My household has been dealing with a recurrence of the dreaded “explosive kitten diarrhea,” and because of all the associated cleaning (of carpets, walls, bedspreads, couches, kittens, etc), tonight I am too tired to find anything much to blog about.
But here are a few brief items that I found rather interesting:
First, here’s are some selections from Bush aides called evangelicals ‘nuts,’ ‘goofy’, WorldNetDaily’s article about David Kuo’s book Tempting Faith.
Asked if White House officials really mocked conservative Christians, Kuo told Lesley Stahl, “Oh, absolutely. You name the important Christian leader and I have heard them mocked by serious people in serious places.”
Specifically, Kuo says people in the White House political affairs office referred to Pat Robertson as “insane,” Jerry Falwell as “ridiculous” and that James Dobson “had to be controlled.”
[…]
The White House calls Kuo’s book “ridiculous” […].
And presumably, the WH also stated that Kuo was insane, and has to be controlled. But hey, that stuff that Kuo said that they said about Robertson, Falwell, and Dobson is completely untrue!
Anyway, although it seems to me that the most explosive charges in the book deal with the way that religion was cynically made to serve political ends, the wingnuts seem most outraged at being called names. For example, here’s part of a column by Jason T. Christy, publisher of the Christian conservative magazine The Church Report:
David Kuo, a former deputy in the White House Office of the Faith Based Initiative, has taken it upon himself to author a book where he maintains that the Faith Based Initiative falls terribly short of it promise and that White House officials routinely mock prominent Evangelicals describing them as: “nuts, goofy and boorish.”
And for taking upon himself to maintain such things, Christy has declared Kuo to be “an addition to the Axis of Evil.” (Seriously. In fact, Christy titled his piece “David Kuo: An Additon to the Axis of Evil.”)
But Kuo has done more than say that WH officials describe Evangelicals as goofy, boorish, nuts. Much more!
Don’t be fooled by Kuo; he is someone who has been described as a “wolf in sheep’s clothing.” Don’t let his smarmy tones and pouty eyes fool you. Having done campaign work for several Kennedys, having contradicted himself and his own letters, Kuo is being used to try and prop up the liberal left, to breathe life into lifeless campaigns and his master literary work is a mere smokescreen. Questioning the faith and motivation of this administration is wrong.
Pouty eyes???
But remember, my children, you must NEVER question this administration’s motivations, because doing so makes you just as bad as Iraq, Iran, or North Korea. And we all know what happened to Saddam after he question the Bush White House’s motivations (the talk about him having WMDs was just a clever ruse to cover the real reason for the invasion)!
But anyway, speaking of James Dobson, it seems that he will be safely on a cruise ship in the Alaskan waters this summer. (Another Focus on the Family moneymaker, or a White House ploy to control the Dobster? YOU make the call!)
Focus on the Family Alaska Cruise – 2007
I ‘m excited to announce that Focus on the Family is planning an Alaskan cruise in July 2007 – we’d love to have you join us! […]
I’m pleased to report that we already have a stellar line-up of speakers and singers who have committed to the cruise: Dr. James Dobson, Focus President and CEO Jim Daly, Dr. Emerson and Sarah Eggerichs, and a special humorist to be announced later.
Anybody have any guesses as to who the “special humorist” might be? (I’m thinking that it might be Ann Coulter, but having her on the same boat as Dobson might be tempting God a little too much).
Oh, and speaking of cynically using non-profits for political ends, it seems that ol’ Jack Abramoff was doing just that. Here’s part of the Wash Post’s story on one of the many, many ongoing Republican scandals.
Report Says Nonprofits Sold Influence to Abramoff
Five conservative nonprofit organizations, including one run by prominent Republican Grover Norquist, “appear to have perpetrated a fraud” on taxpayers by selling their clout to lobbyist Jack Abramoff, Senate investigators said in a report issued yesterday.
The Senate report released yesterday states that the nonprofit groups probably violated their tax-exempt status “by laundering payments and then disbursing funds at Mr. Abramoff’s direction; taking payments in exchange for writing newspaper columns or press releases that put Mr. Abramoff’s clients in a favorable light; introducing Mr. Abramoff’s clients to government officials in exchange for payment; and agreeing to act as a front organization for congressional trips paid for by Mr. Abramoff’s clients.”
The report bolstered earlier revelations that Abramoff laundered money through the nonprofits to pay for congressional trips and paid Norquist to arrange meetings for Abramoff’s clients with government officials including White House senior adviser Karl Rove.
The groups named in the report are Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform; the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy, which was co-founded by Norquist and Gale Norton before she became secretary of the interior; Citizens Against Government Waste; the National Center for Public Policy Research, a spinoff of the Heritage Foundation; and Toward Tradition, a Seattle-based religious group founded by Rabbi Daniel Lapin.
Et tu, Heritage Foundation spin-off? And man, I can see using tax reform group, religious groups, and anti-government waste groups to launder money and pay for congressional trips, but I expected better of a Republican environmental group.
Here’s another interesting bit:
Abramoff traded on Norquist’s cachet, at one point referring to him in an e-mail as a “hard-won asset” of his lobbying empire. In exchange for Norquist’s opposition to taxes on Brown-Forman products, Norquist recommended that a $50,000 donation be made to Americans for Tax Reform, according to an Abramoff e-mail.
“What is most important, however, is that this matter is kept discreet,” Abramoff wrote to a colleague at the Preston, Gates & Ellis law firm. “We do not want the opponents to think that we are trying to buy the taxpayer movement.”
Heaven forbid that anyone ever get such an idea about Abramoff, or any of the people he was pimping out, such as his hard-won asset dear friend Grover!
Anyway, now that we all know just what Grover is, let’s find out his price.
Norquist wrote an op-ed piece, published in the Washington Times, as part of an extensive Abramoff campaign for Channel One, which broadcasts educational programming and advertising into public school classrooms. An Abramoff e-mail to Norquist offered him $1,500 for an op-ed, and another e-mail exchange suggested up to $3,000 to buy an “economic analysis.”
I don’t mean to criticize, but Jack could have had Jeff Gannon for the whole weekend for that price – and Jeff would have thrown in the op-ed for free!
And speaking of Jeff, you may recall that he managed to get an interview with Karl Rove. There was a lot of speculation about how he managed that, but it now seems that it was probably just a professional courtesy.