So, here I am at Netroots Nation, courtesy of a DFA scholarship [for which I'm extremely grateful] and I'd like to preface everything I'm going to say here with the point that it's a privilege to be here, and an invaluable opportunity to meet people I've only interacted with via text, blogging and email. Meeting humans in the flesh has no substitute.
And yet, for all the excitement of being here, the privilege, I find myself frustrated because the field I've been studying for the last several years doesn't officially exist here at Netroots Nation and that's bizarre to me given that I just created a 3-4 minute video that shifted the dynamics of the current presidential election, last May, by forcing John McCain to renounce the political endorsement of pastor John Hagee.
At Netroots Nation 2008, the elephant in the living room is the effect of religion on US politics. Privately, every single person I have to talked to so far has acknowledged that, yes, the effect of religion on US politics is anywhere from large to enormous...
Well, it should. It's been a little late in coming but I've had some homework to do, researching linkages of the Democratic Leadership Council in terms of its origin, founding membership, and ideology to the shadowy, antidemocratic, elitist and right wing Washington fundamentalist cult, "The Family" which is, as the title of Jeff Sharlet's new book The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at The Heart Of American Power (excerpt from book and a review) suggest, "at the heart of American power."
From its inception the DLC and The Family were intertwined, both in terms of membership and also ideologically. I'm not going to bother proving that here on this post because that's the gist of my entire upcoming series...
Here's my first installment:
87.5% of "Family"/DLC Affiliated Senate Democrats Voted For FISA
Wow that was fast! an insta scandal. the Paynegate scandal has gone, in less than 48 hours, from the UK Sunday Times, to the blogosphere, mainly via ThinkProgress and the Huffington Post, then up Digg and out to WaPo, The LA Times, CBS, Fox, UPI... Here's the current Google News List
The story has provoked a Waxman inquiry too. In my dKos post yesterday, I said that if anyone in Congress has any jeuvos... well, somebody does.
[ UPDATE: This story needs all the media air it can get - so please VOTE IT UP on Digg ! Here are current Digg posts on this scandal which your votes can help push towards mainstream media recognition:
Many Americans are currently worried that the Bush Administration may attack Iran prior to the 2008 US presidential election, involving the US in a far more disastrous war even than the Iraq conflict and dramatically changing the presidential election dynamics, possibly to the benefit of US Senator and GOP presidential aspirant John McCain. A sizable American majority is opposed to a US war with Iran, but the developing political alliance between American Christian Zionists, conservative American Jews and the Israeli right makes such a war dramatically more likely.
Early in July, producers of 120+ videos were informed, as reported by Sam Stein of the Huffington Post, that their videos had been removed from the YouTube website for alleged copyright infringement, for containing John Hagee sermon video footage. With the immanent kickoff of Pastor John Hagee's 2008 Christians United For Israel summit, at which Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman is due to deliver a July 22nd capstone speech, the prevailing assumption is that Pastor Hagee and his ministry launched preemptive attacks against YouTube videos critical of his ministry in order to temporarily repress the critical reports during mainstream media coverage of CUFI 2008 expected to ensue in little more than a week. [Digg this story! - 1, 2, 3]
Last week, on July the 1st, I received notice from YouTube that eight of my videos on YouTube's website had been taken down, allegedly for copyright violations. The videos included the notorious "God Sent Hitler" video which caused sufficient scandal, because it got shown widely on American and international TV, to force John McCain to renounce the political endorsement of Pastor John Hagee. JHM Ministries also targeted videos from Max Blumenthal, from People For The American Way and even from a Christian fundamentalist ministry critical of Hagee's "Prosperity Gospel" teaching - maybe videos from other parties too. But overall the hit was very selective.
On July the 3rd, 2008, the Los Angeles Times published an op-ed entitled "
No proxy war with Iran: The United States must not signal that it would be acceptable for Israel to bomb Iranian targets."
It's been astounding for me to watch, over the course of the past year, orthodox observers gradually come to take seriously a potentially disastrous scenario that I was warning about, here on this forum, over three years ago. The domestic political dynamic that I warned could arise as a consequence of a United States war with Iran was similar, if less fully articulated, to that now being aired by Naomi Klein, to concerned audiences around the United States.
Some possibly infectious memes just crossed my desk and, time being short, I thought I'd pass them on.
All morally centered humans, wherever they might happen to fall on the political or ideological spectrum, recoil from hypocrisy...
I've added the Obama bits to this, but those are only my feeble efforts. There's a whole, vast pool of creative talent here on dKos. There's SO such potential here in this formula.
So, what new and fancy versions of this can the Dkos community generate ?
On Friday, June 27, 2008 NBC Producer John Rutherford wrote one of the most grotesque pieces of propaganda I have seen in a long time and I'm sure there's an immense swamp of such media excretion floating around the American news info-sphere but this one caught my eye, perhaps especially because John Rutherford doesn't put out, as would a Fox correspondent, his politics quite bluntly in his rhetoric.
As an action I'm going to suggest two things. One is EASY. The other is HARD but very much WORTH IT. See the end of this post.
[In this piece I illustrate the extreme parallels between the British colonial occupation of Iraq during the 1920's and the American neo-colonial occupation of Iraq today.]
Iraq was starting to become a real problem for the British, in 1920, and T.E. Lawrence, who knew the situation intimately, wrote the following in a August 22, 1920 letter to London's Sunday Times:
The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiques are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows. It is a disgrace to our imperial record, and may soon be too inflamed for any ordinary cure. We are today not far from a disaster.
The point of this post is to shine more media attention on James Dobson's crackpot child-rearing theories which appear to be based in crackpot dog training ideas.
Fruitcake, anyone ?
Mainstream media has been very compliant in broadcasting Focus On The Family head James Dobson's recent attack [1,2] on Barack Obama, in which Dobson said Obama holds "fruitcake" views on church-state Separation. Dr. James Dobson, through his books on child rearing that have sold into the millions or tens of millions, has influenced millions of American parents. Why, asks FrameShop's Jeffrey Feldman, does the media give James Dobson a pass given how far out of the mainstream his parenting ideas really are ? The following post examines the apparent origins of Dobson's views on child-discipline which seem to be tied to or grounded in Dobson's sense of how to train dogs - by beating them into abject submission, an approach that's generally held by professional dog trainers to be less than worthless and even dangerous.
Lately there's been a bit of a flap over Dr. James Dobson's public declaration that Barack Obama has "fruitcake ideas" about the US Constitution and church-state separation. Mr. Dobson might want to reconsider going head to head with a man who taught Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago for twelve years.
But, Mr. Dobson might also want to reconsider his charge of "fruitcakery" given Dobson's earnest and highly enthusiastic account, in his best-selling book "The Strong Willed Child", of an epic battle between Dobson and his 12 pound miniature Dachshund "Siggie" - to force the little Weiner Dog off its napping spot on a fuzzy toilet seat cover:
As the nationally-known, alleged child-rearing expert described in his child-rearing book, Dobson was apparently initially overmatched by the wee weiner dog and so grabbed a belt. A titanic clash, between man and vicious, snarling miniature Dachshund ensued:
[UPDATE: How reasonable are concerns the Bush Administration might use nuclear weapons against Iran ? See information on the Bush Administration's new "Global Strike" plans, towards the end of this post]
If the US or Israel tries to destroy Iran's two key underground nuclear facilities with "bunker busting" tactical nukes the result could mean the deaths of close to 3 million Iranians, the wounding of millions, and the radioactive sickening of tens of millions in the region including in neighboring, nuclear-armed Pakistan. In the picture below, the yellow plume equals the likely nuclear fallout region of death/near death. Red=certain death.
Pastor John Hagee and his "Christians United For Israel" group claim to support Israel and Jews but Hagee and leaders of his group have been, for decades now, mass-marketing anti-Jewish propaganda - and leaders of Hagee's group are on public record stating their expectation of a coming future "Holocaust" they expect to engulf Jews.
When I saw the news, Congress Set To Approve Iran Resolution and saw the appalling number of Congressional co-sponsors, both Republicans and Democrats, itching to push the US into what almost certainly would be a disastrous war with Iran I reacted the way one might in the moments before a car crash, or similar possibly deadly accident in-process, as the brain speeds up relative to the body, because...
Every second counts. And, paradoxically I got very, very mad - in a slow, deep way.
War with Iran ?
Kiss meaningful action on Global Warming goodbye.
Kiss pulling out of Iraq goodbye.
Kiss avoiding an economic depression the likes of which you've probably never seen in your lifetime unless you're over 80 year old goodbye.
Kiss dealing with the Federal deficit goodbye
Kiss universal health care goodbye
Kissthe increasing entrainment of the Democratic Party with a progressive agenda goodbye.
"To obtain the George W. Bush presidential library, Southern Methodist University has been required to accept an autonomous partisan institute on campus. Karl Rove is in the middle of the planning of and fund-raising for this Trojan horse project. The institute will give Rove the resources he needs to try to re-write the narrative of the Bush presidency, as well promoting his larger vision -- the domination of the right-wing of the Republican Party in American politics. In July the United Methodist Church, which owns SMU "lock stock and barrel," has one last chance to stop Rove." [emphasis mine]
The final vote in the Library and attached think tank is due to occur in Dallas on July 15-16.
My real name is Bruce Wilson. I co-founded Talk to Action, a blog dedicated to the intersection of politics and religion, with Frederick Clarkson.
