A Charge To Keep, by W.H.D. Koerner

The above painting was proudly displayed in Governor George Bush’s office in Austin, Texas. As Crooks and Liars describes it:

In 1995, he issued a memo to his Texas staff, describing the painting, by W.H.D. Koerner in 1916, which he kept on his office wall. Bush told his aides:

The…painting is based upon the Charles Wesley hymn “A Charge to Keep I Have.” I am particularly impressed by the second verse of this hymn. The second verse goes like this: “To serve the present age, my calling to fulfill; O may it all my powers engage to do my Master’s will.”

This is our mission. This verse captures our spirit. […]

When you come into my office, please take a look at the beautiful painting of a horseman determinedly charging up what appears to be a steep and rough trail. This is us. What adds complete life to the painting for me is the message of Charles Wesley that we serve One greater than ourselves.

When one looks at the painting, you see a man on horseback — who actually looks a little like Bush — apparently leading a group of missionaries. It worked for Bush on a couple of levels: the title comes from one of the president’s favorite Methodist hymns, the man in the picture looks like him, and he related to the missionary work depicted in the painting.

He liked all of this so much, Bush used the title for his autobiography (which he admittedly did not write). He even brought the picture with him to Washington upon taking office.

The funny part is the truth about the painting: “Bush’s inspiring, proselytizing Methodist is in fact a silver-tongued horse thief fleeing from a lynch mob.”

Hard to think of a better metaphor for Thursday’s announcement that Bush has set forth an “aspirational goal,” part of “a general time horizon” for withdrawing US forces from Iraq. An event that John McSame likes to call “surrender.”

Not only did Bush pull the rug from beneath McSame’s feet, but Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki proceeded to roll him up inside it by telling the German magazine Der Spiegel that Obama’s plan for withdrawal of US troops for Iraq is just hunky dory with him:

“US presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes.”

Oh dear, how cold it must be for Saint John to be dangling there alone, twisting slowly, slowly in the wind…

“A Head of Our Times” —Terry Kruger

Yesterday, Barack Obama appeared with Indiana Senator (and veep prospect) Birch Bayh at a forum at Purdue University where he continued to articulate his national security vision. As The Indiana Star reported it:

… Obama argued that the Bush administration has not stayed “one step ahead of the threats of the 21st century.”

Naturally, this line caught my attention as it reflects the second line in my “About” Bio here at US:

“My first editorial column (mid ’70s) was called ‘Staying One Step Ahead of the Future,’ a mantram which I try to follow to this day.”

I’m by no means a big Bible reader, but I was probably influenced by the line in Proverbs 29:18 (perhaps Barack was too):

Where there is no vision, the people perish. . .

Not that vision, or at least the claim to one, is always a good thing. As Bob Woodward writes in “Bush at War”:

[T]he president was casting his mission and that of the country in the grand vision of God’s master plan.

This is the same Bush who told Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that God had told him to strike down Saddam. And we all know how that turned out. So in discussing vision in a political context it is imperative to distinguish between process and content, between means and ends. George Bush Senior admitted he wasn’t particularly good at “the vision thing,” but at least he had enough foresight not to invade Iraq when he had the opportunity.

As for oedipally challenged Junior, he too was likely influenced by the Proverb, but decided that the phrase immediately following “the people perish— ” “but he that keepeth the law, happy is he” wasn’t to his liking.

Launching a preventive war, which the Nuremberg Tribunal designated as the supreme war crime, violated the very international laws that the US did so much to champion in the ruinous wake of World War II.

As for a ‘vision’ of what awaits George and his cohorts after they leave office, I refer the reader to former prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi’s new book The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder.” And this quote from H.G. Wells:

A time will come when a politician who has willfully made war and promoted international dissension will be. . . surer of the noose than a private homicide.

Findings of the US Climate Change Science Program

While the vast amount of media coverage of Obama’s speech on national security today will focus on Iraq and Afghanistan, I would note what Obama himself says is the greatest single security threat to the US (and the world):

This immediate danger is eclipsed only by the long-term threat from climate change, which will lead to devastating weather patterns, terrible storms, drought, and famine. That means people competing for food and water in the next fifty years in the very places that have known horrific violence in the last fifty: Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. Most disastrously, that could mean destructive storms on our shores, and the disappearance of our coastline.

This is not just an economic issue or an environmental concern - this is a national security crisis. For the sake of our security - and for every American family that is paying the price at the pump - we must end this dependence on foreign oil. And as President, that’s exactly what I’ll do. Small steps and political gimmickry just won’t do. I’ll invest $150 billion over the next ten years to put America on the path to true energy security. This fund will fast track investments in a new green energy business sector that will end our addiction to oil and create up to 5 million jobs over the next two decades, and help secure the future of our country and our planet. We’ll invest in research and development of every form of alternative energy - solar, wind, and biofuels, as well as technologies that can make coal clean and nuclear power safe. And from the moment I take office, I will let it be known that the United States of America is ready to lead again.

Never again will we sit on the sidelines, or stand in the way of global action to tackle this global challenge.

Over four years ago, the Guardian leaked an internal report, ordered by THE senior Pentagon official, Andrew Marshall, aka “Yoda,” that made this very point. Money quote:

The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents.

Better late than never, I suppose….

McCain climbs Mount Flipflopapalooza (click it)

Johnnie Sidney McCain made his now famous infamous semi-annual monthly weekly pilgrimage to the pungent lava fields of Mount Flipflopapalooza today, and, donning the elaborate headgear of the soulless political automatons of the American archipelago, delivered the latest in an amazing eruption of ratfurker reversals, or in MSM public parlance, “flip flops.”

The undeniable conclusion a sane person arrives at? Teh only way you could flop around like this on the “transcendent issues of our time” is if your spine had been completely vaporized by. . . personal freewill choice. . . or you’re a living marionette controlled by the RNC.

Deep bow to the tireless Steve Benen @ The Carpetbagger Report, for tracking through this extraordinary pile of a politician’s effluvium, which will soon require EPA supervision and environmental impact statements, and for the many supporting story links as well.

Read’m and weep.

1. McCain thought Bush’s warrantless wiretap program circumvented the law; now he believes the opposite.

2. McCain insisted that everyone, even “terrible killers,” “the worst kind of scum of humanity,” and detainees at Guantanamo Bay, “deserve to have some adjudication of their cases,” even if that means “releasing some of them.” McCain now believes the opposite.

3. He opposed indefinite detention of terrorist suspects. When the Supreme Court reached the same conclusion, he called it “one of the worst decisions in the history of this country.”

4. In February, McCain reversed course on prohibiting waterboarding.

5. McCain favored closing the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay before he was against it.

6. When Barack Obama talked about going after terrorists in Pakistani mountains with Predators, McCain criticized him for it. He’s since come to the opposite conclusion.

[Read more →]

He may as well be a brother from another planet:
“Greetings; Take me as I am— not as you think I should be.”

The “new politics” of Barack Obama are leaving many Americans lost in his dust. Traditionally they may have been categorized— and understood themselves to be— “liberals,” “conservatives,” “progressives,” “Republicans,” “Democrats,” and “Independents.” Not so surprisingly, a sizable majority of MSM pundits also have no idea what Obama means by a “new politics.”

But it is proving altogether unsettling for these various sub-groups of the electorate, having been so thoroughly and completely indoctrinated in the “Left-Right-Centrist” Meme of politics as usual that they can’t see themselves defined any other way, to suddenly find Barack Obama is not following their calcified notions of what they think he should be, and how he should behave. A few weeks ago Karl Rove was all by his lonesome calling Obama “arrogant” and “elitist” (read: “uppity”); now the fickle mouth breathers of teh illiterate electorate are having to change their intellectual underwear almost every week, and they don’t like it one bit.

Yo Yo: What ever your old political notion was of Barack Obama, he is not definable that way, anymore.

It has nothing to do with the dissection of political decision making by attributing it to left, right, or center, and it never did. These crude demarcations of political ideology never really yielded a true picture of the real values that form the basis of the decisions of a Barack Obama, or any other politician. Obama’s recent decisions have the various segments of his supporters, and his opponents, attempting to hammer them into the increasingly meaningless meme of the old politics, by whining “He’s tacking teh the center,” “He’s betraying the left,” “He can’t be trusted,”  “He won’t go to Bagdad,” He’s just another liar,” “He’s a fundamentalist Christian!” blah, blah, blah— Because the MSM, and even some of the progressive blogosphere, still insist on seeing the political world through the grossly cynical but fading paradigm of the old politics. Thank you, Dick Bush; your legacy is upon us.

It is inevitable that a presidential candidate who actually has a living relationship with Christ will eventually make his way to the White House. The tacit and superficial toleration of the inconsequential religious lives of recent presidential candidates and presidents (save perhaps Jimmy Carter) is symptomatic of an even bigger problem, and it has left the electorate unprepared — even the secular and religiously educated intelligentsia— for what they might expect from an Obama presidency.

Many who were initially inspired by Obama’s leadership abilities and personal charisma haven’t really grokked what he’s been saying about his religious convictions, in his books or in his speeches. Those who have been paying attention, if they are agnostic secularists or even religious secularists, are flabbergasted and confused by his commitment to following the truth— as he sees it, not them or more specifically, their political creed— wherever it may take him. Why is anyone shocked they barely hesitate to turn and rend him, his pearls be damned.

There are numerous comments at places like Alternet and HufPo where one can read the whining superficial loyalty to Obama, now that he’s beginning to “refine” his opinions in ways that don’t nuzzle up to the secular left’s butt cheeks. A couple examples.

Liz Sidoti:

Obama also may be undercutting his claim to be a straight-shooting, new-politics candidate as he repeatedly breaks with his liberal base on various issues to aggressively move to appeal to the center of the electorate.

Liz can’t help but fall into the “center of the electorate” pit; it’s just too easy to assume Obama’s principles are as jello-like as any other politician’s; he can’t really believe his own decisions are based on real principles, can he??

I selected this comment from Susan of Texas at HufPo because she riffs on a “true believers” stereotype and father substitution, while throwing in a little personal peccadillo she harbors on authoritarianism:

He says everthing [sic] that is right, but what he actually does conforms with his authoritarian leanings. He is extremely competitive and ambitious; he wouldn’t be the nominee if he weren’t. He gew [sic] up without a father and substitutes his “heavenly father” to make up for the loss; he is a true believer. And we all know how dangerous they are.

Setting aside for the moment the lack of personal religious experience at the heart of so many of Obama’s critics both inside the democratic party and out, let’s focus on her notion that Obama says everything that’s “right, but. . .” Ask yourself why he says everything that’s right, if he really means none of it? The deeply ingrained cynicism of such a view is of course, lamentable, but ultimately it’s the insinuation that Obama is a shallow, lying deceiver just like Bush, Cheney, or Rove, that he has no real values at all, that smells up the place. Such a lack of discernment results from a completely debilitated ability to trust, and is the ultimate cost of cynicism.

“And we all know how dangerous they are.” Let the term “True believers” be defined here as anyone on the planet with a genuine spiritual awareness through their own personal religious experience. To every appearance, Obama is such a person. But “dangerous”? True believers in Jesus actually believe “Love your enemies” is a superior philosophy to “kill your enemies.” Hence, Obama’s commitment to withdraw from Iraq, and not launch American wars of choice.
And his recent decisions, which have caused a chorus of caterwauling among some of his supporters, probably the same ones who recoiled at the spiritual fervor Obama engendered in many of his other early supporters, are all positions that place the highest values of a truth-driven political prodigy right out there for all to marvel at, or complain about. Discuss.

“He g[r]ew up without a father and substitutes his “heavenly father” to make up for the loss; he is a true believer“

Non-religious minds can plop out such a thoughtless notion because it seems so logical. But anyone who truly knows God as a Father does so, not to fill the physical void of an absent or inadequate earthly father, but because they have already learned the value of such a divine Father through their experiences with an earthly father figure. Every child is wholly dependent on his parents and the home life for all his early concepts of everything intellectual, social, moral, and even spiritual; all that he can first know of either human or divine relationships comes from the family. Obama’s book, Dreams From My Father, makes it reasonably clear that most of that guidance came from a loving Grandfather, Grandmother, Father, however briefly, Step-father, and Mother all of whom, to my mind, must have done a superb job, based on what little we can observe of Obama’s spiritual relationship with God as a Father.

America’s political ship has steamed out of the sheltered bays of established old-politics tradition, and has begun its perilous cruise upon the high seas of evolutionary destiny. The only real question is, does America want Obama— a genuine religionist— the “real deal” at the helm, or McCain— a genuine fraud. As never before in our history, the soul of America had better carefully scrutinize the charts of our highest shared values, and therein find the trust the new captain will need from us if he is to steer us true.

Unity— Not Uniformity!!

Photo credit: Crooks & Liars

Whether its tax cuts for the rich, Iraq, Iran, lobbyist love, opposition to the new bipartisan G.I. Bill– even torture– John McCain continues to morph into George W. Bush.

Congressional Quarterly reports that in 2007, “Maverick” McCain supported Bush with his Senate vote 95% of the time, and thus far in 2008, a perfect 100%.

The political liability for doing so was demonstrated yesterday when a planned Bush fundraiser for McCain at the Phoenix Convention Center had to be canceled because not enough people were expected to show. Instead, it was moved to a private house, well out of range of those nasty recording devices called cameras, which would have put the two in the same frame.

You can run but you can’t hide, McSame.

MoveOn has more.

Last week in a speech before Israel’s parliament, The Knesset, George W. Bush implied that Barack Obama was a terraist appeaser for his willingness to talk to evil doers like Iran and Syria. His foreign policy clones, John McSame and his Svengali adviser, Joe LIEberman immediately piled on, citing Barack’s inexperience and naiveté.

One has to wonder how they feel now that its been revealed that Israel is actively pursuing a peace agreement with Syria. And with Hamas, via the government of Egypt.

Or that Qatar has negotiated a deal between the government of Lebanon and the terraist Hizbollah to end its takeover of Beirut, on terms quite favorable to Hizbollah.

How about the vital role the government of Iran had in brokering a cease fire with the Shi’ites in the two month old explosion of violence in Basra and Sadr City in Iraq?  Not to mention its previous help in dislodging the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Then there’s the fact that the Bush Administration has negotiated an end to the nuclear weapons programs in of Libya and that charter member of the Axis of Evil, North Korea. And continues negotiations with Iran to reduce the overall level of violence in Iraq. Can you spell hypocrisy?

What are the war mongers to do, now? Well, they can always attack Iran before the election, capitalizing on the historical reluctance of the American people to change war horses in mid stream. Seemed to work in the 2004 elections.

I mean, wouldn’t you want an PTSD crazed experienced war hero like McSame, who did his level best to bomb the Vietnamese into the Stone Age, in the role of Commander in Chief? As opposed to, say, a wimp like Obama who thinks the willingness to talk is a sign of strength and not weakness?

To accept the Obama approach to foreign policy is to reject the neocons‘ glorious vision of the New American Century. How can the USA realize her manifest destiny to dominate the world (and its diminishing natural resources) during this unique unipolar moment in history if we allow other countries to play anything more than a supporting role in remaking that world in our own triumphant image?

To accept an Obama presidency would be a rejection of Biblical prophecy, at very best a delay in the apocalypse and the rapture! Wasn’t the US founded in part to destroy Islam, as John McCain’s (now rejected) “spiritual guide” Rod Parsley maintains ?

I’ll leave it the 20th century bard, Bob Dylan, to describe the moral and diplomatic bankruptcy of the last 7 1/2 years of the McSame approach to international diplomacy:

There’s no success like failure
and. . . failure is no success at all.

For weeks on end, Senator John McCain, the valiant warrior/hero of our last interminable war, has borne the torturous brunt of the MSM’s obsession with his plans for continuing the Iraq War indefinitely, our worsening economic catastrophuck, and his recent spate of “senior moments,” which they insinuate reveals his funda-mental inability to understand the dynamics of the Middle East.

The senior senator from Arizona recently returned from Iraq and Israel, where, on a day that saw at least sixty-one Iraqis relinquish the freedoms of their new-found democracy for cozy coffins, also witnessed McCain being mercilessly harangued by a press core that trained observers thought more closely resembled the Spanish Inquisition than a bunch of talking point pussies. (See Video)

John McCain suffers a brutal grilling by agents of the MSM.

Just how long the seventy-one year old McCain will be subjected to the “comfy chair” of media intimidation is anyone’s guess. There is wide-spread speculation that such harsh interrogation techniques by the press are a direct result of the government’s own relaxed attitude towards increasingly harsh and inhumane interrogation of anyone it suspects of, well, anything.

God how the dead men
Grin by the wall.
Watching the fun
Of the Victory Ball.

—Alfred Noyes

John and Cindy McCain, (who was not actually there but sent a clone), looking appropriately Hasidic at the Western Wall

Michael D. Shear, WaPo wrote:

JERUSALEM — What was supposed to be a somber visit by Sen. John McCain to the Western Wall this morning was marred by an unruly mob of Israeli photographers, police and tourists who threw punches at each other as they engulfed the Republican presidential candidate.

McCain was not hurt, but appeared rattled by the spasm of violence as he began a second day of meetings with high-level Israeli officials as part of a congressional trip to the Middle East and Europe.

The crush of people surrounded McCain (Ariz.) after he and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.) briefly touched the towering wall at the base of the Temple Mount, where the Second Temple stood until its destruction nearly two thousand years ago. The senators placed notes in the cracks between the ancient stones, a common tradition. McCain declined through a spokesman to reveal what his note said.

We’re not going to tell you how we obtained the text of that note, suffice it to say that many Jews still consider the placing of such prayers to be desecration of the holy. McCain produced the note from his left suit coat pocket, and with a series of awkward looking jabs, he finally forced the note into a tiny crevice of the ancient wall.

Surprisingly, the note was not penned in McCain’s jerky scrawl, but appeared to be a first draft, printed off the computer in crisp, orderly, 18 point justified type. The note:

My Dear Western Wall Friends    Friend,

As you know, I’m the Republican nominee for president of the United States, and unlike my opponents Hillary Clinton, a woman, or Barack Hussein Obama, a black man, I’m ready from day one to lead the fight for what ever, for ever. But today I need your help, dear friend. (I feel like I’m talking to a wall , ha ha!) Some of my good Jewish friends say you are more than just a frakin’ stone wall venerated by a superstitious people. If this is so, I’d like you to know— not just how important it is to me that I’m the next president— but also the staggeringly huge sum of money I need to continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and, more importantly, to wage new wars against Syria and Iran, and probably North Korea.

Oh, remember that great song, Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran! Well it isn’t just a great song my friend, it’s my ticket to another historic war presidency! (Nothing changes an enemy’s behavior like bombs, my friend, and lots of them; remember I’ve personally dropped my share of bombs on evil men, women, and children, and I’d like to think you’re the kind of wall that would want to support my willingness to continue this important attack against the ever present threats to our national security.)

So my friend, I’m going to need to recruit some seriously enormous amounts of young cannon fodder, in order to wage more wars in the global fight against terrorism, in order to keep my country safe from our many enemies who hate our freedom, the radical Islamist extremist terrorists, the Iranians, the North Koreans, the Syrians, and our future enemies, the Chinese commies, the Russian commies, and, well, you know, anybody that won’t see things our way.

If you could grant me this grotesque amount of blood and capital, my friend, I will ensure that the war against a world full of terrorists is fought intelligently, with endless patience and resolve, using all the toxic instruments of national power and death I can get my hands on. And I will lead this fight with the understanding that to impinge more than we already have on the rights of our own citizens, or to further restrict the freedoms for which our nation stands will be done only as necessary, because to do so is to give terrorists the victory they seek.

In closing my prayer, let me say that John McCain believes that just as America must be prepared to meet and prevail against any adversary on every field of battle, we must also engage and prevail against them on the battleground of ideas. So if you have any great ideas, please pass them along to my advisers. In so doing, we can and must deprive terrorists of the converts they seek and teach the doctrine of hatred and despair.

Your old friend in the White House,

John McCain