Have to give him credit on this one. Too bad he'd never deliver such a devastating conclusion in the print magazine.

Do I detect Joe Klein channeling the mighty Atrios there???

Maybe all this bloggy stuff is finally rubbing off on him...

Nope. Nothing new from Klein. Still a hack.

He's failing to distinguish between religious extremism and healthy/normal faith.

Which fails to address real issues, paints people as black/white, atheist/faithful, and plays right into RNC talking points.

It will later allow him to bludgeon Democratic candidates for merely mentioning their faith in conjunction with support for secular government. (I'll bet dollars to donuts that's exactly what he does, if he hasn't already started.) He'll probably call Democrats phony for doing so, and call himself impartial for it.

He still lacks substance, still phoning it in and cashing paychecks. Still a hack.

He's also edicted (is that a word?) that it won't be long before the entire world speaks Korean.

Big whoop. Joe Klein has spent the last 20 odd years cozying up and rationalizing the right wing. He, and others like Anna Marie Cox ought to be castigated for the pathetic weak-kneed clones that they are.

Reagan = lousy small-minded President.
God - I'm an agnostic.

Tom

He's failing to distinguish between religious extremism and healthy/normal faith.

Please. Do us all a huge favor and make that distinction for us.

Jan

What Reagan has to do with god is that he is the first president that I know of who used the name of god with such hypocrisy and to such advantage.

This was a guy who treated all his children shabbily and adored only his wife ...er...the second one that is.  He could wax poetic about god and country and people swooned.  He talked the talk and to this day has never in any meaningful way been called to account for not walking the walk.

He started using god as a Weapon of Mass Delusion, and Bush has weaponized it

Jan

What do you mean by this?

JFK didn't exactly seem like a holy-holy type in his private life but he made many pious visits to Catholic Mass ( I assume making his Confession while there).

 So he went to mass, which you call "pious."  Going to mass is what Catholics do; would you call any visit to a church "pious?"  If not, what distiguished JFK's visits for you? 

Although I personally believe that confessing to a person is ridiculous, I wonder why you bring it up as a value judgement against someone who did things wrong in his personal life.  If one has nothing to confess, why go to confession? 

What would have been hypocritical would have been for JFK to say he didn't GO to confession because he had nothing to confess (because god was whispering in his ear on a daily basis and directing his every move), which is pretty much what George says to us every time he gets a chance.

What JFK didn't do, was wear his religion on his sleeve to SuperGlue nonthinking Americans to his cause.   Be specific.  What type of hypocrisy did JFK use to get himself elected, or to further his cause. 

If your only point is JFK went to church and also committed adultery, I guess we could go back to the beginning of time.  I am talking about USING one's religion in a hypocritical way, like being pro-life for ostensibly religious reasons, and then presiding over death and destruction that you have wrought without any regret. . .Oh, and then saying that god told you to do it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Jan

That was deep.  How about an answer?

Jan

As opposed to last weeks Democratic debate which can be summarized with:

"Defeat, withdrawal, pullout, defeat, lost, pullout, lost, defeat, defeat, defeat, defeat, lost, withdrawal, and, oh by the way, we lost so it's time to get out now.

or we never should have gone in

You sure? Are you absolutely, positively certain we have no interest in the massacre of citizens by governments and in the invasion of neighboring countries such as in The Sudan today, in Bosnia yesterday, and Germany in a time past?

The bunghead that America decided would be a dandy president (or at least many did besides the Supremes) falsified the reasons for invasion, tried to remold Iraq into his vision of America while making a grab for its oil. Bush has spent the lives of Americans as carelessly as he squandered the national wealth. That may not be a great model of good world citizenship. But neither is strict isolationism.

Best, Terry

My take on this is that if you read Machiavelli, read Marx ("opiate of the masses"), and listen to Orwell's character Moses the Raven in Animal Farm, they all back up my idea that many politicians have cynically used religion. Reagan was not the first. I picked JFK as one of thousands of politicians over the centuries who I believe did this and are still doing it, right up to Karl Rove.

You don't have to agree, but I must admit to being taken aback at first by the vehemence of the response from someone I agree with 99% of the time. Maybe we're looking at this topic from different perspectives.

Tom

Sorry,  I was feeling particularly protective of JFK.  I had just read a piece about the new book, "Brothers" about how RFK was convinced the job was done by the CIA, and the sadness of the whole thing just came back.  I still disagree with what seemed to me as conflating JFK's going to mass with Bush's invocation of god every time he gets a chance, but I was a little over the top!  Apologies!

Jan

So make your case that invading Iraq in March 2003 was a brilliant idea. You and the other 7 or 8 people on the planet who agree with you will be thrilled.

Unbelievable!

Tom

In your 7 or 8 who agree are you including the duly elected president of Iran?  He has the most to gain after BushCheney's friends.

Jan

make your case that invading Iraq in March 2003 was a brilliant idea.

You might first make your case that anyone said any such thing.

Then you could tell us about why you think it is a fine thing for a psychopath to slaughter enemies, including the use of poison gas, or alternatively why you think it is mighty fine for American pilots to be shot at with a bounty offered for their capture.

You might add why you think it was just dandy to starve infants while consolidating Saddam's power and enriching the fellow with a boycott that did wonders for the corrupt outside Iraq as well.

I can hardly wait for you to address issues of substance unless you are like Bush and his cohorts who can think only in slogans and continue to misrepresent the views of others.

Best, Terry

We cannot just simply set a date and implement a policy of phased withdrawal.

Why not precisely?

When people are shooting at you and want to kill you, maybe it is a good idea to leave. We are part of the problem rather than the solution.

What sort of benchmarks would you like to see? How many American lives and how much American treasure would you like to spend for these benchmarks? Do you have any doubt the situation will continue to deteriorate while folks are working on those benches? Or do you think there is progress of some kind?

Best, Terry

So every country in the world that has a despicable ruler should be invaded unilaterally by the US

If you think there is something wrong with Mexicans invading this country with its despicable ruler, just spit it out. Sure hope they can get somebody good in, since you guys aren't willing or able.

I don't recall anyplace saying that the U.S. should invade any country. What I asked you to do was address the questions since you have all the answers. Should I have typed slower?

The world is a complex place. Simpletons like Bush with easy answers may not be best suited to be The Decider or Commander Guy. Others who can do no more than toss slogans around may not have all the answers either.

Best, Terry

there needs to be some semblance of a functioning government before we can leave.

But then you see there will not be a functioning government until after we leave. So we stay there forever you think?

As with Tito in Yugoslavia, it was only terror that held the disparate parts of Iraq together. Once we removed the terror, the result was bound to be anarchy. In attempting to put the pieces back together again, we must fail unless we are willing and able to substitute the same level of terror and only for as long as it continues.

Joe Biden's answer to partition Iraq is fine except that is hardly clear how we might be able to do that. We are going into the business of ethnic cleansing?

Best to leave and let the natives sort things out as best they can I think. We have never really been good at the terror business and not overly good at even the democracy business. Chicago is testament to the latter.

Best, Terry

You get a "10" in my book.  No one wants to believe it, but it happened.  Read some of my old blogs and follow the links.  It happened! 

Those who fomented this voter fraud rely on all of us being afraid to admit that we believe our government has been taken over by fascists.    "Let's make fun of the tin-foil hat people!" 

Too bad some of us  them are right. 

Jan