"Pish. Posh."
"Meh."
"Gah."
"Pfft."
"Huh?"
"Whaaaaa?"

Oye!
Oye veh!
Oye veh gevalt!

I get the emails from Right Rev. too and they remind me of the hysterical Cindy Sheehan brand of logic that insists that President Bush is a bigger threat to America than Loony bin Laden.

"Ministers" like Andrew Weaver are the reason the United Methodist Church is dying.

Is it just me or does this guy look constipated?

I thought it was Karl Rove at first....waaaait a minute. Has anyone ever seen Weaver and Rove together in the same room? Someone call Alex Jones.

How did SMU get in this situation?

To answer that question one needs to look to the SMU board of trustees, particularly, Texas billionaire, Halliburton board member and Bush loyalist, Ray Hunt. A long-time trustee (continuously since 1976), Ray Hunt, served as the finance chairman of the Republican National Committee for George W. Bush in 2000. Hunt, who has given millions to both Bush senior and junior, has already donated a whopping $35 million toward the Bush Complex at SMU.

According to Forbes magazine, Hunt’s personal wealth at the beginning of the Iraq war was $2.3 billion (Forbes, 2003). This year it was $4.0 billion (Forbes, 2008). Not everyone has been a loser in the “shock and awe” catastrophe in Iraq.

According to knowledgeable UMC bishops, as well as several informed clergy and SMU faculty, Ray Hunt has been the key person in a successful effort to pack the SMU Trustees with wealthy Republican allies of George W. Bush. At least 26 of the 41 trustees have personal, financial, and/or political relationships with Bush, and many have been major fundraisers and contributors to his political campaigns. Nearly all of the contributions to political candidates and campaigns by the trustees have been to Republican causes. In total, public records show that the SMU trustees have given $2,759,000 to Republican candidates and causes and $34,000 to Democratic candidates and causes in recent years (Campaign Finance in American Politics, 2007; Fundrace, 2007; NewsMeat, 2007; Public Citizen's Congress Watch, 2004; 2007).

A balanced, responsible board of trustees would have protected the interests of the university and the church. Granting George Bush or Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama permission to build an independent institute on campus to promote his or her policies is something no self-respecting university board of trustees would permit. The trustees voted for the partisan institute without one dissenting vote, even after three bishops called for many of the trustees to recuse themselves because of apparent conflicts of interests (Weaver, Sprague, Hicks and Yeakel, 2007).