"torresD" <torresd30@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:KkmXg.6067$Lv3.3912@newsread1.news.pas.earthlink.net...

http://www.alaskareport.com/z44411.htm
Book says Bush just using Christians

RSS 10/12/06
Washington, D.C.

More than five years after President
Bush created the Office of Faith-Based
Initiatives,

the former second-in-command of that
office is going public with an insider's
tell-all account that portrays an office
used almost exclusively to win political
points with both evangelical Christians
and traditionally Democratic minorities.


The office's primary mission,
providing financial support to
charities that serve the poor,
never got the presidential
support it needed to succeed,
according to the book.

Entitled "Tempting Faith,"

the book is not scheduled
for release until Oct. 16,

but MSNBC's

"Countdown with Keith Olbermann"
has obtained a copy.

"Tempting Faith's" author is David Kuo,

who served as special assistant to
the president from 2001 to 2003.

A self-described conservative Christian,
Kuo's previous experience includes work
for prominent conservatives including
former Education Secretary and federal
drug czar Bill Bennett and former
Attorney General John Ashcroft.

Kuo, who has complained publicly in
the past about the funding shortfalls,
goes several steps further in his new book.

He says some of the nation's most
prominent evangelical leaders were
known in the office of presidential
political strategist Karl Rove as
"the nuts."

"National Christian leaders received
hugs and smiles in person and then
were dismissed behind their backs
and described as 'ridiculous,'
'out of control,'
and just plain 'goofy,'" Kuo writes.

More seriously, Kuo alleges
that then-White House political
affairs director Ken Mehlman
knowingly participated in a
scheme to use the office,
and taxpayer funds,

to mount ostensibly
"nonpartisan" events that were,
in reality, designed with the intent
of mobilizing religious voters in 20
targeted races.

According to Kuo,

"Ken loved the idea and
gave us our marching orders."

Among those marching orders,
Kuo says,

was Mehlman's mandate to conceal
the true nature of the events.

Kuo quotes Mehlman as saying, ".

(I)t can't come from the campaigns.

That would make it look too political.

It needs to come from the
congressional offices.

We'll take care of that by
having our guys call the office
[of faith-based initiatives]
to request the visit."

Nineteen out of the 20 targeted
races were won by Republicans,
Kuo reports.

The outreach was so extensive
and so powerful in motivating
not just conservative evangelicals,

but also traditionally Democratic minorities,
that Kuo attributes Bush's 2004 Ohio victory
"at least partially .
to the conferences we had
launched two years before."

With the exception of one reporter
from the Washington Post, Kuo says
the media were oblivious to the
political nature and impact of
his office's events,

in part because so much of the
debate centered on issues of
separation of church and state.

In fact, the Bush administration
often promoted the faith-based
agenda by claiming that existing
government regulations were too
restrictive on religious organizations
seeking to serve the public.

Substantiating that claim proved difficult,
Kuo says.

"Finding these examples
became a huge priority..

If President Bush was making
the world a better place for
faith-based groups,

we had to show it was really
a bad place to begin with.

But, in fact, it wasn't that bad at all."

In fact,
when Bush asks Kuo how much
money was being spent on
"compassion" social programs,

Kuo claims he discovered

"we were actually spending about
$20 million a year less on them
than before he had taken office."

The money that was appropriated
and disbursed, however, often
served a political agenda, Kuo claims.

"Many of the grant-winning
organizations that rose to
the top of the process were
politically friendly to the
administration," he says.

More pointedly,
Kuo quotes an unnamed member
of the review panel charged
with rating grant applications.

"But," she said with a giggle,
'When I saw one of those
non-Christian groups in
the set I was reviewing,
I just stopped looking at
them and gave them a zero...
a lot of us did.'"

"Tempting Faith"
contains several other controversial
claims about Kuo's office,

the Bush White House and even
the 1994 Republican revolution
in Congress.
Credit: MSNBC

This is yet another fact based post that the moronic republicans, in this
group and in public, will NOT rebut.