Looney Birthers Whine That No One Takes Them Seriously Anymore

Birthers Whine That No One Takes Them Seriously Anymore

Submitted by Brian Tashman on December 6, 2011 – 3:40pm

The release of President Obama’s long-form birth certificate in April hasn’t stopped Jerome Corsi, author of Where’s The Birth Certificate?, from pushing his fanciful case that President Obama was born outside of the United States, and yesterday he appeared in Crosstalk with Vic Eliason on Voice of Christian Youth America where the two complained that no one cares what they have to say anymore. Eliason lamented that people “call us just a bunch of crazies, radicals, birthers” and said that people like himself “get a label, an epithet that kind of raises a shadow over” their arguments. Corsi assured him that “Barack Obama’s nativity story and his life story” have all been “fabricated,” and claimed that the alleged “cover-up” is a “serious issue.”

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/sites/default/files/mp3/player.swf

Eliason: One of the things that frustrates me as I hear about these things Dr. Corsi is this, there’s enough evidence here—if this was a bank robbery the law would pounce on the perpetrators—but there’s enough evidence here to raise questions from A to Z and nobody seems to be or have the power or the will or whatever to get, I mean, why are people scurrying around it? For instance, if you mention this and by us putting it on the air, they’d call us just a bunch of crazies, radicals, birthers, that’s the term that they call them, birthers. They get a label, an epithet that kind of raises a shadow over anybody that raises a question.

…

Corsi: The entire story we’ve been presented with, Barack Obama’s nativity story and his life story, appear to be all fabricated. So we truly don’t know who this man is.

Eliason: That statement is rather shocking but I’ve seen it even coming from other countries and national leaders that have called Mr. Obama a mystery man that has come from somewhere, emerged quickly, qualifications ignored and basically placed. And there are many people that have asked the questions, could it be, as this morning on Fox News they were saying he was the bystander in the White House, that was the term that Fox was using, a bystander in the White House, standing by while everything else goes crazy, only stepping in at certain times when he should be in there, dealing with the issues instead of being out golfing or running for office or whatever he’s doing at this present time.

Corsi: I think another term that’s been used is usurper, in other words, instead of coming forward and presenting his credentials in an open fashion, saying, ‘do you want to see my passport records here they are, do you want to see the original birth certificate materials, here’s what’s in the vault in Hawaii.’ We still have even today, three years into the presidency, a cover-up going on, so we’re not allowed to see original documents pertaining to Barack Obama, and I think that’s a serious issue.

10 Signs God Hates Right Wingers

10 Signs God Is Furious With the Right

Whatever disaster strikes, there’s always an upside in
religious rightland, always somebody to point the finger at with glee. Let’s
turn the tables.

September 16, 2011  |

Editor’s note: the following is satire… for the most part.

Why is it that whenever disaster strikes, right-wing religious nuts seem to
have all the fun? Some might say it’s just because they’re sadists, but they
always seem to find the silver lining. 9/11? God’s calling on America to repent!
(No, not for it’s foreign policy, you dummy!) Hurricane Katrina? It was that
darned homosexual parade the organizers forgot to tell anyone about!

Whatever disaster strikes, there’s always an up-side in religious rightland,
always somebody to point the finger at with glee. How come they get all the
fun?

So when the East Coast got a one-two punch last month, earthquake-hurricane
within a few days of one another, it got me thinking. When another hurricane
followed up afterward, it was more than I could bear. And so, I offer you a list
of God’s Top 10 Targets from a
not-so-right-but-possibly-more-righteous point of view.

There are at least three different ways to approach this subject, and we have
examples of all three. First is to identify specific target groups for repeated
offenses—sinners who just won’t mend their ways. Second is to identify
geographic targets for specific offenses—sin city or state, as the case may be.
Third is to identify specific individuals.

1. Republicans, for bearing false witness.

It’s not just one of the Ten Commandments — the Bible has repeated warnings
against slander, false testimony and plain old lying. But Republicans apparently
think that God was talking to somebody else—the exact opposite of their usual
assumption—especially since Barack Obama arrived on the scene. Obama was born in
Kenya, he is a Muslim, he’s a socialist, a Marxist, a fascist, he hates white
people (like his mom and his grandparents), he hangs out with terrorists. It
goes on and on and on.

God has repeatedly told them not to act like this—yet they pay Him no mind.
It’s not just Obama, either. When it comes to science, things get just as bad,
be it evolution, global warming, reproductive health, or gender orientation;
when the science isn’t on their side, the lying and slander take up the slack.
It’s not just that the science is against them, you see. Scientists are
fraudsters; they are always conspiring against God and his people, according to
some of the more whacked out types—like GOP senators, for example. God may have
a great deal of patience, but when folks start trying to drag Him into the mix,
that’s when the earthquakes and hurricanes begin.

2. The Religious Right, for ignoring Jesus on the separation of
church and state.

More than 1,600 years before John Locke and 1,700 years before Thomas
Jefferson weighed in on the subject, Jesus said, “Render therefore unto Caesar
that which is Caesar’s and unto God those things which are God’s.” (What’s more,
he said that, in part, as a way of opting out of a tax revolt!) But the
Religious Right defiantly continues to oppose Him. God’s been extremely patient
with them over the years, but that patience has finally run out, as the most
anti-separationist elements of the Religious Right—known as dominionists—have come increasingly to the fore.

Some might say they’re embarrassing Him personally. Others will say it’s starting to get
really dangerous. Whatever the reason, God’s had enough.

3. The nativist right and the GOP, for a rash of anti-immigrant
laws.

“Thou shalt neither vex a stranger, nor oppress him: for ye were strangers in
the land of Egypt.” Exodus 22:21 could not be clearer—unless, of course, we
switched from the King James Bible to the New International Version: “Do not
mistreat an alien or oppress him, for you were aliens in Egypt.”

But for some in the GOP, them’s fightin’ words. All they can think about is
disobeying God. They are positively possessed with the Satanic spirit of
disobedience. It began with Arizona’s SB-1070 last year. And while a number of
states followed Arizona’s lead with anti-immigrant laws of their own, the most
notorious was Alabama, which faced “a
historic outbreak of severe weather” in April.

The same day the law was signed, Alabama’s Episcopal, Methodist and Roman
Catholic churches filed a separate lawsuit, claiming the law unconstitutionally
interferes with their right of religious freedom. Church leaders said the law
“will make it a crime to follow God’s command.” Among other things, the suit
said, “The bishops have reason to fear that administering of religious
sacraments, which are central to the Christian faith, to known undocumented
persons may be criminalized under this law.”  If criminalizing Christian
sacraments isn’t inviting divine retribution, what is?

4. The predatory lending industry and all who enable
them.

There are numerous Bible passages condemning usury. Typical of these is
Exodus 22:25: “If you lend money to one of my people among you who is needy, do
not be like a moneylender; charge him no interest.” Naturally, the whole of
modern capitalism is built on ignoring a broad reading of this. But predatory
lending is a particularly egregious form of defiance. It’s proved rather costly
to our country as well.

A Wall Street Journal article on December 31, 2007 reported that Ameriquest Mortgage
and Countrywide Financial, two of the largest U.S. mortgage lenders, spent $20.5
million and $8.7 million respectively in political donations, campaign
contributions, and lobbying activities between 2002 and 2006 in order to defeat
anti-predatory lending legislation. Such practices contributed significantly to
the financial crisis that plunged us into the Great Recession. But it seems that
wasn’t a clear enough lesson, especially since those who lobbied most intensely
benefited most from the bailouts as well, according to an IMF
study. So earthquakes and hurricanes are an old school, Old Testament way
for God to make his point.

5. The GOP, for its contempt for the poor.

For more than half a century, the GOP has attacked Democrats and liberals for
their concern for the poor. At least since the 1980s, the neo-liberal wing of
the Democratic Party has tried to distance themselves from the poor, and
reposition the party as defenders of the middle class, instead. The GOP has
responded with policies to impoverish the middle class as well, so that they can
be safely demonized, too.

But the GOP’s venom for all but the wealthy has reached new heights during
the Great Recession. Not only should those who caused the crisis be taken care
of while all others suffer—far too many national Democratic politicians seem to
agree on that one—but a renewed rhetoric of contempt for the poor has emerged,
in direct contradiction to what Jesus said, in Luke 6:20: “Blessed are you who
are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.”

Increasingly, it seems, Republicans don’t think poor people are even
human. In January 2010, South Carolina Lt. Governor Andre Baurer (R) compared poor people to stray animals: He told an audience
that his grandmother told him “as a small child to quit feeding stray animals.
You know why? Because they breed.” He compared this to government assistance,
which he said is “facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person
ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don’t think too
much further than that. And so what you’ve got to do is you’ve got to curtail
that type of behavior. They don’t know any better.” Then, in early August,
Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning, the frontrunner for the GOP senate
nomination, compared poor people to scavenging racoons. Talk like that is
what causes earthquakes and hurricanes.

6. Privatized public utilities, for the worship of
Mammon.

Public utilities are natural monopolies, totally unsuited to private
enterprise, since there is no competitive marketplace. This, of course, makes
them perfect targets for monopoly capitalists—Mammon’s greatest worshipers.

Against them, God struck a mighty blow. In Mansfield, Massachusetts, which
has had its own municipal power service since 1903, electrical service was
restored for most customers within 24 hours after Irene hit, even though 4,000
out of 9,500 households had lost power—quite unlike what happened to nearby
communities served by a commercial outfit. According to a local report, the storm “uprooted old trees and knocked down
utility lines all over town.”

“Unlike homes and businesses in Easton, Norton and Foxboro, however, local
customers did not have to wait for National Grid to respond with crews or listen
to a recording on the telephone…. [M]uch of Easton waited three days for power
to return and areas of communities such as Foxboro are still in the dark.”
According to another report, about Foxborough, “The outrage expressed… is
similar to the movie Network in the scene where people flung open their windows
and said, ‘I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore.’”

Then there are a couple of geographically specific targets:

7. Virginia.

Virginia was the site of the earthquake’s epicenter and the second state
where Irene made landfall, so the state is a target-rich environment.

There’s House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. On God’s bulls-eye scale, the
epicenter near Mineral, Virginia is in Cantor’s district—a direct hit. And in
budget negotiations this year, Cantor’s contempt for the poor came through loud
and clear. He’s been the most aggressive congressional leader when it comes to
budget-cutting and pushing the economy as hard as possible over the cliff. Then,
after the earthquake hit, Cantor said any federal relief would have to be offset
with spending cuts, and quipped, “Obviously, the problem is that people in
Virginia don’t have earthquake insurance.” He reiterated his demand for offsetting cuts when Hurricane Irene hit shortly
afterward—even though he voted against such a provision after Tropical Storm Gaston hit
the Richmond area in 2004.

Then there’s Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli. No way he escapes
God’s wrath. Cuccinelli’s widely criticized witch-hunt against eminent climate scientist Michael Mann
represents the most extreme right-wing attack on the mythical “climate-gate”
scandal, which consisted primarily of scientists making snide remarks about
ignoramuses like Cuccinelli. He’s all wrapped up in sin of bearing false
witness. Which is where Hurricane Irene comes in—although it surely doesn’t help
that Cuccinelli is suing to keep people sick, and has told Virginia’s colleges
and universities that they can’t ban anti-gay discrimination.

And, of course, Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell has tried to have it both
ways with God, as well as with the people of Virginia. On the one hand, all the
way back in 1989, he wrote a Christian Reconstructionist M.A. thesis, “The
Republican Party’s Vision for the Family: The Compelling Issue of the Decade” at
the College of Law at Pat Robertson’s Regent University. McDonnell’s authorship
of the thesis came to light during his 2009 campaign for governor, but because
the establishment is in deep denial about Dominionism in general, and Christian Reconstructionism in
particular, the full weight of his thesis never really sunk in. On the other
hand, McDonnell has tried very assiduously to walk away from that past, given
that almost no one wants to admit to such extreme views. He’s wobbled back and forth on a number of issues, but generally
tried to strike a reasonable demeanor—in sharp contrast to Cuccinelli. But God
doesn’t like folks who run hot and cold, which is why McDonnell’s a target,
too.

Finally, just to be a wee bit bipartisan about it, we need to include
Virginia’s Democratic Senator Mark Warner in our list—though with a bit of
twist. On the day of the earthquake, Warner was scheduled to speak at the
Library of Congress Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation in Culpepper,
Virginia. He arrived about 10 minutes after the quake, according to the local Star Exponent, which reported:

The building had been emptied of its staff and the approximate 75 people who
came to hear Warner so the former governor talked from under a tree atop Mount
Pony.

“I was not going to mention the fact that one of the last times I was in
Culpeper there was a tornado,” he said of an appearance years ago at
CulpeperFest marked by wild weather. “If you don’t want me to come back, there’s
an easier way to do this. If we start seeing frogs, it may be a sign of things
to come,” he said.

So it’s not that God is angry with Warner, exactly. He just targets Warner
for amusement, to see what he’ll say next. And, of course, because he, too,
represents Virginia, truly a state of sin.

8. North Carolina.

Hurricane Irene could have barreled directly into South Carolina, but it
delivered a stiff upper-cut to North Carolina instead. And why not? Governor Bev
Perdue tried her darnedest to protect the state. She vetoed its draconian budget
bill, only to see her veto over-ridden. It too was an attack on the poor — the bill
didn’t just fail to balance spending cuts with tax increases, it actually let a
temporary one-cent sales tax expire, along with some income taxes on high
earners, while cutting $124 million in local education funding on top of $305
million cut in previous years. Perdue also vetoed a highly restrictive abortion
law—one that, among other things, has a 24-hour waiting period, and force-feeds
anti-abortion propaganda to women seeking an abortion—call it the “Bearing False
Witness By Doctors Act.” But that veto was over-ridden as well—by a single vote in the
state senate. So, really, God’s hand was forced on this one. He had no choice
but to strike North Carolina, and strike it hard.

Finally, there are two individual targets to consider:

9. Rick Perry.

While the one-two punch of the Virginia earthquake and Hurricane Irene were
far removed from Texas Governor Rick Perry’s stomping grounds, God had not
forgotten Perry, but was merely preparing to toy with him. Perry, after all, had
responded to a terrible drought in Texas not by implementing any long-term
policy measures (which might make Texas better able to deal with the prospects
of more severe droughts to come as global warming impacts increase), but by
calling on Texans to pray.

Back in April, Perry proclaimed the “three-day period from Friday, April 22,
2011, to Sunday, April 24, 2011, as Days of Prayer for Rain in the State of
Texas.” Since then, however, things have only gotten worse, as Timothy Egan noted in the NY Times “Opinionator”
blog, “[A] rainless spring was followed by a rainless summer. July was the
hottest month in recorded Texas history….Nearly all of Texas  is now in
‘extreme or exceptional’ drought, as classified by federal meteorologists, the
worst in Texas history. Lakes have disappeared. Creeks are phantoms, the caked
bottoms littered with rotting, dead fish.”

Somehow, though, it seemed like most folks outside of Texas had no idea of
Perry’s failed prayer initiative. That’s where God came in, following up Irene
with the tantalizing prospect of a Gulf of Mexico storm that would finally bring
relief to the Longhorn state. But alas no. First Tropical Storm Jose petered out
entirely, then Tropical Storm Lee turned to Louisiana instead. If you pray with
Perry, you obviously take the Lord’s name in vain. As one frustrated Texan wrote on Reddit, “Perry’s prayer has been answered. The answer
was ‘No’.” God is making things perfectly clear, as Richard Nixon would say: If
you want someone praying for America in the White House, Rick Perry is not your
guy.

10 God.

Yes, it’s true, God Himself was one of the main targets of God’s wrath,
particularly during the earthquake, which did remarkably little damage to the
living. But, as Rob Kerby noted at BeliefNet, churches took some pretty hard hits:

“Churches seemed to bear the brunt of Tuesday’s 5.8 earthquake on the East
Coast.

“Significant damage was reported to Washington, D.C.’s National Cathedral and
St. Peter’s Catholic Church, historic St. Patrick’s Church near Baltimore, and
two churches in Culpepper, Va., close to the epicenter — St. Stephen Episcopal
Church and Culpepper Christian Assembly.”

Okay, so maybe God’s not self-flagellating. Maybe it’s the tenants who are
being targeted. But who’s to say, really? And if the God’s wrath biz is all
about appropriating authority to cast blame around, then why not think really
big, and proclaim God Himself to be the target? Pat Robertson & company have
monopolized this gig for far too long. If the rest of us are to have any hope of
catching up, we’re got to make ourselves a splash. And what better way to make a
splash than proclaiming that God is the target?

Related articles

• Dominionism – Part Ii (maboulette.wordpress.com)
• Evidence That Jesus Was Homosexual (truelogic.wordpress.com)
• The Lunatic Ravings Of Religious Right Crazy John Hagee (theageofblasphemy.wordpress.com)
• Religious Conservatives Start Blaming Gays For Virginia Earthquake (lezgetreal.com)
• Michele Bachmann (R-Mars): God Sent Hurricane Irene to Tell Us to Cut Spending (littlegreenfootballs.com)

Rightwing Rutherford Institute, Co-Founded By A Racist Holocaust Denier And A “Bloodthirsty Theologian” Homophobe, Attacks The Exiled!

Rightwing Rutherford Institute, Co-Founded By A Racist Holocaust Denier And A “Bloodthirsty Theologian” Homophobe, Attacks The Exiled!

By Mark Ames and
Yasha Levine

Separated at Stone Age: Holocaust-denier R J
Rushdoony…
…and Holocaust-dreamer
al-Zawahiri?

On Tuesday May 3, a lawyer for the rightwing Rutherford
Institute sent a threatening letter to The
eXiled to punish and intimidate us because we reminded our readers about
the dark, extremist homophobic ideology behind the early years of the Rutherford
Institute and its co-founder, John Whitehead. The Rutherford Institute has waged
a 15-year public relations campaign to recast itself as a “civil liberties”
outfit similar to the ACLU, yet this same “defender of civil liberties” wants to
crush The eXiled’s First Amendment rights to free speech over the crime of
reminding readers that the outfit was co-founded by one of the most extreme
anti-Semitic, homophobic monsters of our time, a Holocaust denier and eugenicist
named R. J. Rushdoony.

Rutherford’s attorney sent us a letter objecting to
two fully-sourced and documented statements in our April 28 article, Did You Fall for It? America’s Outrage Over TSA “Porn
Scanners” Was Right-Wing PR to Prevent Workers from Unionizing:

1) Characterizing Rutherford Institute president
John Whitehead as “a one-time Christian Reconstructionist,” which is true;

2) That his “outfit once advocated the death
penalty for homosexuals,” which is true.

Rutherford’s lawyer, Tom Neuberger, wrote, “Neither
The Rutherford Institute nor Mr. Whitehead, its president, have ever subscribed
to Christian ‘reconstructionist’ ideologies. … And the outrageous assertion that
the Institute ‘once advocated the death penalty for homosexuals” is clearly a
complete fabrication.”

This is an outrageous, baseless and disgusting
attack on independent journalism. An outfit that claims to be for civil
liberties yet threatens journalists who print the truth, simply because the
Rutherford Institute is trying to whitewash its past, is the height of hypocrisy
and reveals that the Rutherford Institute has not changed one bit from its
beginnings as an attack dog for far-right Holocaust deniers, anti-Semites and
neo-Confederate fascists whose one goal was to intimidate and crush any
opposition to their plan to turn America into a fundamentalist Christian nation
along the lines of the Taliban.

We will report more about the Rutherford
Institute’s threats to The eXiled and to others–one reader pointed us to a story
in Delaware which resulted in a kind of pogrom against two Jewish families
fighting a lawsuit against rabid Christian fundamentalists represented by the
Rutherford Institute– and we’ll get into the dark, sordid history of the
Institute’s founders and their beliefs, which make our factual statements that
they object to seem as though, if anything, we were going far too light on
Rutherford.

And to survive this assault, we will be asking for
our readers’ support. Gary Brecher has agreed to return to the field of action,
but only on condition that you support our effort to resist a 30-year-old
rightwing outfit’s efforts to crush independent journalism.

God Hates Fags…So did Rutherford Institute
co-founders

But first, there are so many credible sources
backing our statement in our article characterizing John Whitehead as “a onetime
Christian ‘reconstructionist’… whose outfit once advocated the death penalty for
homosexuals” that they are too numerous to list. Here we provide a small sample
of sources which repeat, expand on, and/or support this:

* From American University Professor Alan
Lichtman’s book White Protestant Nation, a
finalist for the 2008 National Book Critic’s Award for Non-Fiction:

“A movement known as Christian Reconstruction or
Dominion Theology, led by Rousas John Rushdoony of the Chalcedon Foundation,
Gary North of the Institute for Christian Economics, and John Whitehead of the
Rutherford Institute, extended Schaffer’s absolutist thinking. Dominion leaders
aimed to make America a Christian nation. They desired to ‘take back government
from the state and put it in the hands of Christians.’ This meant replacing
secular ‘self-law’ with ‘God’s law,’ which meted out harsh punishments,
including death penalty for adulterers and homosexuals.” [pp 349, Atlantic
Monthly Press, hardcover edition]

* David Brock’s bestselling book from 2002, Blinded By The Right:

“When various settlement offers were rejected by
[Paula] Jones [the woman who sued President Bill Clinton for sexual harassment],
Davis and Cammarata quit the case and were replaced by lawyers working with the
right-wing Rutherford Institute, which had been founded with the support of
Christian Right reconstructionist R. J. Rushdoony, who was an early board
member.* …The Reverend R. J. Rushdoony believed that civil law should be
replaced by Biblical law ‘to suppress, control, and/or eliminate the ungodly.’
He advocated the death penalty for abortion, adultery, sodomy, and incest as
well as for blasphemers and ‘propagators of false doctrines.’ Rushdoony was also
a Holocaust denier.” [pp 201. Three Rivers Press. 2002 paperback
edition.]

* Jeff Sharlet’s book The Family, a 2008 New York Times bestseller:

“John W. Whitehead, a constitutional lawyer who
counts Rushdoony as one of his greatest influences [pp. 349]…Rushdoony is best
known as the founder of Christian Reconstructionism, a politically defunct but
subtly influential school of thought that drifted so far to the right that it
dropped off the edge of the world, disavowed as ‘scary’ even by Jerry Falwell.
Most notably, Rushdoony proposed the death penalty for an ever-expanding subset
of sinners, starting with gay men and growing to include blasphemers and badly
behaved children.” [pp.347. Harper Perennial. 2008 paperback.]

* Mark Crispin Miller’s 2004 book, published by
W.W. Norton, Cruel and Unusual: Bush/Cheney’s New
World Order:

“John Whitehead, an ex-student of Rushdoony’s, and
introduced by him once at the council as a man ‘chosen by God,’ directs the
Rutherford Foundation, a legal arm of the Chalcedon Foundation (which until his
death was run by Rushdoony and funded by Howard Ahmanson). Rutherford’s
important mission is to fight the legal battles on behalf of Reconstructionism.”
[pp. 263]

* Frederick Clarkson, journalist, author and
activist, in a chapter from the 1999 book Eyes
Right: Challenging The Rightwing Backlash edited by Chip Berlet:

“The Rutherford Institute’s John Whitehead was a
student of both Schaeffer and Rushdoony, and credits them as the two major
influences on his thought. … [I]t is not surprising that Whitehead goes to great
lengths to deny that he is a Reconstructionist. Rushdoony, introducing Whitehead
at a Reconstructionist conference, called him a man ‘chosen by God.’ Rushdoony
then spoke of ‘our plans, through Rutherford,
to fight the battle against statism and the freedom of Christ’s Kingdom.’” …
“The Rutherford Institute was founded as a legal project of R. J. Rushdoony’s
Chalcedon Foundation, with Rushdoony and fellow Chalcedon director Howard
Ahmanson on its original board of directors. Whitehead credits Rushdoony with
providing the outline for his first book, which he researched in Rushdoony’s
library. ” [p.69]

* Chris Hedges, writing about Whitehead’s mentor
and partner in the Rutherford Institute in his 2006 book, American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On
America:

“The racist and brutal intolerance of the
intellectual godfathers of today’s Christian Reconstructionism is a chilling
reminder of the movement’s lust for repression. The Institutes of Biblical Law
by R. J. Rushdoony, written in 1973, is the most important book for the
dominionist movement. Rushdoony calls for a Christian society that is harsh,
unforgiving and violent. The death penalty is to be imposed not only for
offenses such as rape, kidnapping and murder, but also for adultery, blasphemy,
homosexuality, astrology, incest, striking a parent, incorrigible juvenile
delinquency, and, in the case of women, ‘un-chastity before marriage.’ The world
is to be subdued and ruled by a Christian United States.  Rushdoony dismissed
the widely accepted estimate of 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust as an
inflated figure, and his theories on race often echo those found in Nazi
eugenics, in which there are higher and lower forms of human beings. Those
considered by the Christian state to be immoral and incapable of reform are to
be exterminated.” [pp.12-13]

* The Southern Poverty Law Center’s magazine Intelligence
Report called Rushdoony “a racist and a holocaust denier.” The SPLC describes the Rushdoony-founded Chalcedon
Foundation, for which the Rutherford Institute was set up to act as its
legal arm: “Rushdoony supported the death penalty for homosexuals, among other
‘abominators.’ He also opposed what he called ‘unequal yoking’ — interracial
marriage — and ‘enforced integration,’ insisting that “[a]ll men are NOT created
equal before God” (the Bible, he explained, ‘recognizes that some people are by
nature slaves’). Rushdoony also denied the Holocaust, saying the murder of 6
million Jews was ‘false witness.’”

* Another co-founder of the Rutherford Institute,
Rushdoony’s son-in-law, Gary North, has been described as a “bloodthirsty
theologian” who “may actually be a psychopath” by Jeff Sharlet in his 2008 book
The Family: “North […] may actually be
a psychopath—he favors stoning as a method of
execution because it would double as a ‘community project.’” [pp.348].
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Gary North advocates hiding the
true agenda of the Christian Reconstructionist movement for obvious reasons:
“Theonomists, and especially Reconstructionists, know their views are an
anathema to most Americans. Reconstructionist ideologue Gary North, in fact, has
written that Reconstructionists need ‘the noise of contemporary events’ to hide
their goals. ‘If [non-believers] fully understood the long-term threat to their
civilization that our ideas pose, they … would be wise to take steps to crush
us.’” (“Confederates on the Pulpit” SPLC Intelligence Report.
Spring 2001).

* From a Public Research Associates article:

“Whitehead believes, according to an article by
Martin Mawyer published in the May 1983 issue of the Moral Majority Report, ‘That courts must place
themselves under the authority of God’s law.’ Mawyer’s article explains, ‘The
Institute states that ‘all of civil affairs and government, including law,
should be based upon principles found in the Bible.’ That statement is a
simplified definition of Christian Reconstruction, an important movement within
evangelical Christianity.”

* Bill Moyers, interviewing R J Rushdoony in 1988, (six years after the founding
of Rutherford Institute):

Moyers:
You’ve written that the Bible calls for the death penalty, and I’m just running
down a variety of things as you can see. You’ve written that the Bible calls for
the death penalty of some 15 crimes: rape, sodomy, adultery.
Rushdoony:
Adultery because in the Bible the basic institution is the family.
There’s no law of treason against the state. The Bible doesn’t even imagine
anything remotely like that. But the basic institution is the family. And so,
several of the death penalties are associated with the family and its life.
Moyers: So
adultery was considered a theft of the family.
Rushdoony:
It was, yes, it was treason to the family.
Moyers: Homosexuality.
Rushdoony:
Yes, it was treason to the family.
Moyers: Worthy of the death sentence?
Rushdoony:
What?
Moyers: Worthy of the death sentence?.
Rushdoony:
Yes.
Moyers: Deserving of the death sentence?
Rushdoony:
Yes, that’s what [Apostle] Paul says.

…

Moyers:
But you would re-instate the death penalty for some of these or all of
these Biblical crimes?
Rushdoony: I wouldn’t—
Moyers: But
the reconstructive society–
Rushdoony: I’m saying that this is what God
requires. I’m not saying that everything in the Bible, I like. Some of it rubs
me the wrong way. But I’m simply saying, this is what God requires. This is what
God says is justice. Therefore, I don’t feel I have a choice.
Moyers: And
the agents of God would carry out the laws.
Rushdoony: The civil government would, on
these things.
Moyers: So you would have a civil government,
based upon–
Rushdoony: Oh yes. I’m not an anarchist. I’m
close to being a libertarian. But–
Moyers: But the civil law would be based on
the biblical law. And so you’d have a civil government carrying out a religious
mandate.
Rushdoony: Oh yes.

* Rushdoony and North were not only co-founders of
the Rutherford Institute, but they were also regularly featured members of the
“Rutherford Institute Seminars” speakers bureau. In other words, they were
intimately tied to, part of, and speaking on behalf of the Rutherford Institute.
Here is from a 1994 Anti-Defamation League report:

In the fall of 1986, the Traditional Values
Coalition and Citizens for Excellence in Education advertised “Rutherford
Institute Seminars” in which Rushdoony was a featured speaker — along with
Rutherford Institute founder John Whitehead. Rushdoony was described in the
advertisement as a ”theologian…who presents scriptural framework for building
orderly structures in society [sic].”

Whitehead, one of the country’s leading
conservative evangelical attorneys, has called Rushdoony one of the two major
influences on his thought. Rushdoony wrote the introduction for Whitehead’s The
Separation Illusion, and the reconstructionist patriarch is the most frequently
cited author in the bibliography for Whitehead’s The Second American
Revolution – a favored text among evangelical activists (The Institutes for
Biblical Law is among the works cited).

Rushdoony reportedly helped Whitehead found the
Rutherford Institute, and has been a director of the Institute and a participant
in its speakers bureau.

[Source: The
Religious Right: The Assault on Tolerance & Pluralism in America. A
publication of the Anti-Defamation League. (1994). pp 111]

Finally, we are not surprised that the Rutherford
Institute—which claims to defend civil liberties, but seemingly behaves more
like a right-wing attack dog outfit trying to intimidate critics of its
far-right Christian agenda— sends a letter from a lawyer to suppress journalists
from exercising their first amendment rights. From its very beginning in the
early Reagan years, as Whitehead explained in a 1983 interview, “We need to be
very aggressive, not passive. Take the initiative. Sue rather than waiting to be
sued. That’s where we’ve [the Christian far-right] been weak. We’ve always been
on the defensive. We need to frame the issue and pick the court. The
[Rutherford] institute, if necessary, will charge that government is violating
religious freedoms rather than the church waiting for the government to charge
it with violating the law.” [Institute for First Amendment Studies.]

We’ve answered the Rutherford’s outrageous,
anti-Constitutional threats and attempts to crush our civil liberties. Now we
would like the Rutherford Institute to explain to us and to readers of The
eXiled why it failed to successfully challenge the statements made by the
authors in passages cited above, and how it claims to be a “civil liberties”
outfit that has distanced itself from its extremist hateful past when it
threatens to crush anyone who dares to report the truthful past.

—Mark Ames and Yasha Levine

Pamela Geller “America’s Most Deranged Blogger”

Pamela Geller Rages at the Independent’s Accurate Article

Shrieking Harpy says, ‘I love Muslims!’

She’s looking more and more like SKELETOR!

“I ♥ me some Muslims!”

The Independent’s Robert Chalmers has a very balanced and fair look at Pamela Geller: American patriot or extremist firebrand?And of course, any balanced and fair examination of the Shrieking Harpy can only come to one conclusion: she’s desperately unhinged.

What’s striking about this article, though, is that Geller completely lacks the courage of her convictions. When confronted about her bizarre, hate-filled posts, she invariably attempts to pretend she didn’t really say what she did really say. It’s a “joke,” or it’s somebody else’s writing that she just happened to put on her blog for no particular reason, or it’s “taken out of context.” Like many extremists and bigots, underneath the bluster and the hateful statements Geller is a coward.

For example:

Among the many new things I have learnt from the work of Pamela Geller is that President Obama reputedly used to knock around with a crack whore.

“That,” the author, blogger and broadcaster insists, “is not what I said. You are taking this out of context. The post [on her website atlasshrugs.com] was pointing out how people were reporting lie after lie about Sarah Palin. I said to myself, there is so much about Obama we don’t print. In his youth,” she continues, repeating a story for which there exists absolutely no foundation, “he supposedly liked a girl who was a crack whore. I never reported it as fact. They say all these vile things about Palin but do we ever talk about Obama and the crack whore?”

The incredibly libellous post, entitled: “IT’S TIME TO EXPOSE THE TRUTH ABOUT OBAMA” appeared on 1 August 2009. “Why not tell the truth about Obama and his reported strange sexual predilections?” Geller wrote. “It is well known that he allegedly was involved with a crack whore in his youth. Very seedy stuff … Find the ho, give her a show! Obama allegedly trafficked in some very deviant practices.”

Pretty hard to take that out of context, wouldn’t you say?

Chalmers emailed me to ask for my reaction to Geller’s insults:

She began blogging on littlegreenfootballs.com, run by the professional musician and software expert Charles Johnson. Between 2004 and 2007, she posted thousands of entries. “She was always as reactionary,” he tells me, “as you see her now.”

Johnson, who, as that remark would suggest, does not share Geller’s opinions, is described as a “mental patient” on Atlas Shrugs.

“I know Pamela Geller often calls me crazy,” he told me. “But I’m not the one who talks about the president’s birth certificate being faked or says that he’s the illegitimate son of Malcolm X, and I’m not the one who defends a war criminal and makes alliances with white supremacist groups. That would be Ms Geller. She has a very long record of absolute lunacy, mixed with bigotry and racism and I am far from the only person to point this out.”

Please note: the article says Geller posted “entries” at LGF, but that’s not accurate. She posted comments only; even when LGF focused heavily on Islamic extremism, there was no way I’d ever let someone this crazed and illiterate post front page entries here.

The overall picture you get from the Independent’s article is of a pathetic, intellectually challenged bigot who thrives on the attention, and the Shrieking Harpy has responded to Chalmers’ article with her customary insults and incoherent rage: Independent Sunday Magazine Cover Story: Pamela Geller ‘The most dangerous woman in America???????’

Robert Chalmers could not disappoint his judgemental peers and risk losing his cache with the lemmings; hence he commiserated with intellectual frauds like Charles Johnson and an unnamed journalist who actually attempted amateur Geller psychoanalysis (as if), but Chalmers chose not to speak to the people I actually work with, like Robert Spencer, Pamela Hall, James Lafferty etc.,

Geller seems to believe that Chalmers was actually sympathetic to her, but too afraid to say so. Good grief.

Pamela Geller is definitely not the “most dangerous woman in America,” but she just might take the title of “most deranged blogger in America.”

Read the whole thing…

Sarah Palin an Ugly Woman; Exposed by John Stewart

Right Wing fruitcake Sean Hannity attempted to elevate poor persecuted Sarah from bullied school into a saint Joan of Arc martyr effigy!

You would think these pair of hypocritical liars and loons were beyond parody; but John Stewart proves that wrong!

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Petty Woman – The Daily Show with Jon Stewart –…, posted with vodpod

 

Fruitcake Billionare David Koch Thinks the Tea Party is “Best Uprising Since 1776”

David Koch Thinks the Tea Party is “Best Uprising Since 1776”

 

Today, 12 January 2011, 4 hours ago | karoli

Lee Fang of Think Progress was able to surprise David Koch after the swearing-in of his newly-minted House of Representatives last week for this impromptu man-on-the-street interview. The interview is posted in three parts, but Part One captures just how arrogant, uppity, and callous this man is. The other guy is Tim Phillips, who desperately tries to become a human shield for that most dangerous thing of all: the interview.

You have to watch the video to really catch the ebullience Koch has for his new Congress. He’s nearly beside himself with joy.

TP: Hi sir, I’m Lee Fang. I’m with the blog ThinkProgress. I’m just asking what you’re expecting from the new Congress under Speaker Boehner?

KOCH: Well, cut the hell out of spending, balance the budget, reduce regulations, and uh, support business.

PHILLIPS: Hey David, Lee here is a good blogger on the left, we’re glad to have him–TP: Just a quick interview. Are you proud of what Americans for Prosperity has achieved this year?

KOCH: You bet I am, man oh’ man. We’re going to do more too in the next couple of years, you know.

TP: What are you planning on doing. What are your goals?

KOCH: I just told you what we hope the Congress will do and AFP is going to support that.

[…]

TP: I’m curious to know, Mr. Koch, are you proud of what the Tea Party movement and what they’ve achieved in the past years–

KOCH: Yeah. There are some extremists there, but the rank and file are just normal people like us. And I admire them. It’s probably the best grassroots uprising since 1776 in my opinion.

This interview was done long before the events of Saturday unfolded. But Koch’s casual toss-off of the “extremists” in the Tea Party is telling, particularly given the strenuous denials we’re all hearing now. Like the way his ‘grass roots’ characterization seems to affirm astroturf as an organic thing, at least in the mind of David Koch? And hey — it’s totally fine with Koch to have an extremist or two in the mix as long as the whole thing is dag-gone grassrootsy and populated with “normal people like [him].” Funny thing. I haven’t met even one single normal person in my entire life who is also a billionaire who spends millions and millions trying to defeat political opponents. But that’s just me, I guess.

Let’s consider those few “extremists”. We have extremist Sharron Angle, with her “2nd Amendment remedies.” Then there’s “extremist” Sarah Palin, loading and reloading. Then there’s lower-profile but still destructive extremists like Dana Loesch and Bill Hennessy. If this video isn’t bone-chilling and visceral evidence of extreme speech and views, I’m not sure what is.

Maybe David Koch wants to rethink his characterization of them as grass roots. I’m more inclined to think of them as “dry brush”. The kind that ignites and destroys everything in its path.

The rest of Fang’s interview can be viewed here and here.

The Becking of Gabrielle Giffords

At Talk to Action, the veteran watcher of white supremacist and anti-semitic groups Chip Berlet writes, The Becking of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. An excerpt:

From a moral viewpoint Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is the victim of demagogues such as Glenn Beck and his allies at Fox News and in the Tea Party Movement. This is not about legal liability but about moral culpability. This is about a nation that has lost its moral compass.Some of us progressive writers have been warning about this dangerous trend for several years. This includes my colleagues Fred Clarkson, David Neiwert, Sara Robinson, John Amato, Adele Stan, and others. We blame right-wing demagogues like Glenn Beck and Ann Coulter and a culture that tolerates their vicious targeting of scapegoats.  Now the shootings have created a new word floating across cyberspace: “becking.” To be “becked” is to be held up as such an evil and destructive person that someone, somewhere, will interpret it as a call to eliminate that problem through violence. I made similar assertions after the murder of Dr. Tiller in a post at Religion Dispatches, “Who Will Rid Me of This Troublesome Doctor?”: Bill O’Reilly, King Henry II, and George Tiller” Here is what I wrote then: On the day Dr. Tiller died, May 31, 2009, Gabrielle Winant on Salon traced O’Reilly’s relentless campaign against the murdered doctor. Winant wrote that some of O’Reilly’s characterizations of Tiller replicated “ancient conservative, paranoid stories: a decadent, permissive and callous elite tolerates moral monstrosities that every common-sense citizen just knows to be awful. Conspiring against our folk wisdom, O’Reilly says, the sophisticates have shielded Tiller from the appropriate, legal consequences for his deeds.” So, concludes Winant: “O’Reilly didn’t tell anyone to do anything violent, but he did put Tiller in the public eye, and help make him the focus of a movement with a history of violence against exactly these kinds of targets.” The analysts at Media Matters for America have been forcefully arguing the case against the “Emerging Culture of Paranoia” and the role of “Right-Wing Media” in fostering a toxic climate in which violence is more likely. Media Matters’ Eric Boehlert, who suggested after the Tiller murder that “O’Reilly and Fox News will have more right-wing vigilantism to explain,” selected some of O’Reilly’s most egregious statements demonizing Dr. Tiller. … Hannah Arendt described the process of demagoguery leading to violence as it occurs in totalitarian regimes ranging from Hitler to Stalin. The demagogue frames the target, but leaves off a direct call for violence. But the message is clear. Unstable people often act first. Political ideologues, however, can be mobilized as the process continues to act as a group. Sara Robinson and I have been tracking the number of political murders since the inauguration of President Barack Obama. [See link below]. The people who “becked” Rep. Gabrielle Giffords began with a premise of dualism or Manicheaism, and then constructed a frame that uses demonization, scapegoating, and conspiracism to divide the world into a good ‘us’ and a bad ‘them’. … Following the shooting of Rep. Giffords we once again heard calls for civility and pundits pointing out that hateful rhetoric is aimed at Republicans and conservatives by Democrats and their lefty allies. This is true, and I do object to liberals who hurl buckets of mud as we on the left are being buried in an avalanche of shit from right-wing demagogues with national television and radio programs, websites, and newspaper columns. The comparison is true in the manipulated facts yet false in the claim of equivalence. Peter Daou writes about the bogus equivalency between right/left extremism in his post Gabriel Giffords and the rightwing hate machine.”The targeting of political scapegoats in our nation today is overwhelmingly coming from the Political Right. To claim otherwise is a lie easily debunked by even a modicum of research. A big lie. … We who must speak out are not faced with death here in our nation this week. We are faced with our visage in a moral mirror looking back at our conscience which is telling us that we must speak out against the crescendo of totalitarian demagoguery. We must oppose the becking of our society. How many more must die before we wake up and put a stop to this terrible trend?

^{Another important read on this subject is the 18-month-old Tragedy At The Holocaust Museum: Stand Up To Terrorism by Sara Robinson.}

^{See also Marta Evry’s The “Becking” Of America: How Right-Wing Media and Politicians Incite Violence at Venice for Change.}

How the U.S. Government Promotes Islamophobia

Via Alex Kane

I often focus on organizations and individual right-wing activists outside the U.S. government that have stoked anti-Muslim sentiment here.  But the U.S. government itself is just as culpable in promoting a McCarthyist climate of fear where every Muslim-American is considered a “terror threat” and Islam is turned into the new bogeyman of the day.

The latest installment in the Washington Post‘s investigative series by Dana Priest and William Arkin, “Top Secret America,” provides a look into how the U.S. government is mired in the deep swamp that is Islamophobia in America (emphasis mine):

Seeking to learn more about Islam and terrorism, some law enforcement agencies have hired as trainers self-described experts whose extremist views on Islam and terrorism are considered inaccurate and counterproductive by the FBI and U.S. intelligence agencies…

Ramon Montijo has taught classes on terrorism and Islam to law enforcement officers all over the country.

“Alabama, Colorado, Vermont,” said Montijo, a former Army Special Forces sergeant and Los Angeles Police Department investigator who is now a private security consultant. “California, Texas and Missouri,” he continued.

What he tells them is always the same, he said: Most Muslims in the United States want to impose sharia law here.

“They want to make this world Islamic. The Islamic flag will fly over the White House – not on my watch!” he said. “My job is to wake up the public, and first, the first responders.”

With so many local agencies around the country being asked to help catch terrorists, it often falls to sheriffs or state troopers to try to understand the world of terrorism. They aren’t FBI agents, who have years of on-the-job and classroom training…

Amazingly, the Center for Security Policy, a neoconservative think tank, is also being listened to by the U.S. homeland security apparatus:

A book expanding on what Shoebat and Montijo believe has just been published by the Center for Security Policy, a Washington-based neoconservative think tank. “Shariah: The Threat to America” describes what its authors call a “stealth jihad” that must be thwarted before it’s too late.

The book’s co-authors include such notables as former CIA director R. James Woolsey and former deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, along with the center’s director, a longtime activist. They write that most mosques in the United States already have been radicalized, that most Muslim social organizations are fronts for violent jihadists and that Muslims who practice sharia law seek to impose it in this country.

Frank Gaffney Jr., director of the center, said his team has spoken widely, including to many law enforcement forums.

“Members of our team have been involved in training programs for several years now, many of which have been focused on local law enforcement intelligence, homeland security, state police, National Guard units and the like,” Gaffney said. “We’re seeing a considerable ramping-up of interest in getting this kind of training.”

The fact that Gaffney speaks with law enforcement on how to combat “terrorism” is disturbing.  Matt Duss of Think Progress explains that Gaffney is a person who thinks that “Obama is a Muslim, question[s] whether Obama is an American citizen, [and] believe[s] that the U.S. Missile Defense Agency’s new logo is a sign of the president’s ‘submission to sharia.’”  Gaffney is not an expert on Islam.  In fact, Gaffney did not consult a single Islamic scholar on his “report” on shariah law, and only started studying the religion three years ago.

What’s more, as I explained here, the Center for Security Policy’s general counsel is David Yerushalmi, an advocate for criminalizing Islam and who once wrote that “blacks [are]…the most murderous of peoples.”

Another recent instance of the U.S. government promoting Islamophobia was the arrest of Mohamed Osman Mohamud in Oregon, which in reality was, as Glenn Greenwald put it, the FBI successfully thwarting its own plot.

The next day, this happened:

U.S. investigators said a fire at an Islamic center in Oregon on Sunday was arson and warned they would tolerate no retribution for an attempt by a Somali-born teenager to detonate what he thought was a car bomb.

Texas Tea Baggers Push for Judenfrei Republican Leadership

About Atheism has some interesting and insightful comments on the Tea Bagger loonies:-

It would be difficult to understate just how bigoted America’s Tea Bagger movement really is. It’s unlikely that many are consciously bigots, like members of the KKK, but they do subscribe to an extreme form of tribalism in which white, Protestant Christians are the only “true” Americans.

The extremes to which this can be taken are evident in Texas where State Rep. Joe Straus should have the votes to become Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives, but a coalition of Tea Baggers is fighting him — and one of their key arguments is that he’s a Jew. The anti-Semitism of their anti-Straus campaign is evident to everyone but them — they seem to believe that they are immune to anti-Semitism because they are Christians guided by God.

– “Straus is going down in Jesus’ name,” said one e-mail, whose origins were unclear.

– Straus “clearly lacks the moral compass to be speaker,” said another, written by Southeast Texas conservative activist Peter Morrison. A Morrison e-mail said that Straus’ rabbi sits on a Planned Parenthood board and then pointed out that Straus’ opponents in the Speaker’s race “are Christians and true conservatives.” Morrison is a contributor to the white supremacy website VDARE.

– The Tea Party-backed groups are now running anti-Straus robo-calls and e-mails demanding a “true Christian speaker,” reports News 8 Austin.

– The Quorum Report, an online newsletter, reported extensively late Monday on e-mails that mentioned Straus’ Judaism, his rabbi and the Christian faith of his House critics, who include Rep. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola.

– Patrick Brendel reported that David Barton, leader of the group WallBuilders, has helped organize much of the anti-Straus campaign. Barton is a frequent contributor to the Glenn Beck program.

– Kaufman County Tea Party Chairman Ray Myers sent an e-mail last week praising a Straus opponent as “a Christian Conservative who decided not to be pushed around by the Joe Straus thugs.”

Source: Think Progress

It’s important to recognize that these aren’t just some fringe Tea Baggers at work here. All of these groups have operated alongside other conservative groups without a problem for a while now. They are accepted as being as “mainstream” as a group can get in conservative circles today. What this means is that this anti-Semitism, bigotry, and extreme tribalism are also accepted as “mainstream” among conservatives and Republicans today. Indeed, they are arguably what is driving modern American conservatism.

Myers, Morrison, and others have signed letters and worked in conjunction with major right-wing and Republican groups, like Americans for Prosperity. Americans for Prosperity, funded and financed by billionaires David and Charles Koch, is one of the most prominent conservative organizations in the country. Its leader, Tim Phillips, ran a similarly anti-Semitic campaign before being asked by David Koch to manage Americans for Prosperity.

That anti-Semitic campaign was, interestingly enough, against Eric Cantor in 2000. Today Eric Cantor is one of the leaders of the Republican Party — and he hasn’t wasted a second of his precious time condemning or even mildly objecting to the anti-Semitic tribalism or Christian Nationalism of his political cronies. He doesn’t have enough self-respect to complain when it’s directed at him, much less enough respect for others to stand up for them — not even when they are conservative Republicans.

This is the true heart of the American Tea Bagger. Gaze upon it well, for sooner or later it will direct its hatred in your direction. This sort of tribalism always seeks out new targets to attack, until there is nothing left but to turn in on itself and become self-destructive.