Tag: Congress

Liz Cheney to Join Fred ‘K Street’ Thompson’s Campaign

Jon Ponder

On MSNBC just now, Tucker Carlson said an announcement will come soon that Liz Cheney, the vice president’s not-gay daughter, is joining the as-yet unannounced presidential campaign of former Washington lobbyist Fred Thompson.

If he were to win in 2008, Thompson would be the first lobbyist elected president.

Since 2005, Cheney has served in the specially created job of Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, Near Eastern Affairs, in the U.S. State Dept. Assuming Carson is correct, at the Thompson campaign, she will join other GOP operatives said to include Cheney-family lackey Mary Matalin and U.S. attorneys scandal figure Tim Griffin, the former Bush White House official who recently resigned as the federal prosecutor in Arkansas after evidence implicated him in Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign voter suppression activities.

If he were to win in 2008,Thompson would be the first lobbyist elected president. During his 18 years as a lobbyist, his clients included General Electric and Westinghouse, and he successfully pushed the passage of the deregulatory legislation that led to the savings-and-loan crisis of the 1980s.

Thompson also briefly served as a U.S. senator representing Tennessee.

O’Reilly Attacks an Evangelical – And Converts Me

Trish

Bill O’Reilly has done the impossible. He’s got me cheering for an evangelist who says homosexuals and people who don’t accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior are going to hell. Through the magic of O’Reilly’s utter foulness, I am now on the same team as Bill Keller, who according to the Tampa Tribune, “writes a daily devotional published on his Web site and e-mailed to more than 2 million subscribers. His live, call-in program is televised weeknights at 1 a.m. in the Tampa market.”

Keller: Going on O’Reilly “requires you are really prayed up surrendered”

Keller recently appeared on The O’Reilly Factor, taking the usual abuse and sanctimonious hot air from Bill, who tried to appear to be the voice of reason. The topic was Mitt Romney, whose faith Keller has consistently referred to as a cult (go Rev.!). His charge that a vote for Romney is a vote for Satan has Americans United for the Separation of Church and State asking the IRS to revoke Keller’s tax exemption.

Keller posted his reaction to being beaten up by O’Reilly on his web site, www.liveprayer.com. And he makes some good points. FOX, O’Reilly, and most of their viewers, he says, only pretend they love Jesus and the flag.

As “conservative friendly” and “Christian friendly” as FOX News tries to portray itself, it is still very much part of the world…Anyone who goes into that environment taking a Biblical position on the issues and telling people Jesus is the only way to be saved, immediately comes under intense fire. The world for the most part may believe in God, but they don’t honor Him, they clearly reject His Truth, and very few have really committed their hearts and lives to Jesus Christ.

In addition to speaking to an audience that for the most part rejects Biblical Truth, I was also dealing with exposing a satanically inspired cult that has done a masterful public relationship job of getting people, including many Christians, to believe they are “just another Christian church.” As I have stated often, the teachings and theology of the Mormon cult are completely inconsistent with Biblical Christianity…

[…]

Former White House Communications Deputy Tim Griffin Resigns after Evidence Ties Him to Alleged Voter Suppression

Jon Ponder
The White House installed Griffin as U.S. Attorney without Senate approval using a provision they’d slipped into the Patriot Act.

Big media is ignoring the story that former White House Deputy Communications Director — and former RNC Research Director — Tim Griffin resigned as the U.S. Attorney in Arkansas last week after evidence revealed he was directly involved in alleged voter suppression in the 2004 elections.

This may be the first time you’ve heard of the illegal tactic of “caging” voters, but if BBC investigator Greg Palast is correct, it will not be the last.

Caging is a form of voter suppression involving registered mail. Typically, campaigns send registered letters to voters who are are unlikely to respond — soldiers serving overseas, for example. A list is compiled of the voters whose mail is returned marked undeliverable, or “caged.” On election day, when people on the caging list arrive to vote, campaign operatives are on hand to float challenges to their residency in the precinct. Palast says caging is a felony.

Palast recently obtained hundreds of emails sent by White House officials to Bush-Cheney operatives during the 2004 campaign. Among these were emails containing caging lists sent by Griffin, apparently in his role as communications deputy. Late last week, Palast agreed to show Griffin’s emails to Rep. John Conyers, chairman of the Judiciary Committee. On Thursday, Griffin abruptly announced his resignation in Little Rock, citing an urgent need to work in the private sector. (Some sources say Griffin is in negotiations to join Fred Thompson’s presidential campaign; while one wag suggests Griffin resigned “to spend more time in jail.“)

Griffin’s name first surfaced nationally in the investigation into the Bush administration’s unprecedented firing of eight U.S. attorneys last December. He has been depicted as a protege of Karl Rove with no real prosecutorial experience who was chosen to replace Bud Cummins as federal prosecutor in the Little Rock office. His appointment created a controversy in Arkansas — and in the U.S. Senate — when it was revealed that the White House installed him without Senate approval using a provision on “interim” appointments they’d slipped into the Patriot Act.

Why would the U.S. Dept. of Justice replace a seasoned, successful prosecutor with a political operative whose last job was working for the White House communications department? Here’s how David Iglesias, the New Mexico U.S. attorney who was also fired in December, described why the Bushies wanted him out of the way:

“They wanted a political operative who happened to be a US attorney … and when they got somebody who actually took his oath to the Constitution seriously, they were appalled and they wanted me out of there. The two strikes against me was, I was not political, I didn’t help them out on their bogus voter fraud prosecutions.”

None of this is new, by the way. In 2004, Palast, working then as now for the BBC, accused Griffin and the GOP of caging the votes of African-American service personnel who lived in Florida but were serving in Iraq — but this, too went unnoticed by America’s corporate media.

VIDEO
See Greg Palast’s BBC report on vote fraud, including caging, from Oct. 2004.

Update: The story is even older than I indicated previously. Palast first reported it in 2004, not 2006, as I’d stated earlier. Thanks to Brad Friedman for the correct date.

Update 2: Here is a link to additional posts on voter fraud by Greg Palast at Bradblog.

DeLay: My Adultery Was Less Immoral Than Newt’s

Jon Ponder

In his book, “No Retreat, No Surrender,” Tom DeLay, the indicted former House Majority Leader, admits that in the days when he was drinking as many as 10 martinis a day, he engaged in extramarital affairs:

“I was no longer committing adultery by that time, the impeachment trial. There’s a big difference.”
— Tom DeLay

In this period, he earned the nickname Hot Tub Tom. Then he found Jesus and, he said, stopped sinning. In the book, he freely confesses to committing adultery. “I had put my needs first,” he told me. “I was on the throne, not God. I had pushed God from His throne.”

In the book, DeLay attacked his former colleague, then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich, for having an affair while he was leading the impeachment of Pres. Bill Clinton because he committed perjury when asked under oath about his affair with Monica Lewinsky. DeLay says Gingrich’s adultery was worse than his — due to the implicit hypocrisy:

[Gingrich was] conducting an affair with a Capitol Hill employee during the 1998 impeachment trial of Bill Clinton. (The woman later became Gingrich’s third wife.) “Yes, I don’t think that Newt could set a high moral standard, a high moral tone, during that moment,” DeLay said. “You can’t do that if you’re keeping secrets about your own adulterous affairs.”

A reasonable person might see this as splitting hairs, but so-called Christians always have an “out” when it comes to accountability:

“I was no longer committing adultery by that time, the impeachment trial. There’s a big difference … Also, I had returned to Christ and repented my sins by that time.”

But what about “Judge not, lest ye be judged,” Tom?

Falwell Farewell: Rev. Jerry’s Ten Most Un-Christian Statements

Jon Ponder

My colleague Buck has been leading a prayer vigil for the past year or so urging the Lord to “call home” prominent televangelists. Now that Jerry Falwell has been the first of the big-time grifters to get the call, here’s a list of some of the things he said here on earth that might mean he is finding the afterlife a wee bit warmer than he expected. (H/t to Trish for spotting the fond farewell from Tinky Winky above.)

1. 9/11 was caused by gays, feminists, pagans, the ACLU and PFAW
September 2001:

“I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say ‘you helped this happen.'”

2. Tinky Winky is gay
February 1999:

“He is purple – the gay-pride colour; and his antenna is shaped like a triangle – the gay-pride symbol.”

3. Mohammed was a terrorist
June 2006:

“I think Mohammed was a terrorist. He – I read enough of the history of his life written by both Muslims and — and — non-Muslims, that he was a – a violent man, a man of war.”

4. Secularists hate Christ
December 2004:

“Well, the fact is that lawyers today, over 3,000 of them in America — Christian lawyers, constitution, conservative lawyers — have offered their services at no charge, pro bono, to certain groups of constitution firms to do war with the ACLU, with the secularists, with Americans United, and all who hate Christ and want to drive God from the public square.”

5. Archbishop Desmond Tutu is a phony
September 1985:

“I think he’s a phony, period, as far as representing the black people of South Africa.”

6. The Antichrist is a Jewish man alive today
1999:

“If he’s going to be the counterfeit of Christ, he has to be Jewish. The only thing we know is he must be male and Jewish.”

7. Gay sex equals bestiality
November 2004:

“So here we have now same-sex marriage. What’s next, polygamy? … Why not? And why not bestiality?”

8. Flag burners should be whipped
September 2006:

“You know when I see somebody burning the flag, I’m a Baptist preacher I’m not a Mennonite, I feel it’s my obligation to whip him. In the name of the Lord of course. I feel it’s my obligation to whip him, and if I can’t do it then I look up some of my athletes to help me.”

9. Bush critics should be beaten
September 2006:

“But, as long as at 72 I can handle most of the jobs I do it myself, and I don’t think it’s un-spiritual. When I, when I, when I hear somebody talking about our military and ridiculing and saying terrible things about our President, I’m thinking you know just a little bit of that and I believe the Lord would forgive me if I popped him.”

10. Christians must be the most intolerant people in the world
March 2006:

“I want my people to be the most intolerant people in the world.”

Sussing Out Bush’s Never-Ending Surge

Buck Banks

Political analyst Craig Crawford equates the pattern the Bush administration has established with Congress with Muhammad Ali’s infamous boxing tactic he used against George Foreman — the “ropa dope.” By laying back on the ropes, Ali was able to prolong the fight until Foreman wore himself out whaling away on him.

The White House might be preparing the way for another “ropa dope” of Congress.

Crawford sees the same kind of tactic at work in George Bush’s surge, which seems to somehow keep getting extended. As Crawford sees it:

Back in December, when Bush announced his new Iraq strategy, his GOP war supporters — and even the White House itself — had pinpointed this summer as the soft deadline for determining whether it is working. But early last month the president announced that the troop boost would not even be completed until June, thus buying a few more months.

House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., among others in their party, are now settling upon September as a deadline. But the White House might be preparing the way for another “ropa dope” of Congress. Yesterday the Pentagon announced that another 35,000 troops were notified that they are likely to be heading to Iraq by December. That suggests that, come September, the White House will be asking for a reprieve until the end of the year — and possibly beyond.

Events This Weekend Celebrate Ryan Skipper’s Birthday

Jon Ponder

There are two events this weekend to commemorate Ryan Skipper’s birthday — a memorial today in Atlanta, and a fundraiser tomorrow in Auburndale, Fla., for the Ryan Keith Skipper Foundation.

Memorial in Atlanta

Note: Check Georgia Equality website for last minute schedule changes.

Saturday, April 28, 2007

1:00pm

First Metropolitan Community Church

1379 Tullie Road NE

Atlanta, GA 30329

404-325-4143

For more information on attending Ryan’s vigil and other ways you can help please contact Melinda Morgan by email or at (404) 327-9898.

The RSK Foundation Fundraiser

Source: The Lakeland Ledger:

A fundraiser for the Ryan Keith Skipper Foundation will be Sunday at the Auburndale Civic Center. Admission is $10 for the benefit, at 115 W. Park St. in Auburndale.

At 3 p.m. Sunday, Harmonious Universe, an artists’ group that promotes peace and unity through artwork, will be on hand with blank canvases that can be painted by visitors in Skipper’s memory.

Canvas painting is free, and a silent auction and entertainment will begin at 7:30 p.m.

All money raised from the auction, food and drink will go toward the foundation, whose mission statement is to educate and promote the acceptance of diversity. Skipper was gay.

Skipper was found stabbed to death March 14. His killing has been classified as a hate crime.

Ryan would have been 26 today.

Ryan Skipper Foundation Fundraiser April 29 in Auburndale, Fla.

Jon Ponder

The newly formed Ryan Skipper Foundation is holding a silent auction fundraiser on Sunday, April 29, at the Auburndale Civic Center at 119 West Park St. in Auburndale, Florida.

Activities include a mural painting at 3:00 p.m., with Harmonious Universe, and entertainment and the auction at 7:30 p.m. Performers will include Katherine Novots, Amy De Milo, Stephanie Shippae, Summer and more.

Entry is a $10.00 donation that will go to a scholarship fund in in Ryan’s memory at Traviss Career Center.

Memorial for Ryan Skipper in Atlanta, Sat. April 28

Jon Ponder

Saturday would have been Ryan Skipper’s 26th birthday. His family and friends are holding a memorial in Atlanta:

Saturday, April 28, 2007

1:00pm

First Metropolitan Community Church

1379 Tullie Road NE

Atlanta, GA 30329

404-325-4143

For more information on attending Ryan’s vigil and other ways you can help please contact Melinda Morgan by email or at (404) 327-9898.

Ryan Skipper was viciously murdered on March 14, 2007. Two men, including one who had known Ryan for about six months, were arrested and charged with the murder as a hate crime.

Update: Check the Georgia Equality website for the latest info.