For all who know about the Bible, you would know that what Trump said at a Christian school in Virginia today, was totally horrendous. The man who often brag about his religious background didn’t even know the right way to refer to a verse in the Bible.
“Two [sic] Corinthians, right?” Trump boldly said, causing some laughs, moans and giggles among the audience. “Two [sic] Corinthians 3:17. That’s the whole ballgame.”
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President Obama is a Christian. He has said this on many occasions and his past venues of worship suggest his Christian belief. So the president quoting and relying on verses from the Bible should come as no surprise to anyone. But Republican Rep. Dave Brat, cannot believe the president has the nerve to quote the Bible.
The president, Brat said, “is using the Christian tradition and trying to bring about compassion by bonking Republicans over the head with the Bible. It’s almost a comedy routine on what compassion and love is. He’s mocking his enemies in order to compel a larger federal state using the tradition of love.”
He said that the conservative movement “needs to reeducate its people that we own the entire tradition” of Christian love, because liberal professors “have rejected natural law” and religious ideas.
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I came across this video while browsing YouTube. I had to share.
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They invited the Republican mad man was invited to speak at a conference for Middle Eastern Christians Wednesday night. Consider that the first mistake they made. As if they didn’t know that Ted Cruz was a pompous and egotistic maniac, eager to pander to a group if there is the slightest chance they can further his own political needs, the Middle Eastern Christians booed the Republican congressman when he began talking about his love of Israel.
Apparently Cruz did not do his homework on acceptable topics when pandering to Middle Eastern Christians.
“Christians have no greater ally than Israel,” was the comment that got the boos going.
Cruz, who cannot get his feelings hurt stormed off the stage like the little spoiled brat who cannot get his way. But before he exited left, as the boos rained down from the rafters, Cruz left the audience with these chilling words, a warning to be precise. “If you will not stand with Israel and the Jews,” he said. “Then I will not stand with you. Good night, and God bless.” And off he went!
Oh the calamity!
An interesting discussion between Alan Colmes and a white supremacists leader in Pennsylvania… correction, a so-called Christian member and leader of the Pennsylvania chapter of the KKK!
Much of the discussion centered around the KKK leader referring to his group as “a christian group.” Colmes challenged that assertion by the man named William Walters, Grand Dragon of the East Coast Knights of the KKK. And as the discussion progressed, it became very clear as if we did not already know – there is nothing “Christian” about the KKK, they’re just a collection of uninformed, racist white folks intent on staying ignorant.
At one point in the discussion, Colmes pointed out that, although Jesus wasn’t white, he preached to all and believed in being inclusive. Colmes asked The Grand Dragon to explain exactly how they call themselves a christian organization, but refuses entry to non-whites. Of course, the racist had no answer.
Watch the confrontation below.
Finally, The veil has been lifted and the conservative media is beginning to see what the liberals have seen from day one – that Sarah Palin, the quitter from Alaska, is a selfish loser who will do or say anything to further her name with a particular group.
What brought this realization to these people was Palin’s recent NRA soeech, where she foolishly compared waterboarding and baptism.
In the highly pitch shriek – or speech if that’s what you wanna call it – Palin said;
“Oh, but you can’t offend them, can’t make them feel uncomfortable, not even a smidgen. Well, if I were in charge, they would know that waterboarding is how we baptize terrorists.”
And understandably, Christians should be outraged! Baptism is not a political ploy. It is not something you invoke to further your politics in front of a certain group. It is a sacred belief based deep in the Christian foundation, and Palin’s Ill-advised association with waterboarding was truly sacrilegious.
But don’t just take my word on it, I’m just a liberal. Here’s an example of what the conservatives are saying.
From The American Conservative.
Man, the 12 minute speech Sarah Palin gave to the NRA convention is awful. It’s just witless, red-meat blathering, delivered in that nasal whine of hers that makes it sound like she’s chewing wads of tinfoil. For people who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they like.
Fast-forward in the video to the 6:30 mark, though, and listen to what she says about terrorists. It’s part of a long harangue about lily-livered liberals, delivered in such a way that makes Archie Bunker sound like Cicero. Money quote:
“Oh, but you can’t offend them, can’t make them feel uncomfortable, not even a smidgen. Well, if I were in charge, they would know that waterboarding is how we baptize terrorists.”
OK, stop. Not only is this woman, putatively a Christian, praising torture, but she is comparing it to a holy sacrament of the Christian faith. It’s disgusting — but even more disgusting, those NRA members, many of whom are no doubt Christians, cheered wildly for her.
I’m with my Lutheran pal Mollie Hemingway on this. Excerpt:
I’ve long defended Palin against the offensive treatment she’s received at the hands of a blatantly biased media, a media that collectively lost its mind the moment she entered the national stage. But that hardly means she must be defended at all times. … This is a perfect example not just of civil religion but also how civil religion harms the church. Civil religion is that folk religion that serves to further advance the cause of the state.
Palin and all those who cheered her sacrilegious jibe ought to be ashamed of themselves. For us Christians, baptism is the entry into new life. Palin invoked it to celebrate torture.
Here’s the video.
“Duck Dynasty” stars Phil and Si Robertson have bigger game in their sights.
“It ain’t gun control we need, it’s sin control,” Si Robertson, one of the stars of the hit A&E reality series, told Men’s Journal in a recent interview.
“Self-control,” corrected his elder brother, Phil, the leader of the duck-call selling clan from West Monroe, Louisiana.
Either way, the brothers and Phil’s sons, Willie, Jase and Jep, are hoping to use their new found fame to spread the gospel of religion and political conservatism — subjects that get played down on “Duck Dynasty.”
The elder Robertsons credit divine intervention for both the success fo the show and of their company, Duck Commander.
“We’re trying to infuse a little good into a culture in which gentleness, patience, kindness, self-control, love, joy and peace have become abnormal,” Phil Robertson told the magazine.
Though much of the appeal of the show — which drew a network record 11.8 million viewers for its fourth season premiere — surrounds their goofy antics, the family hit the Christian speaking circuit over the summer. Evangelist Rick Warren’s church even hosted a “Ducky Dynasty” day in July.
Willie Robertson revealed on Fox News a month later that GOP leaders had been courting him for a political run, based on the clan’s emphasis on family values.
“I go out into America and I am literally navigating a minefield. Godliness has become abnormal,” Phil Robertson told Men’s Journal
I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to be a saint or a nun. I had great romantic ideas about nuns. On the other hand, saints appealed to my imagination. The Christian martyrs were killed by the Romans because they wouldn’t renounce their faith. Some of them were eaten by lions and some of them were roasted alive and some were crucified. Except for the pain part, this also appealed to me mightily. Once you were a saint, you sat at the right hand of God and people prayed to you and you could perform miracles. I thought that it would probably hurt to be roasted alive or eaten by lions. I wasn’t sure it was a good trade off. I wanted to be able to perform miracles, but how much would it hurt to be eaten by a lion? I wasn’t sure. There was always being a nun. No horrific death required. I would be cloistered (shut away from the world) and I would pray all the time and I would be very holy.
I practiced being holy. I went to church and prayed for long stretches of time. The longer you prayed, the better. I asked God for silly 
You were supposed to contemplate the stations of the cross in those days and I spent a lot of time doing that. The stations of the cross, for the uninitiated, are depictions of Christ’s journey up the hill as he carried the cross on his way to be crucified. They are especially gory and sadomasochistic. The blood running down his face from the crown of thorns and his bloody back from the lashes. The nails pounded through his hands and feet. How does a five year old meditate on torture? Well I felt very very sorry for him. Poor Jesus, I thought. We must have done something very bad if he had to do all that to make up for it. I wanted to be the lady who gave him a drink of water. I wanted to be the lady who wiped his brow or the lady who cried at his feet.
One day I was praying all by myself in the church and I looked at that little gold container on the altar where we were told Christ was. It seemed to me Jesus must be very lonely in that little gold box, even if it was very pretty. I climbed over the railing (which you weren’t supposed to do) and I climbed up on the altar (which you weren’t supposed to do) and I sat next to the little gold box and I swung my legs and talked to Jesus. I told him everything that was on my five year old mind. I told him I loved him and I would always be his friend. I told him I wanted to be holy. I told him I was either going to be a nun or a saint and either way I’d be a virgin because nuns and saints are always virgins. I wasn’t sure what a virgin was but if that’s what Jesus wanted me to be, then I was going to be it.
My homeroom teacher Miss Staid came in and saw me and she nearly had a heart attack.
If you listen carefully, you can hear it gathering momentum, foam, vitriol, recrimination and self-serving hypocrisy. It’s the conservative wave roaring towards the beach, cresting and ready to crash. The 2012 election will be the beginning of the end for the far-right conservatives and, like the liberals who didn’t see their wave tumble in 1984, will likely lead to an even uglier aftermath. Republicans are angry now: Imagine what will happen if they lose another presidential election this year (and they will), especially if they’re able to hold on to the House and take back the Senate. So close, yet so far.
The conservative Republican era that began in 1980 and tilted the country to the right had a good run if you supported the cause, but it was never able to achieve its stated goals of severely scaling back government, ending the New Deal and Great Society programs, overturning Roe v. Wade, and ending the progressive tax structure (though they’ve come pretty close with this one). They built up the military and got a Democratic president to end welfare, passed a too-expensive Medicare prescription plan and raised taxes enough to begin to pay off the deficit, though that cost George H. W. Bush his reelection.
The era lasted because Ronald Reagan and both Bushes were able to tame the party’s conflicting passions. Reagan galvanized the economic old guard GOP while paying lip service to the religious conservatives led by Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. Reagan was never a religious person but he talked the talk well enough to keep the support of Christian conservatives, and really, where else were they going to go? That he was able to raise taxes, reform Social Security and work with liberal Democrats speaks to his political skills. The Bushes had a mixed record with the party’s disparate groups. George H.W. inherited Reagan’s mantle, but he was considered suspect on abortion. W. was more conservative, but still did not fight all that hard for the religious agenda.
Of course, the damage that all three presidents did with their hostility to government, marginalization of gays and women, and their Supreme Court choices will endure for many years.
The more recent history of the movement shows most conclusively that it is indeed on its wheezing last breath. The public still sees the Republican Party as the architect of the economic disaster of 2008, and as the economy improves President Obama will get the lion’s share of the rewards. More people support marriage equality than oppose it and the recent flap over contraception shows that the GOP is out of touch with the way most Americans, especially women, view both the birth control and religious issues.
That brings us to why this is the beginning of the end.
The far right wing of the Republican Party is driving the party’s agenda and there’s not one candidate who’s shown they can corral the competing factions. Conservative reaction to Mitt Romney ranges from suspect to hostile and none of the other candidates can claim the right’s support. Yet. That might change as Rick Santorum showed in winning three non-binding primaries last week.
If anything, the nomination battle has proven that the movement has splintered along economic, social and religious lines. Many of the proposals we’ve heard are meant to appeal to the far fringe Tea Party wing of the party (Ron Paul) or to the religious conservatives (Santorum and Gingrich). Romney’s attempts to appeal to the center while throwing the right some scraps on abortion and taxes have so far fallen short of gaining wide acceptance.
None of the candidates would take the deal that offered $10 in budget cuts for $1 in tax increases. Some in the party still question President Obama’s citizenship and religion, and the candidates accuse him of the most outlandish things: anti-religion, creating a communist state, forsaking Israel, and wanting Iran to get a nuclear weapon.
It’s an extreme agenda to say the least, and it will lead to the GOP’s crash. History shows that when you lose the middle of your constituency, you lose your mandate to govern. The Republican Party is on that path.
My sense is that this will all be exposed during the general election campaign and, combined with an improving economy, will result in Obama’s reelection. The 2010 Congressional elections resulted in redistricting that solidified the Republican’s majorities in the House, though Tea Party seats are certainly up for grabs in many districts, and the Democrats have to defend too many Senate seats to count on continued control of that chamber. Conservatives will still hold sway on many issues, but the wave is over. The United States won’t become more liberal, but it will become less conservative and less extreme. Most Republicans probably don’t see this trend coming, and it’s already too late to stop it.
For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives and Twitter @rigrundfest
Magen is a pastor’s wife. She and her family went on Family Feud and got the unfortunate question from host Steve Harvey, “Tell me something you put in your mouth but don’t swallow.”
The Pastor’s wife answered, “Sperm.”
That pastor is a happy man!
Well, watch it below.
On Friday at the conservative Values Summit, Pastor Robert Jeffress, while introducing his candidate Rick Perry, accused Mitt Romney of not being a real Christian. Jeffress went on to warn the audience that voting for Romney will be endorsing a cult, referring to Romney’s Mormon religion.
In his introduction of Perry, Jeffress said;
“Do we want a candidate who is a good, moral person, or one who is a born-again follower of the Lord Jesus Christ? In Rick Perry, we have a candidate who is a committed follower of Christ.”
Later, Jeffress told CNN that although Romney is a good man, his Mormon religion would be a problem, saying “I think Mitt Romney is a good, moral man. But I think those of us who are born-again followers of Christ should always prefer a competent Christian to a competent non-Christian like Mitt Romney.”
But this message that Mormonism is wrong is not something new to Robert Jeffress or his congregation of over 10,000 people. Jeffress also feel the same way about the followers of Islam, Jews and of gays. Jeffress calls these different religions and groups of people “wrong,” saying ” it is a heresy from the pit of hell!”
I think part of the problem is we’re in this consumer mentality as a church where we have the idea that our job is to build as big of a church as we possible can. And if we get into that idea and fall into that trap, then we say then we can’t say anything that’s going to offend people, why, if we preach that homosexuality is an abomination to God we better not preach that because that’s going to offend the gays or people who know gay people, if we tell people what the Bible says that every other religion in the world is wrong: Islam is wrong, it is a heresy from the pit of Hell; Mormonism is wrong, it is a heresy from the pit of Hell; Judaism, you can’t be saved being a Jew, you know who said that by the way, the three greatest Jews in the New Testament, Peter, Paul, and Jesus Christ, they all said Judaism won’t do, it’s faith in Jesus Christ.
As an elected congressman or woman for that matter, one of your primary responsibilities to the people who vote you into power is to be honest. However, Republican congressman Steve King from Iowa went on “The Last Word” with Lawrence O’Donnell and claimed that he lies to his constituents to keep the peace.
Only in America can a congressman come on television, say he’s a Christian, profess to know the truth about an issue, then deliberately withholds this truth from his constituents for fear of pissing them off! The issue in this case is whether or not President Obama is a Christian or Muslim.
Ladies and gentlemen, please allow us to introduce to you the Lying, Christian, Republican Congressman from Iowa, Mr. Steve King.
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