HorsesAss.Org

With Romney’s loss, despite a strong push from the White Evangelical community, the influence of that particular group is waning. But in the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s and throughout the Bush years, these politically conservative Evangelicals had quite a bit of power and money behind them. And with that came a large group of scam artists.

People made good money telling white conservative evangelical Protestants who were afraid of the other — afraid of gay people, afraid of black folks and black churches, afraid of women who acted in any way other than submissive to their husbands or virginal, afraid of women who’ve had abortions, scientists, anyone who isn’t Christian, anyone who is Christian in a way they don’t approve of — that their fear made them good Christians. These modern day witch-prickers ruined lives for money and when they’re questioned they found clobber verses and said “it’s in the book.”*

If this didn’t have any political impact it would still be awful. It would still cause people to abandon their gay children. It would still cause women to stay in abusive relationships because of these antiquated notions of gender roles in marriage and on the nature of divorce. It would still cause divisions among people based on their religions.

But of course, it also has a political dimension. They lobby hard against the rights of gay people and women, and they make policy worse.

Among the worst of the bunch are Tim and Beverly LaHaye: He had a horrible combination of John Birch Society and apocalyptic (I don’t even want to say Biblical, since what he describes and what’s in the Bible are so different) predictions that eventually lead to his co-writing the Left Behind books. And she founded the organization Concerned Women for America that pushed some of the worst of this hatred out there.

And why this history is relevant to a Washington State blog is that before running for office, newly minted Seattle mayoral candidate Tim Burgess worked at a firm that did consulting for Concerned Women for America. As Erica C. Barnett explained when he first ran for City Council.

Burgess, however, has a client in his past that won’t sit well in progressive Seattle. Burgess’s ad firm provided media planning, copywriting, media buying, and other consulting services to Concerned Women for America (CWA), a fundamentalist Christian group that’s best known for fighting against equal rights for gays and lesbians. Gay former council member, Tina Podlodowski, who has endorsed Burgess, says CWA is “not a group I could ever support. Clearly, he made a big mistake.” Among other things, CWA advocated against making emergency contraception available over the counter, arguing that access to it would encourage promiscuity; has said that legalizing gay marriage would destroy the fabric of society; actively opposes the Equal Rights Amendment; and believes that “politicians who do not use the Bible to guide their public and private lives do not belong in office.”

The firm Burgess cofounded, now called Merkle/Domain, services non-profits. According to Burgess, the firm represented CWA for eight or nine years. “We generally did not have an ideological screen on clients. We’ve served all kinds of groups, [including] some others that I don’t always agree with,” Burgess says. According to the Washington Secretary of State’s corporation listing service, Burgess’s clients did not include any liberal equivalent of CWA. They did include the African Wildlife Foundation, Mercy Corps, and the Lance Armstrong Foundation.**

Look, Burgess should be judged more on his time in office than for a consulting gig a decade ago. But it seems to me that this is a window on his character. He saw a scammy group that was doing harm to people’s lives and claiming to be Christian. And rather than use his position as an outspoken Christian to denounce that, Tim Burgess figured out a way to get a cut. Given that a lot was made out of it by activist groups when he first ran for City Council, you would think it would at least play a part in the biographies people are running now. But so far, I haven’t seen it.

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– Not really Only in Seattle, so much as one building designed around bicyclists.

– What Pierce County Prop 1’s loss means for transit.

– Does Donald Trump realize he’s a joke?

– The Deep South is more pro-Obama than 4 years ago (also, I can’t figure out Upstate NY. I was talking to Darryl about it yesterday, and he hadn’t seen the map but thought it might be a reaction to Sandy. Maybe, but CT and Downstate changed in the other direction).

– I have to be pretty far out of town earlier in the day, but I’m going to try to make it to the Balloon Juice meetup in Seattle on Saturday.

It’s good to remember that if I-502 is implemented without federal interference, incidents like this will be a thing of the past in this state. People will still have small personal grows (which is still legal for authorized medical marijuana patients), but large-scale commercial grows will finally be where they belong, in non-hidden commercial spaces regulated by the state.

It’s Tuesday already. So please join us tonight for a pint and discussion at the Seattle Chapter of Drinking Liberally.

We meet every Tuesday at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Starting time is 8:00pm. Some people show up earlier for Dinner.

Can’t make it to Seattle’s DL tonight? Check out one of the other DL meetings over the next week. The Tri-Cities chapter also meets tonight. On Wednesday, the Bellingham chapter meets, as does the the Burien chapter. And on Monday, the Yakima, South Bellevue and Olympia chapters meet.

With 230 chapters of Living Liberally, including fourteen in Washington state, four in Oregon, and three more in Idaho, chances are excellent there’s a chapter that meets near you.

There are a lot of angles you could take writing about Tim Harris writing a positive piece about McGinn’s downtown public safety program. Taking two paragraphs to set up how much you assume the ideas are at odds, as Josh Feit (?), does here doesn’t strike me as particularly helpful.

McGinn started his term with the support of an unlikely alliance of social justice lefties (like Real Change director Tim Harris) and urbanist greens (like the Sierra Club, where McGinn once served as chairman); typically those factions are at odds, with the social justice activists criticizing the urbanists as bourgeois and the urbansits criticizing the social justice advocates as provincial.

McGinn had some success keeping the coalition together, vetoing the panhandling ordinance for example. But as he pushed hard on urban density and light rail he has rubbed some advocates for the city’s lowest-income and homeles sresidents [sic] the wrong way; they’ve argued that density and high-cost rail transit increase the cost of living for Seattle’s poorest.

I mean, I’ve always felt it was a natural alliance. People in Seattle are generally supportive of both goals. And given that bad environmental things are generally shitting on poor people, they’re pretty intertwined. Really, wanting to put transit in poor neighborhoods isn’t as opposed by social justice activists as the piece assumes (although dealing with higher prices, etc. that can come from it absolutely is part of the social justice agenda). Now recently, I’m not so sure how solid McGinn’s commitment to social justice is with his response to the DOJ on police accountability, for example.

Goldy’s piece on how if we want to save education in this state, we’re going to have to pay for a lot more of it at the state level got me thinking about how the response to McCleary has been sold to us by both Democrats and Republicans.

Inslee and McKenna both more or less ran on magical solutions. Inslee thought we’ll grow our way out of it: hopefully OK for the short term, but not really a sustainable solution. And McKenna’s solution was to take money out of Puget Sound schools and put it into the rest of the state. Not really OK when Puget Sound schools are in trouble too. We were also told that charters would bring the magic of the market to education.

But no, we’re going to have to pay for it if we want better education, as Goldy says:

Instead—and here’s a novel and straight forward idea—why don’t we just raise the state school levy from the $2.26 per thousand dollars of property value rate it stands at now, to the maximum statutory $3.60 rate it stood at during the mid-1980s, the era of peak K-12 funding equity? That would add over $1.1 billion in new K-12 spending, about $1,000 per student. Sure, everybody’s taxes would go up, but by far the largest share would still be shouldered by those of us in “property-rich” districts, thus increasing both equity and funding. If local voters then want to cut their own local school levies, that’s up to them.

But of course, people would scream bloody murder if that were to happen. They’ve been told that they can fund education with magic. The debate is simply what magic to use.

– There’s more than one catch.

– I’ll believe these anti-Grover Norquist Republicans when they actually vote for something.

– If Patty Murray is a key to the budget deals, then I feel better about them (although still not great).

– I knew about Hamilton. And Eaton’s story sounded familiar when I read it. But the other two early American sex scandals, I didn’t know anything about.

– In the last couple months I got my driver’s license renewed and went to the doctor. And hands down the driver’s license was easier.

– I don’t understand what Boeing is doing trying to deny same sex married couples pension benefits.

– Salmon for Thanksgiving.

Last week’s contest was won by Deathfrogg, who identified the building, and Two Dogs, who found the link. It was the Whatcom Museum in Bellingham.

This week’s contest is related to something in the news from November, good luck!

Malachi 2:2-3
If you do not listen, and if you do not resolve to honor my name,” says the LORD Almighty, “I will send a curse on you, and I will curse your blessings. Yes, I have already cursed them, because you have not resolved to honor me.

“Because of you I will rebuke your descendants; I will smear on your faces the dung from your festival sacrifices, and you will be carried off with it.

Discuss.

Red State Update: Mad Obama won.

SlateTV: Ron Paul, “Secession is a deeply American principle”.

Martin Bashir: But wasn’t it Romney who was offering the most “free stuff”?

Sam Seder: Linda McMahon screws campaign staff with bounced checks (and condoms).

Thom and Pap: Is this the death of the GOP?

Touré: The GOP’s modern version of the Southern Strategy.

The Twinkie Blues:

• Hostess Love Song:
• Jonathan Mann: The Twinkie Kid and King Ding Dong are Dead.
• Ed: The vultures and the twinkies.
• SlateTV: No more Twinkies.
• Sam Seder: So long, Twinkies!

Ezra Klein: Some numerology with Mitt Romney’s 47..

SlateTV: Mitt Romney was right about the 47%…in a way.

Maddow: Misguided rich idiots try shaving Income to under $250,000 to ‘avoid taxes’:

Young Turks: Jon Stewart versus Bill-O the Clown.

Daily Show correspondents explain Constitutional amendments.

Sharpton: Allen West Finally Concedes.

McCain and Company:

• Maddow: Bitter, sputtering, and wrong…that would be John McCain.
• Sharpton: McCain and friends use ‘racist code words’ in attacking Amb. Susan Rice.
• Ed: Bosom buddies McCain & Graham won’t let go of Libya witch hunt.
• Maddow: The troubles with McCain.
• Ed: Are these racist “code words”?
• Maddow: McCain and the GOP’s basic lack of foreign policy incompetence. Part I
• Maddow: McCain and the GOP’s basic lack of foreign policy incompetence. Part II

Ed: Henry Winkler talks pro-Obama politics.

Ezra Klein: Are Republicans losing their fidelity and devotedness to Grover Norquist?

Liberal Viewer: Did Jesus die for Klingons?

Sam Seder: Marco Rubio on the age of the earth.

Thom: The Good, The Bad, and The Very, Very Ugly.

The G.O.P. Voter Suppression Programme:

• Young Turks: Many threats to voter’s rights remain!
• Ed: Ohio Republicans are already scheming to suppress the vote in 2016
• Maddow: Florida, Wisconsin, and Ohio’s War on Voting™.
• Sharpton: WI Gov. Scott Walker takes aim at voting laws
• Thom and Pap: Federalize voting standards now!

FAUX News’ Scariest Christmas Ever (via TalkingPointsMemo).

Red State Update: Time to secede!

Maddow: The spectacularly wrong clown from ‘Unskewed Polls’ thinks he’s onto massive ‘voter fraud’.

Ezra Klein: ObamaCare is here to stay.

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

Happy Thanksgiving, dear Reader. And thanks for all the unique IP hits, page views, and comments over the past year.

Here is a Thanksgiving-themed collection of media clips and open thread, best explored in a tryptophan stupor….

Larry David’s Thanksgiving special.

Suzie Sampson: Thanksgiving and post election sad:

Obama pardons turkeys.

SlateTV: PETA to Obama, “don’t bother with that pardon.”

When turkey’s attack!

BEST THANKSGIVING CLIP EVAR!!!: The Thanksgiving Massacre!:

Raw food Thanksgiving.

Jennifer Granholm: much to be thankful for!

Jimmy Fallon’s Thanksgiving Do Not Read list.

Mark Fiore: Thanks, Turkey!

Learn about Canadian Thanksgiving!

Jonathan Mann: Zombie Turkey:

Jimmy Fallon: Pros and cons of the Macy’s Thanksgiving day parade.

Sam Seder: Thanksgiving with your “independent” relatives.

It’s over now. Go wash the dishes….

Senators John McCain (R-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) released a joint statement today:

“We commend Prime Minister Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders for the role they played in reaching today’s ceasefire. We also are encouraged by the responsible leadership role played by the President of Egypt and his government. President Morsi deserves credit for successfully bringing an end to the violence and preventing further loss of life on both sides.

So…Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been shuttling like mad between Jerusalem and Cairo to broker this agreement. What do the three Senators have to say for the Obama Administration’s efforts?

Above all, the recent fighting in Gaza underscores that this is a moment in history when the future of the Middle East has never been less certain – and when the actions or inaction of the United States will be critical to determining what path this vital region takes. …[W]hat happens in the Middle East will impact America’s vital national security interests for the foreseeable future, and stronger, smarter American leadership is desperately needed. There is no pivoting away from that fact.

Wait…so, they are praising leadership coming from Israel and Egypt, and they turn around and, essentially, apologize for the weak and dumb American leadership?

That’s, like…practically an apology tour!

Why do these three stooges hate America?

Goldy nails it:

Regardless of whether McKenna really is a different-kinda-Republican, the very fact that he relied on this image to pacify voters is a tacit admission that 21st century Republicanism remains outside the mainstream of Washington politics.

– Happy Thanksgiving.

– Nobody drive on 520.

– Bob Schieffer, Dana Milbank, and needless to say MoDo are trying to sell the pseudo-scandal. I rest my case.

– Good logic from Glenn Reynolds.

– Alan West really doesn’t want to give up being in Congress.

– Trail maps on a bike rack is a great idea.

– Please! Not in the voting booth!

Uh-oh. It looks like the looney-tune Wingnut brigade is going to have to find some other “thing” to call a White House “scandal” (source):

CBS News has learned that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) cut specific references to “al Qaeda” and “terrorism” from the unclassified talking points given to Ambassador Susan Rice on the Benghazi consulate attack – with the agreement of the CIA and FBI. The White House or State Department did not make those changes.

As Paul Waldman pointed out last week, the Republicans have a serious problem—Obama has nearly completed his first term, and their isn’t a real White House scandal anywhere in sight. Oh, sure, we had “beer summit-gate,” and then the moral fabric of our society was nearly put through the shredder by Biden’s “Big Fucking Deal!” But somehow the public responded with an amused or bemused smile and a vote for Obama—Biden.

This leaves the Republicans with a chronic case of scandal envy. (Oh…the humanity!) I mean, the Benghazi thing is, obviously, entirely vacuous. Suppose the White House had changed Ms. Rice’s qualified (and, in retrospect, partially wrong) assessment of the situation. Who gives a shit? What difference does it make? Waldman sums it up thusly:

If you’re looking at the Republican harumphing over Benghazi and asking yourself, “Why are we supposed to be so mad about this again?” you’re not alone. Let’s review: There was an attack on our consulate that killed four Americans, including our ambassador. Amid confusing and contradictory reports from the ground, President Obama waited too long to utter the magic incantation, “Terrorism, terrorists, terror!” that would have … well, it would have done something, but it turns out that he did say “terror,” so never mind that. But that’s not the real scandal! The real scandal is that Susan Rice went on television soon after and amid all kinds of “based on the best information we have”s and “we’ll have to see”s, said one thing that turned out not to be the case: that after the protests in Cairo, there was some kind of copycat protest in Benghazi, which was then “hijacked” by extremist elements using heavy weapons to stage an attack.

A sane person might say, OK, she was obviously given some incorrect information at that time, but it’s not a particularly meaningful deception. As people have been pointing out for weeks now, it’s not as though not using the word “terror” or saying there was a protest before the attack gave the White House some enormous political advantage. If you’re going to have a cover-up, there has to be something you’re covering up.

But the White House didn’t make the changes. It was at a number of stops through the intelligence screening process where the edits happened—on the road from a classified intelligence assessment to a public statement about something that was still under active investigation. The edits are even more comprehensible (well…to folks living in the reality based community, anyway) considering that the attack ended up at a CIA annex about a mile from the consulate. The existence of that CIA facility was a secret prior to the attacks.

So, our friends in the right-wing-nut-o-sphere are left without much of anything in the way of White House scandals, so far. But I’m thinkin’ that one of these days, some reporter is going to catch President Obama in an undisclosed smoke-free location with a coffin nail hangin’ from his lips.

“Impeach!!!!!”