Newt Gingrich and the 11th Commandment 11MAI11

newt gingrich is a hypocritical pig, believing it was OK to be cheating on his wife while voting to impeach Bill Clinton for cheating on his! He cheated on his first wife and then divorced her while she was battling breast cancer, then cheated on his second wife (the woman who replaced his first wife) and married the woman he was cheating with, she is number three. Yet this man feels he has the authority to tell the rest of the country how we should live.  This from Mother Jones....

Newt Gingrich has famously cheated on and then divorced two wives, all while loudly trumpeting his own family values bona fides and slamming liberals for their ruinous effect on our national culture. David Corn:

None of this is a secret, and Gingrich hopes to defuse this story line by placing Callista [i.e., wife #3] in the limelight. Yet, his jump into the presidential pool will likely produce a series of tales and news reports about Gingrich's bad-boy days, for as long as he remains in the race. In a presidential contest, biography matters much. And fresh details—even about well-known episodes in a candidate's past—are much valued, at least by reporters and cable news viewers. Thus, Gingrich may find it tough to escape the tawdry escapades of his earlier decades.

Maybe! But here's the thing: Gingrich may be a cannier media player than we think. Sure, he knows he's going to get slammed for his sexual adventures, but he also knows that one of the iron laws of the news business is that no one is interested in "old news." So the key to his success is to get in the race now, get all of these stories out in the open over the next few months, and then count on the media to yawn and refuse to bother itself over this stuff by the time serious campaigning starts later this year.
The only question is whether his fellow candidates will play along. If they decide to be good Reagan Republicans and keep their traps shut, Gingrich might get away with it. If one of them makes it a big issue, then the press will report it because — um, because it's now an "issue."
In the end, I think David is probably right: Gingrich can't escape his past. His primary opponents will stay quiet about his lecherous past as long as he's no threat, but the minute he looks like he might really have a chance to win, at least a few of them will go after him with all guns blazing. Politics ain't beanbag, after all.

Rick Santorum said Obama said "any child" born prematurely "can be killed" 7&10 MAR11

rick santorum is a liar, and as a Christian needs to go back to the Bible and consider the 9th Commandment, you know, the one about not bearing false witness against thy neighbor......and to also acquaint himself with the teachings of Christ concerning providing for the poor, women, the working class as laid out in Matthew 25 and the Beatitudes, considering his voting record in the Senate against raising the minimum wage, health care for the poor, education funding for children, anything to provide for and improve the lives of those who are the least among us. This from PolitiFact....

The Truth-O-Meter Says:

"Any child born prematurely, according to the president, in his own words, can be killed."

Rick Santorum on Monday, March 7th, 2011 in a speech to the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition.

Rick Santorum said Obama said "any child" born prematurely "can be killed"

Rick Santorum addresses the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition on March 7, 2011.

It may seem early to some voters, but a few Republicans candidates for the 2012 presidential race are already on the trail in Iowa, the first caucus state. One is Rick Santorum, a former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania.

Santorum recently spoke at a forum hosted by the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition, emphasizing that conservatives need to remain committed to social values, even though many expect the economy to be the most pressing issue of the election cycle.

Opposition to abortion is particularly important, he said. "Any child born prematurely, according to the president, in his own words, can be killed," Santorum said, according to a column by Dana Milbank in the Washington Post.

That’s a strong charge, so we decided to check it out. We turned to video from the forum to get Santorum’s complete comments.

Part of his comments touched on the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, a federal law he sponsored in the Senate. "It said that if a child was born out of a, quote, botched abortion, then that child is entitled to medical protection, entitled to treatment," Santorum said.

Several states decided to copy the law. Santorum noted that Barack Obama, then an Illinois state legislator, opposed the state version of the law in Illinois.

Obama "stood up and said that he opposed this bill because it would impinge on a woman’s rights under Roe v. Wade, and said, in fact, that any child prior to nine months of gestation would be able to be killed, otherwise it would impinge on Roe v. Wade," Santorum said. (See Santorum’s comments on C-SPAN.)

"Any child born prematurely, according to the president, in his own words, can be killed," Santorum said. "Now who’s the extremist in the abortion debate?"

We researched Obama’s position on "born alive" legislation extensively during the presidential campaign. Obama favors abortion rights generally, and he opposed the state version of Illinois’ "born alive" measure as a state senator. But he never said that premature children, even those who survived an abortion, could be killed.

'Born Alive' in Illinois

When Obama was a state senator, abortion opponents proposed "born alive" legislation in 2001, 2002 and 2003. The proposals’ intent was to require doctors to provide immediate life-saving care to any infant that survived an intended abortion. The legislation, which included multiple bills, specified that an infant surviving a planned abortion is "born alive" and "shall be fully recognized as a human person and accorded immediate protection under the law."

The bills' supporters said it gave added emphasis to laws already on the books, deterring the death of abortion survivors from neglect. (One of the bills' strongest supporters was a nurse who said she had witnessed infants left to die in dirty utility rooms.) Abortion-rights proponents, on the other hand, said the legislation was a back-door attempt to stop legal abortions.

Illinois already had a law on its books from 1975 that said if a doctor suspected an abortion was scheduled for a viable fetus — meaning able to survive outside of the mother's body — then the child must receive medical care if it survives the abortion. The new laws didn't distinguish between viable and nonviable, meaning that an infant of any age that survived an abortion should receive care.

Obama, along with other Democrats in the Illinois legislature, opposed the "born alive" laws every time they came up. Over the years, Obama offered several reasons he opposed the legislation.

Back in 2001, legislative transcripts show that Obama questioned part of the "born alive" legislation package because he said it would be struck down by the courts for giving legal status to fetuses. In 2002, Obama discussed a different aspect of the legislation, which required a second doctor be present at abortions. Obama said he thought that legislation was intended to make abortion more difficult to obtain, not to provide better care for the "born alive." There is no record of his remarks in 2003 because the bill never made it out of committee, and the committee proceedings were not recorded.

The 'neutrality' clause debated

The federal legislation (the law Santorum sponsored in the Senate) became law in 2002. The federal legislation included a so-called "neutrality clause," which said the law would not change the legal status or legal rights of anyone prior to being "born alive." Abortion rights advocates said the clause was necessary to make sure the bill would not affect current abortion laws.

Obama said as far back as 2004 that he would have supported the federal bill and that he would have supported the Illinois versions if they had included a similar neutrality clause. The laws the full Illinois Senate voted on in 2001 and 2002 did not have such a clause, but 2003 is a different story.

The National Right to Life Committee said during the 2008 campaign that the Illinois bill of 2003 did have a neutrality clause. The committee said Obama subsequently misrepresented the bill. Obama responded to that charge in an August 2008 interview.

"I hate to say that people are lying, but here's a situation where folks are lying," Obama said. "I have said repeatedly that I would have been completely in, fully in support of the federal bill that everybody supported, which was to say that you should provide assistance to any infant that was born even if it was as a consequence of an induced abortion."

Back in 2008, we requested documentation from the Illinois State Archives about the 2003 bill and found that it did have a neutrality clause, as the National Right to Life Committee said. (The clause was added at the committee level, and those records are not available online. But we have posted the documents we received via fax from the State Archives here). But there is an important caveat to add here: We don't know what the discussion was at the 2003 committee meeting because the proceedings weren't recorded, but it seems likely that the federal neutrality clause was not considered sufficient at the state level, because the 2005 Illinois law that eventually passed included a more extensive neutrality clause than the federal legislation. To read more about the differences between the neutrality clauses, read our previous detailed fact-check here.

Obama’s comments

With Santorum reviving the issue of "born alive" legislation, we went back again to check the transcripts from the Illinois legislature. Obama did say he opposed the bill because it wouldn’t pass constitutional muster under Roe v. Wade. But he never said that "any child prior to nine months of gestation would be able to be killed" or that "any child born prematurely …  can be killed," as Santorum said.

In fact, Obama said in 2001 that there were "a number of members who are typically in favor of a woman’s right to choose an abortion (who) were actually sympathetic to some of the concerns" raised by supporters of the legislation.

In 2002, Obama said that he thought Illinois already had laws sufficient to ensure that children that survived abortion received care. The proposed law would have required two doctors instead of one in the case of a live birth to ensure that care would be provided. "If these are children who are being born alive, I, at least, have confidence that a doctor who is in the room is going to make sure that they’re looked after," Obama said then.

At no time did Obama say that children born prematurely can be legally killed.

We contacted Santorum’s political action committee, America’s Foundation, for comment. Spokeswoman Virginia Davis said that Obama’s votes against the state measure showed he supported killing children who were born alive.

"By his statements and votes, (fully documented by the lead advocate of this legislation in Illinois and at the federal level), and as verified by Factcheck.org, then-state Senator Barack Obama several times voiced opposition to, and voted against legislation that, protected a child scheduled to be aborted -- and was born alive -- from being killed," David said via e-mail.

We should note that the Factcheck.org report noted Obama’s positions on the Illinois measures but reiterated his support for the federal legislation. "Whether opposing ‘born alive’ legislation is the same as supporting ‘infanticide,’ however, is entirely a matter of interpretation," the report noted.

Our ruling

To reiterate what’s not in dispute: Obama opposed "born alive" legislation in Illinois and gave several reasons for opposing the proposals. But at no time did he make the argument that infants who survived botched abortions should be killed.

Santorum may feel that abortion is tantamount to infanticide, but that does not give him the license to put words in Obama's mouth that he never uttered. Santorum said, "Any child born prematurely, according to the president, in his own words, can be killed." Obama didn’t say that. In fact, he said that abortion should be legal, but that children that are born should receive medical care. Obama never said that any child born prematurely can be killed or anything like that. Santorum crosses a line with his rhetoric in distinguishing the difference between his position and Obama’s. We rate Santorum’s statement Pants on Fire.

About this statement:

Published: Thursday, March 10th, 2011 at 12:34 p.m.
Subjects: Abortion
Sources:
CSPAN, Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition, March 7, 2011

The Washington Post, With Pawlenty's Iowa speech, a side of syrup, March 9, 2011

Slate, Roemermentum in Iowa, March 8, 2011

PolitiFact, "Born alive" votes fuel abortion fight, Oct. 9, 2008

Illinois General Assembly, Regular Session Senate Transcript , March 30, 2001

Illinois General Assembly, Regular Session Senate Transcript , April 4, 2002

Illinois General Assembly, Born Alive Senate Bills , 2001

Illinois General Assembly, Born Alive Senate Bills , 2002

Illinois General Assembly, Born Alive Senate Bills , 2003

U.S. Government Printing Office (federal law), Born Alive Infants Protection Act of 2002

Thomas, Born Alive Infants Protection Act of 2002

Current Illinois state law regarding abortion

Illinois General Assembly, Born Alive Act , passed 2005

Barack Obama campaign Web site, federal versus state "Born Alive" factcheck , June 30, 2008

Barack Obama campaign Web site, Born Alive legislation factsheet , Aug. 19, 2008

Barack Obama campaign Web site, Reckless accusations of infanticide

Chicago Tribune, Obama's record on abortion hit , Aug. 20, 2002

Chicago Tribune, A big split over abortion, stem cells, Oct. 4, 2004, accessed via Nexis

National Right to Life Committee, White Paper on Barack Obama and born alive legislation , Aug. 28, 2008

CBNNews.com, Obama gets heated on born alive protection act, Aug. 16, 2008

The Associated Press, Obama comments on late term abortions , July 4, 2008
Written by: Angie Drobnic Holan
Researched by: Angie Drobnic Holan
Edited by: Martha Hamilton

Media Matters debunks Obama’s alleged Bible misquote from THE RAW STORY 4FEB11

fox "news would do well to consider the 9th commandment, Exodus 20:16 
King James Bible
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.
 
Fox News recently accused President Barack of misquoting a passage from the Bible during his address this week at the National Prayer Breakfast. However, a liberal media watchdog group pointed out that Fox Nation failed to realize that "there is more than one version of the Bible."
"Obama was quoting from the New International Version," Ben Dimiero of Media Matters for America wrote Friday, "while Fox Nation was pointing to the King James Version to 'debunk' him."
Fox Nation blasted Obama's reading of Isaiah 40:31, stating that the passage is, "But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint."
Obama's version stated, "Those who wait on the Lord will soar on wings like eagles, and they will run and not be weary, and they will walk and not faint."
Dimiero said that this volley was the latest attack aimed to discredit Obama's Christian upbringing and identity. "This would be funny if it weren't so pathetic," he said.
However, the overall smear campaign has worked. A Pew polling report last year showed that only 34 percent of Americans think Obama is Christian, while roughly 18 percent think he is Muslim.
The stage for this latest smear -- the annual National Prayer Breakfast -- is steeped in controversy. The breakfast's organizer, The Family, is a group of secretive right-wing evangelical Christian politicians that aims to spread its strict beliefs abroad, as noted by church-state separation advocates.
"Unlike other Christian right groups, they don’t really believe that you’re in power because you’re a good person," Jeff Starlet, author of The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power told Democracy Now of The Family's members in 2009.
This video is from the White House, broadcast Feb. 3, 2011.

American exceptionalism: an old idea and a new political battle from WASHPOST 29NOV10

THE sad fact is the gop and tea-baggers are violating the 9th commandment, "thou shall no bear false witness against thy neighbor" in their hypocritical attacks on Pres Obama on God and religion in America and the concept of American exceptionalism. What god, what supreme being, approves of it's followers resorting to lies, deception, manipulation and propaganda to promote belief in that faith? What articles of faith, what teachings of Christianity, tell believers to lie about another to promote Christianity? Consider this aspect of all the criticism of President Obama's position on American exceptionalism, and what his real position is, and one can only conclude all the "religious" critics don't have a moral, a Christian leg to stand on. See the SPEECHES page on this blog for Pres Obama's 2004 Democratic National Convention speech (text and video).
 
By Karen Tumulty
Washington Post Staff Writer


Is this a great country or what?
"American exceptionalism" is a phrase that, until recently, was rarely heard outside the confines of think tanks, opinion journals and university history departments.
But with Republicans and tea party activists accusing President Obama and the Democrats of turning the country toward socialism, the idea that the United States is inherently superior to the world's other nations has become the battle cry from a new front in the ongoing culture wars. Lately, it seems to be on the lips of just about every Republican who is giving any thought to running for president in 2012.
"This reorientation away from a celebration of American exceptionalism is misguided and bankrupt," former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney writes in his campaign setup book, "No Apology: The Case For American Greatness."
On Monday, Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), who is also considering a White House bid, is scheduled to address the Detroit Economic Club on "Restoring American Exceptionalism: A Vision for Economic Growth and Prosperity."
For former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, the concept is a frequent theme in her speeches, Facebook postings, tweets and appearances on Fox News Channel. Her just-published book, "America by Heart," has a chapter titled "America the Exceptional."
Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, contends in his speeches that Obama's views on the subject are "truly alarming."
In an interview in August with Politico, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee went so far as to declare of Obama: "His worldview is dramatically different than any president, Republican or Democrat, we've had. . . . To deny American exceptionalism is in essence to deny the heart and soul of this nation."
And last week, Rick Santorum, the former senator from Pennsylvania, told a group of College Republicans at American University: "Don't kid yourself with the lie. America is exceptional, and Americans are concerned that there are a group of people in Washington who don't believe that any more."
Some, however, wonder whether Obama's conservative critics are sounding an alarm about the United States' place in the world - or making an insidious suggestion about the president himself.
With a more intellectual sheen than the false assertions that Obama is secretly a Muslim or that he was born in Kenya, an argument over American exceptionalism "is a respectable way of raising the question of whether Obama is one of us," said William Galston, a former policy adviser to President Bill Clinton who is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
Much of this criticism harkens back to a single comment that Obama made at a news conference a year and a half ago in Strasbourg, France, during his first trip overseas as president.
Obama was asked by Financial Times correspondent Ed Luce whether he subscribes, as his predecessors did, "to the school of American exceptionalism that sees America as uniquely qualified to lead the world."
The president's answer began: "I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism."
That may have been a nod to the fact that many abroad hear talk of American exceptionalism as worrisome jingoism. But it provided ammunition for Palin and other Republican critics.
"Maybe President Obama grew up around coaches who insisted that all the players receive participation 'trophies' at the end of the season and where no score was kept in youth soccer games for fear of offending someone," she wrote in her book. " . . . when President Obama insists that all countries are exceptional, he's saying that none is, least of all the country he leads."
At a minimum, Obama's comment reflected "casual staff work. Let's put it that way," said James Q. Wilson, an influential conservative thinker who has written extensively about American exceptionalism. "He did not understand how Americans feel about this."
But while the opening sentence of Obama's answer sounded dismissive, the president's full statement was more complex than that - and was indeed an affirmation of American exceptionalism, although arguably a qualified one.
In addition to the world's largest economy and its mightiest military, Obama said, "we have a core set of values that are enshrined in our Constitution, in our body of law, in our democratic practices, in our belief in free speech and equality, that, though imperfect, are exceptional."
He added: "I see no contradiction between believing that America has a continued extraordinary role in leading the world towards peace and prosperity and recognizing that leadership is incumbent, depends on, our ability to create partnerships because we can't solve these problems alone."
Obama was placing the concept in the context of his view that the United States must enter what he has called "a new era of engagement."
His Republican critics do have a point, Galston said: Democrats have become more squeamish about the idea of exceptionalism in the wake of the George W. Bush years, when spreading American values was used as a justification for unilateral action on the world stage.
"For many liberal Democrats, George W. Bush made the world unsafe for the vigorous assertion of American exceptionalism," Galston said.
But while Obama's statement - made on foreign soil - was about how the idea applies to this country's global role, the concept of exceptionalism also speaks to Americans' beliefs about the size, role and scope of their own government.
"The nation's ideology can be described in five words: liberty, egalitarianism, individualism, populism, and laissez faire," wrote the late political sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset, one of the leading scholars of the subject.
Indeed, exceptionalism has often been employed to explain "why the United States is the only industrialized country which does not have a significant socialist movement or Labor party," Lipset wrote.
The proposition of American exceptionalism, which goes at least as far back as the writing of French aristocrat and historian Alexis de Tocqueville in the 1830s, asserts that this country has a unique character.
It is also rooted in religious belief. A recent survey by the Public Religion Research Institute and the Brookings Institution found that 58 percent of Americans agreed with the statement: "God has granted America a special role in human history."
Gingrich says Obama fails to understand that "American exceptionalism refers directly to the grant of rights asserted in the Declaration of Independence," and that it is a term "which relates directly to our unique assertion of an unprecedented set of rights granted by God."
But White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer noted that Obama has declared exactly that on many occasions - including in his speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, the moment that first brought the then-Illinois state senator to national attention.
"Tonight, we gather to affirm the greatness of our nation not because of the height of our skyscrapers, or the power of our military, or the size of our economy; our pride is based on a very simple premise, summed up in a declaration made over 200 years ago," Obama told the delegates in Boston. " 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.' That is the true genius of America."
Pfeiffer contended that the new criticism of Obama on the subject says more about the race for the Republican presidential nomination than anything else.
The GOP contenders know that this kind of argument - with its suggestion that Obama is undermining American values - was "a huge piece of what Sarah Palin did in 2008," Pfeiffer said. "They want a little bit of Sarah Palin magic, because she has a lot of enthusiasm and support among the base."
Research editor Alice Crites contributed to this report.

Pat Robertson’s Group Demands Investigation Of Muslim Congressional Staffers Based On Misleading Fox Report from THINKPROGRESS 17NOV10

I just have to wonder what God thinks about these religious people who use their faith to spread lies, hate, fear, and prejudice about others? This is a perfect example of the 9th Commandment "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor" being ignored by the same people who insist the 10 Commandments be placed in courthouses and other government buildings to show just how religious America is. Their gospel of hate does nothing but harm Christianity in America because so many people can see through the hypocrisy of their propaganda and are disgusted by it. Unfortunately, too many willing adherents of "faith based" hate and discrimination are willing to be deceived by those who are perverting Christianity for their own lust for power and domination. It is a sad fact that these people, leaders and followers, present as much a threat to the civil liberties and human rights of our Republic as do the fanatical Muslims they rail against. From ThinkProgress
With America caught up in an Islamophobic whirlwind, anything remotely tied to the Islamic faith sets off paranoid hysterics over an impending Muslim takeover. Rather than responsibly debunk these delusions, the Fox News network has contributed to the hysteria by promoting extremely radical guests, polarizing rhetoric, bigoted punditry, and racial profiling. Last week, FoxNews.com unveiled a new “investigation” targeting Muslim staffers on Capitol Hill. According to the report, the Congressional Muslim Staff Association’s (CMSA) have sought to bring the “Who’s Who” of jihadist sympathizers to its weekly Friday Jummah prayer meetings “for more than a decade.”
Right on cue, the right-wing American Center for Law and Justice demanded that the Justice Department to investigate and “take immediate action to halt” the congressional prayer sessions. Channeling its founder and indefatigable anti-Muslim Rev. Pat Robertson, the ACLJ said the “absurdity” of inviting “the very terrorists who want to destroy America” to Capitol Hill “raises a host of significant questions-including concerns about national security” and, based on Fox’s “report,” warrants a “thorough investigation”:

The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) is calling on the U.S. Department of Justice to launch an investigation concerning reports that Islamic terrorists have appeared before a Congressionally sponsored Muslim group that meets at the U.S. Capitol. The investigative report by Fox News reveals that a number of well-known terrorists-including U.S. born Anwar al-Awlaki, the Al Qaeda cleric believed to be hiding in Yemen and the lone American on the U.S. government’s capture or kill list-have appeared at what’s been described as weekly ‘prayer’ sessions on Capitol Hill.
“It is unbelievable that that the very terrorists who want to destroy America are permitted to meet in a Congressionally-sanctioned setting on Capitol Hill,” said Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the ACLJ. “This raises a host of significant questions-including concerns about national security. We’re demanding that the Department of Justice conduct an investigation and take immediate action to halt to what appears to be a pattern of inviting Islamic extremists with ties to terrorism to participate in these events. The absurdity is clear: the U.S. government disinvites Franklin Graham to a prayer service at the Pentagon, while Islamic terrorists take part in Capitol Hill events. A thorough investigation is warranted.”

In ginning up the hysteria over terrorist infiltration, Fox and the ACLJ missed one small fact – the Friday prayers have nothing to do with the CMSA. As Religion Dispatches’ Sarah Posner explains, the prayers are held by individual staffers “under the auspices of the House chaplain; they are not an official function of the CMSA.” In fact, the CMSA, which does not receive funding or support from the government, “didn’t exist” when Fox says the people with terrorist ties supposedly went to the prayer sessions. The report, says Posner, is less fact and more “red meat” for the “conservative culture that feeds on paranoia.”
Just ask the Muslim Republicans who are involved. Suhail Kahn, a conservative Republican who served as a political appointee in the Bush administration and who currently serves on the American Conservative Union board, was once a Republican hill staffer. According to Khan, the services are open to the public and are “very pro-American, and tend to be about public service, and the honor of public service.” In fact, the member who granted Khan’s room request for a small number of Muslim staffers to pray was then-Speaker and current Islamophobe Newt Gingrich. If CMSA truly posed some national security issue, Gingrich or Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) — who’s staffer is CMSA’s vice-president — would avoid any semblance of support.
But, as Khan points out, unfounded “guilt-by-association” claims like this are nothing more than “good old fashioned bigotry.” “Ninety-nine point nine percent of honest reporters” would “know a smear when they see it” and “toss it into the garbage can,” he said. Kudos to Fox News for making that 0.1 percent.

FRANK WOLF SO SCARED HIS CAMPAIGN IS RESORTING TO LIES ABOUT JEFF BARNETT 28OKT10

FRANK WOLF is running scared and so just sent a mass mailing to voters in Virginia's 10th congressional district lying about Jeff Barnett's position on taxes. Hey Frank, as a person of faith have you ever heard of the 9th Commandment? You know.....you shall not bear false witness??? So the best thing to do with this campaign propaganda is write refused, return to sender and drop it in a mail box (so Wolf's campaign has to pay the return postage) and see below from Jefff Barnett's campaign to donate your time or money to fight this last minute deceptive propaganda campaign by Wolf.

 

Dear Craig,

Frank Wolf is worried.

Yesterday afternoon, thousands of people across the district opened their mailboxes to discover a piece of campaign literature that contained a rather fanciful conception of economic reality. Frank Wolf accused me of supporting tax increases on all Virginians - even though I've been a firm proponent of the hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts that the majority of Americans received this year, thanks to Democratic leadership. For the record, those are tax cuts Mr. Wolf voted against. 
We're under attack - will you help us fight back against the Republican smear campaign?
Mr. Wolf also seems to think that rolling back tax breaks for the top 2% - those who make more than $250,000 - would be a "tax increase for many Virginians." Perhaps Mr. Wolf runs in circles where most people make more than $250,000, but that's not how we live in the 10th District. Here in Virginia, most people don't make that much money. Wolf's comments betray a profound ignorance of the reality his constituents face, and his attacks on me are dishonest. I'm dedicated to keeping taxes low for working professionals in Virginia, but Frank Wolf is desperately trying to convince people otherwise.

We're working hard to talk to voters and counteract this deception, but we need you're help to reach people in time. Can you contribute to help us strengthen our field team?
We're also taking the fight to the opinion pages: click here to write a letter to the editor of your local paper!  

There are just five days left to win this election. I'm working every hour, fighting for every vote. It's great to have you by my side.
Sincerely, 

 P.S. If you can't make it to your polling place November 2nd, click here to find your in-person absentee voting location and make sure you vote by Saturday at 5:00 PM!

          

Paid for by Jeff Barnett for Congress

P.O. Box 941
McLean, VA 22101

TRUTH AND CIVILITY ELECTION WATCH from SOJO 11OKT10

Because name calling is so 2009 ...

IS IT 3 NOVEMBER YET?
 
Are you ready? Like it or not, election season is upon us with its requisite yard signs, campaign promises, attack ads, and more people lobbying you in public places and knocking on your door than when it’s Girl Scout cookie time (btw, we love those cookies).

Did you know that Sojourners doesn’t support any candidates during election season? Our motto is “no permanent friends, no permanent enemies, only permanent issues” -- and, trust us, there will be plenty of issues waiting for us on the other side of Election Day.

Frankly, we’d like to take a vacation until November 3, but since that isn’t an option, we came up with a game plan to survive the season of mud-slinging: our first-ever Truth and Civility Election Watch!

Want to join us? Sign our TCEW Pledge and get started.

Truth and Civility Election Watch Pledge

For the duration of the election season, I hereby pledge to uphold the highest standards of truth and civility in word, thought, and deed.

On my honor, I will:

•    Just say no to crazy email forwards, and to any other noxious electronic communication that comes my way. Everyone in your address book will thank us. We promise.

•    Communicate in a spirit of truth, humility, love, and patience with all people I come in contact with, despite our political disagreements or family relationship. That goes for Uncle Frank. Especially Uncle Frank.

•    Question any and all statements that sound mean, vindictive, or absurd; that provide no source or context; or that are politically motivated. So, pretty much everything you hear on cable TV news.

•    Share and enjoy stories of folks who are living out an attitude of truth and civility. Make sure each story meets both requirements: Nice people telling lies don’t count.
•    As a witness for God, encourage and spread a message of hope and reconciliation to a world that is deeply divided by political and cultural differences. Like Jesus taught.

In the coming weeks we’ll highlight civil discourse and actions on our blog, compile our very own Truth and Civility Honor Roll with submissions from people like you, and call the news media to account when they give airtime or ink to uncivil or untruthful dialogue.

Tired of the hateful rants, lying, and deceptive rhetoric? Don’t suffer in silence -- join the Truth and Civility Election Watch today!

Here’s to a rousing invigoration of truth and civility. Oh, and don’t forget to vote -- it is still important.

Peace,

Tim, Jim, Elizabeth, and the rest of the team at Sojourners


P.S. Want to take your commitment to Truth and Civility more seriously? Check out our full-length Civility Covenant, which outlines scriptural teachings on the topic -- perfect for teaching at your next Sunday School or small group.

Is the GOP Looking Out for You? (REMEBER, GOD IS NOT A DEMOCRAT OR REPUBLICAN) 31AUG10

THIS is a great article from HuffPost about the deliberate deception by the tea-baggers and the fanatical right wing media of the American public about the policies of the Democrats and the Obama administration and Pres. Obama himself, at times with the active participation of and other times with a wink and a nod from the Republican party on the local, state and national level. It is a sad fact that a lot of Americans who choose to believe and spread these deceptions do so out of deep seated prejudice that they in turn deny, because their professed Christianity does not permit prejudice. And a lot of Americans are just ignorant, choosing to be spoon fed the hate, racism, fear, and prejudice from the extremist on the right because they choose not to do any research on their own. The professions of faith of the members of the Republican party who participate in these deceptions, a majority are Christians, are also ill served by this tactic, because it plays right into the anti-religious communities reasons not to be a person of faith. We, as a nation, need to remember that God is not a Democrat or Republican or of any other political party, and we also need to re-examine the basic teachings of our faith, especially Christianity and Jesus, and try harder to be the people, personally, socially, politically, economically and environmentally that our faith calls on us to be.

With the midterms just over two months away, we are inundated with daily media reports on the election, most of them predicting doom for the Democrats. But what jumps out at me is how telling so many of the proposals and actions from Republican officeholders and candidates are, since they reveal that they are acting on behalf of a small group of right-wing extremists, not in the best interests of the American people.
To be clear, I'm all for political debate. I think for democracy to work, there has to be a free exchange of ideas, with the best solution to a problem winning the day. But in the current American political environment, we are missing two key elements necessary for our democracy to work. First, thanks to the dissolution of the mass media and the rise of a right-wing propaganda machine (Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, etc.), there is no longer an accepted common set of facts on which to base a debate. Instead, the right wing has decided to use lies and fear-mongering (everything from inventing death panels to questioning the ideological and religious beliefs of the president, including where he was born, to stoking fear of Islam) as a strategic method to win elections. As a result, we have a situation where, according to a recent Newsweek poll, 52 percent of Republicans think President Obama "sympathizes with the goals of Islamic fundamentalists who want to impose Islamic law around the world," and nearly a quarter think he is, in fact, a Muslim. Second, regarding the tea party-dominated Republican Party, in most cases, their proposals and tactics are not chosen with the best interests of the majority of Americans in mind, but are instead cynical attempts to win elections.
Today, Media Matters revealed how several right-wing media sources took a report from the InterAcademy Council on global warming and trumpeted it as proof that the threat from climate change was exaggerated, even though it said no such thing.
Again, policy debates are a good thing. And if someone thinks that we have no responsibility to act to beat back the debilitating effects of climate change, that person has every right to do so, and to make his/her best argument for that point of view.
But what is not useful for democracy is for partisans to knowingly lie about the facts in play to make an argument that plays to their rigid ideological position. The scientific community is not in a 50-50 split about the causes and effects of global warming. The IAC report (the one the right-wing propaganda machine insists debunks the global warming "myth") says: "Climate change is a long-term challenge that will require every nation to make decisions about how to respond."
I think a majority of Republican officeholders know that scientists are almost universally in agreement that global warming is a real issue, but they are choosing to allow the right-wing media to use lies to keep Americans doubtful, all for political gain. If the effects of global warming are real, these Republicans are not just failing to look out for what is best for Americans, they are actively preventing solutions from being discovered and implemented.
Global warming is just one example. On the myriad of problems we have to face as a nation, solutions are hard to come by because the tea party-controlled Republican Party has put political gain ahead of helping the American people.
Who are Republicans looking out for when they insist on extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, even if they add to the deficit? By definition, the tax cuts would be a windfall for a tiny portion of the population (those making more than $250,000 a year) at the expense of the vast majority of Americans, both individually and collectively (higher deficits, fewer services and benefits). So to defend this gift to the wealthy, Republicans have to resort to fudging the facts. They argue that somehow the tax cuts help job growth by helping small business owners. But as numerous writers have laid out (a good example comes from Ezra Klein in the Washington Post), that argument has no basis in fact, as only a tiny percentage of small business owners are directly affected. (In fact, this paper from the Tax Policy Center of the of the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution argues that "a majority of households that report small business income will end up worse off than they would have been without the tax cuts.")
When Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty issues an executive order forbidding his state from applying for federal health care aid, is he looking out for his state's citizens or his presidential aspirations? Clearly it's the latter, as he is blocking potential help to individuals in the name of his ideology. But such an action is not surprising given the Republican positions in the health care reform debate. Rather than engage in a productive discussion over how to handle the real problems facing the American health care system (as I've written many times before, while I support health care reform, I can easily make a thoughtful, compelling argument against it, even though no Republicans chose to do so), Republicans instead turned to fear-mongering and lies. (Death panels! Socialism!) Pawlenty is protecting his true constituency (corporations over individuals) and his own political ambitions, not the best interests of most of the people in Minnesota.
Similarly, with our education system falling behind many other countries of the world, and with the South's schools doing worse than the rest of the country, who is Georgia Republican gubernatorial candidate Nathan Deal helping when he said he would reject federal education aid if elected? Certainly not the children of his state. And when Nevada Republican senatorial candidate Sharron Angle says she would have voted against federal aid to victims of Hurricane Katrina (something, by the way, not a single senator actually did at the time), she clearly isn't looking out for the well-being of the people of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. And the list goes on and on.
That's actually the heart of the problem here. You can disagree with the approach the president and the Democratic-controlled Congress took in addressing the massive problems left by the inept Bush administration. Again, debating solutions to problems is what underpins the people's faith in our democracy. But the Republicans never engaged in such a debate. They instead spoke and acted as if the Obama presidency was somehow illegitimate, even though he won a convincing majority of the American people. Rather than debate the benefits of a stimulus bill (and reveal that they were protecting their constituency: the wealthy and corporations), Republicans called Obama a socialist. Rather than debate foreign policy, politicians and candidates gave a wink and a nod as right wingers questioned his religion and his place of birth.
In the end, with the country facing massive problems, the Republicans decided not to act in the best interests of the American people and try and find solutions. The vast majority of Republicans holding office know that the president was born in Hawaii and is not a socialist. They know he advocated for health care reform out of a desire to help Americans, not as part of a plan to seize control of private corporations. They know that his economic proposals were his honest attempt to boost a recession-addled economy and restore a near-collapsed financial system, not an attempt to redistribute wealth. They know that his foreign policy actions were his honest best judgment meant to protect and promote the interests of the United States, not a secret plan to help radical Muslims. And they know that as president, he is doing what he thinks is right to help the American people, not to bring down the United States.
They know these things even as they stridently disagree with his policies. But rather than make that clear, these Republicans chose, instead, to allow the demonization to occur, knowing full well that many Americans would start to believe the lies. (We saw in the March Harris poll that revealed that 57 percent of Republicans think Obama is a Muslim, and 45 percent think he wasn't born in the United States.) Clearly, allowing these lies to take root is not in the best interest of the American people.
(It is interesting that Republicans accused Obama of intervening on behalf of the failing auto industry and proposing federal stimulus as part of an ideological attempt to assert government power over private industry. But these same Republicans have been completely silent over the fact that the American auto industry has not only rebounded since the federal government intervened, but the government will soon be selling off its shares in General Motors to private owners, as well as the report from Moody's chief economist Mark Zandi finding that the stimulus legislation was successful in saving and creating millions of jobs.)
As I wrote in July, I understand that Americans are angry. They have a right to be. But if they take that anger out by voting for Republicans in November, they will only be making a bad situation worse. In addition to playing into the GOP strategy of obstruction and dishonesty, they would be making it harder for the country to address the real and massive problems facing the country.
The GOP is looking out for a select group of constituents, but unless you are an extreme right-wing ideologue or in the top one percent of American earners, Republicans probably aren't trying to help you.

Follow Mitchell Bard on Twitter: www.twitter.com/MitchellBard

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RNC Committeewoman Kim Lehman Claims Obama Told Muslims That He Was A Muslim 23AUG10 & Obama Speech In Cairo: VIDEO, Full Text 4JUN09

TYPICAL of the tea-baggers and the gop right wing extremeist and fanatics, the continuing attacks on Pres. Obama show the ignorance and prejudice and racism of these people and their supporters. This is from HuffPost, and includes the segment from Pres. Obama's Cairo speech in which he states flay out he is a Christian. Those of faith who continue this controversy about the President should consider the 9th commandment on false witness against anyone.....I have also included a video of Pres. Obama's speech in Cairo, the transcripts have been added to the Speeches page on this blog.

The Republican ranks have, by and large, cautiously avoided weighing in on recent poll numbers showing that a healthy portion of the American public believes that President Barack Obama is a Muslim.
Wary of the cultural sensitivities such discussions entail, the de facto response seems to be the one offered by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Sunday: "The president says he's a Christian," McConnell said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "I take him at his word. I don't think that's in dispute."
There have been a few notable exceptions. Congressional candidate Tom Ganley said last week that he did not have "a position on whether he's a Muslim" only to walk back his remarks amidst the uproar. No one in the official GOP tent, however, has fully embraced the rumor. Until now.
Last Friday, a Republican National Committee woman Kim Lehman, responding to an article about the polls in Politico, accused the publication of trying "to protect Obama" by denying his true religious heritage.
"BTW he personally told the muslims that he IS a muslim," wrote the Iowa RNC member. "Read his lips."

A few Iowa progressive blogs picked up on her remarks. But beyond that they went largely ignored. Lehman, who also works for The John Paul II Stem Cell Research Institute, appears to be the first national committee member to fully endorse the Obama-is-a-Muslim view.

Story continues below

Reached on the phone Monday, Lehman stood by her initial tweet, arguing that it was during his speech that Obama let the real truth slip.
"I was watching television when he was over there talking to the Muslim world and he made it, in my opinion, clear he was partially Muslim," Lehman told the Huffington Post. "The way he was approaching that speech was, 'Hey I'm one of you. I'm with you.' He didn't have to say that... but he did."
Obama's speech in Cairo did include discussion about his father's Muslim faith. But the president also made it abundantly clear, both then and many times since, that he was a practicing Christian. Asked why she didn't believe the empirical and overwhelming evidence, Lehman replied:
"Again, going back to his speech... he would have said I'm a Christian and I'm from the Christian religion and we can work together. It didn't appear to me he said Christianity was part of his religion."
For the record, here is the relevant portion of Obama's speech (emphasis ours):

Now part of this conviction is rooted in my own experience. I'm a Christian, but my father came from a Kenyan family that includes generations of Muslims. As a boy, I spent several years in Indonesia and heard the call of the azaan at the break of dawn and at the fall of dusk. As a young man, I worked in Chicago communities where many found dignity and peace in their Muslim faith.

Obama Speech In Cairo: VIDEO 4JUN09

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/04/obama-speech-in-cairo-vid_n_211215.html
Below, the full text of President Obama's speech in Cairo, Egypt, titled "A New Beginning."
Watch video:



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CONFUSION GROWS ABOUT THE PRESIDENT'S RELIGION & RELIGION AND POLITICS 19AUG10

Here is  a fascinating poll from the Pew Center For Research on the public perception of Pres Obama's religious beliefs. There is growing speculation he is a Muslim and not a Christian though he has publicly declared his faith as a Christian. Maybe those questioning Pres. Obama's faith would get a clearer view if they concentrated in removing the mote in their own eyes and start acting and living like Christians, or Jews or Muslims or whatever faith they are claiming....I think we wouldn't have the severity of all the problems we are facing as a nation if all these religious people actually walked their religious walk instead of just talking their religious talk. Click the header or the link below to see the entire survey, and I have also added it to the page The Great Debate of Our Season on this blog.
 
There is widespread -- and growing -- confusion about President Barack Obama's religious affiliation with one in five Americans now saying (incorrectly) that he is a Muslim, according to a new national poll conducted by the Pew Research Center.
Fully 18 percent of those tested in Pew's annual religion and public life survey said that Obama was a Muslim, a significant increase from a March 2009 Pew poll where 11 percent said the president adhered to the tenets of Islam.
(Worth noting: The Pew survey was conducted in late July and early August -- prior to the President's remarks about the New York City mosque.)
While nearly half of the Pew sample (48 percent) last March correctly identified Obama as a Christian that number, too, dropped precipitously -- down to 34 percent -- in the new Pew poll. The number of people who said they were unsure exactly what the President's religious affiliation was rose from 34 percent to 43 percent.
Not surprisingly, there was a strong linkage between those who wrongly believe Obama is a Muslim and those who disapprove of the job he is doing as president. Of the 41 percent who disapprove of the job he is doing, fully two-thirds identify say the President is a Muslim.
In terms of political affiliation, the sharpest rise in those who say Obama is a Muslim is among Republicans (up 14 points) since 2009. But, the religion question is also not purely partisan; among independents the number of those describing Obama as a Muslim is up eight points since last March and the number of Democrats identifying him correctly as a Christian is down from 55 percent to 46 percent.
"The overall picture here is of growing confusion or uncertainty about the President's own faith," said Alan Cooperman, associate director of the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
The poll suggests that the persistent untruths that dogged Obama's presidential campaign regarding his associations with Islam remain -- and are even growing -- as Obama finishes up his second year as the nation's commander-in-chief.
The political ramifications of the growing uncertainty regarding Obama's religious affiliation are more difficult to ascertain.
There is, without question, some significant level of partisanship inherent in questions about Obama's faith; the less you like the President, the more likely you are to say he is a Muslim. And, in truth, that 18 percent who falsely identify the President with the Islamic faith would almost certainly never be voting for him anyway.
Perhaps more important from an electoral perspective, however, is the growing number of people who don't know what religion the President identifies with. While most Americans don't tend to vote based on religious faith -- although being either a Muslim or a Mormon can, among certain demographic groups, complicate a politician's electoral calculus -- they do like to believe that their president is a man of faith.
Religion humanizes a president for many people, allows them to identify on a very basic level with the most powerful man in the world. For a president whose detractors have scored political points by painting him as aloof and uncaring, religion could be a bridge by which he connects to the average person. The Pew poll suggests work still remains to be done in building that connection.

The GOP's Facebook Anti-Semites 29JUL10

ANOTHER example of the racism and fascist attitudes that the gop seems to be tolerating for political gain. 

— Republican National Committee/Facebook.

After MoJo inquiries, the Republican Party promises to take down a Facebook page with offensive comments.

— By Nick Baumann

Thu Jul. 29, 2010 7:26 AM PDT

Israel is responsible for 9/11, Al Qaeda is "100% state sponsored by Zionist Jews," and White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel is actually an agent for Mossad, the Israeli spy agency—at least according to posts that appeared on the Republican National Committee's Facebook page. (You can see screen shots of some of the posts below.)
Several avowedly anti-Semitic commenters regularly posted on the national GOP's Facebook wall, encouraging tea partiers and "White, Black, Spanish, [and] Asian" people to "arm yourselves" and rise up against the "Zionist Jews" who, they claim, control the country and the media. They linked to a site that hosts purported versions of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" and promoted 9/11 "truth" theories that allege "Israeli agents carried out the attacks."
The RNC could easily have deleted these comments—it's as easy as clicking "remove" if an administrator is signed in to the account—or blocked the users who were posting them. Even if the RNC decided it didn't have the resources to monitor its Facebook wall, it could have simply disabled the ability to comment on its wall. When Mother Jones contacted the committee for comment Thursday morning, the RNC disabled its Facebook discussion board, but not its wall containing the anti-Semitic comments. When a Mother Jones reporter explained the difference between a Facebook discussion board and a wall, RNC spokesman Doug Heye promised the wall "will be down shortly." (UPDATE, July 30: The comments have been removed, but the wall is still up.)  "We're interested in a civil debate, and any rhetoric or language that is out of bounds is not something we're interested in hosting and not something we're interested in hearing," Heye said. "We have decided we are better off closing down our discussion page." That's what Organizing for America has done with Barack Obama's Facebook page. (The White House's wall, however, is still live.) But until it was contacted by Mother Jones, the RNC allowed commenting to continue unabated—and apparently unmoderated.

The various comments—which came from Facebook users calling themselves "Jennifer Grey" and "Shelly Adams"—also included attacks on "Jew-controlled" politicians. Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.), Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-Fla.), Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.), and Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wisc.) are among those targeted. (All except Sensenbrenner are Jewish). Presidents George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama are criticized as "Zionist Puppets."
Kevin Anderson, a Californian Facebook user who describes himself as a "staunch Republican," alerted Mother Jones to the comments. Anderson says he was banned from commenting on the RNC's Facebook page after he complained about the anti-Semitic comments to committee officials. He claims that "hooked nose" style photos initially accompanied the posts. Those photos were removed when he first threatened to contact the press, he says.
At Mother Jones, interns review every comment that comes through the system, and delete the most offensive ones, along with a whole bunch of spam. Mother Jones also has an intern who monitors the magazine's Facebook wall.
Some media organizations have taken different tacks—ignoring comments entirely. But Andrew Rasiej, the co-founder of the Personal Democracy Forum, says that's not an option for politicians and political organizations. "I don't think that's acceptable," he says. "If they have comments open, then they're inviting reasonable people to comment. To allow a free-for-all means you are not respecting the reasonable commenters."
A review of the Democratic National Committee's Facebook wall during the past month reveals one commenter warning his "fellow Africa-Americans" to "be on the watch for jews with anti-black behavior." The DNC page also shows many posts from Anderson pushing Republican talking points—and trying to draw attention to the anti-Semitism on the GOP page.
"While I don't think this indicates anti-Semitism among the GOP leadership," Anderson writes. "I feel it indicates that there is a certain laxity among GOP workers in removing anti-Semitic screeds from GOP sounding boards. However, as this is an OFFICIAL GOP sounding board sponsored by the Republican National Committee and moderated by GOP employees. I think you might have room to indicate certain biases among the workers at the GOP and indicate an ethical climate of its official party organs."
This isn't the first time the RNC has gotten in trouble for the content of its Facebook page. Last October, it kept a number of racist pictures of Obama (including one saying "miscegenation is a crime against American values") on its page for nearly a week before removing them.
Screen shots of the RNC posts follow below. You can also look at a large (11.7 MB) PDF of the posts from the month of July.

Confessions of a Tea Party Casualty Why GOP Rep. Bob Inglis is looking for a new job. from MOJO 3AUG10

 THIS man lays it right on the line, especially with this statement (in the article below) 
I refused to use the word because I have this view that the Ninth Commandment must mean something. I remember one year Bill Clinton—the guy I was out to get [when serving on the House judiciary committee in the 1990s]—at the National Prayer Breakfast said something that was one of the most profound things I've ever heard from anybody at a gathering like that. He said, "The most violated commandment in Washington, DC"—everybody leaned in; do tell, Mr. President—"is, 'Thou shall not bear false witness against thy neighbor.'" I thought, "He's right. That is the most violated commandment in Washington." For me to go around saying that Barack Obama is a socialist is a violation of the Ninth Commandment. He is a liberal fellow. I'm conservative. We disagree...But I don't need to call him a socialist, and I hurt the country by doing so. The country has to come together to find a solution to these challenges or else we go over the cliff.

By David Corn | Tue Aug. 3, 2010 3:00 AM PDT

---

It was the middle of a tough primary contest, and Rep. Bob Inglis (R-S.C.) had convened a small meeting with donors who had contributed thousands of dollars to his previous campaigns. But this year, as Inglis faced a challenge from tea party-backed Republican candidates claiming Inglis wasn't sufficiently conservative, these donors hadn't ponied up. Inglis' task: Get them back on the team. "They were upset with me," Inglis recalls. "They are all Glenn Beck watchers." About 90 minutes into the meeting, as he remembers it, "They say, 'Bob, what don't you get? Barack Obama is a socialist, communist Marxist who wants to destroy the American economy so he can take over as dictator. Health care is part of that. And he wants to open up the Mexican border and turn [the US] into a Muslim nation.'" Inglis didn't know how to respond.
As he tells this story, the veteran lawmaker is sitting in his congressional office, which he will have to vacate in a few months. On June 22, he was defeated [1] in the primary runoff by Spartanburg County 7th Circuit Solicitor Trey Gowdy, who had assailed Inglis for supposedly straying from his conservative roots, pointing to his vote for the bank bailout and against George W. Bush's surge in Iraq. Inglis, who served six years in Congress during the 1990s as a conservative firebrand before being reelected to the House in 2004, had also ticked off right-wingers [2] in the state's 4th Congressional District by urging tea-party activists to "turn Glenn Beck off" and by calling on Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) to apologize for shouting "You lie!" at Obama during the president's State of the Union address. For this, Inglis, who boasts (literally) a 93 percent lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union, received the wrath of the tea party, losing to Gowdy 71 to 29 percent. In the weeks since, Inglis has criticized Republican House leaders for acquiescing to a poisonous, tea party-driven "demagoguery [3]" that he believes will undermine the GOP's long-term credibility. And he's freely recounting his frustrating interactions with tea party types, while noting that Republican leaders are pushing rhetoric tainted with racism, that conservative activists are dabbling in anti-Semitic conspiracy theory nonsense, and that Sarah Palin celebrates ignorance.
The week after that meeting with his past funders—whom he failed to bring back into the fold—Inglis asked House Republican leader John Boehner what he would have told this group of Obama-bashers. Inglis recalls what happened:

[Boehner] said, "I would have told them that it's not quite that bad. We disagree with him on the issues." I said, "Hold on Boehner, that doesn't work. Let me tell you, I tried that and it did not work." I said [to Boehner], "If you're going to lead these people and the fearful stampede to the cliff that they're heading to, you have to turn around and say over your shoulder, 'Hey, you don't know the half of it.'"

In other words, feed and fuel the anger and paranoia of the right.

During his primary campaign, Inglis repeatedly encountered enraged conservatives whom he couldn't—or wouldn't—satisfy. Shortly before the runoff primary election, Inglis met with about a dozen tea party activists at the modest ranch-style home of one of them. Here's what took place:

I sat down, and they said on the back of your Social Security card, there's a number. That number indicates the bank that bought you when you were born based on a projection of your life's earnings, and you are collateral. We are all collateral for the banks. I have this look like, "What the heck are you talking about?" I'm trying to hide that look and look clueless. I figured clueless was better than argumentative. So they said, "You don't know this?! You are a member of Congress, and you don't know this?!" And I said, "Please forgive me. I'm just ignorant of these things." And then of course, it turned into something about the Federal Reserve and the Bilderbergers and all that stuff. And now you have the feeling of anti-Semitism [4] here coming in, mixing in. Wow.

Later, Inglis mentioned this meeting to another House member: "He said, 'You mean you sat there for more than 10 minutes?' I said, 'Well, I had to. We were between primary and runoff.' I had a two-week runoff. Oh my goodness. How do you..." Inglis trails off, shaking his head.
While he was campaigning, Inglis says, tea party activists and conservative voters kept pushing him to describe Obama as a "socialist." But, he says, "It's a dangerous strategy to build conservatism on information and policies that are not credible...This guy is no socialist." He continues:

The word is designed to have emotional charge to it. Throughout my primary, there were people insisting that I use the word. They would ask me if he was a socialist, and I would always find some other word. I'd say, "President Obama wants a very large government that I don't think will work and that spends too much and it's inefficient and it compromises freedom and it's not the way we want to go." They would listen for the word, wait to see if I used the s-word, and when I didn't, you could see the disappointment.

Why not give these voters what they wanted? Inglis says he wasn't willing to lie:

I refused to use the word because I have this view that the Ninth Commandment must mean something. I remember one year Bill Clinton—the guy I was out to get [when serving on the House judiciary committee in the 1990s]—at the National Prayer Breakfast said something that was one of the most profound things I've ever heard from anybody at a gathering like that. He said, "The most violated commandment in Washington, DC"—everybody leaned in; do tell, Mr. President—"is, 'Thou shall not bear false witness against thy neighbor.'" I thought, "He's right. That is the most violated commandment in Washington." For me to go around saying that Barack Obama is a socialist is a violation of the Ninth Commandment. He is a liberal fellow. I'm conservative. We disagree...But I don't need to call him a socialist, and I hurt the country by doing so. The country has to come together to find a solution to these challenges or else we go over the cliff.

Inglis found that ideological extremism is not only the realm of the tea party; it also has infected the official circles of his Republican Party. In early 2009, he attended a meeting of the GOP's Greenville County executive committee. At the time, Republicans were feeling discouraged. Obama was in the White House; the Democrats had enlarged their majorities in the House and Senate. The GOP seemed to be in tatters. But Inglis had what he considered good news. He put up a slide he had first seen at a GOP retreat. It was based on exit polling conducted during the November 2008 election. The slide, according to Inglis, showed that when American voters were asked to place themselves on an ideological spectrum—1 being liberal, 10 being conservative—the average ended up at about 5.6. The voters placed House Republicans at about 6.5 and House Democrats at about 4.3. Inglis told his fellow Republicans, "This is great news," explaining it meant that the GOP was still closer to the American public than the Democrats. The key, he said, was for the party to keep to the right, without driving off the road.
Inglis was met, he says with "stony" faces: "There's a short story by Shirley Jackson, 'The Lottery.'" The tale describes a town where the residents stone a neighbor who is chosen randomly. "That's what the crowd looked like. I got home that night and said to my wife, 'You can't believe how they looked back at me.' It was really frightening." The next speaker, he recalls, said, "'On Bob's ideological spectrum up there, I'm a 10,' and the crowd went wild. That was what I was dealing with."
Inglis acknowledges he's intimately familiar with extreme politics. He was part of the GOP gang that went after Clinton and impeached him for the Lewinsky affair:

I hated Bill Clinton. I wanted to destroy him. Then I had six years out [after leaving Congress in 1999] to look back on that, and now I would confess it as a sin. It is just wrong to want to destroy another human being and to spend so much time and effort trying to destroy Bill Clinton—some of it with really suspect information. We went on and on about Whitewater. We had talked about the strange things about Vince Foster's death. The drug dealing at Mena airport. So in the six years I was out, I looked back and realized, "Oh what a waste."

When he returned to the House in 2005, Inglis, though still a conservative, was more focused on policy solutions than ideological battle. After Obama entered the White House, Inglis worked up a piece of campaign literature—in the form of a cardboard coaster that flipped open—that noted that Republicans should collaborate (not compromise) with Democrats to produce workable policies. "America's looking for solutions, not wedges," it read. He met with almost every member of the House Republican caucus to make his pitch: "What we needed to be is the adults who say absolutely we will work with [the new president]."
Instead, he remarks, his party turned toward demagoguery. Inglis lists the examples: falsely claiming Obama's health care overhaul included "death panels," raising questions about Obama's birthplace, calling the president a socialist, and maintaining that the Community Reinvestment Act [5] was a major factor of the financial meltdown. "CRA," Inglis says, "has been around for decades. How could it suddenly create this problem? You see how that has other things worked into it?" Racism? "Yes," Inglis says.
As an example of both the GOP pandering to right-wing voters and conservative talk show hosts undercutting sensible policymaking, Inglis points to climate change. Fossil fuels, he notes, get a free ride because they're "negative externalities"—that is, pollution and the effects of climate change—"are not recognized" in the market. Sitting in front of a wall-sized poster touting clean technology centers in South Carolina, Inglis says that conservatives "should be the ones screaming. This is a conservative concept: accountability. This is biblical law: you cannot do on your property what harms your neighbor's property." Which is why he supports placing a price on carbon—and forcing polluters to cover it.
Asked why conservatives and Republicans have demonized the issue of climate change and clean energy, Inglis replies, "I wish I knew; then maybe I wouldn't have lost my election." He points out that some conservatives believe that any issue affecting the Earth is "the province of God and will not be affected by human activity. If you talk about the challenge of sustainability of the Earth's systems, it's an affront to that theological view."
Inglis voted against the cap-and-trade climate legislation, believing it would create a new tax, lead to a "hopelessly complicated" trading scheme for carbon, and harm American manufacturing by handing China and India a competitive edge on energy costs. Instead, he proposed a revenue-neutral tax swap: Payroll taxes would be reduced, and the amount of that reduction would be applied as a tax on carbon dioxide emissions—mainly hitting coal plants and natural gas facilities. (This tax would be removed from exported goods and imposed on imported products—thus neutralizing any competitive advantage for China, India, and other manufacturing nations.)
Here was a conservative market-based plan. Did it receive any interest from House GOP leaders? Inglis shakes his head: "It's the t-word." Tax. He adds, "It's so contrary to the rhetoric we've got out there, to what Beck, Limbaugh, and others are saying."
For Inglis, this is the crux of the dilemma: Republican members of Congress know "deep down" that they need to deliver conservative solutions like his tax swap. Yet, he adds, "We're being driven as herd by these hot microphones—which are like flame throwers—that are causing people to run with fear and panic, and Republican members of Congress are afraid of being run over by that stampeding crowd." Inglis says that it's hard for Republicans in Congress to "summon the courage" to say no to Beck, Limbaugh, and the tea party wing. "When we start just delivering rhetoric and more misinformation...we're failing the conservative movement," he says. "We're failing the country." Yet, he notes, Boehner and House minority whip Eric Cantor have one primary strategic calculation: Play to the tea party crowd. "It's a dangerous strategy," he contends, "to build conservatism on information and policies that are not credible."
Asked if there are any 2012 GOP contenders who can lead the party in a more credible direction, Inglis points to Rob Portman, a former House member who was President George W. Bush's budget director. But Portman is now running for Senate in Ohio. He's not 2012 material. What about Sarah Palin? Inglis pauses for a moment: "I think that there are people who seem to think that ignorance is strength." And he says of her: "If I choose to remain ignorant and uninformed and encourage people to follow me while I celebrate my lack of information," that's not responsible.
After winning six congressional elections since 1992, Inglis is now a politician without a party, a policy maven without a movement. And in a few months, he will be without his present job. He has no specific plan yet for his future. He mentions looking for "private sector opportunities" in a sustainable energy field—or an academic or think tank position. Becoming a lobbyist is another option he has started to mull.
Inglis is a casualty of the tea party-ization of the Republican Party. Given the decisive vote against him in June, it's clear he was wiped out by a political wave that he could do little to thwart. "Emotionally, I should be all right with this," he says. And when he thinks about what lies ahead for his party and GOP House leaders, he can't help but chuckle. With Boehner and others chasing after the tea party, he says, "that's going to be the dog that catches the car." He quickly adds: "And the Democrats, if they go into the minority, are going to have an enjoyable couple of years watching that dog deal with the car it's caught."

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Source URL: http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/08/bob-inglis-tea-party-casualty

Links:
[1] http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docID=news-000003688244&cpage=1
[2] http://online.wsj.com/article/NA_WSJ_PUB:SB10001424052748704792104575264471489833504.html
[3] http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2010/07/09/gop_leaders_let_demagogues_set_tone_lawmaker_says/
[4] http://www.adl.org/rumors/bilderberg.asp
[5] http://www.businessweek.com/investing/insights/blog/archives/2008/09/community_reinvestment_act_had_nothing_to_do_with_subprime_crisis.html