Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin(below) are linked to the same cult.


This is not a Religion Column: Biblical Capitalism

By Jeff Sharlet
Posted on October 1, 2008, Printed on October 7, 2008

Only months ago, what scant attention the press paid to fundamentalism in American life was dedicated to declaring the Christian Right deceased. Of course, those were the days when Lehman Brothers still looked like a good investment. Now, Christian Right leaders are feeling bullish for the first time in years, ready to bet the farm on Sarah Palin, while the rest of us blink in shock as the clock goes spinning back to the Great Depression. In more ways than one—it was in the 1930s that modern fundamentalism’s strange marriage of laissez-faire economics and heavily-regulated morals was first consummated, in reaction not to abortion or homosexuality, but to economic malaise—“spiritual depression,” as it was called by an early advocate of “biblical capitalism.”

In 1932, James A. Farrell, president of US Steel, tried to persuade then Governor Franklin Roosevelt that economic depression was “caused by disobedience to divine law,” and that the only cure was a mix of spiritual revival and unprecedented powers for corporate leaders. In 1936, Frank Buchman, the founder of the Moral Re-Armament movement—a network of upper crust Christian clubs—announced, “Human problems aren’t economic. They’re moral, and they can’t be solved by immoral measures.” He suggested instead “God-controlled democracy, or perhaps I should say a theocracy.” Bruce Barton, a founder of advertising giant BBDO and the author of one of the 20th century’s bestsellers, The Man Nobody Knows (it was Jesus, whom Barton proposed as the greatest CEO in history), won a seat in Congress in 1938 by proposing to a nation battered by unfettered capitalism that it “Repeal a Law a Day.”

The most influential of these businessmen for God was a Norwegian immigrant named Abraham Vereide, founder of an annual ritual of piety and politics that survives to this day, the National Prayer Breakfast. In 1935, Vereide created a “fellowship” of Christian businessmen bound together by the idea that God hates government regulation because it interferes with a believer’s ability to choose right or wrong. He found receptive audiences in private meetings with Henry Ford and the president of Chevrolet, Thomas Watson of IBM and representatives from J.C. Penney. By 1942, he’d moved to the capital, where the National Association of Manufacturers staked him to a meeting of congressmen who would become students of his spiritual politics, among them Virginia senator Absalom Willis Robertson—Pat Robertson’s father. Vereide returned the manufacturers’ favor by telling his new congressional followers that God wanted them to break the spine of organized labor. They did.

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October 06, 2008 Issue
Copyright © 2008 The American Conservative

An Open Letter to Sarah Palin       PDF

 

By TAC Editors

To: Gov. Sarah Palin
From: TAC Editors
Re: What Your Tutors Aren’t Telling You

Congratulations on being chosen as John McCain’s running mate. It’s an honor, if a dubious one. As you know, conservatives have reservations about McCain. To your credit, they have few such concerns about you.

You’ve given new life to a party whose brand was bankrupt. You’ve energized a campaign that was embarrassing its own partisans. Across America, crowds flock to see you—not that old man who barely wheezed his way through the primaries. If John McCain wins, he will owe you, as the guy in the undisclosed location says, “Big time.”

Wonder why Middle America finds you irresistible? Maybe they’re big Tina Fey fans. More likely, you remind them of the conservative values they feared lost: faith, family, independence. This impression owes more to who you are than what you’ve done. But at least you keep Obama from cornering the market on hope. Conservatives have faith in you. Don’t fail them as George W. Bush has.

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Related
Press kept under a watchful eye
"Track, the kid who joined the Army, did so because a judge told him it was that or jail due to his dealing drugs."

Be strong! Do you think it is just coincidence the people of the lie have become so obvious?

Do Over! Palin Answers Katie Couric's Questions ... to Fox News' Carl Cameron (She Reads The Economist, She Says)

October 03, 2008 2:52 PM

In a post-debate interview today with Fox News' chief political correspondent Carl Cameron, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin provided some of the answers that seemed to elude her in her past interview with Katie Couric.

Cameron told her that some observers, pleased with her debate performance, asked, "Where was this Sarah Palin in the interview with Katie Couric?"

"OK, I'll tell you honestly," Palin said, "the Sarah Palin in those interviews is a little bit annoyed because it's like, man, no matter what you say, you're going to get clobbered. If you choose to answer a question, you are going to get clobbered on the answer. If you choose to try and pivot and go on to another subject that you believe that Americans want to hear about, you get clobbered for that, too."

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Sunday, October 5, 2008

There's no debate

On Friday afternoon, just at the time of the week when people unveil unhappy news releases in order to minimize media coverage, the McCain-Palin campaign released Sarah and Todd Palin's federal income tax returns for 2006 and 2007. The returns do not include as taxable income any of the per diem allowances or travel expense reimbursements that the State of Alaska paid for travel by Sarah or Todd Palin, or by three of their children (Bristol, Willow, and Piper Palin), in 2007. At roughly the same time as it released the returns, the campaign also handed out an opinion from a Washington, D.C. tax lawyer that purports to address at least some aspects of the propriety of the omission of the travel money from the 2007 tax return.

Since then, one commentator has reported that there is now a "wonky debate" as to the correctness of their omitting the travel money from their tax returns. We disagree. There is no serious debate (at least, none that has been brought to our attention) about the fact that at least the amounts paid for the children's travel -- $24,728.83 in 2007, according to the Washington Post -- are taxable. The campaign's tax lawyer has got at least that much of the law, and perhaps more, wrong.

The opinion is from Roger M. Olsen, an M Street solo practitioner who was a tax official in the Reagan administration. His specialty appears to be the criminal side of the federal tax laws. Olsen's three-page letter never comes out and directly says "It's my opinion that the travel payments the Palins received were not taxable to any of them."¹ Instead, it bobs and weaves a fair amount and never lands squarely on point:

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October 5th, 2008

In slip up, Palin calls Afghanistan “our neighboring country”

Posted by: Jason Szep

Tags: Tales from the Trail: 2008, Afghanistan, CBS, Joe Biden, Sarah Palin, Saturday Night Live, Tina Fey

SAN FRANCISCO - Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin called Afghanistan “our neighboring country” on Sunday in a speech that could revive questions over her tendency to stumble into linguistic knots.rtx95kp.jpg

Three days after a mostly gaffe-free debate performance, the Alaska governor fumbled during a speech in which she praised U.S. soldiers for “fighting terrorism and protecting us and our democratic values”.

“They are also building schools for the Afghan children so that there is hope and opportunity in our neighboring country of Afghanistan,” she told several hundred supporters at a fundraising event in San Francisco.

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"We need a VP who understands, respects the balance of power, and the limits of power. That is fundamental to our democracy. So far, Palin has it exactly, frighteningly wrong."

The New York Times

October 4, 2008

Dick Cheney, Role Model

In all the talk about the vice-presidential debate, there was an issue that did not get much attention but kept nagging at us: Sarah Palin’s description of the role and the responsibilities of the office for which she is running, vice president of the United States.

In Thursday night’s debate, Ms. Palin was asked about the vice president’s role in government. She said she agreed with Dick Cheney that “we have a lot of flexibility in there” under the Constitution. And she declared that she was “thankful that the Constitution would allow a bit more authority given to the vice president also, if that vice president so chose to exert it.”

It is hard to tell from Ms. Palin’s remarks whether she understands how profoundly Dick Cheney has reshaped the vice presidency — as part of a larger drive to free the executive branch from all checks and balances. Nor did she seem to understand how much damage that has done to American democracy.

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Say what you will about Sarah Palin—that she's a dingbat, an ideologue, and a bit of a creep—but she's not dumb enough to pay her taxes. The McCain campaign released the last two years of her tax returns yesterday in an old school Friday news dump—and she totally cheats! "Palin, it appears, did not pay taxes on the more than $60,000 of travel reimbursements that she and her family members reportedly billed the state during her 18 months as governor." McCain's goons will surely argue that there's nothing wrong with that. Because they are liars.

"There is a fairly wonky debate over whether she should have been charged for these trips or whether it was accounted for in her salary. John Bogdanski, a tax professor at the Lewis and Clark Law School, told the Huffington Post's Seth Colter Walls that they did qualify as taxable income."

And $60 grand isn't a big deal if you're a total millionaire like John McCain and own eight houses, but Palin is merely wealthy. So she rips off the Treasury Joe Six-Pack style.

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Robert Fisk

www.rupeenews.com

Robert Risk is one of the few independent journalists left in the Western world who can dare to say it like it is. He correclty points out the lack of usage of the term Palestinian. He also correctly points to the outlandhish remark by Biden that Pakistani Nuclear missiles could reach Israel. Fisk correctly says that Pakistan has never threatened Israel and that Pakistan is on the side of the West–though having supported the USA for the past six decade, the Pakistanis get “do more’ lectures from “the allies” that keep bombing Pakistan and killing Pakistanis on a daily basis.

• Afghanistan in Peril: Defeat and disaster for USA & India
• Afghanistan: Omar rebuffs weak Karzai. No Saudi lifeline for him

Robert Fisk’s World: When it comes to Palestine and Israel, the US simply doesn’t get it

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Related
FACT CHECK: The Truth Hurt During Debate

ABC News' Teddy Davis Reports:

Sarah Palin got her facts wrong in Thursday's debate with Joe Biden when discussing where John McCain stands on new protections for homeowners facing foreclosures.

The Alaska governor incorrectly made it sound like McCain supports giving bankruptcy judges the power to rewrite mortgage payment terms on first homes.

He doesn't..

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Related
Caribou Barbie's Earpiece

VP Debate - a true "natural" and a wannabe

The New Energy Expert Doesn’t Blink - She Winks.

Tonight, we met the latest version of Sarah Palin. A mix between the RNC pitbull and the brawling Ross Perot.

We’ve been winked at, mavericked, joesixpacked, hockeymummed, heckofaloted,mainstreeterlikemeed, waktawaktaktataked by the new self proclaimed national expert in energy issues.

Tonight, Joe Biden was controling himself (he only managed to lose the gay-lesbian voters, who anyway won’t rush to Sarah Read My Lipstick Palin*). Like Obama the other day**, he missed opportunities on economics (he could for instance denounce the politics of "fear" of her opponent).

But he didn’t blink when it came to put a label on the Bush legacy, "an abject failure", Dick Cheney, "the most dangerous Vice-President in History". And he shed a tear that looked more genuine than Palin’s fake and nervous compassion. His support of Israel sounded more sincere than her AIPAC leaflet... The true "natural" was the one who didn’t have to train clumsily to look and sound like one.

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October 02, 2008

No Debate: How the Republican and Democratic Parties Secretly Control the Presidential Debates

Guest:

George Farah, executive director and founder of Open Debates. He is the author of No Debate: How the Republican and Democratic Parties Secretly Control the Presidential Debates.

Rush Transcript

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Added: October 01, 2008

All the best moments of Sarah Palin interviews, starring Sarah Palin, Charlies Gibson, Katie Couric, Sean Hannity, and special guest appearance from John McCain himself

Sarah Palin blunders over talks with British ambassador that never took place as her first TV debate looms

By Paul Thompson and Mail Foreign Service
Last updated at 6:06 PM on 02nd October 2008

• Half of U.S. voters think John McCain is too old to be president

Sarah Palin has committed yet another political blunder after claiming she had held talks with a British ambassador - talks that never actually took place.

In an answer to questions about her foreign policy experience ahead of tonight's make-or-break vice presidential TV debate, her aides listed numerous contacts with foreign officials - including Britain's ambassador to Washington, Sir  Nigel Sheinwald.

However the meeting never occurred. Officials at the embassy swiftly contacted the  McCain-Palin campaign to inform them of the discrepancy.

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Posted by Paul Mulshine October 02, 2008 6:03AM

In today's Republican Party, it's easy to win forgiveness for being wrong. It's being right that gets you into trouble.

Take Ron Paul, for example. In the run-up to the Iraq war, the Texas congressman asked, "Are we willing to bear the economic burden of a $100 billion war against Iraq, with oil prices expected to skyrocket and further rattle an already shaky American economy?"

And then when he made a run for the GOP presidential nomination earlier this year, Paul warned repeatedly of the dangers of funding that war and other out-of-control expenditures with dollars hot off the printing press.

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Palin Debate Preview II: The Wilhelm Scream

by Kagro X

Wed Oct 01, 2008 at 11:50:09 AM PDT

In my last take [SEE this]on the Palin debate preview, I discussed the widespread use by Republican candidates, particularly those trained by GOPAC, of interview and debating tactics designed to allow them to evade tough questions for which they're not intellectually prepared. That is, that when stuck, they'll often: 1) repeat back some of the words in the question to establish that they're "answering" it; 2) parry by steering the frame of their answers toward a talking point that bears some relation to the subect of the question; 3) spray some transitional buzzwords that help them segue from what they were asked to what they have prepared to say, and; 4) deliver the focus group-tested answer they originally planned, even if it's kind of a non-sequitur.

Normally, only the best-trained Republicans get the chance to demonstrate this technique on the national stage. Up-and-comers make use of the practice in local debates, with local media in the audience. And while the chances of being caught at it are just as great with local media as with national media, the professional inclination among journalists is simply not to insert themselves into the story by calling it out on their own, though they'll surely quote anyone who'll go on record to note it. Thus does such an obvious technique get by mostly unremarked upon.

And it is an obvious technique. It's obvious to even the casual observer, if you're willing to take mental note of it. But it's also forgettable enough that it usually just melts away. And as with most such situations, supporters hear what they want to hear, and opponents what they want. But to those who take the time to clearly note it, it's the "Wilhelm Scream" of politics. Once you've identified it and seen it in action, you'll never miss it again. And you'll laugh out loud when you hear it, again and again, from different candidates, in different states and different races. It becomes an inside joke among people who can identify it, just like the Wilhelm Scream itself:

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* LRB
* 9 October 2008

Cut, Kill, Dig, Drill

Jonathan Raban

Sarah Palin has put a new face and voice to the long-standing, powerful, but inchoate movement in US political life that one might see as a mutant variety of Poujadism, inflected with a modern American accent. There are echoes of the Poujadist agenda of 1950s France in its contempt for metropolitan elites, fuelling the resentment of the provinces towards the capital and the countryside towards the city, in its xenophobic strain of nationalism, sturdy, paysan resistance to taxation, hostility to big business, and conviction that politicians are out to exploit the common man. In 1980, Ronald Reagan profitably tapped the movement with his promises of states’ rights, low taxes and a shrunken government in Washington; the ‘Reagan Democrats’ who crossed party lines to vote for him are still the most targeted demographic in the country. In 1992, Ross ‘Clean out the Barn’ Perot and his United We Stand America followers looked for a while as if they were going to up-end the two-party system, with Perot leading George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton in the midsummer polls. In 1996, Pat Buchanan (‘The peasants are coming with pitchforks’) appealed to the same bloc of voters with a programme that was militantly Christian, white, nativist, provincial, protectionist and anti-Washington. In 2000, Karl Rove cleverly enrolled this quasi-Poujadist faction in his grand alliance of libertarians, born-agains and corporate interests. It’s worth remembering that in 2004 every American city with a population of more than 500,000 voted for Kerry, and that the election was won for Bush in the outer suburbs, exurbia and the countryside – peasants with pitchforks territory. For an organisation so wedded to its big-city corporate clients, the Republican Party has been hugely successful in mopping up the votes of low-income, lightly educated rural and exurban residents.

Most large American cities, especially in the West, are situated in counties that extend far beyond the city limits. Liberal urban governments with high property-tax rates and progressive environmental policies wield great power (some say tyranny) over their rural hinterlands, delivering ukases about land use and conservation: brush-cutting is to be limited to 40 per cent of the property; ‘setbacks’ of 100 feet are required from streams and wetlands; new churches are denied building permission because they are deemed ‘large footprint items’ in ‘critical habitat areas’ etc. So the householder or farmer sees ‘the city’ making unwarranted infringements of his God-given right to manage his land as he pleases, and imagines his precious tax-dollars being squandered on such urban fripperies as streetcar lines and monorails. These local quarrels spread to infect whole states. In Washington state, where I live, almost every ill that befalls people in the timberlands and agricultural regions, far from any city, is confidently attributed to ‘liberals from Seattle’, a nefarious conspiracy of wealthy, tree-hugging elitists with law degrees from East Coast universities, whose chief aim is to destroy the traditional livelihoods of honest citizens living on either side of the Puget Sound urban corridor. Poujade – and Jean-Marie Le Pen – would have had a field day here; as, I’m afraid, will the McCain-Palin ticket in November.

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Added: September 30, 2008

Palin Appeared To Endorse Hamas In Couric Interview

Added: October 01, 2008

Broadcast September 30, 2008. Gary Tuchman reports.

CNN