The Vatican Politics and Secular Politics----Like pees in a pod.

The same diplomat who helped secure the President's election in Florida is now the new hired hand involved in saving Jr's face in the middle east. Blunt assessment? I don't think so.

Just days ago President Bush was quoted as saying he would "stay the course" if the only ones who agree with him were Laura his wife and the family pooch. I wonder which one bolted for the door first?

What I have found these past three years of becoming more worldly in my reading and study is how remarkably similar church politics and American politics are. The officials have the impossible task of separating their own egos from the issues confronting their administration of duties. The main difference as I see it in eventual outcome is the church has the Holy Spirit to guide it and keep the compass pointed in the right direction... despite it's leaders failings. In politics however, from time to time, learned men must do for government what the elected leaders are incapable of. James Baker has proven to be such a man time after time. Yes...saving the face for the leaders while saving the bacon for the electorate.

And why would any sane person who has studied the world events these past five years or so not expect a "James Baker" to come to bat as the cleanup hitter. Too much is at stake to entrust the future of our nation...our world to one mans ego. Yes "one man" and a few parrots who sit on his shoulder egging him on.

James Baker will now find a way that makes "cut and run" work. It will be spiced up with just the right flavoring to go down the voters throats... while not stinking to horribly in the process. The timing will be just right so that it appears world events have ordained the change. And Iraq will probably be downsized whether the country can stand on it's own two feet or not. I have said all along it is ALL about politics.

Iraq has become the Republican parties lodestone. Pulling it's collective members heads below water while sucking the vital energy from its core body. And now with the midterm elections upon them, as I predicted months ago the Iraq war would be a deciding factor this November. Granted, I was unaware of the triple wammy that would send three more shells thundering below the waterline of the rapidly sinking Republican ship. Intelligence reports, a book, and now a scandal. I had expected the Iraq situation itself to be the single deciding factor. And I still believe it would have been.

G.W. Bush is arrogant and stubborn to a fault. We have North Korea calling his bluff yesterday and joining the world's nuclear weapons club. We have Iran about to do the same. We have Syria and Iran launching defacto attacks against our ally Israel. And our President refuses to talk with any of them until they play marbles "his" way. Well Mr. President...there are more than just one marble games going on.

It doesn't make any difference to him what our own Generals, world leaders, or two thirds of the American people feel. It is George's way or the highway. Well it sounds like Laura and the pooch have finally done what none of the rest of the world has been able to. Get him to privately admit he was wrong and pursue another strategy. After all...it is not too late. And....who would ever be so gullible to suggest that this "Baker" plan has not been endorsed by Jr. before an artilce like this hit the news stands?

Yes we still have the Islamist's raging their unholy war against mankind. And yes we have a broken country we still need to fix. But most of all we need a leadership that has a workable solution on the secular front where ego's don't determine the outcome. Or at least not too much of it. The war agaist evil will be won one heart at a time, as satan never had a chance to begin with. Will there be spiritual casualties? Most certainly.

I say give GW back his "face" Let him save it and his dignity. We all have faults at least as equal to his. We are all human. Until after the November elections, we should be comforted by this articles release. The Vatican does the exact same thing. They release an article months before it's fruit will be apparent to all the faithful. The Holy spirit turns the keel much like James Baker and crew are currently doing. And the world goes on. And that my friends is my take on the matter.

We should all pray for our President. He has plenty on his plate and a job that still needs done.

Thank you Mr. Baker. And now it is time for Yodi and Sadies morning walk. And for me to ponder another day's events.

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Monday, October 9, 2006

Baker hints new Iraq war plan is needed
Bush loyalist also suggests talks with Iran, Syria

By DAVID E. SANGER
THE NEW YORK TIMES

WASHINGTON -- James Baker, the Republican co-chairman of a bipartisan panel reassessing Iraq strategy for President Bush, said Sunday that he expected the panel would depart from Bush's repeated calls to "stay the course," and he strongly suggested that the White House enter direct talks with countries it has so far kept at arm's length, including Iran and Syria.

"I believe in talking to your enemies," he said in an interview on ABC's "This Week," noting that he made 15 trips to Damascus, Syria, while serving Bush's father as secretary of state.

"It's got to be hard-nosed; it's got to be determined," Baker said. "You don't give away anything, but in my view, it's not appeasement to talk to your enemies."

Bush had refused to deal with Iran until last spring, when he declared that the United States would join negotiations with the country if it suspended enriching nuclear fuel. Iran has so far refused. Contacts with both Syria and North Korea have also been limited.

But Baker's "Iraq Study Group," created in March, with the encouragement of some members of Congress, to come up with new ideas on Iraq strategy, already has talked with some representatives of Iran and Syria about Iraq's future, he said.

His comments Sunday offered the first glimmer of what other members of his study group, in interviews over the past two weeks, have described as an effort to find a politically face-saving way for Bush to slowly extract the United States from the war.

"I think it's fair to say our commission believes that there are alternatives between the stated alternatives, the ones that are out there in the political debate, of 'stay the course' and 'cut and run,' " Baker said.

He rejected a rapid withdrawal from Iraq, saying that that would only invite Iran, Syria and "even our friends in the gulf" to fill the power vacuum.

He also dismissed, as largely unworkable, a proposal by Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, the ranking Democrat on the Senate foreign relations committee, to decentralize Iraq and give the country's three major sectarian groups, the Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis, their own regions, distributing oil revenue to all. Baker said he had concluded "there's no way to draw lines" among those three groups in Iraq's major cities, where members of all of Iraq's ethnic groups are intermingled. According to White House officials and commission members, Baker has been talking with Bush and his national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, on a regular basis. Those colleagues say he is unlikely to issue suggestions the president has not tacitly approved in advance.

"He's a very loyal Republican, and you won't see him go against Bush," said one colleague of Baker's, who asked not to be identified because the study group is keeping a low profile before it formally issues any recommendations. "But he feels that the yearning for some responsible way out which would not damage American interests is palpable, and the frustration level is exceedingly high."

At 76, Baker still enjoys a reputation as one of Washington's craftiest bureaucratic operators and as a trusted adviser of the Bush family, which has enlisted his help for some of its deepest crises, including Bush's effort to win the vote recount in Florida after the 2000 presidential election. Baker served as White House chief of staff, as well as secretary of state, under President George H.W. Bush.

Andrew Card, Bush's former chief of staff, acknowledged recently that he twice had suggested that Baker would be a good replacement for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Bush rejected that advice, and some associates of Baker say they do not believe he is interested in taking the job at his age, which could put him in the position of having to implement the recommendations his study group makes, expected to come after the November elections.

Those proposals, which he has said must be both bipartisan and unanimous, could very well give Bush some political latitude, should he decide to adopt strategies that he had once rejected, such as setting deadlines for a phased withdrawal of American forces.

Given his extraordinary loyalty to the Bush family -- Baker was present Saturday at the formal christening of a new aircraft carrier named for the first President Bush -- it was notable Sunday that Baker also joined the growing number of Republicans who are trying to create some space between themselves and the White House.

Sunday, on "This Week," Baker was shown a video clip of the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. John Warner of Virginia, who said last week that Iraq was "drifting sideways" and who urged consideration of a "change of course" if the Iraqi government cannot restore order in two or three months. The American ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, has offered a similar warning to the current Iraqi government.

Asked if he agreed with that timetable, Baker said: "Yes, absolutely. And we're taking a look at other alternatives."

Baker has in the past been critical of how the Bush administration conducted post-invasion operations, and he has not backed away from statements he made in his 1995 memoir, in which he described opposing the ouster of Saddam Hussein after the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

In the book, he said he feared that might lead to an Iraq civil war.

"BUMFIGHTS" .....a unholy departure from civilized behavior

Last night while Yodi, Sadie, and myself were comfortably layed out on the couch watching 60 Minutes, along with the bob woodward report I was interested in viewing was a stark reminder of an event that occured in Florida in which young teenagers and men beat some homeless men in acts of randem violence. Today I decided to do some research on this matter. It appears the acts were copycat in a sense that a hideous film depicting this as sport has been marketed and watched by many of our nations youth. Does this surprise you?

With growing fervor... government officials, merchants and the media have broadcast a message of intolerance that labels homeless people as unwanted outcasts. When the pillars of society vilify homeless people as a subhuman minority synonymous with urban blight, and when city officials pass laws aimed at banishing people living on the street, an extremely dangerous message is sent out that this is one hated minority that it is safe to attack.

The close connection between a society that disparages homeless people as less than human, and acts of violence and hate crimes against street people, was displayed for all to see on the streets of downtown Los Angeles in mid-August.

On August 16, 2005, two young men who told police officers that they had just watched the "Bumfights" video, went on a rampage on the streets of Los Angeles and savagely beat two sleeping homeless people with baseball bats. Ernest Adams, an elderly homeless man who was well liked and widely respected even by business owners and a U.S. appellate court judge who knew him well, was hospitalized in critical condition with severe head wounds.

The Los Angeles Times reported that William Orantes and Justin Brumfield, who were arrested on suspicion of attempted murder, told police they had watched the "Bumfights" DVD and were inspired to do some "bum bashing" of their own.

The National Coalition for the Homeless [NCH] has been campaigning against the "Bumfights" DVDs for more than three years, and has warned that retailers who sell the shocking video are inciting acts of violence against homeless people. Currently--- there are at least six different DVDs being sold which show homeless people being savagely assaulted, demeaned, and injured.

Los Angeles Police Chief Willam Bratton said, "This was a vicious, cowardly crime that even veteran officers such as myself find hard to believe."

The general public is largely unaware of the extent of this growing wave of brutal crimes and murders committed against homeless people across the country. The National Coalition for the Homeless has carefully documented 156 murders and 386 violent acts committed against homeless people in the period from 1999-2004.

One of the most disturbing aspects of these hate crimes is that none of them -- no matter how shocking or cruel -- have ever sparked the kind of high-level public awareness and outrage that hate crimes against other minorities have evoked. Homeless people are often attacked in dark alleys or desolate areas -- and this alarming rise in hate crimes remains hidden in that same darkness.

But, for homeless people, the reality of these savage assaults and murders is not hidden in darkness at all. It is a well-known danger of living on the streets. The Los Angeles Times reported that the mid-August beatings of Ernest Adams and Gerald Henry have spread fear and alarm in the homeless community there.

Our society has done something even worse than allow countless human beings to live in horrible conditions of neglect and poverty on city streets. It also has forced them to live a life of real and constant danger... exposed and vulnerable to the threat of deadly assaults and deliberate hate crimes, 24 hours a day.

The NCH has documented that these acts of violence have occurred in 140 U.S. cities in 39 states. News of these assaults may be little known by the general public; but nearly every person living on the streets, in every one of those 140 cities where homeless people have been attacked, knows full well that they, too, could be brutally assaulted as they sleep, alone and unprotected.

In an effort to explain why he was involved in this activity, one of the culprits who was caught after beating to death one unfortunate fella labeled the activity..."entertainment".

May "GOD" have mercy on his soul.