2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumBarbara Ehrenreich: Hillary's Nasty Pastorate: Networks of Radical Right-Wingers: Only Elites Matter
Hillary's Nasty PastorateBarbara Ehrenreich
There's a reason why Hillary Clinton has remained relatively silent during
the flap over intemperate remarks by Barack Obama's former pastor, Jeremiah
Wright. When it comes to unsavory religious affiliations, she's a lot more
vulnerable than Obama.
You can find all about it in a widely under-read article in the September
2007 issue of Mother Jones, in which Kathryn Joyce and Jeff Sharlet reported
that "through all of her years in Washington, Clinton has been an active
participant in conservative Bible study and prayer circles that are part of a
secretive Capitol Hill group known as the "Fellowship," aka The Family. But it
won't be a secret much longer. Jeff Sharlet's shocking exposé, The Family:
The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power will be published
in May.
Sean Hannity has called Obama's church a "cult," but that term applies far
more aptly to Clinton's "Family," which is organized into "cells" -- their term --
and operates sex-segregated group homes for young people in northern Virginia.
snip
The Family's most visible activity is its blandly innocuous National Prayer
Breakfast, held every February in Washington. But almost all its real work goes
on behind the scenes -- knitting together international networks of right-wing
leaders, most of them ostensibly Christian.
In the 1940s, The Family reached out to former and not-so-former Nazis, and its fascination with that
exemplary leader, Adolph Hitler, has continued, along with ties to a whole
bestiary of murderous thugs.
As Sharlet reported in Harper's in 2003:
During the 1960s the Family forged relationships between the U.S. government
and some of the most anti-Communist (and dictatorial) elements within Africa's
postcolonial leadership. The Brazilian dictator General Costa e Silva, with
Family support, was overseeing regular fellowship groups for Latin American
leaders, while, in Indonesia, General Suharto (whose tally of several hundred
thousand "Communists" killed marks him as one of the century's most murderous
dictators) was presiding over a group of fifty Indonesian legislators. During
the Reagan Administration the Family helped build friendships between the U.S.
government and men such as Salvadoran general Carlos Eugenios Vides Casanova,
convicted by a Florida jury of the torture of thousands, and Honduran general
Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, himself an evangelical minister, who was linked to
both the CIA and death squads before his own demise.
At the heart of the Family's American branch is a collection of powerful
right-wing politicos, who include, or have included, Sam Brownback, Ed Meese,
John Ashcroft, James Inhofe, and Rick Santorum.
They get to use the Family's spacious estate on the Potomac, the Cedars, which is maintained by young men in
Family group homes and where meals are served by the Family's young women's
group. And, at the Family's frequent prayer gatherings, they get powerful jolts
of spiritual refreshment, tailored to the already-powerful.
Clinton fell in with the Family in 1993, when she joined a Bible study group
composed of wives of conservative leaders like Jack Kemp and James Baker.
When she ascended to the senate, she was promoted to what Sharlet calls the Family's
"most elite cell," the weekly Senate Prayer Breakfast, which included, until his
downfall, Virginia's notoriously racist Senator George Allen. This has not been
a casual connection for Clinton.
snip
Furthermore, the Family takes credit for some of Clinton's rightward legislative tendencies, including her support for a law guaranteeing "religious freedom" in the workplace, such as for pharmacists who refuse to fill birth control prescriptions and police officers who refuse to guard abortion clinics.
The Family avoids the word Christian but worships Jesus, though not the Jesus who promised the earth to the "meek."
They believe that, in mass societies, it's only the elites who matter, the political leaders who can build God's "dominion" on earth.
Insofar as the Family has a consistent philosophy, it's all about power -- cultivating it, building it and networking it together into ever-stronger units, or "cells." "We work with power where we can," Doug Coe has said, and "build new power where we can't."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/barbara-ehrenreich/hillarys-nasty-pastorate_b_92361.html
peacebird
(14,195 posts)highprincipleswork
(3,111 posts)thereismore
(13,326 posts)vdogg
(1,384 posts)So, we're just going to abandon all pretense and literally use Republican talking points now huh? Gotcha. I must say, even though the article is from Huffingtonpost, it sounds like it got pulled straight from InfoWars.
amborin
(16,631 posts)longship
(40,416 posts)They are seriously scary.
Rachel did a great expose on them a few years ago. And much has been written about them. Look it up.
vdogg
(1,384 posts)During the height of the primary season in 2008, all of them were bullshit. It is all rumor and innuendo designed to cast poor light on a political opponent. The article basically takes a long and tortured route to calling Hillary a fascist. Hillary Clinton...A fascist. I know you guys hate the very ground that woman walks on but let's bring things back to reality. The author brought Adolf Hitler and the Nazis out in the first few paragraphs, clearly this is nothing but a hit piece.
longship
(40,416 posts)They are seriously scary.
Again, look them up. There are books about them, and a Rachel Maddow expose.
tk2kewl
(18,133 posts)You want to disparage Mother Jones too? here, from 2007:
Hillary's Prayer: Hillary Clinton's Religion and Politics
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2007/09/hillarys-prayer-hillary-clintons-religion-and-politics
passiveporcupine
(8,175 posts)These days, Clinton has graduated from the political wives' group into what may be Coe's most elite cell, the weekly Senate Prayer Breakfast. Though weighted Republican, the breakfastregularly attended by about 40 membersis a bipartisan opportunity for politicians to burnish their reputations, giving Clinton the chance to profess her faith with men such as Brownback as well as the twin terrors of Oklahoma, James Inhofe and Tom Coburn, and, until recently, former Senator George Allen (R-Va.). Democrats in the group include Arkansas Senator Mark Pryor, who told us that the separation of church and state has gone too far; Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) is also a regular.
If I could stomach it!
And OMG!
With Santorum, Clinton co-sponsored the Workplace Religious Freedom Act; she didn't back off even after Republican senators such as Pennsylvania's Arlen Specter pulled their names from the bill citing concerns that the measure would protect those refusing to perform key aspects of their jobssay, pharmacists who won't fill birth control prescriptions, or police officers who won't guard abortion clinics.
This is the woman we want protecting women's rights?
Armstead
(47,803 posts)Look her up. She is far from a right wing shill.
beam me up scottie
(57,349 posts)After completing her doctorate, Ehrenreich did not pursue a career in science. Instead, she worked first as an analyst with the Bureau of the Budget in New York City and with the Health Policy Advisory Center, and later as an assistant professor at the State University of New York at Old Westbury. In 1972, Ehrenreich began co-teaching a course on women and health with feminist journalist and academic Deirdre English. Through the rest of the seventies, Ehrenreich worked mostly in health-related research, advocacy and activism, including co-writing, with English, several feminist books and pamphlets on the history and politics of women's health. During this period she began speaking frequently at conferences staged by women's health centers and women's groups, by universities, and by the United States government. She also spoke regularly about socialist feminism and about feminism in general.[11]
Throughout her career, Ehrenreich has worked as a freelance writer, and she is arguably best known for her non-fiction reportage, book reviews and social commentary. Her reviews have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, The Atlantic Monthly, Mother Jones, The Nation, The New Republic, the Los Angeles Times Book Review supplement, Vogue, Salon.com, TV Guide, Mirabella and American Film. Her essays, op-eds and feature articles have appeared in Harper's Magazine, The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, Time, The Wall Street Journal, Life, Mother Jones, Ms., The Nation, The New Republic, the New Statesman, In These Times, The Progressive, Working Woman, and Z magazine.[11]
Ehrenreich has served as founder, advisor or board member to a number of organizations including the U.S. National Women's Health Network, the National Abortion Rights Action League, the National Mental Health Consumers' Self-Help Clearinghouse, the Nationwide Women's Program of the American Friends Service Committee, the Brooklyn-based Association for Union Democracy, political activist Robert Boehm's Boehm Foundation, the anti-poverty group Women's Committee of 100, the National Writers Union, The Progressive magazine's Progressive Media Project, the Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) advisory committee on women in the media, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, the Center for Popular Economics, and the Campaign for America's Future.[11]
Between 1979 and 1981, she served as an adjunct associate professor at New York University and as a visiting professor at the University of Missouri at Columbia and at Sangamon State University. She lectured at the University of California, Santa Barbara, was a writer-in-residence at the Ohio State University, Wayne Morse chair at the University of Oregon, and a teaching fellow at the graduate school of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. She has been a fellow at the New York Institute for the Humanities, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Institute for Policy Studies, and the New York-based Society of American Historians.[11]
In 2006, Ehrenreich founded United Professionals, an organization described as "a nonprofit, non-partisan membership organization for white-collar workers, regardless of profession or employment status. We reach out to all unemployed, underemployed, and anxiously employed workers people who bought the American dream that education and credentials could lead to a secure middle class life, but now find their lives disrupted by forces beyond their control."[12]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Ehrenreich
"Republican talking points"?
amborin
(16,631 posts)beam me up scottie
(57,349 posts)I am not kidding someone here actually called Mother Jones a right wing source.
zentrum
(9,865 posts)
on the family.
They are not "Pastors", like you might have down the block. They are are a seriously powerful group of politically involved and funded Right Wingers.
sulphurdunn
(6,891 posts)or mocking it because of its source is illogical. Either something is true or it is not. While a source may be suspect or unreliable, that in and of itself is irrelevant to the truth or untruth of the proposition.
MADem
(135,425 posts)Just so you understand her objections to "pastors" and "Hillary Clinton."
She's best known for the very good book "Nickel and Dimed." She's written other stuff too, I'm sure it's quite good as well.
But let's not pretend this woman is impartial or looking at issues OR candidates dispassionately.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Ehrenreich
Barbara Ehrenreich (/ˈɛrᵻnraɪk/;[1] born August 26, 1941) is an American author and political activist who describes herself as "a myth buster by trade",[2] and has been called "a veteran muckraker" by The New Yorker.[3] During the 1980s and early 1990s she was a prominent figure in the Democratic Socialists of America. She is a widely read and award-winning columnist and essayist, and author of 21 books. Ehrenreich is perhaps best known for her 2001 book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. A memoir of Ehrenreich's three-month experiment surviving on minimum wage as a waitress, hotel maid, house cleaner, nursing-home aide, and Wal-Mart clerk, it was described by Newsweek magazine as "jarring" and "full of riveting grit",[4] and by The New Yorker as an "exposé" putting "human flesh on the bones of such abstractions as 'living wage' and 'affordable housing'".[5]
I don't intend to give this objection any more attention than it merits! LOL!! I'd be shocked if a player in the DSA supported anyone else.
amborin
(16,631 posts)MADem
(135,425 posts)PonyUp
(1,680 posts)Response to amborin (Original post)
longship This message was self-deleted by its author.
thereismore
(13,326 posts)MisterP
(23,730 posts)thereismore
(13,326 posts)oasis
(49,407 posts)How about an apology for her part in enabling Bush to steal election 2000?
Maybe then someone will be willing to listen.
tk2kewl
(18,133 posts)Unlikely partnerships have become a Clinton trademark. Some are symbolic, such as her support for a ban on flag burning with Senator Bob Bennett (R-Utah) and funding for research on the dangers of video games with Brownback and Santorum. But Clinton has also joined the gop on legislation that redefines social justice issues in terms of conservative morality, such as an anti-human-trafficking law that withheld funding from groups working on the sex trade if they didn't condemn prostitution in the proper terms. With Santorum, Clinton co-sponsored the Workplace Religious Freedom Act; she didn't back off even after Republican senators such as Pennsylvania's Arlen Specter pulled their names from the bill citing concerns that the measure would protect those refusing to perform key aspects of their jobssay, pharmacists who won't fill birth control prescriptions, or police officers who won't guard abortion clinics.
Clinton has championed federal funding of faith-based social services, which she embraced years before George W. Bush did; Marci Hamilton, author of God vs. the Gavel, says that the Clintons' approach to faith-based initiatives "set the stage for Bush." Clinton has also long supported the Defense of Marriage Act, a measure that has become a purity test for any candidate wishing to avoid war with the Christian right.
dembotoz
(16,832 posts)i have read lots of her stuff
she has EARNED being listened to
Armstead
(47,803 posts)He is an asshole, but his goals are ones that most liberal Democrats would agree with if they were given the "blindfold test."
And Barbara E. is a great progressive writer, and one of the first to expose how shitty life is becoming for the working poor.
I think you should save your scorn for more worthy targets, like Jeb Bush who is the one who really stole that election with the help of the SC.
elljay
(1,178 posts)Do you have any proof to the contrary? Has Hillary made any statements? Or, are you not interested in hearing any information that challenges your candidate and fairly evaluating whether it is true?
d_legendary1
(2,586 posts)Nader didn't cost Gore the election: Jeb's cage voting efforts helped his dumbass brother win the White House. Then there's those butterfly ballots that gave Pat Buchanan 2,800 votes (which would have won Gore the election). Then there's that pesky Supreme Court decision that stopped the count in Florida. Ralph Nader had NOTHING to do with that election. Quit trying to rewrite history. I lived it! I know what happened here!
oasis
(49,407 posts)well aware a series of events were in play at the time which contributed to the election theft, but Nader's not getting a pass. He will never live it down.
I'll admit Katherine Harris, Jeb Bush, "Nino" Scalia all had a larger roles. If I were writing a play, they would be cast as the central characters. However, Nader's part would be more than that of a "tree".
d_legendary1
(2,586 posts)Its incredible how you guys go from the flat tire to the turn signal as the source of why the car keeps shaking when its driven. Enough about Nader. Crooked politicians cost Gore the win. Everybody knows this.
oasis
(49,407 posts)earthside
(6,960 posts)Last edited Wed Mar 2, 2016, 07:47 PM - Edit history (1)
Hillary fundraiser hosted by NRA lobbyist?
Hillary fundraiser hosted by Walmart lobbyist?
Hillary Victory Fund gets $350,000 from Alice Walton?
Major Repuglican donors to her campaign?
Tall tales about taking fire in Bosnia?
The anti-democratic coup in Honduras?
The Libyan mess?
Pals with Henry Kissinger?
Cozying up to The Family?
On and on.
It doesn't matter.
Hillaraians are very much like Trump supporters ... no matter what it is that demonstrates Hillary's hypocrisy and cravenness, It Just Doesn't Matter!
Hoppy
(3,595 posts)So there.
Dustlawyer
(10,497 posts)99th_Monkey
(19,326 posts)The Clinton legacy of corruption, shady connections and dirty tricks is
just what we need in the WH.
CharlotteVale
(2,717 posts)for women?!
Yeah, nothing like being in a "cell" (what a creepy, disturbing word to use, too) with George Allen.
stupidicus
(2,570 posts)consideration of the negative kind, like her associations with the Bush/Kissingers of this world.
Apparently being close to war criminals as she is, is okay with the rest of her clan, as is her relationship with rightwingnuts of the religious kind
99th_Monkey
(19,326 posts)Not ever again.
I posted about this crap a week ago. This is a great example of how the M$M is anything
but actual "journalism" or even "news" much of the time.
When they can simply ignore stuff like this -- and like Bullhorn Bill's closing down MA polling
places -- all during a primary election for President, that should tell you something.
stupidicus
(2,570 posts)I've been a Clinton critic since before his first admin was over, and I can't tell you how pleased I am to see the bandwagon filling up and hopeful as well as a result. I've mentioned it several times since the battle began, but few seem to have much of an interest, or had larger ones to pursue at the time.
WHen I first started posting on forums like this after the "selection" in 2000, finding allies was almost impossible. Few on the left or in the dem party wanted to revisit much of anything he did, including the wmd yarns, that imo, paved the way for the level of acceptance Bush received for his.
I've long been convinced that it was the closing of the ranks that so many engaged in throughout the Bush admin that prevented a level of scrutiny and criticism he deserved that explains his and her continued support today with the older dems and indies. ANd those that have received an education on such matters don't wanna confront or acknowledge his failures that they supported any more than Bushbots do his step-brother dumbya, even though he went on an apology tour outlining many of them prior to HC tossing her bonnet into the ring.
Like with their rightwing cousins, their denials (as most if not all denials do in some measure) have Freudian roots -- an ego-preservation program. That's why they think they can get away with putting her and BS on a set of moral scales and at worst, find the two of the same weight. That's why few to no denunciations of/for his conduct will be forthcoming over his Mass adventure from the Hillarians -- they have the moral high ground and this little incident doesn't change that
amborin
(16,631 posts)Dustlawyer
(10,497 posts)When some of their members get their freak on it comes out a little, but otherwise you don't hear shite about The FAMILY.
stupidicus
(2,570 posts)much like their evil siamese twin, the "Dominionists"
SciDude
(79 posts)jalan48
(13,883 posts)I think a lot of long term politicians act like this-there's show with Kevin Spacey that captures the mindset perfectly- "House of Cards".
sus453
(164 posts)here:
Clinton's prayer group was part of the Fellowship (or "the Family" , a network of sex-segregated cells of political, business, and military leaders dedicated to "spiritual war" on behalf of Christ, many of them recruited at the Fellowship's only public event, the annual National Prayer Breakfast. (Aside from the breakfast, the group has "made a fetish of being invisible," former Republican Senator William Armstrong has said.) The Fellowship believes that the elite win power by the will of God, who uses them for his purposes. Its mission is to help the powerful understand their role in God's plan.
Clinton declined our requests for an interview about her faith, but in Living History, she describes her first encounter with Fellowship leader Doug Coe at a 1993 lunch with her prayer cell at the Cedars, the Fellowship's majestic estate on the Potomac. Coe, she writes, "is a unique presence in Washington: a genuinely loving spiritual mentor and guide to anyone, regardless of party or faith, who wants to deepen his or her relationship with God."
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2007/09/hillarys-prayer-hillary-clintons-religion-and-politics?page=2
Response to amborin (Original post)
Name removed Message auto-removed
Bluenorthwest
(45,319 posts)They see The Family as an adorable faith community.
ReasonableToo
(505 posts)...flashing back to all the independent media covering bush's desertion story but hardly a peep in mainstream media.
If it's not covered in mainstream media then it didn't happen.
bettyellen
(47,209 posts)zentrum
(9,865 posts)As does Opus Dei in terms of the Supreme Court. One down without Scalia.
Whatever happened to separation of Church and State?
Herman4747
(1,825 posts)I thought he just pretended to be, in order to be elected.
Duppers
(28,127 posts)Her involvement is for political contacts and reasons.
Would she let her daughter become jewish, marry a jewish guy if she belived the crap the family dishes?
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)n/t.
Kalidurga
(14,177 posts)amborin
(16,631 posts)Kalidurga
(14,177 posts)Erich Bloodaxe BSN
(14,733 posts)amborin
(16,631 posts)George II
(67,782 posts)sulphurdunn
(6,891 posts)who has touted his or her religious faith as a some kind of political litmus test. That leaves only one candidate I will vote for.
Oilwellian
(12,647 posts)is directly tied to the notorious "Kill the Gays" bill in Uganda.
Hillary prays with such nice people.
amborin
(16,631 posts)MisterP
(23,730 posts)safe standing next to each other at Bernie rallies if they're the same sex and some LGBT hero will say that they heard Sanders supporters scream "hang the fags!" and we'll be told to feel guilty because we doubted the great and mighty N who didn't have his face beaten in to be second-guessed by cishet meatheads and Skinner will say it's a shame, a SHAME how LGBT is discussed on his own forum and bla bla bla
haikugal
(6,476 posts)She is affiliated with some very sketchy characters, it's true.
DhhD
(4,695 posts)The Fellowship, also known as The Family,[2][3][4] and the International Foundation[5] is a U.S.-based religious and political organization founded in 1935 by Abraham Vereide. The stated purpose of the Fellowship is to provide a fellowship forum for decision makers to share in Bible studies, prayer meetings, worship experiences, and to experience spiritual affirmation and support.[6][7]
The Fellowship has been described as one of the most politically well-connected ministries in the United States. The Fellowship shuns publicity and its members share a vow of secrecy.[8] The Fellowship's leader Doug Coe and others have explained the organization's desire for secrecy by citing biblical admonitions against public displays of good works, insisting they would not be able to tackle diplomatically sensitive missions if they drew public attention.[8]
The Fellowship holds one regular public event each year, the National Prayer Breakfast held in Washington, D.C. Every sitting United States president since Dwight D. Eisenhower has participated in at least one National Prayer Breakfast during his term.[9][10][11][12]
more at link
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Dobson
May 5, 2016:
http://www.nationaldayofprayer.org/staff
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/creeping-dominionism-religious-right
It is scary alright.
JEB
(4,748 posts)Arazi
(6,829 posts)And certainly not to be taken lightly