Funny or Die’s Presidential Reunion (video: Funny or Die)
From Funny or Die: “Barack Obama gets a surprise visit in the night from ex-Presidents Bush Sr., Bush Jr., Clinton, Ford, Reagan and Carter to get a few pointers about the Consumer Financial Protection Agency and why it’s so important.”
Will Ferrell, Chevy Chase, Jim Carrey, Fred Armisen, Darrell Hammond, Dan Aykroyd, Maya Rudolph, Dana Carvey, Jake, and Antonio Scarlata star in Ron Howard’s short feature, Presidential Reunion.
[ updated: see below ]
Bishop Council Nedd of InGodWeTrustUSA is beyond pathetic. Nedd has a message for our socialist, fascist, muslim, gay-loving, foreign-born, Manchurian-Candidate-like terrorist of President:
Obama Administration Ripped for ‘Historic’ Meeting with Atheist Anti-Religion Hate Groups
Contact: Jim Crumley, 703-690-1247; www.InGodWeTrustUSA.org
MEDIA ADVISORY, Feb. 26 /Christian Newswire/ — The advocacy group In God We Trust today ripped the Obama administration for meeting to plot political strategy with 60 atheist activists representing organizations comprising the Secular Coalition of America.
“It is one thing for Administration to meet with groups of varying viewpoints, but it is quite another for a senior official to sit down with activists representing some of the most hate-filled, anti-religious groups in the nation,” says In God We Trust’s Chairman Bishop Council Nedd.
Tina Tchen, the director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, will meet with representatives from groups that comprise the Coalition. The Coalition’s sponsoring organization’s include American Atheists, founded by Madalyn Murray O’Hare and the Freedom from Religion Foundation which is campaigning to stop the post office from issuing a stamp honoring Mother Theresa.
“President Obama seems to believe that it is a good idea to have a key senior aide plan political strategy with people who believe faith in God is a disease,” Nedd says. “Some of the people in this coalition believe the world would be better off with no Christians and no Jews and they aren’t shy about it. The fact that this meeting is happening at all is an affront to the vast majority of people of all faiths who believe in God.”
According to the Freedom from Religion Foundation’s President Dan Barker, “Christianity is an enemy to humanity, and the antithesis of freedom.” (Dan Barker, Freedom from Religion Foundation Co-President in Losing Faith in Faith Page 255) and “Religion also poses a danger to mental health, damaging self-respect, personal responsibility, and clarity of thought.” (Losing Faith in Faith Page 217.)
Madalyn Murray OHare declared, “Ours is a time when successful struggle against this reactionary philosophy requires more than a petulant argument over the authorship of the Gospels, more than a negative attack on the totalitarian and monolithic authoritarianism of conventional religion, but rather an aggressive action program to spread the positive philosophy of materialism.” (Source: American Atheists website.)
“The President should tell the American people whether he believes these groups’ hate-filled views to be ‘mainstream’ and worthy of his supposedly inclusive administration,” Nedd says.
In God We Trust is a national political advocacy organization with over 70,000 supporters of various faiths. Council Nedd is a traditional Episcopal priest and serves as the Bishop of the Chesapeake and Northeast for the Episcopal Missionary Church. On the Internet: www.InGodWeTrustUSA.org.
(emphasis: mine)
Hysterical. But please, InGodWeTrustUSA, do us all a favor and get Bishop Nedd back on his meds.
It’s time to stop pretending that the lifestyle choices of these fundie haters deserve special protection. The extremists of the American Taliban have veered completely off the tracks, and they now pose a dangerous threat to their fellow citizens.
+++++++
UPDATE (26 February 2010, 9:25am):
Kyle at Right Wing Watch notes: “President Bush would never have met with anyone who esposed “hate-filled views” … would he?”
Oh no. Of course not. Unless you count this parade of bigoted haters:
Rachel Maddow judges a conference by its swag
(video: The Rachel Maddow Show)
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow traveled to the American Conservative Union’s annual conference — CPAC. Judging by the available crap, CPAC is up to its tea-bagging, birth-certificate-chasing, homophobic, Bible-banging, loony-tunes ass in nothing but merde. Hell! They’ve even got Santorum on the speaker’s podium, literally.
Any political conference that features a professional crybaby like Faux News entertainer ‘Lonesome’ Glenn Beck as its keynote speaker is definitely one can short of a six-pack Joe.
In an article in yesterday’s San Francisco Chronicle called Obama elusive on about-face on same-sex marriage, Bob Egelko has a clue for those who attempt to muster support for their relentless campaign to prevent equality for LGBT citizens by claiming they hold the same position on marriage as the President of the United States:
President Obama says he opposes same-sex marriage for religious reasons. Fourteen years ago, however, while a churchgoing Christian and a state legislative candidate, he endorsed the right of gays and lesbians to marry.
Sponsors of Proposition 8, California’s ban on same-sex marriage, cited Obama’s current position in their 2008 campaign and have quoted him in their defense of the measure during a federal court trial in San Francisco. Gay rights groups, noting that Obama actually opposed Prop. 8, have urged him to take a stance on the lawsuit, without success.
What has received much less attention is Obama’s unexplained reversal of the position he once held backing same-sex marriage – the position still held by the church he attended for most of his adult life.
Obama was running for the Illinois state Senate in Chicago in February 1996 when he answered a questionnaire from a gay-oriented newspaper, Outlines, on gay rights issues. One of his answers was, “I favor legalizing same-sex marriage, and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages.“
(emphasis: mine)
The opponents of marriage equality are either deviously selective in what they choose to report about the President’s position or just plain ignorant. In 2008, candidate Obama took a position Geoff Kors, the Executive Director of Equality California, labeled “pure politics.”
“When he was running for office in Chicago and wanted strong support from the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) community, he made it clear he supported full equality,” Kors said. “Since he has continued to seek higher office, he has changed his position for the worse.
The President’s position seems to be evolving once again. In a speech last October to the Human Rights Campaign, Obama said:
You will see a time in which we as a nation finally recognize relationships between two men or two women as just as real and admirable as relationships between a man and a woman. You will see a nation that’s valuing and cherishing these families as we build a more perfect union — a union in which gay Americans are an important part. I am committed to these goals. And my administration will continue fighting to achieve them.
If right-wing, anti-gay zealots want to continue to claim they share the same position on marriage equality as the President, they’ll have some evolving to do themselves. And, that’s a good thing.
Responding to an article by veteran activist David Mixner, a number of equality activists called Egelko’s Chronicle piece “old news.” It might be just that for those of us in the trenches, but it’s refreshing and positive to see the mainstream media reporting the whole truth, context and history behind the President’s on again, off again support for equal rights, vis-Ã -vis marriage, for LGBT couples.
Today a coalition of gay and straight bloggers are asking their readers to contact the Human Rights Campaign on behalf of the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. It’s time to demand some serious bang for all those LGBT bucks!
The Message for HRC Is Simple:
Publicly demand that President Obama take the lead in getting DADT repealed this year.
- That means the President needs to state publicly that he wants Congress to repeal DADT this year; and
- The President needs to take the lead in working with Congress to make sure the repeal happens.
- HRC Front Desk: (202) 628-4160
- TTY: (202) 216-1572
- Toll-Free: (800) 777-4723
- HRC Web site comment page.
- General membership email at hrc: membership@hrc.org
Some may say that there is little the President can do, or that this is up to Congress now. That is simply untrue. The President can send a powerful signal that he wants the repeal done this year. He can include the repeal of DADT in the Defense Budget he sends to Congress in the next few months. If the President is serious about keeping his promises to our community, now is his chance to prove it.
Blog Swarm Sponsors
Today’s blog swarm is sponsored by the following bloggers and sites, all of which will also be writing about this issue today, and urging their readers to contact HRC:
Joe Sudbay and John Aravosis, AMERICAblog; Pam Spaulding, Pam’s House Blend; Michelangelo Signorile, Sirius OutQ & the Gist; Markos Moulitsas, DailyKos; Andy Towle, TowleRoad; Joe Jervis, Joe My God; BIll Browning, Bilerico; Taylor Marsh, TaylorMarsh.com; Dan Savage, Slog.
Momentum Has Turned to Confusion
HRC may argue that it’s already told the President it would like to see DADT repealed this year. Well, that’s not enough. And here’s why.
We’ve had an amazing few weeks of momentum on DADT repeal following the mention of DADT in the State of the Union, the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing during which both the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs both stated their support for repeal, and the unexpected support we’ve received from former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Colin Powell and former Defense Secretary and Vice President Dick Cheney.
But that momentum is quickly slipping away. After talking to people around Washington over the past two weeks, Joe and I have found a vacuum of leadership that is leading to confusion. The Hill has no idea if the President does or doesn’t want them to move ahead with repeal this year. The House has already said that it’s waiting for the Senate to do something. The Senate is in turmoil after the Democrats lost a single seat in January. And the DADT proposals being discussed in the Senate are focused on every possible approach except full repeal this year.
As we painfully learned last year during health care reform, nothing happens in Congress unless the President leads. And when the President doesn’t lead, disaster is guaranteed.
Whatever HRC has been telling the White House about DADT, it clearly isn’t working. In spite of the President’s positive comments during the State of the Union, no one knows where President Obama stands on repealing “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”this year. All the while, unnamed administration officials are telling the media that it could be years before repeal finally happens. The White House clearly didn’t get HRC’s message, and as a result, we are losing this historic momentum.
Why HRC?
Why are we focusing on HRC? Because HRC is our community’s largest, best-funded gay rights organization in Washington, and they carry the most sway with the White House. In fact, HRC often boasts about their close working relationship with the White House. HRC’s President, Joe Solmonese, is so close to the White House that he gave the President political cover during the uproar over theadministration’s brief in support of DOMA. It’s time HRC, and our entire community, got something in return for everything we have done for this President, this Congress, and the entire Democratic party.
Unfortunately, we’ve reached a point with the Obama administration where allies have to publicly demand action, or promises are never kept. Just last week, the AFL-CIO was forced to send an action alert to its members, targeting the White House. If it’s good enough for the unions, it’s good enough for us.
We truly believe that if HRC were to openly call on the White House to get DADT repealed this year, it would happen. Mostly because Democrats are rightly worried about the gay vote (and the support of our straight allies) months before a critical congressional election.
If Not This Year, When?
It’s been a long first year of the Obama presidency. While our community made some gains in the past 13 months, there has been no progress whatsoever on the President’s top three commitments to the LGBT community: to repeal DADT and DOMA; and to pass ENDA. In fact, we’ve seen backward movement, as the President has continued to defend DADT and DOMA in the courts - even though he didn’t have to -going so far as to invoke incest and pedophilia. What’s more, we’ve been told to expect no progress on DOMA until the second term of the Obama presidency, if there is one, and if we still control the Congress. And ENDA, which we had been assured would pass last year, is now nowhere to be found. If DADT is not repealed this year, it’s not clear if any of the President’s top three promises to our community will be kept before he faces what might be a difficult reelection.
Why not just pass the repeal next year? Because Democrats are already having enough problems passing legislation, next year we’re expected to have even fewer Democrats in the House and Senate, and there’s talk in town as to whether the Democrats will even control the congress after the elections this fall. We saw the damage that was caused by the loss of one single Senate seat in Massachusetts. Democrats panicked. They talked about the need to move to the middle, be more bipartisan, give more to the Republicans, and at all costs avoid all those “controversial” issues – all of that is code for distancing themselves from you and me. If DADT isn’t repealed this year, it may not be repealed for years to come. And that will mean none of the President’s top promises will be kept to our community.
Please Contact HRC Today
Please contact HRC today, and urge them to publicly demand that the President take the lead in getting DADT repealed this year.
We are at a unique moment in history. Pro-gay Democrats control the White House and the Congress. Momentum is building for the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. And the polls show that the American people, even Republicans, are on our side. We can win this battle. But only if our leaders choose to lead. Gay Americans helped elect this President and this Congress with our votes, our money and our time. And gay Americans have funded HRC for years, in exchange for a promise of results once the Democrats finally came to power.
You’ve done your job. Now it’s time for the President, Congress and HRC to do theirs.
- HRC Front Desk: (202) 628-4160
- TTY: (202) 216-1572
- Toll-Free: (800) 777-4723
- HRC Web site comment page.
General membership email at HRC:Â membership@hrc.org
