All Posts Tagged With: "His"

Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) is scheduled to give the keynote address at Pastor John Hagee’s ‘Christians United for Israel’ Summit on July 22^nd. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Hagee, he is the founder and pastor of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas. Cornerstone is a non-denominational, charismatic church with 19,000 members. He is also CEO of his non-profit corporation, Global Evangelism Television (GETV) as well as President and CEO of John Hagee Ministries, which telecasts his national television and radio ministries on 160 TV stations, 50 radio stations and eight networks. On February 7, 2006, Hagee found Christians United for Israel, which calls itself “a national grassroots movement focused on the support of Israel.”

It was after McCain sought and received Hagee’s endorsement that the controversy began. Hagee’s radical view about Catholicism, Islam, the holocaust and the link between homosexuality and Hurricane Katrina came to the forefront. Then it was revealed Hagee preached to his throng that Hitler was doing God’s bidding as “the force and fear of Hitler’s Nazis drove the Jewish people back to the only home that God ever intended the Jews to have - Israel.” McCain had been steadfast in sticking with Hagee up until that point, and I assure you that McCain would not have renounced his association with Hagee had he not been pressured. On the contrary, Joseph Lieberman, himself a Jew married to the daughter of Holocaust survivors, must be in some type of fundamentalist trance.

Many progressive Jews, like Rabbi Jonathan Biatch of Temple Beth El in Madison, Wisconsin, believe that Hagee would like to exacerbate the tensions in the Middle East in order to bring about Armageddon. Peace is not in the best interest of the Rapture. At the 2006 CUFI event, Hagee stated that “The United States must join Israel in a pre-emptive military strike against Iran to fulfill God’s plan for both Israel and the West…a biblically prophesized, end-time confrontation with Iran, which will lead to the Rapture, Tribulation and the Second Coming of Christ.” Today we’re closer than we’ve ever been to that scenario and it’s frightening to those who can see Hagee’s ulterior motives. Joseph Lieberman can never be accused of having vision, even though he knew of Hagee’s controversial view on the holocaust before McCain renounced his endorsement.

To Hagee, the Jews are nothing more than a means to an end. He supports a pre-emptive military strike on Iran in order to create Armageddon. After the battle, Jesus will return to Jerusalem and cleanse the earth of evil. But here’s the catch that seems to be eluding Lieberman’s rumored supply of gray matter: The non-believers, which include none other than the Jews, along with Muslims, Hindus and mainline Christians, must convert in order to be spared eternal damnation. One would think Lieberman would get it, but he doesn’t. Here’s what he had to say at the 2007 CUFI event:

I begin by thanking your founder, Pastor John Hagee. I would describe Pastor Hagee with the words the Torah uses to describe Moses, he is an “Ish Elochim,” a man of God because those words fit him; and, like Moses he has become the leader of a mighty multitude in pursuit of and defense of Israel.”

Unlike Lieberman, others are separating themselves from Hagee. Democratic Congresswoman Betty McCollum (MN) declined to attend an April 29 ‘Night to Honor Israel’ scheduled for Brooklyn Park, a suburb of Minneapolis, citing “Hagee’s extremism, bigotry and intolerance.

“To get in bed with the hard Christian right on Israel is a dangerous path,” said Daniel Sokatch, executive director of the Los Angeles-based Progressive Jewish Alliance. “This is a hard-driving, extremely smart and successful movement to essentially recast the U.S. as a Christian nation, and if Jews don’t think that empowering that group in American foreign policy isn’t part and parcel of empowering that group on domestic policy, they’re wrong.”

The only Senator to hold two Senate seats at the same time, has avoided serious scrutiny of his hypocritical actions because he is popular. I personally have always liked him and his no nonsense charts. But I never saw several hypocrisies on his charts.

So how did Conrad make this unique and devious silent history? After being elected to the Senate in 1986 on a promise not fulfilled, a reduction in the federal budget, he “honorably” agreed to honor his pledge not to stand for re-election.

But when the other seat became vacant due to the death of the incumbent, Conrad ran for and won that seat in a special election, not a re-election, resigning his original seat the day he was sworn in to the new seat. He did not run for re-election to one seat, but ran for election to the same kind of seat, one of only two in all states, because he promised he would not. Confused?

Perhaps Senate seats are not fungible. Who would have thought.

What other honorable things has he done?

Well, more recently he allowed Countrywide Financial Corp to give him two favors you and I would not have gotten. He was referred as a FOA, Friend of Angelo, Founder and Chairman of the company who popularized the “Fast and Easy” money mortgage which fueled the current crisis caused by giving fog a mirror loans to anybody, which drive up prices beyond sustainable levels which are now in the process of normalizing and a process so fundamental to our economic security, one can argue easily that it has harmed our national security.

First he allowed them to treat him to a reduction in fees equal to one percentage point on his 1.2 million dollar loan a VACATION HOME in Bethany Beach, Delaware. How can a lifetime politician afford that kind of vacation home, maybe even not his only one? (Does anyone know?)

He must have married into money. But then why did he need or how did he come to deserve that $12,000 break?

Second, why did he get any kind of loan on his eight (8) unit apartment building in Bismark, N.D.? Countrywide only make loans on one to four family units. But then, he thinks he paid over market for that loan, so he must have done nothing wrong. But if they do not make those kinds of loans, how doe he know what the “market” is and why did he pay so much? Just a garden variety catch 22.

Should popularity make anyone immune from scrutiny, whether it be Senator Conrad or Tim Russert or John Kennedy or Ronald Reagan or George Bush for a short while after 9/11?

Truth is, those who are popular get away with more than those who are not. That flows from public and voter hypocrisy and creates great risks to all of us as a result.

And found none.

While the bias of most pundits and authors and commentators of all kinds is usually pretty obvious, we determined that the Chief Hypcrite should be bias free. We are proud of that determination.

So we commissioned a study