BUSH'S IRS GOES AFTER A PROGRESSIVE CHURCH IN PASADENA FOR BEING ANTI-WAR AND PRO-JESUS CHRIST
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I can't count the number of times I've been bouncing off walls hearing about fascist-oriented so-called "priests" and "ministers" out-and-out campaigning for right-wing politicians in direct violation of separation of church and state practices and laws. I remember my housekeeper telling me how her sister's priest in the Valley had told all the parishioners that they would be going to hell if they voted for Kerry. (I think some "bishop" or "archbishop" or "cardinal" or "little-boy-molesting-pervert," or whatever they call themselves when they get all up in dresses, in Colorado Springs made up a whole theology based on going-to-hell-if-you-vote-for-Kerry.) And then, of course, almost the whole fundamentalist-religion-for-haters-and-bigots that dominates so much of the South is far more political than it is spiritual. Fake GOP preachers like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Fred Phelps, Jerry Dobson, Louis "Lucky Louie" Sheldon are all about accumulating wealth and power by scaring weak-minded people with visions of hell and eternal damnation and then duping them out of their money while convincing them to support politicians who further drive them into poverty with policies that benefit only corporations and multi-millionaires (all of whom help enrich these same fake preachers). I can never for the life of me understand how the IRS gets their kind of blatant politicking go on. I mean when is the last time you heard about one of these fake right-wing churches losing their tax exempt status for actively engaging in politics?
Well actually today there was a story in the L.A. TIMES related to all this stuff. It was about a mainstream Episcopal church in Pasadena (All Saints) being threatened by the IRS with losing its tax exemption. Seems that two days before the last presidential election the church's former rector, George Regas, gave a guest sermon opposed to war. Unlike the right-wing fake preachers who are given millions of taxpayer dollars by Bush to help in his electoral campaigns, Regas said that "good people of profound faith" could vote for either man, and did not tell parishioners whom to support. Regas told the TIMES that the church very careful to never endorse any candidates.
The IRS then proceeded to try to blackmail the church by telling them that if they admitted wrong-doing, the investigation (read: "political persecution") would end and they would not lose tax-exempt status. The church declined, since they did nothing wrong whatsoever.
posted by DownWithTyranny @ 4:24 PM
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I'm reminded of an article by a right wing editorialist in the Cincinnati Enquirer (one of the most conservative papers in America), who stated after 9/11 that it's because of ideology from people like John Lennon and his song, "Imagine" that have led to weakness in America. "Imagine" he said, is the clearest example of what's wrong with the left. Of course, there was nothing in his article that gave it any bit of intellectual substance. He was out to attack the left and he used John Lennon, a symbol of peace, to do his dirty work. He went on to 'try' to explain that Lennon would have been with all the other peace mongers in the country to protest the war and bush's response to terrorism, further explaining that this is the mentality that causes us to appear weak, thus, the attacks.
"Liberalism" he said, was the cause of 9/11.
John Lennon was a liberal. He also loved New York. It's why he moved there. He loved it. He was also a rebel. And John Lennon would have been the first to pick up arms against the psycho's who killed so many innocent people, unrelated to government policy. He would want every man, woman and child to defend themselves against evil. Lennon would have pleaded with government to find a less violent means of ending terror, as in, dealing with the root cause of it all ... economics and ignorance.
The fight for religious ideology he would say, is a phony mask. No truly religious people would preach hate and practice evil.
The Enquirer's Peter Bronson is the poster child for the right wing. He pretends as though he understands the left because he "was" one of them in college.
I guess he meant to say that he was a war protester during the Vietnam days. Now that he's mature and can see through all the 'smoke', he can see that "Imagine" is the evil that caused 9/11 to happen. John Lennon and his ilk are the pansies who invite terrorists to do what they do.
John Lennon would have had a field day with Peter Bronson. He would have turned his words against him, as they should be.
Afterall, like the rest of this neocon regime we're living under, bronson never served this great country on the battlefield. Nor did rumsfeld or bush or cheney, hypocrits all.
Bronson attacked liberalism because he refuses to admit that our economic support of terror regimes is partly responsible.
And he wrongly thinks liberals won't fight back. As though we'd let a small minded neocon like himself tell lies and bend the truth, as this administration does.
We liberals and progressives are here to defend America from ignorance, right wing ignorance. We will defend ourselves and our idea's. And we'll fight for America. We'll fight to end (discover)the ignorance that causes the hate.
And if they still don't get it, we'll refer to Jesus himself (who they claim to believe in), who screamed as he hung from the cross, absence of hate and full of love for humanity .. "Father please forgive them, for they know not what they do."
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