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Top Anti-Gay Group’s Wild 2008 Pre-Election Fear Mongering Never Came True

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Focus On The Family during the 2008 election issued a 34-point “Letter from 2012” that predicted how terrible America would become if Barack Obama were elected. Two  examinations of each of their 34 points, many of them anti-gay, reveals that out of 34, the only ones that came true were — actually, well, none.

In total, the “Letter” mentions the word “homosexual” or some variation of it, 34 times. By contrast, it mentions “Christian” 31 times, “God” only 11, and the “Bible” only five.

The “Letter” interestingly predicts:

Many of our freedoms have been taken away by a liberal Supreme Court and a Democratic majority in both the House and the Senate, and hardly any brave citizen dares to resist the new government policies any more.

That seems ironic, because the group that is trying to take away freedoms aren’t Democrats, but Republicans — in a huge way. And frankly, many of the prophecies the “Letter” suggests, sound pretty darn good. So, in reality, “our freedoms” actually means, “how we oppress minorities.”

Focus On The Family is not technically an anti-gay hate group, although it was founded by the same man, James Dobson, who did create an anti-gay hate group, the Family Research Council. And Focus on the Family does dip its toes pretty deep into the anti-gay hate water — just not enough for the Southern Poverty Law Center to add them to their list of active anti-gay hate groups.

In 2008, “A Christian from 2012” supposedly penned the “Letter from 2012 in Obama’s America.” Some of the predictions that anonymous “Christian” made include imposition of same-sex marriage across all 50 states, the dissolution of the Boy Scouts, the expelling of Christians from the U.S. armed forces once Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was repealed, along with the payment of special recruiting bonuses — only to homosexuals, though.

Focus on the Family’s “Letter” claimed that President Obama by 2012 had created a liberal-stacked Supreme Court with a 6-3 majority of “justices who were eager to create laws from the bench.”

But that isn’t all.

The most far-reaching transformation of American society came from the Supreme Court’s stunning affirmation, in early 2010, that homosexual “marriage” was a “constitutional” right that had to be respected by all 50 states because laws barring same-sex “marriage” violated the Equal Protection clause of the U.S. Constitution. Suddenly, homosexual “marriage” was the law of the land in all 50 states, and no state legislature, no state Supreme Court, no state Constitutional amendment, not even Congress, had any power to change it. The Supreme Court had ruled, and the discussion was over. This was a blatant example of creating law by the court, for homosexual “marriage” was mentioned nowhere in the Constitution, nor would any of the authors have imagined that same-sex “marriage” could be derived from their words. But it just followed the precedents that had been set by state supreme courts in Massachusetts (2003), California (2008) and Connecticut (2008).

President Obama repeated his declaration that he personally was against same-sex “marriage”, but he told the nation there was nothing he could do. The Supreme Court had ruled, and it was now the law of the land. The president asked the nation to support the decision.

After that decision, many other policies changed, and several previous Supreme Court cases were reversed rather quickly — raising the question, “Is America still the land of the free?”

Can’t you just taste the fear in the hearts of the Christian conservatives, the “Moral Majority,” the supposed Evangelical Christian, the radical right wing religious theocrats?

In Focus on the Family’s 2012, “many private Christian schools decided to shut down after the Supreme Court ruled that anti-discrimination laws that include sexual orientation extended to private institutions such as schools,6 and that private schools also had to obey the law and teach that homosexuality and heterosexuality are both morally good choices.”

And , yes, there’s more.

The Bible can no longer be freely preached over radio or television stations when the subject matter includes such “offensive” doctrines as criticizing homosexual behavior. The Supreme Court agreed that these could be kept off the air as prohibited “hate speech” that is likely to incite violence and discrimination. These policies followed broadcasting and print restrictions that were in place prior to 2008 in Canada and Sweden.

Fred Clark, who writes the excellent “Slacktivist” blog at Patheos, says the “‘Letter from 2012′ makes Focus on the Family look ridiculous,” but suggests, “let’s be generous — we’ll give them half credit for prediction No. 10. That one correctly foresaw the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” — but then also incorrectly predicted a host of disastrous consequences of that repeal.

Obama did repeal DADT, but Christians have not been expelled from the military and the Pentagon isn’t paying “special bonuses” to LGBT recruits. But still, that one comes closer than the other 33 predictions, which are all utterly wrong, so let’s cut Focus some slack and say they’re 0.5-for-34.

The Boy Scouts and private Christian schools were not forced to disband by the Supreme Court; adoption agencies remain in business; religious broadcasters still broadcast; churches are not being compelled to host gay weddings or to hire lesbian clergy; Christian tribal gatherings are still permitted “at the pole” in public high schools; the Pledge of Allegiance and private gun ownership have not been outlawed.

Libby Anne’s post is long because it is impressively thorough and methodical. Here is what Focus on the Family said would happen. Here is what actually did happen instead. Over and over and over. Focus on the Family was wrong. Focus on the Family was wrong. Focus on the Family was wrong. … Thirty-four times over. Treat yourself to reading the whole thing.

Re-reading the Focus letter four years later, what strikes me most — besides how utterly wrong they are about everything — is how parochial their imagination is when attempting to envision a political dystopia. The horrors they predict are almost all narrowly targeted at and tailored toward them. I’ve read a ton of dystopian stories, good and bad, and this is the most cluelessly self-absorbed vision of its kind that I’ve ever seen.

Maybe my favorite part of the letter (here’s a .pdf version) is prediction No. 18: “Pornographic magazines are openly displayed in gas stations, grocery stores and on newsstands.” I can’t figure out which is more laughably wrong — that this is what they imagine is the real secret agenda of President Obama and his party, or that anyone in 2008 was looking ahead to 2012 and predicting boom times for print media.

For a more extensive look, read  Libby Anne’s analysis.

Hat-tip: Andrew Sullivan

Related:

Bobby Jindal: Gay Marriage Slippery Slope To Overturning Second Amendment

Focus On The Family: Chick-Fil-A ‘No Way Deviated’ — Still Funding Anti-Gay Groups

Tweet Of The Day: Focus On The Family On How To Have Sex

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News

‘Wall of Resentment’: Trump’s ‘Affordability Weave’ Isn’t Working Says Columnist

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December 12, 2025

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President Donald Trump’s “signature” weave — where he goes off-script and off-topic — is not working for Americans when it comes to affordability.

That’s according to CBS News correspondent John Dickerson, writing at The Atlantic.

His weave was “on display” this week during a speech that the White House promoted as focused remarks on the economy, but his comments included, Dickerson noted, “the topics of tariffs, U.S. Steel, fracking, wind turbines, electric-vehicle mandates, immigration, crime, gender policies, Obamacare, the Fed, his election victories, rare-earth negotiations, a D.C. terror attack, and ‘the lips that don’t stop’ of White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.”

READ MORE: Trump Is the ‘Biggest Security Threat’ Facing America: Columnist

The problem, he noted is, “now that the engine of the U.S. economy is smoking, the American people are looking for a technician, not an improv comic.”

Trump is hitting “a wall of resentment,” according to Dickerson, who pointed to a Politico poll which, he noted, found that “nearly half of voters—including 37 percent of Trump’s own 2024 coalition—said that the cost of living is the ‘worst they can ever remember.'”

There’s more.

“Only 31 percent of U.S. adults now approve of how Trump is handling the economy, a new AP/NORC poll found, down from 40 percent in March,” he reported. “It’s the lowest economic approval that AP/NORC has registered in either of Trump’s two terms. In a recent CBS News/YouGov survey, a majority of respondents said that his policies are driving up food and grocery prices.”

During times of crisis other presidents have worked to get results:

“Franklin D. Roosevelt passed 15 major bills in 100 days. Ronald Reagan, in the teeth of double-digit unemployment, pushed for sweeping tax cuts week after week. Bill Clinton built an economic ‘war room’ before he even took office, and his team introduced what has now become a political cliché: focusing ‘like a laser beam’ on the economy. Barack Obama instituted a morning economic briefing that put the issue on par with national security. Each practiced the same principle: If you can’t solve the problem fast, at least get caught trying.”

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He say that now, Trump is trying. “Kind of.”

Despite talking about “affordability” during his Pennsylvania speech, he also knocked it.

“The president’s most focused message on affordability is that affordability concerns are a hoax. He used that word, or an equivalent, several times on Tuesday, as he has in Oval Office remarks, in a Cabinet meeting, and on social media.”

The “unavoidable truth, no matter how hard you weave,” Dickerson wrote, is that “his argument is weak because he has to overcome people’s lived experience.”

READ MORE: ‘You’re a Loser Dude’: Carville Scorches Trump as ‘Done’

 

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Trump Is the ‘Biggest Security Threat’ Facing America: Columnist

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December 12, 2025

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Nobel laureate and professor of economics Paul Krugman is condemning President Donald Trump as “the biggest security threat facing the U.S. and, indeed, all the world’s democracies.”

“According to Donald Trump,” Krugman wrote on Substack, “anything he doesn’t like is a threat to national security. Question his clearly illegal tariffs? You’re a dark and sinister force trying to undermine America. When the New York Times reported on signs that age may be taking a toll on Trump’s stamina, he denounced the reporting as ‘seditious, maybe even treasonous.'”

Krugman charged that “Trump’s foreign policy is not about securing the safety and well-being of the United States” and lambasted the “betrayal of America’s security interests.”

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“Trump doesn’t care at all about national security,” Krugman declared, “or for that matter America’s national interests. Instead, it’s all about him.”

He highlighted a report from Denmark’s military intelligence service that “contained the most explicit statement of the growing alarm. It pointed out that, under Donald Trump, America is no longer acting like a friendly partner.”

It read:

“The United States uses economic power, including threats of high tariffs, to enforce its will, and no longer rules out the use of military force, even against allies.”

READ MORE: ‘You’re a Loser Dude’: Carville Scorches Trump as ‘Done’

Other top U.S. allies, “including Canada and the UK, have reportedly acted to limit intelligence-sharing with the U.S.”

He also noted that Canadians and Europeans are “alarmed” by “the presence of Putin sympathizers and conspiracy theorists like Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence, in sensitive positions within the Trump administration.”

And he pointed to the “fawning and borderline treasonous conversation” Trump’s de facto envoy to Russia, Steve Witkoff, had with Putin’s foreign policy adviser, “in which Witkoff coached him on how to manipulate Trump.”

Krugman noted that Trump’s peace plan for Ukraine “reads like a Russian wish list, but it also uses some odd phrasing and syntax suggesting that it was translated from a Russian original.”

He asked, “who would want to share sensitive information with this American president?” And he concluded, “the biggest threats to U.S. national security aren’t coming from Beijing or Moscow. They’re coming straight out of the Oval Office.”

READ MORE: ‘Positively Authoritarian’: White House Tweets and Deletes ‘Naughty List’ of Journalists

 

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‘Positively Authoritarian’: White House Tweets and Deletes ‘Naughty List’ of Journalists

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3 hours ago

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December 12, 2025

By

The White House appears to have tweeted then deleted a “Naughty List” of journalists, including top news reporters and outlets, in an act that is being described as “positively authoritarian” by one legal expert.

The video was posted to X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, and the White House’s own website, which reads: “MEDIA OFFENDERS ON THE NAUGHTY LIST,” and “Video unavailable. This video has been removed by the uploader.”

A Google search of the White House’s page shows a video thumbnail consistent with the videos captured by several social media influencers.

READ MORE: ‘Where Is Antifa Headquartered?’: FBI Official Struggles Defending Top Threat Label

The video includes a Santa Claus chortling “ho ho ho,” and unrolling a scroll titled “Naughty List” that includes MS NOW reporters Carol Leonnig and Ken Dilanian, CNN’s Jake Tapper, and reporters from CBS News, Axios, and The Bulwark as well. The background music is “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.”

The video closes with the message, “Better luck next year,” then the screen reads:

The White House
President Donald J. Trump

An AI generated trending page on X reads: “The 34-second clip, posted Thursday evening, showed photos of journalists pinned to a wall alongside names like The New York Times and The Washington Post. It disappeared from the official account within hours amid backlash comparing it to authoritarian blacklists. Supporters laughed it off as holiday humor, while the White House site already tracks similar outlets in an ‘Offender Hall of Shame’ for alleged bias. The episode highlighted ongoing tensions over media coverage during the Trump administration.”

READ MORE: ‘You’re a Loser Dude’: Carville Scorches Trump as ‘Done’

“This is a blacklist,” wrote social media influencer The Maine Wonk, saying the video was “quickly deleted…after getting serious backlash.”

“This isn’t a joke. It’s a blacklist,” warned another influencer, Brian Allen. “Authoritarians always start by mocking the press… then labeling them… then listing them. We’re now on step two. History has seen this movie before and it never ends well.”

The Bulwark’s Tim Miller offered “Huge congrats” to one of the outlet’s reporters who appeared on the list, Adrian Carrasquillo, and commented, “(ooh we are really quaking in our boots on that one nerds).”

Justin Kanew’s The Tennessee Holler called it a list “showing who is doing their jobs.”

Professor of Law, MSNOW legal analyst, and former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance commented on the video, writing, “How positively…authoritarian.”

READ MORE: ‘His Heart Just Ain’t in It’: Report Reveals Trump’s ‘Achilles Heel’

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