Fornits

Fornits Home for Wayward Web Fora
An open discussion about the troubled parent industry

Quote from: "Anne Bonney"

In other words, you can't support your assertion. Color me shocked.

and you misquoted me just to be rude... what else is new.

I didn't misquote you. I quoted exactly what you said it it's entirety.  It's there for everyone to read.  I may have misinterpreted what you meant to say, but at least I had the integrity  to link to where I thought you said putting a hotline in programs was a bad idea because the operator might talk dirty to the kids.  You, on the other hand, have absolutely nothing to back up what you said that I posted because I never said anything remotely like that.

You're very good at tap-dancing around issues.  Smells like a marketer.

http://www.alternet.org/news/141278/rac ... family%27/


Rachel Maddow: GOP Sex Scandal Exposes Secretive Conservative Religious Group -- 'The Family'
Sen. John Ensign's affair has brought unwanted attention on a powerful religious network in Washington.
July 14, 2009  |  
 
The following is a transcript from The Rachel Maddow Show on Washington D.C.'s "C Street House,"  which is now at the center of a media firestorm. Now GOP Senator Tom Coburn, sex-scandal embroiled GOP leaders Senator John Ensign and South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford have been tied to the C Street House, which is registered as a church and provides substantially lower than market rate rent. Coburn and Ensign have lived at the C Street house, while Sanford has participated in its Bible study group.

We start with a mystery -- a mystery that's unfolding alongside the two major political scandals of the summer.  It's a mystery that concerns this house at 133 C Street Southeast in Washington, D.C.  I'm calling it a house because that's what it looks like to me and people do live there.

But if you consult this building's financial paper trail, you will find that it's actually considered to be a church.  That designation makes C Street a convenient tax-free haven for the secretive organization that runs it, an organization known as the Family.  It also makes for some awkward tax and income questions for the at least five, probably seven members of Congress who live at the house, in exchange for what appears to be substantially below market rent.

As explained by our guest last night, Jeff Sharlet, who secretly infiltrated the family to write a book about them, the C Street house is a former convent.  It's used as a sort of subsidized, really upscale dorm for members of Congress who are associated with this powerful, poorly understood religious group.

The Family and the house at C Street have ended up reluctantly in the headlines now because of the two major politicians' sex scandals that are embroiling the Republican Party this summer and that have taken two of their reported 2012 presidential hopefuls out of political contention.

Embattled Nevada Senator John Ensign lives at the C Street house.  The husband of Senator Ensign's mistress says that prominent members of the Family -- this religious group -- including the sons of the group's founder, as well as other members of Congress who live at C Street -- were both aware of Ensign's secret affair and were involved in his efforts to pay off the mistress and her family as the affair was on again-off again ending.

Republican Senator Tom Coburn lives at C Street with Ensign.  He has said he encouraged Ensign to end the affair but he has denied the allegation that he specifically encouraged Senator Ensign to pay the mistress off to the tune of millions of dollars.

South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford mentioned C Street by name in his long public statement of regret about his affair with a woman in Argentina.

Video transcript:

    Unidentified male: Did your wife and your family know about the affair before the trip to Argentina?

    South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford: Yes.

    Unidentified male: For how long?

    Sanford: We've been -- we've been working through this thing for about the last five months.  I've been to a lot of different -- I was part of a group called C Street, when I was in Washington.  It was a, believe it or not, a Christian Bible study -- some folks that asked of members of Congress hard questions that I think were very, very important and I've been working with them.

Maddow: Hard questions.

Governor Sanford said he was working with C Street somehow about his affair for months -- while the affair was ongoing, while it was still secret, and while Governor Sanford continued to lie about it publicly.

This is the first point about C Street and the Family that makes the group more than just a cameo appearance in both of these sex scandals.  In both instances, these powerful family values preaching, conservative politicians who were themselves having adulterous affairs say now that they disclosed those affairs to other members of Congress and other people affiliated with the secretive religious group for a long time while the affairs continued and while they were kept secret from the world at large.  This organization was allowed to know but nobody else was.

Zack Wamp of Tennessee is a Republican member of Congress who says he has lived in the C Street house for 12 years.  Today, he told "The Knoxville News Sentinel" that the members of Congress who live there are sworn to secrecy.

Quoting from the "News Sentinel," "The C Street residents have all agreed they won't talk about their private living arrangements, Wamp said and he intends to honor that pact.  'I hate it that John Ensign lives in the house and this happened because it opens up all of these kinds of questions,' Wamp said.  But, he said, 'I'm not going to be the guy who goes out and talks.'"

When you start looking into this organization and its members' oaths to secrecy and fidelity to one another that "I'm not going to be the one who talks here" theme looms very large.  But last year, when Jeff Sharlet's book about the Family first came out in hardback, the resultant buzz around the secrecy and high level connections of the Family and the C Street spurred NBC's Andrea Mitchell to obtain sermons of the group's long-time leader, Doug Coe, in order to find out more about what this group's agenda might be.

Here's some of what she found.

Video transcript:

    Douglas Coe, Leader of "The Family": I've seen pictures of the young men in the Red Guard.  They would bring in this young man's mother.  He would take an ax and cut her head off.  They have to put the purposes of the Red Guard ahead of their father, mother, brother, sister, and their own life.  That was a covenant, a pledge.  That's what Jesus said.

Maddow: That's what Jesus said?

Here's more from the same sermon.

Video transcript:

    Coe: Jesus said, you have to put me before other people.  And you have to put me before yourself.  Hitler, that was a demand to be in the Nazi party.  You have to put the Nazi party and its objectives ahead of your own life and ahead of other people.  :eek:

Maddow: Again, the man speaking here is Doug Coe.  He's the leader of the group the Family, that runs the secretive C Street house that features in the sex scandals of both John Ensign and Mark Sanford.

Doug Coe describing the group's mission here in this next clip through his interpretation of the life and words of Jesus.

Video transcript:

    Coe: One of the things he said is "If any man comes to me, and does not hate his father, mother, brother, sister, his own life, he can't be a disciple."  So I don't care what other qualifications you have, if you don't do that, you can't be a disciple of Christ.

Maddow: If you don't hate your father, mother, brother, sister, you can't be a disciple of Christ.

Every American's faith is her or his own business.  It's our constitutional inheritance as Americans.  Now, there is no religious test for public office, there's no official religion in this country, and every American has a right to believe or not believe, to worship or not worship, or as he or she sees fit.  Religion is a private matter in this country.

And religion is the organizing principle of many, many powerful interests in the United States, including this one very connected, sworn to secrecy, ministry only to the powerful, that has had a key role in how two major Republican sex scandals have unspooled this summer, that has a theology of power that is poorly understood, and cites Hitler a lot, and that currently houses at least seven members of Congress in what it calls a church.

Joining us now once again is Jeff Sharlet, who lived among this group as part of the research for his book "The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power," which is now out in paperback.

Maddow: I realize when we finished our interview last night there were more questions about the connection between this theology and these politics that I really wanted to ask you.  And when I asked you last night how a group like the family could essentially sanction John Ensign putting his mistress's son on the Republican Party payroll -- you said, essentially, that this group would be solely focused on looking out for John Ensign dealing with it internally.

Well, it now seems like a big part of the way Ensign responded to the scandal was by spreading a lot of money around.  So, I wanted to ask you to talk to me a little bit about wealth and financial power and how that fits into the theology of this group.

Sharlet: Well, to understand the Family's approach to wealth, it's a good place to start is their own label for themselves.  They like to call themselves the Christian mafia at times.  And they mean this in the sense of money moving quietly behind the scenes.

As David Coe -- one of the leaders of the group, the son of the man we just saw, and also John Ensign's spiritual counselor we now know -- as David Coe explained it to me a few years ago, if money moves around behind the scenes through what they call the man-to-man financial method, then we are able to sort of maintain this veneer of privacy, and that this is very important, because when you're dealing with members of the Family, these guys have been chosen by God for leadership and what the Family is going to do is in some ways almost play the role of consigliores, as fixers for these guys.

So, when I heard about the Ensign money, that makes sense as a kind of thing that they might be comfortable with.  But you've got to pull it out into sort of a broader picture.  Doug Coe, the leader of the group has said, he said, "I loan or give money to all sorts of people or I have my friends do so."

Now, Coe takes no salary many years.  All of the money is sort of moving through this man method and when you apply that overseas -- as they do -- you start to see what the idea of this is.  They believe in something called "biblical capitalism," and biblical capitalism is the way they're going to bring the gospel to the already powerful.  Where the money goes they believe God goes.  :ftard:

Maddow: So, biblical capitalism, this idea of the man-to-man financial method, which is one of the more awkward terms of a summer full of awkward terms.  That -- it's not just part of the way that they exert power.  That is part of their theology, that's part of the way they understand how they are, their version of Christianity at least.

Sharlet: Absolutely yes.  It's a theological position.

And when they call themselves a Christian mafia and talk about sort of avoiding institutionalization, talk about avoiding, you know, the books and records and all of that kind of stuff -- all of this stuff allows them to avoid accountability.  What they see it as is avoiding the building up of an edifice.

There is a level in which they're almost antichurch.  They don't like an organized church because it's too democratic.  They like this sort of behind-the-scenes elite approach.

Maddow: Well, you write in the family about how Doug Coe has done political favors for dictators like Suharto of Indonesia and Siad Barre in Somalia, Jonas Savimbi in Angola.  What is the Family doing with these guys?  Why are there so many dictators that Doug Coe and the other members of the Family cross paths with?  How does that work?

Sharlet: Well, you know, we heard in that clip, we heard Coe talking about Mao's China and so on.  And we also hear him again and again using the model of Hitler as an ideal of strength.  And I've heard him -- this is really boilerplate sermon for Doug Coe.

It's not that he's a neo Nazi of some sort.  It's that they fetishize strength.  They look for the leader who they believe is chosen by God.  Evidence is his power, his wealth, and his willingness to align himself with their version of American power.

The dictator Suharto in Indonesia was one such.  They organized meetings for him with American defense contractors, with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, with the secretary of defense, and most notably, since Indonesia is a major oil producing company with American oil executives, who described their meetings in memos of Congress as great moments of spiritual honesty between themselves and the dictator.

Maddow: Jeff, briefly, we're just about out of time -- but religion is obviously a private matter in this country.  Do you think that the members of Congress who belong to this religious group should feel compelled to tell the country more about the group?  Do you feel that would be appropriate?

Sharlet: I think when you have -- when you have members of Congress who are looking to a particular religious group for a sense of authority, which is explicitly antidemocratic, that explicitly fetishizes strength and dictatorial power, if they want to do that, that it's their choice.  But I think they owe it to their constituents to say, "Here is why I have chosen to leave the mainstreams of American religion and affiliate myself with this sect that is so unorthodox and so really brutal in its theology."

http://www.mcall.com/news/local/mc-alle ... 5501.story

Police: Man exposes himself to woman, follows her into grocery store

 By Manuel Gamiz Jr., OF THE MORNING CALL
5:17 p.m. EDT, September 14, 2010


Allentown police arrested a 41-year-old man Monday for exposing himself to a woman in the parking lot of a south Allentown grocery store and then following her through the store's aisles asking her what she thought about his size, according to court records.

Quilvio J. Bisono, of 722 W. Washington St., Allentown, was charged with stalking, indecent exposure, and open lewdness and two counts each of harassment and disorderly conduct. He was sent to Lehigh County Prison under $10,000 bail.

According to an arrest affidavit:

A woman said at 11:07 a.m. Monday she was getting out of her car at Price Rite parking lot, 1720 S. Fourth St., when she noticed that a man was sitting in a car next to hers, exposing himself. She told police he continued to expose himself as she walked to the store with her child.

Inside the store, the man confronted the woman and asked her about his size. She told the man to leave her alone and to go away. She said he then followed her through three more aisles, repeating his question. The victim repeatedly told him to leave her alone, but he wouldn't.

Court records do not indicate how police arrested Bisono.


Of course there's nothing funny about being stalked and this was especially bad because the poor woman's kid was with her, but for some reason it made me laugh.  I love this from the comments section as a proposed response to this asshole ......


"Vienna sausages are in aisle 4, next to the Gerkins. "

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld ... 5034.story

Government food safety scientists report political, corporate interference  
:eek: Shocking, I know!

Nearly half of the scientists and inspectors polled at the FDA and USDA say businesses and members of Congress have intruded on their work.

 By Kim Geiger, Tribune Washington Bureau

September 14, 2010


Scientists and inspectors at the federal agencies responsible for food safety say they face political and corporate interference with their work, according to a survey released Monday by the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonpartisan advocate for unbiased science in government.

The survey suggests a continuation of problems that government scientists had complained about during the George W. Bush administration, despite Obama administration pledges not to let politics intrude on scientific conclusions. And it comes more than a year after the administration promised to issue new rules to protect scientific integrity.

More than 1,700 scientists and inspectors at the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Agriculture responded to the survey, which was conducted by the Center for Survey Statistics and Methodology at Iowa State University.

The survey found only a slight improvement in perception of the agencies' approach to science under the Obama administration.

"What we found is that action is needed to curtail interference in science, both political and that driven by the private sector," said Francesca Grifo, director of the Scientific Integrity Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. "We have two very different agencies giving very identical responses, and this suggests the need for broad reform."

The Department of Agriculture, while not commenting on the survey's findings, acknowledged a need for improvement in its food safety program.

"We can and must do a better job of ensuring the safety of meat and poultry products regulated by USDA as there is no more fundamental function of government than protecting consumers from harm," the USDA said in a statement. "Food safety is the sole function of our Food Safety Inspection Service and no other considerations should detract from carrying out their mission."

Almost half of those surveyed said that in the last year they had experienced "situations where corporate interests have forced the withdrawal or significant modification of [an agency] policy or action designed to protect consumers or public health."

And 45% said they had experienced similar interference by members of Congress.

Fifty-four percent said the agencies gave political interests too much weight in their decision-making.

"Typically, once a member of Congress gets involved, the agency does whatever it can to make the situation go away rather than address food safety issues," one USDA employee wrote in an anonymous essay that accompanied the survey questionnaire.

Dean Wyatt, a supervisory public health veterinarian who has worked for nearly 20 years at the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service, said the agency went out of its way to protect businesses from costly shutdowns for failing to comply with food safety standards.

Under the Bush administration, Wyatt was reprimanded, demoted and eventually transferred when he documented inhumane treatment of hogs at a slaughtering plant in Oklahoma. He was transferred to a calf slaughterhouse in Vermont, where he has worked throughout the Obama administration.

In an interview, Wyatt cited examples of food safety violations that were suppressed or ignored. He said he suspended plant operations on three occasions. Each time, his supervisors intervened to allow the plant to reopen.

It wasn't until an undercover investigation by the Humane Society produced video evidence of more serious violations that Wyatt's superiors became responsive to his complaints.

[email protected]

Copyright © 2010, Los Angeles Times

I saw the 15 or 30 second TV spot for this, but hadn't seen the full length version.  Jus' bringin' some levity.  :seg2:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtZKL74LgMg

Tea Party Senate Candidate Opposes Masturbation
 By Mary Papenfuss
Posted Sep 3, 2010 2:41 AM CDT

'Lust is adultery,' says Delaware's Christine O'Donnell

  (Newser)  – Now that's  abstinence. Delaware Tea Party Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell is opposed to masturbation because the Bible says (my comment......isn't there such a thing called separation of church and state???) "lusting in your heart" is the same as committing adultery and, as O'Donnell so correctly pointed out in a past MTV interview, "you can't masturbate without lust." During a 2007 debate on sexuality on Fox News, when former Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders complained that "we have a sexually unhealthy society," O'Donnell snapped: "That's wonderful. It's called modesty."

Jezebel calls O'Donnell a "wackjob," but also points out that dark horse Tea Party candidates can turn out to be stunningly powerful as witnessed in Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski's defeat by Tea Party challenger Joe Miller this week. Now nervous Delaware Republicans are viciously attacking O'Donnell, with state party chairman Tom Ross claiming she "couldn't be elected dog catcher." Dems, convinced they could easily beat O'Donnell, are rooting for her to trounce GOP challenger Rep. Mike Castle in the Senate primary this month.

You've got to watch the video of the incident to really get how much of an asshole this cop is.

http://www.wbaltv.com/r/24800952/detail.html

Fired Officer In YouTube Rant Speaks Out
Baltimore Officer Salvatore Rivieri 'Devastated'

POSTED: 12:14 am EDT August 29, 2010
UPDATED: 7:23 pm EDT August 30, 2010

BALTIMORE -- The Baltimore police officer fired three years after a rant toward a teenage skateboarder spoke out Saturday morning, saying he feels devastated and blindsided by the firing.

Officer Salvatore Rivieri, a 19-year veteran, is no longer with the department, officials said in confirming the dismissal.

A video posted on YouTube,   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GgWrV8TcUc    apparently shot in the summer of 2007, shows Rivieri putting a youth, Eric Bush, into a headlock and pushing him to the ground. Bush was 14 at the time. The clip received millions of views on YouTube and was picked up by national news channels.

On Saturday morning's Kendel Ehrlich Show on WBAL 1090 AM, Rivieri said of the 2007 confrontation the he warned the boy and his friends that skateboarding at the Inner Harbor is illegal.

Bush has said he did not hear an order that the officer gave him about skateboarding at the Inner Harbor. Rivieri repeatedly got upset at being called "dude" in the video.

"I'm not 'man.' I'm not 'dude,' I am Officer Rivieri," he told the teen. "The sooner you learn that, the longer you are going to live in this world. Because you go around doing this kind of stuff and somebody is going to kill you."

On Saturday, Rivieri said the video does not show him and Bush shaking hands after the confrontation.

Rivieri was suspended and sent back on the streets in November 2008. Earlier this month, the city police trial board dismissed the most serious charges against him but found him guilty of failure to submit a police report and recommended a six-day suspension without pay; however, days later, Police Commissioner Fred Bealefeld overruled that decision and fired him.

Rivieri is appealing the case. Bob Cherry, head of the Baltimore Fraternal Order of Police, said Wednesday that the union is outraged by the firing. Cherry said the officers in the FOP have supported Rivieri's actions.

The Police Department has declined comment citing a personnel matter.

http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafe ... 117508.ece

 By Jamal Thalji, Times Staff Writer
Posted: Aug 25, 2010 08:08 PM


ST. PETERSBURG — The driver of the car wore black face paint and a black long-sleeve shirt, police said. Inside the car, police said they found a wig, a video camera, a loaded gun and a notebook detailing a young woman's whereabouts. An officer stopped the car after he saw it traveling suspiciously around a women's shelter.

Police say it's a case of stalking. The accused is a 59-year-old man. The alleged victim: his 19-year-old daughter.

That April 14 incident was one of several encounters St. Petersburg police said they had with Dennis Hobbs. After an investigation, he was arrested two days later on a misdemeanor stalking charge. The St. Petersburg Times is not identifying the daughter.

The father told police that he was trying to protect his daughter, that he feared her life was in danger because she wasn't making the right decisions. He has pleaded not guilty in the case.

"He had reason to believe she was going wayward," said the father's defense attorney, Kym Rivellini. "He was just concerned for her safety."

But the daughter told police that her father believed she was violating his religious beliefs, so he was following her around, harassing her and making her feel "trapped" by his behavior.

Tensions between father and daughter had been on the rise since July 2009, police said. The daughter told police that he wouldn't let her out of his sight, according to court documents, and even installed a dead bolt on their front door but didn't give her a key.

It got worse when she turned 18, she said. She moved in and out of her parents' house. She ultimately moved to the shelter, near where her father was pulled over on April 14. Police said the father also had two weeks of records detailing his daughter's movements collected by a private investigator he had hired.

The Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney's Office has decided to prosecute and filed official charges on Aug. 17. Details about the case were revealed in a search warrant obtained Wednesday by the Times.

When police asked Hobbs why he was armed, he said he feared for his daughter's safety. "When he heard that she was living in a very-high crime area," Rivellini said, "he was extremely concerned for her physical well-being."

In June, Pinellas Circuit Judge Peter Ramsberger issued a restraining order barring the father from contacting his daughter for six months.

"I've got no doubt that dad loves his daughter and wants what's best for his daughter and thinks she's making bad decisions," the judge said at a court hearing.

Then he added: "But on the other side of the coin, when our kids reach a certain age, there's only so much we can do ... but we don't paint our faces up and go out at 10:30 at night with a gun in the car."

Times staff writer Rita Farlow contributed to this report.