Many Democrats Are Freaking Out When Anyone Calls Status Quo Joe The Lesser Of Two Evils

And he wasn't ever really a liberal on civil rights and civil liberties either

I really liked the two Jeff Sharlet books I read, The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power and C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy and his Netflix series, The Family (based on the two books). Between Ken, Gaius and I, there are a dozen posts that feature him, the most recent of which, Most Religions And Many Governments Feed The Poor-- But Not All... And Millions Of Elderly Americans Are Literally Starving, was last year.

Last week Sharlet published a piece on his Facebook page explaining why he is not just voting for Biden, but contributing money to his campaign. It's a good post and I agree with his analysis, albeit not his conclusion, at least not to me personally. Read it if you have a minute or two:

It may feel like too soon, but the hour is already late. I'm sending my first donation to the Biden campaign. I've despised Biden as long as I've known about him. Sure, he's done some good things. But he has been a loyal servant of empire and corporation, there are allegations of sexual assault (I haven't examined them, but I'm troubled by those Biden supporters who attacking his accuser using the same misogynist playbook as Harvey Weinstein), he is constitutionally dishonest, his vanity pales only next to Trump's, and he is woefully mismatched to the hour. My first choice was Warren by an inch; Bernie better matched my politics, and I still believe he would have had the better shot at beating Trump.

I supported his campaign, but his campaign is over, and even absent pandemic we would we be facing full meltdown. Is Biden the answer? Hell no. He is part of the problem. But he won't actively try to kill us. I know what Biden is; it's dispiriting. And I've reported on Trump in 2016 and this campaign close up; he's worse than horrifying because he's not even as bad as it could be. He's not full fascism, because he's too self-involved; but he is the door, and it's open, and it's pouring in.

So with respect for those who can't do it, I'm asking fellow Bernie and Warren supporters planning to sit it out now that Biden's the only option to swallow the bitterness-- and it will be bitter-- and vote for Biden. I'm donating, modestly, even though it feels like paying protection money, because I know firsthand from reporting on Trump how astonishing his fundraising is. If you haven't been paying attention, he's been by far outraising every Democrat. Before I gave money to Bernie and Warren, so I knew what their fundraising was like-- I got all the emails, all the texts. Sloppy, compared to Trump's operation. You may look at him and see a fool and at his followers and see only racism or delusion, but the machine around him? The people who are profiting from his authoritarianism? They're no dummies.

The people around Biden, meanwhile? I kind of think they're maybe not keeping up with the program. They can't believe it's not 2008 anymore. They believe the center will hold. They don't understand that their neoliberalism, their corporate coziness, let any idea of "center" slouch so far rightward that Trumpism is now the center. He's not an aberration. He is our horrifying new normal. So a return to normalcy isn't an option. the old normal wasn't so grand. The hope is to build anew--and Biden won't do that. I'm not suggesting we pretend Biden is anything other than what he is: a means of buying time. Voting for him isn't a moral choice; it's a very temporary survival mechanism. I keep thinking of the campaign slogan associated with the utterly corrupt Democratic Louisiana governor Edwin Edwards, running against actual Klansman David Duke: "Vote for the crook."

Same deal here: Vote for the hack. Then maybe we can fight like hell for what comes after.

The post from Wednesday on my own blog, Will Deeply Committed Progressives Vote For Status Quo Joe In November-- The Lesser Of Two Evils Play? caused hysteria on my Facebook page. I only unfriended the nastiest commenters, none of whom I know or had ever heard of (and have no idea how they became my "friends," but some former colleagues from work went right up to the line in their denunciations of me-- or anyone else-- who refuses to vote for Biden. I wonder how they would receive Sharlet's Biden endorsement.

I don't disrespect or look down on anyone who decides they want to vote for the lesser evil. Many express-- like Sharlet-- excellent and reasonable arguments to do so. But I vote for candidates who I want to see in office, not because the opponent is worse. My hatred for the Democratic Party, which has used the lesser-of-two evils strategy to turn the party into a neoliberal corporate hellhole, is, as my grandfather taught me when I wasn't even a teenager, less than my hatred for the Republican Party... just not by much. I'm a progressive, not a Democrat.

Rebecca Parson, who is challenging the head of the Wall Street owned and operated New Dems in Washington state, is also a dedicated progressive. "Voters in my district," she told me yesterday, "are excited to turn their energy to local elections like mine. We've all heard of NY-14, but I am bringing that populist leftist message to a working-class rural district, and  volunteers from Bernie's campaign are coming over to mine after he dropped out. My opponent isn't well known nationally but he's been getting away with taking millions of dollars of corporate PAC and lobbyist money and he's the chair of the conservative New Democrat Coalition. But there are other reasons voters care about my campaign: my district is on the coast and has a beautiful national forest, so issues impacting the environment are on voters' minds, and yet my opponent doesn't support the GND. Our district also has some of the highest rising rents in the country, so voters in Washington's 6th are ready for a candidate like me who is making affordable housing a top priority with nationalized rent control and a Homes Guarantee. Trump is a symptom of greater problems within our political system; those problems existed before he came into office and they will persist afterward if other down-ballot candidates don't step up."

Yep, godspeed, to all the people putting their hearts and souls into electing Biden and other conservatives who call themselves Democrats. I'm putting mine into progressives like Rebecca. And Shan Chowdhury, running in the southeast Queens district where that hospital you keep hearing about with all the deaths-- Elmhurst-- is. "It’s clearly disappointing that Bernie is not the Democratic nominee," he told me. "So many working people put their money and time into seeing him win. Now all there’s left is anger, and rightfully so. I’m reminded more than ever now how critical down ballot races like mine are. I’m taking on one of most corrupt members in Congress. I am his first serious challenger in over 20 years, and I’m doing it completely 100% people funded, turning out new voters with a mission to fight for progressive change. This is how we will win! The movement does not end with Bernie."

I heard a similar message from the Blue America-endorsed candidate in the suburbs north of Indianapolis, Jennifer Christie. "Until a month ago, we were out knocking doors every day. Now we are phone-banking and people are home. I’ve talked with thousands of Indiana voters. People are sick of politics and want real leadership. Hoosiers are interesting. We are considered a 'red' state, yet we elect Democrats throughout the state at all levels.  The average voter here regularly crosses the ballot. Indiana voters care deeply about authenticIty. Bernie won my district in 2016, and he won the state. We have always had wonderful volunteers in our campaign. In the last couple of months, our team had been growing immensely with new volunteers joining us every day. Why are voters enthusiastic about our campaign? Real change and genuine leadership. We have Democrats, Independents, and even a few Republicans who support our campaign because we are willing to take a positions and leadership on the issues. I am the only candidate in the race to support Medicare For All, a Green New Deal, and other important progressive policies. I am also the only scientist in the race, which, especially during the pandemic, people appreciate as a much needed voice in policy-making. We find over and over again that most Hoosiers support these policies, even across party lines. I believe that voters are especially enthusiastic now because  we have an opportunity to flip a seat with a true progressive. We know that our best shot for passing our policies is to fill the House and Senate with progressives.  Much of our support comes from Bernie and Warren supporters who understand that, while Biden is not a progressive, if we get a Medicare For All or Green New Deal bill to his desk, he will sign it. Since I am running for an open and flippable seat, we can make a big difference toward making that happen."

She's more hopeful than I am about getting Biden to sign a Medicare for All bill-- or anything progressive by twenty-first Century standards. But electing candidates like Jennifer Christie, Heather Parson and Shan Chowdhury is the way to move and get the country out of the ditch Trump and corporate conservatives have shoved us into. Please consider contributing to all three campaigns by clicking on the Blue America thermometer above.

And, by the way, AOC staffers and Team Biden have been discussing how to get progressive enthusiasm up for Biden: policies. She's asking Biden to more in a more progressive direction in terms of healthcare climate change, immigration and federal treatment of Puerto Rico.

On the subject of Biden’s health care proposals, Ocasio-Cortez said his support for lowering Medicare’s eligibility age to 60 is not “going to be enough for us,” adding that the party is “going to have to pursue a much more ambitious health care policy.”

Ocasio-Cortez also elaborated on Biden’s stance toward climate change, characterizing his preferred methods for combating the threat from rising global temperatures as inadequate.

“I don’t think that the vice president has a climate change policy that is sufficient right now,” she said, “and I’d like to see us really work on that.”

The congresswoman also offered advice on the most important decision Biden will make in the coming weeks, casting his choice of vice presidential nominee as another litmus test of the candidate’s progressive credentials.

Although Ocasio-Cortez said she was heartened by Biden’s pledge to name a female running mate and his openness to a woman of color being on the Democratic ticket, she argued that “what’s really important is not only just that woman’s identity, in terms of gender and cultural terms, but... who that woman is and [what] her stance is.”

Most Religions And Many Governments Feed The Poor-- But Not All... And Millions Of Elderly Americans Are Literally Starving

In my long life, I've seen starving people in India and in Afghanistan... but not too many other places come to mind. Except America. In the richest country in the history of earth there are people-- primarily very old people-- who go without food. It's not just Trump's fault. It's part of standard conservative dogma. It's not that Jesus taught but it's the the way it's supposed to be according to conservatives, including conservative religionists. Have you been watching The Family on Netflix. Totally excellent, especially if you read Jeff Shalet's books, The Family (2008) and C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat To American Democracy (2010), in the last decade.

The Netflix series drives home the fetishization of the Family's "church" religionist doctrine (they applied for and got tax exemptions as a church) started as an anti-union and anti-LGBTQ movement and wound up as an ultra-fetishization of politicians as God's chosen ones. Sounds weird but... watch the series or read the books. In raking the leaves and scrubbing the toilets of powerful politicians, the Family's recruits learned about the power dynamics of their sick "religion"-- but, while professing devotion to Jesus (not the Bible, just Jesus-- they cast his teachings about the poor completely aside.





Our whole political class has been sucked into this ugly vortex, celebrated annually since the early '50s by The Family-sponsored National Prayer Breakfast, a bipartisan cesspool of fascism, corruption, homophobia and oligarchy. The religion can be summed up in less than 10 words: "Ignore the poor and super-serve the rich and powerful." And every U.S. president since Eisenhower has attended the hideous so-called National Prayer Breakfast, some specifically paying public homage to the Nazi-worshipping huckster-in-charge, Doug Coe.

While our corrupted political class is breakfasting with fascists, over 5 million American senior citizens were starving or, more politely, "food insecure," according to a new report from Kaiser Health News, How America Fails To Feed Its Aging. Laura Ungar and Trudy Lieberman wrote that "millions of seniors across the country quietly go hungry as the safety net designed to catch them frays. Nearly 8% of Americans 60 and older were 'food insecure' in 2017, according to a recent study released by the anti-hunger group Feeding America. That’s 5.5 million seniors who don’t have consistent access to enough food for a healthy life, a number that has more than doubled since 2001 and is only expected to grow as America grays. While the plight of hungry children elicits support and can be tackled in schools, the plight of hungry older Americans is shrouded by isolation and a generation’s pride. The problem is most acute in parts of the South and Southwest. Louisiana has the highest rate among states, with 12% of seniors facing food insecurity. Memphis fares worst among major metropolitan areas, with 17% of seniors like Milligan unsure of their next meal."

And government relief falls short. One of the main federal programs helping seniors is starved for money. The Older Americans Act-- passed more than half a century ago as part of President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society reforms-- was amended in 1972 to provide for home-delivered and group meals, along with other services, for anyone 60 and older. But its funding has lagged far behind senior population growth, as well as economic inflation.

The biggest chunk of the act’s budget, nutrition services, dropped by 8% over the past 18 years when adjusted for inflation, an AARP report found in February. Home-delivered and group meals have decreased by nearly 21 million since 2005. Only a fraction of those facing food insecurity get any meal services under the act; a U.S. Government Accountability Office report examining 2013 data found 83% got none.

With the act set to expire Sept. 30, Congress is now considering its reauthorization and how much to spend going forward.

Meanwhile, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, only 45% of eligible adults 60 and older have signed up for another source of federal aid: SNAP, the food stamp program for America’s poorest. Those who don’t are typically either unaware they could qualify, believe their benefits would be tiny or can no longer get to a grocery store to use them.

Even fewer seniors may have SNAP in the future. More than 13% of SNAP households with elderly members would lose benefits under a recent Trump administration proposal.

For now, millions of seniors-- especially low-income ones-- go without. Across the nation, waits are common to receive home-delivered meals from a crucial provider, Meals on Wheels, a network of 5,000 community-based programs. In Memphis, for example, the wait to get on the Meals on Wheels schedule is more than a year long.

“It’s really sad because a meal is not an expensive thing,” said Sally Jones Heinz, president and CEO of the Metropolitan Inter-Faith Association, which provides home-delivered meals in Memphis. ”This shouldn’t be the way things are in 2019.”

Since malnutrition exacerbates diseases and prevents healing, seniors without steady, nutritious food can wind up in hospitals, which drives up Medicare and Medicaid costs, hitting taxpayers with an even bigger bill. Sometimes seniors relapse quickly after discharge-- or worse.

Widower Robert Mukes, 71, starved to death on a cold December day in 2016, alone in his Cincinnati apartment.

The Hamilton County Coroner listed the primary cause of death as “starvation of unknown etiology” and noted “possible hypothermia,” pointing out that his apartment had no electricity or running water. Death records show the 5-foot-7-inch man weighed just 100.5 pounds.

Most of the states with the highest percentage of starving seniors are red states (2 exceptions-- New Mexico, where elderly Native Americans are poorly served and Rhode Island, which has a fake Dem neoliberal governor), states where voters still believe in Trump, states with voters who profess Christianity but loath Jesus' message to mankind, The first % represents the number of seniors starving and the second percentage was Trump's score in 2016:

• Louisiana- 12.3% -- 58.09%
• Mississippi- 11.8% -- 57.94%
• New Mexico- 11.5% -- 40.04%
• Texas- 10.5% -- 52.23%
• North Carolina- 10.5% -- 49.83%
• Alabama- 10.4% -- 62.08%
• Rhode Island- 9.6% -- 38.90%
• Kansas- 9.4% -- 56.65%
• South Carolina- 9.3% -- 54.94%
• West Virginia- 9.2% -- 68.50%
• Oklahoma- 9.1% -- 65.32%
• Arkansas- 9.0% -- 60.57%
• Arizona- 9.0% -- 48.67%

Ungar and Lieberman continued, explaining the findings of James Ziliak, a poverty researcher at the University of Kentucky who worked on the Feeding America study. Ziliak explained that "food insecurity shot up with the Great Recession, starting in the late 2000s, and peaked in 2014. He said it shows no signs of dropping to pre-recession levels."

While older adults of all income levels can face difficulty accessing and preparing healthy food, rates are highest among seniors in poverty. They are also high among minorities. More than 17% of black seniors and 16% of Hispanic seniors are food insecure, compared with fewer than 7% of white seniors.

A host of issues combine to set those seniors on a downward spiral, said registered dietitian Lauri Wright, who chairs the Department of Nutrition and Dietetics at the University of North Florida. Going to the grocery store gets a lot harder if they can’t drive. Expensive medications leave less money for food. Chronic physical and mental health problems sap stamina and make it tough to cook. Inch by inch, hungry seniors decline.

And, even if it rarely kills directly, hunger can complicate illness and kill slowly.

Malnutrition blunts immunity, which already tends to weaken as people age. Once they start losing weight, they’re more likely to grow frail and are more likely to die within a year, said Dr. John Morley, director of the division of geriatric medicine at Saint Louis University.

Seniors just out of the hospital are particularly vulnerable. Many wind up getting readmitted, pushing up taxpayers’ costs for Medicare and Medicaid. A recent analysis by the Bipartisan Policy Center found that Medicare could save $1.57 for every dollar spent on home-delivered meals for chronically ill seniors after a hospitalization.

Most hospitals don’t refer senior outpatients to Meals on Wheels, and advocates say too few insurance companies get involved in making sure seniors have enough to eat to keep them healthy.

...As the Older Americans Act awaits reauthorization this fall, many senior advocates worry about its funding.

In June, the U.S. House passed a $93 million increase to the Older Americans Act‘s nutrition programs, raising total funding by about 10% to $1 billion in the next fiscal year. In inflation-adjusted dollars, that’s still less than in 2009. And it still has to pass in the Republican-controlled Senate, where the proposed increase faces long odds.

U.S. Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, an Oregon Democrat who chairs the Civil Rights and Human Services Subcommittee, expects the panel to tackle legislation for reauthorization of the act soon after members return from the August recess. She’s now working with colleagues “to craft a strong, bipartisan update,” she said, that increases investments in nutrition programs as well as other services.

“I’m confident the House will soon pass a robust bill,” she said, “and I am hopeful that the Senate will also move quickly so we can better meet the needs of our seniors.”

In the meantime, “the need for home-delivered meals keeps increasing every year,” said Lorena Fernandez, who runs a meal delivery program in Yakima, Wash. Activists are pressing state and local governments to ensure seniors don’t starve, with mixed results. In Louisiana, for example, anti-hunger advocates stood on the state Capitol steps in May and unsuccessfully called on the state to invest $1 million to buy food from Louisiana farmers to distribute to hungry residents. Elsewhere, senior activists across the nation have participated each March in “March for Meals” events such as walks, fundraisers and rallies designed to focus attention on the problem.

Audrey Denney is the progressive Democrat taking on Trump enabler Doug LaMalfa in the vast rural northeast corner of California. This morning she sent me a note after I had sent her an early version of this post and asked her for a comment. Please take a look and consider contributing to her campaign-- and to Mark Gamba, whose comments are below Audrey's-- if you like how they look at this problem:

I am a person of faith-- raised Episcopalian, I went to an Episcopal elementary school and Catholic middle school where we went to chapel every day. I've been active at my church in Chico for over 15 years; my mother, my two sisters, and my stepfather are all Episcopal priests. (Weird, I know). My faith informs everything I do, from my call to public service at this moment in time, to my deep, underlying belief that all human beings are inherently equal in rights and dignity-- we are all children of God, created in God's image, every one of us-- each one equally precious, beloved, and worthy. For a long time the dominant religious voice in the public sphere has been primarily concerned with issues of what I would call private morality. Some of the most intimate, private moments of a person's life-- who they fall in love with, what they can do with their body, when and how to have children-- these have been the subject of intense public debate, scrutiny, and legislation. But what's largely been forgotten is a much longer, broader, and deeper strain common to many religious traditions, and that is one of what I would call public morality. The Judeo-Christian scriptures talk time and time again about the fact that the measure of the holiness of a society is how we care for the most vulnerable among us-- the widow, the orphan, the foreigner (stranger). That's what Jesus did on this earth-- loved and lifted up the outcast. How are we doing, as a society, as a nation, on upholding the absolute worth and dignity of every human being? How are we doing on loving our neighbor--whether that neighbor is the same as us or different from us-- as ourselves?

We all have a duty to take care of our most vulnerable populations, including our seniors. In CA-01, a quarter of the population receives SS benefits (183,548 in 2017). Social Security benefits are less than $1,200 per month for millions of retired low wage workers with no other source of income. Anyone who is familiar with rent prices in CA will understand that it is virtually impossible for a senior living on $1,200 a month to pay rent, eat, and get the care they need. Caring for the most vulnerable means not only funding the programs that allow them to have their basic necessities met-- it also means funding and staffing the agencies that help connect them with those benefits. Social Security offices have lost about 4,000 staff in the last 5 years-- our office in Redding has 14 open desks. When the people of CA-01 send me to represent them in DC I will defend Social Security and Medicare against partisan attacks and work to ensure that it is a rock-solid benefit seniors can count on-- not subject to the budget whims of Congress or the fluctuations of the stock market. I’ll fight to increase funding to the Social Security Administration to ensure there are enough qualified staff members to meet the needs of our seniors. Staff members are crucial in making sure every senior, especially the most vulnerable-- get the benefits they’ve earned.

Mark Gamba, mayor of Milwaukie, Oregon is running for a congressional seat held by a reactionary Blue Dog, Kurt Schrader. Today Mark toldmethat "In a country where we are giving billionaires tax breaks-- when they barely pay anything already-- it is appalling that we continue to reduce our expenditures to feed our most vulnerable citizens. Causing your own people to starve to death is not the sign of a first world country. It should be particularly concerning as the population ages, given that for the last 40 years the middle class has gotten poorer and has been less able to save for retirement. Add the effect of climate chaos into the food insecurity mix and we have a recipe for mass starvation of the elderly if things continue as they are."

Dangerous Right Wing Cult, The Family, Involved In Move To Exterminate Gays In Uganda

Headquarters of a lethal cancer in the heart of our nation's capital

If you visit us here at DWT from time to time, you may recall how excited I was earlier in the year about Nanci Griffith's new album, The Loving Kind, especially because I learned all about a Virginia couple, Richard and Mildred Loving, who traveled to Washington, DC in order to get married in June, 1958. It was illegal at the time for black and whites to intermarry. They were dragged out of their bed and thrown into jail cells when they got back to sweet Virginie. Times have changed so drastically since then. Last year 1,959,532 Virginia voters (53% of those who went to the polls), helped elect the offspring of such a marriage. But, in some ways, time has stood still for homosexuals, who are still discriminated against by the same types of bigoted and insecure sociopaths as those who arrested and persecuted Richard and Mildred Loving. On the 40th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision that made her marriage legal, a few months before she passed away last year, Mildred, having never spoken out on anything political before has this to say:

Surrounded as I am now by wonderful children and grandchildren, not a day goes by that I don't think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, and how much it meant to me to have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the "wrong kind of person" for me to marry. I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry. Government has no business imposing some people's religious beliefs over others. Especially if it denies people's civil rights.

I am still not a political person, but I am proud that Richard's and my name is on a court case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness, and the family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight seek in life. I support the freedom to marry for all. That's what Loving, and loving, are all about.

So, I was heartened to read this morning that the Washington DC City Council voted 11-2-- despite threats and blackmail attempts from the Catholic Church and hysteria from right wing political hacks-- to approve legislation that would allow same-sex couples to get married in their city. Forget for a moment that bigoted Mormon fanatic Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) has pledged to the satanic "god" he worships to use Congress to force DC to back away from the kind of equality for gays that was the salvation for mixed-race couples like the Lovings. Instead, let's take a look at something really insidious and dangerous to America that's going on among some of Jason Chaffetz' friends and neighbors, the demented, neo-fascist religious fanatics and sexual predators who live in the C Street House provided to the religious cult known as -- The Family.

Last night, Rachel Maddow did a segment on the relationship between the genuinely dangerous cult, The Family, and plans in Uganda to pass even more stringent anti-gay legislation, including the death penalty. Behind this move is a close political associate of both pop-pastor Rick Warren and the insidious Republicans and Blue Dogs who make up the viciously homophobic Family. Among the hate-filled bigots who make up The Family are Sam Brownback (R-KS), James Inhofe (R-OK), Jim DeMint (R-SC), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), John Ensign (R-NV), Tom Coburn (R-OK), Mark Pryor (DLC-AR), John Thune (R-SD), Mike Enzi (R-WY), Joe Pitts (R-PA), Todd Tiahrt (R-KS), Frank Wolf (R-VA), Zach Wamp (R-TN), Mike McIntyre (Blue Dog-NC), Bart Stupak (anti-choice-MI), and Health Shuler (Blue Dog-NC). Villainous members no longer in public office include John Ashcroft, Dan Quayle, Ed Meese, Strom Thurmond, Jerry Ford and Richard Nixon.

The C Street clubhouse: the place for self-absorbed "Christian" pols on the make to do it all -- to fellowship, pray, talk about Jesus, and eat

If Jenny Sanford had been a more traditionally subservient "barefoot and obedient" Christian wife, might her scumbag husband have gotten away with his "Argentine adventure"? True, he was getting idiotically indiscreet, and now he seems to have turned into a babbling buffoon, but maybe that's 'cause he got caught?

"We'd fellowship, we'd pray, we'd talk about Jesus, and we'd eat. In the headiness of Washington, D.C., it's trying to make sure you keep your head screwed on straight."

-- Michigan Rep. "Crazy Pete" Hoekstra, making public

his previously unknown connection with the Family,

which he stressed ended two years ago

"Recently, an unscrupulous author has implied that I am involved in meetings or am even a resident at what is called the C Street House located in Washington, D.C. To be clear, I have never lived at the C Street House nor have I participated in any regular Bible studies or so-called counseling sessions there. Over the past decade, I have attended a few luncheons at the house involving ambassadors and other members of Congress. While there, I had conversations with those in attendance. Other than these few visits at the house, I have had no membership or involvement in meetings at the house."

-- Kansas Rep. Todd Tiahrt, in a statement issued to KWCH Wichita, whose reporter Kim Wilhelm did a report on the Family Sunday

"Their idea is to identify politicians who are in positions of power, placed there not so much by voters but by God. The Family helps polish them up -- become more sophisticated leaders so they can better serve this ‘vision of the kingdom' as they put it. So they can do good things, they can do bad things, it doesn't matter. They're chosen for power. And the Family believes it's their job to help them stay in power."

-- Jeff Sharlet, in KWCH Wichita's report on the Family

by Ken

All of that, plus . . . it's Christian!

When last we visited the now-famous house on C Street that houses the kook Christian power cult called the Family, I believe it was former Mississippi Rep. Chip Pickering's turn at the GOP Adultery Flogging Post. (These days you really have to book ahead.) Our Chip, you'll recall, who left Congress in 2007, ostensibly to spend more time with his actual family, meaning wife Leisha and their five sons, turns out to have been having yet another of these tediously humiliating affairs, this one apparently conducted at least in part within the sacred walls of the Family's C Street clubhouse. And they are sacred, because --

SHH! DON'T MENTION THIS TO THE IRS!

To its best knowledge, the building is in fact a church. Expansive as the IRS traditionally is in interpreting what constitutes a church, given our country's traditional -- not to mention constitutional -- commitment to separation of church and state, in the face of all that we've learned about the Family and the C Street clubhouse, somebody at the IRS could think that at least a few questions might be in order.

Ironically, the type of pol drawn to the Family tends to be publicly, dare I say righteously, scornful of the whole concept of separation of church and state. The Family itself doesn't even pay lip service to the idea.

An interesting wrinkle in the case of Chip Pickering, you'll recall, is that, as Max Blumenthal reported for The Daily Beast, Leisha Pickering's divorce filing revealed that her guy "recorded details of his exploits in a secret diary, including the dates and locations of his adulterous encounters." What's more, Chip's sex diary "reveals the identities of several men who enabled his adulterous trysts and helped him cover his tracks."

OOH, A SEX DIARY? AW-RIGHT! WHERE
IS IT? WE WANNA SEE THE SEX DIARY!

According to Max Blumenthal: "Thanks to heavily politicized local courts and an aggressive damage-control campaign waged by Pickering and his powerful Republican allies, the diary, which is said to contain the answers to these questions, is locked away in a courtroom in Mississippi. And if Pickering has his way, it will stay there indefinitely." Sorry!

Now don't forget about that diary. (Like as if you're thinking about anything else! Except maybe wondering if there's also video.) We're going to come back to it. And while you're remembering, note -- in the "Crazy Pete" Hoekstra quote at the top of this post -- the Crazyman's emphasis on the fact that his association with the Family ended two years ago. It's just possible that these two details could be connected!

Anyway, since our last visit, so much has happened on the C Street front that it's hard to take it all in. To be honest, I've kind of tuned out. We've already learned plenty about the heady mixture of Bible-thumping and power-mongering concocted by Family patriarch Doug Coe and his chip-off-the-old-block son David. In the time since our giddy discovery of the embarrassing and rather alarming links between the Family and the marital follies of putative presidential pretenders Nevada Sen. John Ensign and South Carolina Gov. (and, importantly, former U.S. Rep.) Mark Sanford, it's all had kind of a same-old, same-old ring.

Perhaps the most interesting development has been what we might call "The Flight from the Family," which is to say the growing number of Family-style pols who have suddenly become shy about celebrating their Christianity, something they were once prepared to do anytime they found themselves within range of a camera. Now they either refuse to comment on reputed ties to the Family or deny them outright, sort of. "Outright" denial seems a bit of a reach for them, and so we're getting a fascinating assortment of indignant denials of involvement beyond certain carefully delimited points. Which brings us to the Kansas and Michigan connections.

THE KANSAS AND MICHIGAN CONNECTIONS

Sunday night KWCH-TV Wichita's Kim Wilhelm did a nearly four-minute report on the Family, drawing on Jeff Sharlet's book The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, including excerpts from Jeff's appearances with Rachel Maddow and a phone interview of her own. You have to give both the reporter the station credit. It doesn't seem likely that Wichita folk had heard much about the subject. And as the piece makes clear, there are Kansas connections to the Family. The written version of the report (which is similar to but not a trasncript of the TV version) notes:

The group rents out rooms to members of Congress. Kansas Congressman Jerry Moran's staff confirms he stays at C Street. His office refused to answer questions or comment further. Sharlet's book has no mention of Moran, but it does list Senator Sam Brownback and Congressman Todd Tiahrt as members.

Congressman Tiahrt (that's pronounced "Tea-heart," as in "teabag"), as we've already noted up top, could hardly be more vehement in his denial of "membership" or much of any real association with the Family. At the same time, if you were to parse his statement closely, you could find any number of ways in which it could represent careful weaseling, and in the event that documentary evidence should begin turning up, one wonders whether those "few visits" might not grow the way, say, Jack Abramoff's few visits to the White House eventually did.

Our Todd, by the way, is probably most famous for his recent contribution to the House health care debate, shown in the KWCH report, where he made the case against allowing government funding of abortions, which of course his deep religious convictions lead him to oppose, thusly:

If you think of it in human terms, there is a financial incentive that will be put in place, paid for by tax dollars, that will encourage women who are -- single parents, living below the poverty level, to have the opportunity for a free abortion. If you take that scenario and apply it to many of the great minds we have today, who would we have been deprived of? Our president grew up in a similar circumstance. If that financial incentive was in place, is it possible that his mother may have taken advantage of it? Clarence Thomas, Supreme Court Justice, if those circumstances were in place, is it possible that we would be denied his great mind?

Let me just say here that this speech seems to me all-but-irrefutable proof of the non-existence of a god, or at least one with any self-respect, who could hardly fail to respond with a prompt smiting. Working in mysterious ways is all well and good, but surely there are limits.

Now as to the Michigan connection, what most struck Emptywheel's Marcy Wheeler, a veteran watcher of the congressman whom she calls, possibly affectionately, "Crazy Pete" Hoekstra (only she doesn't use quotation marks), was the mere fact that he "preemptively" announced his connection to the Family: "Frankly, I hadn't even realized Crazy Pete was a member of this group, and I could swear I've checked once (he is definitely their 'type.' So it surprises me a bit to see Crazy Pete offering up his ties to the group."

"Crazy Pete," by the way, is probably best remembered for his shockingly inept, dishonest, Bush-abetting performance as a member and then chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Actually, Wikipedia reminds us of what's probably the next-most-distinctive aspect of his nine-terms-and-counting career: that it was made possible in good part by beating up on 13-term GOP powerhouse Guy Vander Jagt for having been in Congress so long. That's why primary insurgent Hoekstra pledged to serve no more than six terms, and already-expansive concept of term limits which Congressman Hoekstra seems to have found intolerably restrictive when it came time to run for term number seven.

"Crazy Pete," as you may have heard, is looking seriously at a race for governor of Michigan. Marcy, while acknowledging that it's pure speculation on her part, speculated in that Sunday post about a possible link between his separation from the Family and the famous Chip Pickering sex diary:

Pickering resigned in August 2007, just under two years ago. If the diary precipitated the divorce, then it may end about two years ago.

So if someone like Crazy Pete knew that his involvement in yet another hypocritical affair might become public, he might be able to say that he ended his relationship with the group two years ago, setting up a very convenient story just in case anything became public between now and when he tried to run for Governor.

I have no idea whether Pickering's diary time bomb is the reason for Crazy Pete's pre-emptive admission of ties with C Street. But the timing does make me want to see Pickering's diary all the more.

Before we leave "Crazy Pete," I think we need to pay some sort of tribute to a man who: (a) has shown us, by using it in a sentence, how to use "fellowship" as a verb, and (b) has so tidily summed up the Family agenda as a bunch of good Christian men getting together to keep their heads screwed on straight by means of the Big Four: fellowshiping, praying, talking about Jesus, and eating. Strangely, there is no mention of having affairs and counseling one another on said affairs while keeping them totally secret from everyone else, including spouses.

MORE IMPORTANT THAN SEX???

Notice how we keep coming back to the sex scandals, which always make for the juiciest, not to mention attention-gettingest, copy. It's been clear ever since the Family got dragged into the spotlight in connection with the Ensign and Sanford high jinks, that Jeff Sharlet, in his capacity as reigning outside expert on the Family (at this point he's become Rachel Maddow's virtual cohost, on a broadcast that might be renamed The Rachel Maddow Show, featuring Jeff Sharlet on the Family), thought and thinks there's something more important than sex scandal to the story. While I wouldn't presume to speak for Jeff, I think what he's trying to call attention to is neatly summed up in the quote he gave KWCH, up top. I think it's worth a replay:

Their idea is to identify politicians who are in positions of power, placed there not so much by voters but by God. The Family helps polish them up -- become more sophisticated leaders so they can better serve this ‘vision of the kingdom' as they put it. So they can do good things, they can do bad things, it doesn't matter. They're chosen for power. And the Family believes it's their job to help them stay in power.

I realize it will be a serious comedown for tabloid-trained news consumers if it turns out that the really important story about the family is nothing sexier than a cult master's clever fusion of religion with power, all built on a bedrock of Christian hypocrisy. That's not all that sexy, is it?

Well, there are those who might disagree, like for example Leisha Pickering and Jenny Sanford. I'm a bit surprised myself tp find that in the end this is where my thoughts are gravitating. Because neither Chip Pickering nor Mark Sanford seems to have chosen the traditionally subservient barefoot-and-obedient Christian wife who exists for no purpose greater than to serve her master. Both Leisha and Jenny appear to be seriously bright women who were at least as responsible for their husbands' career successes as the possibly less-bright men.

Here are those old sweethearts Chip and Leisha Pickering. What a handsome couple, no? It's not hard to understand that Chip would have given up his seat in Congress to spend more time with Leisha and their five boys. 

Of course we don't know what went on behind the scenes with the Pickerings all those years. Leisha doesn't seem to have had any insupportable problem with Chip's ambitions when he was a rising star in God's Own Party. At some point, though, she seems to have become noticeably less enthusiastic about Doug Coe's "you can have it all, hornyboy" Family program. The apparently not-very-discreet affair seems to have exhausted such tolerance as she may once have had.

There are marriages that can handle that, and there are marriages that can't. Mrs. Pickering, however, made the unusual choice, for a good Republican wife, of not going quietly.

Poor Mark Sanford seems to have run into a similar sort of wifely uppitiness. A man of his, er, appetites should probably have had a proper wife of the barefoot-obedient sort, the sort who would know her place. (What was it Jimmy Carter was just saying about male religious leaders who have "overwhelmingly chosen" to "subjugate" rather than "exalt" women?)

To his credit, our Mark doesn't seem ever to have been looking for that sort of mate. Oh, Jenny comes from serious money, which would certainly have helped qualify her as a suitable Christian wife for a good Christian pol under the old standards. But she sure seems like someone who knows how to take care of herself -- and, when it came to it, her children. But when she met Mark, she was a player on Wall Street. They met in the Hamptons, you'll recall, not at a church social. She spent six years as a vice president (mergers and acquisitions) at the investment bank Lazard Freres. When the Sanfords moved south and Mark launched his political career, she seems to have worked at it if anything harder than he did. Until recently she was usually described as his top adviser.

Even after the doody hit the fan, Mark, when asked how he was handling his wife's discovery of his affair,, was still burbling stuff like, "This goes into the personal zone. I'd simply say that Jenny has been absolutely magnanimous and gracious as a wonderful Christian woman in this process."

As a matter of fact, Jenny seems to have been prepared to do whatever it took to save the marriage, if only for the sake of the kids. She "knew" for a long time without revealing anything publicly. She had stumbled across a love letter in Mark's files. It was, we're told, quite a shock. ("I didn't think he had it in him.")

If Mark had had the good Christian sense to marry the kind of woman toads of his sort traditionally did, or turned their wimminfolk into, then when it came to crunch time -- you know, when he "went hiking the Appalachian Trail" -- she might have covered for him. Not Jenny, though, who you'll recall helped fan the flames of intrigue by making it absolutely clear that she had no idea where her the father of their four sons was on Fathers' Day.

She had her reasons. It turns out that lovelorn Mark had actually begged her for permission to, um, pop down to Argentina to, er, visit the sights! Astoundingly, unlike that good Christian wife he should have had, Jenny said no! Or as she tells it, "I said absolutely not. It's one thing to forgive adultery. It's another thing to condone it." We can guess that as the drama unfolded, Jenny, being as far as she is from the model of the barefoot-and-obedient wife, didn't respond at all well to the growing inklings that the Atlanta airport, not the Appalachian Trail, was where Mark had headed.

The portrait of Mark that emerges -- and of Chip too, for that matter -- is of a greedy, self-absorbed young pol who knows how to think big, a horny toad on the make in every sense. For the Family, it would appear, Bible-thumping is optional at the outset. If you've got a horny enough young toad who can sling a little "family values" lingo, we can teach him enough Jesus to hornswoggle all those needy folks out there who crave a proper Christian tongue-lashing.

If it's any consolation to Leisha and Jenny, the guys were bums. I feel bad for them, and for their combined nine boys, who you have to hope don't grow up to be bums like their dads.

"Family values" indeed.

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Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann dig deeper into the "Family" connections of Sen. John Ensign

I've added a "Saturday Update" to my post last night about the power-mongering religious cult the Family, which included Rachel Maddow's riveting Thursday-night segment, with guest Jeff Sharlet, who literally wrote the book on the subject.

Rachel herself was so overwhelmed by the subject that she felt compelled to do a follow-up segment last night, with Jeff Sharlet back, focusing on the weird system of "life coaching" apparently practiced among the members. She's especially taken with the newly revealed tale of Sen. John Ensign being browbeaten by his Family coaches (including, most famously, OK nutjob Sen. Tom Coburn) to break off his affair, even forcing him to write a letter to his heartthrob breaking it off and then dragging him to FedEx to send it -- except that the wily adulterer managed to sneak off to a telephone to call the lovely Cindy to tell her to pay no attention to the letter, and flew out to, um, "be" with her.

Come to think of it, Keith Olbermann also went wild over this story, and was in fact driven to a new installment of his, er, legendary Puppet Theater (there's also a follow-up with interview with Margaret Carlson on the political ramifications, which she thinks will now be dire):



Here's what I'm wondering: Do you think "Shut up, Coburn" is going to be the next big catch phrase?

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We think of them as crazies, but you know, the people who wander in and out of the Family's lodge house on C Street have clout in D.C.

A lot of jaws dropped last night when Rachel Maddow presented this segment on the fundamentalist sect The Family, which turns out to provide a creepy linking factor between those princes of "family values" NV Sen. John Ensign and SC Gov. Mark Sanford -- and that curious, cranky, and crazy loon and noodge, OK Sen. Tom Coburn.

by Ken

Even though the Family isn't totally unknown, I know a lot of people whose eyes were popping out during this segment about its connections to the Ensign and Sanford scandals. Among Rachel's guests was Jeff Sharlet, a contributing editor for Harper's and Rolling Stone who actually infiltrated the Family and literally wrote the book on it, The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, now out in paperback.

The Family, first published last year, is yet another of those books from recent years that are by all accounts utterly splendid, which I've forlornly added to the "must read" list that I know I'll never get to. By way of summary, Jeff posted the jacket copy on his blog when the book was published, in February 2008:

They are the Family—fundamentalism’s avant-garde, waging spiritual war in the halls of American power and around the globe. They consider themselves the new chosen, congressmen, generals, and foreign dictators who meet in confidential cells, to pray and plan for a “leadership led by God,” to be won not by force but through “quiet diplomacy.” Their base is a leafy estate overlooking the Potomac in Arlington, Virginia, and Jeff Sharlet is the only journalist to have written from inside its walls.

The Family is about the other half of American fundamentalist power—not its angry masses, but its sophisticated elites. Sharlet follows the story back to Abraham Vereide, an immigrant preacher who in 1935 organized a small group of businessmen sympathetic to European fascism, fusing the Far Right with his own polite but authoritarian faith. From that core, Vereide built an international network of fundamentalists who spoke the language of establishment power, a “family” that thrives to this day. In public, they host prayer breakfasts; in private they preach a gospel of “biblical capitalism,” military might, and American empire. Citing Hitler, Lenin, and Mao, the Family's leader declares, "We work with power where we can, build new power where we can't."

Sharlet’s discoveries dramatically challenge conventional wisdom about American fundamentalism, revealing its crucial role in the unraveling of the New Deal, the waging of the Cold War, and the no-holds-barred economics of globalization. The question Sharlet believes we must ask is not “What do fundamentalists want?” but “What have they already done?”

With regard to the political connections popping out now, our esteemed colleague Marcy Wheeler has been exploring the Ensign and Sanford ties to the Family lodge house on C Street: "Did the Ensign Confrontation over His Affair Take Place at a 'Family' Gathering?" (June 19), "Did 'the Family' Force Sanford to Ditch His Mistress?" (June 24), and "WaPo Discovers C Street" (June 26).

The infamous Family house on C Street

SATURDAY UPDATE: RACHEL DOES ANOTHER SEGMENT
ON THE FAMILY, WITH JEFF SHARLET RETURNING

And it turns out that what I've been calling the Family's C Street "lodge house" is actually . . . a church!

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