The spokesman for Christian Exodus, Cory Burnell, is the NE Texas Regional Director for the neo-confederate League of the South.

As I noted in an earlier post, he also promoted an earlier Christian secessionist plan called The Confederate State of America Project (CSA). Other backers included Ron Holland, the leader of the failed Southern Party, and Robert Hayes and James E. Layden, the Director and Chair, respectively, of the League of the South’s North Carolina chapter.

George W. Bush is in a statistical dead heat with John Kerry according to the latest Minnesota poll. A poll conducted by St Paul Pioneer Press and Minnesota Public Radio shows Bush with 41% vs Kerry’s 44% with 13% undecided and 2% supporting Ralph Nader. The poll results show that Bush is still competitive in Minnesota and that his support continues to come from his traditional base, men along with suburban, western and south Minnesota voters favor Bush, whereas women and the urban regions of Minnesota (St. Paul and Minneapolis) and the northwestern sectors support Kerry.

Yet, the fact that Bush is only receiving a 44% approval rating on this poll in Minnesota puts the results into question. Back in January, Bush’s approval ratings showed that 57% of those questioned approved of his handling the job as president, so there has been dramatic deterioration on this front.
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This is Part II of The Right Will Fight Dirty

Major league baseball teams use the minor league teams as a place to “farm” new baseball players. These minor league teams plant seeds by hiring hundreds of young “wannabe” players, providing them with a place to make a living while they train and gain experience, and eventually some of the best players rise up to “the majors.” Hence the term “farm teams.”

In The Next Generation, Atrios linked to Right On, a piece by Matthew Yglesias, which links to a piece by Laura Rozen describing how the right-wing American Enterprise Institute enthusiastically recruits young interns. They are discussing how the Right has a “farm team” system in place to provide internships, training, materials, etc. to a next generation of right-wingnuts to be political candidates at all levels, Congressional staffers, pundits, speakers, activists, etc. The Right has farm teams to recruit young people who are interested in politics, train them, give them a place to grow and learn. Moderates and Progressives do not.
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You may have already read about Christian Exodus at Prairie Angel, BlondeSense, or Sound and Fury. It’s an organization that is trying to take political control of a Southern state for the purpose of secession–they hope to create a fundamentalist Christian nation.

The idea sounded a lot like the Northwest Imperative to me, so I thought I’d go to their website and see who was behind it. Curiously, although they mention a Board of Directors, they don’t list them nor do they list any of their backers.

I then did a little more googling and learned that the group’s spokesman, Cory Burnell, promoted a similar plan called the Confederate State of America at the neo-confederate website, the Southern Caucus.

That sparked my suspicions even more, so I wrote them. Here’s their response:

Hello Sir,
Our board of directors consists of four individuals:
A rancher in Washington state,
A CPA in Tyler, TX
A business owner in Tyler, TX
and a minister in Florida.

We’ve purposely kept our board anonymous in this early stage due to the incredible media strain. We’d rather they not contact board members directly (I have received dozens of phone calls this week at my home). Once things settle down, there will be a page on our new website listing the board members. Additionally, our Statement of Faith and our Position Statement (a White Paper of sorts) have been sent to the Board for approval and should be public very shortly. Those documents will help you understand our organization.

Please be patient as things unfold, because the WND article preempted our official launch. So we’ve had to accelerate things very quickly.

God bless,
Cory

–
Cory Burnell, MBA
President
ChristianExodus.org

This group’s commitment to secrecy is interesting. They’re worth watching.

… and try out a double-shot of the truth-in-puppetry liquor that Billmon’s serving the past two days. You’ll get drunk, while the CIA remains the skunk. You know, the same CIA that gave us Abu Ghraib.

You might save them bandwidth costs by waiting a couple days before visiting Lunaville. But with Doonesbury picking up their database of names of the American war dead in Iraq, Mike and Pat deserve a round of applause, along with others on their team.

Along with the soldiers I thank on Memorial Day, I count the journalists and bloggers who defend and rescue the truth as worthy of my gratitude. Some have died in this war and I wish I had a list of their names, as well.

Cox was Borked, Dash proved wise and both are gone. And I’m still wondering if the ethics of half the country have died too, and whether we can overcome the injury to the truth that the Bush administration has been responsible for.

Thank you, Archie. Thank you, Sam. You won’t be forgotten by this American, ever.

In a swing state like Oregon, Democratic victories statewide or nationwide depend on its most democratic city, Portland. Polls show a dead heat between Kerry & Bush in a state that’s one of the hardest hit in unemployment terms.

So the mayor of Portland race is always important here. And Tom Potter faces a November runoff after he nearly pulled off an outright win in the primary.

Potter is a former police chief from Portland, left of center and respected by homeless advocates for working out solutions when police and homeless folks clashed.

And now, Howard Dean’s giving him backing, one of the best bits of news I’ve seen in this state for awhile.

(This may prove doubly useful to me. If I don’t pin down a job soon, I may be one o’ those homeless bums by midsummer.)

“Honk Kong Rally Signals Start of Turbulent Summer”

This is a example of today’s NY Times headlines, demonstrating how committed they are to accuracy and reliable reporting.

Honk if you love the Kong after it falls off its perch. I hate to say it, but The Grey Lady’s dementia grows worse daily. And I’ll echo others in saying Digby’s done a great job defining her dilemma yesterday.

You have to search carefully to piece together the real hidden agenda liberals have, but here’s some more evidence that what those self-hating guilty leftists are really after is the total destruction of the human race.

Start with this story:

A German couple who went to a fertility clinic after eight years of marriage have found out why they are still childless - they weren’t having sex. … “We are not talking retarded people here, but a couple who were brought up in a religious environment who were simply unaware, after eight years of marriage, of the physical requirements necessary to procreate.”

This shows that absence of education is equal to education in abstinence, which justifies Our Noble Leader’s opposition to those liberal public schools. But did Second-Day Lede, who found this article, celebrate this scientific evidence that home schooling can prevent teenaged pregnancy? No, she used this as an excuse to subject those devoted religious people to cruel mockery:

Why would anyone encourage these people to reproduce?

Her meaning is clear: only sceptics, scoffers, and Satanists should have children. The devout should die out. What she’s calling for here is nothing less than self-inflicted genocide for the Godly.
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What’s that smell in this room? Didn’t you notice it, Brick? Didn’t you notice the powerful and obnoxious odor of mendacity in this room? –Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

The green-eyed monsters of the “environmental” movement praise the Ketchup Consort for his concern with the Earth. His older, richer spouse is acclaimed for

improving the scientific and economic foundation for environmental policy through collaboration among industry, government, academic, and environmental organizations.

They’re working together, all right, but not just to impose Kyoto’s Krippling Kontrols upon our struggling corporations. No, they’ve come up with a scheme that would give her more profits to pass out to her left-wing subversive groups, and him more revenues ripped from the wallets of the rich to hand out for worthless social programs. It’s all revealed in an announcement from her family company’s Australian branch:

We’re opening a restaurant! Beanz Meanz Heinz - the world’s first restaurant dedicated exclusively to Heinz Baked Beans starts cooking in Melbourne….

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Sources close to the American Street have learned more details regarding the elevated threat level from terrorists in the US this summer. A secret memo from a White House operative signed “DC” (which may stand for either “District of Columbia,” “Divine Cherub,” “Dick Cheney” or all the above) describes a “terrorist organization” that will gather in their “unholy city” of Boston in late July to honor their incoming leadership.

“DC” says this organization is dedicated to the overthrow of all that George W. Bush holds dear. “There is little doubt why they chose to gather in Boston. This is the center of a depraved state that has recently violated our natural essence — a state that has desecrated the idea that marriage is between one man and his woman and his girlfriend,” DC wrote.

DC minced no words in his continuing assessment of the threat:
“Thousands of these terrorists are expected to flood the city not far from Plymouth Rock, where our ancestors invaded their first country and occupied the native populations — many of them dying at the hands and arrows of insurgents. Here in the bedrock of America — not far from Salem, where young women learned the perils of thinking for themselves — these terrorists and tree huggers want to rape our environment of fear and bring comfort to Cadillac-driving welfare mothers.”

DC noted that every dollar that can be spared from the Halliburton war effort will go to protecting America’s homeland security from these “actors of evil.” DC noted that some of these terrorists expected in Boston have been known actors on the world stage. “Some have been ‘Yentils,’ ‘Taxi Drivers,’ and a few have even been seen ‘Bowling for Columbine.’

Homeland Security personnel will be watching Logan Airport on the last weekend of July to watch for the terrorist arrivals. Others will be standing at both ends of the Mystic River Bridge and the “Big Dig.” Unlike 2001, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge says agents will be ready to cart off terrorists to an undisclosed location. Ridge would not admit whether or not that “undisclosed location” would be Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where scores of enemy combatants await the faith-based justice of George W. Bush. White House officials were clear that unlike this year’s Super Bowl, there would be no wardrobe adjustments or other obscenities coming out of Boston this summer. “Not even C-SPAN cameras will hear them scream,” DC said in his memo.

“Someday we will be able to make Boston a part of the free world again, a place where priests can safely meet in private with young and old, “he noted in his memo. “But for now, we can only hope that we will be able to turn back this savage invasion of a place that has given us Michael Dukakis, Patriot Act Day and a lovable green monster.”

Remember Pat Tillman, the football player who gave up a big contract and left his new wife to go serve? Well, it looks like we killed him

Pat Tillman, the former National Football League safety who left the Arizona Cardinals to join the Army after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, was “probably'’ killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan, the U.S. Army said today.

Tillman had left his vehicle and moved into position to suppress enemy fire, U.S. Central Command said in a statement. His unit was ambushed with small arms and mortar fire while it conducted combat operations, the statement said.

The April 22 ambush occurred in “very severe and constricted terrain with impaired light conditions,'’ it said.

“There is an inherent degree of confusion in any firefight, particularly when a unit is ambushed, and especially under difficult light and terrain conditions which produces an environment that increases the likelihood of fratricide,'’ the statement said.

Tillman, 27, enlisted in the Army with his brother, Kevin, seven months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. He left behind a new bride, a NFL career and a %243.6 million contract with the Arizona Cardinals.

The rest, NWS so much.
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Democrats are enraged at Ralph Nader because he might steal votes away from their Taxachusetts Darling this fall. Some have declared total moral bankruptcy in their hypocritical anti-democratic efforts to keep him from getting on state ballots or drawing any lefty support.

Mike Frisby, a former Boston Globe reporter who worked for Draft Clark 2004 … now is spokesman for StopNader.com. His group has little sympathy for the Naderites who “look me in the eye and say that they’re an idealist,” Frisby said. “There’s a time and a place for everything, and right now is not a time and a place for idealism.”

We thank you for that brilliant example of precisely how not to try and persuade those holier-than-thou Ralphid dogs not to waste their votes. Keep it up, Mike. We’ll give you a Presidential medal after November.
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Liberals continue to vent frustration and befuddlement over how Our Noble Leader’s poll numbers show growing public disapproval of his policies, yet his election numbers are still within the margin of error against The Ketchup Consort. At the same time they have paranoid visions of election software stealing votes this November. Somehow they still haven’t made the obvious connection between those two mysteries: it’s the fundraising, stupid. When an election is already decided, than a campaign is really all about contributions. That money will help us reduce the Democrats to even greater irrelevancy.

No, we aren’t worried about “winning” this fall (and we have a Court standing by, just in case). Yet there are still at least a few corporate donors who retain enough scruples that we can’t just tell them that. For those givers, polls still matter. They won’t cough up as much if we are hopelessly behind, so we have to make sure our numbers stay within shooting range of Heinz-Kerry. Now, if we are willing to hide self-erasing miscounting programs in the election software, why wouldn’t we be willing to hack into the polling companies’ computers to skew their results? The answer is left as an exercise to the student. Let’s just say that Karl can keep smiling as long as no one passes a law demanding paper ballots and recounts for preference polls.

Summertime,
And the threats aren’t specific
Jar Jar’s jumpin’
And the alert is now high

Haliburton’s rich
And the twins are good lookin’
So hush little Dubya
Stay off the bike

One of these mornings
We’re going to just bomb them
Spreading democracy
With profits to the sky

But till that morning
Polls just can’t harm us
Ashcroft and Rumsfeld, standing by

Summertime,
And the spinin’ is easy
Keep them frightened
And our rating is high

All our friends are rich
But the torture’s bad lookin’
So hush little media
Don’t you pry

Today the Department of Homeland Security warned of a much higher risk of a terrorist attack over the coming months, which prompted them to raise the threat level from Yellow (”Elevated”) to Yellow (”Still Elevated”). “The threat level remains fundamentally the same,” said Tom Ridge, “Except that it is definitely, certainly much threatier.”

In response, the FBI pledged to step up its random arrest program, used most recently to such great effect with Portland lawyer Brandon Mayfield last week, who, although not a terrorist, “was unable to mount a terrorist attack during his two weeks in captivity, had he really been one.”

Although unable to supply a date, time, place, method, situation, guess, hope, or random thought for the expected attack on the U.S. by al Qaeda, Ridge said there was “credible intelligence” corroborated by lots of “chatter” that, while not “actionable,” provided a firm basis for scaring the bejesus out of an otherwise complacent U.S. populace.

“We don’t want people to panic,” said Ridge. “But it could be any place, at any time, and it could be either a nuclear explosion that flattens the coast or a biological attack that could make “The Day After Tomorrow” look like a high school picnic.”

“Or not,” he added.

Ridge cut his remarks short to make a trip to Capitol Hill to get the Department of Homeland Security renamed the “Department of Scaring The Pants Off People While Not Offering The Slightest Help Whatsoever.”

I’ve been trying for three weeks to write about what happens after the election, and I keep getting hung up on the things the Right will do to stay in power. Beyond just the loss of power, any honest Justice Department or Congressional examination of their activities since January 2001 is likely to land many of them in prison for a very long time. So maybe I need to get that subject out of the way before I can write about AFTER the election.

We’ve all heard each other’s paranoid talk that there will be an “October Surprise,” or that the voting machines will refuse to count Democratic votes, or that the Republicans might just cancel the election. Unfortunately there is reason to fear. In 1968, fearing an end of the Vietnam War would mean a Humphrey victory, the Republicans sabotaged the pending peace agreement, and by 1972 they had turned the IRS, FBI and CIA into little more than arms of The Party, with the government acting as a pay-to-play contractor to large corporate contributors. Fortunately there was still an independent press and a Congress willing to investigate such matters when they became visible, and Nixon had to resign.
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Call to Renewal held their conference “Pentecost 2004: Making Poverty a Religious and Electoral Issue” last week. It resulted in the signing of the Unity Statement on Overcoming Poverty:

As Christian leaders in the United States, we recognize that we live in a time when political and social issues threaten to divide the church. Although there are issues on which we do not agree, we come together to affirm that justice for those in our society who live in poverty is, for all of us, a deeply held religious belief on which we are firmly united. We affirm God’s vision of a good society offered to us by the prophet Isaiah. His words are as relevant today as they were 3,000 years ago, and show us the way forward. Isaiah envisions a society where:

No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days, or an old person who does not live a lifetime…They shall build houses and inhabit them: they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. They shall not build and another inhabit: they shall not plant and another eat; for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be, and my chosen will long enjoy the work of their hands. They shall not labor in vain, or bear their children for calamity; for they shall be offspring blessed by the Lord….” (Isaiah 65:20-25)

The Rev. Chris Hobgood, General Minister and President of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and the Rev. John H. Thomas, General Minister and President of the United Church of Christ wrote a letter recently to President Bush on the crisis in the Middle East:

Mr. President, we urge you to do all that is within your power to restrain Israel from further assaults on the Palestinians of Gaza, particularly those refugees living in the Rafah Camp. Mr. President, we appeal to you to seek the acquiescence of Israelis and Palestinians to abide by agreements to stop all forms of violence and to desist from unilateral alterations to the facts on the ground. Mr. President, we implore you to mobilize the resources of your good office to resuscitate the Road Map and to re-engage in the steps necessary to bring about peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Such engagement, we believe, is in the best interest of the United States, and must be a priority for peace-loving people throughout the world. In that vein, please find enclosed our denominations’ resolutions from our 2003 General Synod (United Church of Christ) ucc.org/synod/resolutions/res24-26a.pdf and General Assembly (Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) disciples.org/ga03/resolutions/ on U.S. Policy in the Middle East, which we share for your positive consideration.

Christian Peacemakers Team has been in the news a lot this month. This is the organization that helped uncover the abuse of Iraqi prisoners under US control. Read their report and recommendations on Iraqi detainees.

The Interfaith Alliance is asking Americans to take part in multi-faith effort to draw attention to the atrocities in Iraq:

Washington, May 26—Today, The Interfaith Alliance announced “Lights for Human Dignity,” a joint, nationwide response to atrocities in Iraq, calling on the nation to turn on lights or light candles all night Sunday, May 30 until dawn Monday, Memorial Day.

“We are asking all Americans who believe in human dignity to please light up your houses of worship, homes, businesses, community centers, and anywhere else you feel is appropriate,” Gaddy said. “By this simple action we can demonstrate to the world that we share common values as people of faith and as patriots.”

A growing list of religious and community organizations, representing Christians, Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, and more than 75 faith traditions, will join to illuminate the nation.

Click here to learn more.

The National Council of Churches USA held a memorial service on Thursday for all those who have died in Iraq. Earlier in the week a group including NCC leaders met with the Secretary-General of the United Nations to discuss the situation in Iraq.

Anyone who doubts that Kerry can talk a good spiel when the chips are down should read both of the speeches Mark Kleiman quoted.

Kerry can win the military vote and the tough on terror vote talking like this and them’s the only places he trails Bush a little… so far. From my perspective as a liberal, I don’t see any serious weaknesses in the Kerry platform, foreign and domestic, beyond my concern that he can’t fully relate to America’s impoverished, which is my address.

Ah well, I don’t rely on any politician for my nirvana. Kerry’ll be a damn sight better than Bush just because he’s ethical, he understands war and can speak actual English without bruising his face.

I say, let’s go for the rout now. It’ll take a weak economy to achieve, but I think Americans can handle that. If he does that, my reasoning in the 2000 elections will be borne out, with the GOP proving itself a disgrace at the level it’s fallen to, playing sycophant to Little Lord Holier-than-God.

Jay celebrates his first year at Folkbum today. All he wants for his anniversary is for you to donate a bit to Russ Feingold’s reelection bid. Tomorrow is when WI became the 30th state (and it’s the late JFK’s birthday, so it’s a fine time to donate to Feingold and the second JFK).

And all I want is for your votes to count so go sign up to the campaign for verified voting.

We’ve all seen railroad flatcars loaded with freight-truck containers. These are carried to ports and loaded on thousands of container ships, which carry them around the world. The Colombo Bay carries more than 3,000 such containers, and it is not the largest of the container ships.

These vast ships are the tramp steamers of our era. They travel from port to port at speeds of 22 knots, unloading some containers and picking up other containers. Their turnaround times are much less leisurely than in Conrad’s era, although the similarity to his stories is striking. Container ships have become the lifeblood of global trade and have added a trillion dollars to the U.S. annual business inventory. We couldn’t do without them.

But think of the possibility for terrorists in those 3,000 containers on The Colombo Bay. When it docked off New York, the crew discovered that the seal had been broken on a container that carried missile warheads manufactured in Germany and shipped by rail to a French port for transit to the Raytheon Corp. The French authorities had broken the seal to inspect the contents and (with characteristic French efficiency) had placed a makeshift lock on the container and made no annotations on the shipping papers.

The Coast Guard spent two days clearing the container. Pollak comments that the Coast Guard’s equipment is obsolescent (helicopters 20 years old) and its computers a generation behind — and unable to communicate with the computers of the FBI, CIA and INS. Terrorists would have seen that a proper seal was on one of their containers.

Pollak adds that in 2003, Sen. Ernest Hollings, author of the Maritime Transportation Security Act, requested $1 billion for the Coast Guard for port security as an amendment to the $87 billion appropriation for the war in Iraq. The amendment was rejected. It was a classic example of how the administration’s distraction with Iraq interfered with a critical component of homeland security — which is not the same thing as President Bush’s Frankenstein monster Department of Homeland Security.

Father Andrew Greeley provides the tragedy awaiting us from the policies of homeland unprotection.

Ten ways we botched Iraq, per Molly.

As we head into Memorial Day weekend, why not remember someone who has added much to our lives, before being imprisoned by the country with the highest incarceration rate on the planet and rejects calls to conform to international standards for humane treatment of prisoners.

I refer, of course, to our prison system and a guy who has added mirth to our lives before they spent $12 million to put him in jail because his son sold bongs: Tommy Chong.

You can write him here. It’s a telling example of puritanism spreading the meme of the denial of joy at an enormous and unecessary cost to society. Osama runs free while Tommy rots.