Just watch this old clip from Hannity & Colmes, featuring Hitch and Ralph Reed.

Hannity and Reed did not fare well.

[h/t Blue Texan]

(Weekly Column)

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the rancid “values” of those leading today’s so-called pro-family movement:

Today, defining our opponents is not so easy, and sometimes vexing, because their values are so vacant and vacuous. Back in the day, a true conservative was defined by how one lived – not necessarily how one voted. But today’s soulless, corporate conservatism has nothing to do with the way one lives and everything to do with lazy political labels and one-size-fits-all prefab positions.

True to form, the ultimate con man, Ralph Reed, is making a strong comeback after living in exile following a disgraceful exit from politics five years ago. Back then, Reed was riding high as the former head of Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition, the chairman of Georgia’s Republican Party, and a candidate for Georgia’s lieutenant governor.

However, a political consulting firm he founded had ties to sleazy lobbyist Jack Abramoff, and that brought Reed down. For those who do not remember, Reed exploited Christians who he organized — based on moral opposition to gaming — to oppose new Indian casinos. He once called gambling a “cancer” that “is stealing food from the mouths of children.”

What Reed did not tell these poor conservative supporters (suckers), was that he was being paid by other casino-owning Native American tribes who did not want the competition from their tribal rivals. In other words, Reed had no problem profiting handsomely from a business he called a “cancer.” According to e-mails between convicted lobbyist Abramoff and Reed, the good Christian was simply trying to “hump in corporate accounts” to the tune of $4 million in casino money for Reed’s consulting business.

There is a word for such people: Hypocrite.

Five years have passed and the moral reprobate is hoping Christians forget his sordid past — and he seems to be succeeding. Reed, ever the opportunist, says he is now organizing doe-eyed Christians and Tea Party enthusiasts, who he refers to as his “sweet spot.” (What’s up with the creepy sexual terminology like “humping in accounts” and “sweet spot?” What’s next, Ralph’s “money shot?”) The vehicle he has cooked up for his comeback is a new organization he founded, the “Faith and Freedom Coalition.”

Reed considers his new group a 21st-century version of the Christian Coalition — with basically the same agenda, except they now will use Facebook and Twitter.

“Our goal is to build a file of 29 million conservative voters,” according to the New York Times. “We’ll e-mail them, we’ll call them, we’ll knock on their doors and, if necessary, we’ll drive them to the polls.”

The danger of Ralph Reed is that he is one of only three archconservatives who are brilliant strategists – with the others being Karl Rove and Newt Gingrich. However, Rove is too mean and is tied to Bush’s failures, while Gingrich is too undisciplined and mired in personal scandal. Reed is the only GOP puppet master who has the savvy to match his proven skills as a top-notch organizer.

Reed doesn’t have much to work with, given the sorry state of Republican presidential wannabes. But the latest economic numbers provide a glimmer of hope to the GOP’s slate of extremists. The unemployment rate is at 9.1 percent and the average length of unemployment is nine months. Former Federal Reserve economist Morris Davis told the New York Times that as many as a million homes slipped into foreclosure because of a lack of help for the unemployed.

Americans may conclude that tough times call for radical measures, such as electing once-unthinkable candidates like Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann. But thanks to powerbrokers like Reed, even the alleged moderates in the GOP have raced to the fanatical fringe, as evidenced by their statements at Reed’s “Faith and Freedom Coalition” event held in Washington last week.

The supposed moderate, former Utah governor Jon Huntsman, said at the conference that “I do not believe that the Republican Party should focus solely on our economic life to the neglect of our human life.”

Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty said that his top four “common-sense principles” were to turn America toward God, protect the unborn, oppose marriage equality and keep Americans secure. It is time that the media stops portraying Pawlenty as mainstream, because he has sounded like fellow Minnesotan Michele Bachmann longer than he has sounded like the media’s sanitized version of Tim Pawlenty.

So, what if Reed’s organization can effectively exploit the recession and help elect an extremist (or a former moderate posing as an extremist like Mitt Romney) to the Oval Office? All his blustering base of scolds will have accomplished is the glamorization of a morally compromised kingmaker who has repeatedly turned evangelical Christianity and GOP politics into a national punch line. (Slimy candidates like thrice-married Newt Gingrich pushing the sanctity of marriage further compounds this “family values” folly.)

What a wonderful example these purified “Christians” have set for their children in their righteous quest to create a “godlier” nation.

This is Jim Garlow, who Jeremy points out was a big mover and shaker in the Prop 8 fight.  He spoke at Ralph Reed’s [more on Ralph later today, by the way] “Faith and Freedom Conference” on Friday, and said the following insane thing:

Yeah, those are the same. One involves a child’s parent being burned to death in a terrorist attack, the other involves children with two loving parents who have genitals that don’t conform to Jim Garlow’s sense of compatibility.

Weirdo.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the rancid “values” of those leading today’s so-called pro-family movement:

Today, defining our opponents is not so easy, and sometimes vexing, because their values are so vacant and vacuous. Back in the day, a true conservative was defined by how one lived – not necessarily how one voted. But today’s soulless, corporate conservatism has nothing to do with the way one lives and everything to do with lazy political labels and one-size-fits-all prefab positions.

True to form, the ultimate con man, Ralph Reed, is making a strong comeback after living in exile following a disgraceful exit from politics five years ago. Back then, Reed was riding high as the former head of Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition, the chairman of Georgia’s Republican Party, and a candidate for Georgia’s Lieutenant Governor.

It was his role, however, in a political consulting firm he founded that had ties to sleazy lobbyist Jack Abramoff that brought Reed down. For those who do not remember, Reed exploited Christians who he organized — based on moral opposition to gambling — to oppose new Indian gambling casinos. He once called gambling a “cancer” that “is stealing food from the mouths of children.”

What Reed did not tell these poor conservative supporters (suckers), was that he was being paid by other casino-owning Native American tribes who did not want the competition from their tribal rivals. In other words, Reed had no problem profiting handsomely from a business he called a “cancer.” According to e-mails between convicted lobbyist Abramoff and Reed, the good Christian was simply trying to “hump in corporate accounts” to the tune of $4 million in casino money for Reed’s consulting business.

There is a word for such people: Hypocrite

Five years have passed and the moral reprobate is hoping Christians forget his past — and he seems to be succeeding. Reed says he is now organizing doe-eyed Christians and Tea Party enthusiasts (He calls this crowd of dupes his “sweet spot”) for the latest scheme he has cooked up — an organization called the “Faith and Freedom Coalition.” (What’s up with Reed and sexual terms like “humping in accounts” “sweet spot”. What’s next, “money shot”)

Reed considers his new group a 21st Century Christian Coalition — with basically the same agenda except they will tweet.

“Our goal is  to build a file of 29 million conservative voters,” according to the New York Times. “We’ll e-mail them, we’ll call them, we’ll knock on their doors and, if necessary, we’ll drive them to the polls.”

And if Reed wins, what will his followers get? A morally compromised kingmaker who has repeatedly turned evangelical Christianity into a national joke. If the fundies fall for this charlatan again, they will deserve to be used and discarded by Reed after he has profited from their gullibility.

Can the fundies really be this obtuse? It certainly seems like it.

The American Christian Religious Right are different from radical Islamists how, precisely?

In some Islamic societies, specifically those which veer toward and are ruled by conservative Islamic religious law, women and girls can be blamed, prosecuted, or even killed for being victims of rape or other sexual assault. Even in some relatively moderate nations, such as Jordan, “honor killings” occur over sexual impropriety, whether real or perceived. And of course, in some of these societies, gay people fall victim to the same societal traditions and practices. Regardless, the running theme is that women and gays are objects of shame, and that even if attacked, they still deserve to be punished. It’s the classic “shame the slut” routine that’s existed in patriarchal Abrahamic religious tradition, in varying degrees of intensity, for centuries.

So how, pray tell, is this different?

A state lawmaker and hundreds of child advocates are calling for young girls to be treated as victims and not criminalized as prostitutes.

Sen. Renee Unterman is proposing a bill that would set the minimum age at 16 for prosecuting sex-for-hire.

“There are approximately 400 children per month in the streets of Atlanta that are being prostituted,” she says.

(…)

But conservative and Christian groups banned together to oppose the bill. They say it would lead to more prostitution.

“All we would do is be inviting into our state pedophiles and panderers looking for children,” says former state Sen. Nancy Schaefer, now president of Eagle Forum of Georgia.

She says correction can also turn a child around and that discipline should not be removed when it comes to children engaging in illegal activity.

As so often happens when I read about what the Christian Right is up to, my head is proverbially slamming into the desk. And of course it’s the Eagle Forum, AKA The House of Phyllis Schlafly, the woman who is perhaps most known (at least on our side) for claiming that marital rape simply doesn’t exist.

So, according to Nancy Schaefer, the Mini-Schlafly of Georgia, child prostitutes, who, by the way, don’t tend to choose that profession, should be “disciplined.” She’s basically saying that even a child who’s kidnapped and forced into sex slavery is at heart an unrepentant whore who needs to be punished. The comment about “inviting pedophiles” into the state is just know-nothing concern trolling, because I highly doubt that child predators care whether the children they violate can be prosecuted or not. It’s a non sequitur, meant to deflect from the misogynistic B.S. coming out of her mouth. Her contention that failing to “discipline” child prositutes would lead to “more prostitution” is specious, as it assumes that there are hordes of little third grade harlots-in-training just waiting for the law to allow them to slut around for money like they’ve always wanted.

Again, how is this different from the slut-shaming mentality that exists within conservative Islam? How deep is the self-hatred that pervades the psyches of women trapped in these chosen extremist religious ideologies?

The answer is that is that it’s different only in degree, but it’s the same in spirit. It’s all part of the same story. Oh, of course, you’re not likely to see a Christian Fundamentalist in the United States blow his daughter’s brains out because she gets raped. Secular modern society has moderated that sort of instinct in even the most extremist faction of American right-wing Christian society. But absent that moderating influence, would they keep their hatred, shame and bigotry so subtle? My belief is that they would not.

Right Wing Watch points out that Eagle Forum is not alone in opposing this bill. They are joined by the Georgia Christian Alliance, the Georgia Christian Coalition, Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition and the Georgia Baptist Convention.

Nice line-up, y’all. I’m sure that’s how Jesus would’ve played it.

The more I read about the Tea Party, the more it becomes vividly clear that this is nothing more than a Great Tea Purge of Republican moderates and independent thinkers. This process was already underway for years. It began when Ralph Reed was hired by Pat Robertson to form The Christian Coalition. Reed took the huge mailing list compiled from Robertson’s quixotic run for President in 1988 and transformed it into a movement.

Having placed basically every blue-nosed busybody in a database, Reed set out to hijack the Republican Party. He had a stealth strategy of taking over school boards, local GOP committees and city councils under the radar. Once this was accomplished, his largely clandestine movement came out of the closet and stole Congress. Unfortunately, Washington has never been the same, with collegiality in shambles and extremism replacing reasonable debate. In short, Reed and Robertson soiled our nation to fulfill their sinister goal of turning America into a theocracy.

The Christian Coalition ran out of steam. However, this new Tea Bag movement has picked up where they left off. Phillip Glass is using his National Precinct Alliance to hijack the GOP by signing up Tea Baggers to run the party. In the process, they are running out moderates and finishing the job that the Christian Coalition’s Reed set out to do.

So, what is the Tea Party (Purge)?

It is a brilliant coup by Big Business to co-opt the American government, by using dim-witted fundamentalists and under-educated, under-employed rural folks to carry their water. Look at the issues:

1) Climate Change: Irresponsible members of Big Business do not want to pay to stop the damage corporations have done to our planet. They want to continue polluting and exploiting our natural resources. The best way to do this is to trick people, by flooding the Internet with fake science, into believing climate change is not man made. The next step is to turn the government into a bogeyman, so “the people” will reduce its power to regulate corporate excess and corruption.

The end result will be dirtier water, filthier air, sicker families and dwindling natural resources. Of course, the powerful and wealthy CEO’s won’t notice. While your children choke on the dust and grit, they will be yachting off to the few remaining private islands that are not despoiled by greed and pollution.

2) Taxes: One of the most irresponsible parts of this “movement” is that Americans should not have to pay their fair share of taxes. This whole idea that you can get something for nothing is a mirage and the poor families who scream and act the fool at Tea Bag protests are the ones who will be left without basic services if this radical agenda becomes enacted.

Here is a dirty little secret. Developing countries are only “Third World” for the desperately poor (i.e. the majority.) The sliver of wealthy people in these nations often live like kings. They have privatized services and are pampered in every imaginable way. They frequently jet off to beautiful flats in Paris, New York and London, while “the people” suffer in anonymity back home. While living in such luxury, these elites have little incentive to make life better for the impoverished masses.

By significantly eroding or eliminating the tax base, the majority of Americans would lose government services – from clean water to garbage pick-up, to affordable education to job training, to pathogen-free meat to reliable transportation (such as train service). The CEO’s would save a fortune on taxes, while using private companies to pay for services no longer available to average Americans.

They win. You lose.

Meanwhile, when people become angry over the situation, these titans will spend millions of dollars on propaganda to blame the deterioration of America on liberal morals and government incompetence – even as they starve the government of the resources it needs to effectively do its job.

What a scam.

The hard truth is, these avaricious conservatives and their Tea Party tools are going to turn America into a Third World nation, where there is a huge gulf between rich and poor. Look around – it is already happening.

Wake up Tea Baggers. You are dupes who are forfeiting your family’s future and don’t even realize it.

3) Health Care: CEO’s and their families will always receive top-notch health care and cutting edge medicine. But, increasingly, they see little incentive for workers and average Americans to get the same benefits and level of care. By crushing labor unions and buying off politicians, thanks to our Supreme Court, they can easily replace sick workers with younger, healthier models.

The CEO’s have used this gullible Tea Bag crowd to convince a majority of people that the government is inefficient and should stay out of health-care. I guess these “real Americans” are content having potential treatments for their children rejected by faceless insurance company bureaucrats sitting in sterile cubicles with the job of protecting a corporation’s bottom line.

Do these tools realize how they have been tricked by hucksters like former Congressman Dick Armey (R-TX) – who now runs FreedomWorks, an umbrella for Tea Party groups? Armey is a corporate shill who is robbing your family of its future. However, too many people think he is on their side because he wears cowboy boots and uses quaint, folksy sayings.

Catch a clue – Armey cares nothing about your freedom. Armey is a con artist – an actor – posing as a good ole’ boy outsider, when he is the ultimate insider. Yet, countless Americans keep falling for his phony snake charmer act.

4) Illegal Immigration & Gays: The corporate titans realize that if they ran on a platform of, “We manipulate the system to steal your money and you go broke”, they would not do so well in elections. So, they have developed the cat-with-a-laser technique.

When I want to distract Critter, my cat, I shine a laser on the wall and he runs to attack it. He never actually catches the gosh-darn-red-light, but he always feels like he’s getting close. More importantly, he expends a lot of energy – and then takes a multi-hour slumber.

Tea Baggers – you are the cat and the issues of immigration and gay rights are the laser. You are being distracted, busied on a circular obstacle course and ultimately being put to sleep – even as you feel you are accomplishing something.

I have news for you.

You are never going to stop people from crossing the border, as long as there are better economic opportunities in America. You are never going to stop gay people from dating and mating. No matter how high you build that wall, or how many Proposition H8 measures you spend millions of dollars to enact. You are essentially wasting your time and money. You will eliminate gay people and immigrants, right after you accomplish winning that great war against marijuana or electing pure Christian politicians who won’t cheat on their spouses.

It ain’t going to happen, so the sooner you drop the expensive fantasy, the sooner we can all move on to real issues that will actually improve the lives of our families.

Of course, by adopting extreme anti-government, anti-regulatory economic policies, we will ruin the economy for all but the robber-barons. With few decent-paying blue-collar jobs left in America, hard-working Mexican immigrants will just stay at home. And, those loudmouths at the Tea Party rallies will have no choice but to fill their threadbare shoes – picking tomatoes and mowing laws.

Sadly, these folks will be happy performing such labor-intensive, menial tasks, because – a bad job is better than no job. And, the joke is, the radical politicians they helped elect to destroy America’s economy will make these dupes feel important by feeding them propaganda about opportunity, freedom and hard work.

“If you just scrub that toilet a little bit harder, you’ll be an entrepreneur in the opportunity-based society and one day smoke cigars on the country club golf course with Rush Limbaugh,” I can hear the hired PR guns say. (Read More)