Tag: Conservative Values

Did Ford Cave to the AFA on Gay Adverts?

Buck Banks

Boycott — botched or butched? Ford Motor Co. announced yesterday that its Jaguar and Land Rover brands would no longer advertize in gay publications — nearly a week after the holycon American Family Association called off its suspended boycott.

According to the Associated Press, Ford blamed the change in its ad spend on money woes and the two brands’ poor performance in the marketplace.

“The decisions with regard to advertising was a business decision,” Ford spokesman Mike Moran said. He said Ford’s Volvo brand would continue advertising in gay publications. Ford hasn’t advertised its Ford, Lincoln and Mercury brands in those publications, Moran added.

Moran said Jaguar and Land Rover, which are part of Ford’s money-losing Premier Automotive Group, have decided to cut back on their advertising everywhere because of difficult market conditions. The Premier Automotive Group reported a pretax loss of $108 million in the third quarter.

Last Wednesday Tupelo, Miss.-based American Family Association canceled its boycott of Ford vehicles that began in May, when the group criticized Ford for being too gay-friendly by giving thousands of dollars to gay rights groups, offering benefits to same-sex couples and actively recruiting gay employees.
[…]

Tainted Rightwing Gabfest Moves from PBS to Fox

Jon Ponder

And good riddance: This show was ill-conceived – literally – on PBS. Now it’s moving to Fox News. Perfect:

“Tomlinson made extensive efforts to develop and promote the conservative ‘Journal Editorial Report,’ featuring Wall Street Journal commentators — despite federal law barring board members from being involved in program development.”

The “Journal Editorial Report” on PBS has been enveloped in controversy recently. A May 2 report in the New York Times said Corporation for Public Broadcasting chairman Kenneth Tomlinson “encouraged corporation and public broadcasting officials to broadcast ‘The Journal Editorial Report.'” Tomlinson helped get the program on the air “as a way of balancing ‘Now,'” the story added. Tomlinson was “instrumental in lining up $5 million in corporate financing and pressing PBS to distribute it.”

“Participants in the show generally conform to conservative orthodoxy in their discussion of public affairs,” a May story on the UPI wire added.

The issue has been in the media as recently as Sunday. A Washington Post editorial said “Tomlinson made extensive efforts to develop and promote the conservative ‘Journal Editorial Report,’ featuring Wall Street Journal commentators — despite federal law barring board members from being involved in program development.”

Swedes: Gay-Bashing OK If Done In Church

Buck Banks

Scandinavian scandal: Reuters reports that Sweden’s supreme court on Tuesday cleared an evangelical preacher of inciting hatred after he labeled homosexuality “a cancerous tumour” responsible for AIDS during a 2003 sermon.

The case has acted as a rallying point for Christian groups in Sweden and abroad that have defended the pastor’s right to freedom of speech and faith. One gay rights group said it would open the door to further pressure from right-wing Christians.

The highest court upheld a ruling by a lower tribunal affirming Pentecostal Pastor Ake Green’s right to preach religious views even if many found them offensive.

Green told Swedish radio he was relieved, adding: “There will be no limitations on the way we can preach.”

The court said his comments could not be considered hate speech as they were made in church on a biblical theme.

It also said the European Court of Human Rights would likely find a conviction of Green to be against the European Convention on Human Rights, which Sweden has signed.

The lower court had overturned a sentence of one month in jail for inciting hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation.

Gay rights group RFSL said the verdict showed Sweden’s hate speech law needed reform to include the religious sphere.

“It is very serious that the church has been made into a free zone of persecution. We will now unfortunately experience growing religious persecution from extreme right religious groups,” RFSL chairman Soren Andersson said in a statement.

Sweden’s Lutheran church, of which 80 percent of the country’s 9 million people are nominal members, faces a revolt by more than 700 of its 5,000 priests over a decision to bless gay couples.

The church separated from the state in 2000 and attendance is low in one of the world’s most secular countries. It ordained its first woman priest in 1960 and in 1998 the late Pope John Paul II canceled an audience with its head, Archbishop K.G. Hammar, over his pro-gay views.

Pastors from Sweden’s west coast protesting at the ordination of women and gays have called in an archbishop from Uganda to anoint their own first bishop.

Brent Bozell, GOP Blowhard and Coward

Jon Ponder

All talk: From former CIA agent Larry Johnson:

I was contacted by an MSNBC booker late today (Monday, 28 November) who asked if I would appear tonight on the Joe Scarborough Show to discuss whether or not the media are hypocrites when it comes to covering the leak to the Washington Post about the CIA secret prisons. The booker told me that Brent Bozell, head of the Media Research Center, was accusing the media of focusing too much on the leak of Valerie Plame and not enough on the leak about the prisons.

I agreed to come on air to debate Mr. Bozell. My point was simple–the leak to Dana Priest came in part from CIA officers who were concerned that the effort by the Vice President and Director Goss to allow a torture loophole would discredit and destroy the CIA’s future effectiveness.

This is a far cry from the President and Vice President authorizing the leak of CIA clandestine operative’s identity because her husband had the temerity to blow the whistle on the White House trying to bamboozle the people of the United States. I was looking forward to discussing the issue with Mr. Bozell.

Apparently, Mr. Bozell is a coward. He told MSNBC he would not appear if I was on the show, even if they scheduled me before or after him. He couldn’t handle a man-to-man debate. Typical conservative coward. I think the term is “Girly Man”. Tough talker when he is alone but unable to handle an informed debate. What is really sad is the MSNBC is caving into Bozell, rather than insisting that its audience hear both sides of an issue.

Shocked, anyone?

Preacher: ‘Lesbianism Is About to Take Over’

Jon Ponder

“Lesbianism is about to take over our community. I’m talking about young girls. My son in high school last year tried to go to the prom. He said, ‘Dad, I ain’t got nobody to take to the prom because all the girls in my class are gay. Ain’t but two of ’em straight, and both of them ugly.'”

— Rev. Willie Wilson, pastor of Union Temple Baptist Church in Southeast Washington DC.

On the 60th Anniversary of the Nuremberg Trials

Jon Ponder

Mike Tidmus:

Just a gentle reminder to President Torture and company, this past Sunday was the 60th anniversary of the start of the Nuremberg Trials. Bush and Cheney and Rice and Rumsfeld may think that thumbing America’s collective nose at the International Criminal Court will protect them. Time will tell. It’s becoming increasingly clear that history will judge their crimes against humanity harshly, because the truth is finally getting out.

Several European countries have already launched formal international investigations into the illegal use of European soil and airspace for the CIA’s Club Torture facilities.

‘Mean Jean’ Lied

Jon Ponder

Not surprising: Why are Republicans such shameless liars? Even when they have to know their lies are easily proven to be false, they seem to be completely without guile about fabricating the truth. Latest case in point, Rep. “Mean Jean” Schmidt of Cincinnati, Ohio, who lied on the floor of the House of Representatives when she trashed Rep. Jack Murtha:

During Rep. Jean Schmidt’s (R-OH) shameful attack on Rep. Jack Murtha (D-PA) on the House Floor she said she was communicating a message from Marine Colonel Danny Bubp:

Schmidt: “A few minutes ago I received a call from Colonel Danny Bubp, Ohio Representative from the 88th district in the House of Representatives. He asked me to send Congress a message: Stay the course. He also asked me to send Congressman Murtha a message, that cowards cut and run, Marines never do. Danny and the rest of America and the world want the assurance from this body – that we will see this through.

Bubp denies he said that:

Danny Bubp, a freshman state representative who is a colonel in the Marine Corps Reserve, told The Enquirer that he never mentioned Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., by name when talking with Schmidt…”There was no discussion of him personally being a coward or about any person being a coward,” Bubp said.

The Anti-Anti-War Rhetoric Is Spinning Out of Control

Buck Banks

Earth to Dick: In an address today to the American Enterprise Institute, Vice President of Torture Dick Cheney continued the administration’s aggressive response to critics of the Iraq War. In what may mark a change in tactics, Cheney is using irrational ideas to purposefully perplex the administration’s critics.

At the same time, Cheney pressed the administration’s high-voltage attack on war critics, particularly Senate Democrats who voted in October 2002 to give Bush authority to go to war in Iraq and who now oppose his policy, calling them “dishonest and reprehensible.”

“The flaws in the intelligence are plain enough in hindsight. But any suggestion that prewar information was distorted, hyped or fabricated by the leader of the nation is utterly false.”

So, if you’re a Democrat senator who voted to give the president authority to go to war — not voted to go to war, mind you — and now you’re pissed because the intel was false and trumped up, you’re “dishonest and reprehensible”? That does not compute.

And Cheney is careful to note that it’s not Bush who distorted, hyped or fabricated — we all know he ain’t equipped — but it just could be … Cheney himself, right?

As to proposals for a rapid pullout of U.S. troops, Cheney said, “It is a dangerous illusion to suppose that another retreat by the civilized world would satisfy the appetite of the terrorists and get them to leave us alone.”

Cheney ticked off a long list of terrorist attacks on American interests going back more than the two decades that preceded the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, including the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and earlier ones in Beirut, Saudi Arabia and Africa.

“Now they’re making a stand in Iraq, testing our resolve, trying to intimidate the United States into abandoning our friends and permitting the overthrow of this new Middle Eastern democracy,” Cheney said.

What terrorists? Where’s the connection between the insurgency in Iraq (Iraqis fighting a military invasion) and terrorism? Since when are they terrorists “making a stand” in Iraq? Does anybody besides the chickenhawks and neocons believe this drivel?

It’s the old ploy of acting irrational, crazed, to get folks to leave you alone. I just wonder how much of this is an act. If you act crazy and say crazy things for years, aren’t you liable to go crazy? Yeah, crazy like a fox ….

Repugs Misunderestimate People of Faith

Trish

Froma Harrop makes some bigger points worth noting after the Dover, Penn. elections.

Few disinformation campaigns have been as dishonest as the one over intelligent design…

We hear many stereotypes about religious conservatives, but Republican strategists are among the chief stereotypers

It’s a fraud, but the political wizards in the Republican Party seem to think that ruining the education of some kids in the sticks is a small price to pay for votes – which they’re obviously not getting…

We hear many stereotypes about religious conservatives, but Republican strategists are among the chief stereotypers. They assume that people of faith don’t think – that devout people are unable to see complexity in social issues and can’t reconcile science with religion.

The Republicans’ poor soundings on the mindset of religious people are adding up. Republicans made fools of themselves over the Terry Schiavo case. It turns out that the vast majority of even religious Americans did not see the matter as a simplistic right-to-life issue.

The Bush administration assumed that its conservative base was brain-dead on global warming. But now the National Association of Evangelicals – 45,000 churches, representing 30 million Americans – is working on a draft to demand that Congress put mandatory controls on carbon-dioxide emissions.

Bad science does not make good morals.

Is Italia Federici This Year’s Scandal Blonde?

Jon Ponder

She allegedly took $250,000 from indicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff in return for using her influence in high government places to benefit his clients. But when she failed to show up to testify before a Senate committee chaired by Sen. John McCain, he sent U.S. marshals out to bring her in.

It is an odd characteristic of our era that all the big scandals seem to produce a blonde woman near their centers – Fanne Foxe, Donna Rice, Fawn Hall, Gennifer Flowers and Linda Tripp, to name just a few.

The corrupt Republican leaders in the Congress have kept a lid on scandals during the first five years of the Bush Administration, but recent events indicate that the lid is about to be blown off.

“Any way to see if this is something coming from the top?” Abramoff asked in an email. Federici responded: “I will definitely see what i can find out. I hate to bug you, but is there any news about a possible contribution. . . .”

And right on cue comes Italia Federici, complete with honey-colored hair and a swirling cloud of controversy.

She is the president of a Republican anti-environmentalist group based in Washington who has been caught up in the alleged influence peddling of former GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Abramoff and his partner Michael Scanlon are accused of bilking $80 million from six Indian tribes who had hired the lobbyists to represent their interests in the Capital.

Abramoff donated between $225,000 and $500,000 he collected from his tribal clients to Federici’s nonprofit group, the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy (CREA).

Investigators allege that, in return, Federici used her influence at the Dept. of Interior to help one of the tribes maintain its monopoly over gambling in its home region.

The “favors” Italia Federici performed for Abramoff’s clients usually involved making requests to her friend Steven Griles, who was a deputy interior secretary.

Whatever she did for Abramoff, it had little or nothing to do with the activities or purview of CREA, which was founded by anti-tax whack job Grover Norquist and Gale Norton before she became interior secretary.

[…]