Barack Obama

Jesse Lee Peterson of the Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny has carved out a unique niche for himself as the far-right's arbiter of who/what is racist and who/what is not racist in today's political environment.

Thus, we see him declaring that "Barack Obama hates white people – especially white men" and claiming that he was elected by "by black racists and white guilty people" while defending the racist rants of people like Michael Richards and Duane Chapman.

Given Peterson's rather limited role, I was a little confused when he announced that he was launching a petition to defeat RNC Chair Michael Steele if he runs for re-election ... until I realized that he was doing so in order to reassure and provide cover to those who have "fears of being called 'racists'" for opposing Steele: 

Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, Founder and President of BOND Action, a national 501 (c) (4) nonprofit organization created to educate, motivate, and rally Americans to greater involvement in the moral and political issues that threaten America, announced today that his group is launching a "Michael Steele Must Go!" petition drive. Rev. Peterson was one of the first Republicans to publicly call for embattled RNC Chairman Michael Steele to step down last January, citing his financial mismanagement and lack of conservative convictions to lead the committee.

"I am encouraging the national committee members to vote Michael Steele out in January," said Rev. Peterson. He added, "Steele has shown with words and by his actions that he is a liability to the party. Republicans cannot afford to go into the 2012 presidential election cycle with a weak and potentially corrupt committee head."

...

Rev. Peterson said, "I'm encouraging Republicans around the country to sign our petition and send a message to the voting committee members to get over their fears of being called 'racists' or any other apprehension they have and replace Steele with a qualified conservative Republican."

Peterson is hoping to get 10, 000 signatures for his petition.  He currently has 13:

Brad O’Leary has been an emerging voice in the Religious Right thanks to books such as “The Audacity of Deceit: Barack Obama’s War on American Values,” “God and America’s Leaders,” and “America’s War on Christianity.” Today he received a platform in the Washington Examiner to spew his factually incorrect and conspiratorial views over the Southern Poverty Law Center’s latest hate group designations. He suggests that the SPLC’s descriptions of eighteen anti-gay organizations may lead to their future criminalization under recently-passed hate crimes law:

Their crime? These groups represent millions of Americans and speak for tens of millions more who support traditional marriage and believe that homosexuality is biblically wrong.

I don’t use the word “crime” lightly. Calling an organization a “hate group” used to be nothing more than a slur. But in today’s America, such a pejorative may have serious legal connotations.

SPLC knows this, because in 2009 the group was instrumental in getting the Democrat-led Congress to pass, and President Obama to sign, the Hate Crimes Prevention Act into law.

…

As I detail in my recently released book, America’s War on Christianity, this new law adds homosexuals and transsexuals to the list of uber-protected citizens under existing federal hate crimes law.

The measure effectively criminalizes any speech that may be “proven” to incite hatred that leads to violence against any of the special classes of citizens (homosexuals, transsexuals, etc.) who are protected under the law.

But regardless of what O’Leary might say, you can’t be prosecuted under hate crimes laws unless you actually commit a crime. The suggestion that the law “criminalizes” speech is a typical and unfounded claim by Religious Right activists like O’Learly, who dismiss the law’s clear stipulation that it cannot be “construed to prohibit any constitutionally protected speech, expressive conduct or activities.” Of course, O’Leary’s assertion that the SPLC may try to push the government into prosecuting or dismantling anti-gay groups ends with a plug for O’Leary’s own organization:

If you think this blatant attempt to criminalize Christianity is outrageous, you’re not alone. In fact, you should go to www.AmericasWarOnChristianity.com to take a quick, 10-question, true-or-false quiz that reveals other shocking ways Christianity is under attack in America.

Attacking Christians during the holy season of Christmas is nothing new, and the SPLC has long been at the forefront of this bigoted tradition. But Christians and Christian groups need to be on guard, and understand that what was once nothing more than vile slander, may now be greasing the skids toward legal prosecution.

As we noted earlier, the Religious Right is uniformly livid with the Southern Poverty Law Center's updated list of anti-gay hate groups and seems to be struggling to come up with coherent response as demonstrated by this Concerned Women for America statement which basically accuses the SPLC of calling African Americans bigots:

Concerned Women for America, among several other pro-family, pro-life national groups, has been named a “hate group” by The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) because of our opposition to same-sex “marriage.”

The SPLC began as a civil rights organization in the 1960s, but has been marginalized by “gay rights” organizations. They no longer simply focus on the noble cause of fighting racism and have, instead, become another tool for the left. This time, the SPLC has taken their liberal propaganda too far. By demonizing traditional family groups that support traditional marriage, they just put a huge portion of the African-American community in California in the same category with the rest us so-called bigots.

According to an Associated Press exit poll, 70 percent of African-Americans in California who voted for Barack Obama also voted for Prop 8 and in support of traditional marriage in 2008. The very people the SPLC supposedly seeks to protect from bigotry and “hate crimes” are heavily in favor of the very institution that the SPLC is fighting against.

And the AFA's Bryan Fischer has also decided to weigh in, trotting out his now standard "truth has become hate speech" line as he unveils his own convoluted response:

The Southern Poverty Law Center last week added five members to its list of “hate” groups, one of which is the American Family Association.

This illustrates one point and proves another. The point it illustrates is that the first and last refuge of a man without an argument is name-calling. If you can’t win on the merits of the case, call your opponent a racist or a bigot or a hater and the debate is supposed to be over at that point. So you know as a matter of fact that the moment someone stops debating and starts name-calling, they’ve lost the argument. It’s an admission of defeat.

...

Thus, in a strange way, it is a badge of honor for these groups to be tagged now by the SPLC as hate groups. It’s a sign of desperation on the part of the SPLC, and a sign that they are so threatened by the truths that these groups speak that they are now flailing about trying to silence them rather than to debate them. They’ve given up winning on points, and so have taken to trying to run them off the field. Their strategy now is not to persuade the public but to demonize their cultural adversaries.

I’ve often maintained that liberals, progressives, Democrats, socialists, Marxists, etc. - they’re all the same under the covers - hate free speech. They hate freedom of religion, and they hate freedom of the press, because such freedoms threaten their stranglehold on public discourse and their goal of indoctrinating the American people with their non-traditional moral values. They hate the First Amendment, for the very reason that it was designed by the Founders to protect robust public discourse on political and social matters.

So, Fischer says name-calling an admission of defeat ... and then proceeds to simply assert that all the Marxists and Socialists on the left just hate free speech and religion and the First Amendment and America in general.

Of course it should also be noted that Fischer's entire professional career is based on calling gays names like nancy-boys and sexual perverts and sexual deviants and pedophiles and domestic terrorists who are part of a "deviancy cabal" who "want to use the anal cavity for sex."

As I mentioned the other day, James Dobson has dedicated the last three days of his radio program to airing a speech he delivered back in 1998 at a gathering of the Council for National Policy in which he laid out his views regarding the GOP's continual abandonment of the Religious Right and the issues they hold dear. 

Today, Dobson aired the final portion of that speech in which he focused largely on attacking the Republicans for ignoring basic moral principles in order to maintain political power and threatened that the Religious Right would leave the coalition if the party continued to do so:

It's a lack of conviction that there is a boss to the universe and that there are moral standards that we are held to and we need officials who will stand up and represent them.

What that conveys to the constituency I'm talking about is that principle does not matter, it's party over principle. That there are some things that you stand for whether it is popular or politically astute to do so or not. That's what that pro-moral community stands for.

And yet it seemed to me that what I heard from the Republicans in Indian Wells was we cannot have power if we stand on principle - please don't take away our power.

What good is it to have power if you don't use it for good?

The Republican Party was born in the crucible of conviction and courage and moral righteousness, that's where the Republican Party started.

It took a stand against slavery in a day that cost six hundred thousand lives in the Civil War. But they knew is was wrong and they took a stand on it, whether win, lose, or draw, that's God business. They took a stand on what was right.

If they party has left that and it is now going to mouth these two things every two years and then go on to something else, I think we need to look for another. And it would be tragic if that happened. I don't want that to happen. There are many state houses of government where Republicans will suffer if that happens. It will be a disaster for the country, but somebody said "if you do that, you have no voice at all." I don't think we have a voice now. I can't hear the voice.

So, to hear Dobson tell it, the problem with the GOP it its utter lack of conviction to stand on principle even if it means losing some political power. 

Of course, that sort of condemnation from Dobson might carry a bit more weight if Dobson didn't repeatedly do the same thing, constantly threatening to abandon the Republican Party only to fall back in line when Election Day approached.

Does anyone remember this?

Should John McCain capture the nomination as many assume, I believe this general election will offer the worst choices for president in my lifetime. I certainly can’t vote for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama based on the virulently anti-family policy positions. If these are the nominees in November, I simply will not cast a ballot for president for the first time in my life.

That announcement was followed just a few months later by this one:

This has been the most difficult moral dilemma for me. It’s why you haven’t heard me say much about it because I have struggled on this issue. And there are some concerns here that matter to me more than my own life and neither of the candidates is consistent with my views in that regard. But Senator McCain is certainly closer to them then Senator Obama, by a wide margin. And there's no doubt, at least no doubt in my mind, about whose policies will result in more babies being killed. Or who will do the greatest damage to the institution of marriage and the family. I'm convinced that Senator McCain comes closer to what I believe. So I am not endorsing Senator McCain today … But as of this moment, I have to take into account the fact that Senator John McCain has voted pro-life consistently and that's a fact. He says he favors marriage between a man and a woman, I believe that. He opposes homosexual adoption. He favors smaller government and lower taxes and he seems to understand the Muslim threat, which matters a lot to me – I am very concerned about that.

If Dobson is going to spend three days airing a speech blasting the Republican Party for abandoning its principles for the sake of politics, maybe he should spend the rest of the week examining his own blatant hypocrisy.

For the last several months we've been noting the gradual re-emergence of James Robison, who was an influential leader back at the founding of the Religious Right but who eventually sort of fell off the radar. 

But in the last year or so, he has suddenly become more and more involved in Religious Right activism and I guess nothing better demonstrates that fact like this article, via AU, reporting that a few months back Robison convened a large gathering of leaders to plot how to defeat President Obama in 2012:

Conservative Christian leaders from across the nation met two months ago near the Dallas airport to strategize about replacing President Barack Obama with someone who matches their agenda – a move that paralleled an effort by Christian leaders in 1979 to defeat then President Jimmy Carter.

About 40 conservative Christian leaders gathered in Dallas on Sept. 8-9 to begin laying the groundwork for a religious-political movement similar to the one that helped Ronald Reagan oust the Baptist Sunday school teacher from the Oval Office. Convened by evangelist James Robison – a key figure in the religious effort 30 years ago to promote Reagan's candidacy – the list of attendees included many of the most prominent Christian evangelists and ministers, including several Southern Baptist leaders.

Southern Baptist leaders attending the meeting included: Richard Land (president of the SBC's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission); Richard Lee (pastor and the editor of The American Patriot's Bible); John Meador (pastor of First Baptist Church of Euless, Texas); and Paige Patterson (president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary).

Others at the meeting included: Tony Evans (a megachurch pastor in Texas); Father Joseph Fessio (founder and editor of Ignatius Press); Craig Groeschel (pastor of LifeChurch.tv); Miles McPherson (a megachurch pastor in California who spoke at the 2008 Republican National Convention); Johnnie Moore (a vice president at Liberty University who defended the school's decisions to have Glenn Beck and Newt Gingrich as recent speakers); Tom Mullins (a megachurch pastor in Florida); Doug Napier (legal counsel at the Alliance Defense Fund); Dino Rizzo (a megachurch pastor in Louisiana); Dave Roever (an evangelist who prayed at Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally); Mark Rutland (president of Oral Roberts University); David Stone (a megachurch pastor in Kentucky); and Stu Weber (a megachurch pastor in Oregon).

Several conservative Christian leaders highly active in politics attended the meeting, including: Stephen Broden (a pastor and Republican politician in Texas); Keith Butler (a pastor and Republican politician in Michigan); Maggie Gallagher (a conservative columnist who received tens of thousands of dollars for her work from the George W. Bush administration); Jim Garlow (chairman of Newt Gingrich's organization, Renewing American Leadership); Harry Jackson (pastor of Hope Christian Church in Washington, D.C.); Gene Mills (executive director of the Louisiana Family Forum); and Tony Perkins (president of the Family Research Council).

Some attendees have been guests on Glenn Beck's program on Fox News (including Broden, Garlow, Lee, McPherson, Mullins, Robison, Roever and Stone), and several were involved with his "Restoring Honor" rally (including Jackson, Land, Lee, Gallagher, Garlow and Roever).

Three of the attendees at the meeting have been under investigation since 2007 by Republican U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, a Baptist from Iowa, for perhaps violating IRS tax-exempt rules. Those at the meeting included televangelists Kenneth Copeland, Creflo Dollar and Joyce Meyer.

Other individuals helped plan the September meeting but were unable to attend. They included: Jerry Falwell Jr. (president of Liberty University); Jack Graham (a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention); O.S. Hawkins (head of the SBC's Guidestone Financial Resources); Jack Hayford (president of Foursquare International); and author Ravi Zacharias.

I should point out, also, that Robison's return can only be good news for Mike Huckabee, as Robison was his mentor back in the 1970s, leading Huckabee to drop out of seminary so he could go to work for Robison as his director of communications.

If Robison and crew are looking to replace Obama "with someone who matches their agenda," Huckabee seems like a perfect fit.

Yesterday I posted a clip from the Generals International webcast in which Cindy Jacobs prophesied the rise of a third party that would be led by people like Marco Rubio.

Earlier in the program, Bishop Harry Jackson skyped in to deliver his thoughts on the election results and declare them evidence that God is "about to sweep clean" the nation, which is finally waking up to the fact that President Obama is not a "true Christian":

I believe that this election was very, very prophetic in that we have an agenda that President Obama ran on that talked about change. And now this sweeping, historic victory by the GOP, it really says that God is about substantive, long-lasting change.

I believe that God is about to sweep clean many, many places of power in America just as he has done this thing with removing Democratic Party leaders at an unprecedented level.

We Evangelicals finally said all the earmarks of being a true Christian are not really with President Barack Obama. I'm not saying he's a Muslim, I'm not saying he's not a true believer, I am simply saying that his attitudes and his policies are clearly antithetical to true Christian values and and the Word of God.

Right after the election in 2008, a group of right-wing leaders gathered at Brent Bozell's house to lick their wounds and begin plotting their return.

They are now crediting the meeting with laying the groundwork for the republican gains in the last election and so they are gathering once again to strategize ways to solidify and expand their gains in the next election:

A group of conservative leaders who helped steer their movement away from a painful defeat in 2008 and toward an electoral comeback in 2010, plan to meet privately on Friday to map out their strategy for the next two years.

Led by Brent Bozell, president of the Media Research Center, a conservative media watchdog group, and the nephew of the late conservative icon William F. Buckley, Jr., the gathering will include a who’s who of right-leaning activists.

Joining Bozell at his mountain retreat in Stanley, Va. will be Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council; Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity, one of the most active conservative groups of 2010 election cycle; former Indiana Republican Rep. Dave McIntosh; Becky Norton Dunlop, vice president at the Heritage Foundation; Frank Gaffney, founder and president of the Center for Security Policy; Al Regnery, publisher of the American Spectator magazine; and Leonard Leo, executive vice president of The Federalist Society.

The group includes many of the same individuals who, in the words of one conservative activist, helped define President Barack Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as “far leftists” who were tipping the country “toward socialism” -- an idea that energized the conservative base this year.

...

Many of the same individuals who will gather at Bozell’s home this week took part in a similar meeting after the 2008 election, not only to lick their wounds after Obama swept into the White House and Democrats scored big gains in Congress, but also to plot a course out of the political wilderness

After that session, Bozell declared “the moderate wing of the Republican Party is dead,” and his counterpart, Tony Perkins, warned that candidates for elected officials who are “squishy on conservative principles” would no longer be tolerated.

Friday’s discussion will focus on the issues that will continue to drive movement supporters, including an emphasis on limited, constitutional government. The group also plans to look ahead to the 2012 election cycle, identifying some of the rising-star candidates who have the best chance to defeat President Obama.

To pass muster among members of this group, the activist who outlined the meeting’s agenda, said potential 2012 candidates will have to be “full-throttle, across-the-board conservatives."

The Susan B. Anthony List has been spending millions of dollars targeting Democratic members of Congress who voted for Health Care Reform with claims that they voted to expand taxpayer-funded abortions.

It's not true and Rep. Steve Driehaus (D-Ohio) got fed up with SBA lying about it so he filed a complaint with the Ohio Elections Commission that the group was violating Ohio election law which makes it illegal to "post, publish, circulate, distribute, or otherwise disseminate a false statement concerning a candidate, either knowing the same to be false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not."

The Elections Commission agreed with Driehaus and so now, of course, SBA is suing ... on the grounds that the Ohio laws preventing them from lying about candidates violate their free speech:

A national anti-abortion group blocked from putting up a billboard against a Democratic anti-abortion congressman from Ohio has asked a federal judge to overturn a state election law standing in its way.

The Susan B. Anthony List, based in Washington, D.C., filed the suit after the Ohio Election Commission ruled in favor of GOP-targeted, first-term Rep. Steve Driehaus. The commission said there was probable cause that the planned billboard includes false statements.

Driehaus was one of several anti-abortion Democrats in Congress whose votes sealed the passage of President Barack Obama's health care law, which abortion opponents argue promotes taxpayer funded abortions. He has been the target of abortion opponents since the vote.

In its lawsuit, filed Monday, the anti-abortion group argues that the Ohio law barring false statements about a candidate's voting record is vague and violates free speech. It also says the law is unconstitutional because it does not require the offended candidates to prove actual malice.

Back during the last Republican presidential primary, Richard Land could not stop talking about how Fred Thompson was a "Southern-fried Reagan" who possessed "a tantalizing combination of charisma, conviction and electability," while gushing that to "see Fred work a crowd must be what it was like to watch Rembrandt paint.”

Of course, Thompson's presidential campaign ended up being monumental bust ... but that hasn't stopped Land from fancying himself a political prognosticator and offering up inane "predictions" about how Hillary Clinton is going to resign as Secretary of State in order to launch a primary challenge against President Obama:

Dr. Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, believes the American people are unhappy with the Obama agenda, and he predicts that a GOP tsunami is coming.

"I think what you're going to see in November is a massive backlash saying, 'No -- we want to restore this country to a country where we understand obligations and responsibilities, and we're not going to focus so much on rights and privileges,'" Land suggests. "I think that there is a tsunami coming."

But even if the Democratic Party gets thrashed, he does not think Obama will moderate his left-wing ideology.

"If this is as bad as I think it's going to be, I'll make a prediction for you: Within 30 days, Hillary Clinton will resign as secretary of state, and she will shortly after that announce that she's running for president. She will say that Barack Obama abandoned the Israelis, [but] she will not; she will support Israel, and...the only thing that stands between the Democratic Party and a political debacle is Hillary Clinton," the ERLC president suggests.

Election Day is November 2, which means that, according to Land, Clinton will resign by December 2 ... so let's check back in then and see how Land's prediction is faring, shall we?