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.

Posted 12:47 PM by Scoobie Davis

Quick Question for Some of My Readers
I notice from my Sitemeter stats that a lot of my readers work for defense contractors. Why is this the case?

Posted 9:09 AM by Scoobie Davis

Film Stuff
Last night, I saw Superbad. I didn't like it as much as a lot of people.

A while ago,at Clinatro Live! in Chula Vista, I met one of the guys behind the forthcoming film Raw for 30 Days, a film that essentially is Supersize Me in reverse. The premise is simple, take a group of people with diabetes and give them raw food for thirty days (at Gabriel Cousens' Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center in Arizona). The results were remarkable. Here's the trailer:

Posted 12:28 PM by Scoobie Davis

D. James Kennedy, RIP
The dominionist paster and political activist was 76. I wrote about him last year (be sure to read the hilarious addendum on how Kennedy helped to ruin Fort Lauderdale).

Posted 10:17 AM by Scoobie Davis

The Collapse of Amway?
A while ago, I pondered this question. I'm not the only one thinking this might be the case. Read this article on Amway infighting and the tools scam. I'm glad to have been a part of Amway's troubles (this post also succinctly explains the kingpin tools scandal--a Dateline NBC report also explains this phenomenon).

Posted 9:34 AM by Scoobie Davis

New Jack T. Chick Tract
"There Go The Dinosaurs" has a rather creative view of history--namely that dinosaurs and humans co-existed. A detailed critique of the tract is here.

Posted 2:39 PM by Scoobie Davis

A Moonie in the House of Representatives?
Mark Anderson is considering a run.

UPDATE: Even the Freepers are wary of Anderson.

Posted 9:57 AM by Scoobie Davis

I love the song and the video: