BUSH TO PAT ROBERTSON: "WE AREN'T HAVING ANY CASUALTIES"

Fascinating TV watching last night. Much as I loathe Paula Zahn, no one was watching her last night -- all eyes were on a jovial Pat Robertson, who couldn't seem to stop giggling over George Bush's ability to screw things up royally and still be "blessed by God" with success among the electorate. That's not God's blessing, Pat. That's the power of fear and a bovine desire on the part of too many people to be led to the promised land by an earthly father (a distinctly UN-Christian attitude the Bible explicitly warns us against) who they can love and believe in unflinchingly while he protects them against all evildoers. That's what gave rise to the Hitler and Mussolini cults, and it's the source of Furious George's success.

Roberts went on to tell about a visit he paid to FuGee before the Iraq war. Roberts said he warned "the most self-assured man I ever met" that he should be ready for American casualties in Iraq, but Bush responded, "That's not going to happen." Roberts said God had told HIM that the Iraq adventure would be "a disaster" and "messy." But George wasn't having any of it.

Well, who else do we need to tell us before we start to BELIEVE it, that BushCo lives in an alternate universe where The Anointed One has a line straight to God (I wonder sometimes, just who's giving the orders here, God to George Bush or George Bush to God?), so he has no need to prepare, plan or execute strategy -- he can just be confident that no matter what he does, God will bless it with success. In the face of evidence to the contrary, George, like Abraham of old waiting for a son and heir, just figures "it hasn't happened yet, but it will eventually." Unfortunately for GWB, Abraham could believe because God Almighty told him it would happen. In George's case, I think it's pretty clear that he's the one doing the talking, not God.

UPDATE: CNN has a story on the interview.