Cliff Kincaid.

The group, assembled by something called America’s Survival Inc., gathered in the basement of Ebenezer Coffee House at Second and F streets NE. They shared the stage with a big drum set, and posters documenting items they would seek to tie to Obama: an SDS newsletter from 1969 (when he was 7), and a police killing from 1970 (when he was 8). (Dana Milbank)

This organization, America’s Survival, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization. If they are going to undertake smear activity like this, they should immediately have their tax-exempt status revoked.

There’s no reason to resurrect the ghosts of Joe McCarthy on the taxpayers’ dime. Their mission statement is as follows:

Our mission is to educate the American people and to expose the influence of global institutions, including an International Criminal Court, on their lives. Our president is veteran journalist Cliff Kincaid.

Um…smearing Barack Obama does not appear to fit that mission statement, so it should be buh-bye to the 501(c)(3) designation, but OOPS! Look who’s in charge right now. Guess we’ll have to wait till January to start cleaning that house.

For a bonus, check out the endorsements — Beverly LaHaye and Phyllis Schlafly?

“Let me ask you a question. Where is the outrage?”

“People matter, regardless of the color of their skin…”

He has an incredible propensity to twist up even the most basic of ideas.

Technorati Tags: rod parsley, extreme, christian, mccain, demagogue

Or at least, one of them. Doug Coe, leader of “The Fellowship”, a shadowy group in Washington DC and sponsor of the National Prayer Breakfast is a Clinton “genuinely loving spiritual mentor and guide to anyone…”

From Mother Jones:

Coe’s friends include former Attorney General John Ashcroft, Reaganite Edwin Meese III, and ultraconservative Rep. Joe Pitts (R-Pa.). Under Coe’s guidance, Meese has hosted weekly prayer breakfasts for politicians, businesspeople, and diplomats, and Pitts rose from obscurity to head the House Values Action Team, an off-the-record network of religious right groups and members of Congress created by Tom DeLay. The corresponding Senate Values Action Team is guided by another Coe protégé, Brownback, who also claims to have recruited King Abdullah of Jordan into a regular study of Jesus’ teachings.

The Fellowship’s long-term goal is “a leadership led by God—leaders of all levels of society who direct projects as they are led by the spirit.” According to the Fellowship’s archives, the spirit has in the past led its members in Congress to increase U.S. support for the Duvalier regime in Haiti and the Park dictatorship in South Korea. The Fellowship’s God-led men have also included General Suharto of Indonesia; Honduran general and death squad organizer Gustavo Alvarez Martinez; a Deutsche Bank official disgraced by financial ties to Hitler; and dictator Siad Barre of Somalia, plus a list of other generals and dictators. Clinton, says Schenck, has become a regular visitor to Coe’s Arlington, Virginia, headquarters, a former convent where Coe provides members of Congress with sex-segregated housing and spiritual guidance.

Now I might be just a little angry about how she’s used Jeremiah Wright in the past week, but all I will say is this: I would much rather have a man like Jeremiah Wright who is up front, out there, and lets you and the world know exactly what he’s thinking, than a shadowy figure in a large mansion overlooking the Potomac that organizes prayer groups into “cells”.

My own inside knowledge compels me to say that folks like this are the ones who encourage all the hatred toward gays, for example. Isn’t there just a bit of hypocrisy here? Okay, maybe more than a bit?

More about “The Fellowship” and Hillary’s connections.

Technorati Tags: Doug Coe, The Fellowship, Mother Jones, radical, Christian

Really DO exist. Just check this post out, reacting to more of the ridiculous fringe-lunacy about Barack Obama’s supposed “Muslim ties”. Thank you, Rick Moran. I may not agree with your politics, but I appreciate your intellectual honesty. (Don’t agree about them being “freed”, however.)

But the idea that Obama in traditional Kenyan garb proves he’s some kind of closet Muslim or Islamic sympathizer is absurd. Kenya is 70% Christian and only 10% Muslim. To extrapolate that Obama’s dress denotes anything other than acknowledging his birthright not to mention playing the gracious guest by donning the clothing of his hosts is irrational, stupid, ignorant, and totally without foundation.

One good point made by an emailer is that even if he isn’t a Muslim, Obama may be more sympathetic to Muslims than any other candidate.

I hope so. Someone sympathetic to Muslims wouldn’t use the word “Crusade” when talking about the war in Afghanistan. That utterance by Bush did more to harm US-Muslim relations than anything except possibly the war in Iraq which most Muslims refuse to acknowledge freed 25 million of their co-religionists from one of the most brutal regimes in the world.

The most recent lunacy surrounds a photograph of Obama clothed in traditional Kenyan garb during a trip to Kenya, which sent the nutjobs into a frenzy about him being a ‘closet Muslim’.

This plays straight to McCain and his nonsense about “Islamofascists” or whatever he’s calling them today. Oh, the paranoia almost overwhelms sometimes.

Technorati Tags: McCain, islamofascism, right-wing whackos

It looks like Dr. Dobson has decided that Mike Huckabee is better than John McCain, even though Huckabee’s tax insanity will result in incredibly unfair taxation of the poor, should it ever actually become reality.

AP, via Huffpo:

James Dobson, one of the nation’s most prominent evangelical Christian leaders, is about to endorse former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, The Associated Press has learned.

Dobson, founder of Colorado Springs, Colo.-based Focus on the Family, talked to the GOP presidential hopeful Thursday and later was to release a statement explaining his choice, said Gary Schneeberger, a spokesman for Dobson.

Huckabee had long sought Dobson’s endorsement, believing he is the best fit to advance Dobson’s conservative, moral worldview.

What I find most objectionable about Huckabee is the underground funding and promotion through churches, and with Dobson’s endorsement, that becomes all the more overt. All I can say is, bring it on, because a Huckabee nomination will guarantee a Democratic win.

What happens if Huckabee is McCain’s running-mate? Ohhh, that would be a dilemma, wouldn’t it?

Technorati Tags: James Dobson, Focus on the Family, Huckabee, Religious Right

And I confess, it does my heart good to see him in such a dilemma, because it highlights the hypocrisy of his politics on the national stage and more importantly proves how mean-spirited he is. As a Christian, he embarrasses me. His organization is one of the most political I’ve seen, masquerading as a Christian information network. The hateful attitudes toward anyone who is not white, straight and conservative is shrill and ugly.

And now, Dr. Dobson has a problem. Here is the statement he released:

I am deeply disappointed the Republican Party seems poised to select a nominee who did not support a Constitutional amendment to protect the institution of marriage, voted for embryonic stem-cell research to kill nascent human beings, opposed tax cuts that ended the marriage penalty, has little regard for freedom of speech, organized the Gang of 14 to preserve filibusters in judicial hearings, and has a legendary temper and often uses foul and obscene language.

“I am convinced Sen. McCain is not a conservative, and in fact, has gone out of his way to stick his thumb in the eyes of those who are. He has sounded at times more like a member of the other party. McCain actually considered leaving the GOP caucus in 2001, and approached John Kerry about being Kerry’s running mate in 2004. McCain also said publicly that Hillary Clinton would make a good president. Given these and many other concerns, a spoonful of sugar does NOT make the medicine go down. I cannot, and will not, vote for Sen. John McCain, as a matter of conscience.

“But what a sad and melancholy decision this is for me and many other conservatives. Should Sen. McCain capture the nomination as many assume, I believe this general election will offer the worst choices for president in my lifetime. I certainly can’t vote for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama based on their virulently anti-family policy positions. If these are the nominees in November, I simply will not cast a ballot for president for the first time in my life. These decisions are my personal views and do not represent the organization with which I am affiliated. They do reflect my deeply held convictions about the institution of the family, about moral and spiritual beliefs, and about the welfare of our country.”

Evidently Dr. Dobson didn’t think much about the welfare of our country when he shimmied up to the Bush/Cheney crowd during the 2006 elections, or had a little visit at the White House in May 2007 to cheerlead the Bush Iran policy. Supporting the bombing of Iran surely doesn’t endanger the welfare of our country? Subverting the constitution doesn’t endanger the welfare of our country? Allowing the economy to languish and social services to die while raising spending to continue to maim and murder our own soldiers along with Iraqis and other innocent bystanders is good for the welfare of our country?

Dr. Dobson, what happened to “forgive others”? What happened to “thou shalt not kill?”

Oh yeah, you think they’re bad for the welfare of our country. Dr. Dobson has a problem, not just with how to cast his vote but how to tell the truth. How sad for the real Christians in this country who don’t share his hateful and militaristic views.

Oh, and at the end of his statement, he says he’ll vote for Mitt Romney if he wins the nomination:

“My theology is very, very different, obviously, and I would not find myself in agreement with the ways he sees Scripture, and, of course, their own interpretation and extension of Scripture. I’m not in any way minimizing that; it’s a very important issue.

“I think we’re facing such a point of crisis in our country, that we’re going to have to have the strongest leadership we can. And I think I could deal with that in the polling booth.”

Let me translate that for you: Dobson is saying, “I hate gays, Iraqis, McCain, and liberals more than I hate Mormons. I can compromise my theology to keep my politics pure.”

Technorati Tags: James Dobson, Religious Right, McCain, conservatives, the common good

The only terrorist in this ad is the one who approved it.

We need to wise up and stop being taken in by this kind of nonsense. Yes, 9/11/2001 happened. Yes, it was terrifying. But the reaction and overreaction and obvious psychological manipulation of ads and approaches like this one are so far beyond reasonable discourse that they should only be branded the ravings of a mad lunatic.

Obviously Tom Tancredo has studied Hitler’s methods. Don’t be one of his victims. This article explains how Hitler did it — guard your minds against similar tactics.

Amplification and contagion. (Note to self: Go back and read Totem and Taboo. Freud had at least some good ideas.) Contagion is the way feelings transfer from one member to another, the way emotions spread through the whole group. Amplification is how emotions in a group grow and grow bigger than the sum of their parts — the emotion of the group-as-a-whole becomes more than that of the members additively.

Hitler sensed their impact on your average Joe: “When from his little workshop or big factory, in which he feels very small, he steps for the first time into a mass meeting and has thousands and thousands of people of the same opinions around him…he is swept away by three or four thousand others into the mighty effect of suggestive intoxication and enthusiasm….” (Ibid. 478-9)

Technorati Tags: Tom Tancredo, fearmongering, amplification, contagion, propaganda

Farewell, Falwell. May your gatekeeper to Heaven be gay and a Democrat, and may you rest easy knowing it.

Forgive me, but I’m not in mourning at his passing. I’m sure he’s in a better place and we’re better for it.

Technorati Tags: Jerry Falwell, Moral Majority

Again I say, This organization should lose its tax-exempt status or remove Dobson as its head. He is either in ministry or in politics, but he can’t do both and we shouldn’t be financing his campaign.

“Everyone knows he’s conservative and has come out strongly for the things that the pro-family movement stands for,” Dobson said of Thompson. “[But] I don’t think he’s a Christian; at least that’s my impression,” Dobson added, saying that such an impression would make it difficult for Thompson to connect with the Republican Party’s conservative Christian base and win the GOP nomination.

- James Dobson, in an interview for US News & World Report

Just for fun, here’s an extra tidbit from the article. Really – Focus on the Family should not be a non-profit organization.

While making it clear he was not endorsing any Republican presidential candidate, Dobson, who is considered the most politically powerful evangelical figure in the country, also said that [Newt] Gingrich was the “brightest guy out there” and “the most articulate politician on the scene today.”

Technorati Tags: James Dobson, Focus on the Family, politics, religion, taxes