“Obama has been a unifier, of sorts,” he quips. “He has united Democrats and united Republicans -- against each other.”

Where Did the Worst of Bush's Cronies Go? To Work for Corporate Media. By Eric Alterman, The Daily Beast Posted on April 10, 2009, Printed on April 10, 2009 http://www.alternet.org/story/135947/ When you consider the respective achievements of the folks who peopled the upper echelons of the Bush administration, I think youll agree that after their incompetence, ideological obsession, and general malevolence, their most impressive characteristic was, and remains, their audacity. Think about it: George W. Bush is widely considered to be, if not Americas worst president ever, than certainly in the bottom four or five. His legacy to his successor includes: the worst economic crisis in eighty years, two unsuccessful wars, a thoroughly corrupt Justice Department, the destruction of time-honored civil liberties and hard-won rights, and the widespread contempt of almost everyone on the planet who was not a committed member of the conservative Republican base. And yet not only did Bush and company never own up to the catastrophic consequences of their actions, they gave one another medals for it. (Its only a rumor, however, that Bush tried to rename the Presidential Medal of Freedom the Heckuva Job medal.) In a society with any memory whatever -- much less one whose public servants enjoyed a modicum of self respect -- these folks would slink off into the sunset and lay low for a decade or two before taking up new careers doing something useful -- if not ministering to the poor like Jimmy Carter than at least sticking to charity golf tournaments like Gerald Ford. Instead theyve become pundits. And unlike ex-Democratic pundits, who tend to want to prove their mettle as independent analysts by attacking their ex-friends using Republican talking points -- demanding to know why presidential candidates do not wear flag pins and are BFFs with Louis Farrakhan and the like -- they keep up exactly the same shenanigans that landed this country in the screwed up place they left it. Admit it, its impressive. Exhibit A in this category is ex-chief speechwriter Michael Gerson. Using the same kind of impeccable logic that led him to write speeches demanding that we invade a different country than the one that attacked us on 9/11, Gerson was punished for his crimes against the English language with a regular gig in The Washington Post and Newsweek, and a fancy fellowship at the Council on Foreign Relations. This week, he took the occasion of a recent poll by the Pew to attackBarack Obama as the most polarizing new president of recent times. Obama has been a unifier, of sorts, he quips. He has united Democrats and united Republicans -- against each other. As with so many Gerson-authored speeches for George W. Bush, the question one has to ask oneself upon hearing this is not whether the man uttering the words believes them, but whether he can even comprehend them. In Gersons case, he appears to understand his own audaciously dishonest claim because he undermines it a few paragraphs later. The Pew report notes that this is the extension of a long-term trend, he admits. Well, yes, theres that. (The poll itself is here.) And there are also a few obvious-to-everybody-else explanations for the tendency. As Michael Dimock, Pews associate director toldGersons Post colleague Greg Sargent, Its unfair to say that Obama has caused this divisiveness or to say that he is a polarizing president. Not only is the trend one thats been building over time, but it is driven in part by the fact that partisan divide is always stronger under Democratic presidents -- Bush II being the exception -- because Democrats tend to give their opponents a chance while Republicans do not. Second, two Bush terms that went about as well as Biblical flood -- see above -- have left the party denuded of all but its most ideologically-driven elements. A party answerable to Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh is going disapprove of just about anyone and anything in what during the Bush years became known as the reality-based community simply because, well, its there. Gerson goes on, again impressively, to blame Obama for failing to get Republican votes for his budget, for increasing the deficit, and expanding our dependence on China as if the past eight years never happened. To be fair to Gerson, he is merely following in his mentors footsteps. Recruited by Karl Rove in 1999 for the Bush campaign, he has learned at the feet of an audacious master. Rove, if youve not been paying attention, appears to be campaigning for Nobel Prize in the category of keeping a straight face while spouting bullshit -- just as soon as the category is invented. This week he made the same silly argument that Gerson did, here but to be honest, one could pick almost any utterance by this honored Wall Street Journal, Fox News, and Newsweek columnist to make this point. Google and I just happen to stumble on one, in which, I kid you not, Karl Rove, who headed the Office of Political Affairs, the White House Office of Public Liaison, the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives, etc., is shocked, shocked that the Obama White House is (allegedly) being used for political purposes. I swear Im not making this up. Here he is, during the Limbaugh flap, complainingto Greta Van Susteren: ROVE: about this. They have assigned a senior aide to President Obama [who] is heading this up inside the White House, an unnamed aide. This has clearly got Carville, Begala, and Rahm Emanuel, who talk literally every day -- they have an early morning phone call. This is clearly something that they've concocted. And the question that we -- there are two questions we ought to ask. First of all, is this appropriate? The idea that the White House is devoting all this time and energy and effort when we've got all this myriad problems facing the country, that they've got senior aides in the White House gaming out how they can make Rush Limbaugh the headline in the evening news seems to me to be a little petty, small, and really inappropriate. I know my job here is to have something to say about that but I dont see how I can possibly improve on it. Of all of Bushs disaster lieutenants, the one who has most successfully reinvented himself is probably David Frum. He was the first one out the door, and bet badly on a hagiographic portrait of his boss when he was still riding high, but quickly switched gears and starting voicing misgivings. While Frum is better at it than his colleagues, his project is the same: to paint Obama and company as no different than Bush, and hence, make the implicit case that Bush wasnt so bad after all. In a forthcoming article in the liberal American Prospect, he explains,In a way Paul Krugman is the General Shinseki of the Obama administration. The Axelrods and others are like those who fired Shinseki. They don't want to know, because it would be too inconvenient. Now think about that analogy for a second (which, to be honest, is 99/100ths of second more than it deserves): General Shinseki was a top-ranking career military officer under the command of his superiors who tried to warn the country, correctly it turns out, that we were being deliberately misled into a potentially disastrous military engagement by his gung-ho civilian counterparts. For this he was fired from his job and forced to end his career in apparent ignominy, attacked ceaselessly and anonymously, by those who forced his firing. Paul Krugman is a Nobel Prize-winning economist who teaches at Princeton University and enjoys a sideline as Americas most influential political columnist, publishing twice weekly in The New York Times, the countrys most important newspaper. He has an intellectual disagreement with members of the administration about the size and scope of its economic recovery policy, has been the topic of no friendly fire whatever, and yet Actually, I cant go on. Perhaps Im insufficiently schooled in the ex-Bush Aide College of Audacious Analysis, but Im as lost as Jimmy Hoffas body in trying to locate even a microcosm of meaning in that analogy. Back in the real world, in polls released this week, Obamas 66 percent approval rating is higher at this (ridiculously early) point in his presidency than it was for either Bush or Clinton. His approval rating is more than doublethat of his Republican opponents in Congress, and despite this moment of profound economic uncertainty and emergency, Americans are, according to a CNN poll less pessimistic about the future than they were a year ago. My advice, guys: Next time, blame Canada 2009 The Daily Beast All rights reserved. View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/135947/ Naomi Klein talks about her new book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. The Shock Doctrine is the gripping story of how America's "free market" policies have come to dominate the world-- through the exploitation of disaster-shocked people and countries.

Evil

From SourceWatch

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, evil, "in a large sense, may be described as the sum of the opposition, which experience shows to exist in the universe, to the desires and needs of individuals; whence arises, among humans beings at least, the sufferings in which life abounds. Thus evil, from the point of view of human welfare, is what ought not to exist."

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Also see Wikipedia: "Evil".

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"According to the Bible, evil is the result of an ongoing war in the spiritual realm. Satan was a great and beautiful angel; considered the most beautiful of them all. Eventually, filled with self-pride, he set himself out to take hold of the throne of God. But his rebellion was crushed, and he was cast out of heaven together with a third of all the angels."[1]

"We know that evil demonstrates itself through behavior which troubles us. We tend as a society to think of evil almost as a physical entity, as we think of a knife or gun. Our western culture portrays evil as a red-skinned satanic creature with two horns holding a pitchfork and waving a spiked tail. The concept is that this character compels us to destructive behavior, though most think of this creature as a cultural myth."[2]

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Since the events of September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush and members of the Bush administration have presented the world with an unrelenting repetition of the concept of absolutely good versus absolutely evil terrorists and evil-doers engaged in a war on freedom.

The terrorists, and those associated with them, are addressed as evil-doers and the evil ones. "Evil" is to be found everywhere and anywhere because evil knows no borders, no boundaries. Nearly every act and every motive attributed to these "evil ones" is painted with deliberate evil intentions. For example, the "evil ones" come from a cult of evil and are armed with the designs and power of evil. These "evil ones" represent a clear and present danger and are the enemies of freedom and a danger to civilization.

However, these "evil ones" are apparently not embued with self-direction. They have been described as the instruments of evil, motivated by hate. In these "evil ones," evil has found a willing servant.

In the ancient battle between good and evil, the "evil ones" have struck the innocent victims of September 11, 2001. America, as a compassionate nation of freedom-loving people, cannot comprehend these hateful actions and are alleged to frequently ask why do they hate us?

America's preliminary battle against evil resulted in Operation Enduring Freedom designed to locate and destroy Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda forces in Afghanistan. Next, since it was necessary to expand against the Axis of evil engaged in the war on freedom, late in 2002 and early 2003, a coalition of the willing was enlisted in the fight against evil in Iraq, i.e. Operation Iraqi Freedom, to combat terrorism now said to be promoted by Saddam Hussein. In particular, Saddam was hiding weapons of mass destruction which threatened the United States. The numerous countries which formed the coalition were presented with the scenario of us versus them in a challenge by President Bush who demanded that they were either with us or against us.

President Bush has expressed that out of evil comes good, since the "evil" terrorists, to include al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, are being conquered.

President Bush is not the first U.S. President to attempt to affiliate America's enemies with evil. President Ronald Reagan, in depicting the former Soviet Union as an "evil empire," implored that there was a moral foundation to his efforts to contain and even defeat the former Soviet Union. Ironically, the same figures that the Bush administration regards as "evildoers" come from the same mujahideen guerrilla movement in Afghanistan that the Reagan administration supported as "freedom fighters" in the battle against the Soviets.

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One source for the theological bent of Bush's speeches can be attributed to White House speechwriter Michael J. Gerson.

"Fritz Ritsch, pastor of Bethesda Presbyterian Church, in a Washington suburb, notes that the President will not meet with representatives of mainstream
Christian denominations, while he uses the 'bully pulpit,' acting like 'theologian in chief.'

"Ritsch's column, titled, 'Of God, and Man, in the Oval Office,' gives a detailed and theological critique of Bush's rhetoric, and that of the so-called religious drive for war and empire.

"While Ritsch does not take up explicitly, the matter of the role of Bush's lead speech-writer, Michael J. Gerson, the Elmer Gantry-type who wrote the President's Oct. 7, 2002, Cincinnati speech on Iraq,Ritsch does specify and denounce specific words and phrases, which are the typical 'secret-meaning' fundamentalist clap-trap Gerson specializes in."

"Ritsch writes, 'Contrary to popular opinion, the religion that this group [Bush's religious supporters] espouses is Triumphalism, not Christianity. Theirs is a zealous form of nationalism, baptized with Christian language. The German theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was martyred by the Nazis,
foresaw the rise of a similar view in his country, which he labeled, 'joyous secularism.' .... If, as I believe, this worldview is really American triumphalism, Christianity has taken a backseat to joyous secularism [i.e. Nazism].'

"Bush, Ritsch says, 'asserts a worldview that most Christian denominations reject outright as heresy: the myth of redemptive violence, which posits a war between good and evil ... God [versus] ... Satan.... Christians have held this view to be heretical since at least the third century.... In contrast [to the 'fundamentalists'], the Judeo-Christian worldview is that of redemption. ...'

"Ritsch points to ways that the ignorant Bush misuses received religion. For example, 'The President used the words of a hymn There's Power in the Blood, to strengthen the religious rhetoric of his State of the Union 2003 speech. He spoke of the 'power, wonder-working power' of 'the goodness and idealism and faith of the American people.'

"'The original words of the hymn refer to the 'wonder-working power' of 'the precious blood of the lamb' -- Jesus Christ. The unspoken but apparently deliberate parallel between Americans and Jesus is disturbing, to say the least.'"

Posted by Rosalinda at Rumor Mills News, March 9, 2003. [3] and [4] Sources cited include Washington Post op-ed, March 2, 2003; EIR article, "Separation of Church and Mental State Needed".

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According to Rosalinda Arizona Indymedia, the article "Bush, Bible, and Iraq" by Stan Crock in the March 7, 2003, edition of Newsweek "reviewed the Darbyite belief in a final battle of Armageddon, leading to the return of Christ and a thousand-year reign of peace, and noted that Bush's campaign speeches, written by fundie Michael Gerson, are peppered with secret messages to his fundamentalist constituents." [5] See John Nelson Darby for explanation of "Darbyite belief."

"'It's true that a President sending political messages to a key constituency isn't the same as a President basing a strategy on a messianic vision,' author Stan Crock wrote. 'But European geopolitical strategists with long ties to the U.S.--people who can't be dismissed as nut jobs--are convinced that religious beliefs are the primary motivation for the Bush administration.'

"While not fully agreeing with this assessment, Crock warned, 'The problem is that even as the President's words strengthen his ties to his political base at home, they corrode relations with important elites and publics abroad. Unless you understand the religious undercurrents at work in the current crisis,' he
concluded, 'you can't fully appreciate the resistance of America's allies as the U.S. tries to build a consensus for attacking a devilishly clever leader in Iraq.'"

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