Miranda Blue's blog

Generations Radio’s Kevin Swanson spoke yesterday with Creation Museum president Ken Ham, who has written a book about how many Christian colleges “are going the way of Yale, Harvard and Princeton” and rejecting young earth creationism.

Ham recently lashed out at televangelist Pat Robertson after Right Wing Watch reported Robertson’s rejection of the idea that the Earth is only 6,000 years old. In his interview with Swanson, Ham accused churches and Christian colleges of “open[ing] the door to allow the philosophy of naturalism, and evolution, millions of years, to permeate into God’s word,” warning, “If we don’t shut that door, we’re going to lose this culture, America will be the England and Europe of tomorrow.”

“As you write this book,” Swanson asked, “Do you get the sense that you are effectively very, very close to Omaha Beach in the war of the worldviews?”

Ham: Evolution, millions of years, he naturalistic philosophy that permeates our education system, that’s really the religion of this age to explain life without God. And much of our church, our church leaders, have adopted that religion, sadly, and compromised it with God’s word.

Swanson: Ken, as you write this book, ‘Already Compromised,’ do you get the sense that you are effectively very, very close to Omaha Beach in the war of the worldviews? I mean, you are right there, where the ideas are being formulated, where the minds and the lives of the next generation are being formed by the millions across this country, I mean this is an important battle.

Ham: It is, it’s an extremely important battle. Because, you know what, it only takes one generation to lose a culture. That’s all it takes. And if you can capture one generation, you’ll have the culture. And just as, you know, when the Israelites crossed the Jordan river and there were 12 stones to remind the next generation of what God did and what did we find? They weren’t reminded, the next generation, they lost it in one generation, we’re losing this culture before our very eyes today because the church opened the door to allow the philosophy of naturalism, and evolution, millions of years, to permeate into God’s word. We need to shut that door. If we don’t shut that door, that’s where the battle’s at right now, if we don’t shut that door, we’re going to lose this culture, America will be the England and Europe of tomorrow.

Karl Rove, whose American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS spent hundreds of millions of dollars attacking President Obama’s economic record without avail, has become something of a punching bag for a defeated and embittered Religious Right. Shortly after the election, Gary Bauer faulted Rove for focusing on the economy rather than on abortion rights and marriage equality and radio host Janet Mefferd expressed concern that “we didn’t even talk much about radical Islam.” A few days later, the American Family Association’s Sandy Rios even accused Rove of moderating the GOP’s previous focus on anti-gay policies.

Today, Joel Gilbert, director of the widely distributed anti-Obama movie “Dreams From My Real Father,” joined the pile-on. In an interview with Renew America’s Cliff Kincaid, Gilbert argued that Rove made a fatal mistake by focusing his attacks on the economy rather than on Gilbert’s theory that the president’s real father was communist organizer Frank Marshall Davis. "If Republicans had made Obama's Marxist agenda and personal background the main issues of the campaign, Americans would have had a much clearer understanding of the choice between American values and Marxism,” Gilbert said.

"I heard complaints from Rove's conservative donors four weeks in advance of the election," filmmaker Joel Gilbert told Accuracy in Media. "They kept asking, 'where is the money being spent?'" The questions intensified after Obama's victory and the Democrats achieved a larger 55-45 majority in the Senate.

Gilbert, who directed the documentary "Dreams from My Real Father," about Obama's Marxist roots, notes that Rove had argued to conservative donors that the winning strategy for Republicans was to place ads focusing on the poor economy.

Gilbert's film, which was distributed to millions of voters and argued that Obama's real biological and ideological father was Communist Party USA propagandist Frank Marshall Davis, attempted to expose Obama's character and background. But Rove, Romney and Republican leaders did not want to raise these issues. In fact, Rove had argued that calling Obama a socialist or left-winger would backfire.

Gilbert argued that Obama was a pop-culture phenomenon with a high "likability" factor and that "Voters perceived Obama as a nice man with an inspiring family story." The right strategy, he says, was to expose Obama's Marxist views, the role of Frank Marshall Davis in molding Obama's political philosophy, and Obama's questionable statements about his own upbringing.

Gilbert says, "If Republicans had made Obama's Marxist agenda and personal background the main issues of the campaign, Americans would have had a much clearer understanding of the choice between American values and Marxism."

Gilbert’s film, meanwhile, is on record as having “revolted” focus groups of swing voters and disgusted at least one Florida voter so much that he decided to vote for the president.

The Pew Research Center is out with a new analysis showing that the support of people under 30 was critical to President Obama’s reelection victory. Concerned Women For America’s Janice Crouse has a theory as to why, a theory that she bolsters with a quote from a “popular Amazon discussion.”

Why, then, did young voters overwhelmingly support President Obama? The short answer is: Demographics and Dependency.

Nearly 60% of young voters favor an activist government (compared to 44% of older voters). A sharp generational difference was noted in the racial and ethnic makeup of this year's voters. Seventy-six percent of voters 30 and older were white, with 12% black, 8% Latino and the rest falling under a number of other self-identifiers. Among young voters, 58% identified themselves as white, while 42% were either black, Latino or among another minority group. A popular Amazon discussion declared, "Young voters choose marijuana and government dependency over jobs and prosperity."

For the record, this thread of 15 comments appears to be the “popular Amazon discussion” at issue. (Apparently young voters are also interested in “bicycles and beards.”)

The Center for Security Policy’s Frank Gaffney dedicated Wednesday’s edition of Secure Freedom Radio to discussing the Benghazi attack and the resignation of Gen. David Petreaus with leaders of the anti-Muslim Right. He spoke first with conservative columnist Diana West, who in October claimed that the Benghazi attack was a “fortunate event” because it brought attention to the Obama administration’s “supporting jihad.”

West – who explored similar ground in a WorldNetDaily column yesterday -- told Gaffney that Petreaus’ extramarital affair was “apiece” with the entire philosophy behind the counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan, claiming that American troops are now being ordered to “revere the Koran” and “look the other way” at “polygamy, pederasty, abuse of dogs.”

“I’m not surprised to see the men who prosecuted this doctrine, Gen. Petraeus, Gen. Allen, and who else, we don’t even know how many others, showing such immoral leadership and such corruption of their own personal lives,” she said.

West: In a sense, we live in a COIN [counterinsurgency] world, because I think the doctrine that Christopher Stevens and the Bush administration and of course the Obama administration was pushing was this notion, if you do enough to please the Islamic world you can work with them. But in that process, you become part of the submission. You adopt so much of the Islamic worldview that you lose your own. And I think the counterinsurgency doctrine exemplifies this with guns. It’s a matter of appeasing Islamic masters, of satisfying Islamic norms in order, the idea is to win them over to your side. But you no longer have a side once you’ve given over freedom of speech, which the military essentially gave over in ordering men to revere the Koran and never speak ill of it, once you give over the notion of outrage over polygamy, pederasty, abuse of dogs, which the military institutionalizes in forcing our men to look the other way at these behaviors, which are norms in Afghanistan. You have given away yourself, you no longer have yourself, and as these men come home when these attitudes towards corruption – everything in Afghanistan is done with money, you know jizya, the amounts of, your persuading people to do things not because you’re right or according to the law, but because you pay them, these things are going to seep back into our society. And this tolerance of polygamy, pederasty, etc. is going to seep back in. These are dangerous things, we’re no longer ourselves.
…

West: The notion of protecting the populations of Iraq and Afghanistan, which is at the heart of COIN, over protecting American forces in the field, I believe is an immoral doctrine. And I’m not surprised to see the men who prosecuted this doctrine, Gen. Petraeus, Gen. Allen, and who else, we don’t even know how many others, showing such immoral leadership and such corruption of their own personal lives. I don’t think it’s far afield, I think it’s all apiece of a larger philosophy.

Gaffney: Symptomatic of a larger problem, one I think that those of us who revere the military and its place in our society as our defenders must take very much to heart.

Elsewhere in the program, Gaffney spoke with author Andy Bostom, who claimed that President Obama has adopted what he sees as the West’s “cultural self-loathing.” Gaffney agreed, adding that “it really speaks to the psychology of this guy… this hostility to the United States.”

Bostom: I think we’re coming to a phase in the West where this sort of cultural self-loathing. Our engagement now in these wars, the way we’ve conducted them, may be the apotheosis of this trend, this completely self-destructive self-loathing. And our president seems to have totally bought into this mentality that somehow, you know, all the ills of the world are due to western attacks, to hegemony and colonial…and this is all the detritus of the colonial empire, and we are a guilty people, we are a guilty civilization, and he is actualizing policies, it seems to me, based on this mindset. And al Qaeda’s a great example. On the one hand, they aren’t even Muslims, according to our president and his advisors, they’re some sort of vague manifestation of extremism that has nothing to do with Islam, that has nothing to do with Muslims, that’s a sui generis phenomenon or something, but we are incalculably wrong in almost everything we do.

Gaffney: That’s such a telling insight, Andy Bostom. It really speaks to the psychology of this guy, and we’ll be speaking momentarily with Dr. Paul Kengor about his sort of upbringing and influences that may have helped shape this hostility to the United States. But to the extent that it really is translating now into fundamentally misunderstanding the danger that’s being posed to us and therefore making absolutely impossible our success in contending with it, it really is a disaster of the first order and something that I pray we will have members of Congress addressing in the course of these hearings starting this week.

Leading up to what promises to be a very close presidential election, the Right has been working hard to lay the groundwork for blaming an Obama victory on “voter fraud.” The same strategy worked wonders last time around, when, one year after President Obama’s decisive victory a full half of Republicans believed that the community organizing group ACORN had stolen the election. In-person voter fraud, as John McCain strategist Steve Schmidt admitted today, is a convenient part of “the mythology now in the Republican Party,” one that as Josh noted earlier has helped to fuel decades of voter suppression measures.

At an Eagle Forum conference in September – attended by Todd Akin, among others – two speakers addressed the issue of voter fraud: Catherine Engelbrecht, whose group True the Vote has been challenging registered voters across the country, and John Fund, a conservative columnist and author of a recent book on the issue.

Fund claimed that President Obama wants the election to go to the Supreme Court, and that in a close election, the president would use the now-defunct ACORN to change the outcome: “The election is close, and he puts his thumb on the scale of democracy, and he sends his old ACORN friends the signal, you know what’s going to happen.”

 After Engelbrecht’s speech, Schlafly joined her on stage to share news she had heard from “somebody” that in Pennsylvania, “at two o’clock in the afternoon they have no Republican observer, the Democrats just vote [for] the rest of the people who haven’t voted.”

“I think it goes on,” Engelbrecht agreed.

Filmmaker, Bob Dylan enthusiast, and all-purpose conspiracy theorist Joel Gilbert has been getting plenty of attention recently for his film, “Dreams From My Real Father,”which presents his theory that President Obama’s real father was Communist organizer Frank Marshall Davis, who groomed the president from birth to lead a “revolution to end capitalism.” Gilbert has taken advantage of an undisclosed source of funds to send copies of his movie to 4 million swing-state households, where it has been met with decidedly mixed reviews. Gilbert’s film has earned effusive praise from the chairman of the Alabama Republican Party and Fox News’ Monica Crowley, but was panned by a Republican focus group, which found it “revolting.” A public screening of the film organized by a county commissioner in Texas has drawn promises of protests.

In the midst of this hubbub, though, Gilbert hasn’t neglected his continuing research into the president’s history. This summer, he speculated to Alex Jones that the Obama administration might have been behind the Aurora movie theater shooting. Earlier this month, he put on his “expert in Islamic history”  hat to uncover a secret “Islamic inscription” on the president’s wedding ring. And today, he drops another bombshell to World Net Daily’s Jerome Corsi: the president got a nose job (a.k.a. "facial forgery") because he was “concerned he was looking too much like Frank Marshall Davis as he got older.”

Filmmaker Joel Gilbert contends President Obama has altered his facial profile for the national stage of American politics, citing two nationally known cosmetic surgery experts he consulted who concluded Obama had a “nose job.”

“It appears Obama had some aesthetic refinement,” said plastic surgeon J. David Holcolm.

…

“Obama has gone to great lengths to obscure his past,” Gilbert said. “Now, in addition to the alleged document forgery and photographic forgery by Obama to hide his true identity, we now have evidence of facial forgery.”

…

Gilbert suspects Obama had the surgery because he was “concerned he was looking too much like Frank Marshall Davis as he got older.”

“I don’t think it was a coincidence that Obama chose to undergo a rhinoplasty before running for U.S. Senate and facing the national spotlight,” Gilbert said. “If Obama was identified as Davis’ son, it would connect the Marxist dots of Obama’s entire life journey.”

Gilbert said Obama “needed the Kenyan father fairy tale to misdirect the public away from the fact that he is a red diaper baby, the child of a Communist Party USA propagandist and Soviet agent.”

As evidence, Gilbert presents a somewhat unconvincing side-by-side photograph array.

The New York Times today offers up the wide distribution of Joel Gilbert’s “Dreams From My Real Father” as a case study in “how secretive forces outside the presidential campaigns can sweep into battleground states days before the election.”

According to the Times, Republican strategist Frank Luntz, at the behest of unnamed conservative activists, focus-group tested Gilbert’s film this summer, along with Dinesh D’Souza’s “2016” and “The Hope and Change,” a Citizens United joint featuring interviews with disaffected Obama supporters.

“The Hope and the Change,” directed by Stephen K. Bannon and produced by Citizens United, the conservative political advocacy group, tested highest with focus groups and is running on local cable stations. It was shown here just before Monday’s debate.

Many conservatives also loved Mr. D’Souza’s film and wanted it to have wider distribution. It tested poorly, however, and Mr. Luntz warned his clients that it could undermine their cause.

Focus groups were revolted by “Dreams From My Real Father,” with its conspiracy theory paranoia and dubious evidence. It compares photos of the president and Mr. Davis, noting that they have similar noses and freckles. It also purports to have uncovered nude photos of Mr. Obama’s mother in a bondage magazine.

Mr. Luntz’s clients were not surprised. Their thinking was, “I want to know if it’s as bad as I think it is,” Mr. Luntz said.

The opinion of Luntz’s focus groups mirrors that of at least one Florida voter who got Gilbert’s movie in the mail and found it so disgusting he decided to vote for Obama.

Gilbert, for his part, remains convinced that he will come out with the upper hand, and perhaps beat out The New York Times for a Pulitzer:

Mr. Gilbert will not say where he received the money to distribute his movie — he claims to have sent out four million copies. “It’s a private company, so we don’t disclose who’s part of it,” he said. He also blamed the mainstream media for not looking deeper into the story he uncovered, telling The New York Times, “I hope you’re not angry or jealous that I beat you to it and might win the Pulitzer Prize.”

Papers in Florida have been reporting recently on a curious DVD that has been turning up in mailboxes across the state. The video is none other than Joel Gilbert’s “Dreams From My Real Father,” a “documentary” narrated by a fictional Barack Obama claiming that Obama’s mother’s marriage to Barack Obama Sr. was a sham meant to cover up her relationship with labor activist and communist organizer Frank Marshall Davis, the president's "real father." Gilbert previously boasted that he sent the DVD to a million households across Ohio, but declines to divulge who is paying for his marketing campaign.

On Friday, Palm Beach’s WPTV reported that Gilbert’s film has managed to swing at least one Florida voter.

When Ron and Judy Cindrick received what was billed as "a must-watch DVD" in their mailbox, they decided to see what "Dreams from My Real Father" was all about.

Judy said what she saw shocked her.

"I was absolutely appalled when I began to watch this and they began to show pictures of Barack Obama's mother, his supposed mother, naked," she said.

Ron said watching the pseudo-documentary turns his stomach, and his vote. He believes the Obama conspiracy-type film has to be politically motivated.

"I am a registered Republican, and as of today, I will vote for Barack Obama after receiving this DVD," said Ron.

The Los Angeles Times reports that the film has also been showing up in mailboxes in Nevada and New Hampshire. In an interview with a Florida radio show on Saturday, Gilbert claimed a version of the film on Netflix Instant Play has been watched by 200,000 people.

Concerned Women for America is trying out a novel strategy in its fight to draw women to support Mitt Romney this November: denying that the next president can do anything to eliminate abortion rights. In a new TV ad, CWA counters a MoveOn.org ad featuring female celebrities talking about the issue of reproductive rights in the presidential election. In the CWA ad, women derisively call the MoveOn.org supporters “Hollywood women” and mock the contention that a President Mitt Romney would “overturn Roe v. Wade.”

“Have they ever heard of the separation of powers?” asks one Concerned Woman.

Maybe it’s CWA that needs the civics lesson. Mitt Romney has repeatedly stated that he would choose Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade. It even says so on his website. With as many as three Justices possibly retiring in the next four years, Romney might very well have the opportunity to shape a court that would take away the right to choose.

Which, of course, is what CWA has been working toward since its founding. A petition on CWA’s website calls for signers to support “any and all legislative efforts to overturn Roe v. Wade” and “support pro-life nominees to the courts.” A pamphlet the group distributed shortly before President Obama's inauguration said anti-choice advocates should work to "pass limits on abortion and appoint judges who will overturn Roe." And here’s the CWA’s blog discussing an Alabama Supreme Court ruling in February that challenged Roe.

This ruling has major implications for the pro-life movement. First, it clearly mirrors the growing sentiments of a majority of Americans who are pro-life, especially our younger generation. Second, Alabama has set a clear precedent that more states are expected to emulate. Finally, as state laws continue to represent Americans’ growing pro-life attitude, the U.S. Supreme Court will be called upon to reconsider and, ultimately, repeal Roe.

Unveiling the deception of Roe shouldn’t be a difficult task. Mario Diaz, Esq., Legal Counsel for Concerned Women for America, explains, “Legally speaking, Roe v. Wade is simply indefensible. It rests on the false premise that the ‘fetus’ is not a ‘person’ because the Justices say so. The scientific bases for that claim simply were not there in 1973, and they are not there now. In fact, JusticeBlackmun acknowledged that ‘[i]f this suggestion of personhood is established, [Roe's] case, of course, collapses, for the fetus’ right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the [Fourteenth] Amendment.’ Advances in science have been proving just that: we are dealing with a baby, not a blob of tissue as some conveniently tried to tell us. This decision by the Alabama Supreme Court is another indication that Roe‘s house of cards is slowly tumbling down.”

Pro-life conservatives can only hope that the Supreme Court revisits the abortion question sooner rather than later. With a few more decisions like the one in Alabama, we may just hold the legal trump card when that time comes.

Romney himself as also tried this tactic, claiming that there is nothing he would do to restrict abortion rights. A New York Times editorial this morning sets that notion straight.

Historian Paul Kengor has been doing a circuit of right-wing talk shows, promoting his new book, “The Communist” which ties President Obama to a childhood family friend, the labor activist and writer Frank Marshall Davis. Although Kengor refuses to comment on filmmaker Joel Gilbert’s hypothesis that Davis is actually the president’s biological father, he argues that a direct line can be drawn between Davis’ Communist writings and the president’s support of universal health care, advocacy for the middle class, and even his “Change” and “Forward” slogans.

In an interview with Janet Mefferd this week, Kengor painted Davis as a sinister and strange influence on the young Obama’s life. Echoing Mike Huckabee’s accusation that the president has a “different worldview” because he grew up with “madrassas” rather than “going to Boy Scouts,” Kengor marveled that Obama’s grandfather chose Davis as a mentor for his grandson rather than “a Boy Scout troop master, a little league coach.” Not only that, but Obama’s grandfather and Davis “would even smoke dope together.”

“So I tell people, I honestly feel bad for Obama. This wasn’t exactly a wholesome, Norman Rockwell upbringing,” he added.

Kengor: In 1970, Stanley Dunham was looking for a black male father figure, mentor, role model for his grandson because the father was gone. So, right there, Janet, you or I, we have sons, grandsons, we’d probably pick as a mentor a boy scout troop master, a little league coach.

Mefferd: Yeah, someone upstanding.

Kengor: I mean, to think that you’d pick a card-carrying member of Communist Party USA, called to Washington to testify on his quote-unquote Soviet activities by the Democratic-run Senate Judiciary Committee, is kind of remarkable and kind of revealing.

Mefferd: Sure.

Kengor: But that’s who Stanley Dunham picked. And Stanley Dunham and Frank Marshall Davis were real close. They’d play cards together, Scrabble, drink together. One person named Donna Weatherly Williams, who was there when Dunham introduced Obama to Davis in 1970, says that Davis and Dunham would even smoke dope together.

Mefferd: Oh boy.

Kengor: And, I mean, here you’ve got, at that point Frank Marshall Davis would have been about 65 years old. So I tell people, I honestly feel bad for Obama. This wasn’t exactly a wholesome, Norman Rockwell upbringing.

Mefferd: No, awfully dysfunctional.

Kengor: Very dysfunctional, very.

Later, Kengor revisited the right-wing meme that President Obama somehow hates Winston Churchill because he removed George W. Bush’s bust of Churchill when he redecorated the Oval Office. This hatred of Churchill, according to Kengor, could very well have been instilled by a drunken rant of Frank Marshall Davis:

Kengor: If you would have asked me five years ago, or anybody in America five years ago, name one American who doesn’t like Winston Churchill…

Mefferd: Now we know!

Kengor: Nobody, yeah. Then suddenly in January 2009, well we have one: Obama. And now we know of another: Obama’s mentor. And actually, I should add, as a Cold War historian, I did know of Americans who didn’t like Churchill. It was members of Communist Party USA and the Daily Worker. So Davis was towing the Soviet line, the Communist Party line. Does this mean that Obama doesn’t like Churchill because of Davis? I can’t say that for sure, but I mean these guys met many times together, at least over a dozen times together, and late evenings. And you know Davis was always very political, always talking about politics, drank a lot, could be very incendiary in his comments. And I’m sure that Obama must have heard a few diatribes against Winston Churchill by Frank Marshall Davis.