engaging in partisan electioneering," he said. "The devil is in the details."

Rosemary E. Fei, a tax specialist at the San Francisco law firm of Silk, Adler & Colvin, said the campaign checklist "feels dangerous to me" not just because of what is in it, but because of what is not. "There's no mention whatsoever that churches should be careful to remain nonpartisan," she said.

Holt suggested such warnings are unnecessary. "Why would we warn one citizen about the boundaries of their political discussion with another citizen?" he said.

[snizz]

Travelinman said:

I thought there was supposed to be a seperation of church and state, so what can this mean.

I see there's been some redecorating since my last visit.

Travelinman, what this means is that not a damned thing's changed and the Bushies still don't give a rats ass about laws or the Constitution and think they're above it.

Don't get me started on the churches. I consider myself a Godfearing man and I believe what I believe, but I broke with the church several years ago after they started strongly "suggesting" that my "proper" donation should be 20% of my net annual income. Basically the gist is blackmail. If I don't pay up, I go straight to hell?

[LS]

Yep...I agree and it's gettin' really uncomfortably disturbing.
This country was based on the principle of religious freedom- and on the other side of the coin that includes people who choose not to practice any religion. The 'God Bless America' thing has gotten way beyond the point of grating on my nerves...and the whole thing with the Pledge...Um- like how difficult is it to just put the dang thing back to it's original version which would be a fair solution and compromise to all??

But yep TM...there's signs of desperation amongst the Bushies all over the place...

Scandals Seen As Hallmark Of White House Under Pressure

By Ken Fireman
Washington Bureau
July 1, 2004

The vice president upbraids a senator on the floor of the chamber for what he calls personal attacks, then ends the conversation with a transitive verb straight from the barnyard.

A chief architect of the Iraq war refers to journalists covering the conflict as cowardly rumor-mongers during a congressional hearing, and is forced to apologize the following day.

The president himself finds it necessary to be questioned by a special prosecutor probing the outing of a covert CIA operative by someone in the administration bent on political retaliation.

The White House, faced with a prisoner abuse scandal that won't go away, is forced into the ultimate embarrassment of a Clinton-style document dump - only to discover that the new material only fuels the controversy.

Washington-watchers have seen these tropisms before, and they are not symptoms of health. They are the hallmarks of an administration under increasing pressure, and starting to stagger and stumble under the accumulated weight.

Indeed, the best news for President George W. Bush in the recent flood of poll numbers is the fact that he is still essentially even with Democratic opponent John Kerry despite all the recent setbacks and missteps.

But Bush's good news begins and ends there. A new CBS- New York Times poll puts his approval rating at 42 percent, the lowest of his presidency.

Then there is what might be called the poll of the box office. Movie-goers are lining up to watch "Fahrenheit 911," which portrays the president as clueless, duplicitous and corrupt.

Most worrisome for Bush is the finding in the latest Gallup poll that for the first time a majority of Americans say it was a mistake to go to war in Iraq. It took three years for a majority to turn against the war in Vietnam - but once that happened, Gallup notes, support for the war never regained 50 percent.

Even the relatively good news from Iraq has not come unalloyed. The United States turned over formal sovereignty to an interim government two days early; but the reason for the early handoff, to forestall insurgent attacks, and the setting, in a heavily fortified compound, hardly inspires confidence.

As events in Iraq and elsewhere have driven its support down, an administration that once prided itself on discipline and sure-footedness has begun to appear wobbly and off-balance. Like a metal structure subjected to increasing stress over time, the damage is gradual rather than catastrophic - but difficult to reverse.

One error that stands out as especially costly is the decision last year to blame the CIA for the president's inaccurate claim that Iraq sought to buy uranium in Africa. Picking a fight with the agency is never a good idea given its capacity for self-protective retaliation, and the administration has paid a stiff price. The latest installment came last month when the CIA cleared a new book by a senior official calling the Iraq war a blunder.

The handling of the prisoner abuse mess has been equally ham-handed. The old rule of get the bad news out early, get it over with quickly and put your own spin on it was ignored for weeks. Finally, last week, the White House swallowed its pride and resorted to a favorite Clinton tactic: releasing hundreds of pages of documents so late in the day that reporters had time for only a limited look before deadline.

If the document dump was an embarrassing reminder of an administration the current White House loves to hate, Bush's interview with special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald must have been as well. Bill Clinton spent most of his presidency dogged by special prosecutors. Bush ended every rally in 2000 by vowing to restore "the honor and dignity" of the presidency. For Bush to face a new incarnation of this presidential nemesis could not have been pleasant.

If the warning signals of a foundering administration are visible, the outcome of the voyage is far from certain. Other presidents have stumbled badly amid adversity only to right themselves - think Clinton winning easy re-election in 1996 just two years after crushing defeats in Congress and at the polls.

But once a perception of fecklessness settles in around an administration, it is difficult to reverse - especially in the fevered climate of a campaign. It is not clear that such a turning point has been reached. But the extraordinary polarization of the electorate gives Bush little margin for error, and recent events do not project an image of an administration confidently marching toward success.

[LS]

Where Politics Shouldn’t Go
BY SUSAN JACOBY

July 11, 2004

One of the most untouchable issues in American politics - and so far campaign 2004 has been no exception - is the damaging proposition, deliberately fostered by government leaders, that religious devotion and patriotism are inseparable.

This largely unexamined subject, which lay at the heart of the case challenging the recitation of "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, scares Democrats to death.

Indeed, the question of whether God has really blessed America scared the Supreme Court so much that the justices chose to duck the issue entirely by declaring that the plaintiff, Michael Newdow, lacked standing because he did not have full custody of his daughter.

Democratic Party officials were privately delighted with the decision, because it relieved John Kerry - who, even though he is a Roman Catholic, has already been tarred with the scarlet "S" for secularist - of any obligation to take a stand on the case. But the pledge is only one symbol - though symbols are important in themselves - of a deeper and more damaging assumption, promulgated aggressively by the Bush administration, that the only true patriot is a religious patriot. The triumphalist melding of religion and patriotism that permeates much of American society not only undermines the American social contract at home but runs counter to U.S. interests throughout the world.

What could be more unseemly in the eyes of the world than trumpeting our oh-so-superior religious values at a time when the U.S. military is implicated in a general abuse of Iraqi prisoners that also incorporated specific insults to the Muslim faith. In Muslim culture, which does not even tolerate casual locker room nudity among men, forcing prisoners to strip naked and simulate homosexual acts is an even graver insult than it would be in other societies.

At home, the equation of religion and patriotism it exclusionary - whether it comes from top government leaders or teachers in elementary school classrooms. Not only atheists and agnostics, but religious believers who also cherish the separation of church and state, are being told that their convictions count for nothing in public life.

Like most Americans, I responded to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, with an immediate wave of anger and grief so powerful that it left no room for alienation.

Walking around my wounded New York, as the smoke from the ruins of the World Trade Center wafted the smell of death throughout the city, I drew consolation from the knowledge that others were feeling what I was feeling - sorrow, pain and rage, coupled with the futile but irrepressible longing to turn back the clock to the hour before bodies rained from a crystalline sky.

That soothing sense of unity was severed for me just three days later, when the president presided over an ecumenical prayer service in Washington's National Cathedral. Delivering an address indistinguishable from a sermon, replacing the language of civic virtue with the language of faith, the nation's chief executive might as well have been the Reverend Bush. Quoting a man who supposedly said at St. Patrick's Cathedral, "I pray to God to give us a sign that he's still here," the president went on to assure the public not only that God was still here but that he was personally looking out for America.

"God's signs," Bush declared, "are not always the ones we look for. We learn in tragedy that his purposes are not always our own ... Neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, can separate us from God's love. May he bless the souls of the departed, may he comfort our own, and may he always guide our country."

This adaptation of the famous passage from St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans left out the evangelist's identification of Jesus Christ as God - an omission presumably made in deference to the Jewish and Muslim representatives sharing the pulpit with the president.

Bush would surely have been criticized, and rightly so, had he failed to invite representatives of non-Christian faiths to the ecumenical ceremony in memory of the victims of terrorism. But he felt perfectly free to ignore Americans who adhere to no religious faith, whose outlook is predominantly secular and who interpret history and tragedy as the work of man rather than God. There was no speaker who represented my views, no one to reject the notion of divine purpose at work in the slaughter of thousands and to proclaim the truth that grief, patriotism and outrage at injustice run just as deep in the secular as in the religious portion of the body politic.

According to a religious identification survey by the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, more than 14 percent of Americans - a much larger minority than any non-Christian group - describe their outlook as "entirely or predominantly secular." There are more secular humanists than there are observant Jews or Muslims - but one would never know it from the makeup of supposedly ecumenical civic rituals that are ecumenical only for those who believe, to paraphrase Bush, that God is at the helm of our country.

Bush's very presence in the pulpit represented a significant departure from the behavior of other presidents in times of crisis. Franklin D. Roosevelt did not try to assuage the shock of Pearl Harbor by using an altar as the backdrop for his declaration of war and Abraham Lincoln, who steadfastly refused to join any church even though his political advisers urged him to do so, delivered the Gettysburg Address not from a sanctuary but on the battlefield where so many soldiers had given "the last full measure of devotion."

The merger of religion and patriotism is especially dangerous in wartime, because it leads naturally to the conclusion that God is on our side. And if God is on our side, it isn't hard to figure out who, with two little horns protruding from his head, is on the other side.

Last year, Army Lt. General William G. Boykin, deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence, explicitly told an audience of evangelical Christians that the war against terrorism was a battle against Satan. He also declared, as widely reported in the media, that he was able to defeat a Muslim warlord in Somalia because, "I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol."

Boykin deserved a public reprimand from his superiors for statements that should never be uttered by a military officer representing the U.S. government. Instead, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld laughed dismissively when asked about the comments at a press conference and accused reporters of being a "blood-thirsty" bunch.

It is not hard to imagine the impact of such comments not only in the Muslim world but in European nations, where both the public and government leaders are baffled and put off by the religious rhetoric coming from Washington.

Bush has spoken proudly, on many occasions, of America's religious liberties as one of the factors distinguishing the U.S. from radical Islamist states - but he does not respect those liberties, which flow from the separation of church and state, at home. Only last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee once again took up the nomination of one James Leon Holmes for a federal district judgeship. This is a man who, in a 2002 address to the Society of Catholic Social Scientists, proclaimed that "the final reunion of church and state will take place at the end of time, when Christ will claim definitive political power of all creation, inaugurating an entirely new society based on the supernatural."

What a great and welcome contribution it would be for John Kerry to step forward and proclaim a love of country based not on dreams of a supernatural Christian government but, as the Constitution's preamble asserts, on the authority of "We the People."

The framers knew what they were doing when they declined to write, "We the People under God." It is simply disgraceful that modern politicians run away from the noble secular heritage that they should embrace.

Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc.

AMEN SISTER!!

[Roland]

I find all this disturbing myself. We teach our children privately and in school one thing, yet the government undermines those teachings by demonstrating the opposite. We teach our kids to respect and be tolerant of others, not to be bullies and bigots. We have a zero tolerance policy against fighting and teach them to settle their differences peacefully and diplomatically. Then our government turns around, bypassing all diplomatic channels, and unilaterally started a war unnecessarily with a country that did nothing to us. In the process, they manipulated the masses, whipping them into a frenzy that perverted patriotism into nationalism and seriously threatened freedom of speech. The author of the above article is right, the framers of the Constitution took great pains and extraordinary measures to keep references to religion out of it. They knew from experience the ramifications of a country where state and religion weren't completely separate and independent from one another. State (under the Constitution) is one entity that affects all citizens equally. Religion, and there are many, is a private, individual choice. In this country it's considered a freedom, people are free to practice the religion of their choice or not to practice one at all, it's not a law and not a mandate. State and church must remain separate or this democracy is headed for extinction.

[Roughneck]

Look at the Thirty Years War to see what happens when you mix religion and government.

[Southbound]

Who would've thought a Python movie had relevance?

"And Saint Attila raised the hand grenade up on high, saying, 'O Lord, bless this Thy hand grenade that, with it, Thou mayest blow Thine enemies to tiny bits in Thy mercy.' And the Lord did grin, and the people did feast upon the lambs and sloths and carp and anchovies and orangutans and breakfast cereals and fruit bats and large chu--"

[Roland]

Southbound said:

Who would've thought a Python movie had relevance?

"And Saint Attila raised the hand grenade up on high, saying, 'O Lord, bless this Thy hand grenade that, with it, Thou mayest blow Thine enemies to tiny bits in Thy mercy.' And the Lord did grin, and the people did feast upon the lambs and sloths and carp and anchovies and orangutans and breakfast cereals and fruit bats and large chu--"

Great comedy is based on truth. It just goes to prove that the foible of the human condition provides the basis for most of our comedy.

[Roughneck]

Jesus and Jihad
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

If the latest in the "Left Behind" series of evangelical thrillers is to be believed, Jesus will return to Earth, gather non-Christians to his left and toss them into everlasting fire:

"Jesus merely raised one hand a few inches and a yawning chasm opened in the earth, stretching far and wide enough to swallow all of them. They tumbled in, howling and screeching, but their wailing was soon quashed and all was silent when the earth closed itself again."

These are the best-selling novels for adults in the United States, and they have sold more than 60 million copies worldwide. The latest is "Glorious Appearing," which has Jesus returning to Earth to wipe all non-Christians from the planet. It's disconcerting to find ethnic cleansing celebrated as the height of piety.

If a Muslim were to write an Islamic version of "Glorious Appearing" and publish it in Saudi Arabia, jubilantly describing a massacre of millions of non-Muslims by God, we would have a fit. We have quite properly linked the fundamentalist religious tracts of Islam with the intolerance they nurture, and it's time to remove the motes from our own eyes.

In "Glorious Appearing," Jesus merely speaks and the bodies of the enemy are ripped open. Christians have to drive carefully to avoid "hitting splayed and filleted bodies of men and women and horses."

"The riders not thrown," the novel continues, "leaped from their horses and tried to control them with the reins, but even as they struggled, their own flesh dissolved, their eyes melted and their tongues disintegrated. . . . Seconds later the same plague afflicted the horses, their flesh and eyes and tongues melting away, leaving grotesque skeletons standing, before they, too, rattled to the pavement."

One might have thought that Jesus would be more of an animal lover.

These scenes also raise an eschatological problem: Could devout fundamentalists really enjoy paradise as their friends, relatives and neighbors were heaved into hell?

As my Times colleague David Kirkpatrick noted in an article, this portrayal of a bloody Second Coming reflects a shift in American portrayals of Jesus, from a gentle Mister Rogers figure to a martial messiah presiding over a sea of blood. Militant Christianity rises to confront Militant Islam.

This matters in the real world, in the same way that fundamentalist Islamic tracts in Saudi Arabia do. Each form of fundamentalism creates a stark moral division between decent, pious types like oneself — and infidels headed for hell.

No, I don't think the readers of "Glorious Appearing" will ram planes into buildings. But we did imprison thousands of Muslims here and abroad after 9/11, and ordinary Americans joined in the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in part because of a lack of empathy for the prisoners. It's harder to feel empathy for such people if we regard them as infidels and expect Jesus to dissolve their tongues and eyes any day now.

I had reservations about writing this column because I don't want to mock anyone's religious beliefs, and millions of Americans think "Glorious Appearing" describes God's will. Yet ultimately I think it's a mistake to treat religion as a taboo, either in this country or in Saudi Arabia.

I often write about religion precisely because faith has a vast impact on society. Since I've praised the work that evangelicals do in the third world (Christian aid groups are being particularly helpful in Sudan, at a time when most of the world has done nothing about the genocide there), I also feel a responsibility to protest intolerance at home.

Should we really give intolerance a pass if it is rooted in religious faith?

Many American Christians once read the Bible to mean that African-Americans were cursed as descendants of Noah's son Ham, and were intended by God to be enslaved. In the 19th century, millions of Americans sincerely accepted this Biblical justification for slavery as God's word — but surely it would have been wrong to defer to such racist nonsense simply because speaking out could have been perceived as denigrating some people's religious faith.

People have the right to believe in a racist God, or a God who throws millions of nonevangelicals into hell. I don't think we should ban books that say that. But we should be embarrassed when our best-selling books gleefully celebrate religious intolerance and violence against infidels.

That's not what America stands for, and I doubt that it's what God stands for.

[LS]

Only you SB...

I rather like this one that was written a couple weeks ago by personal favorite curmudgeon...

Footing The GOP's Heavy-handedness
by Jimmy Breslin
July 6, 2004

What's the matter?" Christ was asked.

"My feet. I'm not 33 anymore and they're going to have me out until I can hardly take a step."

Christ was talking about the start of the political campaigning when the Republicans trying to stay in office have started dragging Christ everywhere, and they will have him out there on the road right up to Election Day.

"The public wants to hear politicians talk about their religion," the Republican message went out to all members.

Straight off, here was George Bush in West Virginia:

"God bless you. And God bless America."

Here was Cheney in someplace, I don't know where he was and he didn't seem to know, either:

"God bless the United States of America."

That was just the start. They are going to go right through to November. From every podium will be heard:

"This nation is under Jesus Christ!!!"

Christ was asking, "Don't they bother to look at me?"

"To see what?" he was asked.

"My feet. I walk on bare feet. Do they think of that when they schedule? They better look at my feet. If they cared, if they had any compassion, they would see my bare feet."

In an effort to save their jobs, Bush and Cheney are calling on Christ to walk with them all through the Low IQ states, Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, Louisiana. That is where Bush half smiles or smirks, it is hard to tell which, and he says Christ and waves his arm and the crowd screams: "Jeeee-zus!"

Then Bush calls for capital punishment. The crowds scream. "Kill. Kill. Kill."

And Christ is saying, "They go in all these churches, but do they ever look up once and see a crucifix? That's how the religion was started. It was an execution. Now they use my name to call for more executions? Bush never looks up at a cross. Would he know what he is looking at?"

Bush says that Christ is on his side on abortion, late-term abortions, same-sex marriages, stem cell research. "Do they think any of this is as important as a mother who can't feed and clothe her children? I don't know where he gets it all from," Christ said. "I never said anything like that in the Scriptures."

He does not like it a bit when they claim they kill in Iraq in his name. They say they are killing for both America and Christ. Everybody should be in favor of that - Christ waging war in the sands to protect America. They say he is helping them kill guerrillas and insurgents and thugs from other countries. Outside agitators!

"They are Iraqis," Christ was saying. "They are residents. They act on free will. We are going to see about that later. But I do know that mortals on Earth can't have me killing for America. Or doing anything for America alone. Try using me anywhere in America. Tell people in the mountains in Wyoming, or on a parkway in Memphis. But they cannot say that I am only with America. God bless America. But God blesses Jordan, too. And Syria. And Israel and Palestine both. And I say to you that God blesses Iraq. Watch out, if you think you are the favored people. There are none!"

Most disgusting is looking out at one of these big dinners in Houston, where they raise millions and a couple of thousand people sit there formal and up on the dais, George Bush, who insists that Christ is with them, chews.

Now you look out at the thousands and see every white jaw moving with him as one. Chewing on filet mignon. Up, down. Some give a sideways motion. White mouths in white faces. To the right side, and others to the left. Tucking meat against the jowls. They have spent $3 million to eat all at once with Bush. They have napkins ready. Steak juice down the chin.

So I look like a pig. God bless this meal. God bless my teeth. God bless America!

They use strange language. They are calling Christ's name and it is about killing Iraqis, cutting welfare, controlling women's bodies and cutting taxes for these wealthy at the dinner.

From the dais the crowd is told, "We give you your tax money back and you let it get down to the poor folks when you think they need it! God wants you to have this money. If he didn't want that, then he'd have made you poor and you sure aren't poor, so that means God wants you to have money. Big money in the name of God."

Hearing this, Christ said, "I wonder if they ever looked at what I said about the rich having an impossible time getting into heaven?"

Then he said, "I know one other thing they never looked at. Not one of them."

"What is that, Lord?"

"Look at the color of my skin. See for yourself. My color is nowhere near theirs."

[Roland]

Two very thought provoking articles, the viewpoints of both I happen to agree with. Man's inhumanity to man is man's doing and man's doing alone. It has nothing to do with God. I was raised to believe he would not approve of anyone killing in His name.

[SanAntonioMike]

Yeah, try being Catholic these days. We support a woman's right to choose AND gay marriage. I was wondering if I'd be allowed to take communion the day after the election, particularly in this pathetically dark-ages diocese (the new bishop is apparently a cut above the last one, the fellow who put Phoenix on the map for being a heartless SOB who first covered up every instance of abuse and THEN hit a man in the street and tried to cover THAT up)...

I like a President who has faith but, like Jesus tells us, does his praying hidden in the closet instead of standing on the stump... er, out in public.