Morning Report 1/21/05
Words of the Profit

To the surprise of no one, George W. Bush officially extended his crusade for four more years yesterday by urging the entire planet to answer his altar call. He vowed to extend throughout the world what he defines as "liberty."

Perhaps the most realistic assessment of his performance came from Takeshi Igarashi, a Japanese professor who specializes in U.S. politics. The Washington Post, rounding up world reaction, gave us this bit from Tokyo University prof Igarashi:

It was very clear the speech was from a wartime president. It was more like a speech by a pastor than a president. . . .

But he didn't mention any actual policies at all. He cried out his ideal but shied away from facing problems that lie there. I actually think he may not have any measures to deal with the issues, that he is lost and still trying to find ways.

Even in expressing his regime's "ideal," Bush missed his own point. For example, the POTUS read these words from his speechwriters and handlers:

For as long as whole regions of the world simmer in resentment and tyranny—prone to ideologies that feed hatred and excuse murder, violence will gather and multiply in destructive power, and cross the most defended borders, and raise a mortal threat.

Those are strange words from a guy who was the hangingest governor in U.S. history and whose unjustified invasion of Iraq has created a new generation of young jihadists.

The Bush regime, while continuing to pursue unjustified and excessive profits for its corporate pals, tries to pawn off on the public a comic-book view of history, one in which simplistic daydreams become real distractions. Bristling with hubris, Bush's handlers are beginning to believe their own hype. Otherwise, they wouldn't have had Bush say this:

America's vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one. From the day of our founding, we have proclaimed that every man and woman on this earth has rights and dignity and matchless value because they bear the image of the maker of heaven and earth. Across the generations, we have proclaimed the imperative of self-government, because no one is fit to be a master, and no one deserves to be a slave.

What country is he talking about? Embedded into the papers signed by the Founding Fathers was the strict rule that slaves were in fact not full citizens. A war was fought over that, remember? That war is still being fought.

As for "our deepest beliefs": Whose beliefs? He means his beliefs. I thought he wanted to spread "liberty." Guess not.

Other Americans are also befuddled by what's going on with this regime. But some of them, like Californian Mike Stutz, are trying to understand the people who helped Bush eke out the narrow victory last November that the regime seeks to portray as a sweeping mandate.

Stutz was a supervising producer of the Showtime series Family Business (I missed the last couple of episodes after my pornograph broke). He and his cabal are reaching out to the red states with their Bullets & Bibles project. As Stutz explains it:

We're Blue-staters who would very much like to understand what we've been told that we don't get about the Red states.

Over the next several months, several of us have decided to raise money for a good cause and to expand our horizons in regards to the beliefs of many of our fellow Americans. In order to raise these funds and our awareness we are going to:

• Each read the entire Bible from front to back and review it for its potential as a law book and classroom guide for American citizens both young and old.

• Learn to fire high-powered weapons.

• Donate all the money we raise to Planned Parenthood.

With the help of Jesus (see photo above), they're looking for sponsors as they learn to read the Bible and shoot—kind of like sponsoring a stretch of road, but this is a highway to heaven.

Apparently Stutz has been caught up in Bush's religious vision of the future: endless war. As the president noted in his inaugural address:

The great objective of ending tyranny is the concentrated work of generations. The difficulty of the task is no excuse for avoiding it.

In other words, "ending tyranny" is not like fulfilling one's National Guard obligations. See you at the shooting range.