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Banned
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Originally Posted by aceventura3
I wonder if Obama/Biden really want the bridge issue front and center? Sen. Demint's opinion piece in the WSJ today helps put the issue in perspective. Considering a govenor does not vote on federal earmarks but senators do, perhaps they should explain their support for the bridge.
Yes, Palin Did Stop That Bridge - WSJ.com
Let's not let facts get in the way of a good story or empty political rhetoric. Please carry on. |
ace, I've stopped engaging you for the most part, because your citations are regularly so "over the top", that it gives me a sense of you that persuades me that what you choose to let influence your political thinking puts you and I op-edin such extremely opposite "worlds", that there is no point in dialogue. The following is an effort to give others here, an idea of what I see as so outrageous in your decision to offer the opinion of Sen. Jim Demint, author of that WSJ, op-ed piece you've posted, as some sort of reasonable voice. He's not, ace:
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Secretive religious group offers Congressmen cheap rent in D.C. (People & Events). | Church & State (June, 2003)
Publication Date: 01-JUN-03
Secretive religious group offers Congressmen cheap rent in D.C. (People & Events).
Finding a nice place to live in the desirable neighborhoods of Washington, D.C., can be tricky, but six members of Congress have stumbled upon a bargain: They reside in a $1.1-million townhouse on Capitol Hill and pay only $600 per month apiece--all thanks to a secretive religious group.
The six members live just blocks from the U.S. Capitol in a three-story house that is owned by an evangelical group called "The Fellowship." The group seeks to help political leaders find ways to integrate their faith into their public lives. Six federal lawmakers currently reside in the house: Rep. Zach Wamp (R-Tenn.), Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), Rep. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.), Sen. John Ensign (R-Ney.) and Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.).
The Fellowship was profiled recently in Harper's magazine and by the Associated Press. In the AP interview, Richard Carver, who serves on The Fellowship's board of directors, implied that the group, which runs the annual National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, wants to affect public policy by influencing politicians.
"Our goal is singular, and that is to hope that we can assist them in better understandings of the teachings of Christ and applying it to their jobs," Carver said.
The members of Congress dine together and meet regularly for Bible study. Carver denied, however, that The Fellowship seeks any type of special access with the lawmakers.
"We have no issue in legislation before the Congress, and nor would we," he said. "And the idea that we would have any quid pro quo is really impossible because there's no quid that we're asking for."
"What concerns people is when you mix religion, political power and secrecy," said Americans United Executive Director Barry W. Lynn told the AP. ....
Washington Wrap, The Latest Political News - CBS News
Washington Wrap
The Latest Political News
WASHINGTON, April, 21, 2003
....The rent is low, only $600 a month, but the tenants must dine together once a week in order to discuss religion in their daily lives. The Fellowship encourages bringing together elected officials as well as world leaders through religion.
"We do have a Bible study. Somebody'll share a verse or a thought, but mostly it's more of an accountability group to talk about things that are going on in our lives, and how we're dealing with them," DeMint explained. .....
Harper's Magazine: Jesus Plus Nothing, p. 2 of 11
Jesus Plus Nothing
Undercover among America's secret theocrats
Ivanwald, which sits at the end of Twenty-fourth Street North in Arlington, Virginia, is known only to its residents and to the members and friends of the organization that sponsors it, a group of believers who refer to themselves as "the Family." The Family is, in its own words, an "invisible" association, though its membership has always consisted mostly of public men. Senators Don Nickles (R., Okla.), Charles Grassley (R., Iowa), Pete Domenici (R., N.Mex.), John Ensign (R., Nev.), James Inhofe (R., Okla.), Bill Nelson (D., Fla.), and Conrad Burns (R., Mont.) are referred to as "members," as are Representatives Jim DeMint (R., S.C.), Frank Wolf (R., Va.), Joseph Pitts (R., Pa.), Zach Wamp (R., Tenn.), and Bart Stupak (D., Mich.). Regular prayer groups have met in the Pentagon and at the Department of Defense, and the Family has traditionally fostered strong ties with businessmen in the oil and aerospace industries. The Family maintains a closely guarded database of its associates, but it issues no cards, collects no official dues. Members are asked not to speak about the group or its activities.....
....During the 1960s the Family forged relationships between the U.S. government and some of the most anti-Communist (and dictatorial) elements within Africa's postcolonial leadership. The Brazilian dictator General Costa e Silva, with Family support, was overseeing regular fellowship groups for Latin American leaders, while, in Indonesia, General Suharto (whose tally of several hundred thousand "Communists" killed marks him as one of the century's most murderous dictators) was presiding over a group of fifty Indonesian legislators. During the Reagan Administration the Family helped build friendships between the U.S. government and men such as Salvadoran general Carlos Eugenios Vides Casanova, convicted by a Florida jury of the torture of thousands, and Honduran general Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, himself an evangelical minister, who was linked to both the CIA and death squads before his own demise. "We work with power where we can," the Family's leader, Doug Coe, says, "build new power where we can't."
At the 1990 National Prayer Breakfast, George H.W. Bush praised Doug Coe for what he described as "quiet diplomacy, I wouldn't say secret diplomacy," as an "ambassador of faith." Coe has visited nearly every world capital, often with congressmen at his side, "making friends" and inviting them back to the Family's unofficial headquarters, a mansion (just down the road from Ivanwald) that the Family bought in 1978 with $1.5 million donated by, among others, Tom Phillips, then the C.E.O. of arms manufacturer Raytheon, and Ken Olsen, the founder and president of Digital Equipment Corporation. A waterfall has been carved into the mansion's broad lawn, from which a bronze bald eagle watches over the Potomac River. The mansion is white and pillared and surrounded by magnolias, and by red trees that do not so much tower above it as whisper. The mansion is named for these trees; it is called The Cedars, and Family members speak of it as a person. "The Cedars has a heart for the poor," they like to say. By "poor" they mean not the thousands of literal poor living barely a mile away but rather the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom: the senators, generals, and prime ministers who coast to the end of Twenty-fourth Street in Arlington in black limousines and town cars and hulking S.U.V.'s to meet one another, to meet Jesus, to pay homage to the god of The Cedars.
There they forge "relationships" beyond the din of vox populi (the Family's leaders consider democracy a manifestation of ungodly pride) and "throw away religion" in favor of the truths of the Family. Declaring God's covenant with the Jews broken, the group's core members call themselves "the new chosen."
The brothers of Ivanwald are the Family's next generation, its high priests in training. I had been recommended for membership by a banker acquaintance, a recent Ivanwald alumnus, who had mistaken my interest in Jesus for belief. Sometimes the brothers would ask me why I was there. They knew that I was "half Jewish," that I was a writer, and that I was from New York City, which most of them considered to be only slightly less wicked than Baghdad or Amsterdam. I told my brothers that I was there to meet Jesus, and I was: the new ruling Jesus, whose ways are secret.
* The Los Angeles Times reported in September that the Fellowship Foundation alone has an annual budget of $10 million, but that represents only a fraction of the Family's finances. Each of the Family's organizations raises funds independently. Ivanwald, for example, is financed at least in part by an entity called the Wilberforce Foundation. Other projects are financed by individual "friends": wealthy businessmen, foreign governments, church congregations, or mainstream foundations that may be unaware of the scope of the Family's activities. At Ivanwald, when I asked to what organization a donation check might be made, I was told there was none; money was raised on a "man-to-man" basis. Major Family donors named by the Times include Michael Timmis, a Detroit lawyer and Republican fund-raiser; Paul Temple, a private investor from Maryland; and Jerome A. Lewis, former CEO of the Petro-Lewis Corporation.
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S.C. GOP Nominee Regrets Remarks (washingtonpost.com)
S.C. GOP Nominee Regrets Remarks
Gays, Single Moms as Teachers Faulted
By Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 18, 2004; Page A06
The Republican nominee in South Carolina's hard-fought U.S. Senate race apologized yesterday for saying gays and unmarried mothers should not teach in public schools, but he stopped short of retracting the statements.
Jim DeMint said he regretted the comments, made in a recent debate, because they distracted voters from "real issues" such as jobs and national security. Repeatedly asked on NBC's "Meet the Press" whether gays and single mothers should qualify as teachers, DeMint said local school boards should decide. .....
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ace.... can you understand, at all....how I have come to view the "jesufied" republican party as a cancer....a pox on all American houses, and, ironically, on the very religion it has elected to wrap itself, around? Does it make any sense that the most hawkish are the religious right who take money from arms manufacturers and enthusiastically align themselves with Saddam Hussein lookalikes, as far as the atrocities they commit in their agenda to strengthen their dictatorial hold on their own countries? Isn't all of this....along with "capitalsim at any price and/or consequence", opposite the teachings of the savior who men like Demint say they are committed to supporting and following?
Last edited by host; 09-11-2008 at 10:07 AM..
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