Tennesee

Another Anti-Government Politician Who Loves Government Money

Submitted by Brian Tashman on October 18, 2010 - 11:22am

Stephen Fincher, best known for his role in the “Fincher Family” singing ministry, is now the Republican nominee in a top Congressional race in northwestern Tennessee. He is running as a livid critic of “wasteful government spending,” and says that “when a Tennessee family has to make tough decisions, they sit down and prioritize spending. Government just spends and borrows and taxes.”

Despite all of his heated anti-government rhetoric, it appears that when Stephen Fincher has to make tough decisions about family spending, the only decision he makes is: how much money should I request from the government?

Republican Stephen Fincher, who has spoken against government spending and "bailouts" in his congressional campaign, applied for and received a $13,650 grant from the state Department of Agriculture last year, records show.

The state grant is in addition to federal farm subsidies of at least $3.2 million he and his wife have received over the last 10 years, a major target of his Republican opponents before his Aug. 5 primary election victory.

The state grant, awarded during the state fiscal year that ended June 30, has not been previously disclosed publicly. The grant to help buy grain hauling and storage equipment is part of the Tennessee Agricultural Enhancement Program, a cost-share grant created by the state legislature in 2005 to help improve farm income. The state pays up to half the cost of implements and equipment under several categories.

Fincher is another case of Tea Party Republicans who hate government except for when it helps them. For example, Rand Paul bashes Medicare, but doesn’t want to cut Medicare payments to doctors like himself; Sharron Angle and Joe Miller criticize government involvement in health care, but don’t mind having government insurance for their families. And a new Center for Public Integrity report details the Republican Congressmen who consistently criticize the stimulus, but then request and publicly credit themselves for winning stimulus money in order to help their reelection bids.

One would hope that Fincher would come clean about the money he receives from the government in a public debate or forum. Unfortunately, Fincher refuses to participate in any debate because he is upset that his opponent criticized him!

Brian Tashman's blog

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Randall Terry Takes His Show On The Road

Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on August 24, 2009 - 10:28am

Last week we mentioned that Randall Terry and his band of merry pranksters were heading out on the road for series of "kill granny/kill babies" healthcare reform protests. Well, they are now underway:

Terry, 50, and his staffers readied their props: plastic toddler dolls, a trick knife, a Halloween syringe, a bottle of fake blood.

"We're going to be executing babies," he joked as the trio, trailed by another staffer with a camcorder, stepped out onto Salem Avenue in Roanoke toward Sen. Mark Warner's downtown office.

...

Friday morning, at the entry to Warner's offices, the activist displayed a sign that read: OBAMA DEATH CARE: One dead patient at a time.

"At the core of Obama's health care policy is the murder of babies and the murder of the elderly," he said. "If this bill passes and they expect us to pay ... there will be horrific consequences to pay."

The consequences, as he explained them, would be contempt for the government; vandalism; and acts of violence against those perceived to be involved with abortions, but he denied involvement with violent anti-abortionists.

"This is not a threat, it's a warning," he said, then told his troupe, "Let's do skit one," and began to stab at baby dolls with a plastic knife. Given a pale-handed "thumbs down" from a staffer in an Obama mask, he pretended to give a lethal injection to another employee who was costumed as a trembling elderly woman.

"You really can save money if you kill granny," he said.

Those and other displays were performed twice before an audience of just three reporters, three cameras and the frosted-glass windows behind him.

Here are some pictures from Kentucky:

They also showed up in Tennessee where even teenagers found their antics to be offensive, juvenile, and misleading:

"I think this is a disgrace," said 13-year-old Jontrez London of Nashville. "Obama's trying to save people. He ain't gonna try to kill an old lady."

Another baby doll went flying and 14-year-old Malcolm Wells shook his head and sighed.

"These are adults acting like children," he said.

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The Return of the 'One-Day Crusade'

Submitted by Anonymous on June 18, 2008 - 4:28pm

Nearly a year after Rick Scarborough began his ambitious “70 Weeks to Save America” to sign up thousands of “Patriot Pastors” and voters at church rallies across America, only to have it peter out due to money, mechanical problems, slim turnout, and Alan Keyes, and nearly three months since announcing the project’s triumphant comeback, Scarborough is finally holding a “Patriot Pastor” rally in Nashville, Tennessee, featuring disgruntled ex-chaplain Gordon Klingenschmitt, “National Statesman/Evangelist Dr. Rick Scarborough,” and a singer billed as the “Pavarotti of gospel.”

This “One-Day Crusade” will be held at Two Rivers Baptist Church, home of Rev. Jerry Sutton, who is no stranger to church-based politicking. In 2005, he hosted a rally in support of President Bush’s controversial judicial nominees (including future Chief Justice John Roberts). Billed as a protest against “activist judges” supposedly trying to “silence” people of faith, “Justice Sunday II” brought together some of the biggest names on the Religious Right, such as Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, and then-National Evangelical Association President Ted Haggard, along with Robert Bork, Bill Donohue of the Catholic League, Bishop Harry Jackson, and then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.

Sutton himself boiled down the message he hoped the audience would take home:

Number one, it's a new day.

Number two, liberalism is dead.

Number three, the majority of Americans are conservative.

Number four, you can count on us showing up and speaking out.

And number five, let the church rise.

Sutton, who is a research fellow with Richard Land’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and ran for president of the Southern Baptist Convention in 2006, has been involved in an imbroglio at his own church recently, when 71 members sued the church over financial mismanagement (along with Sutton’s “lavish lifestyle” and “authoritarian” leadership).

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Hate in the Name of Jesus: From Anti-Gay to Anti-Semitic

Submitted by Anonymous on February 15, 2008 - 6:09pm

Anti-semitic flier

Believe it or not, somebody is taking credit for the above flier, which urges “Memphis Christians” to “unite and support ONE Black Christian” against Rep. Steve Cohen because “Steve Cohen and the Jews HATE Jesus.” Rev. George Brooks of Murfreesboro, Tennessee put his name and phone number at the bottom, and told the Commercial Appeal newspaper that he did it because the 9th congressional district “about 90-something percent black” (actually more like 60 percent, but that’s really beside the point) and therefore ought to have a black representative. Cohen was elected in 2006 when Rep. Harold Ford Jr. left his seat to run for the U.S. Senate.

Brooks’s message painting Cohen as an “opponent of Christ and Christianity” because of his religion is stunningly and appallingly over-the-top bigotry. But it’s not the first time that Cohen has been the target of religion-tinged attacks.

Last August, at a meeting of the Memphis Baptist Ministerial Association, members of the clergy attacked Rep. Cohen for his support of federal legislation to extend protections against violent hate crimes—already in place for crimes motivated by racial hatred—to sexual orientation. These ministers borrowed a page from the Religious Right, falsely claiming that the hate crimes bill would affect religious speech. “If this becomes law, then the gay advocates will start suing preachers for preaching what they (gays) see as hate,” said Apostle Alton R. Williams—in spite of the fact that the law includes explicit protections for the First Amendment. For some of the ministers, the bogus religious liberty charge may just have been a cover for the same complaint motivating Rev. Brooks. "He's not black and he can't represent me, that's just the bottom line," said Rev. Robert Poindexter of Mt. Moriah Baptist Church at the August meeting.

The Religious Right has long used anti-gay sentiment as the centerpiece of its outreach to the black church – Bishop Harry Jackson led an anti-hate crimes press conference at the most recent “Values Voter Summit” – and right-wing leaders viewed the Memphis ministers’ embrace of anti-gay politics last summer as a victory. The ministers received praise from the Traditional Values Coalition, and Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council—who is writing a book with Jackson on right-wing outreach to black churches—claimed the bill was “uniting Christian pastors across racial and denominational lines all across America.” Gary Bauer cited the ministers’ meeting as an inspiring moment, building on the federal anti-gay marriage amendment, “when conservative pro-family leaders stood shoulder-to-shoulder with black pastors in defense of faith and family.”

While Harry Jackson and the Memphis ministers have apparently signed on to such an alliance, national leaders have rejected the claim that civil rights protections for gays and lesbians must come at the expense of African Americans. The NAACP, African American Ministers in Action, and the Congressional Black Caucus all support expanding hate crimes protections.