Bush’s pathetic words

Here’s what the president said Monday night:

“The safety of America depends on the outcome of the battle in the streets of Baghdad”

Here’s an exerpt from a well-written post by Robert J. Elisberg: 

Actually, no, it doesn’t. Anyone who thinks our safety “depends” on street fighting in Baghdad has a piss-poor, pathetic view of America and should be so ashamed that they stay in their room in disgrace. Of course, if they think that little of America, they probably are already hiding in their rooms.

Elisberg continues:

We’ve reached the point where the White House has become a scene out of the “Wizard of Oz.” A disembodied head blowing smoke and making ominous pronouncements, while begging us not to look at the little man behind the curtain.

The words are fantasy, the reality befuddled.

Here’s some more examples from Bush’s 9/11/06 speech, all of them equally pathetic:

We’re adapting to stay ahead of the enemy, and we are carrying out a clear plan to ensure that a democratic Iraq succeeds.  [Clear plan? Could you please remind us of the terms of this “clear plan”]

We’re helping Iraq’s unity government grow in strength and serve its people.  [It’s getting so good, that our military personnel are bringing their spouses and children over there to vacation while the soldiers are off-duty.  Oh, wait.  No,  I was thinking about Hawaii.]

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America is unprepared for the Apocalypse

According to The Onion, America deserves an "F" for "end-of-the-world preparedness." "More than "87 percent of Americans are unprepared to protect themselves from even the most basic world-ending scenarios, according to a study released Monday by the nonpartisan doomsday think-tank The Malthusian Institute." Despite "more than ample warning" for the most…

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Use of “fat” fashion models causes a ruckus in Australia

Here are some of the bad things that can happen to you if you are a fashion designer who dares to use non-anorexic models in your fashion show. Putting “fatties” in her show (woman who were sized 8 – 12) actually got designer MaraJoara blacklisted by Vogue Australia.  Here’s coverage…

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Sizing up Karen Armstrong’s Spiral Staircase

A friend recently handed me a copy of Karen Armstrong’s 2005 Bestseller, The Spiral Staircase. 

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Armstrong entered the convent in 1962 at the age of 17.  These were very difficult years for her, due to the rigid religious dogma that permeated her training.  She ultimately renounced her vows at the age of 24.  Armstrong has written numerous books on religion since that time, focusing on all of the major monotheistic religions.  She makes regular appearances on NPR. The Spiral Staircase was Armstrong’s account of her own struggles with regard to her personal beliefs. 

As I read passages of The Spiral Staircase, I was intrigued by my own difficulty of categorizing Armstrong. I wondered why she would cling to traditional notions of worship at the point when, intellectually, she had already reduced “God” to a all-but-abstract principle.  Though she seems to be a fence sitter, she’s firmly there.  She refuses to allow any atheist or theist knock her off.  See, again, how should one describe her? Is she a Christian, a sympathizer of Islam, an agnostic, an atheist, a Buddhist or something else?  She admits that she was, at one time in “an agnostic, perhaps an atheist.”  (Page 272).  Is she now really a freelance monotheist?: 

I usually describe myself, perhaps flippantly, as a freelance monotheist I draw sustenance from all three of the faiths of Abraham.  I can’t see any one of them as having the monopoly of truth, any one of them as superior to any of

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