Obama Invokes His Christian Faith In His Call To Raise Taxes On The Very Wealthy (VIDEO)

Addicting Info- February 3, 2012

By Michael Hayne

A day after Mitt “Moneybags” Romney stated his lack of concern for the economically disadvantaged (an old school Republican touchstone), President Obama shot back by finally using the right-wing’s bullets against them.  Despite constantly being smeared as a secret Muslim, Barack Obama in fact subscribes to Christianity.  Today’s perverse version of Christianity typically refers to super rich, white proselytizers who flagrantly manipulate the pure teachings of Jesus and spew bilious hatred towards gays, women, single moms, blacks, and the poor and middle-class. It also tends to refer to making a bunch of bombs to kill a bunch of Middle Easterners so that some  defense contactor can continue to eat caviar.  So it’s only natural for thinking people to stay within 100 yards of it. But, much like everything else under the sun, the Republicans love co-opting it blatantly injecting it into politics in order to claim higher ground.

Former president Bush, a simple-minded lummox with virtually nothing to offer other than his ability to relate to even dumber people, understood that invoking Jesus’ name would guarantee universal support of his hawkish foreign policy no matter how severely flawed and unreasonable it may have been.  For that reason, I have been constantly saying that President Obama should put on his best decider face, hold a press conference on the white house lawn, and state that his good homeboy JC told him that he should return taxes on the highest earners to the levels during the Clinton era. But that’s not the style of the guy of the president who sings Al Green.

During the National Prayer Breakfast in D.C. that took place yesterday, the president revealed that his Christian (or Christ-like) faith heavily influenced his economic policies– including calling for the wealthy to pay more taxes and overhauling the healthcare system. He explained to the attendees that the nation’s challenges require smart policies coupled with a strong values system, and not of the philandering on your dying wife, or subscribing to anti-gay policies and making anti-gay rhetoric only to have secret gay sex variety.

‘It’s hard for me to ask seniors on a fixed income or young people with student loans or middle-class families who can barely pay the bills to shoulder the burden alone,’President Obama said.

“For me as a Christian, it also coincides with Jesus’s teaching that, for unto whom much is given, much shall be required,’ he added, referencing verse 48 of chapter 12 in the Gospel of Luke. “To answer the responsibility we’re given in Proverbs to speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute,” added Obama.

VIDEO & MORE HERE

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Gingrich Is a Whale of a Candidate If You’re Into Recycling Garbage

Gingrich Is a Whale of a Candidate If You’re Into Recycling Garbage

Submitted by BuzzFlash on Tue, 03/01/2011 – 9:02pm.

While Newt Gingrich is going around the country courting conservative Christians and complaining that America is “too secular a society,” its “religious belief … [is being] challenged by a cultural elite,” and “God is [being] driven out of public life,” his 527, American Solutions for Winning the Future, became the No. 1 fundraising committee during the 2010 election cycle.

BILL BERKOWITZ FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Anyone who has even remotely followed the career of Newt Gingrich knows that you can definitely count on a few things from him: He has an opinion on just about everything; he thinks he’s the smartest guy in the room; he’s prone to making bone-headed statements and then tries to walk them back; his Gingrich enterprises are running 24/7, churning out books, videos, movies, op-ed pieces, websites, tweets, and You Tube videos; he’s always raising lots and lots of money for his work; and, the capper, he wants to be your president.

Another thing you can be fairly certain about Gingrich is that these days he will go practically anywhere at any time in order to profess his religious beliefs. As the New York Times rather kindly pointed out recently, Gingrich’s “conversion to Catholicism two years ago is part of an evolution that has given him a deeper appreciation for the role of faith in public life.” This “evolution” on Gingrich’s part is likely due at least in part to the fact that over the years serious questions have been raised about the former Speaker of the House’s moral character, especially by leaders on the Religious Right.

Questions about his affairs, three marriages and the hypocrisy he displayed during the Clinton impeachment period have plagued him for years. Leaders on the Religious Right have either downright distrusted him, or at best, been ambivalent about him. Although the Religious Right is not as domineering a force within the GOP as it once was, getting its stamp of approval is a necessary step if a candidate is to win the Party’s nomination.

MORE HERE

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Apparently, God’s Wrath Was Directed At Those Southern Tornado Victims

Crooks and Liars- By David Neiwert

April 30, 2011 05:00 PM

First we had the the professional corporate climate-change deniers snorting at the idea that global warming might have played a role in this week’s devastating tornadoes in the South.

Now we have religious-right climate-change deniers claiming that they know what did cause those tornadoes: in fact, the storms were a product of God’s wrath and an expression of his judgment.

This time it’s Dr. Calvin Beisner, voicing his views on the radio show of the American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer, via RightWingWatch:

BEISNER: What this tells me, Bryan, is that we need to recognize that natural disasters like this are like distant early-warning signals. There is judgment to come. We are all sinners. None of us, none of us is righteous enough to say, ‘Oh, I wouldn’t deserve it if that happened to me.’

I’m sure folks in Alabama and Georgia will be pleased to hear that God singled them out for judgment — especially ahead of such godless places as Hollywood — just to prove that it can happen to good people too.

And why are we getting God’s wrath? you ask. Well, Pat Robertson has the answer — it’s because we’ve become a modern-day “Sodom and Gomorrah”:

Robertson: And I believe that the anointing of the Lord has been here to fulfill the desire of those early settlers, to take the gospel from America throughout the world, and that’s what we’ve been here to do. But let me tell you, ladies and gentlemen, it doesn’t take a great scholar to tell you the United States has lost its moorings.

When you think that courts have denied children the right to pray in schools, that there’s a vendetta against religious belief, that now homosexuality has been made a constitutional right, that abortion has been made a constitutional right, the courts and judges have trampled on the early origins of our nation, they have distorted the meaning of the First Amendment. It’s all been done, and we’ve let it happen.

But I was reading today about a place called Sodom and Gomorrah, and a man named Abraham stood before God, and he says, “God, there’re righteous people in that city, would you kill them along with the wicked, must not the judge of all the earth do right?” And God finally promised, “If I can find ten righteous in that city, I will spare it,” just ten. Well the time came he could only find six, so they destroyed Sodom and Gomorra. But there’re many righteous here in America, and we need to band together and pray that God Almighty will spare this great land and reestablish in our hearts the vision of the pioneers.

Well, considering that the storms struck hardest in states represented by some of the most hardcore global-warming denialists, maybe they’re onto something with this whole “God’s retribution” bit. Though not for the reasons they presume.

SOURCE

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Christian Right’s New Racial Playbook

Exposing the Christian Right’s New Racial Playbook

AlterNet / By Sarah Posner

A diversity summit at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University reveals that the religious right’s survival depends on the black and the brown.

April 28, 2010 |

NOTE: A reel of video highlights of the Freedom Federation Summit, filmed and compiled by Sarah Posner, appears at the end of this article.

“When God has drawn a line of distinction, we should not attempt to cross that line. The true Negro does not want integration.” That was the assertion made by a young Rev. Jerry Falwell in a sermon he preached at his Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia, 1958, four years after the Supreme Court struck down school segregation in Brown v. Board of Education. But at a gathering of the religious right earlier this month at the late preacher’s Lynchburg compound, integration was not only the topic of the day, but touted as the future of the conservative Christian movement.

Convened by the Freedom Federation earlier this month, the diversity summit, dubbed “The Awakening,” took place in the sanctuary of church that Falwell founded, and on the campus of his Liberty University. Sold as a gathering of “multiracial, multiethnic and multigenerational faith-based and policy organizations and leaders committed to plan, strategize, and mobilize to advance shared core values to preserve freedom and promote justice,” this “awakening” coincides with renewed efforts by the Republican Party to recruit African-American and Latino candidates for elected office. This year, 37 African Americans are running for seats in the U.S. House and Senate, according to the Associated Press.

The outreach to nonwhite evangelicals, spurred by Karl Rove’s strategy during the 2004 election and embraced by James Dobson during the same period, has been years in the making. As religious right leaders read the demographic writing on the wall, they are striving to broaden their movement’s base — and to create an environment appealing to the millennial generation of white evangelicals, who are far more accepting of LGBT people and their rights than the generation that came before them, but who remain steadfastly opposed to abortion. Once dismissed for their lack of orthodoxy, fast-growing charismatic and Pentacostal churches, where ecstatic forms of religious expression are displayed, are now regarded as fertile ground for growing the religious right. These churches have large numbers of Latinos and African-American members, often even when the pastor is white.

MORE HERE

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Ralph Reed and Randall Terry- Will Sex & Financial Scandals Sink Them??

Religious Right Has-Beens Try for a Resurrection

By Rob Boston, Church & State Magazine. Posted September 16, 2009.

Will financial and sex scandals sink the hopes of middle-age culture warriors Ralph Reed and Randall Terry? Don’t count them out just yet.

The last few years haven’t been easy ones for Ralph Reed.

The former Christian Coalition executive director and religious right strategist ran for lieutenant governor of Georgia in 2006. Early on, the race looked to be a cakewalk. Political observers predicted Reed would easily win the position, use it as a steppingstone to the governor’s mansion and perhaps bag a Senate seat, or even seek the White House after that.

But Reed hit a serious pothole on his road to victory. His ties to disgraced casino lobbyist Jack Abramoff became an issue, and Georgia Republicans quickly threw Reed under the bus. On Election Day, he lost decisively to State Sen. Casey Cagle 56 percent to 44 percent.

Undeterred, Reed tried to reinvent himself as a novelist. In 2008, he published Dark Horse, a political thriller about an independent candidate seeking the White House. It tanked.

Although Reed worked for the 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns of George W. Bush and helped Arizona GOP presidential nominee Sen. John McCain raise money in 2008, he has been mostly out of the limelight since stepping down as the head of the Christian Coalition in 1997.

With his political career on the rocks, and his attempt to become a Christian fundamentalist version of John Grisham in shreds, what is Reed to do?

One answer: Get back to basics. Reed recently announced that he is jumping back into the political fray by forming a new religious right group.

Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition will target white evangelical Christians but also reach out to new audiences, including Hispanics, blacks, women and young people.

MORE HERE

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Pat Robertson: Crash Homeland Security Hotline

Pat Robertson urges his callers to crash Homeland Security hotline

Crooks & Liars- By David Neiwert Friday Apr 17, 2009 6:45am

Pat Robertson, on The 700 Club yesterday, got in on the collective right-wing teeth-gnashing over that Department of Homeland Security bulletin on the threat posed by right-wing extremists in America.

You know, the controversy that’s been demonstrated to be a lot of hot air — not to mention a terribly revealing one about how mainstream right-wingers see themselves.

Not that such mere trifles would ever deter Pat Robertson. His attack on the DHS yesterday, alongside his coanchor Terry Meeuwsen, featured an unending stream of flatly false information and mischaracterizations. Plus, of course, the requisite gay-bashing and liberal bashing, all wrapped up in a neat little ball:

Robertson: If that had been a Republican, there would be outrage and screams for Janet Napolitano to resign immediately. That — Terry, you’re somebody who favors life, wants to keep little babies alive. Somebody who has been a veteran and served our country as a proud member of the military. Somebody who is opposed to the left-wing policies of the administration and who wants to express his or her views as they are entitled to under our Constitution, these people are now being stigmatized as terrorists! This is an outrage!

Ladies and gentlemen, I want you to do something about it. If that doesn’t get you excited, I don’t know what would. And I want you to call a number. This is the Department of Homeland Security.

[Reads number]

… And just say you protest. This is an outrage!

And Janet Napolitano has got a lot of explaining to do. And that lame excuse she was giving — ‘Oh, I’m sorry they characterized all veterans that way’ — I mean, come off it!

Meeuwsen: The report was the report. I mean, it is astonishing that it was allowed to leave under that —

Robertson: It — it shows somebody down in the bowels of that organization is either a convinced left-winger or somebody whose sexual orientation is somewhat in question.

But it’s that kind of thing, somebody who doesn’t think that we should have abortion on demand, is labeled a terrorist! It’s outrageous!

VIDEO And MORE HERE

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Religious Right Finished With Politics??

Washington Monthly

Political Animal

By- Steve Benen Featuring Hilzoy

April 5, 2009

A RELIGIOUS RIGHT CRACK-UP?…. In general, the most noticeable fissure among politically conservative evangelical Christians is generational. In this dynamic, older evangelicals see themselves as an appendage of the Republican Party, and consider abortion and gay rights as the only “moral” issues that matter. Younger evangelicals are less partisan, and consider poverty and global warming important, too.

But there’s another fissure, which in the short term, may be even more consequential. It’s between leaders of the religious movement vs. those more inclined to take John 18:36 to heart (Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world”).

The split first emerged, on a conceptual level, about a decade ago, when Cal Thomas, a far-right columnist and founding member of the Moral Majority, write a book called “Blinded by Might,” arguing that conservative evangelical Christians have been going about their efforts all wrong. Religious right activists, Thomas said, should focus less on political power and influence — having a seat at the proverbial GOP table — and more on religion and family.

In her Washington Post column today, Kathleen Parker reports on how this kind of thinking as grown considerably more common, to the point that many “principled Christians” are now “finished with politics.” Parker highlights a recent argument between Tom Minnery, head of the political arm of Focus on the Family, and Steve Deace of WHO Radio in Iowa.

MORE HERE

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