I can't think of a more appropriate way to begin the Republican caucus day in Iowa, than with Chris Matthews' closing segment of Hardball Monday night. This stinging rebuke should haunt Mitt Romney for years to come.
'"Let Me Finish" tonight with this", Matthews begins:
This Republican caucus in Iowa has the looks of a travesty, a victory of dollars over democracy, financial equity over equality.
Romney is destroying the only opponent he fears for the nomination, with the relentless wealth-driven advertising campaign the voter can only escape if he turns off his television set. He`s doing it without his fingerprints on the ads, without his face or his name attached to it. He`s doing it while he stands before crowds, reciting their verses from "America the Beautiful".
If there`s ever been a more cynical use of money and media, it is hard to recall it. And so, what exactly will Tuesday nights results mean, will they mean that Iowa likes Romney? Or will it say that the voters of Iowa have been used to destroy his most formidable national opponent?
What it looks like Iowa will say, in the headlines at least, is what it says often, that it likes the candidate who adheres most closely to the evangelical line. In this case, they have a perfect vessel, Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania. He`s pro-life, he educates his children at home, he`s opposed to same sex marriage. He is to the evangelicals and other Christian conservatives, one of them.
So, if Santorum gets up around the high 30s tomorrow night, that will be about right.
"(Bill) LD 908, would make it illegal in Maine to abort a fetus that is known to have the 'gay gene.'"Ah, the spectre of eugenics being used to drive a wedge between liberals who identify primarily as pro-choice and those who identify primarily as supporters of gay rights."
Of course a Republican proposed this bill. Rep. Brian Duprey told the Portland Press Herald that he got the idea for the bill while listening to Rush Limbaugh's radio talk show.
This legislation borders obviously on the insane. However, if enough anti-abortion lobbyist and evangelicals tried to sign on to this bill, then wouldn't it have to force them to acknowledge that homosexuality is not a learned behaviour? TWhen the bill goes down in flames,... you get the point.
There's something that's been kind of weird since the airing of the Simpsons last Sunday. The relative silence. With all the hullabaloo surrounding SpongeBob, Buster the Bunny, and even Shrek 2, The lack of complaining about a primetime show that depicts gay marriage in any form from the likes of the PTC. Pat Robertson, and the TVC has been quite unusual. I haven't heard the trumpets of doom and gloom really that's usually associated to this kind of display. The only negative mention that I found after googling the episode came from the NYTimes(maybe you can find a few more):
"L. Brent Bozell III, president of the Parents Television Council, criticized “The Simpsons” for addressing the issue of gay marriage, though he said that he had not seen the episode.
“At a time when the public mood is overwhelmingly against gay marriage, any show that promotes gay marriage is deliberately bucking the public mood,” he said."
That's an erroneous statement of course, and I find it disingenuous when he said he hasn't seen it when I'm sure his denizens have watched it many times. Why the silence? Are the Simpsons too powerful a show to try and demonize? A reader sugests that because it's on FOX, the evangelicals have backed off. Silence on the Jeff/Jim senario as well.
PTC has nothing on their homepage. Focus on the Family has nothing either.
I've always been intrigued by the kind of Christians whose main problem with the mainstream churches is that they include concepts like compassion and charity. (I used to work with a woman who quit the Catholic Church because "they aren't strict enough.")
WASHINGTON (CNN) — The more often Americans go to church, the more likely they are to support the torture of suspected terrorists, according to a new analysis.
More than half of people who attend services at least once a week — 54 percent — said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is “often” or “sometimes” justified. Only 42 percent of people who “seldom or never” go to services agreed, according the analysis released Wednesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
White evangelical Protestants were the religious group most likely to say torture is often or sometimes justified — more than 6 in 10 supported it. People unaffiliated with any religious organization were least likely to back it. Only 4 in 10 of them did.
The analysis is based on a Pew Research Center survey of 742 American adults conducted April 14-21. It did not include analysis of groups other than white evangelicals, white non-Hispanic Catholics, white mainline Protestants, and the religiously unaffiliated, because the sample size was too small.
Franklin Schaeffer was interviewed yesterday by MSNBC's Tamron Hall, talking about his HuffPo piece describing what's wrong with today's GOP, and why so many onetime Republicans like himself have fled the party for good.
It feels like a consummate summation of the situation, and a clarion call not just for liberals but for everyone who's had enough of movement conservatism.
Bruce Wilson at Talk2Action has come up with easily the most disturbing audio clip of a Rick Warren sermon I've heard yet -- and that's saying something:
On April 17, 2005, at the southern California Anaheim Angels sports stadium thirty thousand Saddleback Church members, more than ever gathered in one spot, assembled to celebrate Saddleback's 25th anniversary and listened as Rick Warren announced his vision for the next 25 years of the church: the P.E.A.C.E. Plan.
Towards the close of his nearly one hour speech, Pastor Warren asked his followers to be as committed to Jesus as the young Nazi men and women who spelled out in mass formation with their bodies the words "Hitler, we are yours," in 1939 at the Munich Stadium, were committed to the Führer of the Third Reich, a major instigator of a World War that claimed 55 million lives. Rick Warren has exhorted Christians towards Nazi-like dedication in at least several public speeches and also during a one hour video recording of a talk by Warren, explaining his P.E.A.C.E. Plan, that is currently hosted on the official P.E.A.C.E. Plan website. A version of the anecdote can also be found on page 357 of Rick Warren's 1995 book The Purpose Driven Church, which sold over one million copies.
Here's what Warren says, exactly:
What is the vision for the next 25 years ? I'll tell you what it is.
It is the global expansion of the kingdom of God.
It is the total mobilization of his church.
And the third part is the goal of a radical devotion of every believer.
Now, I choose that word 'radical' intentionally, because only radicals change the world.
Everything great done in this world is done by passionate people.
Moderate people get moderately nothing done. And moderation will never slay the global giants. . ."
At which point he launches into a recitation of the achievements of past radicals -- notably, Hitler and Mao:
"In 1939, in a stadium much like this, in Munich Germany, they packed it out with young men and women in brown shirts, for a fanatical man standing behind a podium named Adolf Hitler, the personification of evil.
And in that stadium, those in brown shirts formed with their bodies a sign that said, in the whole stadium, "Hitler, we are yours."
And they nearly took the world.
Lenin once said, "give me 100 committed, totally committed men and I'll change the world." And, he nearly did.
A few years ago, they took the sayings of Chairman Mao, in China, put them in a little red book, and a group of young people committed them to memory and put it in their minds and they took that nation, the largest nation in the world by storm because they committed to memory the sayings of the Chairman Mao.
When I hear those kinds of stories, I think 'what would happen if American Christians, if world Christians, if just the Christians in this stadium, followers of Christ, would say 'Jesus, we are yours' ?
What kind of spiritual awakening would we have ?
What kind indeed.
It probably didn't cross Warren's mind, but the examples he cites are two of the world's most classic cases of totalitarianism. The products of their regimes -- beyond millions of people dead -- included the forced regimentation of thought and no press or free-speech protections whatsoever.
If that's the kind of fervent "radicalism" he admires, then we badly need to ought to take a long look at just what his agenda really is. And so ought Barack Obama.
This is typical for the McCain campaign. Dog-whistle politics is a common tactic by Rove and Lee Atwater. It's in play now right before your eyes and this time it's targeted at evangelicals.
Dog-whistle politics, also known as the use of code words, is a type of political campaigning or speechmaking employing coded language that appears to mean one thing to the general population but has a different or more specific meaning for a targeted subgroup of the audience. The term is usually used pejoratively by those that do not approve of the tactics.
A city drowns while a president plays politics. Will the real John McCain please stand up? Will the real threat to academe please stand down? Say hello to Bloomsday and farewell to Eliot Asinof, all this in The Opinion Mill's Sunday Bookchat
New Life Church said Tuesday that former pastor Ted Haggard has prematurely ended a "spiritual restoration" process begun when he was fired for sexual misconduct.
Haggard was fired from New Life Church and resigned as president of the National Association of Evangelicals in November 2006 after a former male prostitute alleged they had a cash-for-sex relationship. The man also said he saw Haggard use methamphetamine.
Haggard confessed to undisclosed "sexual immorality" and said he bought meth but didn't use it.
New Life said in a written statement that "the process of restoring Ted Haggard is incomplete and (New Life) maintains its original stance that he should not return to vocational ministry."
They don't say so explicitly, but it sounds like Ted couldn't quite give up "Teh Gay" and gave up being "restored," whatever that means.
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