Posted 12:19 PM by Scoobie Davis

Synchronicity
Mike Huckabee is standing by his 1998 comment that we ought to "take this nation back for Christ." Last night, I finally got to see Jesus Camp which contained a similar quote ("take back America for Christ") and same general theme. The film deeply disturbed me. Huckabee's chumming it up with John Hagee also disturbs me.

I thought it was interesting that one of the children in the film used Chick tracts as a witnessing tool. Anyone familiar with this blog knows that I have a postmodernist appreciation of Jack Chick's work.

UPDATE: Another synchronicity: Chick Publications has a new tract online called "Poor Little Lamb." It deals with the origins of Passover.

Posted 11:49 AM by Scoobie Davis

Buy this Book!
John Gorenfeld's Bad Moon Rising: How Reverend Moon Created the Washington Times, Seduced the Religious Right and Built an American Kingdom will be published in March. More details on the Moonie blog.

Posted 10:49 AM by Scoobie Davis

The Washington Times and the Mainstreaming of White Supremacist Thought
On the Moon blog.

Posted 11:13 AM by Scoobie Davis

Films
Last night I saw The Savages and Persepolis. I got a lot out of The Savages even though I thought parts of it didn't have the ring of truth. From a standpoint of acting, it's hard to beat a film with both Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney.

I'm not listing Persepolis as my favorite film of the year only because of No Country for Old Men. Persepolis blew me away. It's a coming of age story about a Iranian girl who experiences the Iranian revolution and the Iran-Iraq War and who spends much of her teenage years in Austria. One of the things I loved about the protagonist is that after she returned to Iran as an adult, she and her friends risked arrest and persecution by Iran's morality squads by holding secret coed music-and-dance parties. As someone into comix and sequential art, I was familiar with the highly-regarded graphic novels but I didn't read them. I hope that word of mouth helps the film to gain a wider audience--a challenging task for a subtitled film in the U.S. I also hope the film does well because it ticks off the mullahs.

I also recently saw Charlie Wilson's War. There's something odd about the Washington Time's review of the film so I will write a post about it on the Sun Myung Moon blog later.

UPDATE: The post on Charlie Wilson's War is up.

Posted 11:34 AM by Scoobie Davis

Merry Christmas!

Posted 10:08 AM by Scoobie Davis

Mike Huckabee Hangs out with Pastor John Hagee
Yesterday I was flipping through the channels and noticed that John Hagee's show was on. As I watched, I was so taken aback by his rhetoric that I recorded part of the sermon. It was a Christmas sermon and contrasts starkly with the Christmas sermons I heard when I was a child. Later in the day, I found out that presidential candidate Mike Huckabee was Hagee's guest (I didn't see Huckabee on the broadcast and don't know if it was the one in which Huckabee appeared).

The thing about members of the clergy like Hagee and the late Jerry Falwell is that they graft their own redneck, bellicose, authoritarian, tribalistic, and bigoted views onto Jesus and other biblical figures. For instance, when Falwell was opposing Martin Luther King's call for civil rights in the 1960's, he justified Jim Crow culture by claiming that blacks were stricken with the "curse of Ham" and thus it was biblical that they be subservient to whites.

Likewise, Hagee projects his power-hungry, war-loving, puritanical, aching-for-a-crusade mentality onto Jesus. I have previously written about how policy makers and media people have accorded legitimacy to Hagee's apocalyptic views (click here and here)--developments that are truly frightening. Here are some excerpts from Hagee's Christmas sermon:

And then there's this self-serving, self-absorbed, hedonistic society of ours. People say, "Well, what about my rights?" You don't have any, darling. . .

The idea of a universal peace for a Christ-rejecting, pleasure-loving world, enslaved by greed and materialism is an illusion and an absolute farce. It is never going to happen. . .

The Christmas message is: The baby Jesus in the manger is now the ruling, living, reigning, mighty, all-knowing Son of God-- [Shouting] with power and glory--and he's coming back. [loud applause] He is the lamb that has become the lion of the tribe of Judah. He is the baby of Bethlehem's manger who is now King of Kings and Lord of Lords. . . He's going to rule the world with a wrought of iron. He's not going to ask you if you will obey. He's going to make you obey because he's King of King and Lord of Lords.

Revenge of the Cultic Kitsch-mongers: A Weakness of Democracy
In a previous post, I mentioned how I used to watch Hagee's sermons on the Trinity Broadcasting Network during the 1990's (of course, with plenty of ironic detachment from the subject matter to enjoy it as kitsch). I haven't enjoyed his sermons since I learned that Hagee has the ear of the Bush administration and is being taken seriously. This man is a fanatic who bases his foreign policy views on his interpretation of the Book of Revelation that nuclear war is inevitable and desirable because it will usher in the Rapture (allowing Hagee and his tribe to be whisked into Heaven leaving non-fundamentalists to deal with that cosmic buzzkill, the Great Tribulation).

Although Hagee's foreign policy views are cartoonish and dangerous, that doesn't prevent him from being courted by national politicians and the media. Why is this the case? Authoritarian cult leaders use their power over people to attempt to seize even more power. For instance, Hagee has used the mass media to gain a sizable congregation and, thus, political power. Similarly, Sun Myung Moon has used his religion (through fraud and deception) to become a billionaire who can line the pockets of influential politicians and media figures. Thus, in today's society, we have a situation in which dangerous megalomaniacs like Hagee and Moon exert power because of the number of people they control or the amount of cash they can spend on unprincipled politicians. This is scary.

UPDATE: This January, Sarah Posner's book God's Profits: Faith, Fraud, and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters will be published. The book looks at Hagee and other Rapture-ready preachers and their relationship with the GOP. The forward is by Joe Conason.

Posted 4:55 PM by Scoobie Davis

Jimmy Eat World
Enjoy:

Posted 1:33 AM by Scoobie Davis

Sun Myung Moon and the American People
On the Sun Myung Moon blog.

Posted 2:01 AM by Scoobie Davis

The Incredibly Shrinking Amway Rally
On the Amway blog.

Posted 2:02 PM by Scoobie Davis

Saturday Night Live clip
On the Sun Myung Moon blog. The segment spoofs the New Messiah, deprogrammers, and the zombie film Night of the Living Dead. It's from 1977 and has the original cast members including the late great John Belushi as Sun Myung Moon, Dan Aykroyd, Laraine Newman, Garrett Morris, and Bill Murray. Shelley Duvall was the guest host.

Posted 11:37 AM by Scoobie Davis

Saw a Film Last Night
One of the best things about LA is that your entertainment dollar goes very far. One reason that is the case is that there are many preview screenings and test screening. Studios with films in post-production are always trying to tweak the film and get test audiences. I'm not supposed to go to these because I'm in the industry but I go anyway.

I generally don't comment on these films because they are works in progress, not the final product and because there might be elements of the film that the studio don't want disclosed to the public before its release. That's why I won't go into specific about the film other than to say that I liked it a lot. The film is Forgetting Sarah Marshall. It's my favorite Judd Apatow-produced film (note: I liked Zero Effect and the 40 Year-old Virgin but didn't like Knocked Up or Superbad).

Quick asides: It was only three-quarters through the film that I realized that a main character in the film was being played by Mila Kunis--who is best known for being in That '70s Show. I think Kristen Bell is a really talented actor. She is best known for the Veronica Mars series (which I have never seen; I know her from Reefer Madness: The Movie Musical which is a really funny movie).

Posted 3:27 AM by Scoobie Davis

An Open Letter to Martin Luther King III
Read it here.

Posted 3:51 PM by Scoobie Davis

A Message to Readers of my Sun Myung Moon and Amway Blogs
Check out my blogs addressing Sun Myung Moon or Amway

Posted 5:35 PM by Scoobie Davis

The Enchanter
I'm not in contact with Jack Chick anymore so I didn't get a chance to ask him what he thought about Mitt Romney's speech on religion today. However, I have an idea of what he thought. Yesterday, I finally got to read the new Chick Publications Crusader comic titled "The Enchanter." It's about Joseph Smith and it's no surprise that it's not flattering. Most of it is a biography of Smith (whom Chick views as a pawn of Satan to steal the thunder from the Second Great Awakening). Among other things, Chick addresses Smith's dabbling in divination (e.g., using a seer stone) and apparent appropriation of Masonic rituals. I don't have time for a full review right now but, like most of the Chickster's other books, it doesn't pull any punches and is highly inflammatory.

Posted 3:00 PM by Scoobie Davis

CNN Shouldn't Worry about a Lawsuit from David Bossie
I just read on the Drudge Report that operative David Bossie of Citizens United is considering a lawsuit against CNN for reporting that, among other things, referred to Bossie as "a dirty trickster."

I've written about Bossie. CNN was right. It's pretty bad for a Republican operative when a Republican administration refers to you as "the lowest forms of life." Bossie was also one of the people spreading rumors about the death of Vince Foster and he was fired for doctoring exculpatory tapes of a Webster Hubbell conversation. I have a far-from-exhaustive list of Bossie dirty tricks here.

Posted 12:49 PM by Scoobie Davis

Nutty Religion
People wonder why I simultaneously enjoy the work of Jack T. Chick and am repelled by the activities of the late Jerry Falwell. For one thing, Chick does not generally want to make his world view the law of the land. Falwell, in contrast, had theocratic plans for America. Also, Chick is a businessman who lives modestly and has paid a high price for his controversial stands. Although I disagree with just about everything Chick writes, I have to at least applaud Chick for sticking to his guns even though his controversial comics were threatening his business. Falwell, on the other hand, is a man of the cloth who has bilked his congregation out of their hard-earned money with expensive and libelous video tapes and other schemes. Most important, unlike Chick, Falwell and other apocalyptic preachers have had the ear of people in the Reagan administration and both Bush administrations. That's scary.

That is not to say that I don’t find much of Falwell’s shtick amusing. It would be more amusing if people didn't take Falwell's apocalyptic views seriously. The other day, I checked out a videotape of Falwell's 1993 sermon, "The Coming Satanic Superman" which deals with the supposed imminent arrival of the Antichrist and the Rapture. What is scary about it that John Hagee is saying the same things to today's audiences. Here are a few of the more revealing excerpts of Falwell's sermon.

I’m expecting the Lord to return in my lifetime. I can’t guarantee that but I’m living that way, with full expectations that I will not need an undertaker. . .

Others affirm that he [the Antichrist] will be a Jew. I think he will be. There are two Old Testament passages and one New Testament passage to indicate that he will be a Jew because he will be counterfeiting the Christ who is a Jew [Falwell cited Ezekiel 21:25; Daniel 11:27; and John 5:43]

According to 1 John 4, the spirit of Antichrist is already at work in the world. Who would ever believe that the National Endowment for the Arts, with our tax dollars, would pay a so-called artist to create a cross with Christ on it and submerge the cross in a container of the artist's human urine? All paid for with our tax dollars? Who would believe that that would happen in America and the President of the United States supports the National Endowment of the Arts [Reminder: this sermon was from 1993 when Bill Clinton was president]. It's that spirit of Antichrist at work here: pornography, the abortion of unborn babies, infanticide, euthanasia, all of these wicked, vulgar, and blasphemous things are happening right now. The spirit of the Antichrist is at work in the world while we speak. Al Worthington and I were speaking backstage a moment ago about the fact that the majority of us are now being controlled by a vulgar minority. A vulgar minority--maybe five percent of the New Agers and the pornographers and the baby-killers and the Christ-haters--they actually control all of us. They own Hollywood; they own the national media; they own the White House; they own--the majority of them--the Congress.

Don't think, you liberals and New Agers and Antichrist religious people, that you will rise to power on the coat-tails of the Antichrist. You'll push him to power and he'll destroy you.

It blesses my heart to be a premillenarian because I don't have to worry about those crazies in the Middle East getting their hands on the Ukrainian and the Russian nuclear ICBMs and others and destroying the world.

All the heavens and Earth as we know it now will melt with a fervent heat and cease to be. You know what the saints will say? "So what?" Because coming down out of Heaven like a bride adoring for her husband will be the New Jerusalem, the holy city of God, prepared for the saints for all the ages. We'll have new heavens and a new earth, and no more need for this one. We can give it to the Sierra Club, the Wilderness Society, the environmentalists, Al Gore, the tree-huggers, whoever wants it. We don't need it anymore. [Laughter and applause from the congregation]

Posted 3:14 PM by Scoobie Davis

Today
On the Moon blog, I observe the ultimate death of irony and welcome both the Washington Post and Washington Times readers.

Posted 1:24 AM by Scoobie Davis

Still Busy Working on the Film
I'm working on the post I mentioned previously, titled "The Theocratic Chain of Misery." It's going to be a long post.

Posted 11:22 AM by Scoobie Davis

Is Sun Myung Moon Supporting Mitt Romney's Candidacy?
The preliminary evidence indicates that the True Parent is supporting Romney.

Posted 12:38 PM by Scoobie Davis

New Post on the Moonie blog
Read it here.

Posted 1:30 AM by Scoobie Davis

Why The Son May Be Worse than the Father
The awful forthcoming advent of Hyun Jin "Preston" Moon on the Sun Myung Moon blog.

Posted 12:26 PM by Scoobie Davis

New Posts
Check out the Sun Myung Moon blog.

Also, I'm working on a critical Amway site in French.

Posted 9:23 AM by Scoobie Davis

Forthcoming Post
I'm still busy on the film. I'm working on a forthcoming post tentatively titled "The Theocratic Chain of Misery." Stay tuned.

Posted 4:03 PM by Scoobie Davis

New Posts
Check out the Moonie blog and the anti-Amway blog.

Posted 10:41 AM by Scoobie Davis

I'm Doing a Film Gig
Light blogging for a while

Check out this Robert Parry article.

Posted 12:42 PM by Scoobie Davis

New Jack T. Chick Crusaders Comic Book
After a long hiatus with the Crusader series of full-sized comic books, The Chickster just came out with volume 18 titled, "The Enchanter." Just in time for Campaign 2008, Jack pimp-slaps Mitt Romney with this comic book devoted to taking on Mormonism. From the ad for the book:

The validity of Mormonism stands or falls on the testimony of Joseph Smith. Here is his story, revealing the man for what he really was. Calling himself the “second Mohammad,” Smith was an occultic opportunist, fond of the ladies (lots of them!), who blended Masonic rituals into his temple rituals.

The story is a fascinating one, filled with incredible quotes from Smith himself. After people read this illustrated book, they will not be vulnerable to the Mormon recruiters!

Read the incredible story of how Joseph Smith founded Mormonism. It's a story of intrigue, murder, lust and greed. A few months after marrying the first of his 27 wives, Joseph Smith began to build his religion on a set of golden plates that he claimed had been given to him by a mysterious spirit.

This isn't the first time Jack has taken on Mormonism. He has a comix tract "The Visitors" in which a couple missionaries are raked over the coals by a know-it-all fundy. At the very least, this should be an entertaining read. Back when I interviewed Chick in 2004, I mentioned that artist Fred Carter had finished the work for the video The Light of the World and asked Jack if there would be any more Crusader comic books. Jack had a twinkle in his eye and told me it was in God's hands.

Posted 1:13 AM by Scoobie Davis

Tell Us Your Amway/Quixtar Experiences/Ordeals
Click here

Posted 3:44 PM by Scoobie Davis

Two New Jack Chick Tracts
For fans of the Rapture there's "Where Did They Go?" and there's "Unforgiven?" a new addition to Chick's series aimed at African-Americans.

UPDATE: More on "Where Did They Go?" here.

Posted 9:49 AM by Scoobie Davis

Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror Action Figure Giveaway Contest
To promote the DVD release of Grindhouse's Planet Terror and Death Proof, I have a a Cherry Action figure to give away in a contest. I just have to figure what kind of contest to hold. E-mail me with any suggestions.

Posted 1:54 AM by Scoobie Davis

Success!
My new blogs devoted to exposing Sun Myung Moon's Unificationist movement and Amway have been successful beyond my wildest expectations. Not only am I getting attention from the right people (e.g., Amway's parent company Alticor, The Washington Times) but I have noticed that many people came to these sites because people took the effort to e-mail others about the sites.

This is important because both groups are not only reactionary movements but these destructive cults hurt many people financially and emotionally (e.g., click here, here, and here). Also, let's face it: it's not as if the Democrats or the mainstream media are going to do much to expose these groups.

I'm asking for a little help with the continued success of these two blogs: 1) If you're a blogger, add them to your list of links or mention them on your blog; 2) E-mail someone and tell them about these blogs; 3) If you're on a newsgroup or bulletin board, a mention and a link would be appreciated. Every little bit helps. Thanks in advance.

Quick note: I just added links to the Moon blog. If you have any suggestions about other links, drop me an e-mail.

Posted 1:07 AM by Scoobie Davis

Amway and the Unification Movement: Hierarchies of Misery
On both the Moon blog and the Amway blog.

Posted 10:39 AM by Scoobie Davis

Sun Myung Moon Operative Providing Support to Mitt Romney's Campaign
Check it out on the Moon blog.

Posted 6:02 AM by Scoobie Davis

Ironic Must Read
Christopher Hayes article " The New Right-Wing Smear Machine" in The Nation on the under-the-radar spam e-mail smear campaigns by some right-wing operatives and how sites like Snopes.com and BreakTheChain.org have been countering the disinformation. Hayes mentions the now-infamous Hillary/Gold Star Mothers smear started by an operative writing for the right-wing website NewsMax (I wrote about the Gold Star Mothers smear and about NewsMax). It is a thorough article about how unscrupulous meme-creators are using e-mail for the purposes of modern day whisper campaigns. What I found ironic about reading the article online was that it had a Google ad for, of all things, NewsMax.

Posted 1:31 AM by Scoobie Davis

The Truth About Robert Kiyosaki
I have a new post on the anti-Amway blog.

Posted 8:55 PM by Scoobie Davis

Fox Business Anchor or Porn Star?
Radar magazine reports, you decide.

BTW, in case you missed it, Radar featured me in their story on crashing the Oscars.

Posted 7:44 PM by Scoobie Davis

New Post on HorowitzWatch
Check it out

Posted 10:55 AM by Scoobie Davis

The Washington Times Knows about my New Sun Myung Moon Blog
Today I checked out my Statcounter stats and discovered that someone from the Washington Times came to my new Sun Myung Moon blog based on a Google blogsearch of "Sun Myung Moon."

Also, as has been the case with my new anti-Amway blog, someone from the US Department of Justice was reading the Moon blog today.

Posted 1:11 AM by Scoobie Davis

New Sun Myung Moon Blog
When I decided to put my Amway posts from this blog into a separate blog, it was a success that exceeded all of my expectations. Accordingly, I have created a separate blog in which I have put my posts on Sun Myung Moon and the Unificationist movement. The new blog is called The Real Sun Myung Moon. Enjoy.

Posted 10:49 AM by Scoobie Davis

New Posts on the Amway blog
click here

Posted 1:42 PM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
"Soros or Murdoch" by Marty Kaplan

Posted 12:38 PM by Scoobie Davis

The Mainstreaming of Extremism
Last night on The O'Reilly Factor, Billo discussed controversies revolving around Rosie O'Donnell's latest book, Celebrity Detox. His guest was Marji Ross, the president of Regnery Publishing. This was clearly an attempt by O'Reilly to make a fringe publishing house appear mainstream.

I have meant to write a post about how Regnery Publishing has attempted to rehabilitate the image of Sun Myung Moon. Regnery has published two pro-Moon books and two other Unificationist-related books (there may be more). I will post this soon.

UPDATE: Arianna Huffington: "Midnight in America: the Mainstreaming of the GOP's Lunatic Fringe"

Posted 3:48 AM by Scoobie Davis

New posts on the Amway blog
Click here

Posted 3:54 PM by Scoobie Davis

Targeted by Amway?
I checked my Statcounter stats and found out that my anti-Amway blog is being monitored by Warner Norcross & Judd, the law firm representing Amway in its frivolous lawsuit against online critics. Warner, Norcross, & Judd is one of Michigan's most prestigious law firms. I will write more about this later.

Quick note: My Amway blog is less than two weeks old and it is already getting a lot of search engine traffic. For instance, it turns up in the top ten of a Google search of "reasons not to do Amway." I'm proud.

Posted 11:36 AM by Scoobie Davis

Cults and Power: Two Moonies Seeking US House Seats
Nobody ever accused Sun Myung Moon and his Family Federation for World Peace (FFWP) of modesty. Both Moon and FFWP president Michael Jenkins made this claim about their movement: "We are the chosen people" (this slight of the Jewish people is hardly surprising considering Moon's view of Jews--see addendum).

At least two of Moon's "chosen people" are considering runs for US House seats. Last month, I wrote a post about FFWP member and Arizona State Representative Mark Anderson who is considering a challenge to freshman Democratic representative Harry Mitchell.

In recent days, FFWP member David Caprara is considering a run for the seat left vacant by the recent death of Representative Jo Ann Davis (R-VA).

What makes the runs by Anderson and Caprara especially interesting is that in a 2002 book paying tribute to Sun Myung Moon (modestly titled The Hope of All Ages, A Unified World Peace: A Tribute to the Reverend and Mrs. Sun Myung Moon), Anderson and Caprara co-authored a revealing chapter. In it, they acknowledged that the Congress's establishment of Parent's Day was inspired by Moon, a sexual predator and con artist who exploited people's concern for family members to bilk them out of their life savings. Members of Moon's cult view Moon and his wife as the "True Parents" of humanity. Caprara and Anderson acknowledged that this was the covert rationale for the establishment of Parents' Day by the US Congress: "The establishment of Parents' Day was the result of a bipartisan, multiracial and interfaith coalition of religious, civic, and elected leaders inspired by your commitment, Reverend Moon, to the ideal of establishing true parent role models"(p. 17).

Addendum: Sun Myung Moon on the Jewish people:

To recreate Israel, the church and the state must become one as Cain and Abel. Instead they became one with Rome and captured and killed Jesus. They united with Rome. Who are the Jewish members here, raise your hands! Jewish people, you have to repent. Jesus was the King of Israel. Through the principle of indemnity Hitler killed 6 million Jews. That is why. God could not prevent Satan from doing that because Israel killed the True Parents. Even now, you have to determine that you will repent and follow and become one with Christianity through Rev. Moon.

Thanks again to Moonboots for help with this post.

Posted 1:24 AM by Scoobie Davis

Get Back to Work!
A few months ago, I found out that someone in the US State Department was Googling for pictures of Michelle Malkin (and getting paid by the taxpayer for doing it). More recently, someone in the Justice Department was surfing the web and came to my site apparently looking for dirt on Al Gore (and possibly violating the Hatch Act).

I checked my Statcounter stats and found that for the past three days, someone from the US Justice Department has been checking out my anti-Amway blog. Don't they have some criminals to catch?

A quick note: since I've started this blog, I have noticed from my Statcounter stats that Amway's parent company Alticor has been monitoring my Amway blog on a daily basis.

Posted 1:53 PM by Scoobie Davis

Amway is Imploding!
Read about it on the Amway blog.

Posted 8:54 AM by Scoobie Davis

Amway's War on Bloggers
As cult expert Steven Hassan has pointed out, information control is essential to a cult like Amway. Many new Amway recruits have been told by their sponsors not to watch TV, listen to the radio, or surf the Internet (this last component became more difficult when Amway became web-oriented with Quixtar in 1999). With the advent of the Internet, lower level Amway distributors as well as prospective recruits have plenty of critical information about the corporation (my Google bomb helped to make this information more accessible to these people). This is great because accurate, critical information is a bane to mind control groups like Amway.

More recently, there has been a lot of infighting between the company and disgruntled distributors. This has led to these distributors creating blogs such as Quixtar Lost My Cents, Free the Quixtar IBO log, The IBO Rebellion, Free the IBO, Crazy World, Save Yourself Dick DeVos, and many others.

In response to these new waves of criticism, Alticor, the parent company of Amway and Quixtar, has filed a series of lawsuits against many of these critical bloggers. Such lawsuits are known as Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPP). They are filed in order to chill public expression by bankrupting the defendants. Bloggers and others concerned about freedom of expression should stand up for these targeted blogs against corporate bullies like Alticor.

Note: This post is cross-posted on my Amway blog.

UPDATE: Crazy Horse has a list of the sued bloggers.
If you want to watch the YouTube videos that Amway/Quixtar finds so threatening, click here. The videos with the Hooded Angry Man are hilarious.

Posted 1:07 AM by Scoobie Davis

Amway's War on Bloggers
Click here to read about Amway/Quixtar's SLAPP lawsuits against Internet critics. For a humorous but informative response from a blogger, click here. I will have much more later.

Check out my Amway blog for more later.

Posted 10:50 PM by Scoobie Davis

Krugman on Gore Derangement Syndrome
Read the column here. As luck would have it, Monday morning's Moonie Times' editorial page dissed the former VP for receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. The Times' editorials are just sore because the Nobel committee doesn't award a prize for eugenics.

UPDATE: Robert Parry and The Daily Howler have more.

Posted 10:08 PM by Scoobie Davis

Film Work this Weekend
I was doing work on a full-length indie film project (I have a speaking part). I need to rest but the Amway lawsuits are something I will write about tomorrow.

Posted 11:35 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
David Neiwert on Rush Limbaugh.

Posted 1:55 PM by Scoobie Davis

Congrats to Ed Schultz
For having the same audience size as Billo. This is all the more impressive considering that O'Reilly has a top-rated cable TV show and Schultz started his national radio program over a year-and-a-half after O'Reilly started the Radio Factor.

Posted 11:19 AM by Scoobie Davis

New Posts on the Amway blog
Click here

UPDATE: Alticor, the parent corporation of Amway/Quixtar, knows about my new Amway blog.

Posted 12:32 PM by Scoobie Davis

Announcing a New Amway Blog
I have been receiving a lot of traffic from people doing Amway-related keyword searches. I thought the best way to deal with this traffic would be to create a new blog devoted to Amway and reprint the Amway posts from this blog as well as to create other resources for those concerned about the corporation. The title of this new blog represents my feelings about the corporation. The blog is only a few hours old so it does not have many of the features I envision for it. Check it out.

Posted 11:03 AM by Scoobie Davis

Busy
Working on a big project. Details later. In the meantime, I've updated my post on John Hagee.

Posted 1:08 AM by Scoobie Davis

Amway: The Cult of Greed
I'm writing a somewhat long post on Amway. I don't when it will be finished but it will include some of the company's links to the Bush administration. In the meantime, I have revised my long post on the company I wrote earlier in the year. At the end of the post, I have included excerpts from Eric Scheibeler's must-read book Merchants of Deception that underscore what a truly bizarre organization it is.

Posted 10:47 AM by Scoobie Davis

This is Fox News, indeed!
I was channel surfing last night and checked out Fox News' Red Eye with Greg Gutfeld. I can only watch the show for a few minutes at a time because Gutfeld is the most annoying person in the world (perhaps he learned his annoying mannerisms as an assistant to the American Spectator's R. Emmett Tyrrell). Last night's program had some accidental candor in it. One of the panelists was Rebecca Gomez, on-air eye candy for the forthcoming Fox Business Channel. Gomez told the panel that she believed that Hillary Clinton would be elected president in 2008. Gutfeld chided her for being a downer, explaining to her: "This is Fox News!"

UPDATE: This is Fox News.

Posted 10:36 AM by Scoobie Davis

Web Articles on Sun Myung Moon
Ed Brayton, who writes on issues of science and religion, has a series of articles on Sun Myung Moon with an emphasis on the Messiah's ties to Michigan.

Posted 3:13 AM by Scoobie Davis

Radio Interview about Unification Church Heir Apparent Justin Moon
On the Leonard Lopate Show, Christopher S. Stewart--author of the recent article of Justin Moon's gun company, Kahr Arms--is interviewed (click here then click "Listen to the whole show," then click "Kahr Arms and the Unification Church"). One of the more revealing parts of the interview is how the Moonies are lobbying the Bush administration hard for a pardon for the cult leader for his 1982 tax fraud conviction. This makes sense: Moon is 87 and Bush is probably his last hope for a pardon.

Posted 1:27 AM by Scoobie Davis

Film Stuff
I went to an advance screening of The Heartbreak Kid. I laughed but the traditional Mexican dancing scene was not funny.

Posted 11:41 PM by Scoobie Davis

What Do You Expect?
I wasn't surprised Ann Coulter has fantasies about denying women the franchise. This is the same person who said that women shouldn't be allowed in the military and who blamed Abu Ghraib on "a girl general."

Posted 12:51 PM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Robert Parry: "The Clintons and the Bushes"

Posted 11:38 AM by Scoobie Davis

Is the Unification Church Behind a "Sexual Reorientation" Group?
It's no secret that the Reverend Sun Myung Moon doesn't care for homosexuals, whom he once referred to as "dung-eating dogs." Here is an excerpt from a Moon speech:

Is the world around us a peaceful world centered upon God, or is it all confused? That is what is called free sex. What is the meaning of lesbians and homosexuals? That is the place where all different dungs collect. We have to end that behavior. When this kind of dirty relationship is taking place between human beings, God cannot be happy. That is what the secular world is like. As the lord of all creation, are we seeking that kind of world?

Moon might be behind the International Healing Foundation (whose domain name is www.gaytostraight.org), a group that claims to engage in reparative therapy to make gays heterosexual. Warren Throckmorton has preliminary evidence that IHR is a UC front group.

Posted 10:44 AM by Scoobie Davis

John Hagee is Really, Really Scary
I've written about Hagee before (click here and here). Sarah Posner has an update on Hagee. The man is a maniac. Hagee reminds me of something Blaise Pascal said over 300 years ago, "Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."

UPDATE: Recently Bill Moyers examined the Christian Zionist movement. Hagee and his group Christians United for Israel (CUFI) was the focus of Moyer's examination. The program is available on YouTube:
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five

Posted 3:13 PM by Scoobie Davis

I just Listened to Ann Coulter on Sean Hannity's Radio Show
I hope Media Matters was recording it.

Posted 12:42 PM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Wesley Clark on Rush Limbaugh's dishonoring of the troops. Clark knows all about this pattern by Limbaugh: back in 2003, Limbaugh falsely accused of conduct unbecoming an officer. Digby has much more.

Posted 1:15 AM by Scoobie Davis

A Family Tradition: The Amway/Blackwater Markups
Dick DeVos, former CEO of Amway, and Erik Prince, the CEO and chairman of Blackwater USA, are brothers-in-law (also click here). Both Prince and DeVos are reactionaries with ties to the sectarian right and dominionist causes. Both are businessmen who provide goods and services with very high markups. Here is some information about Blackwater charges. Here is what Amway charges for some of its products (also here and here). The main difference is that Blackwater charges its outrageous prices to the US taxpayer while Amway charges its out-of-sight prices to its mostly Republican distributors (who are taught to blame themselves when they almost inevitably fail in this elaborate Ponzi scheme). However, what is most important is that DeVos and Prince profit from other people's misery.

Addendum: I have some other posts on Amway/Quixtar/Alticor: 1) On the blogger success against Amway's scams (check out the new addendum I added recently); 2) An update on the success against Amway/Quixtar; 3) Why Democrats are chumps for not taking on Amway; 4) I mention the Proctor & Gamble suit against some prominent Amway distributors here; 5) A short post on Amway's troubles; and 6) 2006 was not a good political year for Amway.

UPDATE I: Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army has an article about Blackwater in The Nation appropriately titled Blackwatergate."

UPDATE II: The Death of Irony. Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA): "[Erik] Prince is on his way to being an American hero just like Ollie North was."

UPDATE III: Check out my new Amway blog.

Posted 8:44 PM by Scoobie Davis

Anita Hill Strikes Back
Click here

Posted 1:10 PM by Scoobie Davis

New Post on HorowitzWatch
Click here

Posted 1:56 AM by Scoobie Davis

The New Messiah's Hotel Is Infested with Bedbugs
The story on the Reverend Sun Myung Moon's New Yorker Hotel's bedbug infestation is here.

Moon believes he became Messiah because of Jesus' supposed failure in the role. Perhaps the billionaire Messiah should have heeded Jesus' words the one time he mentioned insects:

Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also (Matt. 6:19-21).

UPDATE: Chris Shott of The New York Observer has more.

Posted 5:44 PM by Scoobie Davis

Fox News Democrat Tammy Bruce Once Again Compares Media Matters to Nazis

UPDATE: Welcome Media Matters readers. Check out the front page of this blog. I have some interesting posts on Sun Myung Moon--including an exclusive report that Hillary endorsed a Moon-sponsored event.

Earlier in the year, Fox News Democrat Tammy Bruce referred to Media Matters for America as 1) a "brown-shirt cadre"; 2) one of George Soros' "Gestapos"; 3) and representative of "today's fascists."

Bruce did it again on her blog today in her announcement that she would appear on the O'Reilly Factor tonight, referring to the media watchdog as "the Soros Media Gestapo, Media Matters" and as "the new SS."

UPDATE: Media Matters has the video of Bruce on O'Reilly's TV show. In less than four minutes, Bruce used the word "gestapo" five times.

Posted 10:58 AM by Scoobie Davis

Charlie Rangel Gives Credence to Sun Myung Moon (Again)
Yesterday, I discussed how Hillary endorsed a September 23 gathering of Unificationists and how this and other instances of legitimizing cult leader Sun Myung Moon by prominent Democrats have been disastrous for them (click here for a short post on the matter).

Another prominent Democrat who have accorded legitimacy to Moon has been Representative Charles Rangel (D-NY). A few years ago, Rangel wrote a proclamation honoring the cult leader as "King of Peace." Rangel not only endorsed the Moonie assembly, but spoke at the event (I got the picture of Rangel from the official Family Federation website). I find this incredible not only because Moon has dumped over $3 billion into a media organization that bashes Democrats but that significant elements of that media apparatus are virulently racist (also here).

Thanks again to Moonboots for the tip.

UPDATE: Check out my links on Sun Myung Moon and the Family Federation for World Peaces.

Posted 9:16 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
In the context of the MoveOn PR debacle, Robert Parry reprinted his excellent article on the development of the right's media infrastructure.

Posted 2:46 AM by Scoobie Davis

Bill O'Reilly Versus Media Matters for America: All You Need to Know
I noticed these succinct thoughts in the comments section of a recent Media Matters post on Bill O'Reilly's recent racial remarks:

Those "far-left assasins" sure know their business. They make up stuff and pretend that Bill said it --

What? You mean they quote him verbatim?

Oh, well, they must take him out of context and only quote a few choice words --

What? You mean they actually post the whole quote, with a full-context transcript? AND video or audio recordings?

They're even more diabolical than I thought!

UPDATE: Media Matters has more on O'Reilly and context.

Posted 11:24 AM by Scoobie Davis

Hillary Endorses Moonie Assembly

What appalls me about Bill and Hillary Clinton is that in many ways they are both masterful politicians. However, on the details, both have made huge errors.

A few months ago, I wrote about something that Hillary did that was monumentally in error: she gave legitimacy to Moon and his phony newspaper, The Washington Times. I find it incredible that Hillary and the Democratic Party help to sow the seeds of their own destruction. Aside from the fact that Moon has dumped well over $3 billion into a pseudo-journalistic empire devoted to destroying democratic values, the man has destroyed many lives. For more information, read these two posts on the squandered opportunities (click here and here).

Hillary certainly hasn't learned. Her latest blunder regarding Moon: Hillary sent a letter of support to Moon's 2007 Universal Peace Federation Assembly that was held on September 23 (thanks to John Gorenfeld for the tip). For those of you who think that endorsing an assembly ostensibly devoted to peace in no way helps Moon's cause, I give you the words of former Washington Times editor James Whelan:

They [the Moonies] are subverting our political system. They're doing it through front organizations--most of them disguised--and through their funding of independent organizations--through the placement of volunteers in the inner sanctums of hard-pressed organizations. In every instance--in every instance--those who attend their conferences, those who accept their money or their volunteers, delude themselves that there is no loss of virtue because the Moonies have not proselytized. That misses the central, crucial point: the Moonies are a political movement in religious clothing.

Posted 1:39 AM by Scoobie Davis

In The Nation Magazine

Marvin Kitman: "Olbermann Rules!"

Also, more by Jeremy Scahill on Blackwater. I mentioned Scahill's book Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army in my post on the Blackwater/Amway connection. More on the Amway business cult here, here, and here.

UPDATE: I just found this amusing video detailing how Amway/Quixtar products are overpriced compared to products available at retail stores.

Posted 1:04 PM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Robert Parry looks back at the MoveOn controversy and the right's media apparatus:

The furor over MoveOn.org’s silly “General Betray Us” ad – which led to a bipartisan Senate condemnation of MoveOn after Republicans blocked a move to include right-wing smears against military veterans like Democrats Max Cleland and John Kerry – carries a bitter lesson for the American Left.

Simply put: This is what happens when one side of American politics – the Right – spends three decades and many billions of dollars building a sophisticated and powerful media apparatus and the other side – the Left – does next to nothing on media infrastructure.

Yes, it’s true that many Democratic senators behaved spinelessly, but a leading reason for their political cowardice is the Republicans’ extraordinary ability to whip up national frenzies over anything that can be portrayed as an affront to them or their allies.

The Right’s powerful ideological media – stretching from newspapers, magazine and book publishing to talk radio, TV networks and the Internet – is arguably the most intimidating force in modern American politics. There is nothing remotely comparable – in size, reach or funding – on the Left.

Parry has more on MoveOn in this column.

Posted 11:13 AM by Scoobie Davis

Urban Legend Alert
I was switching stations and I heard Paul Harvey report as fact the following joke circulating in GOP/right-wing circles such as on this blog (except that Chelsea was supposedly interviewing General Petraeus as a journalist):

Chelsea Clinton meets a group of vets who have just returned from Iraq. She asks them what they were most afraid of while they were serving. One veteran looks her in the eye and says, "3 things: Osama, Obama, and your Momma."

Posted 10:57 AM by Scoobie Davis

Project
Could someone add the term "nutpicking" to Wikipedia?

Posted 11:55 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Phil Rockstroh "The Right's Garden of False Narratives"

Posted 10:37 AM by Scoobie Davis

The Theology of Amway
The blog Esoteric Dissertations from a One-Track Mind has some thoughts. I wrote about Amway's blame-the-victim theodicy in a previous post.

Posted 10:05 AM by Scoobie Davis

I'm going to a special screening of The Kite Runner tonight in LA.

UPDATE: Missed the screening. Went to see The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. It was great.

Posted 6:45 PM by Scoobie Davis

It's Moonie Tuesday
1) Christopher S. Stewart: "Money, Guns, & God" on Kahr Arms, the firearms manufacturer "run and mostly owned by Justin Moon, son of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon." (thanks to Moonboots).
2) Eric Alterman on why right-wing media moguls like Moon dump tens of millions each year into substandard newspapers.

Posted 9:53 AM by Scoobie Davis

Where Would We Be Without Rush Defending the Military?
Rush defends General Petraeus and defends the Swift Boat lies. Blast from the past, in 2003, when Wesley Clark was mulling a run for the presidency, Rush accused him of conduct unbecoming an officer (El Rushbo baselessly charged that Clark "had to beg Bill Clinton for his fourth star. Military people think that he didn't earn it--that he hasn't deserved it--that Clinton gave it to him anyway").

What makes this more interesting was that Rush got this from a Lowell Ponte article from Front Page Magazine which is run by David Horowitz who is still subject to charges of violation of the Espionage Act.

Posted 1:45 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Joe Conason on Ted Olson

UPDATE: David Neiwert has more (also here):

I wonder if Harry Reid and his fellow Democrats can see what's happening here. Olson's defenders are already building the theme -- which is already being picked up by the larger media in reporting on this -- that their opposition to Olson is purely a matter of partisanship. Of course the Democrats are lining up against him; they're only doing it for base political motives.

Never mind that Olson has a long history of giving misleading testimony and distorting facts, often and remorselessly enough to disqualify him as the nation's Attorney General. He's done it twice before Congress -- first in 1984, when covering up his own bad legal counsel for the Reagan White House in the Rita Lavelle scandal, and again before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2001 during his confirmation hearings as Solicitor General -- as well as before the Supreme Court. Why, apparently, that's all in the past now, since Olson lost his wife on 9/11 and has since has pulled his life together, as Toensing reminds us. Sniff.

Unless Democrats can figure out a way to change the perception about their reasons for opposing Olson, Harry Reid may be forced to watch another one of his promises get the BushCo bulldozer treatment.

UPDATE II: Now that Bush is nominating Michael Mukasey for AG, Neiwert has some final thoughts on Olson.

Posted 1:12 PM by Scoobie Davis

More on Amway
I added an update to my most recent post on Amway to give people more information on the importance of providing critical information about the group.

Posted 3:55 PM by Scoobie Davis

Revealing Information about the Washington Times
Former Times reporter George Archibald knows the score but here are some observations that partly explain why Sun Myung Moon needed to subsidize the paper to the tune of $3 billion:

The abysmal advertising and circulation numbers of the Times were an unfortunate joke.
No one on the editorial side of the newspaper could understand why the Times’ total classified advertising was no more than one or two pages a day while The Washington Post’s Saturday edition alone had five or six sections of classified ads totaling more than 100 pages.

Also the large ads from ideological zealots were an embarrassment to people in the newsroom. For example, the paper published 30 ads from 2004 onwards from neo-Nazi Stan Rittenhouse, head of a group called Exhorters that has a white-supremacist web site called Stormfront.

Why would any pacesetting newspaper accept such ads, let alone be dependent on them?

How the owners of the Times tolerated the lack of sales by its advertising and circulation staffs for so many years was a complete mystery to us in the newsroom. The Times’ advertising hole was less than almost any tiny suburban paper in suburban Virginia and Maryland. Even the give-away Washington Examiner tabloid, which started in 2005, had more advertising and circulation on its first day than the Times had built up over almost a quarter century.

Read the entire post; there is plenty of information about infighting and racism at the Times.

Posted 1:37 PM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
David Corn on Newt Gingrich

Posted 12:03 PM by Scoobie Davis

Another Victory Against Amway/Quixtar/Alticor
At the beginning of the year, I wrote about how the blogger Google bomb against Amway/Quixtar/Alticor had been a huge success in terms of educating people who were considering investing in this scam.

In the past several months, I noticed that a lot of traffic has gone to the post based on quite a number of keyword searches (e.g. the post is ranked high for a search of "Dexter Yager"--Yager is one of the Amway kingpin tools scammers). What is great is that over 95 percent of the hits are from either red states or third world nations.

Why third world nations? Because Amway has reached the saturation point in the US and the areas of growth are places in which people haven't heard of them and their shady business practices. Why the red states? The simple fact is that Democrats and progressives are not generally susceptible to the Amway scam--it is a con that is directed at Republicans/conservatives. If the typical progressive were to attend an Amway rally and be exposed to their theocratic/right-wing propaganda, he/she would make a hasty exit (also read Eric Scheibeler's free online book Merchants of Deception for more examples). The kind of people who get scammed by Amway are the same types of people who were conned by Jerry Falwell's phony videotapes (click here and here) claiming that Bill and Hillary were bumping off anyone who got in their way.

That's the power of the Internet: it allows people to better weigh their options--something that should lead to a huge decline in business for Amway.

UPDATE: (via The IBO Rebellion) A hilarious undercover video of an Amway IBO prospecting.

UPDATE II: I've received some inquiries about the attention I've been bringing to Amway/Quixtar. The general tone is: what's the big deal about Amway? For one thing, it is one of the most reactionary businesses out there. The Amway founding families, the DeVos and Van Andel families, have a stingy compensation plan for their distributors but their purse strings aren't tight when it comes to funding wing-nut causes such as creationism, dominionism, and the scary Council for National Policy.

Many of the kingpin distributors are just as reactionary as the main corporation. Listen to these clips of kingpin distributor Dexter Yager (click here and here). Yager and other are using their ill-gained wealth to undermine the U.S. political system (also here).

However, the most important thing about the work that bloggers have done is to help inform prospective Amway distributors about the perils of joining the
organization. That's what is so great about the internet is that information is anathema to mind-control cults like Amway. When I and other bloggers manipulated the search engine results to allow for more critical sites to appear for keyword searches of "Amway" and "Quixtar," it better allows these potential recruits to reason and to ask tough questions of the people who want to sponsor them. As former Moonie Steven Hassan has pointed out, cults thrive when the control of information is in their favor. We helped to even the playing field.

What exploitive cults like Amway do to their recruits is unseemly. They sell their victims--often young couples who want nothing more than a better life--a bill of goods, front-load them with over-priced "tools," and when they fail, blame them for their victimization (blaming the victim is a hallmark of most cults).

This isn't just about politics; it's about freeing people from the tentacles of nightmare organizations like Amway.

Posted 2:40 AM by Scoobie Davis

Isn't It Ironic?
Michelle Malkin alleging that "foreign funny money" is being funneled to Democrats in the Washington Times, the quasi-newspaper owned by undesirable alien Sun Myung Moon. Since 1982, Moon has dumped over $3 billion into the Times through laundered cash smuggled into the United States.

Blast from the past: I have discussed Malkin's relationship with Moon in the past (click here and here).

UPDATE: Welcome to Crooks and Liars readers. Check out my front page as well as my post of links about Sun Myung Moon and his pernicious effects on our nation's polity. Also, go to the sidebar and check out the transcripts with my conversations with members of the right. I also have a recent update on Amway. Enjoy!

Posted 11:52 AM by Scoobie Davis

My Posts on Sun Myung Moon and the Family Federation for World Peace


UPDATE: I have created a separate weblog devoted to an examination of Sun Myung Moon and the Unificationist movement. it is called The Real Sun Myung Moon.

1. I ask: Is opposition to Sun Myung Moon religious bigotry?
2. Two cautionary tales showing the price of playing nice with Sun Myung Moon and his criminal organization. Case study one: Hillary Clinton (here's a more recent post that shows that Hillary still accords legitimacy to Moonie groups). Case study two: The Democratic Party. I also have a post about Congressman Charles Rangel's relationship with the Unification Church.
3. Sun Myung Moon and the Bush family: The Bush/Moon relationship; A post on George H.W. Bush planned to fete the Moon Family. Robert Parry has an informative article on the Bush-Moon nexus.
4. Sun Myung Moon as Sexual Predator and Moon's dysfunctional family values. Moon and his wife hold themselves out to be humanity's "True Parents" who have a perfect family. Nothing could be further from the truth: How Moon committed statutory rape as an accomplice and has gotten away with it; Moon's supercilious theodicy that blames a victim for her victimization (also here); and my open letter to Chris Hansen of Dateline NBC.
5. The Moonie Media's Attack on Journalism: How Moon's Washington Times is an indispensable component of the right's noise machine; Insight magazine's fabricated quote; The Washington Times' virulent racism (also here); journalistic misconduct by Washington Times operative Bill Sammon; how the Moonie media distorts real journalism; Editor of Moonie-Owned Magazine Engages in Thinly-Veiled Call for Muslim Extremists to Assassinate Barack Obama; and how the Moonie media is a cancer on our society.
6. Journalistic enablers of Moon. Probably the most egregious example is that of Christopher Matthews, who originally took a principled stand against Moon's attempts to corrupt American journalism but changed his tune when the price was right. Other examples include Bill O'Reilly, David Brooks, the Associated Press, Carlton Sherwood, and Clarence Page.
7. Sun Myung Moon's creative venture, the film Inchon. A post on a famous fan of the film: Ronald Reagan (Moon's Washington Times was also the Gipper's favorite newspaper).
8. Moon's funding of a quasi-Catholic group
9. Article on Michelle Malkin's favorite undesirable alien (also click here and here).
10. Virtue Czar William Bennett's selective morality.
11. The Unification Church versus Scientology.
12. I mentioned Moon in my post on the Bozell family.
13. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and his seedy relationship with the Moons.
14. My post on Moon and Regnery Publishing.
15. My post on two Moonie-funded universities being ranked as among the nation's worst schools. More details about it here.
16. An amusing post about the bedbug infestation at Moon's New Yorker Hotel.
17. Is the Unification Church Behind a "Sexual Reorientation" Group?
18.My post on the two Unificationists planning to run for the US Congress in 2008.

Additional Web Resources on Moon:
1. Consortium News' archive of Moon articles
2. John Gorenfeld's blog on Moon (also read his Salon.com article on the Moon coronation).
3. Former Unification Church member Steven Hassan's page on the Moonies.
4. Rick Ross's page on Moon.
5. Marc Perkel's web pages on Moon (it has plenty of links).
6. Here's a video of the 60 Minutes interview of Nansook Hong, the former daughter-in-law of Moon as well as an interview of Hong from WBZ News in Boston.
7. Here is a Unification Church video of the 2004 coronation of Moon and his wife in the Dirksen Senate Office Building in a ceremony attended by influential member of the US Congress.
8. Wikipedia has succinct and informative entries on Moon, the Unification Church, Moon's conviction on tax evasion charges, Nansook Hong, The Washington Times, and the notorious coronation ceremony.
9. Craig Maxim has one of the largest anti-Moon sites on the Internet.
10. A Church & State article on Jerry's Falwell's links to Moon.
11. The BBC film on Moon, Emperor of the Universe.
12. A televised conference: "Cults and the Media."
13. A page on Steven Hassan's site devoted to the "Spiritual Sales" scam that has bilked Japanese families out of over a billion dollars.
14. A Chicago Tribune article on Moon's control of the sushi industry.
15. Robert Parry's article "Moon/Bush 'Ongoing Crime Enterprise'"
16. John Gorenfeld's Salon.com article "Bad Moon on the Rise."
17. SourceWatch's Page on Sun Myung Moon and the Unification Movement.
18. A Fair.org report on the Washington Times.
19. A San Fransisco Gate article on how the Unification Church receives tax money for its "faith-based" programs.
20. A far-from-exhaustive list of Moonie front groups.
21. Former Washington Times reporter George Archibald has some revealing observations about the paper.
22. A comprehensive article by Rob Boston on how Moon has been actively trying to expand his theocratic empire.
23. Cell Whitman on the supposed independence of the Washington Times.
24. Christopher S. Stewart: "Money, Guns, & God" on Kahr Arms, the firearms manufacturer "run and mostly owned by Justin Moon, son of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon." Stewart is interviewed on the Leonard Lopate Show.
25. Ed Brayton has a series on Sun Myung Moon and his Michigan ties.
26. Max Blumenthal's article on The Washington Times.