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Exposed: Koch Brothers, Karl Rove, Tea Party ‘Coming Together’ With Anti-Gay Groups

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David Brody, the chief political reporter for CBN News admitted in an MSNBC “Morning Joe” discussion this morning that the Koch Brothers, Karl Rove, and the Tea Party are “coming together” with major anti-gay organizations and a hate group, the Family Research Council.

READ: New Poll Finds Tea Party Is Political Group That Hates Gays The Most

CBN News is the Christian Broadcasting Network, founded by televangelist Pat Robertson in 1961. Brody, author of the new book, The Teavangelicals: The Inside Story of How the Evangelicals and the Tea Party are Taking Back America, is also “a political contributor to Glenn Beck’s GBTV network,” according to CBN.

“We talk about the pro-life groups but the pro-life groups are also the Tea Party type groups, in other words, they’re all coming together,” Brody told the panel, explaining the close relationship between the Tea Party, Tea Party organizations, the Koch Brothers (who fund those groups,) anti-gay organizations, and anti-gay hate groups.

“Here’s my point: Concerned Women for America, a pro-life group, they’re working with Americans For Prosperity, Tim Phillips group, and so they’re doing a lot of bus tours together.”

Americans For Prosperity was founded by the Koch Brothers.

While Concerned Women for America is not technically a named anti-gay hate group, they are mentioned in this Southern Poverty Law Center article, “18 Anti-Gay Groups and Their Propaganda” at least five times. They, their work, and their people have been embedded in several other anti-gay hate groups, like the Family Research Council, Traditional Values Coalition, Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, and Chalcedon Foundation, the SPLC reports.

Here’s what the Southern Poverty Law Center article says about Concerned Women for America:

San Diego, Calif., activist Beverly LaHaye, whose husband Tim would go on to become famous as co-author of the Left Behind novels depicting the end times, started Concerned Women for America (CWA) in 1979 to create an anti-feminist group that matched the power of the National Organization for Women. Today, CWA claims more than 500,000 members organized into state chapters, a radio program that reaches more than 1 million listeners, and a cadre of attorneys and researchers devoted to the group’s mission of promoting biblical values.

LaHaye has blamed gay people for a “radical leftist crusade” in America and, over the years, has occasionally equated homosexuality with pedophilia. In 2001, she hired prominent anti-gay propagandists Robert Knight (now with Coral Ridge Ministries; see below) and Peter LaBarbera (now with Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, above) to launch CWA’s Culture and Family Institute. Matt Barber was CWA’s policy director for cultural issues in 2007 and 2008 before moving on to similar work with the Liberty Counsel (below).

While at CWA, on April 12, 2007, Barber suggested against all the evidence that there were only a “miniscule number” of anti-gay hate crimes and most of those “may very well be rooted in fraudulent reports.” In comments that have since disappeared from CWA’s website, Barber demanded a federal probe of “homosexual activists” for their alleged fabrications of hate crime reports.

CWA long relied on and displayed Knight’s articles and talking points, including claims that “homosexuality carries enormous physical and mental health risks” and “gay marriage entices children to experiment with homosexuality.” Most remarkably, Knight cited the utterly discredited work of Paul Cameron (see Family Research Institute, below) to bolster claims that homosexuality is harmful.

Today, CWA continues to make arguments against homosexuality on the basis of dubious claims. President Wendy Wright said this August that gay activists were using same-sex marriage “to indoctrinate children in schools to reject their parents’ values and to harass, sue and punish people who disagree.” Last year, CWA accused the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), a group that works to stop anti-gay bullying in schools, of using that mission as a cover to promote homosexuality in schools, adding that “teaching students from a young age that the homosexual lifestyle is perfectly natural … will [cause them to] develop into adults who are desensitized to the harmful, immoral reality of sexual deviance.”

“Family Research Council, the pro-life group, is working with Colin Hanna, and Let Freedom Ring, another Tea Party group. It’s all very much a conglomerate… coming together,” Brody continued.

Business Week describes Let Freedom Ring as “an advocacy organization active with ads targeting Obama in 2008 and whose founder is evangelical Christian John Templeton, and Washington-based Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies, which is affiliated with Republican political strategist Karl Rove, are also airing commercials critical of the president’s energy policy.”

Tony Perkins‘ Family Research Council, which most of America now knows is listed as an anti-gay hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, who notes:

Headed since 2003 by former Louisiana State Rep. Tony Perkins, the FRC has been a font of anti-gay propaganda throughout its history. It relies on the work of Robert Knight, who also worked at Concerned Women for America but now is at Coral Ridge Ministries (see above for both), along with that of FRC senior research fellows Tim Dailey (hired in 1999) and Peter Sprigg (2001). Both Dailey and Sprigg have pushed false accusations linking gay men to pedophilia: Sprigg has written that most men who engage in same-sex child molestation “identify themselves as homosexual or bisexual,” and Dailey and Sprigg devoted an entire chapter of their 2004 book Getting It Straight to similar material. The men claimed that “homosexuals are overrepresented in child sex offenses” and similarly asserted that “homosexuals are attracted in inordinate numbers to boys.”

That’s the least of it. In a 1999 publication (Homosexual Activists Work to Normalize Sex With Boys) that has since disappeared from its website, the FRC claimed that “one of the primary goals of the homosexual rights movement is to abolish all age of consent laws and to eventually recognize pedophiles as the ‘prophets’ of a new sexual order,” according to unrefuted research by AMERICAblog. The same publication argued that “homosexual activists publicly disassociate themselves from pedophiles as part of a public relations strategy.” FRC offered no evidence for these remarkable assertions, and has never publicly retracted the allegations. (The American Psychological Association, among others, has concluded that “homosexual men are not more likely to sexually abuse children than heterosexual men are.”)

In fact, in a Nov. 30, 2010, debate on MSNBC’s “Hardball with Chris Matthews” between Perkins and the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Mark Potok, Perkins defended FRC’s association of gay men with pedophilia, saying: “If you look at the American College of Pediatricians, they say the research is overwhelming that homosexuality poses a danger to children. So Mark is wrong. He needs to go back and do his own research.” In fact, the college, despite its hifalutin name, is a tiny, explicitly religious-right breakaway group from the American Academy of Pediatrics, the 60,000-member association of the profession. Publications of the American College of Pediatricians, which has some 200 members, have been roundly attacked by leading scientific authorities who say they are baseless and accuse the college of distorting and misrepresenting their work.

Elsewhere, according to AMERICAblog, Knight, while working at the FRC, claimed that “[t]here is a strong current of pedophilia in the homosexual subculture. … [T]hey want to promote a promiscuous society.” AMERICAblog also reported that then-FRC official Yvette Cantu, in an interview published on Americans for Truth About Homosexuality’s website, said, “If they [gays and lesbians] had children, what would happen when they were too busy having their sex parties?”

More recently, in March 2008, Sprigg, responding to a question about uniting gay partners during the immigration process, said: “I would much prefer to export homosexuals from the United States than to import them.” He later apologized, but then went on, last February, to tell MSNBC host Chris Matthews, “I think there would be a place for criminal sanctions on homosexual behavior.” “So we should outlaw gay behavior?” Matthews asked. “Yes,” Sprigg replied. At around the same time, Sprigg claimed that allowing gay people to serve openly in the military would lead to an increase in gay-on-straight sexual assaults.

Brody also stated this morning:

“What Ted Cruz did last night, talking about our rights come from God not government, Mitt Romney used that exact line in Irwin Pennsylvania and had — and I counted it — a 17-second standing ovation. Bigger than Obamacare, bigger than anything else.”

And Brody admitted Republican Senatorial nominee Ted Cruz used “code language” to appeal to religious voters, like, “the great awakening,” and agreed the former President George W. Bush also used the idea that rights come from God not from government.

“We hear about this all the time in those Tea Party and Evangelical circles, I call them the Teavangelical circles, you know, the great awakening, very much a spiritual reference to our nation’s history,” Brody said, talking about his book. “I talk about how our rights come from God, not government,” Brody added.

10 days ago, The New Civil Rights Movement reported on a new poll that found while “Democrats came in with 68% support for same-sex marriage, Independents with 57%, and Republicans with only 30%, a mere 6% of Tea Party members said they support same-sex marriage. No other group was close to that low support level.”

The relevant portion begins around the 8:00 minute mark, but the entire clip is fascinating.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32545640

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News

Greene Mocked for Weather Control Claim as NC Lawmaker Pleads for Conspiracy ‘Junk’ to End

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October 4, 2024

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“Friends can I ask a small favor?” North Carolina Republican state Senator Kevin Corbin’s Facebook post began Thursday afternoon. “Will you all help STOP this conspiracy theory junk that is floating all over Facebook and the internet about the floods in WNC,” he wrote, referring to Hurricane Helene-hit western North Carolina.

Senator Corbin listed some examples of the conspiracy theories he and his fellow lawmakers are battling as they try to bring help to the people they represent: “FEMA is stealing money from donations, body bags ordered but government has denied, bodies not being buried, government is controlling the weather from Antarctica, government is trying to get lithium from WNC, stacks of bodies left at hospitals, and on and on and on.”

“PLEASE help stop this junk. It is just a distraction to people trying to do their job.”

In the middle of Corbin’s post, one conspiracy theory stood out: “government is controlling the weather.”

READ MORE: ‘Wowza’: Economists Thrilled With ‘Huge’ Jobs Report and Wages Outpacing Prices

That echoes a claim U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) made just hours later, Thursday night on social media:

“Yes they can control the weather. It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done.”

Exactly 12 hours after she posted that falsehood, it’s been been viewed 4.6 million times—not including all the screenshots that are flying around social media.

Congresswoman Greene is being widely derided and mocked.

National security expert, NSA contractor, and former Republican U.S. Rep. Denver Riggleman of Virginia blasted Greene.

“This person is in Congress,” he wrote on social media. “This ignorance, this lunacy, is why we have a government teetering and lurching. Her stupidity is a disease. She’s not alone either. Who do we blame? Well, folks.. we blame disinfo ecosystems— like here on X and we blame… voters. Mass idiocy. Stupid votes count.”

He added: “It’s dangerous how dumb she is.”

Some suggested Greene was merely referring to cloud seeding, attempts to increase rainfall, which date back to the 1940’s.

Riggleman disputed those suggestions: “She’s not thinking of cloud seeding— she is a QAnon adherent who also believes in direct prophecy and 9/11 conspiracies.”

Indeed, in 2021, just weeks after she was sworn in, Media Matters reported on Greene’s conspiracy theory-fueled history: “Marjorie Taylor Greene penned conspiracy theory that a laser beam from space started deadly 2018 California wildfire.”

“In November 2018, California was hit with the worst wildfire in the state’s history. At the time, future Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) wrote a bizarre Facebook post that echoed QAnon conspiracy theorists and falsely claimed that the real and hidden culprit behind the disaster was a laser from space triggered by some nefarious group of people,” the report reads.

READ MORE: JD Vance Says ‘Yes’ Trump Won in 2020 Then Walks Away When Asked ‘Will You Concede?’

“Greene’s post, which hasn’t previously been reported, is just the latest example to be unearthed of her embracing conspiracy theories about tragedies during her time as a right-wing commentator. In addition to being a QAnon supporter, Greene has pushed conspiracy theories about 9/11, the Parkland and Sandy Hook school shootings, the Las Vegas shooting, and the murder of Democratic staffer Seth Rich, among others.”

“Greene also has a history of pushing anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic remarks,” Media Matters wrote before noting, “CNN’s Em Steck and Andrew Kaczynski recently reported that on her Facebook page, ‘Greene repeatedly indicated support for executing prominent Democratic politicians in 2018 and 2019 before being elected to Congress.'”

Some, including Newsweek on Friday, suggested Greene was referring to Democrats when she ambiguously wrote, “they can control the weather,” but others insisted she was referring to Jews.

U.S. Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) served up this response:

Gun violence prevention activist Shannon Watts added, “Reminder: This is a conspiracy theory based in anti-Semitism alleging that Jewish people have the technology to manipulate the weather and cause freak storms that wreak havoc on the world.”

Regardless of who Congresswoman Greene was referring to, her promotion of yet another dangerous conspiracy theory at a time when people in the area of the country she claims to be fighting for are calling for level heads stands out.

U.S. Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI), appearing to respond to Greene’s tweet (which he had just retweeted) wrote: “Spreading lies during natural disasters is a special kind of evil. Don’t do it, don’t indulge it, don’t excuse it.”

Overnight, NBC News reported: “At least 215 people are known to have died as a result of the destruction wrought by Hurricane Helene since it made landfall in Florida a week ago.”

“More than half of the deaths were in North Carolina, where several feet of fast-moving water destroyed entire communities,” the report adds. “Hundreds are still missing, and officials have reported difficulties in identifying some of the dead.”

Senator Corbin, in his Facebook post, also stressed the need for an end to what he described as “intentional distractions.”

“Folks, this is a catastrophic event of which this country has never known. It is the largest crisis event in the history of N.C. The state is working non-stop,” he wrote. “DOT has deployed workers from all over the state. Duke power has 10,000 workers on this. FEMA is here. The National Guard is here in large numbers.”

“Government will play a role in this cleanup,” he promised. “We are going to make sure the state chips in some massive money. But Government is not the total solution. YES, there are a lot of neighbors helping neighbors and that’s good and the way it should be. Please don’t let these crazy stories consume you or have you continually contact your elected officials to see if they are true. I just talked to one Senator that has had 15 calls TODAY about why we don’t stop …….. ‘fill in the blank.’ 98% chance it’s not true and if it is a problem, somebody is aware and on it and not waiting for a post to go thru 10,000 people to be addressed. Thanks for listening but I’ve been working on this 12 hours a day since it started and I’m growing a bit weary of intentional distractions from the main job …. which is to help our citizens in need.”

READ MORE: ‘Judicially Executed Cover Up’: Experts Say Jack Smith Filing ‘Major Indictment’ of SCOTUS

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‘Wowza’: Economists Thrilled With ‘Huge’ Jobs Report and Wages Outpacing Prices

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3 hours ago

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October 4, 2024

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The September jobs report is a stunning confirmation of just how “strong” and “resilient” the U.S economy is, according to economic experts who are celebrating Friday morning.

“US economy smashes expectations with 254,000 jobs added in September,” The Financial Times reports, “far outstripping expectations.”

“Wowza: HUGE jobs report,” exclaimed Professor of economics Justin Wolfers, a senior fellow at Brookings and a frequent guest on cable news. “This economic expansion that is motoring along.”

“This is a great September jobs report,” declared The Washington Post’s Heather Long. “The ‘soft landing’ is still on track.”

The New York Times’ economic reporter, Talmon Joseph Smith, summed up the news:

Economists had expected 140,000 to 159,000 new jobs. The unemployment rate fell to 4.1%, continuing the Biden administration’s historic record of producing and maintaining unemployment at five-decade lows.

READ MORE: JD Vance Says ‘Yes’ Trump Won in 2020 Then Walks Away When Asked ‘Will You Concede?’

“Average hourly earnings grew 0.4% last month, and are now up 4.0% over the year. There’s no question that wages are running ahead of prices, and people are seeing meaningful real wage gains,” he added. Wolfers says he’s “been relentlessly optimistic about the economy for the past couple of years, and it’s felt lonely at times during the drumbeat of ‘recession’ talk, but it’s also been a pretty great place to be. If you were looking for what a soft landing looks like, this is it.”

Bloomberg News adds, “Unemployment for major ethnic groups — Black, White, Hispanic — fell, while the Asian unemployment rate held steady.”

President Biden, who worked with the dockworkers union to bring an extraordinarily fast end to their strike that ended after just three days this week, took a victory lap.

READ MORE: ‘Judicially Executed Cover Up’: Experts Say Jack Smith Filing ‘Major Indictment’ of SCOTUS

“Today, we received good news for American workers and families with more than 250,000 new jobs in September and unemployment back down at 4.1%,” President Biden said in a statement. “With today’s report, we’ve created 16 million jobs, unemployment remains low, and wages are growing faster than prices. Under my Administration, unemployment has been the lowest in 50 years, a record 19 million new businesses have been created, and inflation and interest rates are falling. And we’re seeing the power of collective bargaining to lift up workers’ wages—including the progress made by dockworkers on record wages with carriers, and port operators and the reopening of East Coast and Gulf ports.”

Biden also took a swipe at Republicans.

“Congress should pass our plan to build millions of new homes, expand prescription drug price caps, empower workers and protect the right to organize, and cut taxes for hardworking families. Congressional Republicans have a different plan—more giant tax cuts for billionaires and big corporations, ending the Affordable Care Act, undermining workers by cutting overtime and making it harder to organize, and imposing a national sales tax that would raise costs by nearly $4,000 per year. While they put billionaires first, we’ll keep fighting to grow the middle class.”

See the social media posts above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Biggest Whopper of the Night’: Vance’s ‘Heap of Lies’ on Abortion Was ‘Jaw-Dropping’

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Democrats Call for Trump-Appointed Scandal-Ridden Inspector General to Be Ousted

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19 hours ago

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October 3, 2024

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Two House Democratic Ranking Members are calling for the removal of the Dept. of Homeland Security Inspector General Joseph Cuffari, appointed by Donald Trump in 2019, accusing him of lying to Congress, misleading Congress, blatantly abusing his powers, and wasting millions in taxpayer dollars.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, Ranking Member of the Committee on Oversight and Accountability, and Ranking Member Bennie G. Thompson, Ranking Member of the House Committee on Homeland Security, in a statement following the release of a damning independent report say “Inspector General Cuffari’s extensive and shocking record of misconduct and obstruction is evidence that he has seriously compromised the public’s trust and is plainly not fit to serve in a position that requires him to guard the public interest and act beyond reproach.”

“Cuffari’s unprecedented misconduct in office has been underscored and exacerbated by his persistent and repeated obstruction of oversight efforts. Not only did he fail to fully and meaningfully comply with our investigation—he actively worked to undermine and thwart it.” They call his actions “an outrageous affront and embarrassment to the inspector general community and have undermined the reputation of the entire DHS Office of Inspector General.”

READ MORE: JD Vance Says ‘Yes’ Trump Won in 2020 Then Walks Away When Asked ‘Will You Concede?’

The Project On Government Oversight (POGO), a nonpartisan independent watchdog, on Wednesday released a report alleging Cuffari “waged a years-long campaign to derail and discredit investigations into allegations of his misconduct, which include claims he retaliated against whistleblowers.”

The independent report from the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE) did not cite Cuffari’s actions in deleted texts scandal, but as NCRM reported in 2022, Cuffari appeared to have waited seven months to notify Congress of the missing text messages from the day before and day of the January 6, 2021 insurrection.

That means that four months after the January 6 insurrection the Dept. of Homeland Security knew Secret Service agents’ text messages, from the day before and day of the attack on the U.S. Capitol, were missing and did not inform Congress or the National Archives, which is required by law to retain those records.

RELATED: ‘Coverup of Treason’: Trump-Appointed IG, Under Investigation, Knew of Missing Secret Service and DHS Texts Far Earlier

The deleted Secret Service texts were not the only missing data at DHS.

“Text messages for President Donald Trump’s acting homeland security secretary Chad Wolf and acting deputy secretary Ken Cuccinelli are missing for a key period leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol,” The Washington Post reported in July 2022.

Cuffari also reportedly “declined to pursue investigations into Secret Service during Trump administration,” The Washington Post reported in 2021, and “blocked investigations proposed by career staff … to scrutinize the agency’s handling of the George Floyd protests in Lafayette Square and the spread of the coronavirus in its ranks.”

“Hundreds of Secret Service officers were either infected with the coronavirus or had to quarantine after potential exposure … as Trump continued to travel and hold campaign events during the pandemic.”

The White House says the report is “concerning, but Politico reports Republicans are circling the wagons around Cuffari.

“Firing Cuffari could spark outrage from Capitol Hill Republicans, who have praised him for investigating DHS’s trouble vetting people evacuated from Afghanistan and its inability to monitor all unaccompanied migrant children released from federal custody after traveling to the United States,” Politico reports. “As CIGIE’s investigation into Cuffari has unfolded, congressional Republicans have rallied around him, suggesting he is being targeted as punishment for criticizing the administration. In an occasionally contentious July hearing, House Oversight Republicans pressed the head of CIGIE on how his office handles investigations into inspectors general and raised concerns about the Cuffari probe.”

In 2023 Cuffari testified before Congress he had deleted text messages from his government-issued cell phone which he also stated he did not use for personal reasons. He alleged the texts he deleted were not considered government records.

Watch the video below or at this link.

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