Our accidental president, unfettered by office or responsibility, can now let his fundy freak flag fly:
According to a report from Sarah Posner in Mother Jones, George W. Bush is scheduled to give the keynote address at an upcoming fundraiser for the Messianic Jewish Bible Institute, an organization devoted to converting Jews to Christianity in order to bring about the second coming of Christ.
Speaking as an aging Bar-Mitzvah-boy-card-carrying-atheist-Jew, I am not going to indulge in profanity, hyperbolic insult, or the ridicule and public shaming that should attend any such gob-smackingly awesome arrogance and ignorance. I’ll simply invite the man who is currently to be found in position one, two, or three on the Worst President Ever tables to kindly self-copulate with an oxidized farm implement.
I’ll add just this. You can tell a great deal about someone from the company he keeps:
Bush will follow last year’s keynote speaker, Glenn Beck.
Well — one more thing. Glenn Beck? F**k him too. Or rather — when the need arises, may he be attended by urologists who failed mohel class.
And (“Our weapons are…Three!) really the last one. I can’t leave this story without noting that the grift is strong on this one. Hearing the man Charles Pierce has forever dubbed our C+ Augustus speak will set the rubes back from a C-note to $100,000. That’s a lot of simoleons, enough so that I am inevitably reminded of my co-religionist Jesus’s almost Elizabeth-Warren-like view of the banksters. But I suppose I just lack that necessary faith that would turn handing over that kind of cash to those kinds of people.
(PS — our weapons are 4! — how’s that “why don’t Jews vote Republican” inquiry going, guys?)
Image: Piero della Francesca, The Torture of the Jew, between 1452 and 1466
Baud
FTFY
c u n d gulag
I read about this earlier.
‘Bush, the group says, will “share his passion for setting people free.”’
Yes, if they were black or brown, his passion for setting people ‘free” from:
Life.
Health.
Remaining whole, as a human being.
From living in the town and country you were raised.
And if you were white and wealthy, if not “free,” then ‘freer,” when it came to taxes!
As for “Rabbi Jonathan Bernis, a leading Messianic Jew and televangelist” – what a GREAT GRIFT!
Jesus-grifters, especially Jewish converts, do much, much better, than even the richest Rabbi’s!!!
So, Rabbi Jonathan Bernis, enjoy the pig-picking, and the flounder, lobsters, crabs, clams – and, especially, the baked oysters with bacon!
BACON!
You, are truly now free, Rabbi Jonathan Bernis!
Free – and rich!!!
cleek
if Beck and Bush are who they want to speak, i’m not sure the problem is with the speakers… there might be a problem with the listeners, too
KG
Look, if you keep talking shit about W then Jeb(!!!!) might not run. And if Jeb(!!!!) doesn’t run, then we only have Christie, Paul, and Rubio to mock. Why do you hate popcorn?
Elizabelle
This truly should be illustrated with one of W’s paintings.
Excuse me, make that 43.
Tom Levenson
@Elizabelle:
Nasty piece of work though I am, I just can’t bring myself to be that cruel to this readership.
Belafon
Playing God is not just for geneticists.
schrodinger's cat
Even Bush had the good sense, not to diss the kittehs, while running for office.
max
can now let his fundy freak flag fly:
I originally read that as ‘can now let his furby freak flag fly’ -> ‘GW?
Into furries? Into Furbys? That makes sense somehow.’an organization devoted to converting Jews to Christianity in order to bring about the second coming of Christ.
‘No man shall know the hour or the day.’ Anyways, if we’re doing the whole Relevations thing, then by trying to bring out the reign of the Anti-Christ (that’s the part you have to do *before* you get the Jesus with a sword bit), so you are basically in league with said Anti-Christ.
Hearing the man Charles Pierce has forever dubbed our C+ Augustus speak will set the rubes back from a C-note to $100,000.
Truly the Whore of Babylon is out and about.
how’s that “why don’t Jews vote Republican” inquiry going, guys?
Hey! They don’t do that shit in New York!
max
[‘Because, uh, you know, voters.’]
JPL
@Tom Levenson: Thanks guys, now I can’t erase the picture in my mind of the bathroom scene he did…
chopper
bush did such a great job converting the muslims in iraq. he’s the best guy for this job.
gussie
I’m all for this. I think wackjob Christians should spend more time trying to convert Jews. It amuses me.
EconWatcher
While I don’t have many skills in life, people have had rather good things to say about me as a public speaker, and I’ve often wondered how much I could make if I started my own megachurch, complete with a Starbucks at the entrance and multimedia presentation tools.
I’m an agnostic mind you. But I doubt that would set me apart from any of the others cashing in on that tax-free grift.
Yatsuno
@Tom Levenson:
I r disappoint.
Seems like Dubya got tired of being out of the spotlight a bit. That or this organisation is the only one that has offered to pay for his bits of wisdom so far. Not gonna get into what they do, other than I’ve been evangelised pretty much my whole damn life.
Joseph Nobles
Bush has also spoken at my alma mater, Heritage Bible University. Yes, I graduated from a Church of Christ Bible college. I must have been the only Democrat there. I wasn’t the only gay man, though! I spent three years thinking my gaydar needed recalibrating.
Now I’m an atheist, so I already wasn’t supporting the old school. Bush speaking there was just the curdled icing on the stale cake.
CarolDuhart2
What I’m concerned about is that folks might try something drastic to bring the Apocalypse about. Most of the people who are buying into this are folks who bought into the Rapture, and are scared they might die before it takes place.
I also take Bush’s speech as a sign Jeb really isn’t running. Jeb would want him to keep quiet about this wstuff so he can win over moderates.
bemused
I think Junior has done more than enough damage setting people “free”.
schrodinger's cat
@Yatsuno: Me too. Although, I wouldn’t mind being evangelized by these two.
beltane
Since Bush is an abject failure at everything he does, I don’t see any cause for concern here. However, it would be worthwhile for someone to confront Sheldon Adelson or some other far-right Jews with this information just to see them defend it.
Betty Cracker
@CarolDuhart2: Yeah, I was raised in part by fundamentalist whackos and was a frequent (and involuntary!) attendee of Camp Jeebus, and there was a lot of talk to the effect of “That’s a nice Dome of the Rock you got there. It would be a shame if something were to happen to it…”
jl
I had no idea Jesus was a Jewish atheist, and card-carrying about it to boot.
The things you learn on this blog!
I would check out one of these Armageddon hastening shindigs. The humility and generosity, kindness, love, and total lack of spiritual pride exhibited there seems to be totally in line with what the Jesus man was teaching. I feel like I should go.
But they always seem to want lots of dough to get in. I’m sure it all goes to the hungry sick and poor, and I am bad for not paying them.
Surely they would not just keep the money to go, like, buy neat stuff, would they? No way. That would be a sin.
Edit: but maybe not. I mean Simon didn’t spend any of the money he stole on hookers and blow. I’ll go check and make sure, since if it don’t, stealing money to spend on hookers and blow doesn’t count, if you take the Bible very extremely literally and seriously.
Baud
@beltane:
Bush might even get some Christians to convert to Judaism.
David Koch
Elizabelle
@Tom Levenson:
Maybe one of his later period pet portraits.
May, rather than February.
jl
@Baud: Poor St. Peter is weeping and putting away his trumpets. Foiled again by meddling fundie Armageddonist anti-Semites.
KG
We should be fine until the coming of the red cow
Suffern ACE
Hmmm. I wonder how many Jews he’s actually spent time trying to convert.
Villago Delenda Est
These sick fucks need to be put to death. Give them the fucking oblivion they deserve.
Villago Delenda Est
@jl:
Every last one of them is Mammon worshiping scum.
Death by slow torture is too humane for these types.
CarolDuhart2
@beltane: My main concern is that his presence may just give enough legitimacy to the paranoid stuff that’s out there.
One thing to consider: the social changes out there scare these aging Armageddonites to death. Massive technology, social changes such as gay people being able to live openly, the rise of China, all play into the fears that the end is coming. Yes, the end is coming, but it’s just the end of a certain way of life.
And that’s another thing. The rise of a new generation born after the Cold War means that most of the folks looking for the end are growing old, old, older. Millenials don’t care. They aren’t looking for signs in the sky, like the folks who grew up with Reds under the bed, or the fear that China will gin up a 300 million man Communist army to attack Israel (dunno why they would do that, but yeah).
Citizen_X
Meh. As far as hastening the Apocalypse goes, that’s a lot less effective than, I don’t know, starting a pointless war in the Middle East or something.
Anoniminous
Have you heard the Good News?
the Conster
@CarolDuhart2:
Tom Robbins did a nice job imagining that scenario with his “Little Matchsticks For Jesus”, in Skinny Legs And All. His best, I think.
ETA: also covered nicely by Michael Chabon in The Yiddish Policemen’s Union.
Villago Delenda Est
@Citizen_X:
The war was NOT pointless.
It made a shitload of money for Halliburton and other GOP grifter types, at the expense of generations yet unborn.
The Bush Crime family is laughing all the way to banks in the US, Switzerland, the Cayman Islands, Qatar, Bahrain, and various places in SE Asia.
Citizen_X
What kind of torture is going on in that painting, anyway? Is that the illustrated version of Throw the Jew Down the Well?
Elizabelle
From the Mother Jones story:
OK. Got that image.
A trigger in heaven, leading to marriage.
Does kind of fit with a lot of these folks’ worldviews. Bless their hearts.
ranchandsyrup
I pressed a friend from back home on FB on his assertion that Hitler was misunderstood today and got:
I can’t stop laughing.
Elizabelle
@CarolDuhart2:
Well, they’re old. So their end is certainly near. Bless their little fear-filled hearts.
Elizabelle
@Villago Delenda Est:
It’s good to see you back.
I thought you’d gone guillotine-shopping, or maybe offline as you assembled tumbrels.
But it were a malfunctioning (no functioning) power chord.
beltane
@Elizabelle: This is my favorite quote:
Does Jesus accept credit cards? Maybe he is more the Bitcoin type.
J
Another reaction, compatible with the TL’s, is to take grim satisfaction in the depths to which GWB has sunk. Surely this is pretty low tier of speaking engagement for a former 2-term president of the United States!
Steeplejack
@schrodinger’s cat:
Ceiling Cat’s Witness.
Baud
@J:
I expect that in 5 years, he’ll replace Fred Thompson as the face of reverse mortgages.
jl
@Citizen_X:
” As far as hastening the Apocalypse goes, that’s a lot less effective than, I don’t know, starting a pointless war in the Middle East or something.”
OK, so that bright idea didn’t work out. Time to try a different approach. Say what you want about Dub, he is a plugger (if the works not too hard and you make a little coin off it).
Keep burning shitloads of fossil fuels might do the trick too.. So many ways to end the world as we know it, so little time!
Mnemosyne
What’s kind of interesting is that if you read the Bible verse that apparently launched all of this the end is near! stuff, it’s pretty clearly referring to the fact that any one of us could potentially drop dead at any moment and it’s calling on believers to be in good with God just in case that happens.
But the whole “Rapture” belief is already based on a deep-seated fear of death and dying and a desperate need to believe that somehow the believers will be able to go to Heaven without having to go through that whole messy “dying” part first, so it’s not really surprising that they read that part and immediately started looking for loopholes.
Elizabelle
@beltane:
It were a fab quote.
Maybe the banksters can trot it out, should they ever face trial.
They were doing it for our immortal souls.
CarolDuhart2
@J: Nobody else wants him. He’s a failed President on top of everything else. People still haven’t forgiven him for Katrina, the War, the bad economy, and everything else.
Elizabelle
@J:
Hey, they’re more willing to listen to him than the Republican National Convention was.
Take that, 2-term president.
They don’t got any they want to claim, except Saint Reagan.
shelly
Ooh. It’s been a while since we’ve heard from/about Jeb. Oh well, it’s only TWO years till 2016.
GregB
Rob Ford wasn’t available?
CarolDuhart2
@Mnemosyne: Or live through that messy “Persecution” stuff.
schrodinger's cat
@Steeplejack: Oh my what big teeth you have kitteh!
Elizabelle
@Anoniminous:
They’re becoming more selective in their appeal.
jl
@CarolDuhart2: The persecution of your own group doesn’t have that exciting excellent adventure ring to it, does it? Funny how that goes.
Edit: Unless it is some other group of your own far away, and you can make some bank off it. That’s a different story. But then, that is not really you or your own group.
Anoniminous
@KG:
Jeb (!!!) is out there, playing it low-key, on the rubber chicken circuit, talking the usual line of Conservative Bullshit to local groups. If he isn’t at least exploring the options it’s hard to understand why.
scav
@J: Next year he’s got a few gigs lined up meeting and greeting at several massive Walmart locales. It was written into his speaking contract he wouldn’t have to manage the carts so he’s still got pull.
J
@scav: I see we’re on the same wave length. This may be less a story about where Bush is choosing to speak than where he’s being invited to speak. I’d be surprised if he’s declining invitations from more respectable institutions. Still, he hasn’t yet agreed to write a column for Breitbart publications, so there may be depths yet unplumbed.
Heliopause
Got bad news for you. Most Christian denominations are devoted to converting Jews (and anybody else) to Christianity, though few are as in-your-face about it. Nevertheless, even in the more liberal denominations there are usually mission programs. It was the final command of Jesus in three of the four Gospels.
sm*t cl*de
Hearing the man Charles Pierce has forever dubbed our C+ Augustus speak will set the rubes back from a C-note to $100,000.
It is hard to think of any group more deserving of being fleeced.
As P.T. Barnum may or may not have said, it is immoral to leave fools in possession of their money.
karen
I’m Jewish and we call them Jews for Jesus. I grew up in Plainview, on Long Island and there was a big stink when the “Olive Tree Congregation” took up residence at the synagogue. Messianic Jews are a paradox and a contradiction since Jews believe that Jesus was a prophet and we’re still waiting for our Messiah. I’m glad that they’ve finally changed their schpiel and have now admitted their goal of converting Jews. Fuckers.
Lurking Canadian
@J: for a hundred large, I think most of us would say any damn thing to any damn group dumb enough to pay it.
Bush, of course, is rich enough that he won’t notice the money, which means he’s doing this because he believes in it.
karen
@Heliopause: that may be but they don’t call themselves Jews for Jesus.
maya
George II is just following in the ♬ tra di shun ♬ of Ricky Nixon who managed to get Henry Kissinger on his knees to pray with him for something or other in the offal office.
Mnemosyne
@Heliopause:
Well, yes, but they generally don’t pull the We were totally wrong about our previous religion card. It’s usually more along the lines of Being a Catholic is awesome, you should try it!
ETA: There aren’t many Islamic sects based around the idea of all of the members having converted from being Lutherans.
GxB
@KG:
As I recall, there was a blurb not too long ago about some fundie goof(s) that financed a genetics lab in Israel to accelerate this very event. I got a feeling future historians will look at the past three decades or so and facepalm to the point of bruising.
eemom
Awesome sauce post, Professor L.
Quaker in a Basement
If W wants Jews to convert to Christianity, then following GWoT logic, he ought to be proselytizing to Hindus, yes?
Too: “Jesus’s almost Elizabeth-Warren-like view of the banksters.” Larf!
debbie
@Heliopause:
I don’t know, I think the Mormons’ posthumous Jew conversions are pretty in your face, too. If they’re smart, they won’t get anywhere near my grandmother’s ashes.
Jamey
Worst ex-president ever, too.
Matt McIrvin
@ranchandsyrup: Gee, too bad Hitler never wrote a book in 1925 or ’26 explaining what he was up to.