LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

This Frank Rich column in the New York Times has some interesting things to say:

WHEN there's money on the line, cronies always come first in this White House, no matter how great the human suffering. After Katrina, the FEMA Web site directing charitable contributions prominently listed Operation Blessing, a Pat Robertson kitty that, according to I.R.S. documents obtained by ABC News, has given more than half of its yearly cash donations to Mr. Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network. If FEMA is that cavalier about charitable donations, imagine what it's doing with the $62 billion (so far) of taxpayers' money sent its way for Katrina relief. Actually, you don't have to imagine: we already know some of it was immediately siphoned into no-bid contracts with a major Republican donor, the Fluor Corporation, as well as with a client of the consultant Joe Allbaugh, the Bush 2000 campaign manager who ran FEMA for this White House until Brownie, Mr. Allbaugh's college roommate, was installed in his place.</blockquote>

The questions are starting to be asked, folks. The important part is that we keep asking them and keep people from burying them.

As the original post has passed a few pages down, I am linking here and also editing the original post to add the following:

( Media Matters picks up the story, and a few more scumbags of interest )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY cheap_laugh)

to Operation Blessing. Operation Blessing is run by Pat Robertson, and his wife. O.B. used money, planes and it’s tax exempt status to ferry mining equipment to the now failed diamond mines. FEMA has removed them from their hoempage, but....

Listen up:
Robertson has supported the tyranny of Mobutu by engaging in business (Damond Mining) with the tryant:

http://www.tbaptist.com/aab/patsdiamond.htm

From and article found at skeptictank:

OFFICIALS MUM ON ROBERTSON DIAMOND MINE OPERATION PROBE

A yearlong investigation of televangelist Pat Robertson’s activities in Africa is now over, but state officials are sitting on the final report pending a review by attorneys, reports the Virginian-Pilot newspaper. The probe focused on possible inappropriate activities involving Robertson’s Operation Blessing outreach, and a private corporation he operated known as the African Development Co. Based in Zaire, the firm was established by Robertson during the rule of the late dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. The two men established close ties, and Mobutu wined and dined Robertson during one visit to the country; ADC also received vast forestry and mineral concessions, but the diamond mining operation eventually went bankrupt. Mobutu, after a quarter-century of iron fisted rule, died last year in exile from cancer. He left Zaire bankrupt and impoverished, and since 1994 had even been considered persona non grata in the United States.

In April, 1997 two pilots who worked for Operation Blessing charged that planes linked to Robertson and his ministry flew mostly to haul equipment for ADC’s private diamond operation. Robert Hinkle, the chief pilot told reporter Bill Sizemore that of about 40 flights within Zaire during the half-year period he was there, “Only one or at most two” were related to the humanitarian mission of Operation Blessing. The rest were “mining-related.”

“We got over there and we had ‘Operation Blessing’ painted on the tails of the airplanes, Hinkle told the Virginian-Pilot, “but we were doing no humanitarian relief at all. We were just supplying the miners and flying the dredges from Kinshasa out to Tdshikapa.”

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY hummingwolf)

Article via religionnewsblo, from Bloomberg.com. Neither surprising nor very alarming, it's still interesting.

The U.S. government released a list of charitable groups collecting contributions to help Hurricane Katrina victims that is dominated by religious organizations and excludes many secular and international relief groups.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency list was posted on the agency's Web site and published in major newspapers yesterday. After the American Red Cross, which was named first, the next organization was Operation Blessing, a group based in Virginia Beach, Virginia and founded by televangelist and Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson.

``How in the heck did that happen?'' said Richard Walden, president of Operation USA, a Los Angeles-based secular group that has been conducting disaster relief work since 1979 and was not on FEMA's list. ``That gives Pat Robertson millions of extra dollars.''

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY brigidsblest)

by G. Jefferson Price III

The similarities among the radical wings of religious fundamentalism are striking and frightening.

In Iran, for example, the mullahs issue fatwas, the exhortations to assassinate people they don't like. The most notorious of these in recent times was the fatwa issued in 1989 by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini against the Indian-born author Salman Rushdie. The ayatollah was incensed because Mr. Rushdie's novel Satanic Verses seemed to insult Islam.

We have our own religious nuts here in America. They issue their own fatwas. The latest example of this came last week from one of the nuttiest of them all, the so-called Rev. Pat Robertson, who urged the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

( It gets scarier. )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY kalibex)

'The only Christian TV channel in Finland said Thursday it will stop airing shows by American televangelist Pat Robertson because of his call to assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

'The channel said its purpose was to spread a Christian message, not indulge in politics.

"It's sad that a leading Christian figure makes these kinds of statements," said the channel's executive, Martti Ojares. "The American style of mixing politics and Christian faith is also foreign to Finnish culture." '

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY seshen)

Pat Robertson Goes to Hell for Threatening Hugo Chavez

Viewers watching the 700 Club on TV were confounded on Tuesday when they witnessed TV evangelist Pat Robertson embraced by the Devil and carried bodily off to Hell because of his recent call for the United States Government to murder Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY seshen)

Conservative religious broadcaster Pat Robertson said Wednesday that his remarks about the removal of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez were taken out of context and that he never called for the killing of the Latin American leader.

"I didn't say 'assassination.' I said our special forces should 'take him out.' And 'take him out' can be a number of things, including kidnapping; there are a number of ways to take out a dictator from power besides killing him. I was misinterpreted by the AP [Associated Press], but that happens all the time," Robertson said on "The 700 Club" program.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY seshen)

Conservative Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson has called for the United States to assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, calling him "a terrific danger" bent on exporting Communism and Islamic extremism across the Americas. "If he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it," Robertson told viewers on his "The 700 Club" show Monday. "It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war."
______________

Basically, the same parallel to a radical Islamic cleric calling for the assassination of President Bush. But THEY'RE the bad guys, it's OK for us to spout such inflammatory nonsense. Thanks, Pat. You've been real freakin' helpful.

AAUUGGHHH!!!!!!!

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY deridetenebras)

From Media Matters: Quicktime Video of Pat Robertson calling homosexuals "self-absorbed narcissists" and blaming them for abortion & divorce

You go back to the various laws that took away the difficulty of getting a divorce, and the people leading the charge were homosexuals, way back in the '70s. So we have no-fault divorce. Who are leading the charge for abortions? So often, you'll find people who are lesbians leading the fight for the destruction of human life. Now they want to destroy marriage.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

firepie asked for a list of Religious Right websites. I found a nice collection of them. Here they are:

American Family Association

Fallwell's Moral Majority Coalition

The 700 Club

James Dobson's Focus on the Family

Breakthrough- Rod Parsley's World Harvest Church

The 10/40 window (world conversion site)

FORCE Ministries (Warning- noisy intro.)

Campus Crusade for Christ

Liberty University

Bob Jones University

That ought to get you started. Anyone else, feel free to add to the list.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

Reconstructionist crusaders don't fool God

THE LAST WORD
By Ole Anthony & Skippy R.
Issue #162 January/February 1999

King John of England made an unusual request on his deathbed.

John, an unsavory character, even for medieval royalty, had amassed a fortune in other people's gold. Yet he was so stingy that he allowed his wife only two dresses and a cape, while he dressed in finery and had jewels stitched onto his riding gloves.

His greedy land grabs made the barons so mad they forced him to sign the Magna Carta, forever limiting royal power. For a time he was excommunicated by the Church. Needless to say, the guy didn't have many friends.

As his life drew to a close, tradition says, he asked his attendants to dress him in a white crusader's tunic emblazoned with a red cross, in hopes of tricking St. Peter and sneaking into heaven incognito.

No doubt the ruse failed.

But a similar plan is alive among Reconstructionist Christians and other groups working for a "return to America's Christian heritage."
Their plan is to camouflage the whole United States of America and smuggle it into the Kingdom of God – all 50 states, from sea to shining sea, everything – including New Jersey and Congress – even our offshore oil rights and the interstate highway system.( Read more... )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

Here's another look at the NYC conference from a conservative point of view. It's interesting how the different sides spin these things... I've taken the rare liberty of including my own remarks in [brackets] in the body of the article- being there and actually listening to what went on is definitely an advantage.

Conference shows deep divide of liberals, religious right

By RICHARD N. OSTLING, The Associated Press
Published: Saturday, May. 7, 2005

NEW YORK – A video screen showed President Bush boarding a plane for Washington. His purpose: to get to the White House and sign Congress’ bill asking federal courts to review the removal of Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube.

Joan Bokaer of TheocracyWatch.org offered her take on the action. “There’s something strange about the folks running our country,” she quipped. The audience of 500 people responded with some appreciative chuckles.

Bokaer, from a social action center affiliated with Cornell University, was speaking at a conference last weekend that denounced conservative Republicans on matters like mercy-killing, abortion, gay marriage, research using human embryos, broadcast indecency, Israel, Iraq, faith-based charity funding, judicial nominations and church-state relations. The book table sold assorted Bush-bashing titles. [I saw one or two, but the majority of books were about the Religious Right, the 'culture wars' and other subjects.- ed]

But the gathering wasn’t a Democratic Party caucus.

It was an academic conference at the City University of New York on “the real agenda of the religious far right” – and it offered a fresh example of just how venomous America’s conservative-liberal religious split has become and how entangled faith is with politics.( Read more... )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY britzkrieg)

My husband just got back from running an errand, and he caught a bit of the Rush Limbaugh show. Apparently Rush said something like, "Democrats are accusing all Republicans of being 'Dominionists.'" Does anyone have any details on this rant? Has he used this word before?

My husband also heard something about Pat Robertson resigning his leadership of a Christian organization (the Christian Coalition?) so he won't distract from the man destined to lead the "true American Christian church" -- George Bush. Does anyone have any details on this?

Edit: The Pat Robertson resignation is apparently old news. I don't see a quote about him calling Bush the head of a "true American church," though. I'll keep looking. It's possible that Rush is accusing "liberals" of making this claim.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY thedemonprist)

( An article and some amusing pics )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY brigidsblest)

From the Yurica Report:

http://www.yuricareport.com/Dominionism/ChristiansPlotToRemakeAmerica.html

An excerpt: "Meet the Dominionists -- biblical literalists who believe God has called them to take over the U.S. government. As the far-right wing of the evangelical movement, Dominionists are pressing an agenda that makes Newt Gingrich's Contract With America look like the Communist Manifesto. They want to rewrite schoolbooks to reflect a Christian version of American history, pack the nation's courts with judges who follow Old Testament law, post the Ten Commandments in every courthouse and make it a felony for gay men to have sex and women to have abortions."

http://www.yuricareport.com/Dominionism/MissionToReclaimAmerica.html

An excerpt: "If they don't vote our way, we'll change their view one way or another," executive director Gary Cass tells the group. As a California pastor, Dr. Cass spearheaded efforts to close abortion clinics and recruit Christians to seek positions on local school boards. "We're going to take back what we lost in the last half of the 20th century," he adds.


http://www.yuricareport.com/Dominionism/MichaelLedeen.html

"Would you be surprised to find that a man who was deeply involved in the Iran-Contra scandal during the Reagan Administration, a man who is the darling of the Bush White House and is an adviser to Karl Rove, a man who loves Machiavelli and studies him, a neo-conservative who has close ties to one of America’s leading “Christian” Dominionists—Pat Robertson, and a man who called Pearl Harbor “lucky” and a providentially inspired event—may be the man who is behind the forging of the Niger documents that convinced America to launch a preemptive strike against Iraq?"

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

This article talks about the very serious consequences of Dominionist rule of the government:

There are times when what we journalists see and intend to write about dispassionately sends a shiver down the spine, shaking us from our neutrality. This has been happening to me frequently of late as one story after another drives home the fact that the delusional is no longer marginal but has come in from the fringe to influence the seats of power. We are witnessing today a coupling of ideology and theology that threatens our ability to meet the growing ecological crisis. Theology asserts propositions that need not be proven true, while ideologues hold stoutly to a world view despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. The combination can make it impossible for a democracy to fashion real-world solutions to otherwise intractable challenges.

In the just-concluded election cycle, as Mark Silk writes in Religion in the News,

the assiduous cultivation of religious constituencies by the Bush apparat, and the undisguised intrusion of evangelical leaders and some conservative Catholic hierarchs into the presidential campaign, demonstrated that the old rule of maintaining a decent respect for the nonpartisanship of religion can now be broken with impunity.

The result is what the Italian scholar Emilio Gentile, quoted in Silk's newsletter, calls "political religion"—religion as an instrument of political combat. On gay marriage and abortion— the most conspicuous of the "non-negotiable" items in a widely distributed Catholic voter's guide—no one should be surprised what this political religion portends. The agenda has been foreshadowed for years, ever since Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and other right-wing Protestants set out to turn white evangelicals into a solid Republican voting bloc and reached out to make allies of their former antagonists, conservative Catholics.

What has been less apparent is the impact of the new political religion on environmental policy. Evangelical Christians have been divided. Some were indifferent. The majority of conservative evangelicals, on the other hand, have long hooked their view to the account in the first book of the Bible:

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth."

There are widely varying interpretations of this text, but it is safe to say that all presume human beings have inherited the earth to be used as they see fit. For many, God's gift to Adam and Eve of "dominion" over the earth and all its creatures has been taken as the right to unlimited exploitation. But as Blaine Harden reported recently in The Washington Post, some evangelicals are beginning to "go for the green." Last October the National Association of Evangelicals adopted an "Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility," affirming that "God-given dominion is a sacred responsibility to steward the earth and not a license to abuse the creation of which we are a part." The declaration acknowledged that for the sake of clean air, clean water, and adequate resources, the government "has an obligation to protect its citizens from the effects of environmental degradation."

But even for green activists in evangelical circles, Harden wrote, "there are landmines."

Welcome to the Rapture!

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

Pat Robertson, ever eager to make himself look foolish, has publicly urged Christians to 'cry to the Lord' to influence three Supreme Court justices to step down.

Broadcaster Pat Robertson calls for retirement of justices

The accompanying picture is interesting- Robertson with his eyes screwed shut and looking like he's constipated. (Why do some people do this? Inquiring minds would really like to know...) I have to wonder what God thinks about this cheekiness?

From my own point of view, such calls for mass prayer to influence another in any way smack of traditional black magick (or toxic prayer, which is just as bad, if not worse)- which is manipulative and controlling. Of course, they'd never admit this, but the karmic blowback from such activities will not be averted just because the ones praying are 'Christian'.

"If we fast and pray and earnestly seek God’s face, then He will hear our prayer and give us relief."