I can't believe no one posted this yet. Bill Mcgraw hs a great article about Detroit politicians turn to God everytime there is trouble. I can't stand any politician who thinks they are some divine ruler. You are a 21st century politician, not a "divine" monarch.
Article here
June 18, 2009



Are you there, God? It's me, Detroit

BY BILL MCGRAW
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST What is it with some Detroit politicians and God?

City Councilwoman Monica Conyers is only the latest public official to summon the Almighty when the going gets tough.

On Tuesday, when it became clear the feds were closing in on Conyers, she described herself to viewers of her weekly TV show as “a child of God," and told viewers "if you're not praying for me, then you're just adding to the problem."

Then she added: "All these things that are going on right now ... I believe in my heart that God will deliver me from them."

C’mon, councilwoman. God is not going to help with a federal bribery rap. God doesn’t work that way. Just ask Kwame Kilpatrick.

Nobody in memory called on God as often as the disgraced mayor. And the number of his heavenly shout-outs seemed to increase last year as the pressure grew greater.

When Kilpatrick was in trouble and refusing to resign, he mentioned God so much you’d have thought He was deputy mayor. And in the end, God did not help Kilpatrick. He had to resign, go to jail, forfeit his law license, move to Texas, rent a house in a fancy suburb and buy an Escalade.

When Kilpatrick first got in trouble in January 2008, he staged a televised address to Detroiters from an empty room in a church. He once described himself as “God’s guy.” Another time last year, he said: “I believe I’m on an assignment from God.”

While deciding whether to run for mayor the first time, Kilpatrick -- then 30 -- said he went to his basement and sought wisdom by opening a Bible. Of all passages, he has said, he stumbled upon Second Samuel, in which David is depicted taking control of Judah — at age 30.

Right.

Many public officials beyond Detroit are into God, too, of course. Few U.S. Presidents have been as openly religious as George W. Bush, for example. Bush once told a friend, the Rev. James Robinson: “I feel like God wants me to run for President. I can't explain it, but I sense my country is going to need me.”

And numerous city pols are not so quick to invoke God.

Mayor Coleman Young even mocked the practice.

“I think people who go around solemn-faced and quoting the Bible are full of [[it),” he once said.

During the Kilpatrick drama last year, Councilman Kwame Kenyatta said: “The mayor says that he serves God and he speaks to God and he's chosen by God, so hopefully those who also say that they have been chosen by God, if they speak to him … then maybe God will speak to the mayor and he will step down.”

The following is a brief compilation of Deity references in Detroit politics over the past 20 years. We’ll start, of course, with Monica Conyers, who runs a close second to Kilpatrick in bringing up God when jail time could be in the future.

“More of the council members need to understand that that I’m not a baby, and that for some reason God wanted me to be president pro tem and not the others.”

— Monica Conyers, the first guest on Kwame Kilpatrick’s cable access show last year, answering Kilpatrick’s question about why she was fighting with her colleagues.

“I think I will be a great president because God does not give you more than you can handle.”

— Monica Conyers, explaining last year how she would cooperate with Mayor Ken Cockrel after she had called him Shrek.

“Leadership is a B. But, the rewards make the challenge worth our commitment to our God and our people. YOU ARE CHOSEN. Let’s roll. MOM.”

— U.S. Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, in a 2003 text message to her son, Kwame Kilpatrick.

“The door is finally closed on the last lingering issue from my first term in office. Our City deserves all of our attention and for my part as Mayor, I will dedicate my life to transforming Detroit into the city we all know it can become and that God intended for it to be.”

— Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick in 2007, saying he had searched his soul and decided to pay $8 million to settle the whistle-blower lawsuit against him and the city. The Free Press later revealed that Kilpatrick’s “last lingering issue” in reality was settled, in part, to hide his own bad behavior. The newspaper obtained his text messages, which had been buried in that settlement, and they proved Kilpatrick and his chief of staff had perjured themselves in court.

“I get my direction from up there. When I first came into this office, I made an announcement that I was taking God into City Hall. … I will not be vindictive because God never gave me that option.”

— City Clerk James Bradley, in 1992, when he was under fire for widespread voting problems.

"Some people are rooting for me. God is good."

— Darralyn Bowers, who spent more than two years in prison over Detroit's Vista Disposal scandal in the 1980s, in a 1992 deposition when she was facing government claims that she lied in a bankruptcy filing to dodge a tax bill of more than $300,000.

“With God as my witness, I swear I did not do that."

—Police Chief William Hart, defending himself from allegations in 1989 that the department's undercover operations fund may have subsidized $72,000 in rent on his daughter's former residence in Beverly Hills, Calif. Hart later was convicted and sentenced to prison for stealing $2.3 million from the fund.

“We keep saying Council President Erma Henderson. We're doing something wrong. The Lord is really confused with us this morning. We should be saying Mayor-elect Erma Henderson.”

—The Rev. Rodney Parnell, at a 1989 rally for mayoral candidate Erma Henderson, the longtime city council president who was taking on Mayor Coleman Young. She lost in the primary.

“Elected officials are all capable of errors in judgment. God knows that I am, and I am comforted in that I have asked for forgiveness.”

— City Councilwoman Kay Everett, in a September 2004 op-ed article scolding her colleagues for passing a resolution on creating an African Town development in Detroit. Everett was indicted the next month on 27 counts of extortion and bribery. She died of kidney disease the month after that.

And, finally, here is an example of a politician referring to the Creator for magnanimous reasons. Of course, he was talking in a church.

“We share the same God. And the great thing is that God is a forgiving God.”

— Then-Mayor Dennis Archer, who was appearing at Hartford Memorial Baptist Church days after his 1993 election, after a divisive this campaign in which the Rev. Charles Adams, the Hartford pastor, had said suburbanites “want a mayor to shuffle when he’s not going anywhere, scratch when he’s not itching and grin when he’s not tickled.” The line was a slam against Archer. Adams apologized several days after his comment.
Contact BILL McGRAW: bmcgraw@freepress.com
http://www.freep.com/article/2009061...+s+me++Detroit