Dr. Baehr, your background in theology makes you eminently qualified to comment on matters of faith, but it does not mean that you are qualified to perform brain surgery and it does not make you an expert on issues pertaining to the war in Iraq.

I note that you received a JD at NYU but it appears that you did not go on from that to become an attorney, choosing instead to go into theology.

Where your undergraduate work was in comparative literature, mine was in political science where I obtained a BA cum laude from U.C.L.A. I also obtained an M.A. in political science.  Like you, I hold a juris doctor, having graduated 4th in a class of 277 at Southwestern Univ. School of Law, but unlike you I did not go into practicing faith but instead chose to practice law, which I have done quite successfully for the past 31 years.

As someone with a J.D. you presumably know that ours is not a Christian nation.  It is a secular nation with a First Amendment that both guarantees your right to your religious beliefs and my right to avoid being subjected to your religious beliefs—not only freedom “of” religion but freedom “from” religion.

While I respect your credentials and your intelligence, I must say that your earlier post reflects a profound ignorance about Iraq—a war and occupation that has nothing to do with religion, WMD or bringing democracy to the Middle East and everything to do with imperial conquest.  The reasons were spelled out by the Project for a New American Century—regime change in order to obtain a permanent base of operations in the oil-rich Middle East.

Of course, your credentials make you obviously qualified to comment on matters of faith.  So I again ask you, Dr. Baehr, who would Jesus of bombed?

I think I’ll ad a Dr. in front of my name as well, even though I’m not SELLING anything.

Maybe it’ll advance my survival project.

So, Dr. Baehr, your c.v. is lengthy, and I am pretty well convinced that you wield your stick wildly, er, um, widely.

By identifying yourself as a Christian, especially one so influential, you do bring upon yourself the onus to answer the question already put to you in this forum, If Jesus was incarnate today, who would he bomb?

If your faith allows you to believe that our government’s activities in the world, esp. Iraq & Afghanistan, are *righteous*, then you should keep those opinions to yourself, or be called out as a fraudulent Christian.  Christ would not have supported you in that position—maybe His answer to you is on its way soon.

God keep us all,

Ernest,

Thanks for enlightening me - yet again. That just goes to show how naive I still am about some things, because I honestly thought the guy was being funny.

HOWEVER, I’ve just returned from a lecture that I had honestly been looking forward to, based on the title alone, and the fact that this is, (for the most part at least) still a relatively liberal environment. (I thought - I keep feeling dumber everyday). Anyway, the lecture was on American Exceptionalism, delivered by a Prof. somebody Q. Wilson. (I know, I just sat through it, and can’t even remember his first name).

Anyway, maybe I should have realized something was odd when I didn’t recognize a single soul at the thing, even though there was a good turn out. Now this guy is a political scientist, and now affilitated with UCLA, and I just assumed that he was going to talk about “American Exceptionalism” in terms of how we’ve chosen to instill US hegemony throughout the world, via militarism and economic strangulation.

In a word, the guy ended up scaring the living shit out of me. He has to be at least 50 behind the times. He thinks America is exceptional all right, but damn sure not for the reasons that I do. The lecture was FILLED with contradictions, as he compared our ‘democracy’ to other democracies, specifically in Europe.

I swear, if I’d been reading some of his theories on a blog like this, instead of listening to him after he’d been introduced with this long line of ‘credits and accomplishments” I would have thought it was parody or satire as well.

Anyway, I still can’t remember his first name, but how many ‘famous’ academics have name with Q for a middle initial, and Wilson as a last name. You could probably look him up if you wanted to, (he’s also responsible for some Public Policy on Crime and Policing, called Broken Windows.)

All I can say is that I’d be extrememly pissed if this hadn’t been a free event. I’m still pissed that I spent cab fare to get to it. It’s not like I couldn’t have used the time and money on something else.

Talk about OUT OF TOUCH!!

Anyway, thanks again. I guess it’s good to be reminded that people like this do in fact exist, because that’s what has created the crash that we’re trying to survive long enough to crawl away from.

They may represent only 20% of us, but they’re the 20% that have ruined the 99.9% for the rest of us.

No Cyrena.  I get the Washington Post on-line.  At the WaPo, unlike Truthdig, Dr. Baehr’s thinking is pretty standard for a number of posters.  Note that the guy posted as an unregistered commentator and has not been back since.  My suspicions are that they guy was curious about Truthdig, saw the link to Michael Moore, listened to information that disturbed his myopic little mind, dismissed Moore as Left Wing propaganda, and bailed out.  I know that there are only 20% who still buy into Bush Co., but those that do are really whack.

GrammaConcept and Ernest,

I THINK…(though I can’t be sure) that whomever this Dr. Ted Baehr is, was trying to be funny.

Now, I only say that because Aegrus was the first one to respond to this, and he took it as ‘parody’. Like somebody being a real wise ass.

Now, that’s one ‘take’ on this, because it’s hard to imagine a real propagandist actually admitting that the US is after that pipeline from the Caspian Sea, or admitting to the fact that the only reason for being in Iraq is to steal all of that oil for our gas tanks.

That’s not to say that he isn’t perfectly serious, since these types can do this anonymously, but it’s SO awful, that one can also assume that he’s just being incredibly cynical in a satorical sort of way.

Again..I don’t know. It’s just that most propagandists try to disguise their real intentions.

Michael Moore, Genuine Working Class Hero…

That’s just what I was wondering.
Thank you, Ernest.

Your delusions of grandeur are showing…

Go away,and get lost…...
maybe you’ll find your self there…

Since you claim to be a Christian, Dr. Baehr, and support the war in Iraq for the purpose of getting “tremendous oil revenues” perhaps you can answer a theological question that has been troubling me for quite some time.

Who would Jesus have bombed?

What is your doctorate in, Ted Baehr, theological right wing propaganda?  When your idol, John McCain, broke into “bomb, bomb, bomb Iran” to the sound of the Beach Boy’s “Barbara Ann,” Code Pink came up with a great parody to the same tune.

“Oh, John McCain,
You are insane.
Don’t bomb, bomb,
bomb, bomb Iran.”

I do thank you for one piece of unintended candor.  The core reason for the invasion and occupation of Iraq was and is those “tremendous oil revenues” that you tout.  From the perspective of Exxon-Mobil, Chevron and the rest of the oil cartel, a more than 300% jump in the price at the pump for the average American since we invaded has translated into record oil industry profits.  The $40.2 billion 2007 profit at Exxon-Mobil alone translates to $4.5 million in profit per hour.  Imperial conquests like the one in Iraq are intended to swell the corporate bottom line.  The huge profits reeled in by the military-industrial complex, Halliburton, Blackwater and the other war profiteers benefit the wealthiest one percent, who evade paying their fair share of taxes let alone put their bodies on the line in these imperial adventures, while the rest of America, the middle and working classes, lose ground.

McCain/Dobson translates in turning America into a Theological fascist state.  Hmmm!  Thanks for the advice, “doctor.”  I don’t think you will find many at Truthdig who want to buy your prescription for the future of this nation.

Well, I enjoyed watching and hearing this, and I appreciate TD posting it, since I probably wouldn’t have otherwise seen it. But then admittedly, my own ideology is pretty much twin to that of Michael Moore.

If I can voice my favorite part, it would be his answer to the excuse for Hillary voting to give george the stick of dynamite knowing he was going to use it to blow up Iraq. I’m overwhelmingly disgusted with her excuse about ‘what she knew then’ as opposed to what she knows now, and long ago arrived at the same conclusion as Michael Moore. If at least 100 million of US –average Americans- KNEW this was all a lie, then why the hell didn’t SHE?

More to the point, she’s lied. She lied and claimed she thought she was voting for continued inspections. It was a lie because it was long ago ‘revealed’ that she was ‘all for that attack’ when she said that Saddam Hussein had NEVER done ANYTHING without being FORCED, and she obviously meant by firepower and military might. She was behind the lies that many still believe to this day, which is that Saddam was not allowing for inspections, even though the inspectors were in Iraq every day for the 6 months leading up to the attack, until George Bush told them to get out.

So, Hillary’s a liar, and I’m glad the question was put to him, so that he could answer that for everyone.

Why is Obama receiving so much money from people within the health care industry? 

I wish Mr. Moore had clearly noted that Mr. Obama [url=“is not accepting Political Action Campaign (PAC) money, aka Lobby groups.  Donations to his campaign are coming from private citizens.  This is more than a fine point; the decision to refuse donations from lobby groups is just another way in which Mr. Obama is standing head and shoulders above.

Note: any people who donate to a political campaign are obliged to indicate their line of work, as required by the FEC.  Though Hillary Clinton (and McCain) would willingly accept money from PACs, and may thus make themselves ‘beholden’ to their corporate owners, a href=”]  here is a chart [/url] that shows how much the Obama campaign has received from private citizens .  So, whenever any media entity announces how much his campaign has raised and how much hers is in debt, I get a little happy to know that my fellow Americans are also excited about this candidate and have opened their pocketbooks, even in these tough times, to show it and to see it to fruition.  Godspeed.

Then again, the election system we have is deeply, deeply flawed.

Personally, I look forward to the future, when campaigns will be publicly-funded so even the average citizen with above-average ideas & persona could beat any silver spoon know-it-all [correction: Mr. Bush lowered the bar on that].  That’s for a different discussion, separate from this election.

Too bad, there are not enough of them.

too many there are not enough of them.

And let’s not forget that the war of occupation in Iraq is reducing the world of an inferior people just as the United States reduced the population of Native Americans so as to allow Republicans to rule the land.

Remember, only the Americans know how to being GLORIOUS FREEDOM AND PEACE TO A COUNTRY…....whether they LIKE IT OR NOT !!!!!!!

I love parody!