LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY kalibex)

Excellent Metaphor.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY navytron89)

Another Dominionist/Religious Reich lackey is back (from the grave) ready to lead us down another road to hell.

This week's U.S. NEWS & World Report has the lastest from Newt Gingrich and the whisperings of  his running for the Oval Office in 2008.

For the record this is the same moron that had the Office of Technological Assessment shut down as supposed part of cutting governmental spending (which is was actual as part of the Fundamentalist movement to put a leash on science and evolution). 

Science and evolution are the things that Religious Reich and Dominionist despise as it challenges/questions biblical ideology and intelligent free-thinking is needed to pursue science which is contridictory to simple-mindness/blind obedience of the masses.

I find bitter irony in Gingrich's statement:

• With America's economic dominance threatened, Newt Gingrich, the brainy former speaker of the House of Representatives, argues, "science and technology are at the heart of our survival." President Bush's No Child Left Behind Act, Gingrich continues, is "nutty." Instead, he says, kids should be paid cold, hard cash for excelling in math and science; prescription drugs, meanwhile, should be available on websites like Travelocity.com, where shoppers can compare prices before they buy.

Ok, with all due respect Mr. (Former) Speaker of the House,  Aren't you the same idiot that shut down the OTA?

While he is currently pandering to the masses and middle America, especially those hurt by the economic impacts that Shrub has caused after going off to an illegal and unjust war. I'll  note that if the OTA had not been shut down and been still running for the last 10 years, as an independent group of scientists and a bipartisan panel, Shrub would have found it ten-twenty times harder to justify the Iraqi War as the WMDs and yellow-cake urianium was never real to begin with.

Reading futher on I see thru alot of his bullshit ideological values which are suppose to make for an appealing presidental canidate, especially after all the problems Bush 2.0 and his thugs have inflicted on the America sheeple and the rest of the planet.

•   Gingrich has plenty of ideas in his current role as consultant and policy wonk. Winning the Future focuses on issues that Gingrich believes threaten America's dominance. Like what, you ask? Liberal secularism, terrorism, inefficient bureaucracy, and poor math and science education. Gingrich's goal is nothing less than "creating a 21st-century, intelligent, effective government."

After looking this statement over I see his attempt to please the Religious Reich crowd with this paragraph, Liberal Secularism.

Excuse me! Professor if you read history as you have the damn degree in the United State was founded on secularism.  Moron!

Additionally he talks about creating an intelligent government, the government is already intelligent. The problem is there is no common sense among the college educated retards that are running the country into the ground, instead they are kissing the collective asses of the big businesses (like Wally-Mart, the Oil Baronies and other Mega Corpses) which is bleeding the populace dry of there life and money.   

While he was the  South Republican Poster Boy back in the 80s-90s,  it amazes me that his head is so far up his asshole that he can see the real world thru the shit-stained lenses of  his.

If you look back at his track record of screw ups and sell outs its amazing that we aren't farther along the road to Dominonist rule.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY nefri)

i have been having an exchange with a fundamentalist christian who knows my parents lately, and have been posting it on my journal. Its kinda amusing, its the last 3 posts. They are friends only, however, so if you want to read the fun, let me know, i will add you. I also may make them public, in the name of entertainment.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

Parsley is the creator of the "Patriot Pastor" movement. Here's an in-depth article about him and his church:

With God On His Side

An excerpt:

When Zell Miller took the stage at one of Ohio’s largest “megachurches” last August, there was no talk of spitballs or duels, but there was plenty of rhetoric about soldiers and war. As the featured speaker at both a regular Sunday-evening church service and a political rally for about 1,300 pastors the following morning, the former Georgia senator wasn’t talking about gun-toting soldiers bringing democracy to the Middle East. Instead, to the delight of thousands of congregants at the World Harvest Church in Columbus, Miller spoke of Bible-toting Christian soldiers bringing theocracy to America.

The apostate Democrat came to Ohio as the special guest of televangelist Rod Parsley, a rising star of the Christian right who was lifted from political obscurity onto the national stage for his role in mobilizing voters in favor of his state’s gay-marriage ban last year. Parsley, a Bible-college dropout who claims to have begun his evangelical career in his parents’ backyard by preaching to a tiny congregation nearly 20 years ago, now boasts a 12,000-member church with affiliated schools offering education from preschool through college; a daily television program, Breakthrough, seen on the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) and other fundamentalist-Christian television outlets; a 2,000-member fellowship of affiliated churches; and a political organization, the Orwellian-sounding Center for Moral Clarity. But Parsley, who is hailed by the theocratic Christian right as a model of virtue and a representative of “values voters,” has been questioned by congregants and even his own family about his church governance and secretive fund-raising practices.

“Probably President Bush would not be in office today had it not been for him,” said Bishop Harry Jackson, a black pastor from the Washington, D.C., suburbs and a fellow rising star in the religious right. A registered Democrat who said that he and Parsley share the same theological and political viewpoint, Jackson runs the High Impact Leadership Coalition, which promotes its “Black Contract With America on Moral Values.” That effort has led Jackson into alliance with the Arlington Group, a coalition of the Christian-right political elite with which Parsley is also affiliated. According to Jackson, Parsley’s style of preaching is “very, very user-friendly to African Americans,” which may explain why the white pastor has a congregation that is 40-percent black. Jackson also maintained that Parsley’s work with Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, as a “black and white team” campaigning for the gay-marriage ban in churches across Ohio, created the “ricochet effect” of bringing out voters for George W. Bush in 2004.

Jackson was careful to point out that Parsley did not explicitly campaign for Bush, which would have jeopardized his church’s tax-exempt status. But that was something Parsley clearly wanted to do in light of his $2,000 contribution to the Bush-Cheney campaign and his outspoken contempt for the Internal Revenue Service rules that prohibit clergy from endorsing candidates. His tag-team campaign for the gay-marriage ban with Blackwell -- who was not only the state co-chair of the Bush-Cheney re-election effort but also supervised the election as secretary of state -- certainly provided support to Bush. Now, through campaign contributions and joint public appearances, Parsley is supporting Blackwell’s bid to become the Republican gubernatorial nominee in 2006.

Although Parsley has barely stopped short of explicitly endorsing Blackwell, he insists that party affiliation doesn’t matter, and that he supports anyone, Republican or Democrat, who shares his view that the Bible offers the ultimate word on morality. Portraying himself as nonpartisan, and even as a Christ-like savior of the less fortunate, he claims (borrowing from Miller) that he is neither a Democrat nor a Republican but a “Christocrat.”

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY evil_genius)

Answer a call to personally fast once a month for President Bush.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY kalibex)

"Walgreen Co. said it has put four Illinois pharmacists in the St. Louis area on unpaid leave for refusing to fill prescriptions for emergency contraception in violation of a state rule.

"The four cited religious or moral objections to filling prescriptions for the morning-after pill and "have said they would like to maintain their right to refuse to dispense, and in Illinois that is not an option," Walgreen spokeswoman Tiffani Bruce said.

"A rule imposed by Gov. Rod Blagojevich in April requires Illinois pharmacies that sell contraceptives approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to fill prescriptions for emergency birth control. Pharmacies that do not fill prescriptions for any type of contraception are not required to follow the rule.

Ed Martin, an attorney for the pharmacists, on Tuesday called the discipline "pretty disturbing" and said they would consider legal action if Walgreen doesn't reconsider."

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY kalibex)

"Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) today filed an Internal Revenue Services (IRS) complaint against Focus on the Family, a conservative, non-profit organization led by its Founder and Chairman James C. Dobson. The complaint asks for the IRS to investigate activities by the group which may violate IRS regulations and require a revocation of its tax-exempt status..."

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY ccroft)

Is this a joke? PLEASE someone tell me that this is a spoof...

Project Pterosaur.

In light of first the DefCon America call for people to report dominionist groups violating tax exempt status and a later report of at least the second serious threat against Focus on the Family's tax exempt status, I would like to present both a bit of useful info and history and a very long list of groups that you, too, can file complaint in regards to.
( First, the history )

A brief note on the whole 501(c)3 and 501(c)4 stuff...the US tax code allows specific exemptions to federal taxes for certain classes of nonprofit organisations. To make a very long story short, the three main types of nonprofit groups legally recognised under the US tax codes are 501(c)3 groups, 501(c)4 groups, and PACs (political action committees). Both 501(c)3 and 501(c)4 groups can be set up as nonprofit groups; 501(c)3 exemptions tend to be used by churches, schools and educational groups whilst 501(c)4 groups tend to be used by actual lobbying groups. (Of note to Dark Christianity, dominionist groups typically register as 501(c)3 groups, and typically under the "religious ministry" or "educational foundation" exemptions (with the exception of groups like the DeVos Foundations, which are organised as private charitable foundations). The very few dominionist groups registered as 501(c)4 groups are uniformly registered as "social welfare organisations".)

The main difference in practice between a 501(c)3 and a 501(c)4 in practice:

501(c)3 group donations *can* be counted off on taxes as "tax deductible donations" but 501(c)3 groups generally are not legally allowed to engage in most political activity. (Certainly not advocating certain persons or certain parties for election, even certain issues can be iffy if it's a party-defining issue)

501(c)4 groups have more leeway as far as lobbying in Congress and state governments but donations to these groups are *not* tax deductible.

The specific IRS rules for lobbying for 501(c)3 groups are here and the rules for 501(c)4 "social welfare" groups are here.

Of special note (and of major import for dominionist groups)--groups that lose their 501(c)3 status as a result of lobbying *cannot* apply for 501(c)4 status; they lose their tax exempt status period. (Christian Coalition had changed their status to 501(c)4 just before the IRS yanked their tax exempt status, and it was only after almost seven years before it was restored; even now, they're essentially on "double secret probation" with the IRS.) Also, 501(c)4 groups can't have political lobbying as their *primary* activity (which is much of what got the Christian Coalition in trouble, and what may even get the few dominionist 501(c)4 groups in hot water).

Instead of the 1040C or other business-related tax forms that are normally filled out, organisations that qualify as 501(c)3 and 501(c)4 groups fill out a different form, called a form 990 or form 990-PF (the latter mostly applies to 501(c)4 groups); churches are largely exempt from having to register or file a form 990 (it's "assumed" they're tax exempt unless they show misbehaviour like, oh, distributing blatantly partisan dominionist voter's guides in sermon).

This is important in relevance to the next section:
( Form 990 filings and tax exempt statuses for lots of dominionist groups )

I know there are probably dominionist groups I've not listed there--if you've additions, let me know and I can add their tax info (and you can have fun reporting them for their misbehaviour!).